Parasmus felt something was out of place just now.

A glance at his status quickly confirmed his suspicions. While the System only reflected changes that the individual registered with their own senses, it could be used to confirm a malady once it was sensed.

And, just a moment ago, he'd felt something take hold in his soul.

So quickly it was applied and so quickly was it masked that he’d almost thought he’d imagined it.

Almost.

He’d learned to trust his intuition over the journey that got him to this position.

The mark was quick to conceal and scramble itself, but now that he grasped a thread, he was able to follow it to decipher parts of it. Not very much, but enough to glean a general understanding.

The curse had a simple enough structure: a “tether” going somewhere imperceptible, connected to the “body” which settled within him. Yet that simplicity was in itself troubling. Rigid mechanisms had a far higher fault tolerance as it reduced the struggle between his opponent into nothing more than a contest of power. However, his opponent had who knows how much time to prepare while he'd needed to hurry before something happened.

The “body”, or mark, comprised the bulk of the curse he could contact and was currently inactive. In the time between its application and his notice, it had already permeated every facet of his being, entering both body and soul. It was an extremely impressive feat, given the size and nature of his existence, and it showcased a deep understanding of his current situation. Though someone scheming against him was the last person he wished to be impressed by.

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36 System Hours until the end of the world

After a while, he was able to identify certain isolated parts that split off from the whole, parts that he hoped were too far apart to trigger a cascade should something go wrong. After an hour careful of prodding, he was able to parse the curse’s overall structure.

His cautiousness and reluctance to do anything drastic stemmed from fear. Fear that his actions would somehow alert the caster that he wasn't blind by triggering some prohibition, an event that would prove disastrous in his current situation.

Only by catching them unaware could he take the initiative.

As, there was no indication that the caster realized he knew, with no movement from the mark after its application. Yet, if they knew and did nothing, that was all the more reason to be cautious. If possible, he would like to continue the current silence, no matter how unnerving it was.

To his knowledge, there was nothing in this world that could threaten him, nor was there anything that could assist in the casting of a curse of this caliber. Nonetheless, existence was proof enough. The fact that such a thing had occurred could only mean one thing.

There was an otherworlder about, and one who was proving extremely difficult to solve.

Otherworlders.

Most of the time he’d ignore their presence and avoid interacting with them, as their methods ranged from strange to world-bending. By their very nature their abilities didn't lie in sync with the world’s rules, making most severely stunted upon arrival. Those pitiful weaklings were the bulk of the infiltrators, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and required little to no attention. They integrated into his world with minimal issue.

The next group needed close monitoring, but weren't too much of a problem. They were the few that were able to ignore this worldly suppression. Those were generally much more trouble to deal with than it was worth. Their actions, while disruptive, couldn't affect the world on a large enough scale. Leaving them to their devices and letting them carve a small territory for themselves was thus the most cost-effective measure. Provided they knew their limits, of course.

Finally, the strongest among them were able to warp the very laws of the world around them. He’d only ever experienced the impact of such a being once, which was more than enough times for his liking.

His current clues, fortunately, did not point the current situation in that direction. That he was not already insane from the onset of this mark gave him solace in the fact he was likely not dealing with the latter. The Calamity had left an indelible mark in his memory, carving a lingering fear that did not abate despite the years.

This gnawing fear only increased with the growth of his power. Further understanding of the existence that brought incalculable damage to the world only made the gulf that existed between them more and more apparent. He rid himself of the memories long ago, but their absence was reason enough to elicit dread. After all, no one knows how much he treasured knowledge more than himself. That he would be willing to throw away valuable knowledge to slow down his corruption proved the scale of that threat.

Knowledge, too, was a form of corruption when dealing with that kind of entity. Therefore, was his current knowledge of his assailant insufficient to trigger such corruption, or was he just not dealing with such a thing, as worst-case scenario as it may be?

Parasmus, ever the optimist, leaned further on the latter. For one, his current clarity was a good sign, and secondly, he needed to hold on to hope for a little while longer yet.

