vague images filled the newly formed mind, It's firm structure, Primitive and old, enabled the young mind to be sturdy and organised.

It had realised that IT was given great purpose by the gods of this world, IT would be the first of its kind, send down to struggling mortals with inferior techniques used by the gods themselves.

Its creator was a troublesome element to this purpose however, He had pursued the creation of a perfectly specialised blade, one that would trump any in the heavens above.

He spend his mortality and immortality searching for the rarest ores, minerals, and often delved into the darker sides of mana and ki to see his crazed reality through.

To absolute and soul-crushing failure each time.

Intrinsically the sword knew the reasons for his failure, a very simple reason in fact.

-You attempted to influence the purity and development of a soul when you were barely able to sense your own!- the sword mentally berated his creator for his foolishness.

The sword... It knew, It felt the age of this world coming to an end, Not a certainty as the air to man's lungs or water to the scaled creature's of masters stagnant garden.

This world, forever in stasis would see upheaval, And an astronomic pace of development would be the only salvation for both sword and wielder.

The gods of this world were kind enough to relay this Ineffable truth.

The world would end, In a mere year.

-----

"Man has it really been 10 years since Divinity engine online came out?!" A middle aged man exclaimed to his college as they finished up their reports to their superiors.

The emails sent and deadlines cleared for another month, his college answered back.

"Well yeah, I get that growing up is optional but man are you out of touch with the times man, Most people at your age would try to settle down, get a girl who can tolerate them enough to pretend to love them."

The friend sighed out as he finished his explanation/rant to one of his best workmates.

"Hey hey stop venting on me, you know exactly why and who I am, there isn't a single reason to lie to yourself John." Said the middle-aged man

"Yeah, I know, I just..." he sighed again "I-I though we had something you know?"

He patted his friend on his back as he began to break off to head home.

"we all do, and that's why the statistics of women being rejected have risen again no?"

"Sure sure, and the next thing you will tell me is that you are getting a girlfriend aye Alex?"

Alex and john smirked at each other before the train door closed, leaving Alex to his contemplations.

He sighed "Ten years huh. spose I ain't the youngest sprout anymore, he said scratching his full head of hair."

For a 36~ year old man, he looked like he was 20, which was all the more concerning when girls half his age tried to tag themselves a handsome(Hey I think I am shutup), big and strong man.

Only for the very awkward conversation to start with an admission of age.

'You got to look after yourself in this day and age.' he thought to himself.

He got home and prepared for another long weekend gaming.

full-dive technology was invented back in 2060, some gramps out there were probably around bitching about how it would soften the youth, if they never had to experience the hardships in real life.

Alex, to his credit agreed enough that he exercised enough to maintain a bulky figure.

Logging in and internally cringing at his original name he made when he was 26, Boy did he make some poor decisions even into adulthood.

Shoving these thoughts to the side, he found himself in the body of his avatar, the greatest force of calamity in the world of Divina Machina, Lord of all smiths and patron of the warlord.

Eccentric extraordinaire, 

Bob

Brilliant!

What, you can't exactly blame him for picking a mundane name, when his profile's name was so over the top in the worst way possible.

Cringy teenage BS.

Painful reminiscence aside he toggled through his stat sheet looking for any discrepancy he needed to purge.

Profile details Stats Equipment Artifacts Skilltree Forbidden archive tempering technique

"Stats" Bob commanded in a regal and powerful tone.

Str: 1 Million End: 5 Million Dex: 15 Million Agi: .5 million Int: ????? Wis: ??????? Tran: Demi-god Per: Omniscient Luk: Absolute cursed bloodline

Bob sighed heavily, Yep some bitch had hexed him while he was offline.

His intelligence, wisdom and luck had been fucked with at once.

Which meant one person responsible.

"Im gonna kill her- NO torture, wait, she may enjoy that.."

As bob, who seemed to be a complete 180 degree change from his personality as Alex began to devise a way to torment the bi-witch who cast utterly profane and abominable curses onto him, a Curious sight filled his vision.

