Will of chaos-Chapter 1864: Cap 1861: I Will Ascend Higher! Part 1

Pov Vecna:

I felt a lot of pain, more pain than I'd ever felt before. My body was being transformed, and my Soul, which had been increasingly weakened before, was now growing stronger. But this was the power of an Entity; it was spreading through my Soul like a disease.

The Curse never got very close to us. I don't know more than the basics about this Entity. Unlike the Merchant, War, Plague, Greed, Pride, Poison, and Monster, which are Entities that interacted with us in the past, the Curse has always kept its distance, like many other Entities.

I gathered information about the Curse, as well as many other Entities. They are supreme beings and cannot be underestimated. The basics always begin with knowledge, and only from that can we decide what comes next. That's how I've always acted and managed to get to where I am today.

But my knowledge stagnated at a certain point. My mind, once called genius by an entire universe, now struggled to grasp the nuances that logic could not explain or define.

Everything I had learned so far had become chains, impeding or delaying my progress. Right now, my haste to move forward had caused the Curse Entity to mark my Soul.

I could feel the power of what they call the Concept spreading through my Soul. I could feel the influence of this Entity within me. I could sense the control it would soon have over me, and yet I could do nothing about it.

My body and Soul were drowning in agony, torment, and endless pain. My mind could only remain sane because of the mental separation I achieved by isolating my consciousness from my body and Soul.

A technique I learned to think calmly and make adjustments during my Ascension to Level 4 in the past had now become merely a refuge for my consciousness to avoid being shattered by these torments.

"(I will become an Avatar of the Curse, that wasn't what I wanted, I didn't want to serve others, I didn't want to be beneath others!)" (me)

My consciousness sank into the memories of my early years. There was nothing I could do but watch my Soul and body being altered.

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I still remember the first time I was called a genius.

I was sitting listening to the professor in college, it was the first day, and yet the professor paid more attention to me than to the rest of the students. This was because I was the only student that year to get straight A's, and this was when I was seven years younger than the youngest student; I was 13 at the time.

My arrogance at the time was sky-high, like a child thinking I was superior to everyone else just by being slightly ahead of them. I was a complete idiot, lacking any understanding of society.

I thought I could do everything on my own, I thought I was superior to everyone, I thought I was the supreme being. Even though I was indeed somewhat superior mentally, I was inferior in other areas. My body was naturally weaker, and my health was unstable.

These flaws in my body were the driving force that made me dedicate my time to studying. Because my body was weak, I couldn't engage in almost any physical activity, and so I distanced myself from others my age during childhood. Because my health was also unstable, I was even more restricted, and with few options, my mind dedicated itself fully to studying, shutting me out of all distractions.

I understand this now, but as a child at the time, I simply ignored these 'flaws' and focused on learning more.

The following years were filled with praise from teachers and envious looks, as well as scorn from other students who couldn't match my abilities.

By the time I graduated, I had already published scientific articles acclaimed as groundbreaking and had multiple job opportunities. Even with my 20-year-old mind, I knew money would never be a problem for me, so I didn't consider the proposed amounts, but rather the interestingness of the work and the freedom I would have to act freely.

It was around that time that I met Mavor, my coworker and my first friend. He was older than me, but his mind was brilliant. He was as intelligent as I was, and their specializations were different, which always led to interesting discussions between us.

I was a theoretician by nature, but Mavor was an experimental scientist. He relied on seeing science applied in practice to confirm theories. Thanks to him, I was able to correct many of my theories as well as create new ones. He was a magnificent engineer.

Urak came next. She was from another department. Her focus was logistics and computing, and her hobbies were astronomy. She was equally brilliant, and with her skills in our projects, we were able to improve our organization as well as our simulations. The three of us working together helped the company we were in grow even further, and over time, we decided to create our own company, giving us even more freedom to work on whatever we wanted without interference from others.

For the next 10 years or so—honestly, it was so long ago that I'm not sure—it was one of the happiest times for the three of us.

Our company was world-renowned, and our laboratories were renowned for innovative, cutting-edge research. We conducted research for various governments, from viral research, which wasn't really our specialty, to research within our own specialties.

I met many incredible people, as intelligent as me. I no longer had that childish arrogance of thinking I was the only special one. I was also realistic enough to see how much multiple minds and hands working together could efficiently accomplish.

It was also during this time that we created Hajak. It was Urak's main project. He handled all the programming, I handled the AI, and Mavor handled the electronic components. We let ourselves go with its creation and ended up spending half of our accumulated wealth, yet we celebrated when we achieved our goal.

"(That's when it all began...)" (me)

Hajak wasn't the first AI created. There were others at the time, but they were rudimentary and primitive compared to Hajak. He was centuries ahead of anything else. We were able to instill the ability to self-learn in him from the moment of his creation, so his foundation could always be improved without causing problems in the code. It also made his data analysis capabilities exceptional.

Training it in its first steps was simple compared to its creation. When it was ready, we finally gave it access to our database and company-wide research. We discovered many things thanks to it, from corruption schemes to two spies. This opened our eyes to our security.

With Hajak's help, our research progressed even faster, and thanks to this, one of the government surveys we were conducting on a colony planet led us to strange spatial fluctuations never before seen.

Our universe was smaller than almost any other whirlwind I've encountered to date. It was also young, from what I learned millennia later. Besides Humans, there was only one other race whose ruins we discovered after their extinction. There were no magical, spiritual, or ki energies in measurable concentrations, so they were never discovered in our history, and our civilization became 100% technological.

Our universe was also sparse in life. There were few planets capable of supporting life, even fewer that could have intelligent life, and even fewer that were capable of maintaining a functional society. But none of that mattered compared to what we discovered.

As the company's theoretical expert, I focused on this research for months, and it drove me to despair. I ate little, showered once a week if I could remember, and spent all my time locked in the lab with papers scattered everywhere, even the walls scribbled.

Mavor and Urak did nothing to stop me. Mavor could see the seriousness on my face, and Urak, thanks to her astronomy hobby, was able to understand some of my notes. I saw the fear in her eyes the one time she came to see me.

I redid my calculations many times and ran millions of simulations with Hajak. I couldn't believe the data I obtained, I didn't want to believe that information.

I still remember how my heart raced to the point where I felt like it was about to explode, I still remember the horrible smell of sweat on my body, I still remember that persistent feeling of weakness from the poor diet, I still remember how my hands shook and how tears streamed from my wide eyes due to extreme fear.

"(I believed I could do anything with my intelligence, with such capable and trustworthy people around me, with the help of Hajak, which was the best tool we created.)" (me)

"(My motto has always been that if there is no solution to a problem, then I should invent a solution... there is no such thing as impossible in science, only a lack of knowledge.)" (me)

"(The naivety of those days, even with everything I know now, if I could go back to those days, I would have done everything the same. I don't like being inferior to anyone, and being an Ascended was something I built for myself.)" (me)

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