The tears, hot and alien on Shinji's spirit-cheeks, dried instantly, leaving tracks of cold resolve etched into his very essence. The raw shock of the embrace, the terrifying intimacy of his own face twisted by eons of darkness, receded like a tide pulling back from jagged rock, leaving behind a stark, focused clarity. This was not a reunion; it was an interrogation at the precipice of oblivion, and the answers held the key to everything – survival, purpose, perhaps existence itself.
"I'm listening," Shinji stated, his voice raspy but firm, the first words born from his transcended core echoing with unnatural resonance in the oppressive gloom of the First Door's realm. The silence that followed was heavier than the void between galaxies, thick with the weight of impending revelation.
The Alternate Future Shinji; AFS released him, stepping back with a fluid grace Shinji didn't possess. The weariness in his eyes deepened, momentarily replaced by a flicker of... something unreadable. Approval? Anticipation? Or simply the grim satisfaction of a surgeon about to operate? He took several measured steps backwards, putting critical distance between them, the faint aura of controlled entropy swirling around him like living smoke, absorbing the ambient darkness. He stopped, drawing himself up, taking a deep, deliberate breath that seemed to draw in the very fabric of the suffocating space. It wasn't just preparation; it was the intake before delivering a universe-shattering verdict.
"Well you see..." AFS began, his voice low, resonant, devoid of mockery now, filled only with terrible, inescapable gravity. "...First of all, you are miserably weak." He paused, letting the starkness of the statement hang like a guillotine blade. "And profoundly ignorant. Not just in the raw output of power, Shinji Kazuhiko, but in the fundamental architecture of existence itself. You stumble in the dark, swinging a child's stick at cosmic titans, blind to the battlefield's true scale."
Shinji's brow furrowed deeply, surprise warring with a spark of indignation that quickly died under the weight of AFS's certainty. Weak? After transcending his core? After surviving Monarchs, channeling spiritual annihilation? Ignorant? He'd learned so much from Merus, Yamato, Kuro!
"First," AFS continued, cutting off Shinji's unspoken protest before it could fully form, "your power. You possess the potential of a Trascender, a seed capable of growing into a world-tree. Yet, you grasp only the crudest, outermost branches. There are Six Acts. Six fundamental expressions of your transcendent nature, six layers of reality you can command. You've unlocked only the lowest three – Instant Regeneration, Danger Sense; and Spiritual Energy Mainpulation, crude energy projection." He waved a dismissive hand, the gesture sharp and final. "Useful toys for surviving a Universal brawl, perhaps. Useless baubles against entities who weave the fabric of Realities. Acts Four, Five, and Six... they are the keys to shaping existence, not merely enduring its currents. To bend causality, rewrite local laws, perceive the threads of possibility... these are the tools you lack."
Shinji felt a cold tremor, deeper than bone, run through his spirit-form. *Six Acts?* He'd sensed... something. A profound depth beyond Act 3, a wellspring of potential that felt infinite yet frustratingly distant. But to have it quantified, categorized, and dismissed as mere foundation... it was humbling to the point of humiliation. His victories against Khoseph, Torento, Nirvana– suddenly felt like a toddler knocking over building blocks while the adults planned celestial engineering. The scale of what he didn't know about his own power was terrifying.
"But power without understanding is a bomb in the hands of an infant playing in a porcelain shop," AFS pressed, his gaze sharpening, pinning Shinji in place. "Your ignorance of the Verse... it's not just staggering; it's dangerous. You think you comprehend? You parrot Merus's comforting nursery rhyme: 3926 universes, galaxies neatly nested within, planets orbiting suns. Tidy boxes on tidy shelves." A cruel, knowing smile touched his lips, devoid of humor. "Kuro, bless his relentlessly analytical mind, scraped the surface. He sensed the cage. But he lacked the perspective, the context, the key to understand what lay beyond the bars."
Shinji bristled, the indignation flaring again. "Huh?! How so? Isn't that the structure? The framework? Merus told me! Kuro kind of doubted the limit but... No matter is still should be 3926! Finite!"
AFS burst out laughing. It wasn't the mocking laugh from before; it was the deep, resonant sound of genuine, weary amusement at cosmic folly, echoing strangely in the confined space, making the dark energy shiver in response. "Oh, Shinji... the charming simplicity of it! If the 'Multiverse' – that neat, comprehensible little box containing your precious 3926 universes – is proclaimed as everything, and yet it possesses a finite, countable number... then pure, unadulterated logic itself screams: Something. Lies. Beyond. Kuro was right about the limit, yes. He sensed the edge of the terrarium. But he barely glimpsed the bars, let alone comprehended the vast, untamed wilderness stretching out beyond the glass."
