The room was silent, save for the rhythmic ticking of a clock on the wall. Zhen Wu sat cross-legged. A faint hum filled the air as a translucent blue screen appeared before him. It displayed the words ;
'Simulation Start' :
[In the first year, little happened of note. You spent most of your time consolidating your foundation. With your vast knowledge from your past life and the treasures stored in the ring, you focused on creating a perfect base. You avoided any flashy displays of power, preferring to stay in the shadows. Your peers viewed you as unremarkable, a mediocre mage at best.]
[Year 2: As the second year arrived, the young mages around you began advancing to the First Circle, a significant milestone in their magical journey. Your peers, including Julius, a loud and ambitious mage, and Cassandra, a prodigy with an affinity for enchanting spells, celebrated their success.
Both of them wanted to befriend you for some reason, and Julius even offered advice. "You're still away from the First Circle? Maybe you should consider a different path." While others mocked and ridiculed you.
You simply smiled, unaffected by their taunts. You had no interest in rushing your progress. Instead, you used the resources from your ring, studying ancient manuals and refining your mana core. Your foundations would be unbreakable, and those kids couldn't understand it.]
[Year 3: By the third year, you decided the time was right. You used a rare treasure from your ring, the Primordial Mana Crystal, a legendary resource capable of purifying and enhancing magical energy. As you absorbed its power, your mana core solidified, and you advanced to the First Circle.
Your peers saw no celebration, no fanfare. To them, it seemed as though you had barely reached the First Circle like everyone else, late and unremarkable. But in truth, your First Circle status was leagues beyond theirs. With your newfound strength, you could defeat even a Fourth Circle Mage with ease.]
[Year 4-5: Over the next two years, you maintained your low profile. Your classmates, especially Julius and Cassandra, grew stronger, gaining attention from their instructors. Julius became a rising star, frequently breaking records, while Cassandra began crafting intricate magical artifacts.
You didn't mind. You let them bask in the spotlight while you focused on perfecting your techniques. Occasionally, you took some time off your busy practicing and studying schedule you made for yourself to make different escape plans, contingencies, and such...]
[Year 6: As the years passed, your peers continued to advance. By the sixth year, most had reached the Second Circle, with a few prodigies like Julius and Cassandra advancing to the Third Circle.
You remained at the First Circle, drawing sneers and pity from those around you. But you didn't care. Your foundation was now flawless, your mana core a masterpiece of precision. When you finally decided to advance to the Second Circle, it was bound to be a second masterpiece.]
[Year 7: This year, Julius got framed for practicing forbidden magic by your older brother Edwin, who was also a Third Circle Mage. You saw through the entire play with your observation spells, but you didn't care and simply ignored it.
By the end of the year, Julius and Cassandra asked for your help, believing you could do something since you were from the same family as Edwin. You simply gave them a half hearted refusal.
Not long after, Julius got crippled and thrown outside of the Tower. You could see that this was a play orchestrated by the will of this world for its child of luck, but what you couldn't understand was your brother coming to you in the middle of the night to kill you for your apparently close relationship with Julius.
In one move, you silently dispatched the fool to the afterlife.]
[Year 8-9: Rumors about Julius gaining back his power and making waves in the outside world spread, but you couldn't care less.
In the ninth year, you used another rare resource from your ring, the Celestial Flame, an artifact that purified your mana and expanded your core's capacity. Feeling that you could handle it, you even added one of the three condensed Suns you had obtained before your reincarnation.
The process was excruciating, but the results were undeniable. Though your peers saw you as a mere Second Circle Mage, you could now defeat even a Seventh Circle Mage in battle.]
[Year 10: By the tenth year, you were far stronger than anyone realized. However, as Julius came back and started jumping around, he challenged you, saying that he always knew you weren't simple, his master had told him so.
But even though you had the capability to help him back then, you refused, and now it's time to pay back.
In front of Cassandra's admiring gaze, he stood before you, and you simply wanted to leave. However, always being the stubborn Julius, he blocked the space with a Fifth Circle spell even though he was just a Fourth Circle Mage.
Annoyed, you slapped him to death, and you slapped the ghost inside his ring to death. Then, you slapped the weeping Cassandra to death. after that you wiped the memories of every witness and kept on with your life in the Tower.
Surprisingly, even after all this time, the Universal Will didn't find you. But the will of this world began to notice the subtle anomalies around you after you killed its golden child. Your perfect foundation, your unnatural strength, it all drew attention.
