God of Strength (Chikara no kami)

Chapter 3

I was surrounded by nothing. Nothing was everywhere and everywhere was nothing. I could feel the cold emptiness besieging me, seemingly insulted to be in the presence of something. I held on as my inhuman body was unceasingly assaulted.

Slowly opening my eyes, I observed my surroundings.

Nothing.

I wasn't surrounded by an endless darkness or an eternal white, just...nothing. I closed my eyes and gathered my thoughts. I had royally messed up. Before arriving in this place I clearly had the ability to see into the past and the future. However, this situation wasn't in any future I'd seen. Was it perhaps everything could be flipped on its head by the Locket? No matter how far I looked in time, the Locket was never there. The thought that countless futures and multiple possibilities could be erased by a simple wish was...terrifying. The Locket seemed to have ripped a hole in the universe and I...was cast out.

I sent out my senses to try and determine the gravity of my situation. It was grave. I couldn't sense anything as there was nothing to sense. With my stomach sinking, I attempted some magic. No effect. Even the knowledge of omnipresent space was of no use. I felt a sinking feeling as fear threatened to overwhelm me. A little while ago I was bragging about how I was an all-knowing divine existence. Simply recalling that made me want to bury my head in shame. All right. I was an insanely powerful being trapped outside space-time. If my abilities only worked within a universe, all I had to do was make one.

Simple.

I raised my palm and focused. For the first time, I performed the only spell of my Aether magic, Big Bang. Nothing happened. Goddamnit, why'd it not work?! The answer instantly appeared in my mind. An incantation. All spells required incantations but due to my high intelligence and mana pool, I could perform them all on a whim. Yet my own magic was too high level for even me to ignore its incarnation. Once more I raised my palm and spoke:

"BE."

And it became.

Immediately after reciting the incantation to the aether magic, I witnessed the moment before creation which mortal minds could never comprehend. With me at the centre, something appeared. Something then began rapidly expanding, devouring nothing. I once more felt the cold familiarity of space. Relieved, I watched as my universe expanded, the newly formed spacetime expanding into itself. Manifestations of energy in the form of particles immediately started to interact with one another. Curious, I began observing the spot before me. In my previous world, scientists were constantly trying to find an answer to the phenomenon I was now witnessing.

All these events took less than second to occur. I let out a maniacal laugh as everything started making sense to me. Every single event or secret of the universe scientists were struggling with in my previous world, I knew. I knew everything.

Right before I could collect my thoughts and revisit that moment, a blinding light caught my attention. It was nothing like the birth or death of stars. I could feel a slight sense of familiarity emanating from it, so I approached. It was then that I saw the one and only object I had no power over. From where I stood was The Locket. The Locket of Fate came into existence after the birth of the universe. So my universe birthed a Locket of its own? Relief washed over me as I reached out to grab it.

…As I reached out to grab it.

…

Why couldn't I grab it?! The moment I came into contact with it, it passed through my hand as if I wasn't there. Something was seriously wrong. I observed myself in detail before discovering the cause. I seemed to be shrouded in a layer of nothing. My mind rapidly came to the conclusion that there couldn't be something without nothing. And so I became that nothing. I almost burst into laughter at the irony. I created the cause of my problems while I became nothing.