“One hundred eighty!” I cheered as I finally reached another milestone in my climb towards the cap.
We crossed the mountains into the demon side of the continent and started turning anything with more than two legs into pincushions. Well, Nenandil mostly just watched me train and gave encouragement while I did the heavy lifting.
The desolate portion of the continent had rocky ground, sparse and twisted vegetation, and a gray haze like the lingering smoke of a distant fire. It was hot and dry. Everything in this place was inhospitable to people. Carnivorous insects the size of a golden retriever dug in the underground at speeds only the System and magic could explain. They preferred the soft flesh of people over the hard chitin of their fellow monstrous bugs. Roving bands of demons and mutated beasts were frequent and the lack of shelter and places to hide meant that every time one such group spotted you, a fight was bound to happen.
Demons didn’t care about their lives. The bodies they inhabited in this world were created when they crossed some threshold during their invasion path, and they were almost absolutely certain their souls would return to wherever they came from upon death. That meant they attacked without regard for their health and never ran away. Even when Arista slaughtered them by the tens of thousands, they still rushed my way to die. They were flashy and noisy, drawing even more attention from far away. Sometimes one could end up with a veritable mob train as the newcomers shot their strongest spell right as they engaged and drew even more attention.
To someone trying to get them killed in a timely fashion as I did, it was a godsend. I would fly high in my {Lightning Elemental} form, shining and being seen by everyone kilometers away, summoning lightning bolts from the dry haze around me and causing the biggest racket I could. From there I would start peppering the monsters and demons with arrows as they came, giving priority to the ones that could either fly or use ranged attacks.
Truthfully, I’d rather stay with Mirina or Grenniana, or go to the Fairy Island in Atlantis to frolic and play pranks all day long. Maybe lead some ships astray and then make them find some treasure I planted earlier. That would be fun. The grind was a necessity though. I needed the points, I needed the levels.
> You reached Lightning Elemental Pixie level 15
>
> You gained 10 Attribute Points.
>
> You gained 2 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 5 Endurance, 5 Mind, 5 Willpower, 2 Charisma, 10 Magic, and 5 Luck.
>
> You gained 6 rank 4 species Perks.
>
> Ultimate Surpasser granted you 18 Attribute Points
>
> You reached Faewild Trickster level 15
>
> You gained 5 Strength, 10 Dexterity, 7 Endurance, 5 Mind, 5 Willpower, 7 Charisma, 10 Magic, 2 Ego, 7 Luck, and 2 Soul.
>
> You gained 5 rank 4 Class Perks.
>
> Ultimate Surpasser granted you 18 Attribute Points
> Level 190
>
> Strength*: 101+23 (124) / 166 - Dexterity*: 155+37 (192) / 166 - Endurance*: 125+24 (149) / 166
>
> Mind*: 135+36 (171) / 166 - Willpower*: 150+43 (193) / 166 - Charisma*: 150+34 (184) / 166
>
> Magic*: 166+69 (235) - Faith: 42+10 (52) / 166
>
> Ego*: 150+38 (188) / 166 - Luck*: 90+34 (124) / 166 - Soul*: 85+42 (127) / 166
>
> HP 221.960.923 (1.433.182 HP/s)
>
> Energy 294.110.928 (615.738 E/min)
----------------------------------------
After a year hunting in the demon side, we grew bored and traveled over the mountains to spend some time in a civilized area. The many small kingdoms of this continent offered a myriad of cultural influences although most of them manifested in some martial way. Most prominent was the myriad weapon fighting styles. Somewhat like feudal Japan when the small samurai and ninja clans developed their own martial arts, each kingdom, each knight order had their own favored weapon and techniques.
I went to spy on the orders that prioritized the spear or the bow. I watched them tray their recruits, their techniques, and checked what Abilities they favored in the System window. Sometimes you had to see someone performing it to unlock them. I was still far from getting a new Ability on these two but I could save it for later.
But eavesdropping on the martial clans had to wait. The pantheon was crumbling and the infighting was seeping into the temples and clergy. The churches had several branches, each interpreting their deities’ mandates to match with their own agendas. Even the Matriarch’s church had such a problem although I actually stopped to explain and clarify things every now and then. But the other Gods and Goddesses were doing exactly the opposite of micromanaging, they cut communication entirely with their clergy. With Wyxnos’ demotion and the loss of control over the System, they were letting all the cats, bobcats, and polecats out of the bag. It was a feline-out-of-flexible-container extravaganza.
I hurriedly sent divine messages to my priests and messenger birds to my allies telling them to hunker down and call for help if they were being attacked. Even in southern Pekothas, Aquilonia and Fulgen were on the defensive as fanatical branches of the church of Queltphion started to gather the roving barbarians to wage war to appease their deity.
