In retrospect, the scene before the group was that of myths itself. Or outright unbelievable as the being which ought to be respected as a god appeared more human than themselves.

But that is to be expected when one’s title is literally ‘God of Man’.

“What is the eternals’ plan then?” Without making the god waste precious time even longer, Mala spoke up first as the others still came to terms with what they’d just undergone. The way simple words impacted their soul so thoroughly was a new concept, even Icy had yet to come across any such power… Leaving the female wizard as the one best off, having vaguely resisted some weak soul spells in her time.

“We do not know. Their gods are sealing off all our vision to the subterranean world, and they decisively slaughtered almost all our spies in the past few months. That is why I arranged this.”

“If you don’t know anything… Was it purely to talk to us? Apologies, Raccelline to be precise,” Jaren finally spoke up. Being far more of a loudmouth than the rest, he didn’t at all hesitate to speak back to a god who was actually treating them with respect. Or something like it at least.

“No,” he said. The faceless face swept across all their bodies, forcing each to shiver for but a moment, with the exception of the two at the back with some form of defence against his ambient divinity. “I came to see those who fatefully came across her. Humanity will not die if the eternals win… But she cannot be allowed to perish. Apologies if that seems rather vicious… You may rise.” He saw how Darak remained prostrated even in the conversation and allowed him to stand, it was rather good to know how wholeheartedly the authentic priests cared for their religion.

No one really took his words to heart though, or at least they figured that Raccelline’s insane potential being valued by the God of Man simply made sense. If allowed to grow to her full strength… Could demigods even hope to stop her?

A living being with god-like power but not limited by the same rules as gods. It was insanity and might topple the power structure of a world single-handedly!

But that still brought up an important question about her, and Mala of all people wanted to know it most. “What even is her power then? The dragons said it was some innate constitution unrelated to divinity… But why does she have a bloodline?”

But she received a scoff. A scoff from a god. Who then said, “Don’t speak nonsense. Nothing can be born with a bloodline.”

“Her bloodline is a dormant form of the Exeter human bloodline… Do you know anything?” Icy didn’t at all hesitate to rebut him, knowing that a god could never stand above the Nexus. The scales of power were simply incomprehensible, as even a moment of thought quickly verified.

Gods could block one another from using their powers, but never had they been successful in blocking the Nexus’ near-omnipresent abilities.

“There are no records amongst the gods about such a bloodline.” However, even when confirming this it didn’t convince the dragon in the slightest as the beast even rolled its eyes in response. To hold such confidence, it received an answer from either another god… Or an absolute source of information. This was not the first time he’d grown curious about this specific dragon, but now more than ever he felt a tinge of annoyance by its presence and unforeseen knowledge. “You Will answer truthfully to this, dragon. Was she born with a bloodline?”

For the first time, as Manus stared him down, a formless divine pressure formed around him and utterly suppressed the divinity within him. His mind and soul both felt the weights like giant iron orbs trying to drag him into the depths of a fathomless ocean.

“Yes. And I would bet my life on my source,” he replied with such confidence even when threatened so suddenly that even the god was impressed for a moment.

He made a heavy note of the term ‘Exeter’ and would do his best to seek out any clues on the word in the future. Clearly, there was some new secret regarding the Nexus that they’d never uncovered before, and Raccelline might be the biggest clue regarding it.

It was well known that the Nexus intentionally ‘reset’ the bloodline of everything on conception, making even the children of two Great sages into an ordinary person. However, it didn’t waste all that bloodline energy, as the Nexus instead converted it into a natural potential for that newborn. So, while the children of two Great sages definitely had better chances of reaching their parents’ position, it was in no way guaranteed. This had been taken as a rule for millennia now, that everything had somewhat of an equal starting point by the Nexus’ hand…

But had that rule been broken? And why now?

What about Raccelline qualified her to break such a long-running rule?

