Chapter 304: The Land of Elsewhere (3)

The fragment of the Authority of Dreams gave Akasha only a faint glimpse of true understanding.

Before his recent evolution, he believed that even if he dreamed up items, they would fall short because of the Divine Rank limit on what could cross into the waking world.

But now, those constraints no longer bound him.

Anything he brought forth would still hold the title of Divine Rank, yet it wouldn’t be the same kind found within Pantheos.

As the God of Elsewhere Dreams, he had unknowingly stepped closer to a freedom he couldn’t have imagined before.

Now, he could alter the potential of every dream he shaped at will.

This meant that his Divine-ranked creations could, in theory, rival Divine Cosmic Items—or even surpass them.

After all, the only boundary left was the endless reach of his imagination.

As the fragment of the Authority of Dreams floated in front of him, Akasha smiled at it and waved his hand.

"Goodbye~," he said, and in the very next moment, the slab began to fade away.

Purple light peeled from the fragment first, then from the inscriptions themselves, the Language of the Gods unraveling into drifting motes that lingered briefly before thinning into nothing.

One by one, each mark released its hold from the stone until the entire structure had vanished without a trace.

Sage’s ear twitched slightly in response to the subtle shift in the atmosphere before resuming its stillness.

He lingered in his seat for a moment before slowly rising, feeling Sage’s paws shift gently through his hair as the change in height loosened their soft hold.

This place felt like another Dream Land, yet it was different—Dream Land had never truly existed within him.

It had always been a destination for him and those connected to him, a realm with a home somewhere in Pantheos.

But this place... this one was inside Akasha himself. And like Dream Land, it granted him the power to Dream as he wished.

The difference now was profound—with this place always within him, Akasha could Dream anywhere, at any time he desired.

All of this was to say that, in this moment, he activated his power for a Decree, and now his Authority extended far beyond the boundaries of Dream Land.

It reached into realms that were literally Elsewhere, granting him the power to make anything possible, limited only by the scope of his imagination.

"By my Authority of Elsewhere Dreams," he said, and the words had a different density than talk, "I declare that every member of the Pantheon of Infinite Dreams will reach ninety-nine percent comprehension of the Authority of Dreams the moment they enter the Land of Elsewhere."

HUMMMMMM!!!!!!!

The moment his words landed, gray and purple burst from him at once, an aura so bright that the void became briefly illuminated.

"And from this moment," he said, still climbing in that seated posture, "I, the God of Elsewhere Dreams, Akasha Originat, will have the full comprehension of the Authority of Dreams."

HUMMMMMM!!!!!!

The aura flared with an even greater intensity, flooding the entire void in a vivid, unyielding purple.

That vast emptiness transformed into a field of color, clinging to his skin and coating Sage’s fur, until every inch of space was swallowed by that single, overwhelming hue, leaving nothing for the eye to land on except its relentless brightness.

In the middle of that brightness, a status screen opened in front of his face.

[You have achieved 100% comprehension of the Authority of Dreams.]

[You have become the embodiment of Dreams.]

[You are now the Ruler of the Dimension of Dreams.]

[Dimension of Dreams — You are now inseparable from the Dimension of Dreams.

Wherever you are, the Dimension is.

Within your Divine Sense, you can step into the dreams of any being you please, acting as you wish with a simple thought.]

----

"I guess now I’m truly the lord of Dreams, huh?" Akasha muttered, knowing that ordinarily he would have had to conquer the Dimension of Dreams itself, even having to destroy its very embodiment, to claim such a title.

Yet for the pure notion of Dreams, it had come to him without such a battle.

Across all of Pantheos, not a single soul had ever achieved complete comprehension of the AutAuthority; it alone fully embodied its boundless potential.

So, not only was the seat basically free for the taking, but the very meaning of Dreams had shifted, as he embodied not just potential, but his own interpretation of Dreams—imagination.

After a brief pause, the purple light stopped spreading and began to draw inward, curling around his arms, his chest, and Sage perched on his head, before sinking through fabric and flesh until it disappeared completely.

The void shifted back to its dull gray, but whatever had settled on him in that moment remained, refusing to fade with it.

"Father," Sage muttered as she cracked one eye open.

"You feel different," she said, voice lazy with the sleep she had not finished. "It’s like... we feel closer than before... and my thoughts are clearer..."

"Yeah," Akasha said with a smile, running his fingers through her fur and over her ears. "Though... that’s only for people I like," he teased.

The presence surrounding him came not only from being the embodiment of Dreams, but from who he was at his core.

He was the God of Elsewhere—not solely of dreams—and Elsewhere itself allowed him to determine just how close or distant he could be from someone, in every sense of the word.

For those within his Pantheon, those he chose to let in, it would feel as though he was the closest thing to them. For strangers, however... well, they wouldn’t trouble him much.

Well... if not for his Fatality Lock.

He left his hand on Sage’s fur for a moment as he closed his eyes without leaving the seated posture, turning his attention inward.

----

In that instant, he was drawn directly to the profound connections he shared with the women in his life and his mother.

Before him, luminous threads of thick cables stretched out, each in a distinct hue and perfectly preserved.

Sage’s was gray, Akashi’s purple, Yume’s blue, and Luna’s pink.

All four seemed to connect to the women, as if they were entering his body rather than inhabiting it.

However, they all converged into a single point inside him, which he couldn’t quite see.

"Well, I’m pretty sure... that’s my soul," Akasha muttered to himself.

While he couldn’t see his soul directly, he could faintly make out the armor he had equipped long ago.

Nodding at this, he shifted his focus to what he had come for.

"Now that Mother and I are essentially one," he said to himself, and his attention slid along the purple thread until the feel of Akashi sat under his thoughts like a second pulse.

"I can take hold of the old wishes."

Before, when he made his wishes, they weren’t necessarily bad, but they certainly weren’t worthy of the Pantheos verse itself.

By now, he had come to realize that Pantheos was nothing more than a broken generator full of overpowered cheats, and he had no intention of moving forward without upgrading his own.

Yet, what he had in mind wouldn’t really be an upgrade at all—it would be something entirely beyond.

He reached for the Gacha System, for the Divine Domain, and for the very essence that had turned him into an anomaly.

Three bubbles of energy formed in front of his inner sight, each holding four essences packed so tight the light inside them crawled.

"How... could something hold so much potential?" he murmured, a slight shudder running through him as he gazed at the strange essences.

Even with his eyes, he couldn’t quite put into words what they were.

The raw power radiating from the orbs surpassed anything he could summon himself—and he was the God of the very concept of potential.

"Well," he said at last, realizing there was no turning back now.

With a mere thought, he drew all three orbs into the void just beyond his form.

When he opened his eyes again, he extended his hands and pressed the orbs together, merging them into a single, larger sphere.

The combined mass condensed into a dense weight that tugged heavily at his palms.

"From this moment on," he said, "I don’t need any cheats.... I want the essence itself!"

HUMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!