Beyond the vast expanse of the starry sky.
This was a realm of silent, unpredictable nothingness, where reality shifted in mysterious and unfathomable ways.
Galaxies, universes, worlds, dimensions... Nothing here could be measured. There was no area, no time, and not even the concept of physical substance.
If an intelligent being accidentally wandered into this place, their first impression would probably be a spectacle composed of countless twisted panes of glass, crystals, curtains of light, and innumerable other glittering objects.
A beautiful abyss.
The scenery changed with every passing second and every shift of one's gaze. By the time someone looked back, the magnificent, multicolored panorama might already have transformed into a mountain range.
Within a forest composed entirely of geometric shapes and sparkling crystalline particles, luminous golden rivers flowed. Then, in the blink of an eye, the entire forest collapsed, unleashing surging tides that roared like ocean waves.
Everything changed from one instant to the next, its transformations endless.
The bizarre spectacle resembled an enormous, terrifying maw. It was mysterious, unknown, and dangerous, yet so captivating that anyone who witnessed it would find themselves reluctant to leave, irresistibly tempted to explore its secrets.
But the number of "visitors" capable of reaching this place had always been exceedingly small. Most remained trapped within the labyrinth adorned with stars, because this realm could genuinely make people forget the way home.
Amid the constantly shifting, multicolored light and shadows, stars spiraled together into a colossal storm. Carrying an overwhelming celestial majesty, the storm transformed into a towering figure of breathtaking splendor and terrifying grandeur.
Countless galaxies bowed reverently before the radiance with which she tore heaven and earth apart. The light of the stars and constellations stretched and coiled throughout her body, while newborn stars pulsed brilliantly with life. That was the authority of creation. Fading starlight adorned the crown of Finality, and entire constellations rearranged themselves with a single movement of her thoughts.
Her magnificent eyes seemed to have been forged from precious stellar jewels.
Selene, just as she had been when she first embarked upon her journey of conquest, wore a faint smile as she studied everything before her with considerable interest.
At a different height and from a different perspective, her homeland looked entirely different. The extraordinary, near-futuristic technological world where magic and supernatural abilities existed had transformed in Selene's eyes into a prison bound by countless "shackles."
Upon closer examination, the world's most fundamental structure was the result of various religions layering enormous quantities of "paper," "lines," and "planes" over reality, like curtains or sheets of filter paper. These constructs, born from what people called "faith" and "religion," could also be described as Phases.
Throughout the Holy Selene Empire's history of conquest, Selene had never encountered such a peculiar world.
Selene continued examining it, peeling back one Phase after another. She wanted to see the world's true appearance beneath them all.
Yet no matter what method she employed, the final result visible through the gaps remained the same—a perfectly flat, featureless expanse of absolute darkness.
If every Phase were completely removed, the world would be nothing more than a black, utterly featureless plain.
Selene gradually arrived at a realization. Perhaps from the moment intelligent life first appeared in this world, the things known as "faith" and "religion" had begun growing by feeding upon the world itself. Then, with the emergence of the first being to ascend to the position of Magic God, the entire world had been reduced to something belonging to an individual.
Selene did not know what the world of A Certain Magical Index had originally looked like, nor was she particularly interested in finding out. She was not so obsessive that she would insist on investigating every little mystery.
All she knew was that after the birth of the first Magic God, regardless of how many more Magic Gods subsequently appeared, this world could never return to what it had originally been.
At the same time, the number of new Magic Gods would only continue to decrease. On one hand, the world might already have reached its limits. On the other, some candidates for the position of Magic God seemed to have lost interest in it entirely, even developing hatred toward Magic Gods and the rules governing their existence.
Aleister was precisely such a candidate. Or rather, a former candidate.
At one point in the past, Aleister Crowley could have become one of the Magic Gods and taken his place among the True Gremlin. However, for the sake of his daughter, Aleister had resolved to destroy magic. He rejected the opportunity to become a Magic God, retaining his human abilities and form instead.
Whether one wanted to criticize the situation or simply shrug it off, Selene could not be bothered to pass judgment on the bizarre laws governing this world. There was nothing inherently wrong with finding a few powerful "fathers" to protect oneself, but finding so many "fathers" who could destroy the very world that had given birth to them simply by moving...
Seriously... Uh, wait. Doesn't the Holy Selene Empire also depend entirely on me for its existence? Never mind, then.
What Selene did was not particularly different from what the Magic Gods did. In both cases, the individual had become greater than the world itself.
Yet the position of Magic God was both their greatest achievement and their greatest limitation.