“Is this all there was to talk about then? Our plan to leave the continent until she’s strong enough to survive was correct then?” Finally, Korridan had regained his mind and immediately focused on the more critical points of this all. Actually learning as much as possible about their best odds for survival.

“Yes, it is a suitable plan. You must take care crossing the Stormwall which separates the two continents. The other matter is for my loyal priest. Collecting favour for future matters is no longer required, simply provide a suitable offering at a statue and I will grant the information you wish for,” the ordinary-sounding point was an outstanding boon to Darak like no other and the visible excitement on his face showed so much.

Normally, a priest not only had to provide sufficient offerings to acquire divine spell manuals or techniques to evolve… But they required favour with Manus, acquired through loyal service or completing tasks in their god’s name.

This part took an unbelievable length of time, and even after so many years Darak only had enough favour for a few more Apprentice divine true spells. To be waived of that cost was the same as no longer requiring years of dedicated service and completing hundreds of troublesome tasks for the church. Few excellent ways of acquiring favour existed, and the biggest was rather obvious…

Killing the targets of an Order for Execution.

With all the main matters that Manus cared to talk about cleared up, he didn’t sit around and wait on the bunch of humans to lambaste him with additional questions, he just stood to leave. He’d hoped to unburden himself, but instead, his already full hands only gained another task in the form of this unknown Exeter bloodline, for which he couldn’t even identify the dragon’s source.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

A troublesome matter on top of the potential destruction of an entire planet’s worth of humans… While he did have seven other worlds full of them, it wasn’t as though he could just let them die. Well, he could, but the guilt and nightmares which then plagued his mind for so many deaths wouldn’t at all be small.

It was already so hard to create a church to act as a force of good… He couldn’t allow any more dark thoughts to invade him. Not after he’d put so much work into keeping things pure.

A thought came to Icy as Manus spoke to Darak about the way things worked, and he forced himself to raise a question with the god. “Why not send a divine revelation to your priests about this? With the full power of your church–”

The divine figure stared him down, for a moment he felt as though the very world wanted to crush his puny existence to a fine ice cream mist, but some other part of the world also futilely resisted such power.

Finally, it ended with Manus’ gaze releasing. “And watch as half the continent spirals into an endless drive to steal power and my followers kill leader after leader? I only see two ways to win this war, and one of them can never be allowed to happen.” When his voice finally quietened, he turned around and didn’t look backwards.

Manus’ throne dissipated just as it appeared, and he walked back to the statue’s location to restore the state of this place once more. The chunks of stone from all around his feet lifted into the air, encasing the golden incarnation bit by bit until faint streams of his golden light barely escaped the tiny remaining cracks. But as though never broken, the cracks and seams healed to a solid chunk of stone, returning the statue to its original form…

And time resumed. Dust began to float around once more, and those within the cathedral either continued to stare or turned around after taking their glance at the group. However, as the two large steel doors opened once more, the group of seven left the church with conflicted faces.

Even the young girl riding that group’s pet seemed to struggle, coming to terms with something.

All of them walked out and found a place to stay for the night, fortunately rather easy in a major city like this. Priests tend to be given favourable conditions as well, so few places would reject their party, even with their pet.

“Perhaps we’d have been better waiting to buy the manuals from here though, and would have avoided that whole mess from before.” Mala aired a complaint after searching through some stores for useful spells, and saw just how great the variation was in this far more magnificent place.

“And what? Allow them to continue that wretched place? You three all got the evolutions you wanted as well, right?” Darak immediately bit back when reminded of what occurred, even now Icy wasn’t entirely sure what about the situation angered him the most. Or what history he had to cause such a rapid reaction.

It couldn’t have been pretty.

Rebecca did have a comment to make on her choice of techniques, and said, “I’m still mixed between going for general stealth or something like a Shadowtrooper, but it seems shortsighted to depend on shadows so much.”

