Chapter 313
Chapter 313
[I am growing tired of amusing myself with lesser creatures in the Middle Realm.]
One of the Gods grumbled.
[That damned Adamas.]
Another God agreed.
[To think that communion with lesser beings is the only way to avoid degradation. Is that not absurd?]
[If only fulfilling our duty were as easy as wandering around like Pantera.]
A mid-ranking God who possessed the Authority of Domination.
Pantera roamed the world as a four-legged beast, sometimes driving an entire species to extinction on a whim.
His duty was to make mortals feel the terror of being dominated by a Transcendent.
Astonishingly, that was all.
[Compared to him, Styx and Murus must be bored out of their minds.]
One God mentioned the two Gods who had remained in the same place for thousands of years without change.
[What could possibly lie beyond the Boundary that requires two high-ranking Gods to stand guard?]
[Lord was the one who told us our duties. We need only obey.]
[Exactly. Was that not why he created the Divine Realm for times like this?]
Several of the Gods marveled at Lord's foresight.
The temptation of the Divine Realm, which Lord had built together with the high-ranking Gods, was no small thing to them.
[I hear Nectar never runs dry in the Divine Realm.]
[I am sick to death of making Divine Objects.]
[I am leaving for the Divine Realm.]
[At least tell Lord before you go.]
[Come to think of it, Lord is nowhere to be seen.]
[He must be visiting the other brothers. He was born with the greatest duty of us all.]
Lord was the first God, and his duty was to care for his brothers.
That was what the Gods believed, and in truth, Lord had always come to them like the wind and listened to their stories.
But at some point, Lord stopped appearing.
Even as Gods exhausted by their duties began leaving the Middle Realm one by one, Lord never showed himself.
***
A cave somewhere in an uninhabited mountain range.
Lord was quietly carrying out a duty of his own.
Dozens of Authorities that had once belonged to him, reclaimed at last.
FWOOSH— FWOOSH—
The power he had named Divine Power manifested.
[…….]
Having lost the characteristic known as Radiance, the Divine Power was simply pure white.
And then.
CRUMBLE—
The monster body Lord had been occupying could no longer endure his Divine Power and began to disintegrate.
[So it still does not work.]
His voice remained calm despite the unwelcome result.
FSSSSSS—
When the monster body vanished completely, Lord's distinctive featureless form was revealed.
Until moments ago, he had been using the body of a lesser creature known as the ruler of this mountain range.
Compared to divinity, it was a base shell, but by human standards it was one of the rare beings classified at 8-Star.
Yet even such a creature withered away after he used only a few Authorities.
[Adamas.]
He thought of the human who had reached divinity in a mortal body.
Lord's eyes sank into contemplation.
[Is a mutation impossible to reproduce?]
Ever since he sealed that man inside a blade, he had contemplated Godslayers, humans, and Mana countless times.
Adamas had not been created overnight.
Mortals lived finite lives.
Humans in particular were short-lived creatures that did not even reach a hundred years.
And yet, generation after generation, they had produced that mutation.
Bringing forth someone of that caliber could itself be called a miracle.
Lord understood that rationally.
Even so, he had thought that, given enough time, there was no reason a Transcendent such as himself could not reproduce the result.
He had, after all, created countless mortals before.
At first, he experimented with the same species as Adamas: humans.
After Adamas appeared, methods of refining Mana Hearts spread among the lesser beings.
At first, Lord interfered with the spread of Mana Hearts, but the more he did so, the more the laws of the world acted against him and constricted his divinity.
It meant the laws of the world judged it right for mortals to learn the method of refining Mana Hearts.
One day, he captured both a person who had refined a Mana Heart and one who had failed to do so.
The experiment began with a simple question: could a divinity such as his enter a human body?
The one with a Mana Heart burst apart almost instantly, and the human without one showed no meaningful difference.
He tried a dwarf's body, an elf's body, a dragon's body.
Then the bodies of countless mountain monsters that had diverged into numerous species.
The body he had just used was the final test subject.
There were only meaningless differences in how long they lasted. Every experiment in which he personally entered the body of a lesser being ended in failure.
[Even if Crea attempted it personally, the result would be the same.]
This was not an issue of how an Authority functioned.
He could not personally take possession of a Godslayer's body.
Lord reached his conclusion.
Divinity could not enter the body of a lesser being.
[A Godslayer…… a mortal…….]
He considered the birth of the Godslayer from a human perspective.
Adamas had wanted to resist the injustice of the Gods.
The Gods treated humans like livestock.
Divinities were immortal beings that needed neither food nor drink, but occasionally one of them developed peculiar tastes.
Such Gods would prepare lesser beings in their own fashion and devour them.
The lesser beings hated those Gods.
They could not show it openly, but among themselves they voiced their resentment and ground their teeth.
One day, someone put those feelings into words.
“Monsters.”
“Shh. They might hear you.”
“So what if they do?”
“Have you forgotten that Pantera wiped out an entire species in the mountains not long ago?”
“Exactly. If they take offense at a single word, it will not end with our deaths.”
“Everyone in this village…… no, even the people in the other scattered villages will die.”
“We have to endure. Someday, an opportunity will come.”
The opportunity came.
The method of refining Mana Hearts began to spread among humans.
It was power that could compensate for their feeble strength and fragile bodies.
The possibility of surpassing the long-lived monsters of the mountains, the elves of the forests, the dwarves of the mines, perhaps even dragons, called the greatest living creatures of all.
Humans did not let the opportunity slip away.
They trained their Mana Hearts relentlessly, determined never to forget the weakness of their former lives even among other lesser beings.
Superhumans began to appear one after another.
And through the racial wars, humanity rose to become the ruling species of the Continent.
