I was having a rough time.

  “Ha! Get fucked ya-” I tried taunting the confusing mess of limbs, before being torn in half hotdog bun style.

  A very rough time.

  The way things worked in the Tear wasn’t really what I expected. I’ve only seen it from the outside, when it was apparently stabilized with the hole open.

  Now that I was inside it and the entrance was closed off, so were the Rules of Reality that I was used to.

  I could feel that this place didn’t have an absence of Rules, just a completely different set of them.

  A set that I couldn’t decipher at the moment.

  “This is some bullshit. Ripping me in half without even getting past Jimmy.” I mumble to myself while my body stitched back together.

  Over and over again, this incomprehensible tangled ball of things just ignored all of my defenses and killed me.

  A truly absurd amount of blunt trauma here, enough heat to slow cook my meat off my skeleton there, all while breaking some fundamental law of the universe I thought would still apply here.

  I continued to do the only thing I could to actually damage the creature. My greatest and most ultimate trump card. Creating Antimatter and obliterating anything I could reach.

  Which was a pretty boring way to do this, but it was the only thing that would work.

  “I need to come up with something new. This isn’t flashy at all.” I waved my arms in wide arcs, flexing my fingers in ways I found interesting in tune with my attacks.

  Of course my movements didn’t help or do anything at all, but it felt right to do something over standing completely still while throwing blobs of antimatter at my enemy.

  My upgraded Energy limit, or the lack thereof, was proving to be more powerful than I thought.

  While I was limited to only a few atoms worth at a time before, I was able to pump out actual spheres of pure destruction instantly now.

  Now that I had no actual limit, that also means I can’t accurately measure how much Energy I’m using at any given time. I remember what it feels like to use up to a couple million points, but we’ve gone so far beyond that I haven’t even got the slightest clue as to what I’m using right now.

  “How about this~?” I snarl dramatically, playing the generic bad guy to a tee.

  Slamming my hands together as hard as I can, I press them firmly palm to palm. Then slowly bring them apart while flexing my fingers like I’m holding some invisible force with all of my might.

  There’s no reason to do this of course, besides the fact it’s fun.

  Within the gap between my hands, a tiny black orb takes shape as particles flow into it from around me.

  It’s just more antimatter, but slinging the same ball of random antimatter over and over again is so dreadfully boring.

  So I mix in some random motes of light, some reconstructed helium, hydrogen, oxygen, some random ass metals to give it a nice color and boom.

  “Blasted creature, suffer my ultimate attack~!” I yell with a smile, shoving my hands forward and showing off the antimatter star I just created.

  A little 6 inch ball of bright blue light with motes of purple. I stole the idea from the faker, and it’s not the same as his, but it’ll work.

  I laugh maniacally as the tiny star zooms through the space between me and the creature, or what I thought was space between me and it.

  The star vanished from my sight several times as it travelled, but my senses told me it was probably going in the right way.

  While it was incredibly small, I put a lot of Energy into making it. Way more than the previous bland orbs of loosely gathered antimatter.

  While those rather large balls of annihilation did basically fuck all to the thing, we’d just have to see what the star did.

  “...When is it going to hit-” I was cut off as I watched the tiny ball of light instantly vanish and a searing blinding light replaced it.

  My control over the antimatter crumbled as it came into contact with the monster finally, and the forced density began to fail as well.

  The star expanded violently as it forcefully ate away at the monster and returning back into Energy in the form of heat and several types of radiation.

  An impossibly loud scream of agony reverberated throughout my body, causing several of my organs to burst, then heal, then burst again.

  Shaking my head to stop the ringing in my ears, I observed as the creature withdrew from my senses.

  “Damn, so in the end it just runs away huh?” I chuckle to myself, feeling proud of my achievement.

  I cross my arms and act like I’m leaning against a wall, despite floating in the expanse of colors and nothing.

  “...Now what?” I asked the air, hoping for a response from Greeny Peany and looking around.

  My eyes didn’t see anything besides the vibrant shifting colors, but my senses detected the left overs from my battle.

  Just some random stray bits of atomic material, the few items I had stored here reduced to slag from the explosion the star gave.

  The explosion wasn’t really a super nova though, more just the typical antimatter deal. Bright light followed by complete erasure of both matter and antimatter.

  I waited a little longer and still got no response.

  “Alright, guess I’m going home. I survived didn’t I? No wait, I died like 5 times. Shit.” I swore under my breath and groaned, bringing up my Quest menu.

