Ben quickly got up from the sofa and motioned for me to do so as well. I silently followed him, and as I did I felt my mind’s eye beginning to slowly but powerfully shift as a solid, video-game like menu began to appear in my mind’s eye. 

“Whoa…” I uttered, as my perception of reality adjusted to the new… lens, for lack of a better word, through which I could see all things. As I did that Ben looked at me curiously and I could loosely feel him probing my mind! 

“Huh… Looks like I’m evolving even now!” I said, excitedly as I made eye contact with the seemingly, and probably, omnipotent entity before me. His face was a neutral mask, but I could see his eyes shift slightly, though even my ultra-enhanced empathy wasn’t enough to allow me to make sense of the subtle twitches of his facial muscles. I couldn’t quite tell if he were pleased or not, as he was making a slight effort at preventing me from understanding his emotions. 

“It looks like it… What exactly do you see? How advanced is the system that is forming in your mind’s eye?” He asked me, curiously. I began to study the fairly unobstrutive thing, and focused on the various components of it. 

Shortcuts to menus appeared in the corner of my mind’s eye. They were in the form of icons like a magical spellbook, an ear listening to some seemingly hand drawn sound waves, a compass, and other stylized images that even I knew were common in video-games. But the system was also evolving, and every few nanoseconds brought new advancements.

I paused for a few moments to allow the system to evolve further before I gave Ben an answer. As I waited I saw new advancements in the system, such as the spontaneous creation of variously colored bars appearing at the very top of my mind’s eye. 

The main bar was red, and I knew without being told that it was the bar depicting my physical health. Other bars were different colors, with a blue bar representing my arcane energy, and a green one representing my stamina. 

I wasn’t invulernable, though I was very… very powerful, and so seeing an abstraction of my health, magical energy, and stamina, was actually somewhat impactful. It was a nice reminder that I was not unstoppable, even if it’d take a lot to take me down.

“I can see bars for my health, stamina, and magical power. As well as things like cartoonified icons for my mentall spellbook and other such shortcuts.” I told Ben, knowing that if he wanted too he could effortlessly read my mind. 

Ben studied my face for a second before nodding. This time I didn’t sense him probing my mind, but I knew better than to assume that that meant that he didn’t actually use them. He almost certainly could have effortlessly been more subtle this time. 

“Well it’ll almost certainly continue to evolve. At some points you’ll likely hit a place where it’s hard for it to advance further but for now it should be steadily evolving for the next few days at least.” Ben told me, confidently. He seemed proud of the system, and I have to admit… I couldn’t blame him. 

Ben turned around, a proud look on his face as he did so, and began to walk towards one of the walls in the distance. The living room area we were in was square, and we had come in from the north. Ben was heading towards the eastern wall. He was staring at it intently and it only took him a moment to reach it. 

The wall seemed to be made of polished, solid stone, so when he reached it and touched the wall I was a bit surprised. The man touched the wall and where he touched it the thing was permanently altered into some sort of embedded touchpad, the kind with a place for people to put their hands for scanning. 

“Reality-warping at this level always looks… A bit silly.” He said, mostly to himself as he stepped to the side and motioned for me to step forward. I did as he asked and studied the strange sight before me. 

The wall in front of me was the color of polished onyx. It was a solid wall of stone, designed to clearly mark a border and seemed incredibly solid. Despite all of that, right in front of where I stood was a high-tech device seemingly built into the stone. 

It was a square pad that was big enough for me to fit my whole hand on it. It was like something one might expect to see if they were in Wayne Manor and trying to get into the Batcave…

I knew what to do, and I placed my hand on the device without having to be told to do so. When I did that I heard a soft hum come out of the machine and I watched the thing scan my hand. A second later the thing whistled at me and I listened as a robotic voice began to emanate out of the strange scanner.

“Andrew Nathanaell recognized. Access granted.” The thing told me, right before the stone walls in front of me physically parted and revealed some sort of high-tech, fully modern elevator waiting for Ben and I. Ben walked into the elevator, humming all the while, and when he was inside of it he smiled at me and motioned for me to follow him. 

“Well… Come on man, you’re keeping your first… dragons, waiting!” Ben told me, pretending to be concerned all while his voice emanated casual power. I paused for a second, and allowed all of this to wash over me. 