[…….]
Lord silently watched the sequence of events unfold.
What he had intended to be a brief period of thought stretched on until humans became the dominant power on the Continent.
The disparity between the sense of time experienced by an absolute being and that of mortals made it unavoidable.
Human civilization had risen and advanced, but the time had not been wasted.
By observing the human species, Lord had gained ample opportunity for contemplation.
They possessed an innate tendency to resist.
They wanted better lives even if it meant taking what belonged to others, and they wanted to secure their own safety even if it meant harming other species.
[Kh…… khuhuhu…….]
Lord's shoulders began to shake before he realized it.
Godslayers, Adamas, humans.
He had made them all sound so grand.
[Are they not, in the end, little different from greedy beasts?]
Were they not the same as the Gods who harmed humans to alleviate their boredom?
The Gods had merely been stronger.
They had simply been given power first.
For a realization reached after such a long time, it was remarkably simple.
Of course, realization and action were different matters.
He had to act.
The many Authorities he had reclaimed had increased his power considerably. The fact that his Authority of Space had grown stronger alone was proof enough.
RIIIP—
Using the Authority of Devouring, he tore through space and forced his way into the realm where the Anomaly resided.
[The one who fled has returned.]
The Anomaly, now radiating an even more intense Radiance, sneered at him.
A different smile from before formed on Lord's lips.
[I needed time to think.]
[You have drawn closer to the Primordial. Did you devour your brothers?]
[Thanks to someone.]
Lord openly revealed his thoughts.
This was not the inside of the Box.
It was a passage connected to the Abyss.
The Great Constellation Anomaly from the outside.
Here, its power exceeded his own.
The fact that it could perceive his thoughts was proof.
And yet.
Even knowing his thoughts were being read, Lord deliberately made no attempt to hide them.
[You intend to devour me?]
[Yes.]
[With your current power, you cannot.]
[Probably not.]
[…….]
[I came only to declare war today.]
He intended to devour the Anomaly and reclaim the Radiance and Curses it had taken from him.
To do that, he first needed to reclaim every divinity.
[If an inner being devours an outer being, will it remain the same being it once was?]
[You have become talkative. It seems my suspicion was correct.]
Lord continued with a smile.
[Changing the laws of the world altered by the Godslayer proved difficult. So I contemplated the nature of my own existence.]
[Hahahaha……. You truly have changed.]
[Did I not tell you? It is thanks to you.]
That brief contact with the outside had transformed him into an entirely different existence.
[I have decided to call this Evolution.]
The Anomaly once again took Lord's form and smiled back at him.
[As expected. ‘You’ can become ‘me.’]
It meant they could exist together not as host and parasite, but as equals.
[Reclaiming every divinity will take time.]
Until then, as though feeding it scraps.
[Trading with you may not be a bad idea.]
Lord made the proposal, and the Anomaly accepted.
As the Continent developed, temples rose, some Gods returned to the Divine Realm, and abandoned temples appeared, Lord contacted the Anomaly again and again.
Through that process, he learned the truth.
[You are an existence with the potential to become a Constellation.]
It should never have been divided.
[Your essence is that of a being from the Abyss.]
A being capable of ruling even the Abyss beyond the Boundary.
[An existence in which the possibilities of the Upper Realm and the Lower Realm have merged.]
A magnificent potential that, under normal circumstances, would have entered the Abyss at once and become the seed of a Constellation.
It should never have made brothers merely out of boredom, nor surrendered control of the laws to a mere human.
Having learned the truth of the world, Lord fell into thought.
[This is troublesome.]
Just as he, a God, could not kill Adamas after Adamas had killed a God, the laws of the world seemed unwilling to let him reclaim the high-ranking divinities.
Perhaps that was because they faithfully carried out their duties and maintained the world's Balance.
‘What if I devour Balance……?’
He soon shook his head.
He had confirmed something during several visits to the Divine Realm.
The laws acted against him merely for forming a plan to harm a high-ranking God.
At this rate, he would never be able to devour the Anomaly in its entirety, and his worries deepened by the day.
Then, one day.
[Lord.]
Cronis appeared before him as he returned from meeting the Anomaly.
His first brother, and the God who possessed an Authority stronger than anyone else's.
The brother who wore the form of an old man holding a staff spoke quietly.
[I sense far greater power from you than before.]
[You seemed busy delivering revelations to humans lately. What brings you here?]
Lord changed the subject while concealing the murderous intent rising toward his own brother.
Cronis did not seem inclined to let it pass.
[Where are you returning from?]
[From visiting our other brothers. That is my duty, after all.]
[Duty……. Yes. You were born with the destiny to guide every divinity.]
[Is there something you wish to tell me?]
[I saw the future.]
[Oh? What kind?]
Lord showed interest.
Cronis was special even among their brothers.
If he claimed not to be curious about the future Cronis had seen…….
[A future in which you devour me and join hands with the Anomaly.]
[…….]
Silence settled between them.
[I do not recall giving you enough power to see even my future.]
FWOOSH—
As an Authority manifested, space around Lord was severed from the surroundings.
Cronis released the divinity he had been calmly suppressing.
RRRRRUMBLE—
Manifested gears began to turn.
As if answering them.
RIIIP—
Lord's Authority of Devouring, which had swallowed countless Gods, manifested.
There was no need for a long conversation.
[If you came here of your own accord, I assume you prepared yourself?]
[I am Time. Which means—]
Cronis's divinity surged until it stood on a level comparable to Lord's.
CRUNCH!
With a gesture, the jaws Lord had created were crushed and burst apart beneath the gears.
[Among the high-ranking Gods, I possess the greatest power.]
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