Chapter 6: fool's reality and reminiscence of a dying man

(A/N: info dumps incoming! Most people were contacting me wanting to know about the power mechanics of this world and what the Mc's capabilities are. Here is you go, its all yours. You can skip this chapter if you want because you will still become aware of everything as we go but for those who cannot wait any longer to understand, this is for you. Its only for this chapter and there will no longer be any more info dumps going forward. Please enjoy!)

Although I had resolved myself to slaughtering everyone on this island, the most important thing right now was to get rid of these guys in front of me and I knew the best way to do it.

I could not help but chuckle to myself. These guys had no idea of the monster they had set free. Last time the Empire crushed me before I could figure out how to best use my power back then when I was still twelve years old. The seven years I had spent in this fucked up place were way more than enough for me to get the hang of it.

The proverbial restriction that all reality manipulators had was that whilst they had all the powers they could ever want in spades, the amount of experience and knowledge they had in the use of their powers would forever be the dividing line between the strong reality manipulators and the weak.

I was born with two innate superpowers and was inherently unable to wield mana and use magic as is the bane of all superpower users. Instead of mana, my mana core utilized soul essence which I could plunder from any slain foes. This essence would then be used to power my superpowers. I looked at the two electric-blue tattoos that manifested on my right hand. They were the trademark of all superpower wielders and they could be manifested anywhere on the body. The more tattoos one had, the more superpowers one was born with and no additions could be gained other than the ones I was bone with.

Mages who could wield mana had their own equivalent which manifested in the form of Archaic runes whose shape and meaning were determined by their innate elemental affinity.

I took a closer look at my tattoos and noted their appearance. One depicted the picture of a dying man with his back rested upon the wood work of a huge grandfather clock. This depicted my first innate superpower, the [Reminiscence of a dying man].

It is a power hereditary amongst the first born of Grisalian Imperial descent and was the sole reason why the Empire could survive for this long.

The user of this superpower could not be 'truly' killed through any artificially induced method. I used the word 'Truly' because they would still die when killed, however the ability would activate upon death and send them to a point back in time before the thing that killed them actually did it. The most frightening aspect of this ability was that it took the user to a point in time where they had ample preparation to fend off their cause of death. As long as the cause of death was artificially induced… you can always be reassured that they would regress and be given ample time to prepare to counter that death.

Although powerful, this ability had an equally powerful limitation, for example, if the user was killed and gets regressed to a past point intime where they can prepare to counter that cause of death, if they did not make enough preparations or did not prepare for long enough…. They would still die when they reached the point of encounter with the artificially induced death and there would be no third chance, they would be truly fucked at that moment.

That said, getting a second chance was not guaranteed since nigh-omnipotent wielders of 'Absolute' forms of magic and superpowers could still kill you regardless of what ability you had or which point you fled to across space and time. 

It was still all good because chances of encountering these specific beings were so slim you would have a better chance trying to shoot down the sun from the sky using an egg and actually succeeding. I was one of the unluckiest few to draw the jackpot lottery ticket on my first try when I went on my first rampage. This was because despite the empire having a population of over five trillion, there were only two wielders 'absolute' level abilities within it. These were My grandfather…  and me…. you can pretty much guess how that went down. Its still a mystery for me to this day why he didn't just kill me there and then.

The second tattoo I had, had the depiction of a clown standing between the border of two worlds which divided the tattoo into two symmetrical halves. On one side which included the right half of the clown's body stood a picture of the real world that was a scaringly perfect representation of the passage I was currently walking through with the rebels in front of me.

The other half depicted the same passage, however it looked broken and mangled like a world seen through the reflection of a cracked and broken mirror.  Instead of the life-like images of the rebels I could see on the right half, those on the left half looked like shadowy twisted beings making twisted and illogical actions that somehow made total logic and sense to me.

To make you understand better, it was the same as someone bending down in front of you and drawing a 'square circle' or someone giving you a number 'greater than infinity'. It was something that made perfect sense if you randomly glanced at it but if you stopped to fully consider it, it would come off as complete bullshit.

This was my second superpower [absolute Fool's reality] and it could allow me to manipulate the logic of my opponents for various effects both temporarily and permanently. In essence, it had a total of two different abilities. The first one was [word play inhibition] which allowed me to influence the super powers and spells of my opponents through the use of my words by playing around with the meaning behind their names and the logic behind how they worked. As long as they subconsciously considered the words I said to them regarding their powers, their powers would automatically change and behave in the same way I would have said they would for a duration of 24 hours.

The second ability the superpower has is called [consideration dependant capability]. As long as my enemies consciously or subconsciously considered for even the slightest Pico-second that I had skills and abilities I told them I had or they believed I had, I would automatically have those abilities as long I stayed within a hundred meters of my enemies. Those very powers I would manifest would still require an immense amount of soul essence to use so being an omnipotent power user was nothing but a far-fetched dream.

It was the same power I used when I manipulated the perception of that loser who had murdered his friend when I led him to believe that his friend was sleeping with his wife. They had come to guard my cell already prejudiced against me by assuming I was a monster who could read and manipulate people's minds and so I became able to do exactly that. They only had themselves to blame for what happened to them. 

Now that I had once again taken stock of the abilities I had, it was now time to wipe out all life on this island.