After waking up the next morning and taking a shower, I settled comfortably in the living room and began to ponder my etheric capabilities. With Kuro's help, calculating the atomic composition of any object wasn't difficult; I simply needed to coat each atom with ether and create an exact copy of it. This was straightforward.
But living creatures made training more challenging, as the atomic structure of every living creature is constantly changing. At first, I trained on rabbits, but all I could produce were dead bodies. So I decided to start with creating a skeleton, then add muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and so on.
Creating a living rabbit took me two months. Then I tried creating a human body. This proved much more difficult, taking me two years. But I managed to create a copy of myself as a normal human, without consciousness or soul, but with a beating heart.
Then, with the help of Kuro and my memories, I built a small laboratory under the house. Kuro taught me the atomic composition of various scientific instruments, like microscopes, and I, in turn, created them. Such instruments require precision; the slightest mistake and I have to start all over again.
In the training room, when facing various opponents with bodies different from those of the shinobi world, I deliberately delayed the fight to study them, and everything went perfectly. But when I faced Kaneki, I ran into difficulties, as ghouls are different from ordinary humans, and Kaneki had been transformed into one through experiments. Ultimately, after spending three months sparring with Kaneki in the training room, I finally managed to understand his structure.
Next came Crocodile. I was required to understand how exactly the Devil Fruit affected his body and attune the ether to the Devil Fruit's energy. First, I scanned Crocodile's body, and then tried to understand what changes the Devil Fruit had wrought in his body. This took me another six months. The Devil Fruit's energy was dark and eerie, like the curse itself.
After studying the energy and body structure after consuming a Devil Fruit, I began attempting to create a Crocodile Devil Fruit. Something kept going wrong, and I ended up with either ordinary apples and mushrooms, or just a pile of manure. After several failed attempts, I decided to ask Kuro for advice. It turned out that Devil Fruit energy resonates at a completely different frequency, suggesting that if I could attune the resonance of the pirate world's energy to the shinobi world, I could eliminate the side effects.
When my opponent turned out to be Esdeath, I felt a thrill, not only from her but also from her Teigu, sparking my scientific interest in studying it. After another drawn-out battle, I left the training room three months later with a vial of blood. Teigu turned out to be simpler than Devil Fruits because they were man-made.
I also drew on my own imagination to create my world, creating a specific point in space and concentrating on my sensations. I pushed this point out of space, realizing I could feel it and control it. I covered a roughly 50-kilometer radius with the perception I'd also developed using ether. I began to precisely copy everything around me into my created world. Three days flew by in the blink of an eye, and everything was complete.
It was at that moment that I became interested in the amount of ether I could control. I asked Kuro about it and received an answer. If you take the world ocean from my past life, the amount of water would be comparable to a drop of ether. Currently, I'm only creating and scanning, so I don't spend that much. But if I were to rewrite a person's mind, or alter the appearance of a living being at the atomic level, the costs would be significant, as even a god is not allowed to interfere with a being's nature, and those who do will suffer a dismal fate.
I laughed, imagining a certain man with a bandaged face and arm, and realized that he had indeed crossed all boundaries in his pursuit of power, for which he had paid the price by dying so shamefully.
Recalling my progress and successes over the past few years, I went out into the courtyard and found Kaguya sitting by the pond, watching the splashing carp. Approaching her, I asked, "What are you thinking about?" To which she merely turned to me and didn't answer for a long moment. After a moment, Kaguya collected her thoughts and finally answered. "What will happen after? After all this, when will it all be over?"
I was stunned by this question and, sitting down next to her, crossed my legs, said, "You know, a sage once said. The past is forgotten, the future is sealed, the present is given, that's why it's called the present. That means it's useless to think about tomorrow, and you need to focus on what's in front of you, otherwise you'll spend your whole life thinking."
Kaguya considered my words and nodded, preparing to return to the house.
"Want to go for a walk?" I suggested.
Soon, we were walking silently side by side, strolling along the sandy beach of the lake I'd recently created. Since the creation of this world, it had grown from its original 50 kilometers to 500 kilometers. Our hands occasionally touched. I waited for her to dare, but Kaguya was shy. Being so intimate with the opposite sex made her hesitant.
Finally tired of the long silence, I gently took her hand and intertwined our fingers. Kaguya flinched in surprise, but soon gave in to my impulse and squeezed my hand tighter. Enjoying the feel of the wet sand under my feet and the scent of seawater, a pleasant warmth began to awaken deep within me; it was familiar, yet alien at the same time.
Stopping, and with the sound of the waves against the setting sun, we lost ourselves in the moment, and all thoughts of the future quietly faded as if they had never existed. After standing in silence for about fifteen minutes, I turned my head to Kaguya and was captivated by her eyes. I don't know how long passed before our faces came close and our lips touched.