The smell of roasted flesh filled the lower levels of the Demon God’s final inheritance. As Gemini laid on his back, his eyes staring at the black ceiling, he couldn’t help but note that this particular smell would only emanate from the finest of roasted dishes and nothing else. A touch more, and it would be from burned food, and if the scent was any lighter, the dish it came from would be of an inferior chef’s work.
One had to say that the chef behind the current presentation of one roasted Gemini was skilled to an extreme.
“Smells nice,” Hereward noted. “I can’t believe this cook is better than Lila.”
“I’m telling her that,” Gemini replied. “Prepare to be starved when we return.”
“Please don’t. There’s a non-zero chance that the world as we know it would end via a catastrophic accident, so I really want to take this chance to savour as much food as possible,” the Sentinel of Space replied.
“You should,” Thasvia replied. “My older brother has been hogging the benefits of your wife’s cooking without telling the rest of us. We demand restitution.”
Liamar roared in agreement, while Aldnath continued to mediate in silence.
The five of them had been struck by black lightning over and over for the past twelve hours, in a bid to understand this primordial power with their bodies alone. Thankfully, their efforts hadn’t gone to waste — Gemini could now resist a tiny pinprick of the black lightning without screaming out like a madman.
Unfortunately, of the five great gods getting zapped over and over again, this was the best result. The other great gods were particularly vulnerable to the black lightning that thronged the area, to the point that no one else could actually handle even a tiny wisp in their body. Gemini had to absorb a finger’s worth, enduring a whole lot of pain on the way, and then let the others absorb it from him.
He eyed the trembling great gods, disgruntled. Clearly, he was the one who had received the lightning strikes over and over again, but why were they the ones who looked far worse?
“You lot feeling better?” Gemini asked.
“I’d be lying if I said yes,” said Thasvia.
The Demon Sovereign turned to Hereward. “How about you?”
“I’ll live. It seems that I have a small measure of resistance to primordial energy. If I’m not wrong, this resistance seems to be a remnant carried over by my former self, but it’s still not as good as yours,” Hereward replied.
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“I’ve been abused and beaten up for the past few years. It’s natural that my resistance to pain is a lot higher than you weaklings.” Gemini paused. “Whoops. It seems that my true feelings leaked out by accident. Please do not mind it.”
“Damn you and your masochistic tendencies,” Hereward muttered. “But yes, we are strangers to pain. We haven’t actually done anything that would cause pain to us ever since our birth.”
Thasvia nodded. Even Aldnath looked up, a rare show of actually expressing a sentiment that completely flew over Gemini’s head. If not for the fact that Gemini already knew that the Dragon of Time was expressing his agreement, the Demon Sovereign might not have noticed anything.
An enormous amount of information flooded Gemini’s head once more as Liamar roared once. It was an apology to Gemini for letting down his expectations, an emphasis on their utility in the battle to come, a heartfelt request for Gemini to continue helping them, as well as a promise that he would only eat one slice of pizza, whatever one slice was.
“Why do you all focus on Lila’s pizza? Go make some yourselves, entitled pricks. You lot also have a Divine Kingdom too, no? You can also get an entire pizza for yourself by dropping by Ark City — just check out the food stands there.” Gemini rubbed his forehead. “Stop stealing my pizza.”
“Ark City?” Hereward asked. “There’s really pizza there?”
“Yes. And cheese hotdogs, all kinds of finger food, copious amounts of bacon and what have you, okay?” Gemini replied. “Just go and descend there or something. No one’s going to complain if you pay street vendors with bars of gold or whatever other treasures in your Divine Kingdom.”
“But—”
“It’s a whole pizza!” Gemini sat up and drew a huge circle. “There was one this huge, you know. Get them of them, hand one to an appointed chef and scoff down the rest.”
“You’ve been gone from Ark City for a long time,” Hereward replied. “As tempting as your revelation is, I prefer a steady source.”
“Forget it.” Gemini rolled his eyes. “Anyway, you lot really are weak…to this black lightning. Why? Is there something specific about you guys that makes you this vulnerable? Can you examine the mechanisms that enable such weaknesses?”
“We’re trying our hardest,” Thasvia replied, “but I cannot tell why this lightning deals so much more damage to us.”
Liamar roared once, and as Gemini tried to parse the numbers and graphs that came along with that single syllable, Hereward frowned. “Hmm. That’s a plausible hypothesis.”
“What hypothesis?” Gemini asked.
“Well, it’s not that we’re actually weak to this,” Thasvia replied. “It’s that we’re already the subset with the highest resistance to this primordial energy. Anyone else that’s not us wouldn’t be able to handle even the smallest amounts without getting killed or crippled.”
“That’s a very problematic hypothesis, then.” Gemini narrowed his eyes, the various thought strands whirling into overdrive once more. There was still some black lightning wreaking havoc in his body, although the amount of damage dealt was at a manageable level. However, if this was the best resistance Orb had to offer against the energies of creation…
“We’re kinda screwed, right?” Gemini muttered. “One good zap by the Abyss Sovereign would kill off entire armies.”
“In which case we better hope that his new world really comes to fruition, since they can be reincarnated there instead,” Hereward observed wryly. “We’ll have to keep this resistance training up, at least. It’s not like we placed hope on the mortals of Orb to begin with…”