Reassuring himself and pushing back the terror that threatened to overwhelm him from the sudden and forceful resurfacing of sealed memories, he went back to work understanding the hex he was put under.

Comprehending its complexity, the ‘tether’ revealed a striking truth. The thread seemed to be anchored to a person. He could faintly detect the other side of this tether, and through it he concluded that it was a soul rather than a ritual focus. A very strong soul - one that approached his own in size. With his deep understanding of the soul, he'd never make a mistake in this kind of judgement. Unless this scheme was the product of multiple individuals, it likely led back to the caster.

However, therein lied this discovery's most unsettling aspect.

How could a soul that powerful be hidden? Why would someone cast a spell that allowed the target to figure out where the caster was once they'd deciphered it? Were they simply that confident in their masking and obfuscation methods? Were they sure in their strength?

Of course, he wasn’t able to tell exactly where it led just yet, but with enough time and tinkering he would be able to narrow it down. The tether itself was like a taut string, just waiting for the person on the other side to pull. Now, that shouldn’t be the extent of this segment’s function, but it should be its major focus.

The destination was hidden masterfully, but even still, he was able to tell it led to somewhere on the surface.

Thankfully the opponent isn't some higher dimensional being that just happened to take interest in me or my world. This narrows it down to just a very well-prepared schemer. Nothing insurmountable.

A most comforting discovery, as at least it meant he had a fighting chance and wasn’t put up against some impossibly more powerful being. It wasn’t all good news, as it also indicated the opponent had carefully planned this curse out and had a staging ground on his world. It annoyed him that even with all the methods he had of gathering intelligence he was unable to catch this scheme during its planning and preparation phase.

Is it the fault of myself or my subordinates?

He humored the idea that this was all misdirection. That the curse was merely a red herring, thrown out to distract him from a different fire that was already burning. Parasmus took note of that idea, issued an oracle, and then suppressed the confidence that came along with it. After all, if that truly were the case he’d be more assured in solving the issue, but it didn't hurt to overprepare. With his current state, an attack on his soul was the only thing he was wary of.

Though generally, the grander the plot, the weaker the mastermind.

He knew this from experience. He was no stranger to plotting against those far stronger than him. With this background, he understood that the larger the gulf between the target, the more obfuscation was necessary. It was with this insight that he engineered the fall of a Greater God early into the Calamity, followed by multiple other attempts at fishing in muddy waters. Nothing as major as the first. Just a few deaths here and there, with him picking up the scraps.

If the enemy had the strength to back themselves up, they’d have tried to take a bite out of the world already as the great Calamitous Beast did all those years ago. For a being of overwhelming might and animalistic hunger, what plans did it need? With merely its approach the world became a mess, and when it finally did arrive, the gods gathered together for a last stand only to send themselves straight into its hungering maws. There was simply no semblance of resistance at all.

Following the Calamity, there was a time when he’d felt self-conscious, burdened by the guilt of sabotaging the Pantheon’s resistance against a foreign threat. The beast had left after consuming all of them, though it didn’t bother to clean up after itself.

At the time, he made those petty moves with confidence in the gods’ victory. The sky would not fall with those deities holding it up, even if they were missing a few members due to his actions.

But the sky did fall.

Not because his actions resulted in the disappearance of a few inconsequential pillars.

No.

It fell because the weight that pressed down was far too heavy for any being or group, united or otherwise, to bear. Even if the pillars themselves had the power to stand such a weight, the ground - the world beneath them - could not.

As such, these worries were laughably misguided. ∎∎∎∎ was going to have its fill, whether the pantheon at its full strength or not. If anything, his actions were able to save a few scraps of divinity for the world.

Regardless, he saw the irony in the current situation.

He, like those gods all those years ago, could not run away from the threat. Stuck confronting a terrifying unknown opponent, the only thing that could complete the picture was one of his followers coming along to give him a “righteous backstab” during his weakest moment...

Which would probably be now.

