Avery went back to divining, faithfully following the path he thought was correct, ignoring the growing temptation of a breakthrough. He persisted for more than a year, honestly immersing himself in the Tao, but, while his conviction was admirable, it was not enough.

  That possible connection to the mental world was like a blinking red light in his peripheral vision, demanding attention. Worse, as his understanding of Fate and of the Tao grew, the connection grew stronger, becoming ever more inviting.

  Eventually, the gap separating him from his visualization became so small he didn’t even need to make an effort to cross it, but rather had to restrain himself from instinctively crossing that barrier.

  In the end, a stray thought - idly wondering what would happen if he accepted - became enough to initiate the breakthrough, and everything suddenly changed.

  One moment he was looking inside his world through a tinted window, unable to see anything clearly, and the next the glass had vanished, and he was drawn at the very center of his creation.

  At first it felt incredible. The entire universe celebrated his arrival, welcoming its master, for now and forever. Here, his power knew no bounds, and he was free, free to do anything he wanted, no matter how dangerous or ridiculous it was. He had become an entity that was above cause and effect, and above limits of any kind.

  He had even surpassed his insignificant mortal intelligence, as the omniscient personification of the cosmos. He had spent decades trying to uncover the nebulous rules of the universe, and had only made minimal progress, but now he had access to all of it at his fingertips.

  But it was more than knowledge or power, it was his entire being that was fundamentally different.

  He was no longer a frail human, so weak he had never been noticed by a gargantuan dragon despite freeloading on top of it for more than half a century. Not even after attracting the punishment of Heaven twice had anyone learned of his existence, and he remained alone, forgotten in the abyss.

  He had believed he had come to terms with his loneliness and insignificance, and he had, but this was different. He was not uselessly rebelling against fate, he was being presented with a position he had not even considered to be possible.

  His dream was simply to reach and get accepted by the Avenue, but wasn’t this even better? No matter how flawed the world was, no matter how erroneous this simulacrum of Truth was, this was his chance to experience being the Tao itself.

  It was like a poor but ambitious peasant wishing to climb the ranks and become a high priest, a respected man who heard the words of God, when he was suddenly offered to become God himself. Who could resist such an opportunity?

  Unable to control himself in front of such devilish temptation, Avery immersed himself into his new identity as a virtual Tao. Unfortunately, this dream was as wonderful as it was fleeting.

  The heavenly feeling lasted a few instants, but it was very soon replaced by an incomprehensible dread and an intense feeling of wrongness, waking Avery up from his lovesick idiocy and helping him realise the enormity of the mistake he had made.

  There was already a path to becoming the Tao, and that was cultivation. Wasn't this what he had vowed to do for now on? To walk his path steadily, and to not make shortsided jump to every attractive alternative?

  The correct way of attaining the Tao was to become a Saint, equal to heaven, and everything else was a distraction. He could be wrong, but regardless of what the objective truth was, what mattered was that Avery sincerely believed that. Since his conviction was pure, why could he never bring himself to carry out his resolutions? He had only done okay in the last decades because nothing extraordinary had happened, but at the first opportunity, he had forgotten everything and repeated his mistakes.

  Even claiming it was an accident was no excuse, because deep down, he knew that if he had wholeheartedly resisted the temptation, nothing could have happened without his consent.

  Unfortunately, the realisation came too late, and his self-rebuke would not stop the terrible consequences of his actions. The feeling of wrongness was intensifying exponentially, until it eventually evolved into something much worse.

  Avery had lived in constant pain for decades, and his body had been almost completely destroyed multiple times, but this was different.

  It wasn’t mere pain, it was something new, something he had never felt before. Pain was only the result of the nervous system signaling there was a problem, but this was his entire being warning him of an existential threat, causing him untold fear and suffering.

  It took a moment for Avery to realise exactly what was wrong, but finding out only served to frighten him even more.

  When his divination had forged an intimate link with his metal world, the latter had somehow traced the connection to the rest of Avery's being, and it had seen something more complete than it. It had instinctively erupted with the devouring intent Avery had trained so hard to produce, and had started to devour Avery's very existence.

  Avery was only a mortal, but he was nevertheless completely real, and born from whatever the equivalent to the Tao there was in his home world. He was perfectly internally consistent, and the virtual world wanted to absorb that original perfection for itself.

  The original balance of his body, mind and soul was already faltering, but now it was being aggressively torn apart. His mind, which was supposed to be the product of body and soul, hosted his mental world, which had been elevated to a realm far above everything else. When his divination had let it come into contact with Avery’s body and soul, it asserted its dominance, and greedily absorbed everything that made Avery "Avery". It violently shattered the delicate balance of his existence and reforms it with itself at the top of the power pyramid.