Shinji felt the familiar ground of his understanding crumble and vanish beneath his feet. The certainty of galaxies, universes – the mental map Merus had painstakingly helped him build – dissolved like mist under a scorching sun. A cold, vast dread, the dread of true insignificance, began to seep into the cracks of his consciousness. "Then..." his voice was a hoarse whisper, tight with nascent terror, "...what's beyond the Multiverse? What's outside the... terrarium?"
AFS leaned forward, the fleeting amusement gone, replaced by an intense, almost predatory focus. "The Asagaverse." The name dropped like a singularity into the stillness, sending violent ripples of pure conceptual dissonance through Shinji. "A clumsy label mortals use for lack of comprehension. It has no true name known to beings confined within individual Multiverses. But within its boundless expanse... reside not one, but a near-infinite number of Multiverses. If not Infinite. Each potentially as vast, as complex, as teeming with life and consequence as your own."
*Infinite Multiverses.* The scale was beyond comprehension. Shinji's mind reeled, trying and failing to grasp the sheer magnitude. His 3926 universes, the battleground of his entire existence, suddenly felt like a single, insignificant grain of sand on an endless, unknowable beach stretching beyond all horizons. "Asagaverse?" he echoed numbly, the word feeling alien and terrifying on his tongue.
"Right," AFS confirmed, his voice flat, emphasizing the horrifying reality. "Containing near-infinite Multiverses. A number so vast it defies mortal imagination, existing in a state that might as well be infinity for all practical purposes."
Shinji's thoughts raced, grasping for familiar anchors in the expanding void of his understanding. "So then... is this Multiverse... the only one with living beings? With... with gods like Saganbo?" The desperate hope that his struggle was unique, somehow cosmically central, was a fragile lifeline he clung to.
AFS shattered it instantly with a single, devastating word. "No." The finality was absolute. "Not even remotely close. Life... consciousness... sentience... it is not an anomaly, Shinji. It is a fundamental cosmic constant, as pervasive as gravity or entropy. A near-infinite number of Multiverses teem with mortals in forms beyond your wildest dreams or nightmares. Civilizations rise, fall, conquer, and are forgotten on scales that would dwarf your comprehension. And gods?" He gave a humorless chuckle, a dry rasp in the gloom. "They are rarer, specialized forces, but far from unique. Saganbo is merely one God amongst Twelve if not even more if we include the entire history, a veteran perhaps within his local cluster, but utterly insignificant on the Asagaversal scale. He lords over precisely one Multiverse. A single, insignificant speck. Countless other Multiverses exist without any divine overseers at all – vast, silent expanses or realms governed by natural laws alone. The lifeless voids and the garden worlds... they are both drowned in the near-infinite ocean."
The implications crashed over Shinji like a series of tidal waves, each larger than the last. Earth, Suchumus, Luminara, the war with Saganbo, Merus's sacrifice, Kiyomi's death... it was a local skirmish, a blink in the eye of an entity so vast it rendered his entire life's struggle meaningless. "12 Gods?" he managed, latching onto the number AFS mentioned earlier, a desperate attempt to find structure. "You mentioned twelve. And... all Multiverses have mortals?" He was drowning, struggling to reassemble a worldview reduced to cosmic dust.
"Yes," AFS replied, his tone shifting to something didactic, patient in the face of Shinji's dawning existential horror. "The pantheon you glimpse is fractured, incomplete, likely filtered through Merus's limited understanding. Saganbo: Destruction, a force of dissolution. Merus?" AFS's lip curled slightly. "He is not the true Creation God of this cosmic stratum. He is, at best, a trainee, a placeholder, perhaps even an exile cast adrift. The true Creation God, the architect who might have woven the fundamental laws of this Multiverse-cluster, resides in a different Multiverse entirely, overseeing its own near-infinite tapestry of realities. And there are others, echoes of fundamental cosmic principles scattered across the Asagaverse: The God of Absolute Beginning, whom Merus fears like a child fears his strict father. The God of Absolute End, whose shadow extinguishes realities like candles. The God of Heroism –" AFS's expression twisted with disdain – "a flawed, hypocritical concept as unstable as 'Justice'. The God of War, an eternal stoker of conflict. And more. Twelve known archetypes, perhaps reflections of the bedrock forces underpinning reality in the current time, each manifesting where their influence is needed... or where chaos allows."
Shinji's mind whirled. Merus, his mentor, his protector... *a trainee? A placeholder?* The scale wasn't just crushing; it was annihilating. "I think I get it now... the scale... Wait, Merus is--" He needed to reconcile this.