The Grand Space Mage Association, a lawful organization, began to take an interest in you.
It started subtly, with spies observing you during training sessions. But when you uncovered their presence, you acted decisively. In a single night, you eliminated several operatives, leaving no trace of your involvement.]
[Year 20: On this year you became a Third Circle Mage. Your strength was unparalleled, but you kept your power hidden, using misdirection and cunning to stay under the radar.
It was the moment of your breakthrough when you felt the Universal Will's senses descend on you. However, surprisingly, it didn't recognize you. Thinking it was an opportunity to go into hiding again, you started making your plans, feigning ignorance.
While the will of the universe just watched you, the will of this world began to send stronger agents after you, including 8th Circle Mages. Each time, you defeated them, leaving chaos in your wake.
After those incidents, the Grand Space Mage Association branded you a criminal, spreading rumors of your treachery.
You were happy about the situation as you staged your own death in a grand battle against the Association.
You faked an elaborate battle, leaving behind a shattered battlefield and a decoy corpse. The world believed you were gone, and you vanished into obscurity, even the will of the universe was fooled by the death of this random genius.]
[Year 130: In the decades that followed, you continued to cultivate your strength in secret. You reached the Seventh Circle, becoming one of the most powerful mages in existence.
However, your strange actions and abnormal powers had not gone unnoticed. The Universal Will found you this time, recognizing you as the real Zhen Wu and realizing its blunder when it didn't act on you earlier. Recognizing it was a great opportunity to kill you while you were still weak, but thankfully, it wasn't too late.
It started sending wave after wave of enemies.
You fought back with relentless determination. You defeated paragons and archmages in single combat, slipping away just before being surrounded. Your mastery of magic was unmatched. But the constant battles took their toll. You knew you couldn't keep this up forever.]
[Year 150: By this time, you became a legend. Stories of your exploits spread across galaxies, though not a lot of people knew your true identity.
You continued to elude the Universal Will, using your unmatched intellect and foresight to stay one step ahead.
But not all of your plans were successful. After attempting to fake your death again and escape into the dream of a child of luck to hide using one of your intricate spells that you made over the years, you were found out after less than a month, unable to achieve much, and the poor person you parasitized was killed in order to get to you.
Back to fighting and escaping...
But eventually, the inevitable happened. During a massive battle against the Universal Will's forces, you were struck down. Your body crumbled under the immense pressure, and for a moment, it seemed as though your journey had ended.
But you had prepared for this. Using a spell you had crafted over centuries, you saved your consciousness and preserved your strength. Your body was destroyed, but your essence remained intact, only to be reformed in a remote galaxy far away from the battlefield.]
[Year 160 – 250 :
For nearly a century, you remained hidden, perfecting your spells and creating new ones as you made progress. Your body, rebuilt from the essence of your old one, was indistinguishable from its original form, and your power remained intact. During this time, you meditated, cultivated, and prepared for the inevitable moment when the world discovered you were still alive.
But your absence had not been without consequence. The Paragons, emboldened by your apparent demise, sought to ensure that no threat like you would ever rise again. They turned their attention to your kingdom, your family, and anyone even tangentially associated with you. With you alive, they had been too afraid to act against them for fear of you knocking on their door.... but now…...
The massacres were brutal. Your family was wiped out under the pretext of erasing any trace of your bloodline. Your kingdom, once a beacon of strength, was razed to the ground. The Paragons justified their actions as a necessary purge to prevent another you from rising.
When news of these atrocities finally reached you, your fury was uncontainable.
The Universal Will had allowed these events to unfold. It had given its tacit approval, ensuring that the Paragons faced no consequences for their actions.
You emerged from hiding, now a Ninth Circle Mage, an existence so powerful that the very fabric of reality seemed to bend around you. Your return sent shockwaves across the universe. Those who had dared to stand against you;Paragons, Archmages, and countless others, soon found themselves hunted.]
[Year 300 – 500:
The first to fall were the Paragons who had destroyed your kingdom. They believed themselves untouchable, but you proved otherwise. In battles that shook entire worlds, you unleashed your wrath, killing them one by one. Your mastery of spells, honed over centuries, allowed you to bypass even the most formidable defenses.
Liu Mei, your guest from long ago, had risen to prominence as a Paragon allied with the Universal Will. When she faced you, she pleaded for mercy, claiming she had no part in the massacres. But you were unrelenting. "You stood by and watched," you said coldly before striking her down.