The deities’ silence caused every fanatical group to interpret it as a mandate to attack the others. Kingdoms were forced to defend themselves from ever-growing bands of bandits and renegade armies. Recruitment and training were at an all-time high. A few kingdoms had already clashed, leaving fields of rotten bodies on the way. Some were even press-ganging young men and women to join the army, dismantling perfectly good tools and disrupting production to field more armies. It was utter madness.
As I traveled from one kingdom to the next, I came across the site of a mighty battle. Two armies bearing the banners of two deities I once thought allied. Rabhorktaar, god of Death, Thieves, and Assassins against Queltphion, god of Soldiers, War, and Balance. A band of agile rogues and skirmishers against an organized and well-trained army.
“Death to the Death god! Punish the traitors! Show them the Truth of War!” The high priest of Queltphion clamored to his troops.
“Kill the iron heads! Murder them in the name of the Veiled One!” The high [Assassin] shouted.
The zealots in armor marched forward, saving their stamina for the last few dozen meters for a mighty charge. Half of the people on Rabhorktaar’s side just vanished as they entered stealth and activated an optical camouflage. The other half started a long-range hail of projectiles.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Watching it from above, I placed my tiny hand on Pandora, the golden orb hovering by my side.
I got no answer.
----------------------------------------
[Administrator Hotline]
CALL START
Matriarch: Tuisto, I can’t talk to the deities. What’s happening?
Tuisto: They sealed their Realms fearing I would intervene with their hold over their churches. They are incommunicable and blocking System communications. Unless there’s a calamity or a global emergency that may threaten all life in the world, I can’t do anything about it.
Matriarch: I don’t think that’s the case right now. Thanks, I won’t bother you any further for now.
Tuisto: I checked your whereabouts as I’m receiving death messages from there. Let them kill each other. The wars aren’t at a level that requires intervention.”
Matriarch: Contact me if you need anything. Hey, any leads on Wyxnos?
Tuisto: None at all. He just vanished. Maybe he had external help to leave the planet but if he did he’s no longer our problem.
Matriarch: What about the thing he stole from the System?
Tuisto: It’s useless to anyone except its rightful owner. Which is not him or anyone associated with him. That set us back several thousand years as the System Core will need the energy to create another, but it is not anything we cannot recover from.
Matriarch: If the Gods aren’t doing their job, why don’t you cut off their supply of Divinity from all the fanatics killing each other down here? Maybe it can help offset the loss.
Tuisto: I’ll take your advice under counsel. I need to talk to Loki. Thank you.
CALL END
----------------------------------------
The two armies were fully engaged now. I could sense souls departing the world of the living already, drawn to me through {Soul Shepherd}. Since none of the deities were here to complain, I took them for myself, letting Pandora absorb them and strip them of their System status, and Exp into more Divinity for the Matriarch. For normal mortals, only the Capstone Perk for reaching level 200 carried over to the next life.
An [Assassin] would reveal himself, killing one officer only to be slaughtered by the soldiers around him. The bloody mud slowed down the rogues and the press of bodies didn’t allow them to display their full agility, more adequate for the cobblestones and shadowy back alleys of an urban setting. Yet they pressed on, killing each other in their mad frenzy.
This was one of the many conflicts that plagued the world in this new Age of Strife. The deities’ silence would last for hundreds of years, and most churches would devolve into corrupt organizations. Worse, they would band together and strike the only one that kept an active deity. Mine. What were the deities doing? I had no idea. I wasn’t even sure if the brood-bitch would still descend to fight me.
The battle between the two churches lasted one day and one night. As the sun dove behind the mountains splitting the continent in two, the armies withdrew from the field to spend the night. Queltphion was the clear winner as the disciplined troops literally mopped the ground with the dead [Rogues]. Pandora had collected tens of thousands of souls. But in the dark of the night, those that worked better under its protective blanket put themselves to work, myself included. I went around both camps by a large margin, surrounding the whole field with a ritual circle.
At night, I felt dozens of {Death Contracts} placed on the God of War’s camp. When the Sun broke the horizon the next morning, fanatical [Assassins] had infiltrated Queltphion’s camp and murdered the leaders. Those that were caught killed themselves by fighting the enraged soldiers, allowing others to either flee or commit more murders. The surviving zealots in armor charged the other camp, in a glorious charge that would make the Death Corps of Krieg wet their panties.
That’s when the weakness in Queltphion’s army became evident. The soldiers relied on their leaders’ boosts from their Perks and Proficiencies to fight effectively, the chain of command and tactics notwithstanding. This disorganized charge born of pure vitriol, hatred, and irrational rage threw all those advantages away if they had any commanders alive. The surviving rogues and the leveled-up [Assassins] – after they collected that many contracts, it was a given – paid back the losses from the previous day with an Italian Mafia loan shark’s interest.