At the threshold between God and World, immobile and blinded, it was the perfect time for someone he'd trusted to deal unto him a critical blow. But he shouldn't have anyone with that level of authority. His followers were scattered, and that was how he'd liked them. Even his kin were in much the same situation.

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Is there a someone amassing power or influence behind my back? Is that why I hadn't noticed any signs before being marked?

However, this wasn’t the time to be doubting his dependents. Whether they were traitors or not mattered little at this point. There wasn't enough time to clean out the organizations under him. Furthermore, they'd serve as fodder all the same. Resources to help bring this enemy into the light. But their mobilization would have to wait until after he’d narrowed down the target first.

He couldn’t just send them after all the otherworlders; there were too many powerful ones. Too many smuggled in through the weakened world barrier, and those that were able to cross all possessed either strange abilities or overwhelming strength. He couldn't be certain the current crisis was made by one that he had under watch, either. It could have just as easily been one that slipped the net.

Most importantly, there were a few that approached his state prior to merging with the world. True Gods, or Tier 7 by the System’s standards. They had no equals on the surface, as he did not allow his followers to reach that level of strength, but they were of no match for him. However, that was under the premise that they either went under the ground to fight him or he expended copious amounts of divine power, which was not even guaranteed to kill them completely. As a result, there was not much he could do about them squatting in his world. It was a peace that he did not wish to break unilaterally, everyone was smart enough to know each other's boundaries.

Furthermore, he’d repair the barrier and recover enough control over the world eventually. Time had always been on his side. He'd planned to just wait it out, but this curse disrupted everything.

In hindsight, the problem only grew to this point because of this attitude. He was patient before ascension, being a dragon, and was even more patient now. He saw time not in months, years, or even decades, but in millennia. This patience gave him unparalleled concentration but had also left him utterly blind to the movements outside his little bubble.

He'd been safe for far too long, losing the urgency the Calamity fostered within him.

Still, it wasn’t like there was much for him to be proactive about.

He’s lost his body, which made many matters more challenging. The only way to affect the world above was to spend the divine power accumulated over the years. This was a precious resource - the only resource capable of assisting his assimilation of the World - that cannot be collected in a rush. Therefore, he'd concluded that doing nothing and hastening his breakthrough was the most correct decision.

He’d already laid the groundwork to step back into the background when he set the world back on track.

But what good would a stronger presence on the surface have? It wouldn't help until he'd at least narrowed the list of possible perpetrators down.

For example, something he considered at first while still gripped by emotion was to carry out a large-scale purge on the otherworlders. Most had little capital to resist such a measure, but all that accomplished was showing his hand. It'd be a joke if such a wasn't noticed. Satisfying his desire to do something tips off the one that truly mattered, to say nothing of the time and manpower wasted for such an endeavor.

That I even had such a desire in the first place speaks of how indulgent I’d become after ascending this far. I’m not invincible. Far from it. I need to go back to my roots. Think back to the days when I laid in wait for years hunting my quarry.

What he needed now was to gather his strength and give whoever schemed against him a decisive blow. Either disrupt their plans and buy himself some time or kill them directly. As unlikely as it was, he hoped for the latter.

Oh, the sorrows of living in a damaged world. But who am I to complain? I only got here because it was damaged to the point of brain death.

Deciding against venting his frustrations, Parasmus turned his attention back to studying. With dread, he moved on to the ‘body’ portion. He had futilely avoided messing with this, as it was bound to his soul. Touching that was the last thing he wanted, but he needed more information. He’d reached a dead-end on the ‘tether’ and needed more reference points.

This, being the bulk of the spell, took considerably longer. Every second mattered, but he needed to confirm a suspicion he had.

The conclusion was not something he liked, however. The ‘mark’ clearly contained two Law fragments that he was all too familiar with, and their inclusion, which he wished was a result of misidentification, was the trigger for those unbidden memories.

They are infinitely close to the tendrils with which the foreign Bringer of Calamity used to feed, distorting and twisting the world’s laws of ‘Corruption’ and ‘Sublimation’ into nightmarish paths to power that were better left sealed.

