Deep inside Paradise, beyond the reach of myriad worlds, lay a special realm.
The space was folded and compressed, causing the area to distort and look like a glass house. Black mists pervaded the entire space, coming together and drifting apart as they pleased.
The mists carried with them a scent of depravity and the muffled wailings of souls that died in Paradise.
These souls shone white in the black mists, like stars in the night sky, as if they were trying to escape the imprisonment. Bright was their light but the darkness was darker.
All struggles, of the largely unconscious souls and the few barely conscious ones, were futile in front of a power that far eclipsed them.
Bubbles popped from these souls, colorful bubbles that contained wisps of the most essential memories of the individuals—the few moments they held as irreplacable in their centuries old lives.
The darkness swallowed these bubbles before transferring them to a large collection where new stories would be selected for the new worlds to be made. Unpopular worlds would be demolished and a new story world would take its place.
The 'providers' of these stories, the souls in the black mist, however would meet their end as they would eventually reach the giant being asleep in the center of the realm.
Fabricator. The Sleeping Creator. Demon of Dreams.
He was a giant wriggling mess of blue and brown flesh with thousands of tentacles—each long enough to reach earth from sun—moving incessantly, folding and unfolding.
There were millions of tiny portrusions on his horrific body, emiting the black mist which filled the realm.
The giant mouth of the creature always remained wide open, large enough to devour a hundred suns.
The stream of dark mist carrying the souls eventually entered the mouth of Fabricator and the souls would be digested, allowing Fabricator to 'experience' their life as if it was his own.
The talent came from his racial composition, one that made them a formidable species across the Alliance.
The race of Fobia.
By absorbing the lived experience of other creatures despite not being in the path of 'Soul', Fobians had grown stronger, not only in terms of divine path but in experience.
At one point, they were referred to as the 'All Knowing' species. If Fobians didn't know something, chances were, no one else would.
Their birth was the result of an experiment between races aligned to the power of Order and pure souls who had the affinity towards spirits.
The experiment was nothing short of a miracle. The rise that followed was meteoric.
Growing not only strong but also knowledgable, Fobians set their sights higher.
More than five millions ago, when the Alliance had suffered yet another defeat, Fobians crossed a line.
The intention was not treasonous. They wanted to build a 'World' with special laws to perfectly counter the army of Jai.
Fobians strongly believed that with enough data and preparation, a nearly autonomous defensive and offensive system could be created.
Perhaps they were right about it. The world would never find out as they just happened to be unlucky enough to kill the third direct disciple of Master Keman Aurik, the one he took in recently.
The disciple had just entered the divine ranks and thus sought disguised himself to avoid being targetted by the brutal Jai warriors.
He survived the enemies. But he couldn't survive Fobians who used the chaos to gobble up a few Genesis provinces.
By the time they realized what they had done, they were beyond the point of return.
Master Keman Aurik took the matter into his own hands. He could've rounded up and killed the ones who participated in the mission. But he didn't do that.
The leader of Genesis wielded the power of life sliver and displayed true power.
Whether they were in the center of Milkyway or the on edge of Andromeda, every being who could qualify to be a 'Fobian' died an ugly, gruesome death.
Down from the weakest to even those who reached the peak of rank 1. No one was able to survive more than a few seconds before they dissolved back into the universe.
The only being who survived, the leader of Fobians, was a being who had reached the second realm of divine!
But even he was helpless against the angered Keman.
One move.
The leader lasted only move, perhaps because Keman blocked the attacks of Demon of Order and Punisher Aridam who tried to intervene.
With the second move, the Fobian leader was gone. Like all his fellow beings, he turned into ashes and scattered into the dust.
The Fobian race should've ended then. But one particular creature took birth at the exact moment.
It was a stillborn child, delivered seconds before the sliver destroyed its mother.
The death of its mother ended up releasing a lot of pure soul power—built up from the vast living experiences she absorbed
— which poured a new life into the baby.
Even though it was born a Fobian, it was distinctly different.
Due to the distorted soul power from which it was created, this Fobian's unending obsession turned into having more and more 'living experiences'.
But it could not go out and devour others. Fobians weren't supposed to be alive anymore.
So, Fabricator was born, a mysterious being who didn't participate in the wars, showed no interest in faction conflicts and stayed away from resource conflicts.
He created Paradise, drew people and used them to satiate his unending thirst.
The reason he's alive today—that corrupted soul power—was the reason he lived the way he did.
'I want to know about the creator of Paradise. Fabricator.'
Along with a billion other messages from the Paradise System, this one too reached him.
Fabricator remained in sleep but his dreams turned a bit more interesting, amusing and curious.
'I want access to the place he lives. 10 billion should buy that. That's the deal for me to stay.'
Varian's voice sounded sincere but sharp.
The tentacles of the sleeping creature halted for a brief moment before they resumed.
The sleeping god laughed in his dreams.