There was something amusing about the casual impossibility of all of this. I was a dude who had just gotten a late fee on my rent and now I was the owner of a planet-sized megastructure that was outfitted with robots, and owned a mansion where dragons were being kept! 

I smiled and managed to have the self-control needed to keep my shit together. I was still for a second, and then shrugged my shoulders and stepped forward, stepping into the elevator. 

As I stepped into the elevator I began to turn around, while Ben tapped on the lowest available button. When he did the doors shut behind me and we immediately began to move. I felt the elevator shake and shuffer for a second, before we began a surprisingly steady and even descent that would lead us into the depths of my bizarre personal planet.

“Owning a planet is pretty wild huh?” Ben asked, as I finished turning around. I chuckled and nodded at the man. 

“I remember my first planet. Heck I remember my first interplanetary empire! Those were the days…” He said, wistfully. There was a note of nostalgia in his voice that suggested that he was being genuine. 

“I’m really excited for your system to evolve the menus for your personal reality. Those menus, coupled with your unlimited points would allow you to really have a truly divine level of control over this place.” He added, a second later. 

“That’s when stuff gets fun. I’ve met jumpers who spend all of their time inside of their personal realities. To be fair to them, the omniverse is a scary place when you’re not omnipotent.” Ben said, in what sounded like an earnest attempt to be considerate of other jumpers. 

“And having a personal reality can make you feel powerful anyway. It takes a being on my level to break into a personal reality, and we are a very rare group.” Ben hinted, though I could hear a touch of steel in his voice that hinted that this was a topic I might not be ready for just yet. I was careful and didn’t press the topic, causing him to smile softly. 

As Ben spoke I saw a new icon appear at one of the corners of my mind’s eye. The symbol was a little word bubble, and when I mentally clicked on it I spontaneously developed a new window for my mind’s eye to peer through. Text began to appear within it, a split second later.

[Welcome to the glossary! This is a submenu created for you by your system. This menu exists to help you make sense of both the omniverse generally and whatever setting you happen to be in, at whatever time you click on it.]

The rest of the text was just words. Words were arranged in a list-like format, and hovered silently, waiting to be clicked on. They included things like “Jumper”, “Jump”, “R.O.B.”, “Essence”, and other words related to my new existence as a… multiverse-exploring entity. 

I began to idly tap through them, my enhanced mind capable of merely peeking at something and remembering it exactly, so I only needed a nanosecond of examination of something before I had it perfectly memorized and slotted into my mind-palace. 

While I was doing that we reached our destination and the elevator began to open up. As it did I readied myself for whatever I was about to see, and felt my heart begin to hammer in my chest. I was… excited to see whatever was awaiting me. 

The doors parted to reveal a gigantic, gorgeous entryway decorated in furniture made of gorgeous wood and beautiful materials. The entryway was gigantic, large enough that even a giant would find the place intimidating, but something about it… felt right. 

I was able to keep my cool enough to not stare, slack-jawed, at the room but only barely. The entire place was bright and welcoming despite its gigantic size, and Ben and I walked out of the elevator and looked around. 

“I see that I did well designing this place…” Ben uttered, a smirk on his face as he studied the handiwork of his potent powers. 

Off in the distance I could faintly hear the sounds of claws scraping against the floor. I could also smell the scent of luxurious oils rubbed on dense, draconic scales. I chuckled softly, so much so that though he surely noticed Ben did not physically react to my reaction to the sensations of my distant dragons slowly coming towards me. 

Now that I was below the surface my senses were slowly extending across the vicinity of my home, and weirdly enough I was still retaining sensory awareness of the places on the surface of my world that I had already explored. It was a good, but strange sensation. It was as if I were still on the surface… 

“Your unlimited mind is a thing of wonder Andrew. I’m impressed you already noticed that you can still sense the surface! That’s because this is your realm. You are permanently tethered to this place, in a real, sensory way.” My benefactor explained, confidently. 

