Chapter 44: The Heaven-Sealing Apotheosis
Back then, as soon as he appeared, he carried the aura of an invincible god.
He was a force of nature, mowing down anything—man or Buddha—that stood in his way.
Whether you were a physical dealer or a magic caster, one touch was enough to send you straight to the grave.
That was because his Damage Reflection didn't depend on how much damage he took; it scaled directly off his armor and magic resistance.
Wait!
Liam suddenly realized something.
If that sneaky bastard teamed up with Barney...
Holy shit!
The mere thought was terrifying.
Between Barney’s massive health pool and Eternal Bastion's armor and magic resistance, who could even scratch Barney in the late game? Aside from True Damage, he would be an immortal fortress.
More importantly, Barney had the Blood-Thirsty Dragon Scale—a passive that healed him based on damage taken. This was a god-tier synergy. They’d be unstoppable.
However...
Liam suddenly remembered something awkward.
The fact that the promotional trailer rewarded a Divine Awakening Stone was something Eternal Bastion himself had leaked during the mid-to-late stages of his previous life.
Unfortunately for him, Liam had already sniped that Divine Awakening Stone.
That meant the guy likely hadn't obtained it in this timeline. As of right now, his Innate Talent probably hadn't even awakened yet.
With that in mind, Liam immediately sent a message to Barney.
"Barney, add a player named Eternal Bastion. Get him into the guild."
Liam knew a fair bit about Eternal Bastion. The man's character was solid; his only issue was that he was an obsessive turtle.
Whenever he had free time, he’d disappear into some godforsaken corner of the map to grind his armor and magic resistance. In his mind, as long as those two stats were high enough, he was invincible.
Technically, he wasn't wrong. There was no upper limit to how much he could stack those stats.
Plus, his Damage Reflection was broken. It wasn't calculated based on incoming damage.
In the mid-to-late game, Innate Talents or skills that reflected a percentage of damage taken usually fell off. High-level Warriors often had decent Life-Steal attributes. If you reflected 30% of their damage but they healed for 30%, the reflection became useless.
But Eternal Bastion was different. His reflection didn't care about the hit. Even if he only took a single point of damage, he would retaliate with a fixed percentage of his armor or magic resistance as True Damage.
This meant his reflection could potentially deal far more damage than he actually received.
Barney replied quickly, confirming it would be done.
As for Liam, he spent a moment browsing the forums and noticed a wave of toxic rhetoric.
The focal point was a blatant obsession with everything foreign.
It had started because the players in The Dragon Empire realized that the Astral Kingdom was a Western-coded nation. They worshipped Divines from the Western pantheons.
This led a vocal group of players to start glorifying Western nations, specifically The Oryzean Dominion.
Liam scrolled through post after post that practically deified The Oryzean Dominion.
He simply scoffed at these people. There was no point in arguing with them.
After browsing for a while, Liam performed a set of old elementary school calisthenics to stretch his limbs before logging back into the game.
He materialized in the village once again.
Liam returned to the Boundary Monolith inscribed with the words: [The Primordial Eastern Empire Rests Here].
Stepping past the monolith, he felt the heavy weight of Divine Pressure descend once more.
Only this time, the pressure did nothing to him.
Even the debuffs to his Attack Speed and movement speed caused by the biting frost had vanished.
The Frost Serpent did not appear.
Liam pressed forward until he reached a withered, ancient tree. It was stripped of its leaves, leaving only thick, skeletal branches reaching toward the sky.
Beneath the tree, something lay buried under the snow.
Liam brushed the snow aside to reveal a game board.
"Is this... Go?"
Liam didn't actually know how to play Go, but he’d seen enough episodes of Hikaru no Go to recognize the board. The stones and the board itself were frozen solid, looking like a crystalline sculpture.
There was text inscribed beside the board.
"The heavens as the board, the stars as the stones; the Heaven-Sealing Apotheosis."
Liam rested his fingers on the frozen board, feeling a jolt of surprise.
The words were incredibly arrogant.
Heaven-Sealing Apotheosis!
This was clearly a method of ascending to godhood.
In his previous life, the mainstream methods Liam knew were the Apotheosis of Faith and the Apotheosis of Merit.
Faith Energy came from the devotion of others; Karmic Merit came from one's own righteous deeds.
