Soren sensed a flood of information bombard his mind in rapid succession.
Then the pain followed; a level of pain that threatened to split his consciousness in half and obliterate it entirely.
At first, they looked like jargons, but the more the volume of data increased, the easier it became to piece them altogether.
"I have experienced numerous lifetimes...' Soren thought to himself, despite knowing his thoughts were still echoing in the area.
If he was going to communicate effectively with an entity of this calibre, then he had to use his thoughts; they were the only things fast enough.
"I believe some of them would be of assistance in the trial you are about to face." The Cosmic Vagrant explained, hinting at something Soren hadn't thought of yet.
"Unfortunately, of the numerous lifetimes you've lived through, these are the only ones of significant importance to your trials, use the accumulated memories and knowledge well.'
Soren began to sort and try to archive the ocean of information that no system could store, in order to transform his mind in every sense of the word.
His wisdom, insight, intuition and knowledge pool gradually began to undergo massive qualitative and quantitative changes.
And at the conclusion of it all, he subconsciously blurted; 'Nine lives ago; I was a 1000-year-old White Oak tree...
Eight lives ago; I was a 900-year old Golden Orchid...
Seven lives ago; I was an 800-year-old Jellyfish...
Six lives ago; I was a 700-year-old Orca...
Five lives ago; I was a 600-year-old Turtle...
Four lives ago; I was a 500-year-old Tiger...
Three lives ago; I was a 400-year-old Jaguar...
Two lives ago; I was a 300-year-old Golden Eagle...
In my previous life I was a 100-year-old Imperial Scholar...'
As the memories settled, the sheer gravity of new realizations blew Soren's mind out of its waters.
However, he knew he couldn't dwell too long on the sheer awe of it and instead began to bask in the new influx of wide ranged instincts and intuitions that came with them.
If the Cosmic Figure felt the sheer weight of it could kill him, then it would have done something about it.
He began to notice how he had reincarnated as something different each time.
He also saw the pattern with which he reincarnated each time; starting as the most apex of Herbs, to the most exotic of marine animals, land, and even sky.
Then finally, he had reincarnated as one of the greatest minds of an Apex Ancient Empire.
Soren finally knew where his curious, adaptive, and transformative mindset stemmed from and why it had helped him interpret and accept his Master Builder Gene's instincts.
The sheer level, volume, and depth of knowledge he was currently receiving was almost as vast as that of an entire race.
Then the Cosmic Figure removed its index finger from Soren's temples, and left him alone to digest, readjust and establish a new mindset with his new memory bank.
Time slowly trickled by, and eventually, Soren finally digested and adapted to a fraction of a fraction of his newfound knowledge.
Not enough to instantly turn him into a sage, but just enough to retain his sanity and not become a vegetable; after all, it would be counterintuitive if his mind got stuck in his life as an Oak Tree.
It would be an interesting sight watching him bury his feet deep into the ground because he was thirsty.
Or a gruesome sight watching him tear apart another human with his bare teeth and hands like an uncultured cannibal because he was hungry.
"Is this where I will undergo my trials?"
The Cosmic Vagrant cracked an amused smirk and nodded.
It seemed to gradually become more and more impressed with Soren's rate of mental malleability and growth.
"Your trial has already begun the moment we left your Soul World." It stated factually.
Hearing this, Soren understood that he wouldn't be given another chance if he messed up this opportunity.
"Your first test is to obtain your first reward; The Origin Codex." The Figure began to explain.
"It is an Apex Chaos Grade Treasure. One that holds unrivaled power.
Compared to it, all other form of knowledge transfer, comprehension, and wisdom application are pitiably lackluster.
Soren was stunned speechless. He gazed at the two flaming eyes for a moment and all of a sudden, his consciousness seemed to hit a reset button, and by the time he recovered, he found himself in a world of blueish white.
In here, the peaks of innumerable icy mountains soared into the heavens like the defiant sword thrust of a fallen god.
Icy winds billowed and whipped about with shearing ferocity, and violent whisperings of secret wisdoms of the ancients.
Not only was the range of icy mountains endless, but they were also the only thing he could see due to the tempest of bone-chilling snowy wind that blocked his vision.
Soren's Soul Body hung mid-air, anticipating a reaction of some sort.
Then in the next moment, an impossibly large shadow suddenly dwarfed him into a dot, and despite giving off no aura of power or pressure, Soren still couldn't help but tremble in fear.
The sheer size of the creature in front of him was horrifying.
It was one thing to see an infinitesimal part of the Cosmic Vagrant's body; he could easily chalk it up to it being an otherworldly self-existing entity.
But this...
Every fibre of his being and new knowledge bank told him monstrosities such as this couldn't have been created; which begs the question: if it wasn't created, then how did it come to exist?
Soren chuckled in defeat for the second time since meeting the Cosmic Vagrant.
"Ofcourse it has to be something of this caliber... Only a being of this level would dare call this place its home."
It was only to be expected that an entity of the Cosmic Vagrant's size would know a being of such inexplicable size.
Filling up Soren's sight, was a colossal tortoise deity with eyes that gleamed with ancient wisdom and knowledge.
"Welcome, traveler," The Tortoise's began, its voice booming with a level of force that caused both an avalanche and a tsunami of snow but merely whispered within Soren's mind.
"The more sophisticated a being becomes, the more fascinated he is with origins.
It peers with ever increasing erudition into its very soul to discover the galaxies of circumstances that birthed the 35 emotions that makes up its every pattern of behavior, or the nature of its "Self".
It is the same with beings, nature, the divinities, the endless cosmos, and even the primal entities that govern, lord or created them." The Tortoise prologued.
