Chapter 410
All those panoramas rushed past Xavier like paintings in a gallery whose visitor moves too quickly to truly see their details, yet slow enough to feel how small and fragile everything once considered important truly is.
"Living infinity."
In the depths of reality untouched by ordinary consciousness, there exists a truth more absurd than mere mythology or science.
That the first dimension, the most fundamental entity of existence, actually surpasses even the concept of a Berkeley cardinal in transfinite mathematics.
It is not merely infinite, but a form of infinity that cannot be approached by numbers, cannot be measured by logic, and cannot be formulated by any human mind.
This is the foundation of everything, the lowest layer of the carpet of reality that has long been trodden upon by beings who believe they understand the universe.
And upon that incomprehensible foundation scatter universes in numbers for which even the word "unlimited" feels far too narrow to describe.
Billions, trillions, quadrillions—every numerical prefix collapses and loses meaning when faced with the reality that every second, every blink of awareness, every breath of the cosmos continuously gives birth to new universes without end, without fatigue, without caring whether anyone records their birth or not.
Amid this chaos of eternal creation, the inhabitants of universes who have reached a certain level of awareness developed a mechanism of mutual recognition.
They acknowledge one another's existence, a silent agreement that each possesses a territory that cannot be violated.
These territories are affirmed in the form of colossal boxes, a spatial metaphor that may be far too simple to represent the true complexity, yet sufficient for cross-universal consciousness to comprehend.
Each box is an entire universe with its own structure of space and time, with physical laws that may be entirely different from those of its neighbors, with civilizations that may be born and perish without ever realizing the existence of the box beside them.
And this endless expanse of universal boxes is what is called the Multiverse Trajectory, a four-dimensional entity that contains everything without exception, a colossal vessel within which every possibility becomes real, every reality becomes tangible, and every dream and nightmare finds its own place.
In the midst of his unstoppable momentum, Xavier witnessed with his own eyes how this Multiverse Trajectory functioned within the pulse of creation that never sleeps.
Every passing second, every invisible vibration of time, gave birth to new universes in numbers that even the wildest imagination could not conceive.
They appeared out of nothingness, from absolute emptiness, from the gaps between what exists and what does not, then immediately found their place among the boxes that had existed before.
This process of birth never stops, never slows, never shows any sign of exhaustion.
As if the universe itself were a reproductive engine obsessed with the continuation of existence, birthing new children of reality at a speed that makes the word "eternal" feel like a blink that is far too slow.
And because this process continues endlessly without pause, the total number of universes within each Multiverse Trajectory becomes truly unlimited—an actual infinity that cannot be reduced to numbers or comparisons.
"Has it been a long time since three-dimensional beings observed a two-dimensional sheet and dismissed it as mere imagination?"
Amid the unending roar of universal births, Xavier allowed himself, for a fleeting fraction of a second, to drift into contemplation.
Not a contemplation of the past or the future, but a rare inner silence, a pause between the thunderous beats of the cosmic heart.
And within that silence, his muscular hand slowly moved toward the pocket behind his robe, retrieving a small object that had long remained hidden from all eyes.
An antique watch.
Not an ordinary watch that measures time in hours and minutes, but an artifact whose surface shimmered in an unknown spectrum of colors, with hands that moved not by the push of springs but by the pull of higher dimensions.
His thumb touched the watch's crown and slowly turned it—very slowly—as if each degree of rotation were a decision that could never be undone.
And along with that turning motion, his body began to transform.
Not a physical transformation in the usual sense, not a change of shape or size, but a far deeper and more radical ontological shift.
Slowly, very slowly, Xavier began to ascend, leaving behind the layer of existence that had long been his home, entering a completely different classification of being.
What he activated was not the elemental power he had always relied upon—not fire, water, earth, air, nor the fifth cosmic element.
Rather, it was something far more subtle and far more fundamental: the Authority of Perception Alteration.
Not to manipulate how others perceive reality, but to change the way he himself perceives reality—and through that shift in perception, alter the way reality treats him.
The goal was simple, yet urgent.
The journey he was undertaking, the momentum that continued to pierce through the boundaries between universes, would soon carry him into higher dimensions, into layers of reality where the physical laws he knew no longer applied, where the structures of space and time transformed into something entirely alien.
And his body—one that had only recently been restored after being shattered for so long, one that had only just reclaimed the powers once entrusted elsewhere—had not yet fully recovered.
He was vulnerable.
He could be crushed.
He could be shattered into fragments merely by touching the inter-universal laws that were far too harsh for an existence still too low in rank.
Thus the Authority of Perception Alteration became both shield and vehicle, a means to elevate the frequency of his existence so that he might endure within the ocean of higher realities.
And precisely a few seconds after the rotation of that antique watch was completed, after the ontological transformation began in perfect silence, Xavier's perception of his surroundings changed dramatically.
The Multiverse Trajectory that had stretched before him with all its majesty and horror, with its endless births of universes and its neatly arranged boxes of reality, suddenly began to appear small.
Not small in terms of size, for size had already lost its meaning here.
But small in terms of significance, in depth, in complexity.
Slowly—very slowly—the Multiverse Trajectory began to fade, to lose its reality, to become something vague, something distant, something no longer truly real.
And Xavier realized with piercing clarity that what he was now seeing was the perfect analogy of how three-dimensional humans view a two-dimensional work of art.
An anime, for instance, with all its beautiful moving images, its captivating story, and its characters that seem alive, is ultimately nothing more than lines and colors upon a flat surface.
Humans may become immersed, may cry, may laugh, may feel emotionally connected, yet never once do they truly believe that the two-dimensional world is a real world—one that can be entered, one that stands equal to their own existence.
Such was the Multiverse Trajectory now spread before Xavier.
A spectacle of beauty, a magnificent performance, a creation that inspires awe—yet in the end merely an imagination, merely a construct, merely a layer of reality that he had now left behind.
For before him, after the veil of his former perception had been lifted, something far broader and far more complex now stretched outward.
To be continued…