The bus arrived.
"You can sit on the window side…" Theodore said normally.
Driti looked into his eyes, then proceeded to sit by the window.
"You can switch dimensionality quickly, can't you?" he asked.
"Yeah… but sometimes I actually forget. That's why that kid felt so much of an eerie pressure from me…" she said in soft disappointment.
Theodore looked up, closed his eyes. After taking a deep breath, he let it out.
His reflection in the window rippled with the city's light.
Beneath that ordinary voice, there was something cracked, a weight of too many worlds held together by sheer defiance.
"You may have lived your life for something else or someone else in the past, but this time, fate is up to you… We should live. Life can be challenging, but…"
She looked at him. Theodore opened his eyes. She accidentally flash-banged him with her luminous essence.
"Dayum… turn off the torch, ma'am!"
She smiled.
Slowly, her radiance ceased, and Theodore looked at Driti, who was again enjoying the sights outside.
They reached their stop.
Both made their way to the Headquarters.
The town was a piece of modern art, lightly shaded with cultural impact, stalls on the roadsides, hypermarkets and restaurants, cinema halls, and liquor pubs, various varieties all defining the constant passage of time!
They walked to the HQ. The security guard smiled.
"Good morning, Theodore, how're ya, son?"
Theodore smiled back warmly. "Nothing much, actually— I came with a friend…"
The security looked at Driti and said, "You were corrupted, but changed because of him?…"
Driti was surprised.
"No need to worry… We're just like Theo and Reji…" the security assured her.
She smiled back.
Theodore showed his identity card and slipped inside the HQ.
Workers, high-grade counters, and other officials bustled about.
Despite all that, Theodore marched to the lift, and they ascended to the top floor.
There stood a woman, looking out over the city.
The air shifted, as if space itself adjusted to acknowledge her.
"Aunt…" Theodore called.
The woman is tall, cream-skinned, middle-aged, with small earrings and shiny bright eyes, had a face that didn't represent her age, yet wasn't totally young.
She wore a business suit and shoes with slight heels.
She seemed to rotate a sphere in her hands, her eyes fixed eagle-like but not sharp, her nose small yet not diminishing her overall features, a vivid jawline, sharp facial structure, and silky hair tied in a half-Assamese way.
She had barely any makeup, but certainly shined bright.
She turned fully to Theodore.
"Horror? Or existential dark matters?" she asked.
"Actually, something big…" Theodore replied.
Driti looked at Theodore's aunt with surprise; her beauty seemed otherworldly.
The woman looked at Driti.
"Razael, THE Overlord-ranked hunter and manager of SCPO State of Kerala…" Razael threw her hands toward Driti.
Unsure how to act, but guided by instinct.
Driti felt herself drawn toward her by a kind of magnetism.
Razael smirked as Driti fidgeted.
"Hey, easy, kitten!" Razael purred.
"You know why I'm here…" Theodore said.
"Yeah, I sure let my psychic energy connect to the universe's exterior by camouflaging redirected vibration to avoid detection and maintain surveillance… But nothing got caught in our web…" Razael's psychic powers were unfathomable.
The SCPO had four major ranks by hunter's skill: GemKnight, the bottommost; DarkKnight, the second last; TheChallenger; and TheOverlord.
"The snake—"
A reality-piercing, unimaginably fierce attack nearly landed on Theodore's skin.
He wrapped himself in outer space, incomprehensible numbers of universes formed in each quantum fluctuation, where a seal that transcends dimensionality ensures chaos does not occur between universes.
A universe was massive, in size, movement, dimensionality, every concept in physics—even compared to Von Neumann's inaccessible model, the difference was like a stone to an infinitely stretching, complex universe.
It outclassed any model in every way.
A single universe was unfathomable enough that it was self exceeding and transcended beyond non-spatiotemporalism, non-mental, abstract, non-physical, realities.
It contained higher realities that transcended the very requirement of manifestation, and is inseparable and lacking identities, possessing contradictions, as well as in between to any subjective/objective reality.
Many Multiverse Branches contains all logical possibilities, as well as logical impossibilities.
However the universe 449 does only constituent of logical possibilities.
The attack wasn't even conceptually an 'attack.' Yet it's called an attack for a tiny sense of understanding.
The attack transcended the Platonic concept itself, which are non-spatial, transcendental, Non-mental, non-temporal, slightly defying causality too, but never existing outside causality completely, which indicates their abstraction beyond any perspective except for causality.
It transcended the space-time interval and landed on Theodore, who swiftly wrapped himself in reality with his bare hands and exited the infinitely branched multiverses, ruled and governed by Causality.
Inflating multiverses were controlled by an even more complex structure called the Metaverse.
There were infinitely branched metaverses, each metaverse containing infinite layers of multiverses.