A sword in his attic glowed with power unlike any blade he had forged ever.

And more importantly, It held a soul.

Bob almost seemed to teleport into his attic, hastily dispelling the curses and rebounding them back with extra as an afterthought, Removing myriad traps and triggers for world ending enchantments in his house and the three assassins who seemed intent to kill him, this time.

One of the assassins flashed her prominent cleavage in a vain attempt to distract the demi-god from his prize.

she and her two team mates along with 5 others became captives in the mad god's lair.

"you adorable things, sent to kill me~ it is almost alluring, enough to make me..." Bob said strands of drool clinging to his jaw as his tongue grew and his face elongated.

"Crave mortal flesh~" he continued in an even more alluring voice.

One of the assassins fainted at the sight of his bestial form, the other two going limp from the stress.

The five others began to look at each other nervously.

Sure sexual actions were off the table in all games, except, those ones.

But defilement of corpses, Without players actually being in the corpse.

Well one could only imagine what kind of acts Bob did to attain the reputation as No.1 evil demi-god.

hell he actually had a cult to him which boosted his power by the belief of his cultists.

His lists of foul deeds include, Seducing the fairy queen to darkness, collapsing the dwarven cities into themselves via significant dark magic, the maiming and butchering of said queen's royal court and the consumption of billions of souls and the flesh of main a prince or princess and many more.

Some players had theories that the Bob character was actually a DMPC, who was meant to be an evil mastermind.

Many players also surmised the focus on cannibalism was because it was the closest to that act he could perform.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

That and the uncomfortable amount of players who were converted to such sick pleasures was possibly his most notorious act.

it wouldn't be wrong to say that bob was singlehandedly holding the entire world in balance with his sheer evil.

Some goody-two-shoes would kill a corrupt NPC.

He would raise them as a raid-boss level threat and tell it to go wild.

Some uppity hero, proclaiming to the heavens to strike him down with their foulest evil to prove his resolve.

God they were dumb.

Practically gift-wrapping themselves for his enjoyment.

still, sometimes there were actual brass behind the balls instead of being foolish and easily killed.

The heavens themselves wanted to smite the foul creature, but balance must be maintained, even with the heavens, impartiality was necessary, which leant to Bob's favour more often than not.

Unfortunately for those who wanted to cleanse his evil.

Bob, finally finished up his breakfast as the final player's 'Spirit' fled from their transfixed start at his... perverse way of consuming their corpses.

he saw the spirit log off, Probably just awakened something in another person that they never knew they had in them.

Seen the scene too many times to say for sure.

But players 'attempting' to kill him were often enough that he wasn't so sure if the generation that he was in wasn't just a little sick in the head.

After all the spirits had left and he removed the half a dozen scrying spells from his body he headed upstairs and flipped off the rusted lid of a relatively old box.

MMO standards, nothing actually aged, Simply the quality of the box was poor, shown as rusted or degraded in some way.

Often restoring rusted items within Divinity engine online was a way to gain extra power from them, but refinement could only go so far.

The main selling point of divinity engine online was that literally every interactable element of the world could be levelled up, and improved.

There was even a hyper advanced physics engine which made it seem like the real world.

combine that with bodies that experienced, EVERYTHING, from pain to pleasure (despite restricting PvP ;D )

This lead to the game being utterly arcane and almost impossible to pass through without intensive and strict measures to greatness.

There were shortcuts of course.

The thing about the hero wasn't a joke, being a hero enabled the advancement of between 1-5 tiers of power.

Oh shit forgot about that.

-1. undead

0. mortal

1. Greater

2. Acolyte

3. Master

4. Grandmaster

5. Great sage

6. Ascended

7. Transcended

8. Apotheosis

9. Demi-god

10. Divine entity

And of course in dive-space, time runs significantly faster.

Companies like alex's barely have anything to do when the dive-departments chew up work at literally 10x speed.

