Lopo had always believed that power was something to be pursued.
Not for the sake of recognition. Not to earn the worship of lesser beings, nor to sit upon a throne and demand that existence bow before him. Power was a means to an end, a way of reaching beyond the boundaries imposed upon those who came before him.
And for a long time, that pursuit had seemed no different from any other.
Until he discovered chaos.
Chaos had existed long before Lopo ever came into being. It was not his creation, nor was it something that belonged to him. It existed beyond the boundaries of ordinary existence, with its true form residing within the Omni Realm, the highest level of existence beyond the multiverses.
Yet Lopo had accomplished something no other being had managed before him.
He had interacted with chaos on a grand scale.
At first, his discoveries were little more than fragments of understanding. The more powerful he became, the further he could reach into the nature of chaos itself. Along the way, he uncovered something that allowed him to approach it more closely than he ever had before.
He did not understand the full significance of what he was approaching.
As far as Lopo was concerned, he was finally nearing the ultimate state of his own ascension. He believed that he was on his way to becoming the ultimate embodiment of chaos.
He never realized that he was approaching something that existed beyond the very thing he sought to embody.
And as his progress continued, something began to take notice.
Or perhaps something had noticed him long before he realized it.
Hundreds of millennia passed with Lopo largely absent from the affairs of other beings.
During that time, the White Room remained what it had always been: a branching realm of doors and passages connecting the multiverses. Beyond it lay the White Realm, an underlying shell of the greater structure, while the Omni Realm existed above and beyond the multiverses themselves.
The distinction between these places was not something most beings could afford to ignore.
Yet Lopo's pursuit had brought him closer to the true form of chaos than anyone had previously managed to reach.
That was enough to prompt intervention.
From the lower levels of existence came an assortment of cosmic gods, deities, and conceptual beings. They were powerful in their own right, beings whose influence extended far beyond ordinary worlds. Nevertheless, they had not come together entirely of their own accord.
An unknown being from the Omni Realm had influenced events, directing them toward Lopo without revealing itself.
The gathered beings did not know who had prompted them, nor did they understand precisely how they had arrived at the decision to intervene. To them, the urge had felt like instinct: a persistent feeling that something had to be done.
There had been deliberate influence behind it, but its source and full purpose remained unknown to them.
The unseen being did not necessarily believe Lopo would succeed in reaching chaos's true form. Lopo was not of the Omni Realm, nor was he one of the beings native to it.
But the possibility was enough to warrant intervention.
They had come to stop his progress.
Not necessarily to kill him.
When the cosmic beings finally confronted Lopo, they discovered that he was far from ignorant of the affairs unfolding around him.
The war was coming.
Gods had been disappearing. Others had died. Across existence, the circumstances surrounding these events had become increasingly troubling.
Despite having remained out of sight for hundreds of millennia, Lopo knew about them.
That knowledge surprised his visitors.
Their expressions changed as he spoke. Some stared at him blankly. Others exchanged glances that seemed strangely out of place.
It was almost as though he had said something he was never supposed to know.
Lopo noticed.
At first, he had misunderstood their intentions. He thought they had come to discuss the growing instability in existence, perhaps to seek his assistance or to question him about what he had discovered.
But the more they spoke, the clearer their actual purpose became.
They wanted him to stop.
They wanted him to abandon the very pursuit that had occupied him for so long.
His irritation grew.
"You're telling me to stop now?" he questioned, his voice carrying an edge of disbelief. "With a war approaching, gods disappearing, and others dying, you decide that what I am doing is the problem?"
The gathered beings offered little that satisfied him.
Then he noticed their expressions again.
That same strange look.
That same inexplicable discomfort whenever he mentioned the war or the disappearances.
His anger sharpened.
"What?" he demanded. "Did I say something wrong?"
He had spent hundreds of millennia pursuing something that had consumed his attention, only for these beings to appear and interfere with his progress. They had given him no explanation that made sense to him, and their behavior suggested that there was more to
their intervention than they were willing to admit.
Queen Marpio, goddess of love, eventually hovered forward.
She intended to explain their predicament, and perhaps his as well.
But before she could finish, Ja moved.
Ja was a powerful deity backed by the spirit of the sun. In his possession rested the Sword of Truth, a conceptual blade whose abilities extended far beyond the physical act of cutting.
The sword possessed a conceptual law known as self-actualization.
Its creator had established that law when he rebuilt the weapon, sacrificing his own existence and pouring his being into it. What had once been a blade with an enchantment that bound souls to its hilt became something fundamentally different. The old enchantment was removed, the weapon was remade, and its self-actualization became permanently active.
The sword could independently actualize responses for Ja, primarily within him. When Ja acted through the blade, those responses could become more potent and manifest externally, affecting the world and those around him.
Its law was not a universal definition of truth. It was the conceptual law of this particular weapon.
And now, it had detected something troubling.
Chaotic energy was swirling around Lopo's fingertips.
The sword recognized the possibility of an attack and began preparing a countermeasure. It insisted that Ja cut Lopo's arm off or strike him down.
That did not mean Lopo had certainly decided to attack. It meant the weapon had identified a potential threat and was responding accordingly.
Ja chose a less lethal course.
He lunged and slashed.
Lopo's arm was severed.
For a moment, Lopo simply stared.
