Chapter 1

-MC pov

My eyes blink open to a world I don't recognize. The void is gone, replaced by stark reality. Around me, the air crackles with distant gunfire, and the scent of smoke stings my nose. My body aches, especially my side, where a sharp pain radiates with each shallow breath. Time feels distorted—I have no idea how long I've been here, but the cold ground beneath me anchors me to the present.

Suspended in this strange, endless space, I drift, my form indistinct, a blend of light and shadow. I am unmoored, my essence unraveling and reforming with each passing moment. Memories surge and ebb like waves, fragments of something I can't quite grasp—images that feel distant yet familiar.

Here, choices seem to loom large, though I don't understand why. Paths appear like threads in a cosmic loom, tangling and untangling in chaotic precision. I sense these threads, feel their pull, but I can't explain what they mean—each one feels like a potential reality, though I have no context for this intuition.

A sudden surge of energy courses through me, unexpected and overwhelming. My form, once indistinct and uncertain, solidifies with purpose I cannot explain. I feel no external presence—only an undeniable force rising from within me, driving me forward.

The void collapses in an instant, or perhaps I am the one propelled away. Light explodes around me, and I am flung into a cacophony of sound and chaos. The scent of gunpowder assaults my senses as my vision clears momentarily. I am on the ground, surrounded by the deafening roar of gunfire and the cries of people I do not recognize.

Before I can make sense of where I am or what is happening, a sharp pain blooms in my side. Darkness surges forward again, consuming me completely. The last sensation I am aware of is the cold, unyielding ground beneath me and the distant echo of voices shouting over the noise.

-location – Martha Wayne hospital

I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar room, roused by the sound of the door opening.

"How are you feeling?" a voice asked.

"Fine, doctor," I replied.

"Despite your amnesia and lack of identification, your application to Gotham Orphanage has been accepted."

"Thank you for your help, doctor."

"You'll be discharged tomorrow."

The doctor nodded and left the room.

Few days ago, I woke up in this hospital rescued from a murder crime scene by the police and later admitted to the hospital due to probable trauma.

My name is Damon Prince, adopted/biological son(now former) of Diana Prince, a archaeologist/art collector (doubtful).

Originally living in Washington dc but now in Gotham and the fucking year is 2005 instead of 2008 as I remembered going to school in.

And if all this was not bad enough, after awakening from my recent spacetime travel I also got a new set of memories making me almost feel despair.

Emphasis on almost, Despite now remembering I now am part of the DC universe where normal people lives can end at a moment's notice, they die as collateral damage to the never-ending game of hero and villain and then some more when villain run through the revolving door of justice. Even city and planet destroying threats are monthly occurrence.

I raised my hand and summoned a book. The book was heavy in my hand, invisible to everyone but me, not just in weight, but with the weight of ages. Touching its cover sent a shiver down my spine, a sense of vast, unknowable power contained within its pages. It felt less like an object and more like a I could see the book—unless I willed otherwise.
This is the reason I just didn't give up after waking up in fucking Gotham of all places.

The Akashic Grimoire

The Essence of the Akashic Grimoire granted me this book, providing several functions.

First: Knowledge Acquisition.

The Grimoire could be tasked to retrieve any knowledge, from any mystical and technological knowledge to personal information. Retrieval time varied based on the information's rarity, the target's power and secrecy (the difficulty of acquisition). This knowledge could then be read or imprinted upon my mind, only requiring subsequent practice for mastery. This function was limited to the current world's information.

Second: Power Augmentation.

The Grimoire contained rituals to enhance mind, body, and soul, even granting new abilities and methods to transcend limitations. Basic rituals were easily performed, but the cost (in materials) increased proportionally with my strength, as altering stronger beings required more resources. These rituals were exclusively for my personal self-improvement, creating rituals for others required independent study, though the Grimoire could provide assistance in their design.

Third: Interdimensional Travel.

At significant energy expenditure, the Grimoire enabled travel to other worlds and the creation of permanent interdimensional gates. However, these gates would establish two-way connections accessible by others and entities with high attainments in dimensional related abilities will also be able to access these world with enough effort.

Fourth: Pocket dimension storage

Within the Grimoire exists a pocket dimension, a space where I can place items in stasis, effectively halting their decay or change. I can also use this space as a refuge, hiding myself within it and setting triggers to automatically return me to the outside world at a predetermined time.

Fifth: Summoning

At the cost of my energy, I could summon any items or people from different worlds.

At the start, I could only be vague about the summons. The more precise I am, the greater the energy needed. Similarly, the stronger or rarer the thing, the stronger I needed to be

They can be summoned from anywhere, even the destroyed world timelines.

Anything with a level of intelligence from simple animals or basic magical constructs to sapient artifacts or people is unable to harm me intentionally or unintentionally by lack of control or instability instead simply becoming inert or subdued enough until I am safely beyond the range of effect. They cannot disobey or subvert any commands I give them. I may also layer commands or set triggers for certain commands to take effect. The Grimoire will not summon items hazardous to me unless expressly told to. The items I summon which need conditions being fulfilled, like me being worthy of them, will automatically work for me or those I give them to.

I could however bypass the energy requirements by using rituals and using outside sources of energy to summon things or even make rituals which would collect the energy from the surroundings for the summoning but those would be painfully long.

And last but not the least.

There's Energy Manipulation, encompassing energy storage, collection, filtering, and transformation. The book itself passively collects ambient energy at a slow but consistent rate, storing it within. It can then filter this energy into its constituent components and transform it into other forms, provided it has previously encountered that energy type at least once.

