Worlds existed within Celestial Foundations, and these Foundations existed within the “sea.” The sea was enormous, containing countless such Foundations, but it was not hard to imagine the existence of worlds outside of it. There were worlds, the space outside them, and another place beyond all of that. Worlds with different fundamental laws all existed nested within each other. That was apparently the structure of the universe. “Apparently,” because it was impossible to observe the entire thing.
That said, there were some who treated this as all that existed, since it comprised the entirety of the territory perceptible to the most intelligent life forms on these worlds. For convenience, the term “Ultimate Ensemble World” referred to this collection of worlds. Many of them followed similar laws, while many more followed entirely different ones. No through line could be established that applied to all of them.
In short, what counted as rare and exceptional in one world was perfectly natural in another, but there were still things that counted as exceptional in all worlds. These were referred to as “exceptions.” The name was nothing special, only enough to evoke the intended meaning within the proper context. There were few enough such phenomena that they needed no special name. None were particularly impressive on their own, notable only for having a characteristic that was applicable across all worlds.
The Great Sage Mitsuki was one such “exception.” His unique trait was to be loved by everyone and everything. The effect varied depending on who it was applied to. On men, it often didn’t manifest as much of anything, but it was particularly pronounced on goddesses.
Goddesses, the females among the gods. As creators and rulers of entire worlds, it seemed a bit strange that they would take the sex characteristics of their creations, but it was possible to explain this through the strong anthropic principle.
That was what the gods of the Ensemble World were like. Worlds that followed a similar pattern were more convenient for those gendered gods, or in another way of putting it, because the Ensemble was observed to contain beings that existed in a gendered system, even the gods it produced would necessarily exist within that structure.
These goddesses, the greatest of intelligent life forms, took notice of Mitsuki. They would eventually come to be known as Alexia, the UEG, and Luu, and their conflict over him would lead Mitsuki to a bizarre fate.
If there had been only one, Mitsuki would have been taken captive and turned into their object of affection for eternity. But with three, a war broke out around him instead. They were three goddesses of equal power. None of them could directly interfere with Mitsuki, so the winner of his affection was entirely up to him.
With no other recourse, the three goddesses called a truce, allowing all of their interactions with Mitsuki to be observed by the others and to be restricted in how much time they could spend with him.
After this agreement, the three goddesses did everything in their power to win Mitsuki’s favor. They gave him gifts, they gave him power, they granted his every wish. The world around him changed drastically. The continents changed shape, and the people and cultures populating them were totally transformed. If it was to make Mitsuki happy, they would do anything.
They were wildly obsessed with him, quite literally driven mad by love. If they could earn Mitsuki’s love, they didn’t want anything else. They offered him everything, with no consideration for themselves. It did not take long for them to reach the tipping point, Alexia being first.
At first, it seemed she had lost. But at that point, the other goddesses had been giving Mitsuki more of their power. Say, for example, that each goddess had one hundred points of power. In their contest for Mitsuki’s affection, they had each given Mitsuki ten. While they wanted to grant him power to earn his favor, giving him too much would be ceding their ability to contest the other goddesses. So they had slowly and gradually given power to him...until one day Alexia suddenly gave up eighty points of her power to him.
That left her at ten points, the UEG and Luu at ninety, and Mitsuki himself at one hundred and ten. Alexia had greatly weakened herself, and it looked like she had no chance in the conflict any longer. However, it also resulted in Mitsuki having more power than the goddesses.
Though everything had revolved around him, Mitsuki had been no more than a spectator up until that point. Now things were different. While Mitsuki was used to members of the opposite sex constantly falling for him, a situation like this was too much. He lent all of his power to Alexia, feeling sympathy for her after she had given up everything she had.
The truce between the goddesses collapsed back into war. When their powers had been more or less even, any such conflict would develop into an eternal deadlock, but now that Alexia was a full third stronger than the other two, it was over in no time. If the other two had cooperated, they may have been able to resist her, but with them still in conflict, Alexia was able to defeat them one at a time.
Mitsuki had been freed. Though he had been granted nigh omnipotence, at heart he was just a boy with good looks. With far more power than he could handle, a long life of trial and error in figuring out how to make use of those abilities followed.
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