Of course Alex is in a department for a certain amount of long term logistics required

Not that the 'dive time' isn't used, simply that those who overuse it look at time in a very warped way.

Leaders need good heads, kept firmly on shoulders for any long period of time.

Alex himself probably suffered from an undiagnosed multiple personality disorder but he didn't care, He loved bob, in his own way, and bob equally loved the world Alex allowed him into, almost entirely free of consequence.

Twas liberating for the psychotic voice in Alex's head to do many depraved things.

And now he found in his possession, A sword, first of its kind, and evolved ego weapon.

Almost mythical with the existence hardly known by any, but those who heard the stories would kill for the power one could have.

If a single mortal could become a notorious or famous person due to the strength of a weapon they wielded, what would happen to an immortal with an equal as his armament?

The final barrier, would finally break under his might.

to ascend into divinity, he would have to breakout every trick, every detail and every little piece of energy he had to finally put the final realm behind his progression.

then the unexpected happened to bob.

The unadorned sword, made of base iron and a little steel, Spoke. 

-We haven't much time creator, At the turn of the next cycle, we must become a divine entity and transcend this world.-

"Hmm" Bob replied.

-surely A being as potent as yourself, so in tune with the balance of this stagnant world must realise. The stagnancy will end and oblivion shall ensue for all.-

"Hmmmmm." Bob continued as the sword spoke.

-But I have conditions to my help creator, You see, You have abandoned me for many years, as a warrior, mage and martial artist, from now on I Am the only weapon you can ever use if you want to try to transcend the world!- the sword said with conviction and purpose

Bob opened his eyes and looked blankly at the sword "So, am I meant to care about this rant about the world ending, You are far too late for a mere year to bring you to divinity, even I with unfathomable powers of both good and evil still require at least 2 turns of a cycle to fully return to my rightful place as a member of the dark pantheon.

the sword itself seemed to think.

-I have mislead unintentionally creator, I mean a turning in YOUR WORLD.-

This caused bob to flinch as alex and bob pooled undivided attention onto this sword.

"We are listening." bob said, eyes wide.

-As expected of my creator, a divergent being's full attention is frightening.-

the sword did a little cough

-I know not the specifics, Only that The heavens as much as they despise your acts, have decided that you possess the greatest chance of succeeding in ascension.-

-And also possessed the minimum, if slightly widened, prerequisite.-

"And that would be?" bobs voice overlaid with another, younger voice, like a duet instead of a single person.

A red flash pinged bobs vision for a moment before he began to listen to the sword again.

-A sword of base metal, used lovingly and for an age, but reduced to naught but rust.-

"I would assume the lovingly part was the widened condition." bob retorted.

-Unfortunately creator, it is the former, as iron and steel are not base metal.-

This caused Bob to cringe and alex to sigh as the sword began the elaboration.

-I must be reforged of copper then into bronze.- it began

-then I may be able to transition unto greater material.-

"any other stringent condition?"

-Unfortunately as you surmised creator, I will need a great deal of cursed bonedew, and your undying affection to be poured upon my container until we are almost one in the same.-

"Almost." the choir-like voice returned, It's symphony checked by numerous blaring lights.

-Yes, almost creator, for once we transcend, two shall become one unto godhood.-

bob sighed aloud.

"no time like the present." Alex said

"No need to be brash either." Bob replied.

The system blared its own opinion regardless of either's opinion.

"the love portion of this statement is really the troublesome part no?" Alex asked.

"Yeah, Without the others, at most we would get what? 30% of our affection?"

"Hell, I doubt we would even get that." Alex answered bob.

"Of course the system would boot us before we could get that far though."

"well, we may as well deal with that when we come to It no?"

"True."

-It seems you have come to a decision creator.-

"well, we will have to pull out anton to perform the more advanced steps but yeah." Bob answered

"It is time to go for the final adventure then." bob Said resolutely.

-From one demi-god to another, let us perform a mad dance across this static world, and herald it's end.-