  “Well I didn’t outright fail I guess. I suppose I can stick around a little longer.” I rubbed the back of my head, my normal senses telling me I just burst through my chest while my more dependable senses told me the truth.

  I was ignoring the Rewards since I knew they would be consumed by my quite frankly ridiculous Skill.

  “Let’s freakin’ do this thing.” I stretch and then fling myself further into the Tear, going in a random direction in search for more locals.

  …

  —------ Layla —------

  “Oh my God, how did you even do this?” I asked Lay while holding a mop helpfully provided by Sally.

  My brother's suite wasn’t just a mess, it was ruined.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The unspeakable things that cat must have done in the 12 hours she was left alone was… surprising, to say the least.

  I continued in my fruitless attempts at mopping the window, trying to get whatever this was off of the glass.

  Everything else was somewhat doable using a vacuum and tossing out the destroyed furniture, but this was just not happening.

  “Alright, I give up.” I sigh and lean against the handle of my mop.

  “Gao.” Lay the cat kobold thing grunted, punching a pillow and clawing it like a toy.

  “Oh you just think you’re so cute huh?” I glare at the misbehaving cat monster, who just stares back at me with those lightless eyes.

  Head empty, no thoughts whatsoever.

  “...You are so lucky that it’s true.” I groan and shift my glare at the window that refuses to be cleaned.

  Before I could go back to bashing my head against the brick wall that is mopping a window, Lay barreled into my legs and knocked me over in her play.

  “Alright, that is it! No more Big Lay time!” I yelled and pounced onto the monster.

  Thankfully it was easy to overpower the magically lengthened Cabold, and forcefully get her to ‘willingly’ remove the necklace that made her tall in the first place.

  Lil Lay yowled and hissed, trying to get the magic artifact back but I used my height to my advantage and held it above the now very short monster.

  “Ah ah~! You’ll get it back when you behave little lady! Now be nice.” I scolded, despite the little shit scratching and biting me like hell.

  So I punched her in the noggin, knocking her out.

  “Take a time out nap.” I scoffed and put the amulet in my pocket.

  I glared daggers at the still sullied window, debating on how to clean it.

  “I wonder what Greg is doing right now.” I sigh, and grab my mop.

  …

  —------ Greg —------

  “Secret technique, Azurath Sun Blaze~!” I laughed loud and proud as I sent out the largest sun I’ve created yet.

  It was so big that I could feel gravity warp slightly around it, but it was still roughly the size of a normal human curled up into a ball.

  The following explosion was larger than last time, and so was the scream for some reason.

  The local I was fighting didn’t seem to be any bigger than the last one, but then again these things are so large that I can’t actually fully detect them.

  Space being twisted in on itself also doesn’t help but oh well.

  “Alright, I didn’t die this time-” My words cut off as my throat filled with blood, organs, and shattered bones.

  My body was turned into a fine sphere within Jimmy, leaving most of the space suit empty as I crumpled into the center.

  “FUCK! I almost had that one!” I yelled into the void, my soul floating around.

  While the local ran away like the others, I formed a new body and Jimmy wrapped around me again.

  “It’s so weird how they just ignore you Jimmy, like they don’t attack you at all.” I pondered while erasing the corpse with a wave of my hand.

  Every single time I get smacked, bitten, eaten, or whatever else these things do that don’t make any sense, Jimmy was left perfectly alone.

  “Maybe we’ll just have to try having you attack?” I asked the living metal and got a feeling of indifference from him.

  “Yeah, let’s just try it out.” I nodded, and luckily a local happened to be approaching in the same way they all do.

  Just a floating mass of something indecipherable full of malicious intent.

  …

  Jimmy couldn’t do shit.

  Nothing he did could actually reach the local, and the local continued to ignore Jimmy.

  Which meant that I died.

  A lot.

  “None of this is working.” I tap my foot against nothing, acting like I was upset.

  The current fight was null, since I needed to defeat one without dying and I had already died to this one.

  So I snapped my fingers and created 15 dense as fuck red stars of antimatter, my flashiest attack yet.

  “Azurath Move: Crimson.” I muttered darkly, going full cringe edge lord like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  Sending the stars out in random directions, I had them collide together at the point of contact against the local. I timed my pose with the explosion, placing my hand on my face dramatically with my back turned to the detonation.

  The explosion was much larger than before, but it still just caused the local to run.

  “Am I not thinking big enough? I mean, I have infinite Energy to deal with so maybe I just need to let go of my concept of limitation.” I pondered outloud, stroking my helmet's chin in thought.