"Soren, the trial for the Origin Codex is here to test the depths of your soul and excavate the origin of the emotions that makes up the very nature of your being.
Are you prepared to face the challenges that lie ahead?" The Cosmic Vagrant's voice sounded within Soren's mind.
Soren's mind gave him what to say, yet the words ended up clogging his throat, refusing to come out, as an anxiety he never thought existed surged from within him.
The gravity of everything that has occurred since his consciousness had encountered the Cosmic Vagrant seemed to be alluding towards something he felt his mind wasn't ready for.
However, his new mindset also understood that it was simply the self-critiquing aspect of his mind that was making him doubt, and as such he tuned it off and allow his curiosity to take center stage.
"I'm ready." He answered resolutely.
This was no time to try to impress beings who could see through you anyway, so he opted to be direct and ambitious.
"Fret not, the trial that awaits you is not one of brute strength, but of wisdom and understanding." The Tortoise's voice sounded impressed, as it gave its final explanations.
"The Origin Codex is one of the most valuable treasure in existence and it demands more than just physical and intellectual prowess.
It seeks and only answers those who possess a reckless level of curiosity towards understanding the nature of what makes up every physical and ephemeral phenomenon."
Hearing this, Soren felt his emotions settle as his body grow lighter.
This time it wasn't just the tuning out of external noise, but a quieting of his internal chaos.
Then with a resolute nod, he stepped forward, his gaze unwavering.
"You may begin."
Hearing this, the Tortoise nodded before opening its massive maws wide.
Ryujin felt a wave of awe ripple through his entire frame.
'To think the location of my trial is literally located inside the belly of a beast...' He chuckled to himself as he stepped in as the Tortoise snapped its mouth shut.
---
Back in the physical plane, everything was choking on its own ruination.
The sky had shattered like glass struck by a hammer forged from eternity.
It began at dawn and started as a single jagged fissure splitting the sky above the Ignis Tribe.
Then came the others—hundreds, thousands—innumerable cracks spiderwebbing across the firmament in every direction.
Through them poured the impossible.
First fell several godlike beings.
Colossal figures of hammered gold plummeted through the tears, some with their chest torn open, their molten amber blood cascading in slow, luminous rivers that hissed into vapor before striking the ground.
They radiated an aura of pure dominion, warping the native gravity around them.
In someplace else in this same world, mighty towers bent inward like bowing worshippers, and tumbling through the cracks in their skies, were pale, silver-skinned deities with eyes wide in death.
Indigo ichor sprayed out of their gaping wounds in fractal patterns that froze mid-air before exploding into crystalline shrapnel.
Torn limbs of various unknown origins followed.
A severed obsidian arm the size of a mountain, still clutching a broken sword that bled black lightning.
A torso of living flame, that were now guttering emerald and violet hues as foreign laws invaded its essence.
But this chaos didn't just stop at the gods and deities.
Beasts the size of cities...
Scaled leviathans with too many eyes...
Chitinous horrors with wings that dripped acid rain...
Tentacled abominations whose very presence inverted color
All of them screaming in pure, deathly horror as they fell.
Alien beings in crystalline exosuits, their helmets cracking to reveal faces that were geometry made flesh, plummeted alongside winged races whose feathers burned with stolen starlight.
Entire hordes of shadow-wraiths and luminous seraphim collided mid-fall, their opposing energies fusing into grotesque hybrids that howled in newborn agony.
Soren, the final anchor of all existence had died, and now dimensions have begun to merge. Reality itself souping into absolute mess.
Gravity inverted in patches; one street floated upward while the next became a lake of liquid time where people aged decades in heartbeats.
Fire froze into screaming sculptures.
The cycle of day and night collapsed; sunrise bled into midnight; auroras of raw entropy painted the horizon.
Laws of physics, magic, and void collided: a blacksmith's hammer turned to living songbirds mid-swing; rivers ran uphill in spirals of pure probability.
Thoughts became visible as colored mist that devoured minds foolish enough to speak them aloud.
The Chaos of the Infinite had begun.
The netizens, merchants, and even scholars of this world who had always thought and believed they were the only existence in the entire cosmos lost their minds in a single collective scream.
They scrambled through streets now laced with impossible flora from a thousand planes.
Carnivorous vines that whispered forgotten prophecies, crystal trees whose leaves were screaming faces.
Mothers clutched children whose bodies flickered between species.
Kings on balconies watched their crowns melt into swarms of undead locusts.
Panic became a living storm; looting, prayers, suicides, riots ensued even as the sky continued to vomit divinity and nightmare without end.
Yet not all fled or panicked.
On the black cliffs of some mysterious mountain range, a group of hooded figures stood motionless in perfect formation.
Their robes rippling and waving even in the absence of drift and air.
They auras never fluttered, as if untouched and unbothered by the chaos.
They had read the omens in the blood of sacrifices decades ago.
On their foreheads, tattoos of an eye sewn shut with thorned vines were etched.
They were all sporting smiles of different vibes even as a wounded god's crimson essence rained upon their upturned palms.
---
Within some hidden valleys of the same mountain range, bone-clad shamans were already harvesting the falling corpses of dead deities as they landed.
Each severed head becoming new totems, each drop of multicolored blood a vial of raw apotheosis.
---
Within some unfathomable depths, blindfolded figures wearing scholarly robes wrote furiously, parsing and transcribing foreign laws onto pages that rewrote themselves.
They didn't speak.
The apocalypse had come, and for the prepared few it was not an ending.
It was the greatest harvest the multiverse had ever offered.