However, compared to Faith Energy, Karmic Merit was significantly harder to farm. The judgment of what constituted a "good deed" was notoriously fickle. For example, saving a person might actually decrease your Karmic Merit if that person turned out to be a villain.
Faith Energy was simpler. It didn't care about good or evil; as long as people worshipped you, you gained Essence of Faith.
Beyond those, Liam also knew of Enlightened Apotheosis.
It was exactly what it sounded like—reaching a peak understanding of a specific "Dao" or "Path." Once your comprehension reached its limit, a corresponding Divinity would be born, and you would ascend.
The predecessor of the Frost Corpse, Eira, the Frost Goddess, likely ascended by mastering The Supreme Path of Eternal Frost.
But this Heaven-Sealing Apotheosis?
This was the first time Liam had ever heard of it.
"The heavens as the board, the stars as the stones..." It sounded badass, certainly.
But he didn't know if it was true power or just empty flair. He’d met plenty of people in his past life who talked a big game but turned out to be weaklings when the fighting started.
Still, considering this was the resting place of The Primordial Eastern Empire, Liam felt a spark of anticipation.
What if he could unlock an entirely new path to godhood?
Furthermore, he was dying to know who the person was that achieved Mortal Deicide, and how they had done it.
Mortal Deicide!
Two simple words, but Liam knew exactly how impossible they were.
The Divines were supreme beings with world-shaking power. Their Divine Pressure alone was enough to crush most mortals.
In his previous life, Liam had heard legends of mortals killing gods, but those individuals were always monstrously powerful entities armed with Divine Artifacts.
Even the Deicide Mark Liam had obtained was classified as Divine Grade.
He pushed the thoughts aside. It was time to keep moving.
Based on his experience, crossing a landmark usually triggered a new danger.
This time was no exception.
As soon as Liam stepped past the Go board, the ground began to tremble. Something massive was about to burst through the permafrost.
BOOM!
The snow exploded in front of him, and a massive fist hurtled toward his head.
The fist was the size of a Yin-Yang Millstone, moving with terrifying speed and carrying a violent gust of wind.
But Liam was ready. The moment the ground vibrated, he was already in motion.
He threw himself into a roll, the fist whistling past the spot where he had stood a split second before.
As he found his footing, he loosed an arrow.
-97,315!
A massive red number popped up.
A single arrow shaved off nearly 100,000 HP.
At the same time, the creature's stats appeared in his vision.
Frost Giant (Silver Grade): Level 50
HP: 84,900,000 / 85,000,000
Attack: 33,359
Skills: ???
Eighty-five million HP.
An attack stat of over thirty-three thousand.
With these stats, this thing could easily slaughter almost any group of players.
Only someone like Eternal Bastion, with his absurd defensive stats, or someone like Liam, with a massive health pool and insane damage, could hope to take this thing down. For anyone else, it would be an impossible nightmare.
The Frost Giant roared in frustration, sending a physical shockwave of sound rippling through the air. Liam’s health began to drop rapidly.
-25,803
-25,799
A two-stage sonic attack.
The damage was actually quite impressive for a mob. However, it was less than the damage of a single Basic Attack from Liam. To him, it was just a light drizzle.
Whiz! Whiz! Whiz!
Liam’s arrows tore through the air in a blur. Every Basic Attack hit like a truck.
Because he was no longer suppressed by Divine Pressure, Liam was firing twelve times per second.
His raw damage output per second was over 1.1 million. Even accounting for the giant’s 100,000 HP per second regeneration, he was still netting a million damage every second.
The Frost Giant wouldn't even last two minutes.
Wait...
Liam’s lip twitched.
The Frost Giant collapsed before a single second had passed.
Death Cycle had triggered.
Liam had fought so hard in previous battles without it proccing, yet it triggered now on a trash mob. A 1% proc rate didn't mean one out of every hundred arrows was guaranteed to kill. Mathematically, you could fire a hundred thousand arrows and never see it once. Every shot was a fresh 1% roll.
Regardless, it didn't matter.
He had to wait for the next Frost Giant to respawn. If his theory held, it would take thirty minutes. He had some time on his hands.
Liam sat down on the snow.
He needed to organize his thoughts and plan his next moves.
So far, things were going smoothly. He had secured almost everything he wanted: special skills, high-end gear, and Blessing of the Gods.