  The Quest also says that I just need to defeat a local, not kill one. Getting one to run will probably count.

  “Let’s see what infinity can do.” I smile to myself and hold my hands above my head as I prepare myself to push my Energy to its absolute limit.

  If it even has one anyway.

  Starting small with a solid gold sphere 4 feet in diameter, I completely form what I want in a matter of milliseconds with little to no effort whatsoever.

  “...Alright, I guess we’ll go bigger?” I mumble, still not used to the size upgrade.

  Before it would take everything I had to just get a few blood cells worth of atomic material, now it just seemed to be limited to what I could actually control.

  Which would be two whole solar systems?

  “That can’t be right…” I shake off that fantasy, there’s no way I’d be able to do that.

  …right?

  “...Wouldn’t hurt to try.” I shrug and then begin pooling more and more Energy into matter creation.

  I held a firm grip on both the regular matter and the antimatter, keeping them separate.

  Within seconds, I had two planet sized spheres of 100% pure gold. One made of matter, and the other antimatter.

  I could have made it out of anything, but I was already messing with gold so I just went with it.

  “Okay, still no limit in sight. Let’s go further.” I increase my efforts, and increase the spheres to a truly absurd size.

  I now had two star sized spheres of pure gold.

  “Huh. Well that’s interesting.” I felt an extremely strong force begin pulling on the two spheres from within as I made them, but now it was impossibly strong.

  I knew I could fight against the force, but I also really wanted to know what would happen.

  So I let go.

  The spheres immediately collapsed inwards on themselves, and two black holes formed.

  Two real black holes.

  Usually, black holes aren’t supposed to look like anything. However, the two I just made were clearly visible because of the weird ever present light coming from somewhere and the absurd everpresent collection of colors.

  The black holes were clearly consuming whatever light there was, warping the space here further and creating an effect that left a perfect black sphere for each golden ball that collapsed.

  They didn’t have the ring of matter being sucked into them though, since there wasn’t anything here to begin with.

  They also happened to be close enough to nearly instantly begin to pull at each other.

  “Damn… That’s really fucking cool.” I admired my creation of two event horizons, and decided that maybe I shouldn’t be too close to them.

  So I flew away while watching them collide and combine into one singularity.

  Which should have definitely taken way longer to do, and it was like watching something on fast forward.

  In mere moments, both black holes were gone and the result also dwindled into nothing.

  Which prompt exploded into a violent expulsion of whatever the holes had consumed.

  I witnessed space warp even more, the colors that fill the background of this place shifting like waves disturbed by violent ripples.

  And in those ripples I saw myself fighting a local, and another vision showed me fighting a different local.

  “What the hell?” I mumbled as everything calmed down, and I got to thinking.

  I know a little bit about black holes, but not much. I know they don’t need to sustain themselves, since spacetime keeps them going due to the event horizon.

  So why did mine collapse so quickly?

  The only answer I can come up with on the spot is that this is not a universe or anywhere with a normal set of Rules. So spacetime clearly isn’t the same here.

  Perhaps it is more limited rather than the boundless and infinite amount I’m more used to. Well, effectively infinite.

  Black holes also only warp spacetime, and this place clearly has some form of it since they formed in the first place.

  But maybe it’s not enough to sustain the warping?

  “What am I even doing? Comparing my standard of universal law in this backwards place like a fool.” I shake off the introspection, since there’s no way I’d ever figure it out.

  There’s a reason I ended up as an electrician and not a scientist on that damn station.

  Oh well, while I’d never really figure out what the deal was, it was certainly cool to watch.

  “I should make more black holes.” I chuckled to myself while rubbing my hands together.

  It would seem that the limit lies not with me but with the very laws of the universe itself.

  Make something too big, and it’ll collapse into itself without fail. Unless I hold it together directly.

  But does it have to be large to collapse into a black hole?

  “Ah, rang the dinner bell, have I~?” I smirked as I felt several locals show up from all around.

  Or it might have just been one big one.

  Hard to tell with these things.

  “Sadly, you’ll find this meal quite hard to chew.” I snarked to the thing unable to comprehend my words, if it could even hear them.

  I held a hand out in front of me, palm up. Gathering the same amount of Energy I spent on making the planet sized gold ball, though I focused more on density than just size.

  Creating exactly what I wanted, I willed a tiny little black hole to form just inches from my palm.

  Before I could even do my best evil laugh, my hand got sucked up into the black hole.

  Then my arm.

  Then my entire upper torso and head as I was forcibly dragged into it.

  Needless to say, I died again.

  “Damnit.”