Bardi sat on the throne, his spine straight like a towering peak. Though he didn't appear tall while seated, he exuded a silent gravity, as if the world revolved around him. He was the pillar anchoring everything. Anyone who looked at him would feel as though they stood at the foot of a mountain, staring up at a giant summit. With his eyes closed, he sat there in silence, like a colossal figure.
His right index finger lightly tapped on the throne. The sharp steel tip of his armored glove struck the crystal-clear surface of the throne, producing a crisp, resonant sound.
There was no one else in the hall.
Ding... ding... ding...
In that instant, Bardi's thoughts spread outward, and he began to comprehend what it truly meant to be the One and Only God.
In that moment, he realized that he had previously only known how to wield power. The Only God was a far more advanced existence than any form of life he had ever imagined. It surpassed even higher-dimensional lifeforms.
Even higher-dimensional beings aspire to be singular.
Across countless animations, films, and even novels, scattered individuals and fragmented wills appear—sometimes as pieces of data that go unnoticed. Only the One can perceive them, absorb them, and thereby enhance their own singularity.
Simply put, when someone dies, their body disappears, their soul vanishes, and every particle of information about them disperses. That data may reappear in the physical world, in films, novels, comics. Through infinite cycles of reincarnation, that data becomes part of another being's spiritual essence. Countless such fragments combine to form a new life. This is true reincarnation.
Even the One and Only couldn't fully comprehend this staggering concept of rebirth.
When Bardi first sensed it, he was shocked.
This transcended energy levels and the physical realm.
He didn't even have the ability to detect it clearly, let alone confront the cycle of Samsara. Extracting his own data from the depths of this infinite reincarnation was the only path to ascend.
To grow stronger, one of the few methods was to recover all externally scattered information about oneself.
This number was immeasurable.
When all the Ones had reclaimed their scattered information, they would transform into something indescribable, formless, invisible, omniscient, and omnipotent—true Gods.
From this, Bardi came to understand that even the God of the DC Universe wasn't truly a God. That being was simply a step ahead on the unique path, ahead of all other Ones. In fact, it could be said that the emergence of entities like the cosmic Beasts was due to anomalies in this process.
As for the full truth, Bardi wasn't certain, but could only speculate based on the data he had and what he had read in comics.
A sound echoed in Bardi's mind. It was his own thoughts, forming a systemic structure.
His consciousness formed a source system that spread across the universe like a plague. All sentient beings capable of thought and emotion gave rise to derivative subsystems of this source system. These systems firmly rooted themselves within the minds of lifeforms.
Within the span of a single breath, he surpassed the entire galaxy. His system spread through the universe like a plague, implanting itself in over a thousand data streams.
We begin with single digits: one, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million, ten million, one hundred million, one billion, ten billion, one hundred billion, one trillion, ten trillion, one hundred trillion, one quadrillion. A quantity already beyond human imagination.
Yet even this was only a drop in the ocean.
The systems that Bardi distributed and implanted were linked to conscious beings who contained fragments of his information. These beings had priority over others and were selected.
In other words, anyone implanted by the system essentially carried Bardi's data. They were another version of Bardi from a parallel timeline, albeit an extremely weak one—so weak that they could not form their own consciousness and could only give rise to a collective mind.
At his current level of thought, Bardi was capable of absorbing all of "them" back into himself.
But this was an infinite task. Absorbing them one by one was not easy. He had to ensure that each subjective consciousness was recovered without regret, or else he would corrupt himself with foreign data. The result would be as unpleasant as eating filth, not to mention how much time it would take.
At this moment, Bardi finally understood why some of the One and Only Gods always sought to destroy universes and worlds. Processing and absorbing every insignificant individual was too much trouble. Destruction was the most efficient method.
It was also a reckless and cruel method—one that ignored the contamination from impure consciousness. That contamination might even serve as sustenance.
The clearest example was the group in Hell—lawless entities like Trigon.
This was why the multiverse was plagued by endless disasters. These One Gods came and went, and conflict was inevitable.
Of course, there were other ways to grow stronger—ways that allowed the multiverse to survive.
One such way was The Source.
A massive aggregation of information, The Source could greatly empower the One God. It was far more effective than absorbing scattered individual consciousnesses. It was also the energy well that all singular Gods pursued. It was dessert when bored.
A virtual map of the universe spread out in Bardi's mind, centered on Earth.
Cygnus, Aquila, Vulpecula, Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, Scutum, Scorpius, Ara, Reticulum, Lupus, Triangulum Australe, Circinus, Musca, and others. All the galaxy constellations were gradually gathered by Bardi's system, forming a galactic map of the cosmic river system.
The star map continued to expand…
Bardi suddenly noticed something more interesting.
A Guardian of the Universe had failed a mission due to Bardi's system and had been erased.
From a mental perspective, the system itself had executed the deletion. All memory was transferred to Bardi's source system through the subsystem. Upon review, Bardi gained insight into the Guardians of the Universe and the Monitor race.
Now, because of suspicions that the Guardian had been tampered with by the Monitors, the Seven Lantern Corps had been summoned, and they were battling the Monitors.
Bardi slowly opened his eyes. His deep gaze seemed to contain the entire universe. In that moment, it was as though he had opened up creation itself, forming countless new things.
A faint smile touched his eyes.
I just finished a fic I was working on and I'm thinking of starting another soon, so if you have any recs, drop them.
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