Chapter 225: God-Spawn
The instant he heard, Ronaldo took off running toward the buildings, Evan following after. No sooner had they left than the ground behind them began to melt like water, and a shadow drifted upward. Had Evan still been there, he would have recognized it at once — the same wolf-headed, human-bodied, bat-winged deity from the mural. Something had clearly gone wrong with it, though; it was nothing more than a wavering phantom, and it suddenly clutched at its own head. "Why can't I remember anything? Who am I?"
"You're god-spawn. I'm god-spawn too. We're both god-spawn. That man just now had divine power in him — he's our prey." The shadow's coloring suddenly shifted, and it spoke again in an entirely different voice.
"Why am I stuck tangled up with you?" The shadow seemed to be two beings at once, gradually taking on solid form.
"I can't help that any more than you can. Blame the fact that I woke first, and your consciousness came after mine. All I know is that we're god-spawn — something to do with the divine, it seems. That man carried divine power in him, which makes him our food. Perhaps if we devour him, we'll recover more of what we've lost."
"Then let's devour him now. He's already gone — should we chase him down?"
"No need to rush. We can appear anywhere at any time. He can't escape us. Still... I feel something I can't quite name. A kind of dread."
"I'm hungry too. I need blood. If you're afraid, then devour the one traveling beside him instead. Go now — I sense the scent of one of our own kind nearby."
Evan had layered a haste spell over himself. Something felt off — as though someone were watching him, though he couldn't spot anyone. The two of them raced toward the buildings at full speed.
Suddenly a roar sounded, and an enormous bear appeared in front of Ronaldo. Neither of them had seen how it got there — as though it had simply risen out of the ground, though the earth showed no sign of disturbance. The bear opened its jaws, wider and wider, far beyond anything a bear's mouth should manage, wider even than a hippopotamus's — and still widening, rows of fangs bared, lunging to swallow Ronaldo whole.
Ronaldo started, reaching back over his shoulder; the greatsword appeared in his hand, and he came to an abrupt halt, his body's blistering speed shifting in an instant from absolute motion to absolute stillness — a sensation sharp enough to jolt the senses.
The massive jaws snapped shut on empty air, missing him by less than a palm's width at their nearest.
Had Ronaldo not stopped himself so suddenly, he'd have been swallowed whole. But he did stop, precisely in time. White radiance burst from his body, and the greatsword in his hands flared blinding-bright. As he moved, it became a sheet of dazzling light; where the blade passed, the bear split cleanly in two — no blood, only yellow smoke scattering in every direction. Ronaldo swept his blade through one more arc, and the yellow smoke fled backward, regathering itself more than five forearms away into the shape of a bear once more, though noticeably smaller than before.
"What kind of monster is this?" Ronaldo stared at the bear in shock, gripping his blade in both hands, back bowed slightly, the tip aimed at the creature.
Evan had no idea what it was either. He glanced around — that sensation of being watched had returned, though it clearly wasn't coming from the bear before them.
The bear threw back its head and roared, and the ground itself surged upward like water, a great wave crashing toward the two of them. This, too, caught them off guard. Evan pushed off the ground and leapt lightly into the air, while Ronaldo dove to the side.
Airborne, Evan summoned the scythe once more and swung it lightly. Something like fear flickered in the bear's eyes, but too late — the scythe passed through it, and it dissolved once more into yellow smoke, which the scythe drew in and absorbed. A faint roar seemed to echo somewhere. The scythe gave a small shudder, though no image formed on its blade this time; still, a dim glow flickered across its surface, and Evan sensed the creature had been utterly destroyed.
Just then, the scythe conveyed a burst of information — very little of it. Evan started: god-spawn. But as to how it had come to exist, there was nothing at all — as though it had simply arisen out of chaos itself, dull and unaware, understanding nothing except that it was hungry.
God-spawn. Evan had read of them once, in a book, though even that book had been speculation. When a god fell, if enough resentment and rage accompanied the fall, something like this could form — evil gods produced them more readily than others. Once formed, their numbers could vary wildly, and their nature could shift endlessly; their minds drifted between lucidity and confusion, and while they craved blood, they craved objects carrying divine power even more. Given enough time to evolve, they would begin devouring one another, and might even recover something of a god's true power. In theory, one could ascend to godhood this way — though no one had ever heard of a god-spawn actually managing it.
This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Could this place once have been a Divine Domain? Evan glanced around. Everything looked ordinary enough on the surface, but the sensation of being watched hadn't faded in the slightest, and he still couldn't find its source.
"What are you thinking?" Ronaldo asked, noticing Evan's expression.
"Could this be god-spawn?" Evan said.
"What's god-spawn?" Ronaldo asked, curious — he'd never heard the term. Evan himself had only learned of it after combing through the library's entire collection.
Evan explained what he knew. "You're sure that's what this is?" Ronaldo asked, somewhat doubtful.
"I'm certain. This place doesn't seem like a benign one. We should be careful," Evan said.
Not far beneath them, the two-souled-in-one god-spawn moved through the earth, seemingly unhindered by the soil at all, watching as Evan utterly destroyed one of their own kind.