“For now I’m limiting your sensory awareness only to parts of the dimension you’ve visited, so as to allow you to adjust to this at your own pace. That means that you can either explore this place fully, perhaps utilizing something like the Speed Force, or I can fully awaken your awareness of this dimension once you’ve completed ‘The Lost Mines’.” Ben told me, giving me more freedom to decide my path. I appreciated that, since freedom was the thing I was most beginning to enjoy regarding my powers.

As he spoke I was able to lay my eyes upon the two dragons coming towards me. One of them was a dragon from the Valyrian Freehold and looked like the dragons who viewed Daenerys as their mother, and the other was a beautiful, red-scaled creature who resembled a cross between the dragon in Shrek and the noble red dragons which were said to be the most proud of their kind in the lore of tabletop role-playing games. 

They were quick on their feet, and rather than flying they meekly walked towards Ben and I. They kept their heads down, because they meekly recognized the literally divine, demonic, and eldritch power that radiated out of both Ben and myself. 

I was everything from the doom slayer to a demon god, and Ben was… somehow even more than myself. We were both entities that existed on a level beyond that of ordinary beings, or even lesser divinities. The two of us were entities who were powered by fiction, who gained might from exposure to even the mere imagination of other entities. That was something that would inspire envy even in other divinities! 

One of the dragons, the dark-scaled one, was utterly gigantic. She was the size of a large hill, and it was only because of the truly immense nature of this strange place, itself a measure designed to allow this location to contain some of my alt forms, that she was able to be contained here at all. 

I sensed Ben turn to me even without facing the man. I could hear the soft sounds of his body turning, even while I watched the two dragons approaching us. 

“Are you impressed? These are your servants you know…” He told me, curiosity audible in his voice. I smiled and nodded. The two dragons were both beautiful and intimidating. As I studied them I knew that they would have filled the me from before today with a certain level of awe, even though I also would have been terrified of them. 

“They are beautiful.” I uttered, honestly. Ben silently nodded at me, in agreement. 

I wasn’t lying. The two dragons were truly stunning, in much the same way that a snow-topped mountain or a setting sun were stunning. They were beautiful in ways that no human could be, in a way that reflected the perfection of nature and evolution. 

When the pair of dragons finally reached Ben and I, I was silent as I studied them. Both dragons were enormous, though the one from the world dreamt up by George R.R. Martin was huge on a scale that vastly exceeded her… sister. The pair of them knelt, which in both cases was a bit amusing to see, before Ben and I. 

“Good morning ladies.” I whispered, though the words were in a language that felt older than any human language could. The words themselves felt powerful and arcane, even though I wasn’t speaking in the Thu’um, but rather another primal language. I was speaking in the mighty dragon tongue known both to all dragon lords and understood by all dragons. 

The reptilian eyes of my two pets watched me, meekly. I was much smaller than they were but the power I was radiating was so vast that it was staining the air around me and painting an area that fully surrounded me a strange orange hue. Ben placed one of his hands on my shoulder and smiled. The limb felt… ancient, somehow. He turned his gaze to the dragons and his smile turned into a smirk. 

“Good morning little ones…” He whispered, in the same reptilian tongue that I had just spoken. Hearing him speak the same draconic words of power I had just spoken but with a slight variation was interesting because his voice sounded different from mine. His words were… darker, somehow. Almost more cursed sounding. 

I approached the dragons and reached out a single limb each to touch the edges of their gigantic faces. They closed their eyes when they saw my hands approaching their faces and allowed me to touch them without complaint or annoyance. As I did I heard them let out contented sighs and exhale big plumes of smoke from their nostrils. 

“I see those lewd essences are already coming in handy…” Ben joked, as he studied me. I also laughed at that quip, while continuing to study the dragons. 

“I really like them… But they are too large for me to bring to Earth.” I noted, though even as I said it I could feel an idea forming in the back of my mind. A rather creative idea. 

“Though, fortunately for me… They don’t have to stay these sizes. Or keep these forms.” I said, as my eyes began to glow brightly. Upon hearing my words I felt one of my “Empathy” powers activating and I sensed a stirring of excitement begin to blossom to life within the dragons. They were excited by my words, and pleased by the sensations I was making them feel with my hands. 

At times like this having the sheer breadth of powers I possessed was really fun. I was about to give these two dragons, neither of whom innately had the power to morph into humans, alt-forms of their very own!