Han, her brother, once a brash youth, had become a Paragon himself the youngest there is.
He led a coalition of mages and cultivators to stop you, but their efforts were in vain. You annihilated them with ease, your spells so potent that even the Universal Will itself seemed to waver.]
[Year 500 – 650:
For centuries, you waged war against the Universal Will's forces. Entire organizations, like the Grand Arcane Alliance, were dismantled. Planets burned, and the balance of power across the universe shifted.
But the Universal Will was not without its own strategies. Bound by the rules of its existence, it could not directly attack you unless you targeted its true body or became an immediate existential threat. Instead, it manipulated the Paragons and Archmages, using them as pawns to delay and weaken you.
You, however, were always one step ahead. You used your profound understanding of magic and tactics to outmaneuver your enemies, creating spells that defied conventional logic. Your most notable creation during this time was the Ethereal Seal, a spell that allowed you to bind even the most powerful beings with a single glance under certain conditions, rendering them helpless before your might.
Eventually, the Universal Will proposed a truce. Though it could not openly admit fear, its actions made it clear that you had become a force it could not control. The truce was tenuous—a temporary peace that both sides knew would not last.]
[Year 601 – 750 :
With the war behind you, you turned your attention inward. You spent centuries perfecting your spells, crafting techniques that pushed the boundaries of magic itself. You even used your old body, preserved in your ring, as a resource. Combining its residual power with : (Nonexistent Materials) substances that defied the very laws of reality, you advanced to the Tenth Circle, a realm of power so profound that few dared to even imagine it.
At this stage, you stood on the precipice of becoming an Archmage, the mage equivalent of a Paragon. However, your strength was already beyond what most Archmages could achieve. Even the Universal Will, a near-omnipotent entity, regarded you with caution.
But you were not content to rest on your laurels. You began traveling across the universe, seeking the rarest materials to forge a set of equipment worthy of your unparalleled power. These materials were scattered across the most dangerous realms, places where even the bravest Paragons feared to tread.
In the Oblivion Abyss, you found Voidsteel, a metal that could absorb and redirect magical energy. In the Crystal Nexus, you harvested Eternity Shards, fragments of time itself. And in the heart of a dying star, you extracted Astral Essence, a substance that could amplify your spells to unimaginable levels.]
[Year 800 :
As you continued your quest, whispers of your deeds spread throughout the universe. You were no longer seen as merely a mage or a cultivator; you had become a legend, a force of nature that defied comprehension.
The Universal Will watched you with unease, knowing that its truce with you was fragile at best. You, for your part, had no intention of breaking the peace, at least, not yet. You had your own plans, a hunter must be prepared before a hunt.
You stood atop a floating island in the Celestial Void, holding a fragment of a material so rare no second can be found within this known universe. Your eyes burned with determination as you muttered to yourself, "This is only the beginning."].
[Year 801 – 900 :
You devoted an entire century to the creation of your legendary equipment, pouring every ounce of your knowledge, skill, and power into the process. Each piece required painstaking precision, rare resources, and a forging environment unique to its nature.
The Staff of Time, named Chronos' Dominion, was crafted using Eternity Shards and Voidsteel, materials that manipulated the flow of time and absorbed magical energy. Forged in the Temporal Forge, a hidden place where time moved in infinite loops, it granted you unparalleled control over time, allowing you to reverse, accelerate, or halt it entirely with certain limitations in both duration and range.
The Robe of Eternity, woven from Astral Essence and Starweave Silk, shimmered with the light of a thousand galaxies. It not only amplified your magical resilience but also allowed you to bend the rules of reality itself, making you almost untouchable.
The Rings of Infinity, a set of six rings, were forged from Void Gold, a material capable of channeling infinite power. Each ring had a specific function: shielding, amplification, teleportation, sealing, healing, and destruction. Together, they made you an unstoppable force.
The forging process took decades for each piece, with you delving into ancient techniques and combining them with your unparalleled innovations. By the end of the forging, your equipment was not only worthy of you but also a testament to your supremacy.]
[Year 901 – 902 :
With your preparations complete, you began your final war. You moved with calculated precision, targeting Archmages and Paragons across the universe.
Entire mage towers were obliterated in an instant, their protectors unable to withstand your power.
The Grand Arcane Council, which once ruled over countless realms, was reduced to ash in a single battle.