Prior to this she only trained in a variety of invisibility and stealth techniques to aid her strengths, but now given the wealth to make a better choice, she actually found the variety somewhat overwhelming. She purchased the set of skills and ideal weapon techniques to become a Shadowtrooper, but one additional requirement of this evolution was purposely infusing one’s own body with dark elements, and that opened up a rather annoying weakness to light element attacks.

Not to mention, most weaker shadow stealth abilities failed to activate when even the simplest light shone on them.

Korridan and Jaren didn’t hold this shared issue though as they already knew where their strengths lay, and where to go in improvements. Jaren’s evolution to Gold ranked was called Endless, while Korridan chose Bulwark. Of course, the Nexus didn’t care for these human-given names and referred to all warriors by their ranking.

Only the spellcasting evolutions had specific names in their status at this level.

However, with money hardly an issue at the moment, as Icy finally revealed a small portion of the fortune he’d taken from the ruins, they eagerly discussed what factors and focuses Rebecca would ideally take. Raccelline grew bored with that topic relatively quickly though and spent most of the time playing games with Icy. Small things like ‘I spy’ and being taught chess by the young dragon, who arguably wasn’t much better than the girl, who never played before.

However, the atmosphere gravely shifted when a few members of the group overheard what another table talked about not too far away.

“So you heard about Keiran invading Detway? Just found out that Prinior and Gantler declared war on each other, and things ain’t looking good elsewhere. And also…” the scruffy merchant talking to his friends slyly glanced around the room before leaning forward to whisper the last part of his sentence, “Trilligar’s Sage died, but also heard a couple Cornem ranks up and vanished from their countries.”

Whispering did nothing to stop the seven from hearing him regardless, although Rebecca and Raccelline were the two who heard it clearest. Not that the latter understood what the man had said while deeply focused on her game with Icy.

However, those talking at that table couldn’t care less about the wars or deaths themselves. Their conversation quickly moved onto the economical and logistical issues arising through such warfare, more specifically, how to turn a profit from this matter. With food reserves already quite low, it was hard for smaller merchants like themselves to truly capitalise on that side of the wars…

Over the next hour, some others parroted this information, clearly becoming common knowledge in a frighteningly short time, but very rarely did anything new come up.

Better yet, rarely did anything truly consequential come up.

One more war over in this or that place, or some sort of conflict somewhere else. Almost all of them were small-scale disputes that adventurers like themselves could evade with such ease that it might as well be a joke. Not to mention, they weren’t mercenaries, so all these wars only got in their way of earning anything… If they even planned on staying on the continent.

Except that one last thing came up as the group enjoyed a meal late into the evening, prepared to rest afterwards, and immediately set off, but this news only reinforced the hastiness of all their actions by a fair bit.

An alliance of Southern nations appeared to counter the empire, and declared not-so-subtle intentions to fight against them in the near future. A Primordius warrior amongst their alliance made an announcement over hundreds of miles just to ensure that their wills were known… And it wasn’t an unpopular opinion in the slightest.

Over the past few decades, it had been common sentiment to find fault with the empire’s way of managing things, especially in cases where their decrees negatively impacted others. While rather misconstrued, there aren’t exactly many ways to correct such an image across a whole continent. Most towns and villages aren’t easily communicated with, and even within the empire itself a dedicated method to send information was required.

In which case, the empire might be seen positively by the third or so population that lived in major cities across all the nations, but it was very easy for the groups who supplied food to become opponents to the ‘shadowy figures from far away’.

And some might imagine that it could be argued the royal family is directly related to Manus… But that argument holds no weight. Many great kings sired disgusting children that nearly destroyed their own nations, leading to revolution and creation of a new royal lineage.

These are all excuses for the main proponent though.

Whether working with the eternals or not, those kingdoms wanted to destroy the empire while united before gathering what remained afterwards. No wonder even the God of Man wanted them to leave the continent… Nowhere would be safe.

And the Eternals would gleefully devour the continent after watching millions of humans kill one another. They might not even need to get their hands dirty this time!

Funny how things work out.