Through continuous trial and error, Su Mo gained a new understanding of the Root.
As an ocean of information containing both everything and nothing, the Swirl of the Root had areas where spacetime was chaotic and areas where it was stable. It had regions where concepts were a jumbled mess and regions where information was arranged in strict chronological order.
Rather than saying the Root contained everything, it was more accurate to say that the Root would automatically manifest from nothingness the existence that the visitor held in their mind's eye.
So, like the Room of Requirement, when Su Mo wished to see this world's Book of Ages, the Akashic Records, the information within the Swirl of the Root truly manifested as such.
The Akashic Records: the sum of all information and changes in the world.
As mentioned before, the power of mythology, in the form of mythological history, runs parallel to and is entangled with human history, forever inscribed upon the Earth's planetary chronicles. This is the source of the pantheons' power. In reality, the so-called planetary chronicles are equivalent to the planet's own annals of history. The Akashic Records are the annals of history for the universe itself. The latter contains the former.
And the annals of history themselves cannot be easily altered.
Only life that truly existed in the corresponding era has the right to write in the Akashic Records.
And as it happened, as a living mythological history, Su Mo could use his manipulation of mythological history to interfere with and rewrite all records related to mythology.
If the Akashic Records were an ancient tome with endless chapters, then Su Mo could, and only could, rewrite the chapters related to mythological history.
The bad news was that mythological history was less than a hundred thousand years old, a negligible amount compared to the Earth's 4.5 billion years of life.
The good news was that the timeline Su Mo wanted to interfere with was conveniently within those hundred thousand years.
Thus, several tens of thousands of years ago in the Common Era, at the moment when Homo sapiens first looked up at the starry sky, developed a desire to understand, and began to worship all things in the wilderness as spirits, the concept of the Second Magician, Su Mo, was inscribed in the Swirl of the Root, tens of thousands of years before Zelretch.
With his terrifying comprehension, he mastered the Second Magic completely at an unprecedented speed.
And when Su Mo finished modifying the Akashic Records and leaped from the beginning of mythology to the present, he looked forward and saw the same small stone monument, still engraved with Zelretch's name, as if nothing had changed.
However, when his gaze shifted slightly backward, he saw a vast, towering landmass.
Lifting his head, he looked up as far as he could and realized that before him was an incredibly majestic mountain, over a hundred thousand meters high. A single piece of rubble from it was larger than the monument bearing Zelretch's name.
At the very peak of this mountain, Su Mo's name was inscribed from top to bottom, also spanning a hundred thousand meters.
It turned out that the entire region of the Second Magic had already taken on Su Mo's form. The monument representing Zelretch was a negligible speck, and it was even borrowing Su Mo's territory.
"Just as I thought. As long as you are earlier in time and have a deeper level of mastery, you can completely monopolize the sovereignty of a True Magic!"
Su Mo had successfully verified his theory.
From the Root, Su Mo had successfully usurped the dominion of the Second Magic. In the present world, Zelretch could still wield the Second Magic and was still the Second Magician. He himself hadn't even noticed the change. However, his mastery of the Second Magic was, in reality, just a second-level permission granted by Su Mo. If Su Mo were to revoke this permission, he would completely lose the ability to use the Second Magic.
"Parallel world interference... With this power, I can inscribe my name in the Akashic Records of the entire Nasuverse!"
The Root of the Nasuverse was a root that encompassed all parallel universes.
With the successful mastery of the Second Magic, Su Mo had become the undisputed Second Magician in all universes of the Nasuverse.
Having achieved his goal, Su Mo glanced at the hole maintained by the Greater Grail. Although talking about time here would be confusing, the hole maintained by the Greater Grail was indeed still more than half open. Evidently, the speed at which Su Mo had mastered the complete Second Magic was even faster than the speed at which an ordinary person could master a fraction of the Third Magic. The Greater Grail's safety alarm was a redundant mechanism for Su Mo.
"Since I have this rare opportunity, I might as well take a look at the other Magics..."
Not yet sensing any danger, Su Mo had a thought and decided to also inscribe his name on the Third Magic, which he had already mastered but had not yet claimed ownership of.
Having had experience with the Second Magic, Su Mo was much more adept at inscribing the Third Magic. Soon, he had written the master of the Third Magic into the Akashic Records. Just as with Zelretch, the fragmented Third Magic mastered by the Winter Saint and others became a secondary permission granted by Su Mo. The true holder of the Third Magic was corrected to Su Mo's name in its entirety.
At this point, the hole from the Grail ritual was still a little less than half open.
Seeing this, Su Mo finally turned his attention to the hidden Fourth Magic.
A moment later.
"Just as I thought..." Su Mo's gaze was vacant as he digested the information he had just received. "The so-called law of wisdom is precisely the law of creating wisdom, the law of creating life... Compared to the Third Magic, the Fourth Magic is actually more related to salvation. Because the Fourth Magic is life itself!"
Life, the only entropy-reducing system in the universe, the greatest miracle in a universe of inorganic matter.
