Chapter 4000  Water

The impact ravaged his entire body more than anything else ever had.

RUMBLE!!!!!

It shattered every bone in his body.

It ruptured every cell in his body.

It overwhelmed his very existence.

His muscles began falling apart as his internal organs began hemorrhaging deeply. The sheer integrity of his material body began crumbling as he floated away. The pain was greater than anything he had ever experienced, and yet it may as well have not existed. His consciousness began dimming.

And yet, it entered a profound state of mind.

He could see everything that happened.

Not through his blurry vision.

No.

But through the realm of information.

He beheld the entire solar system through the information dimension as his fading consciousness watched the consequences of his failures.

The sea of nebula gas expanded.

It expanded, drawing closer and closer to Gaia.

Along with it was the endless tide of alien monsters.

WHOOSH

His body simply floated in the sea of nebula gas as it expanded forth, consuming the entire solar system. The blood-red suns within the depths of his eyes flickered before fading away. He lost sight of the world.

And yet, he found himself growing closer to it than he ever had in his entire life.

As if the universe wanted him to behold the consequences of his failure even as his very life began to fade.

The alien monsters drew closer and closer to Gaia, eventually running into the laminar army, the Gaian army, and the leader of the laminar integuments. The strange jellyfish lifeform appeared to remain true to its promise to switch over to their side if they managed to hold out.

Together, they mounted a collective defense against the tide of alien monsters invading the solar system.

Together, they fought to protect Gaia.

The laminar army unleashed a devastating onslaught of tachyon beams and other energy weapons, pushing their energy systems to their very limit. They deployed their cutting-edge technology, unleashing an onslaught of destruction that could wipe out planets in the blink of an eye.

The Gaian army, moved by his display of defiance, unleashed a desperate offensive against the incoming tide of alien monsters. The Martial Artists charged forth, unleashing as much power as they could. The long-range laser beams emerged from the eleven space siege weapons, unleashing powerful and destructive beams of light against the alien monsters.

The giants, led by none other than the Suneater himself, mounted a devastating offensive against the incoming alien monsters. The Suneater himself pushed his Giant Mind to the very limit, tangling with creatures that were just as large, if not even larger than he was. The evolutionaries, tekvores, and the therianthropes each went all out with everything they had at their disposal, filling in the blanks of the army's holes, allowing them to inflict tremendous destruction along the pathwalkers of Gaia.

The laminar integument leader pushed itself to the very limit as the jellyfish-like alien unleashed tremendously devastating dark energy waves. The same attacks that once threatened to destroy Gaia are now protected against an incoming army of monsters.

Together, each and every single force of Gaia unleashed everything they could, pushing back against the endless tide of alien monsters.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!!!

A maelstrom of energy thrusted forth through outer space, blasting into the alien monsters.

It bruised, burned, and frayed the outer layer of their membrane.

It felled many alien monsters.

And yet, it was not enough.

RUMBLE!!!!!!

The wormholes surrounding the solar systems merely widened.

They merely swept in more nebula gas.

They merely thrust forth even larger nebular lifeforms.

The more they fell, the more they were thrust with.

Their enemies were virtually infinite.

But their energy reserves were not, in turn.

Energy weapons ran out of energy.

Pathwalkers ran out of stamina.

Even the leader of the laminar integuments began slowing down, already exhausted from a battle with Rui.

Their limits were nigh.

RUMBLE!!!!!!

The world shook as the alien monsters drew closer and closer to Gaia in a manner that could only be described as greed. Bit by bit, they overcame the resistance.

The reseeding was unstoppable.

That truth seemed inevitable to Rui even as his consciousness faded away.

His body was on the verge of death as it floated away in the sea of nebula gas. His translucent skin had begun to grow opaque and normal as even his Anthean cells had begun to perish, losing their ethereal luster. His body-consciousness had begun to fade too, as the integrated information comprising its existence began eroding.

His body, once brimming with power, was now reduced to a powerless husk.

Even as he gained an extraordinary amount of insight into the nature of reality and mentality on the verge of death, he watched everything he had ever fought for crumble, even as his life faded.

A single question begged itself in the depths of his soul.

"Why?"

A question that contained every last ounce of emotion in his dying heart.

"Why… why did this happen?"

It was a question to the universe itself.

The flow of events that had led to this moment originated from the very Big Bang of the universe. The countless wave functions that had collapsed into one reality or the other as they moved through the flow of time, culminating in what was very well the most significant moment of his life.

As if whatever created the universe had ordained that one day, Rui Quarrier would helplessly float through outer space, watching everything he had ever known and loved be destroyed as he breathed his final breath.

The alien virus born in the Habitable Epoch of the universe had entrenched itself across the universe, infecting and spreading, and infecting even more planets.

Including his own.

It shaped the destiny of his world.

It shaped his destiny.

He would not have been reborn without the alien virus infecting Gaia.

He would not have come alive if not for Gaia attempting to take measures to heal herself.

Everything that had happened had happened because of something that could be pointed at in the past. Events flowed through the axis of time, affected by the forces of material reality; they changed in accordance with the cause and effect of reality.

The very nature of causality was one of change.

But not a random change.

Change that persisted.

Change that changed around the forces of reality that dictated its flow through time. Every event that unfolded was an event that survived the laws of reality as it flowed into the future. The state of reality itself was ever-changing around the forces of reality. Why had things unfolded the way they did?

Why was he on the verge of death, failing to protect everything he had ever created and loved?

It was because this was the only change that could persist through time through the filters of the laws of reality. From the moment the virus was born, this was the only possible reality that would survive the test of time and the test of reality.

"The very nature of causality is adaptive evolution."

An enlightenment that bloomed within his heart.

"Causality is Water."

Within the depths of his mind emerged a tapestry.

A tapestry woven from every little enlightenment that he had.

Love, nature, life, death, mind, thought, consciousness, and the countless other elements and dimensions of reality.

They came together to weave a single tapestry.

A tapestry of the Enlightenment of Transcendence.

"Everything that flows from past to future, from inception to end, from birth to death, from creation to destruction, is naught but Water."

In that moment, on the very verge of death, he achieved Transcendence.