With the descent of that entity, whose writhing body was suffused with these laws, what were once minor backdrops in this world, became major players. They plagued the land for centuries and lured countless power-hungry mortals to abandon their reason. That was all in the past, though. Now, thanks to his efforts, one couldn’t tell the existence of such a blight from looking at the surface.

It was only after the monster left that Parasmus realized these laws he had so much trouble dealing with were akin to an animal’s digestive enzymes, only, these enzymes specialized in painting the world in its color to facilitate consumption. This discovery made the fact that they were left over easy enough to understand.

Why would something so powerful be left behind like waste? It was simply because they were waste.

After taking a bite out of an apple, would you care if said apple still had some of your saliva?

However, power, at the end of the day, was a relative thing. These dregs, waste unworthy of recovery in the eyes of that indescribable being, were still leagues ahead of native laws pertaining to “corruption” and the like. Like prions to proteins, they bent the native laws to their shape, replacing them entirely. If Parasmus had chosen to incorporate them into his godhead he would have reached a height unfathomable compared to him now.

It was fortunate, then, that he had a feeling early on that dependence on such a power was a massive pit, and that he was clear-headed enough to guess the consequences of using it any more than he had to. As a result, he’d excised the parts of himself that were hopelessly corrupted, and ascended with the divinities he pieced together, cutting away the very thing that allowed him to reach such a position.

Following this was a tale spread across the world, his very first myth, and possibly the greatest good he’d done for the world. These tales spoke of him ending the Calamity, sealing the great evils, and bringing balance to the world once more. That much was true, if only a bit exaggerated. Obviously, he couldn't have ended the Calamity himself, only its offshoots, but to the mortals below he might as well have done so.

He was rightly crowned savior, bringing legitimacy to his reign. Had he not been so decisive the world would be in a much worse shape now. It'd be a miracle for anything to be alive at this point.

Now, rather than a mark of his great triumph, those sealed fragments were essentially buried land mines.

Are they stabbing me with a borrowed knife?

Up to now, he hasn’t felt any of the seals loosen or the contents taken away. While he wasn’t arrogant enough to stare at each of them directly to ensure that fact, as he still very much liked his sanity, his myriad fail-safes indicated that everything was operating as usual.

Despite this assurance, the similarities were uncanny and with the aid of those innumerable sealed corruption sources as nodes, the mark made sense.

After all, with continuous study, the curse seemed more and more like some sort of sacrificial ritual, one set out to transmute his soul into a more palatable, or in this case, more useful state for the recipient.

In alchemical terms, it would be likening it to the creation of a philosopher’s stone, akin to what he was trying to do with the world's heart. That his specialties lay in transmutation and the soul - a necessary outcome after his attempts at grasping the ineffable - paralleled the manner the enemy attacked him had not gone unnoticed. Maybe it was because they also studied the same thing as he - the vestiges of the ∎∎∎∎ scattered throughout the world.

If it weren’t because they moved the seals, then perhaps they drew inspiration from ∎∎∎∎ as well but failed to rid themselves of the corruption as he did. This theory would prove disastrous if true, as he can’t afford to take in much more of their taint.

Could it be possible for a native to be behind all this? It's justifiable to be more wary of outsiders, but it's not as though I had complete control over the people of my world yet. Those heretics were also strangely quiet for the past few centuries. I'd chalked it up to the efforts of my faithful and those otherworlders, but could it be that they managed to break a seal without my notice and understood something with its contents?

That would be difficult to confirm, as he abhorred the idea of checking them all one by one himself. Sending fodder wouldn't do, either, as they wouldn’t make it deep enough to see if it were genuinely missing. Even the leftover residue would kill them.

The [Blessed], his greatest creation, might be able to, but there weren’t enough to check them all. Furthermore, doing maintenance would be a job with a high turnover, and it didn't mean they would just quit being [Blessed]. Rather, they'd become problems in their own right.