"No," AFS cut him off sharply, his eyes blazing with impatience and a strange urgency. "You still cling to the edges of the abyss, afraid to look down into its true depths. You grasp the Asagaverse? Understand this: There are three."
*Three.* The number hung in the air, a hammer blow to Shinji's reeling consciousness. Three near-infinities?
"Three vast, near-infinite collections of near-infinite Multiverses," AFS continued, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, laden with awe and a dread that Shinji now shared completely. "Three Asagaverses. And they..." He gestured upwards, outwards, into a conceptual space Shinji couldn't fathom, "...are contained within, shaped by, governed by... an even greater structure. A Verse beyond comprehension. A meta-reality. Its nature? Purpose? Mechanics? Utterly unknown. Unfathomable to any mind, mortal or divine, dwelling within the 'hellish cosmos' we currently inhabit. Variables and factors exist beyond the reach of Saganbo, beyond Hyachima, beyond any entity you have encountered or imagined. Gods are not the supreme architects, Shinji. They are powerful tenants, localized phenomena, perhaps custodians of specific principles within their domains... but they are not the landlords of existence. We exist within layers upon layers of reality, most of which are utterly beyond our perception or influence."
"What do you mean?" Shinji breathed, the vastness pressing in, an immense, invisible weight threatening to extinguish his sense of self entirely. Was there nothing solid? No ultimate ground? No final truth? Just... endless, unknowable layers? "How... how can any of this be? How can near-infinite exist? What is the Verse? Who made it?" The questions tumbled out, desperate, childlike in the face of the abyss.
AFS's expression softened into something akin to profound, shared weariness, the certainty momentarily gone from his voice, replaced by a haunting vulnerability. "I wonder myself," he admitted softly. "I didn't reach that apex in my timeline. I explored, I transcended further than you have, I grappled with Monarchs and glimpsed the edges of the Asagaverse... and I died, Shinji. Permanently. Irrevocably."
The abrupt confession jolted Shinji like a physical blow. "Died? But... you're here! How... how are you here? With me? Talking?" The paradox was dizzying, a violation of the most basic logic. "If you died in your future... how can you exist now in my... present?"
"Because of what we are," AFS explained, a strange, sorrowful light in his eyes. "When an alternate version of us, a potential Shinji Kazuhiko walking a divergent path through the branching possibilities of the Asagaverse... meets its end... its essence, its accumulated experiences, its power, its very being... it doesn't simply wink out. It flows back. Back to the source. Back to the core consciousness from which all potential Shinjis emanate. Back... to you. The Prime Shinji. The one who still walks the central timeline, the nexus point. I am not truly alive, Shinji. I am an echo. A ghost of a road not taken, a timeline pruned by fate, reintegrated into the main stream of your existence. My knowledge, my pain, my power... it becomes part of your potential, your burden. I am a shadow cast by your light, reabsorbed when the light source that cast me is extinguished."
Shinji stared, mute with horror and awe. The implications were staggering, terrifying. He wasn't just himself; he was a confluence. A repository. A single point gathering the shattered fragments of countless potential selves, countless failures and deaths across the near-infinite branching timelines of the Asagaverse. The weight of it – the grief, the knowledge, the responsibility – pressed down with physical force, threatening to shatter his newly transcendent spirit. His role? His purpose? It dissolved in the face of such infinite complexity and recursion. He was a single, vibrating note in a symphony spanning realities beyond count, a symphony where countless versions of him had already played their part and faded. The fight against Saganbo, the protection of his friends, the search for his mother's potential killer... it all felt absurdly small, cosmically insignificant, a tempest in a teacup adrift in an ocean of near-infinite teacups. A wave of profound disorientation, existential vertigo, and crushing stress washed over him, making the dark chamber seem to spin.
He looked at AFS, this fragment of a dead self, this echo forged in despair and wielding entropy, who had delivered the crushing, yet somehow liberating, truth. A strange, overwhelming mix of gratitude and despair surged within him. "Thank you," he said, the words thick with unshed tears of a different kind – tears of overwhelmed understanding. "You... you actually told me. You gave me the truth, however terrible, however vast. Truths I needed to hear, even if they break everything I thought I knew." He took a deep, shuddering breath, the air feeling thin even in this spiritual space, steeling himself against the crushing scale. "But... how? How can I possibly make it? How can I navigate this... this ocean of chaos? How can I find what I desire – truth, safety for those I care about, an end to the suffering – in a reality so vast, so indifferent, so layered beyond comprehension?"
