He rested on the floor, lying down as to avoid the utter exhaustion and residual pain throughout all his limbs from an utterly horrendous torture. While not ideal, he’d proven that divine healing magic can slow down the mutation process, although he now had to wonder why merely digesting this bloodline had such a ridiculous effect.

This was only meant to happen once he hit 100%!

“What is the Exeter bloodline? Nexus?” In Draconic, he tiredly asked out loud without much care, at this point just wanting some sort of answer to this madness.

[Information classified]

A long sigh escaped his lips, and he might have stamped a foot if lifting a leg were possible.

“So why can you tell me it’s classified? Why were you allowed to respond?”

[Two classing modules are resulting in a grey zone for information. Bloodline information should be accessible under our agreement, but this information is classified]

Thinking for a few seconds, he knew that arguing about such a thing was pointless, and moved his attention to a separate matter. “How do I ‘declassify’ it then?”

[Complete Nexus missions and gather more data]

Well, no surprise there. In fact, it’d been months since he even checked those missions, and he decided to finally see his progress in them.

[Title Evolution Mission 3: Utilise divinity to form derivatives 4 times

Title Evolution Mission 4: Gather 10 bloodlines of every rank up to Advanced+]

So those were the two he had remaining. For the former, in his experience it was extremely rare for anything that didn’t follow the evolution of ranks to produce a derivative. In other words… He needed to start eating some human corpses again. To follow on, he asked, “How many Rare and Advanced bloodlines are left?”

[4 Rare level bloodlines, 7 Advanced level bloodlines]

Still eleven in total, and so many of them were Advanced… Of course, it’d be a pain to complete. Most creatures with Advanced level bloodlines were gold tiers, so how could he possibly harvest enough before becoming one as well?

Enough of that though, his body finally felt healed enough to stand, and he talked to the group directly. Perhaps Mala knew something about this ‘Exeter’ bloodline that no draconic records noted. While his mutterings in the draconic tongue also alerted them, as no one understood what he was saying, they presumed it was either just mutterings to himself or looking at things on his status. But when he stood up, he was surprised to see that Raccelline already rushed up and helped to support his body.

Or tried to at least, the part of his belly she lifted up was in no way useful to how his body stood up, but eventually, he was able to walk very slowly.

“To keep it short. That was a very bad idea, never let me do it again. Have any of you ever heard of the Exeter human bloodline? I have no records.” His dry joke wasn’t exactly well received after such a near-death experience, although it surprised them to hear that he held absolutely zero records on such a powerful bloodline.

Especially if it was Raccelline’s, how could the dragons not have a mention of it?

Of course, none of them had heard of such a thing before. Even to Mala’s knowledge, there was no evolutionary focus called ‘Exeter’, but when Icy asked the Nexus for a list of all partially assimilated bloodlines, it was clearly that word, without a single mistake.

Exeter… What did that even mean?

Was it derived from the word ‘Exit’? In which case, what did it Exit from?

No one knew what it meant, but that was hardly relevant compared to the youngling who almost exploded into an ice cream fireball from merely digesting a tuft of hair from Raccelline. And it was naturally the young girl whose body almost killed him that remained most concerned as she interrupted with, “You almost died because of me… Right?” While he didn’t know why she asked if her eyes already showed how much she knew, it seemed wrong on far too many levels to force a child to accept such a reality.

He certainly despised how one of his parents treated him as a mistake before he’d even hatched… It was one thing to remain cold as a dragon, but the way he was marked as a failure so early on.

But here he was! Still alive and kicking!

The last thing he wanted was to make Raccelline feel at all responsible for what happened though, and after a few seconds of thought he came up with a response which felt good enough. “It’s not your fault, mostly mine for not paying attention. You’re just… Very special in the end.”

Her face scrunched up instantly, and her lips overlaid to appear as though she was pouting all of a sudden… And then she said, “That sounds like what my dad says about me killing mom.”

Everybody froze; Nobody breathed.

It took a few seconds for them all to process she’d really just said that, but at the same time he was forced to ask over the Soul Link if she’d ever brought up this matter before…

Which she never had.

It left them all in a stupor while her head drooped down in self-inflicted guilt. None of them truly knew the pain she felt, and that didn’t make them emotionless husks all of a sudden, but before Darak or Mala could move over to smother the child in more affection, Icy already approached and placed his head on her shoulder.