Su Mo's guess was correct. The reason he could feel the spiritual rank of the Fourth Magic from Illya but couldn't find any traces of it was because he had subconsciously overlooked the greatest miracle created by the Fourth Magic: Illya, the living being, herself.
Just as Servants, Heroic Spirits, and gods were products of the Third Magic, intelligent life itself was a product of the Fourth Magic.
As laws of creation, the Five Magics had always existed in the world as a matter of course.
The First Magic created the world, the Second Magic built the parallel universes, the Third Magic standardized all things, the Fourth Magic enlightened intelligent life, and the Fifth Magic guided toward the end.
The duty of the Fourth Magic was to create life. Therefore, in an era where humanity thrived, this Magic naturally went into hiding. When Su Mo created Illya, he had used the Fourth Magic to enlighten her wisdom.
After roughly mastering the Fourth Magic, Su Mo didn't stop. He wanted to investigate the remaining Magics.
The Fifth Magic itself seemed to be related to order, capable of manipulating concepts like time and space, but it couldn't truly rewrite the ending, so it wasn't very useful.
The First Magic, however, contained a power that ordinary people couldn't imagine. Compared to the perpetual motion machine of the soul from the Third Magic, what the First Magic's "Denial of Nothingness" represented was the power to truly change the world. The concept of creating something by denying nothingness itself pointed to the highest level of stellar particles, something Su Mo had had no clue about until now. It was also the only existence that could truly create something from nothing—a first-class perpetual motion machine.
However, when he tried to step into the domain of the First Magic through the concept of a perpetual motion machine, alarm bells rang in Su Mo's mind. The hole maintained by the Greater Grail had completely closed. If he continued to indulge, he would lose all reference points. If that happened, even if he wouldn't be in danger from getting lost in the Root, by the time he returned, the entire Nasuverse might have already fallen into the apocalyptic ending of the "Steel Earth."
After a moment's hesitation, Su Mo made one last attempt, but no matter how close he got, he couldn't reach the domain where the First Magic's "Denial of Nothingness" resided. In fact, it was as if a law called "Denial of Nothingness" didn't exist in the Root at all. Apart from the name on the surface, everything else was blank.
Realizing that delaying any further would be fruitless, Su Mo decisively retreated.
Considering that Illya also had no information about the First Magic, perhaps it just wasn't the right time for him to come into contact with this power.
In any case, having already mastered the Second, Third, and Fourth Magics, his trip to the Nasuverse had been more than fruitful enough.
---||---
In the Campione! world, in the Netherworld, at the House of Plutarch.
A faint blue starlight shone from the chest of the petite, silver-haired goddess.
Through the "Archetype Induction" he had comprehended from his divine Authorities, Su Mo arrived at this most mysterious place in the Netherworld.
Unlike the dangers of the Root, although the House of Plutarch in the Campione! world had guardians, they were no match for the might of a Devil King, let alone a Devil King of Su Mo's level.
After carefully reading through the records of this world, Su Mo accurately separated its mythological history from its planetary chronicles. Then, through the manipulation of Type-II stellar particles, he rewrote the concepts, equating the concept of the Primordial Mother Creation Mythic Thaumaturgy from mythological history with the Earth Celestial Spirit from the planetary chronicles.
The so-called planetary chronicles were, in fact, also records from the perspective of intelligent life.
Taking advantage of the ambiguity of the concept of "the world" in the Age of Gods, Su Mo successfully inscribed the concept of a Celestial Spirit onto the Earth's chronicles and, through conceptual mapping, transferred it to the Primordial Mother.
For the gods of this world, this operation was exceptionally easy. The Heretic Gods of the Campione! world were originally earth spirits who had run rampant in the wilderness, only to be constrained into the form of gods by mythology. Now, Su Mo's operation could be seen as releasing the gods from the shackles of mythology, allowing them to return to their primordial state.
After a series of delicate operations, Athena successfully changed her race.
From a god, to a primordial earth spirit, and finally to the concept of the earth itself.
The black dragon that had appeared behind her, symbolizing the Primordial Mother, Gaia, also gradually took on the form of an Ouroboros.
Inside the tail-biting Ouroboros, a sapphire-blue planet floated in the air, rotating on its own axis as the Ouroboros turned.
"Did it succeed?" Pandora, who had come to help—or rather, to join in on the fun—asked curiously after seeing the spiritual rank phantom behind Athena. This was the first time she had seen a Celestial Spirit.
From the kind, powerful, and yet alien aura emanating from Athena, she roughly realized one thing: even if Athena retained her divinity, her essence was no longer that of a god, but something far more vast, an existence on the level of a planet.
"Not yet."
Looking at the silver-haired girl whose aura had stabilized at the star-destroying Tier 5, Su Mo shook his head and placed his hand on top of Athena's head.
"There's still one last step... to overwrite her identity onto all parallel worlds. Only then will she truly become a Celestial Spirit."
As he spoke, the law of genesis was activated.
As dozens of shadows of a sapphire-blue planet appeared, the Second Magic, parallel world interference, began to exert its true power.
Even Madame Aisha had been able to connect to parallel worlds. For Su Mo, who had already mastered the Second Magic, it was a piece of cake.