The [Thieves], [Rogues], [Assassins], and [Priests] of the Death God celebrated as they looted the bodies, from friend and foe alike.
That’s when I triggered my ritual, covering the whole field with a magical circle, raising Force Walls, blocking teleportation, and showering everyone with Lightning. As the smoke cleared, only large pools of blood remained on the marred and scorched ground as every corpse and item was funneled into my item box.
I lied. Their storage rings remained behind as I had to use the {Force Tongs} to pick them up and bring them to me. I couldn’t store storage items that weren’t completely empty.
None of these souls were useful to me. I would have to literally brainwash them to serve me and I couldn’t be bothered. I let Pandora bleach them of their accumulated power and send them back to the wheel of reincarnation.
Then I went on my merry way, on the lookout as certainly I could stumble upon more battles to raid for souls and loot. If these idiots sought death so hard, I would indulge their desires.
----------------------------------------
The [Scout], his mind fraying at the edges despite his hidden Divine nature, glanced over his shoulder once again. He couldn’t believe she wasn’t behind him. He swore he sometimes heard the cursed fairies giggling behind him when all was silent.
He had no God to pray for protection for he was one and accepted no master. And the [System Egg] kept taunting him with its dreary silence and impassible protections. All he needed to do was to use the Egg on himself and he would return to Earth alone, leaving the Anomaly, Loki, the damned System A.I. disguised as an old man’s hologram, and the squabbling and entitled Pantheon behind. They could kill each other and then blow the planet for all he cared.
He entered an empty warehouse near the harbor of some shitty kingdom in the middle of the continent and looked at the magic circle engraved on a slab of stone that could fit comfortably ten cots. He activated it and tried to contact his friends on the other side. Differently from some cartoon voodoo con man, he was beginning to doubt if he had friends on the other side.
Then a shimmer appeared in the middle of the circle, a portal to another reality. A man dressed in regal clothes decorated with gold and jewels walked into Yznarian.
“Wyxnos. You look like shit,” he sniggered and twisted his nose. “And what’s wrong with this smell? More importantly, do you have it?”
The man almost jumped at the visitor’s throat. But he was certain it would be his end. He wasn’t strong enough to fight him. Not even Her was.
“I have it but it’s locked. I cannot activate it.”
The visitor grinned, “Good. Give it to me.”
“No. That’s not the deal.”
The posh man covered his mouth with both hands and made a heavy hissing sound as he took a deep breath with a long and loud inhale and exhale. When he spoke, his voice was a deep bass, “I’m altering the deal. Pray that I don’t alter it any further.”
“Fuck you, you giant nerd.”
The visitor cackled. “It would be so easy to pry it out of your cold hands,” he licked his lips.
“Try me. You just crossed over. I’m stronger than you imagine.”
“Wrong quote. You should say, ‘if you strike me down, I’ll become’...”
“Stop getting in my nerves. You have no Divinity in this dimension.”
“Easily fixable though it would take some time. I still can kill you with a wink. Literally a wink.”
The [Scout] stared at his eyelid and saw the magic circle tattooed underneath his eyelid. He deciphered it immediately and knew he’d been played. While the visitor indeed had no Divinity after crossing over the portal, he brought a tiny charge in that magic circle, enough for one singule use. His threat was as good as a Treasury bond.
“If you kill me with that, the Egg is lost forever.”
“I know,” he smiled. “But while it is your last option, to us it is just an interesting trinket. And if you reveal your Divinity, your former friends will sense your location. That’s why you’re possessing this mortal, isn’t it?”
The nervous man possessing the native [Scout] didn’t reply.
“So, do you want a ride back home?” The visitor wiggled his thumb at the portal.
“We can’t. I need to unlock the egg. I fear that if we take it off-world now, we’ll miss the chance to do so. It has something to do with this System.”
Skeptic, the visitor raised an eyebrow, “Mate, you had almost a million years to figure it out. Why didn’t you already did so?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dude this is so fucked up. Why aren’t you with the System Core trying to open the damn egg?”
“I had complications. The Norse trickster got involved. He sent an agent to this world.”
That made the visitor pause. “Fuck me sideways. The deal is off, bro. I’m out of here.”
The deity hiding inside the [Scout] suddenly stopped feeding the ritual circle, closing the portal before the visitor had a chance to move. The next moment, he was hanging from his neck as the newcomer grabbed his throat.
“Not cool, mate. Not cool,” He stared with flaming eyes at the native. “Open it.”
Between gasps, the [Scout] replied, “It’ll only open tomorrow now. I don’t have enough mana to open it, the circle needs to absorb more.”
The visitor cursed and threw the man on the ground like a ragdoll. “You have a day to live. Pray to your Gods, professor.”