Even a single complete Magic God possessed power exceeding the capacity of the world of A Certain Magical Index. Their mere existence would shatter the world, making it impossible for them to manifest in the material realm without dividing their power.
Moving forward, stepping backward, or even remaining perfectly still would affect the world. This was a considerable source of frustration for the Magic Gods. Quite a few wished they could "live freely without affecting anyone else" or "go to a solitary world where they could do whatever they wanted without worrying about the consequences."
Unfortunately, that was impossible. Such was the nature of a Magic God.
The world had nurtured them, allowing them to transcend its limitations. Yet that transcendence was rather difficult to describe...
They had transcended the world, but not completely.
Their individual power far exceeded that of the world in which they had been born, yet they remained trapped within that same universe. They could not escape even if they wanted to, and a casual visit to the material world could accidentally bring about its destruction.
For that reason, the complete Magic Gods had no choice but to retreat into a special Phase known as the Hidden World. Within the Hidden World, no Magic God could control everything, nor could they destroy the Hidden World itself.
And so, some simply abandoned serious thought, shut themselves away, and became lazy shut-ins who ignored everything happening outside. Others had little interest in humanity or the external world, possessed no particular desire to harm anyone, and concerned themselves solely with their own amusement.
Viewed that way, their existence was rather tragic.
Compared with the price paid for the Magic Gods' sudden ascension, achieving enlightenment one day and ascending to divinity the next, Selene would rather continue laboriously expanding her empire, gradually improving herself through a series of wars of conquest.
More importantly, wasn't that approach far more magnificent and entertaining?
Besides, advancing steadily while developing everything in parallel avoided the embarrassing possibility of growing so powerful so quickly that a careless exertion of strength would burst one's own world apart.
Both methods had their advantages. Selene's approach simply consumed considerably more lives, time, and effort.
"Hmm. If I gave them coordinates leading to the outside world, could I possibly put them to use?"
But the next moment, Selene patted her forehead in self-mockery. "As if that would work. Magicians are all a bunch of thrill-seekers... They might seem eccentric and unreliable, but every last one of them is proud and arrogant. Asking them to abandon that pride? I don't even need to think about it. Impossible."
Besides, I don't particularly enjoy creating rivals for myself.
"Then let them become history."
Selene's voice seemed to possess a peculiar magical quality, causing the boundlessly shifting void to fall still.
The Goddess of Finality extended her arm.
In her mind, Selene imagined the sound of bubbles bursting.
Following her movements, countless "bubbles" of varying sizes shattered in an instant. One mature star after another, each several times larger than the entire solar system, was forcibly dragged from its position by Selene, unleashing successive waves of tremendous stellar storms.
Looking downward, one would see countless stars disintegrating beneath Selene's will.
The immense gravitational forces tore innumerable celestial bodies into fragments, causing the scorching magma within their cores to erupt violently!
As the "bubbles" burst, countless worlds met their Finality.
...
Within a certain world bubble, on the surface of a planet where primitive intelligent life had begun to emerge.
As waves of purplish-red radiance symbolizing destruction flashed across the cosmic sky...
In a Stone Age tribe built around a campfire, four-legged, four-armed, carapace-covered creatures were enjoying a pleasant evening meal after a day's hunting. Their heads resembled those of insects, and their sickle-like mouthparts could effortlessly slice through the flesh and bones of their prey.
Then, heaven and earth underwent a sudden transformation!
The entire world seemed to tremble. Mountains overturned, oceans flowed backward, and the sun went dark...
Powerless to do anything and utterly unaware of what was happening, the creatures could only cry out the sacred names of the "gods" they worshiped and begin praying devoutly, hoping their gods would hear their pleas and protect them from the catastrophe.
Elsewhere, in a medieval civilization where magic and battle aura existed.
At first, the inhabitants believed they were witnessing a resurgence of magical energy. But the next moment, they discovered how terribly mistaken they had been. Enormous stars exploded without warning, and the falling debris of shattered celestial bodies blotted out the heavens.
Powerful individuals from every faction set aside their grudges and soared into the sky. Hurricanes howled, war drums thundered, and battle standards fluttered in the wind. They fought to protect their people and preserve their existence, their tragic yet heroic battle cries resounding through the heavens.
Elsewhere, an alien civilization that had entered the age of space exploration.
The continental plates of their homeworld began collapsing. Their interstellar fleet, once the pride and hope of their civilization, exploded amid endless cosmic tremors, breaking apart into several sections as screams echoed throughout the ships.
...