If Causality ruled multiverses, Dextrocausality did the same for transcendence: first Transcendence of a transcendent that is beyond objectivism and subjectivism, surpassing cause and effect utterly, then acts upon a specific framework, then Effect, then Cause, where cause is optional.
Dextrocausality is when something becomes higher than the Cause and Effect completely, also beyond system and concept itself first, then acts, and maybe explains itself after.
"This bitch!" Theodore exclaimed in irritation as he was ripped beyond singularity.
Theodore wrapped out of the Metaverse and reentered his reality.
Driti was scared, unable to comprehend what happened.
The world fractured into incomprehensible layers. Driti's heartbeat echoed between dimensions, each pulse delayed by an eternity.
All she saw was Theodore about to speak, and in the next moment, without any manipulation or interval, his existence was just cut down.
She couldn't find him in causality, as if he never existed.
"What did you find, boy?" Razael asked professionally.
"It wasn't an attack. It never even had meaning, wasn't destined, never boxed under possibility or logical impossibility, truly escalating from mere absolutisms. And, nothing quite important, the attack actually transcended everything, including causality. It was alive, it passed through everything without leaving a mark, avoided even scratching the smallest particles. The attack was an assassin, targeted to assassinate a specific target, absolutely unavoidable, even if you exist outside causality. Same as the attack that happened at the manor while saving Driti…" Theodore explained.
Razael listened keenly, as if it were nothing unusual.
"But you escaped it?" Driti murmured.
"Oh, yeah, I killed it!" Theodore smiled.
"How?!" Driti asked in wonder.
Theodore smiled.
The attack was instantaneous and inevitable, no matter what you did with causality.
Theodore reconstructed anti-matter and matter so retrocausality acts were completely disintegrated.
Knowing he couldn't stay in this form forever, he made a move: he let the attack pass through him.
Before he completely disintegrated into singularity, he twisted a quark particle, backing up his Platonic concept to it.
When the conceptual assassin's attack (which isn't just an attack or logical impossibility and possibility) passed through the quark, instead of disassembling it, the assassin itself became a concept, gained a name, property, and origin.
Theodore snapped back into form by rebooting from the quark and absolutely held the attack in his arm, yelling,
"Gotcha, bitch!"
He tore the conceptual assassin by giving it an origin in his actuality, reducing it like paper, then wrapped back to the original reality.
Driti stood there, unable to process it anymore.
She stared at him, unsure if she was looking at a man or the shadow of everything that had ever tried to be human.
"So strong… you are…" she said.
"Um… yeah, kind of. It's just I made it a concept, me, actually… I killed me. Not my clone or energy's essence, but my own being was murdered by me, so I can kill myself and so the Conceptual Assassin!" Theodore replied.
By the way, Razael was attacked the same way.
She managed to catch the attack like a piece of rubble, compressed it into another sphere like the previous one in her hand, and threw it into her drawer.
"I hate intervening in matters…" she growled.
Driti was flabbergasted, not because she saw it or felt it, but because her excitement stemmed from confronting something of Razael's imposing enigma, which swept a cold creep through her.
"You think we need to check outside the multiverse?" Theodore asked calmly, "And yeah, this is that serpent issue, a chain of incidents.
Although I let those incidents move on, I didn't let them slide; if that day it was my parents, today it could be somebody else… or something more important… chaos amid the order of life and death… I can't let that happen, aunt!" Theodore said, resolute.
Razael put her hand on her chin.
"We should occupy that gem. It's linked to the celestial or to Eldritch; it must have some resolved components of the cosmos that might give us insight about these assassinations and chains of incidents… I believe they need it for some establishment…"
She snapped her fingers.
Theodore's eyes widened as his brain received a psychic energy database code.
He took a deep breath and relaxed.
"Huh… Okay… I'll group with Driti.
Meanwhile, we should let Reji, Jenny, and Akzar execute this…" Theodore suggested.
"Then we're leaving, Aunt!" Theodore said, stepping back toward the elevator.
Driti followed him obediently.
They reached the first floor and walked off.
"Driti, hold my hands…" he showed his hand to her. He looked into Driti's eyes; she lifted her hand and placed her palm on his.
"Aight! Let's get the scroll…"
He walked to a door.
She looked at their surroundings; it seemed like a dungeon.
"Oh…" she was not as amazed as usual, understanding Theodore was just too cosmic for her.
Acknowledging that he might break or know unknown concepts to get this far into unknown ground was nothing remarkable for him.
Driti followed him.
"What is our goal?" she asked.
As they moved quickly, he answered, "The Scroll of Elders might have some revelation to help us neutralize the threat…" An ancient glyph pulsed on the wall, the same one Theodore had seen once before, drawn in the ashes of his home.
Driti was curious about the Scroll of Elders, and she walked with him at a quick pace.