While sending a few every so often might be better than getting blindsided, the costs were too much for that kind of information. It was like that then and it was even more so now. He’d rather just add preparations for if that outcome if it were the case. It didn't change much from his current actions. The findings such a mission would provide could also be gleaned from more research on the spell in front of him.

That said, whatever this spell intended, these conclusions were hardly heartening, to say the least.

If their methods were anything close to his, he was in for a tough time. Parasmus knew what the victims he'd led into the embrace of ∎∎∎∎ experienced, and he'd be damned if he were to suffer a similar fate as well.

He mused the irony before, but it became increasingly clear that this time, he was the fish on the chopping block and was in no position to take advantage of the situation. Nonetheless, he was all but ready to make his next move.

He made one final prayer hoping that it was not the worst case scenario. The only event that would be insurmountable would be if ∎∎∎∎, as the system dubbed it, was not a singular existence, and another of its kin invaded. He hadn’t felt the telltale warping of the world’s natural laws that come with their presence, so he felt that this gamble was likely to go in his favor. He only had one example to go off of, but he felt that he would know if something that strong came through.

Furthermore, it was impossible for ∎∎∎∎ to invade once again. Not only because this did not mirror the haphazard way it did so during the Calamity, but because the world was sure of it. He'd gathered that tidbit from the pieces of the World’s Will after the thing’s feast. It seemed to know many things before being severely damaged.

His inheritance over the broken world was taken forcefully. Multiple factors coincided to make much of the information he could have obtained incomplete. But that incomplete information was still enough to get some “common sense” that changed his perspective completely.

Hell, he was quite surprised to find out that the Overgod was actually an incarnation of the World's Will. It had been rather competent, too, before being devoured.

The next breakthrough would take too long, and the gains did not outweigh the losses. Based on that little bit he figured out time was of the essence. He didn’t have more time to sit around studying the thing. He’d narrowed it down to the Northern Everfrost. There weren’t many people there, to begin with, and even fewer otherworlders.

Furthermore, there was only one person that he had a feeling was the target. There was a foreign wizard who’d built a massive entrenchment up there, though he didn’t seem strong enough to do something like this, one could never guess what a mage could do with sufficient preparation.

From the scouts he’d sacrificed and probing attacks sent in the past, he’d judged their level to be well past a thousand. If it were truly him, then even his highest overestimation was under their true capabilities. To be able to put such an insidious mark on him after he’d assimilated half the world would be impossible for someone so much weaker than him.

That old man, dubbed the Turtle of the North by his believers, hadn’t shown any indication of being a threat so far, but that alone should have been an issue. If they truly were as strong as him, their history of silence meant something in the background he’d failed to detect was going on. No one at their level just decided to go into a world as tumultuous as this one without a plan. Without the natural abundance of a world before the Calamity, there was no reason for anyone with the ability to travel around to stay here.

Even he would have left had he not had the opportunity to assimilate the world. Why else would he become a god in such a place? Parasmus was not someone with a heart for charity.

It was settled then. He’d ascend an avatar and rally everyone that could be mobilized and see just how tough this turtle’s shell truly was, all the while he hoped that this deduction was correct. While it may be a little hasty, he was running out of time.

He felt a change in the mark about an hour ago, an unsettling shift that weighed on him. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was sure that it wasn’t going to be good for him. Now was not the time for more study.

Furthermore, as more and more of his followers mustered together per his instructions, a disturbing revelation surfaced. It wasn't something he'd taken into account at all. Being marked as prey, he'd disregarded everything outside of himself. However, this trait blinded him to the true danger.

It seemed it was arrogant of him to assume the mark was solely targeting him.

No. It had its tendrils in everyone.

The people, the plants, the animals. Elementals, blessed lands, and other manifestations of nature. Even otherworlders. Anything with any semblance of a soul were equal under this spell.

All of creation borne lesser or greater, from the smallest insect to the mightiest beast were beset by this spell. And, unlike him, they were none the wiser. The scale of this threat had gone up magnitudes in his mind. He needed to make a move immediately.

28 System Hours until the end of the world