AFS stepped closer again, his earlier intensity returning, but tempered now with a fierce, almost desperate conviction. "You definitely will!" he declared, his voice ringing with an absolute certainty that felt like an anchor in the storm. "But only if you focus! Stop staring into the terrifying, impossible scale of the abyss and look at the next step directly in front of you! Transcendence isn't a distant mountain peak; it's the very air you must breathe now! You must transcend every millisecond! Push beyond your current limits of raw power, yes – unlock those higher Acts, grasp the tools to shape reality! – but also transcend your limited understanding, your fear of the unknown, your attachment to simplistic, comforting notions of good and evil! Strength manifests in a multitude of forms, Shinji. Knowledge is strength. Ruthless will is strength. Acceptance of harsh truths is strength. Strategic patience is strength. Cultivate them all. Hone your spirit, your mind, your will as relentlessly as you hone your energy blasts."
Shinji felt the crushing despair recede, not replaced by naive hope, but by a cold, hard diamond of resolve forged in the furnace of this terrible knowledge. The impossible vastness wasn't a reason to surrender; it was the ultimate arena, and he was a player, however small. His purpose wasn't negated; it was redefined. Protect his speck. Find his truth. Fight his battles. "Right!" he declared, clenching his fists until his spirit-knuckles shone white, golden-green energy flaring brighter, defiantly pushing back the gloom. "I think I'm ready! Ready to face Saganbo, ready to unlock my true power, ready to break this seal and–"
"Hold on!" AFS interrupted sharply, raising a hand like a blade. "Eagerness is fuel. Recklessness is suicide. You forget the most immediate shackle: you are still sealed. Saganbo's neural bindings clamp down on your physical form like a vice. This," he gestured around them, at Shinji's spirit-form, "is your consciousness, transcended, exploring the depths of your potential. But your body remains a prisoner in his sanctum, utterly vulnerable. Charging out unprepared, even with this knowledge, is a guaranteed path to permanent erasure or worse, absorption. There is more truth you must hear before you act. The final piece of the puzzle you stand upon. The truth about what a Trascender truly is... and its terrible, inevitable cost."
Shinji froze, the fire in his eyes banked by the chilling finality of 'cost.' *Cost?* He'd thought transcendence was pure ascension, pure gain. What price could be extracted from something fundamental? He met AFS's grave, pitying gaze, the weight of the cosmos, the near-infinite Multiverses, the Three Asagaverses, the unknowable Verse, and now this unknown price settling onto his shoulders like neutron stars. He nodded once, slowly, his voice a low, gravelly rumble of absolute, terrifying focus. "I'm listening."
AFS took another deep breath, the air crackling with the unbearable gravity of the last revelation. "You believe you are special. Unique. This Multiverse's first True Trascender. The prophesied hope born from cosmic violation." He paused, letting the assumption hang, a beautiful, fragile illusion. "It is true... and it is a profound lie. You are this Multiverse's first True Trascender. But Shinji Kazuhiko..." He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper that carried the weight of universes. "...you are the Fourth Trascender to emerge within the recorded history of Existence."
"WHAT?!" The word tore from Shinji's throat, not a shout, but a raw, guttural blast of pure shock and disbelief that reverberated violently in the confined space, making the dark energy walls shiver. Fourth? Not unique? Not the first flicker of hope? Not even the second or third? The already fractured foundation of his identity, shaken by the cosmic scale, now seemed to vaporize entirely. He physically staggered back a step, his spirit-form flickering unstable for a moment. "Fourth? But... how? Who? Where? Why wasn't I... why didn't Merus...?"
"A Trascender," AFS continued relentlessly, his voice cutting through Shinji's stunned, stammering silence like a scalpel, "is not merely the hope of a single Multiverse. They are... cosmic singularities. Anomalies. Manifestations of a potential so profound it destabilizes local reality. The dream – or perhaps the inherent instability – of existence itself, erupting in rare, scattered bursts across the near-infinite landscape of the Asagaverse. The sheer scale I just described should have clued you in. 'Hope' is a local phenomenon. Your nature... it resonates on a universal, Asagaversal frequency." His expression darkened, etched with a deep, personal sorrow. "But evolution towards such power, Shinji, demands payment. A terrible, inevitable, corrosive price. The more you transcend... the more you shed. The higher you ascend towards pure potential... the more you lose."
Shinji felt cold dread, colder than the void, pool in the core of his spirit. "Lose? Lose what?" he demanded, his voice tight. "My life? My freedom? What cost could be worse than what Saganbo plans?"