Orion the Radiant, an Archmage renowned for his mastery of light magic, fell before your Temporal Cascade, a spell that trapped him in an endless time loop until his existence unraveled.
Kyran the Eternal, a Paragon who boasted invincibility, was crushed by the sheer force of your Void Ring of Destruction.
Within months, you cleared the battlefield, eliminating every significant threat. The universe trembled under your might as you prepared for the ultimate battle: your confrontation with the Universal Will.]
[Year 901 – 1500 :
Finding the Universal Will's true body was no small feat. It had hidden itself across multiple dimensions, its essence spread thin to avoid detection. But you, with your mastery of time and space, unraveled its secrets. After years of searching, you located its true form, a colossal, otherworldly worm.
The battle began with an explosion of power that shook the universe to its core. The Universal Will manipulated the laws of reality, summoning storms of chaotic energy, dimensional rifts, and waves of annihilation.
You countered with spells that defied comprehension:
Chrono Cataclysm, which rewound the worm's attacks, forcing it to face its own destruction.
Voidforge Chains, which bound the Universal Will despite its immense size.
Celestial Tempest, a storm of pure magical energy that tore through the worm's defenses.
The battle raged for hundreds of years, with you sustaining injuries that would have killed any other being. But you pressed on, your relentless determination fueled by centuries of preparation.
In the end, you stood victorious. The Universal Will lay defeated, its massive body collapsing into the void. Using a spell of unparalleled complexity, you absorbed its essence, pushing yourself to the Archmage level, a state of existence beyond comprehension.]
[Year 2000 – 10000 :
With the Universal Will gone, you became the uncontested ruler of this region of the universe. However, you were not content to remain idle. You explored the farthest reaches of existence, delving into the mysteries of the cosmos.
You enhanced your equipment further, using the essence of the Universal Will to upgrade your staff, robe, and rings.
You discovered ancient civilizations, learning their secrets and adding their knowledge to your repertoire.
You created spells so advanced that they bordered on divine miracles.
Eventually the resources you accumulated and the knowledge you learned had reached a critical point that allowed you to make another breakthrough.
The absolute limit of power reachable, and you had it, but it made you slightly saddened because you came to realization ; an answer to a question you always had... Can immortality be achieved....
The answer was ' No' .... currently you can't die normally and can live endlessly, but once the universe ends so will you...
After a brief silence your mood returned to normal, you always had that suspicion at the back of your mind, now that it was confirmed it was somehow refreshing and a relief....
The Universe was endless, so you went forward planning to explore as much as you can before settling down.
But as you ventured deeper into the universe's mysteries, you began to notice strange anomalies. The flow of time and space around you felt... Different.]
"Sigh !!". For the first time in this long simulation the real Zhen Wu was effected, and reacted to the words displayed.
After all, he trusted himself deep enough to not doubt his future judgment.
Still, after a moment of silence his soft smile returned.
"So be it!".
[Year xxx?! xxxxx? :
Eventually after countless years, you realized the truth: you were within the simulation. Everything you had experienced ; the battles, the forging, the universal Conquest, was a glimpse of a possible future. But the simulation was not a simple projection. It was a temporal echo, an alternate version of yourself living out what could be.
you smiled at the realization.]
Zhen Wu suddenly looked away from the simulator's screen gazing to the right.
[Year xxxxxxxxxx :Xx :
It was ending, and In the final moments of the simulation, you turned toward the unseen observer..... your past self.
For a moment both of you smiled at each other with a nod of acknowledgment.]
....
.. .... ...
.... ...
"as expected of me," The future Zhen Wu said, his voice resonating across the void.
"But, this simulator has a problem, it will turn the user into a different himself after enough simulations and memories were integrated, eventually the user will go mad and this void treasure will take over..
still it's not a problem for us, one use is all what we needed! Hhh!... Plus It wasn't designed to handle power like ours."
Zhen Wu nodded, a knowing smile on your face.
The future Zhen Wu extended a hand, opening a Void Channel next to the past one. "This will allow the simulator to transfer what I... What you've learned back to you. But it will break in the process."
"No matter, it had served its purpose." responded Zhen Wu.
As the Void Channel opened, an immense surge of energy flowed back into Zhen Wu, carrying with it the knowledge, techniques, artifacts, and power he had gained.
The simulator's interface flickered and shattered, its final use complete, with it the possibility of his future self gone.
....
Zhen Wu opened his eyes, his expression calm yet filled with boundless confidence. "The future, is mine to shape."