"It's dead. I can feel that it's dead."
"So it's dead. It was just a bear — it hadn't even inherited a proper form, far weaker than us. Huh, come to think of it, how do I even know what shape I'm supposed to have?"
"How should I know. That man's scythe was terrifying — no wonder I had a bad feeling about this. We should keep our distance from them."
"You coward. That man has divine power in him — he's the most delicious food there is!"
"You go, then. I'm not going."
"That's not up to you. This body is mine to command. What, are you trying to interfere? Sooner or later I'll find a way to devour you whole."
Evan still couldn't locate whatever it was watching him. He swept his gaze around once more and continued on toward the building with Ronaldo.
Along the way, they encountered two more god-spawn — one wolf-shaped, one bat-shaped — both cut down beneath Evan's scythe. The information gained from each was just as sparse as before. These god-spawn possessed little intelligence and had no memory of their own origins. Evan grew increasingly certain: this had to be a Divine Domain.
The sky above remained overcast, lightning rolling through leaden clouds. Evan even began to wonder whether this place had ever seen sunlight at all. Of course, if this really was a Divine Domain, it must once have been all clear skies and gentle breezes, before whatever catastrophe had struck. The grass covering the ground was strikingly uniform, and Evan couldn't tell what purpose it served. Trees, meanwhile, were entirely absent here — there seemed to be some up on the mountain, but taken as a whole, this place felt barren, as though everything here had already begun to decay.
They reached the base of the mountain and saw the hideous structure ahead — utterly without beauty, nothing more than massive stones piled together haphazardly. But the stones were enormous, and the structure built from them towered high, leaning at crooked angles as though the slightest breeze would topple it, and yet somehow it never did.
Silence hung over everything. They'd approached cautiously at first, but on finding the structure entirely empty once they drew close, their nerves eased. Ronaldo, in particular, kept up a running commentary as he looked around. "This thing is hideous, honestly. Who on earth built it, and why would anyone with that much strength go and build something so ugly? Should we go in and look?"
Though it looked ready to collapse at any moment, Evan decided to go in and take a look regardless. A thick layer of dust coated everything inside; there was nothing to be found at all, just an empty shell. As the two of them walked through it, Evan felt something was off — he studied the structure around them. There was nothing here whatsoever. What had these buildings even been for?
Their footsteps echoed through the empty rooms, dust that had settled for who knew how many years rising with every step. Something felt wrong, though neither noticed that behind them, their footprints were slowly fading away.
Ronaldo yawned. "So tired. We've covered a lot of ground today. I could really use some proper sleep." The moment he said it, Evan startled violently. Something was very wrong. He froze in place. "We've been tricked!"
The words had barely left his mouth when everything around them began collapsing like shattering snowflakes. The massive stones dissolved away, and in an instant Ronaldo saw the surroundings transform into a sea of fire, countless vicious, malevolent spirits surging within the flames, rushing toward them on the tide of fire. Ronaldo froze in shock — he was a creature of flesh and blood, and these malevolent spirits emerging from the fire were fanning the flames with everything they had, the whole area erupting like a volcano. Even from a distance, his flesh already burned with pain. Fortunate, at least, that Ronaldo was bald — otherwise his hair would surely have caught fire by now.
"It's over. Who'd have thought this is how Ronaldo's body ends up, cooked right here." White light burst from Ronaldo's body, though the wave of heat pressing in on him hardly relented.
Just then, Evan gave a snort and struck the ground with his staff. A great flood of water surged into being in the air above them, and an enormous monstrous water dragon appeared, raising floodwaters a hundred zhang high — wherever it passed, smoke and fire vanished into nothing.
"This is an illusion. None of it is real," Evan called out.
"It's not real? Then why do I feel like I'm being roasted alive?" Ronaldo asked, dazed.
"Your senses are deceiving you," Evan said. "Don't let your mind scatter outward. Hold fast to what's within."
"I can't. I can't do it," Ronaldo said, watching the flood surge toward him, despair flooding his eyes once more. Evan sighed. The flood, when it came within roughly three forearms of them, vanished without a trace, gone in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, the water dragon vanished as well, gone without a trace. The sound of clapping rang out. "Splendid. I didn't expect you to see through it so quickly. It seems keeping the two of you here is going to take a bit more effort after all."
A young man of aristocratic bearing, dressed in a tailcoat and looking remarkably youthful, stood clapping his hands.
"Are you god-spawn?" Evan asked, though he sensed this one didn't feel like a god-spawn at all — even so, dark energy churned within him, and there was something faintly like the scent of blood about him.
"No. Allow me to introduce myself — Jim Bagot, Third Elder of the Gnostic Society. As for what god-spawn are, well... why would I bother explaining that to you? My dear Evan Wang and Mr. Ronaldo. I must say, I didn't expect you to walk straight into the trap yourselves. This will be the place where you're both laid to rest today. You should feel honored, really — to be buried in the same plane as the ancient great god Josephine."
Bagot said this with a smile.