"Your humanity," AFS stated flatly, the words falling like stones. "Your empathy. Your connection to the small, fragile, fleeting lives you once knew and cherished. The warmth of Kiyomi's smile, the quiet strength of your aunt, the taste of wind over Tokyo, the fierce loyalty of Kagaya, the brilliant spark of Kuro, the serene light of Miryoku... these become first distant, aching memories. Then abstract concepts, like equations describing love or loss. Then... nothing. Faded data points. The power demands detachment. It necessitates viewing existence not through the lens of a single, precious life, but through the cold, unforgiving equations of cosmic balance, probability, and potential energy. To wield the higher Acts, to truly shape, you must become the sculptor, not the clay. And Shinji..." AFS's gaze held profound, heartbreaking pity, the look of one who had paid the price and witnessed others pay it. "...among the Trascenders known to have emerged within the fragmented records I accessed... we are considered... lackluster. By a margin so vast it is incomprehensible to your current understanding. The First... the Second... the Third... they ascended to levels of power, awareness, and detachment that make Saganbo look like a petulant child playing with matches in a universe of thermonuclear fire. Their battles, their purposes... they operate on a stratum we can barely perceive."
The onslaught was relentless, each revelation a hammer blow. Other Trascenders? More powerful? Detached? Shinji's mind scrambled, trying to process this new, terrifying context, this pantheon of beings like him, but infinitely beyond. "Wait... One? Fourth Trascender??? Three others??? Are they still alive??? Who are they??? What are their names? What happened to them? Where are they now? Could they help? Could they stop Saganbo?" The questions erupted in a frantic torrent, a desperate need to grasp this lineage, to find allies, or at least understand the benchmarks of his own terrifying potential.
"Shut up!" AFS snapped, his patience finally fraying, his voice cracking like a whip. "I don't possess a damn directory of ascended anomalies! I told you the fragmented, horrifying knowledge I gleaned from echoes in the void before my end! Obsessing over them now is a fatal distraction! They are out there, somewhere in the near-infinite Asagaverse. They might be indifferent observers. They might be slumbering forces. They might be... something else entirely, entities that have shed even the concept of 'helping' or 'stopping'. Or who knows a damn at all! Focus. On. The. Present. Threat." He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a fierce, conspiratorial whisper, forcing Shinji's scattered focus back. "Back to Saganbo. The immediate annihilation bearing down on you, your friends, and this entire Multiverse. Listen carefully: Even if you somehow, miraculously unlock all Six Acts in the heart of his sanctum during this confrontation – a feat bordering on impossible – your chances of defeating him alone, as you are now... are less than five percent. And that's being generous."
The number hung in the air, colder and more final than the void outside the Labyrinth. Less than 5%. After transcending his core. After learning the Acts. After comprehending the cosmic scale. Utter futility.
"But," AFS continued, a fierce, desperate light igniting in his eyes, burning with a conviction that bordered on fanaticism, "let me tell you this. If we fight together... not as master and student, not as past and future echoes... but as a unified Trascender consciousness; as a unified Shinji Kazuhiko, merging our power, our knowledge, our very wills into a single, focused point of transcendent potential..." He slammed a fist into his open palm, the impact echoing with psychic force. "...then we just might be invincible. Not guaranteed, Shinji. Never guaranteed in the chaotic currents of this existence. But it's the best chance. The only real chance this timeline, these people you still care about, have to survive Saganbo's wrath."
Shinji stared, the concept staggering, horrifying, yet undeniably seductive in the face of 5%. Merging with this dark mirror of himself? This entity forged in despair, failure, and wielding the chilling power of entropy? Becoming something... more, but also something potentially less human? "How?" he breathed, the single word encompassing the terrifying mechanics, the existential risk, the violation of self, and the faint, desperate glimmer of hope. "How could that even work? What would it mean? Would I... would we... still be me? Would I lose myself faster? Would she... would Kiyomi... would she even recognize what I become?"
AFS smiled, a grim, determined curve of the lips devoid of warmth. The oppressive darkness of the First Door's path seemed to deepen and focus entirely on the two figures standing at the nexus of impossible choice. "How?" he echoed, the single word heavy with the weight of the final revelation. "That... is the ultimate truth you need to understand before you choose. The truth of our convergence. The mechanics of becoming... something more than Shinji Kazuhiko. Let me explain it in detail..."
He stepped forward, closing the distance, the space between them crackling with potential energy, the dark path ahead seeming to pulse with hungry anticipation. On the precipice of the most terrifying, necessary choice Shinji would ever face; the willing embrace of his own shadow, his own potential for darkness and dissolution, for the power to face the god and protect the fading light. The explanation of "how" was the threshold to damnation, salvation, or something entirely new – the first step into the true, terrifying unknown that awaited in the world's future.