Rubbing against her neck with his chilly body, not that it bothered her in the slightest.

“Don’t blame yourself for that, you were a baby. Your father knows… It is wrong to blame you for something outside your control. If you at all understand what I mean.” He couldn’t understand the weight associated with her guilt, but there was one aspect that he truly felt just as she did.

The heartbreak of being dismissed by those who should care for you.

He knew not if any of his words got through to her, but he simply stood there and did his best to soothe her pain. It was honestly his fault this all happened, and he knew better than to shove responsibility onto someone else after the fact.

That night, Raccelline slept with Icy wrapped around her, and at the same time refused to let go of him at any point throughout the night.

Not that he’d have pushed her away under any circumstance.

* * *

“That took a day longer than expected,” Jaren made a snarky comment as the group began to see a large city in the distance. In the past few hours, they passed several groups of merchants as well, further indicating that they approached a major trade route to their destination.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Well, someone had to be distracted by the glass-stem lotuses… Sorry, some two.” At a small change of pace, Korridan was the one who rolled his eyes and replied here.

It wasn’t truly that he cared about Mala and Icy wanting to make a short diversion for some local resources, it was the fact that the whole group had been dragged into holding off a family of large toads whilst the two harvested dozens of such plants over the course of half an hour. But even with Raccelline helping, she simply didn’t know enough about combat to go for killing blows when using a sharp weapon, resulting in lots of wounded steel tiers, but few dead ones.

In the end, the short five-hour detour resulted in them losing a whole day as the group washed off separately. With the addition of the spellcasting dragon too, the girls could deal with Raccelline whilst he cast a handful of cleaning spells for the four of them. It wasn’t an issue for the five adults to bathe or clean together in the past, but things changed a bit given that a child and dragon were now a part of their group.

That last line sounded a lot more nonsensical when stated so clearly as well.

Rebecca popped up for a moment to refocus the situation back onto the city, saying, “It doesn’t matter, let’s just go in and visit the cathedral. Would it be best if we all went with you, Darak? Or should the rest of us find an inn for the night?”

“He may wish to speak to these two. And it saves me having to explain what happened either way.” While Darak’s nervousness about meeting his god could not be understated, that didn’t suddenly turn him into a wandering buffoon. Some degree of logical thought came to a reasonable solution, and the group of seven easily entered the city after paying a small fee due to their identities.

The price for a single steel tier to enter was a gold coin, roughly equalling a tenth of a pound of gold. While all resources on the continent were backed by massive stores of materials, on top of the substances used to make the coins themselves, it was most common to simply compare coins to their value of gold for simplicity.

Five pounds of gold, a tangible and easily understood pile of the shiny substance, was a lot more understandable than a single black metal coin.

Anyway, after paying ten gold coins, the guards looked the other way for Raccelline’s situation by pocketing a couple for themselves. From there, the group ignored the hollering merchants practically all around in favour of the large cathedral in this city’s eastern wing.

They entered from the north gate, for reference, but such a short journey meant nothing to them. At most another half hour of walking through busy streets.

But that didn’t mean they bought anything besides some fried sweet pastry for Raccelline to enjoy in the meantime. No one else could really muster an appetite with the concept of what lay in front of them…

And before long, they stood in front of the giant steel doors of this cathedral. With pale grey stone bricks so reminiscent of limestone, as well as black metals used to form various statues and adornments for the structure itself, only the generous usage of glass and some alchemical variants gave off a degree of splendour from the outside.

However, things changed within, as it became immediately clear that the pews were all robust and maintained. Chips and cracks nonexistent, with thin padding applied to each one to make longer ceremonies somewhat easier on those older individuals. The stone bricks which formed the floor and walls were barely dirty, instead clean and smooth like marble, almost glowing from the sunlight which pierced through the multitude of windows.

And lastly, at the cathedral’s back lay not only a statue, but above it a large domed roof with a skylight taking up its entire centre. Sunlight endlessly pouring down into the building and illuminating the statue.

The faceless statue of a nude man with a spear in his right hand, the shaft stabbed into the ground. Just from looking at the statue, Icy felt a deep sense of unease from within and to a point felt sick to his stomach, wanting to vomit like never before. His body made slight jitters from the unfamiliar sensation, but he continued onwards like always.