Among these worlds were desolate universes still in their infancy, where intelligent life had yet to emerge. There were universes inhabited by civilizations of intelligent dinosaur descendants, primitive worlds where barbaric orc civilizations wielded cold weapons, and even worlds where fruits had evolved intelligence and established their own civilizations...
They were extraordinarily diverse, and some were flourishing with life. Yet without exception, none could withstand the arrival of this undeserved catastrophe.
The solid continental plates of countless planets were violently lifted by the upheaval sweeping through their material universes.
Mass extinction descended upon them.
Stars exploded, all things perished, and universes disintegrated. Everything dissolved into countless tiny points of multicolored light. Those points stretched into slender strands of radiance, gathering together at Selene's fingertips.
When efficiency was the priority, gathering ready-made materials was always faster than painstakingly creating everything from scratch.
As for the opinions of those victims who had been minding their own business at home, only for disaster to descend upon them out of nowhere?
Get lost!
It was not a matter of sadistic amusement or an urge to destroy. This approach was simply more convenient. In Selene's eyes, those worlds were less valuable than the world of A Certain Magical Index. Sacrificing them to create a catalyst was a worthwhile exchange. It was that simple.
At that moment, the cosmic law of the jungle, where the strong devoured the weak and the powerful ruled everything, was displayed in its most absolute form.
Gather, compress, accelerate, compress again, accelerate again... Until—
BANG!
A Big Bang erupted. Expansion, acceleration, cooling... And a brand-new universe was created.
Strands of brilliantly glowing purplish-red blood slowly flowed from Selene's fingertips, rapidly seeping into the newly created universe.
Corrosion. Transformation.
It would be completely transformed into a world of Honkai. Every law governing its existence was being modified and reinforced according to Selene's will, specifically tailored to counter the characteristics of Magic Gods.
Gradually, the newborn universe turned entirely bloodred. Its rapid expansion generated extraordinary, irreversible temperatures along its outer boundary. Under the ominous fluctuations radiating from it, even space itself was scorched and scarred.
"After all, this is the battlefield I've prepared especially for you."
Her bloodred eyes narrowed, her gaze lowered, and an irrepressible smile spread across Selene's lips. While continuing to gather "materials" and adding her own creations to accelerate the growth of the new universe, she exchanged glances with her avatar across an immeasurable distance within the sea of worlds.
Under her guidance, strands of pathways connecting the individual universes gradually took shape, extending toward the world of A Certain Magical Index. She was waiting—waiting for Aleister to succeed.
I'm not an idiot. Why would I fight them at full strength and maximum difficulty when someone else is willing to weaken them for me? It would be a waste not to take advantage of that.
Selene possessed a warrior's honor. That was beyond question. But her sense of honor was also remarkably flexible.
"Aleister..."
A trace of seriousness appeared within her magnificent diamond-shaped pupils. Selene carefully concealed the "connection point," maintaining precisely the appropriate distance as she murmured softly, "You'd better not screw things up at the critical moment."
...
Darkness.
This was the place Aleister had gone to extraordinary lengths to reach.
It was also the place he intended to destroy.
If the gaps beyond the multiversal sea of worlds where Selene's true body resided were predominantly dark, yet illuminated by the multicolored radiance of countless stars, making them not particularly dark in reality, then this place was darkness in the most literal sense.
Utterly black. A realm of absolute darkness without the slightest trace of light. A darkness so complete that one could not see a hand held directly before one's face.
And that was not all. The profound darkness seemed to press directly against one's consciousness through the eyes themselves. This place could not even properly be described using words such as "where" or "location." After all, one simply could never describe something that did not exist in any precise detail.
Yet no one within that darkness felt frightened or disturbed by it. It was as though the darkness itself proclaimed that this was how the world was always meant to be. Unless someone appeared and quietly whispered, "Let there be light," this state of affairs would remain perfectly natural.
Within that pitch-black space, where neither direction nor depth could be determined, several voices overlapped.
A hoarse, elderly voice spoke.
"...Although we generally keep ourselves apart from worldly affairs, it seems things have gotten rather out of hand outside this time. Even Ollerus, that man who possesses some of our characteristics, has been defeated. And the man who refused to become one of us is involved as well. What utter nonsense. He's made such a complete mess of the world."
The voice was beyond merely hoarse. "Parched" might have been a more accurate description. A faint note of contempt colored the speaker's words.
"Oh~?" The response to the old man came in a beautiful, melodious voice, sweet and smooth as chocolate, like that of an alluring, graceful woman.
Yet why did that voice evoke such an overwhelming sense of sorrow, making anyone who heard it want to weep uncontrollably?
"High Priest, are you thinking of interfering with the material world?"