  It was like he was eating himself, but he was not a symmetrical snake like the legendary uroboros, instead only one part of him was being empowered at the expense of all the others.

  The process was excruciating, but relatively quick. His body offered almost no resistance and crumbled before the might of the Tao empowered virtual world. His soul resisted a lot longer, as it had been previously elevated by the Tao's presence, but it was too closely linked with the body, and it gradually lost power as it's physical counterpart got devoured. As for his mind, the difference between it and the mental world had always been very blurry, and the assimilation was over before it even began.

  Racked with excruciating pain, Avery sobbed and wailed, dreaming that the entire world was unfair. Did he need to be so severely punished every single time he took a shortcut? How was one supposed to learn if he could not try different things? How could an already intolerable pain become even worse?

  Unable to withstand the unbearable feeling, Avery did what he always did when insanely powerful forces outside of his control messed around with his entire being. He fell to the ground, welcoming the sweet release of unconsciousness.

  In the few hours it took for Avery to wake up yet again, bemoaning the lack of a fluffy bed on which he could pass out comfortably. He wasn't too concerned about what had happened, as this kind of occurrence had almost become familiar. Since he had woken up, it meant he had survived and was going to be fine.

  His composure did falter slightly when he attempted to stand up and felt no response from his body at all, but it was nothing more than passing concern. He somehow felt very distant from all of this, as if it was all happening to someone else and he was only an unrelated observer. He effortlessly managed to remain calm and take stock of the situation rationally.

  Unfortunately, learning the ins and outs of the situation did little to help him calm down. Instead it was the nature of his cage that forced this uncommon composure upon him.

  Actually, he wasn't sure if he was still technically Avery, or if Avery could even be said to be still alive. Everything about him had been ruthlessly devoured, and he had been completely assimilated by his mental world. His entire being had been torn apart and consumed, and he had then been reborn as something new.

  Rather than a human that had constructed a magical world in his mind, now it would be more accurate to refer to him as a living world which happened to have a human body. His body, mind and soul still existed, but they were now only superfluous accessories to the new core of his existence, the virtual world.

  Now that he knew what was happening, he managed to control his body again, but it was completely different from the instinctual way he used to move. It was more like piloting a puppet though mysterious Dao strings, needing his full concentration on each full movement.

  He was also having trouble processing information coming from his body. He did not feel, hear or see anything directly anymore, it was more like his body was receiving all of this information, and then drafted a report which it gave the new Avery.

  He was technically getting all of the data he would normally have access to, but it felt completely different, just like reading "I am in pain" on a piece of paper did not make you feel actual pain.

  However, that did not mean Avery had no direct access to the real world anymore. His mental world had gained a presence in the real world, as if the two overlapped, creating an invisible field covering a two meter radius in every direction.

  There might be more to discover, but for now the only useful application of this field he had discovered was to use it as a perception sphere, inside which he had gained a mysterious sense he called “god's view”.

  It was completely different from the 5 senses he was used to, and he found it impossible to describe it any more accurately than simply saying that "he was seeing through the Dao ''. It was like he had discarded the graphical view of a video game and was now directly viewing its source code. It held the explanation to absolutely everything that happened in his perception sphere, but it was very hard to decode and understand.

  Avery knew there would be a lot to discover about his new nature, but on this aspect alone he was not too bothered by the change. Sure every little movement had become a challenge, he felt like a stranger in his own body, obviously some pretty severe drawbacks, but not everything was negative.

  The Dao vision was honestly great, but even more importantly the constant pain that had accompanied him for decades was gone. He had thought he had learned to bear and even appreciate the pain, but now that it was gone, it was as if he was finally able to breathe freely, and be at peace.

  The revelation that his very nature had been completely changed should have terrified him and caused an existential crisis. Apart from some surface level concern, Avery was astonishingly calm.

  It was not only because his brain was no longer influenced by his hormones, adrenaline and similar chemical processes, it was that the very way he thought had been changed. He still had the same memories, values, intelligence and character, but they were now processed in a completely different manner.

  He saw nothing wrong with this, but then again he was already changed. Perhaps if he had been asked earlier, he would have violently rejected the idea, but now with hindsight he saw only benefits.

  It wasn't a huge transformation that made him unrecognisable, but small tweaks here and there, the most noticeable one being the added momentum to his emotions.

  It was like he was controlling a video game character through a screen, and he had a very low emotional investment. He could still be angry or sad or happy, but he was less invested and could act a lot more rationally and view the situation much more objectively. He still felt the same emotions, but they were no longer handled by his small human brain, but by the majestic consciousness of an entire world. He was the incarnation of an entire universe, so for something to affect him, it had to be able to move the entire cosmos. Otherwise it would only be a passing sentiment he could effortlessly ignore.

  He was no longer a mere mortal, but a veritable god, and his mentality was slowly changing to better align with his position.