Lord of Entertainment

Chapter 532: Pleroma and Kenoma

(3rd Person POV)

The True Dimension held no sound of its own, so the quiet that stretched between them filled the whole of it. The System stood before the throne with her newly made hands folded, and for a long moment she said nothing at all, as if measuring the weight of what she was about to set down.

Then she began.

"The truth, master, is that my Creator never vanished. He is alive. More than alive — he cannot perish. He is an Absolute Being."

Arthur went still on the throne. "Then why is this seat empty?" His brow drew down. "Is this Creator of yours going to be the next thing I have to put down—"

"N-no. No, master." She lifted both palms quickly. "My Creator is not your enemy."

"Then what is he?" Arthur said. "And why isn't he here?"

The System let out a slow breath and gave him the answer plainly. "Because my Creator is the Absolute Ruler of the Pleroma."

"Pleroma," Arthur repeated.

She inclined her head. "The Pleroma is the stable reality. Ordered. Unchangeable. The Realm of Light — whole and self-consistent, with nothing missing from it and nothing out of its place." Her voice took on a careful reverence. "It is the source everything else is drawn from. The fixed point the whole of existence hangs upon."

Even with the boundless power still settling through him, Arthur felt something close to awe move across his face. "So that is the Pleroma..."

"Yes. And the one who rules it — my Creator — is the Supreme Being. The Monad."

"The Monad." Arthur said the name slowly. It sat heavier in his mouth than a name had any right to.

"The Pleroma is the source of all things," the System went on. "And the Kenoma — where you and I stand right now — is drawn out of the Pleroma."

Arthur lifted a hand to stop her there. "Wait. You need to tell me about this Kenoma."

"I'm coming to it." She turned a slow half-step, and the empty white of the dimension seemed to lean in around the word. "The Kenoma is the opposite of the Pleroma. It is the unstable reality — the chaotic one. Unfinished. In motion. Full of accident and contradiction and irregularity. Where the Pleroma is fullness, the Kenoma is what is lacking. Incomplete. Still churning."

Something complicated crossed Arthur's expression. "And that's where we are. Right now. The chaotic one."

"Yes. And unlike the Pleroma, the Kenoma is dynamic. Generative. Chaotic. Alive." She held his eyes. "It gives rise to powerful things — entities that can grow beyond the reach of the very universes that bore them."

"So there are two realities," Arthur said, drawing it into shape. "Pleroma. Kenoma."

"Two, master. The first is the Pleroma — Fullness. Wholeness. The second is the Kenoma — Deficiency." A small pause. "The Emptiness, if you'd rather the harder word for it."

Arthur's lips quivered. "You're describing a broken reality."

"Not broken." She shook her head. "A living one. The Fullness is complete, and a thing that is complete does not create. Every story, every world, every wild and unrepeatable thing that has ever been — all of it is born here, in the deficiency, because the deficiency is the part that isn't finished yet." Her tone gentled and darkened at once. "That is its strength, and its curse. It makes. And what makes, breaks."

Arthur let the silence settle back over them. Everything she was laying before him should have been impossible, and none of it felt like a lie.

"Then tell me the reason," he said at last. "Why am I suddenly the Absolute Ruler of the Kenoma — this unstable reality? And why would your Creator choose me for it? I have more questions than I know how to ask."

"Then I'll start where the trouble starts." The System's manner cooled. "The Kenoma is unstable, yes — but it is not empty. There are entities down in the deficiency, master. Things that grew strong by feeding on the disorder instead of resolving it. The more the Kenoma churns, the stronger they become. And the stronger they become, the harder they churn it." Her hands moved as she spoke, sketching the shape of it in the air. "They lodge themselves inside realities. They set false figures into worlds and take the creator's seat above them, ruling what was never theirs to rule. Where a world should turn through one clean cycle, they force a thousand early collapses instead, and drink down the power that spills out of every one."

She let the picture hang there.

"These entities are known as the Archons."

Arthur said nothing, so she went on.

"But the Archons are not the worst of it. Above them all stands the Chief of the Archons — the one called the Demiurge. The self-proclaimed Absolute Ruler of the Kenoma."

"The Demiurge," Arthur echoed.

"Yes. And if the Demiurge keeps gathering power the way it has been, it won't be long before it becomes a threat to the Pleroma itself."

Arthur turned that over, then frowned. "Then why not the Monad? With the kind of power you're describing, he should be able to simply erase a threat like that—"

"He cannot." She said it flatly, before he'd even finished. "The Monad cannot touch the Kenoma at all. He is the Absolute Being of the Pleroma — not of this place. He is Pure Order, master. For him to set so much as a finger into the Kenoma would be to pour chaos into himself, and to unmake the very stability that everything else leans upon. He cannot enter the unstable reality. So he does not."

