The Death We Seek

Drown in the Wakes of an Infinite Void [Chapter 8]

How long had he spent in this concrete grey cube, wasting away? A month, a few days, a year?

It felt like all of that simultaneously. Regardless, he had to focus. There were precautions that told him it hadn't been too long, so he was free to continue. His head hurt. At a glance, his hands looked wrinkled and withered before delusion faded to reality and showed his smooth, lightly scarred skin.

Right now, Issei was not under observation. He was a separate entity to this magical prison, and was independent of time. His human brain was straining and bleeding trying to keep up and maintain this, but it was the first step.

Ophis. The Ouroboros, the Concept of Infinity. It had lent him power to travel into the past, and he believed magical residues would allow him greater power. He was not borrowing it, like the Khaos Brigade had done, no. He was taking a part of it for himself, honouring Infinity's deeds with a permanent etch onto his soul. Well, he would have to first decipher the code before creating the engraving, and therein lay the problem.

Issei was rewriting the magical code of the World. Defining infinity within a finite space without permission; it was ruining his mind. He did far too much research into quantum physics and was trying to prevent attacks from the World by separating himself into a unique quantum system. To do this, he had to isolate himself magically from the surrounding space, as well as prevent anyone from observing him.

In layman's terms, Issei Hyoudou would use magic to redefine physics and use the World without permission to teleport with no sound, energy or evidence of his existence except him being there. It would take a lot of effort but whenever someone came down to greet him, he would borrow them.

Blood ran down his nose, seeping into his mouth and dripping off his chin. His eyes made it feel like he was crying, and the vermillion tears tinged his vision a salmon pink.

The practice was teleporting naturally when his position was undefined, when there was no observer. His brain was bleeding severely and it was showing. Ddraig was fully focused on healing him, knowing that even looking at Issei was extremely dangerous right now. A phenomenon called "quantum tunnelling", it could decimate his form into nothing. Simply passing the wall of his cube would teleport him directly into a volume of dirt.

Being in the same space, Issei would be eviscerated immediately. The boundaries had to be defined well or his new life was over.

This was the main reason behind why no one dared to tamper with infinity. Even disregarding the potential backlash from Ophis, it was dangerous enough that you could cease to exist in mere instants. Issei did not care.

He knew it had potential when he had successfully used every ounce of his magic and the magic around him to shift a single centimetre to the left. He used every single branch of his magical veins to hold himself together, and very quickly realised a problem. When performing this teleport, his veins did not extend well enough into his feet.

Issei's toes were left behind, a glitched yet conformed mass of flesh evident of his attempts to become something more than human. Ddraig fell silent.

He was trespassing into the realms of a higher dimension. No creature given flesh dared such an act, yet he persisted. 'It would pay itself off', he would repeat for an eternity within a second.

Issei had entombed himself. A cage within a prison all outside of time, he was inherently nothing. He had stopped existing. For just a moment, his world stilled around him. An eternity passed, and yet it stilled none the wiser. Being outside of time yet whole, he trained with the loss of energy being zero. It couldn't move, no transfers could take place between him and his environment. All that existed to him was his prison, and to everything else there was a void where he had been.