Most importantly, the massive influx of AP had allowed his Attack Speed to break past 10 and his movement speed to exceed 14.
And that was without a dedicated set of speed-boosting equipment. If he managed to get his hands on a set like that, his power would become truly grotesque.
When he first got Beyond God-Tier, he had briefly considered following Eternal Bastion’s "turtle" path.
But while grinding Crimson-Eye Rabbits, he realized it wouldn't work. He was killing them in one shot. Even though they respawned quickly, his Attack Speed at the time was too low. Killing them one by one only granted one point of HP per kill—the efficiency was garbage.
Liam shifted his focus to the political landscape.
With his current stats, he was confident he could clear the Ruins of the Frost-Corpse. But he needed a plan to install Leona as the Queen of the Astral Kingdom.
He remembered the political climate of the kingdom from his past life.
The court was divided into three major factions: The Grand Vizier, The Grand Marshal, and the Director of the Fiend-Slayers.
These three powers kept each other in check. The Grand Vizier and The Grand Marshal were constantly at each other’s throats. While the Fiend-Slayer Bureau rarely got involved in court politics, they were locked in a shadow war with the Night-Walkers of The Demon's Den.
All three factions held immense power.
Then there was the royal family. The Three Princesses were the obvious candidates for the throne. As for Queen Fiona, she was publicly backing Seraphina, but Liam knew the truth: she was merely grooming a puppet.
There was also the King’s younger brother, the kingdom’s only Prince. He usually played the part of a lazy, hedonistic royal.
But Liam knew better. That Prince was not to be underestimated.
That was the basic layout of the Astral Kingdom’s power structure.
Realistically, it was impossible to win over both the Grand Vizier and the Marshal simultaneously. The best strategy was to align with the Fiend-Slayer Bureau and the Marshal. That would provide a two-to-one majority in the court.
But Liam knew his rivals would think the same thing.
The real key to the kingdom was Prince Alaric.
Hardly anyone knew the Prince’s true strength. If Liam weren't a Reincarnator, he would have dismissed Alaric as a non-factor too.
But the reality was quite the opposite.
Prince Alaric already possessed the power to stage a coup.
As for the Queen and Seraphina... Liam held a knife to their throats with the leverage he had. He wasn't worried about them. The Queen had likely sent him here hoping he’d die in the ruins.
Too bad for her.
"Recruit Prince Alaric, take down Tiana, then deal with the Queen and Seraphina," Liam muttered, finalizing his decision.
Thirty minutes later!
the second Frost Giant spawned.
Liam began attacking with casual indifference. He had to. If he went all out, the giant would die too fast.
He intentionally throttled his Attack Speed, kiting the giant and dragging out the fight. He needed to milk the thirty-minute respawn window to stack as much HP as possible.
By playing with his food, he managed to stack over 8,000 HP from a single giant.
He even unequipped Tears of the Life Goddess to lower his current HP, which allowed him to stack over 10,000 HP per giant.
The following battles settled into a rhythmic grind.
One by one, the Frost Giants fell. Between his Frost Immunity and the Life-Steal from his Bloodstained Necklace, Liam could completely ignore the giants' attacks.
Death Cycle didn't proc again, which was fine by him—it allowed him to successfully stack over 10,000 HP per kill.
Eventually, two Frost Giants began spawning at once.
The result didn't change; Liam danced around them, playing them like fiddles. Since his Willpower had recovered, using Double Volley was effortless.
Killing two giants netted him over 20,000 HP.
Even as his damage naturally increased, slowing down his stacking efficiency, the impact was negligible. Toward the end, he was still pulling in nearly 19,000 HP per wave.
By the time the final pair of Frost Giants collapsed, Liam had gained a total of 240,000 base HP from the grind (excluding the two he had accidentally one-shot earlier).
Factoring in the 10% boost from Barney’s Innate Talent, that was an increase of over 260,000.
When the multiplier from Tears of the Life Goddess was applied, Liam’s total HP reached a staggering 3.5 million!
At this stage of the game, no player—and very few bosses outside of Secret Realms or Hell Difficulty—could boast a health bar that thick. Below Level 20, Liam was officially a mountain that no one could move.
The advance reading chapters on have reached 12chapters. Thank you for reading!
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