A hand grazing against the back of his neck almost sent him into a fluster, until he recognised it as Raccelline’s, who clearly noticed his shaking and attempted to soothe the dragon. It didn’t really help, but the kindness was not lost on him.

Some individuals praying towards the front noticed the poorly dressed group of adventurers, and their pet, entering such a sacred place. And whilst there was no scorn on their faces, clearly, none particularly liked what they’d seen.

Not that it mattered.

They’d barely taken a few steps into the magnificent building before the large steel doors closed behind them, to the confusion of many regulars and even the priests simply going about their duties. But they hardly had a chance to speak.

Beams of light coming through the various windows illuminated dust in the air, and the group clearly saw how every last speck stopped moving, frozen in place as though they were some hologram or illusion. Not just that though, as the statue which took centre stage beneath the giant dome began to crack, small chips from the fingers and toes quickly expanded and multiplied across the figure, until finally…

Flakes fell off to reveal a body of golden light. A body formed purely of Divinus runes.

“He seems to have stopped time… Did he do that just by existing?” Mala looked around to the room of people still staring at them, bodies and faces stuck in place. But more than that, even their hearts stopped beating and the tiny movements of their individual cells halted too.

Icy added on a small correction based on his own observations through his mana and spatial senses. “Not just time, mana and space are rigid as well. I assume he froze reality.”

Finally, the golden body twitched and stepped down from the platform its statue stood upon. From here they could see its size easily looked down, being at a height over twice their tallest, and just the power radiating from its body made them accept that they had to follow its intentions. But with such a massive body, and muscle-bound at that, it made even the physically strongest in the group, Korridan, appear like a bug.

Darak immediately dropped to a prostration, expected as his morning prayers called for them anyway. Any less in front of his god’s incarnation might as well be sacrilege, but for the rest, they simply bowed deeply and maintained the position.

Icy and Raccelline were both forced to look down, their minds unable to handle the sight of an incarnation for too long. However, he felt the divinity within him roiling, and within moments the pressure imposed by a divine incarnation dropped rapidly, perhaps allowing him to just barely withstand its mere presence. The two stood in place for some time.

Eventually, he was first to lift his head, looking up to the god’s figure and almost recoiling when staring deep into that faceless “face”… A face to represent the collective will of all humans, and an impossible sight for a little steel tier to withstand. Even with the divinity within him helping to offset the divine pressure, little could be done when staring at a core facet of Manus, and in the end, he was forced to look downwards at the golden body’s feet.

Raccelline too found it easy to look upwards with the help of the divine relic around her neck, but couldn’t stand his face for too long either, and settled on looking at the god’s body. However, none of the others could compare to this, Mala stopped bowing but struggled to even maintain consciousness when glancing above the waist, while the others stood no chance and simply maintained their bows. Darak never broke prostration.

“You do not kneel?” He spoke in a gentle, friendly voice no different from a common man, and while it held no abhorrence for their attitude, the questioning tone could not be mistaken.

“You are our god, not my creator,” Mala replied first, forcing her head to stare into the faceless face for a single moment before closing her eyes from the wave of dizziness which overcame her. She had grasped her beliefs in Manus long ago, and simplified the argument into a single sentence for the sake of it. Taking her words as inspiration, the others did their best to stand up straight and speak their own minds.

Korridan followed, “You are our god, but not my power.”

Then Rebecca, “You are our god, but do not share my will.”

And lastly, Jaren, “You are our god, but seek different goals.”

“And you, Icryladrom?” He took a moment to respond given how rarely his full name was used, but came to a similar answer after some time.

“You are not my god, but I am honoured by your presence.” The incarnation of Manus did not respond to his words, but instead turned slightly to stare at Raccelline who was somewhat confused but also felt extremely safe, like when she first met Darak all those months ago.

A breeze passed through the closed cathedral, as though the god sighed. He finally said, “And my poor child. Do grow up strong like your ancestors.” He turned around and gently waved his hand towards the empty space between the pews, in which a large throne slowly faded into existence. A golden throne of countless Divinus runes, just for him to take a seat and face the group once more. “My spare time is dwindling with every passing day; things are as you have guessed. Another Great War is coming, and the eternals are far more prepared than we imagined.”

They felt the sullen emotions of Manus deep within their souls, just his words rousing emotions which none could control. A sea of hopelessness with thick skies of despair, seemingly unbreakable except for one tiny ball of light far off in the distance.

So far, that even the god did not truly think it possible to reach…