He wasn't frightened. He wasn't overwhelmed by the pain. What stunned him was the sheer irrationality of the act.
They had been speaking. He had been trying to understand why these beings had come to stop him. And one of them had decided to attack without any apparent reason or judgment.
The absurdity of it irritated him.
Not enough to provoke an immediate retaliation, but enough to change his expression.
Ja crouched into a crazed, wolf-like stance, prepared for a counterattack. At the same time, he pulled Marpio away from Lopo, anticipating that Lopo might target her first to remove an advantage from the gathered group.
Then another attack came Lopo's way.
His attention dropped toward his injured arm.
His anger increased.
And Kiosk laughed.
Kiosk, cosmic deity of insight, stepped forward with the Blade of Boronobus in his possession. Boronobus was the King of Wisdom and Deadman's Guard.
But Kiosk's first response to Lopo was not to rely on his blade.
His own power grew stronger with the size of his audience. The more people who watched him, the greater his potential strength became. Merely attracting a few additional observers offered little improvement; substantial increases required the audience to grow significantly. Once acquired, those gains remained even if viewers later left.
The gathered gods, deities, and conceptual beings were already watching.
Kiosk advanced alone.
He confronted Lopo's sheer chaotic intent with his own power, attempting to meet it head-on.
For a brief moment, the assembled beings watched in awe as Kiosk challenged a force that had already overwhelmed the others' expectations.
Then Lopo's chaotic intent overpowered him.
Kiosk was forced to change tactics.
He invoked the wisdom associated with his abilities and used it to evade the incoming wave of intent. Rather than continue trying to overpower Lopo directly, he found an opening and moved.
He dashed forward, creating a vast area of thick, dirty, discolored smoke.
The smog swallowed his position.
When Kiosk reappeared, he was behind Lopo, his blade raised and charged with the intent to cut his opponent down the middle.
For the first time since the confrontation began, Kiosk appeared to have found a decisive opening.
Lopo turned toward the smoke and attacked.
He hit nothing.
Then he felt the cold embrace of a blade against the top of his head.
Kiosk's strike began to cut downward.
The blade reached the point where the attack threatened to penetrate as far as Lopo's cerebral cortex.
And then Lopo moved.
At massively hypersonic speed, he crouched, wrenching himself away from the blade's continued path and preventing the strike from completing its intended course.
He reached for the hilt.
The moment his hand closed around it, the Deadman's Guard enchantment activated.
An immense force struck at the atomic level, scorching the skin of his palm.
Lopo responded with the only arm he had left.
He punched straight through Kiosk.
Then, almost immediately, he turned and caught an incoming blade with his uninjured hand.
He healed his damaged palm and looked toward the direction of the attack, squinting through the lingering smoke.
There was Kiosk.
Lopo looked back at the figure he had just struck.
Then he understood.
The Kiosk he had attacked was a body double.
And if that double had been created by anyone other than the person Lopo suspected, he would have been surprised.
But there was only one person who came to mind.
Ji.
His old fling was somewhere nearby.
Lopo's expression changed.
A smirk spread across his face.
For the first time in what felt like forever, he had found himself in a situation that promised to become an actual fight.
And he intended to enjoy it.
Ji stepped forward, swatting the remaining smoke away.
She stood as boldly as ever, her figure still familiar to Lopo despite the changes time had carved into her. A massive, patched scar marked the right side of her face, and intense bags rested beneath her eyes.
Lopo looked her over and smirked.
"Oh, such beauty. Has time not been gentle on your face?"
He pointed toward the scar and then the exhaustion written beneath her eyes.
Ji's expression shifted.
"Hey!" she shouted, adopting a flirtatious manner even as her irritation showed through. "Shut the hell up, would you? You left and never looked back. How cruel is that?"
Lopo continued to regard her with a mixture of amusement and curiosity.
He could tell there was an underlying reason for her presence. Ji had not come here merely to reminisce or settle an old argument.
He was right.
As he watched her, Lopo sidestepped to the left.
Kiosk shot past him, attempting to cut him down once more.
The blade missed.
Ji turned toward Kiosk.
"Damn you, Kiosk!"
She stretched briefly, then moved.
Her speed surged as she blitzed Lopo, leaving body doubles behind her and creating afterimages designed to confuse his perception. Her physical strength might not have matched his, but she possessed the speed and tactical mind to keep pace with him, and she knew enough about him to exploit the opportunities that knowledge provided.
Her fist struck him.
For the first time since Ja's attack, someone other than the Sword of Truth managed to draw blood from Lopo.
Ji followed with an upward axe kick.
Lopo caught her leg.
Then he broke it.
But Ji's body double did not hesitate.
The double ripped the leg away and drove the exposed bone into Lopo's forearm.
While he dealt with that attack, the real Ji dashed forward and began wailing on him. Her double released nerve toxin and a powerful paralytic poison into his body.
Lopo was stunned.
His body ceased responding as the toxins took hold.
Ji seized the opportunity and continued attacking, using her speed, tactical instincts, body doubles, and personal knowledge of Lopo to keep the pressure on him.
He could do nothing but endure it.
His anger grew.
But until the poison and toxin wore off, he could not fight back.
And Ji intended to make every moment count.
The confrontation had become something far more personal than the others realized.
Lopo had finally encountered an opponent who knew him well enough to exploit his weaknesses.
Unfortunately for him, Ji was only getting started.