Understanding moved across Arthur's face. "So that's why he made you."

"Yes. Though he did not make me whole — he designed me." She spread her new hands and considered them, as if seeing the logic of her own existence in them. "I manifested here, inside the Kenoma. The Monad only set the conditions and let the Kenoma do the rest. Out of its raw power and all its irregularities, I was born. That is the single thing the Monad is able to do, because even he cannot contradict Pure Order."

"So the Kenoma is simply beyond his reach," Arthur said.

"Yes."

"Then why do you need me at all?" He leaned forward on the throne. "You were designed by the Monad himself. Shouldn't you have power enough to be the Absolute Ruler of the Kenoma on your own?"

"No." Again she shook her head, without hesitation. "I was born from the Kenoma, yes, and designed by the Monad — but I am only a tool. That is all I was made to be. A tool, meant to help a worthy candidate rise to become the Absolute Ruler of the Kenoma."

"And you chose me."

"The truth, master, is that your origin was never in this Kenoma at all." She held his gaze. "Your very soul came from the Pleroma."

Arthur's eyes widened. "What? Then — I don't belong here."

"Yes. The moment I came into being as a System, the Monad granted me leave to choose a single soul out of the Pleroma."

"Why not choose one from here?" Arthur pressed. "Someone already of the Kenoma?"

"Because that would be no better than my acting alone, as a mere system," she said. "It wouldn't hold. It would only ever follow the unstable logic of this reality and come apart. What I needed was a soul from the Pleroma — one born of Pure Order. That is why I could never do this by myself, and why I needed you." Her voice steadied with something like conviction. "Without you, how was I ever to bring the things that belong to the Pleroma into the Kenoma? Its technologies. Its entertainment. All of it beyond anything the Kenoma could reach on its own."

Arthur drew a long breath and eased back. "This is a great deal to take in."

"Then take the time you need, master." She bowed her head slightly. "Your duties as the Absolute Ruler of the Kenoma can wait."

But Arthur was already rising from the throne, shaking his head. "No. I'll take up my duties now. This was placed on me by the Monad himself, after all."

"Master." Something almost careful entered her voice. "You should understand — at your current strength, you can stand arm to arm with the Monad."

Arthur stopped. "Truly?"

"Yes. What power I hold is little enough. But everything I gathered from every system across every timeline of Arthur — all of it was passed into you."

"No..." he breathed.

"There are only two Absolute Realities," she said. "The Pleroma and the Kenoma. The Pleroma has the Monad to rule it. The Kenoma had no one — until now." She looked at him fully. "You are the Kenoma made manifest, master. You did not only consume the timelines of Arthur. You consumed the power within the Kenoma itself. In raw strength alone, drawn from the Kenoma, you may already have surpassed the Monad."

Arthur's face went incredulous. "You're telling me I hold more power than the Monad? The Kenoma is the reality of the lower worlds — how could that possibly be?"

"Because the Kenoma is the opposite of the Pleroma, and an opposite must weigh the same. The Pleroma is ordered, stable, unchangeable. The Kenoma is irregular. Anomalous. And every scrap of that chaotic, unstable power was forced into you, until your strength itself turned unpredictable." She paused. "But the Monad is all-knowing, master. In power you may match him. In intellect, you stand far, far beneath him."

Arthur said nothing, so she pressed on.

"And the Kenoma's power is still rising, because every fiction dreamed up within the Pleroma manifests here, in the Kenoma. One Piece. Dragon Ball. Every tale that has ever been told takes on form somewhere in this unstable reality." Her eyes moved over him. "That is why you are what you are. You have absorbed the powers of countless systems across countless fictions. Ki. Chakra. Cultivation Qi. Every last one of them yours to wield now." A note of something like pride. "My Creator, the Monad, cannot do that. Not one bit of it."

Arthur was quiet for a moment, unsure what to even say to it. "Then does that mean the Archons — the Demiurge — I can handle them without trouble?"

"They operate outside the reality of the Kenoma, master. Their power transcends time. It transcends narrative itself." She lifted her chin. "But you are the Absolute Ruler of the Kenoma. You transcend the very thing they transcend from. You will handle them without difficulty."

Arthur felt the confidence he'd nearly set aside come flooding back into him. He had braced himself, somewhere in all of this, for a long and bitter road against the Archons and their Demiurge.

It seemed he'd been bracing for nothing.