It's a good powerset for a world like this, especially the knowledge acquisition power.

-Wayne orphanage

Several days have passed since my arrival at the orphanage. The matron, showing great kindness and understanding regarding my (false) amnesia and sickly condition(days in void without food and water), has provided me with a single bed in the infirmary to facilitate my transition.

I thought a bit more about how I would go about using my powerset and I came to a conclusion

I take back my earlier thougs this is not a good powerset, this is a very Broken essence, I only need one good sacrifice/power source to become relatively op even in this bullshit death world.

Which if I can figure out which comic book series (please don't be ) or tv show/movie (hopefully) world this is or I could just break into some superpowered human/being jails for sacrifices, since despite dc having a very powerful revolving door of justice it at least tends to keep villains locked for some time.

So getting strong sacrifice with enough information should not be that difficult.

And once I have my strong sacrifice I will get the fuck away from this world.

Why one might ask.

Comic book world might be good , even enjoyable to read but they are hell to live with especially for the weak.

One might say so why not become strong.

In comic book world trying becoming strong mean now you have to fucking face even more stronger people be it hero or villain.

So hell no , I am going to leave this shithole of a world and go to some other world which at least let me live in relative peace.

I have first set my grimoire to get me information/knowledge of basic martial arts, body conditioning, hiding and assassin/thief skills .

One thing good about dc is normal people here with enough training can go against much superior enemies , example that everyone knows is batman with superior training and equipment given enough time he has bested the strongest this world has to offer, other example is lady Shiva and Deathstroke aka Wade Wilson, able to keep up against almost everyone albeit a few exceptions.

So people here should have much superior baseline for knowledge of these skills making it cheaper to get information of this kind especially since league of assassin and similar organization have been training a lot people with these skills for a long time.

-3 days later

So my first set of basic skills has just been deposited in my mind.

So just as I expected getting the knowledge and skills from grimoire is more efficient than getting it from a teacher at least for basics I know no basics of hiding in and out of crowds, basics of throwing objects, shooting and weapon usage and unarmed combat.

These were the bare basics so closest comparison would be the professional knowledge of weakest newbie grunt in the league of shadow.

If it were a game I would have now gained level 1 skill in basic assassin on field knowledge and the max level achievable using all this knowledge will be 50 while master assassin will have few hundreds level in these skills or even reaching thousand depending on their speciality.

I just would have to practice and use this knowledge to get these skills engraved in my muscle memory .

It took close to 15 days for all this information to be searched by the grimoire .

So now is the time to test other features of this grimoire.

Let's try summoning.

I have set grimoire to store energy from surrounding for this purpose since I woke up in that hospital few weeks ago.

Attempt 1 lets try summoning money

…..

I got no response from the grimoire.

Do objects get summoned in grimoire storage? No ,Nothing in the storage of grimoire as well

Let's wait sometime and try again.

Few hours later

"I want a refund" I cried

What a shitty situation this is .

So I have good news and bad news.

Good news is now I know what happened before my trip to the void.

Barry Allen happened.

More precisely flashpoint is what happened.

Barry Allen. What an absolute catastrophe of a human being. A man so inexplicably reckless, so monumentally shortsighted, that his very existence has become a cosmic liability. Congratulations, Barry, you broke time. Not just a clock or a timeline – no, that would have been too quaint for your level of incompetence. You shattered reality itself. Bravo.

Flashpoint. That's the name of your magnum opus, isn't it? The crown jewel of your disastrous decisions. Because of you, the world as we knew it unravelled, people's lives rewritten like bad fanfiction, all because you couldn't keep your hands out of the past. Oh, you wanted to save your mother. A noble sentiment, truly. But maybe, just maybe, a speedster with god-like powers should think twice before rewriting the laws of causality.

I understand wanting to save your mother, I too if given chance would try to save Diana but he was supposed to be the hero, now the only survivor of that multiverse cluster of universe should be flash and reverse flash(barely, is on life support) rest people have completed ceased to exist.

So what actually happened was when I was being erased the grimoire prematurely activated and brought me here. The grimoire took the brunt of most damage now here it is .

The good thing is the Knowledge Acquisition and ritual function are mostly working .

Knowledge acquisition function is internally being used by grimoire for repairs, so would only able to do one knowledge search at a time and would have to cancel it if I want to do other and rituals would also requires some prior knowledge on type of strengthening I wish to perform on myself.

Both drawbacks are not that big of the issue as I have some understanding about the enhancements and powers available in dc as well as good imagination. And knowledge acquisition issue is not that serious as well since speed of acquisition is not impacted.

Now the real bad news.

The real issue is with the other features.

Energy manipulation -only ambient mystical energy gathering and energy storage is left cannot do anything other with it except use it all for summoning.

Summoning -completely broken

World travel- completely broken

Item storage- will work but very limited storage and takes considerable amount of time to remove items from it and only item/people summoned can be put in storage.

Total estimated time of full repair in current condition -1000 years.

So yeah this is all I was able to find using knowledge acquisition feature and situation is dire.

So once again.

FUCK YOU Barry Allen!

The repair time will be reduced as I grow stronger and along with all actions I do as well.

If I am able to learn advance spatial and dimension magic space related functions will get repaired and same with me awakening any energy based ability and my understanding/knowledge of them.

I can at least direct the grimoire to which function and subfunction I want to repair first.

I have chosen summoning. More specifically item summoning.

So once I have completely recovered I should start working on getting stronger and getting out of orphanage.