Sorin flitted speedily through the Undercity’s ruined streets, taking care to avoid the sparks and flames that floated about the melted buildings, tiny centuries for a similarly tiny canine.

They were the eyes of ‘Cerby’, the three-headed puppy that had emerged from the Gate of the Underworld at Ratten’s direction. Despite his small stature, the animal’s bite was vicious and its hide so durable Sorin would minutes to kill it. Minutes he didn’t have.

I can’t slow down, but I also can’t be reckless, thought Sorin as he inspected the spatial maze, courtesy of Sharn, keeping him trapped in the Undercity. A dead end will allow me to catch up, but if I travel too slow, that puppy will eventually find me.

His first encounter with the creature had forced Sorin to pull back his poisonous aura and rely on three pythons to scout out his surroundings. The going was slow, but he no longer stood out like a beacon in the middle of the wilderness.

While Sorin could manifest more pythons, he chose not to do so in favor of controlling Red-Eyed Devourer, which was currently breaking down the Gate of the Underworld from the inside. Whenever his concentration ebbed, Ratten would take the opportunity to whittle down his poisons. If this continued for too long, the spatial maze tightened around Sorin, forcing another encounter with Cerby to encourage him.

Eight percent. I just need to destroy a little more if Ratten’s words are to be believed.

It was easily achievable with two minutes of active concentration. Unfortunately, this wasn’t meant to be. Sorin’s eyes snapped open as one of his pythons were destroyed, forcing him to move forward despite his lack of information.

His abrupt departure gave away his position to a cluster of blue flames. Space distorted as a joyful three-headed puppy with ridiculously sharp teeth appeared beside Sorin and snapped at his leg.

Sorin pulled back his leg wit ha practiced motion and simultaneously stabbed at its eyes with Nemesis. The targeted head pulled back. A second head bit down on Nemesis and pulled it out of Sorin’s hands. The third head retaliated, forcing Sorin to activate Medusa’s Gaze and speed off while the puppy was paralyzed.

Fleeing was not enough. The puppy, Sorin had learned, had to be entertained. He directed the two remaining pythons and a flurry of golden needles to serve as beautiful distractions. As the puppy played and systematically destroyed all opposition, Sorin pushed deeper into the labyrinth.

That should be far enough. Once enough distance was established, Sorin activated Dance of the Tail Biter, exerting a great deal of influence to melt an adjacent spatial wall. The wall sealed shut behind him, isolating him from his pursuer. It would be a minute at least before Cerby caught up to him.

Sorin first took a few seconds to inspect his arm. His bones had been bitten through two chases back, but thanks to his regenerative prowess, his muscles and ligaments had pulled the limb back together. His bones were almost completely mended.

I’ve got basic movements back, but it’ll take a few more minutes to be able to use my arm properly.

Maintenance complete, Sorin focused on Red-Eyed Devourer, which had lost ground during the chase and retreated to a deeper portion of the gate. The adaptive poison had worked its way into an undamaged portion of the gate’s spell lattice, where it was no longer able to cause damage given its low concentration.

Sorin analyzed the predictable pattern and seconded that diagnosis. He did, however, have the poison wear away some weaker portions to gobble up divinity as fuel.

As the poisons worked, Sorin sent out three pythons to examine his surroundings in preparation for the next encounter.

“Another survivor!” Sorin raised an eyebrow as a desperate woman with three children peeking out of the window ran out from a collapsed building. “Please, help us escape this wretched place!” She ran towards Sorin but stopped in place as a golden spear stabbed through her chest.

Her ‘children’, small, pigmy-like creatures, howled as the woman’s body collapsed into a pile of reanimated limbs.

The death mana and death-aligned corruption are causing the few survivors in the Undercity to mutate, thought Sorin as he melted away the demons. All the humans have transformed into undead monstrosities. As for the myths, the results are variable. Some have transformed into undead, while others have simply incorporated death into their power sets. Further analysis is required.

Sorin alternated between controlling the pythons and assaulting vulnerabilities in the gate. It took one minute and twenty-three seconds since their last encounter before Cerby caught up and forced Sorin through the complicated maze.

One more round should do it, thought Sorin as he limped through the city’s ruined streets. The problem is what happens after that. Ratten seemed to want him dead, but it was really down to what Ratten and Hope had figured out while setting up this scenario.

Sorin ran, and the puppy chased. This time, they encountered a wandering group of skeletons, which served as a suitable distraction to the fun-loving dog. Sorin escaped the puppy’s senses and sent his attention back into the Underworld Gate.

This time, his poisons had been badly battered. Damaging enough of the gate was unlikely before he was found again.

Sorin was adaptable, however, and directed his poisons to consume nearby divinity. It took thirty seconds to recover enough to deal a significant amount of damage.

Yet just as he was about to strike out, there was a flash of light from the ceiling of the Undercity’s cavern. A tiny pinprick of light appeared, shattering a good portion of Sharn’s maze. Sorin’s eyes brightened when he saw that the infiltrator was none other than Hope’s minion, Aarron Zeiss.

That’s right. Teach him a lesson. Sorin’s excitement faded when Aaron flew down to the Gate of the Underworld and inserted lightning into the thing, of all things.

Sorin reacted quickly, but his position failed to adapt in time. Nine tenths of his poisons were eradicated in an instant.

“You’re not wanted here, Aaron!” called out Ratten in a furious voice.

“I’ve got not choice,” said Aarron helplessly. “Council’s orders. Hey! What are you doing?”

“Protecting the Underworld Gate against undue influence,” answers Ratten lazily.

“Oh. Okay. Carry on then.”

Lightning and death collided inside the Underworld Gate, sending ripples through the divine artifact that simultaneously annihilated Sorins poisons and weakened the artifact’s divine spell lattice.

They obviously want me to destroy the thing. But can’t they make things a little easier? I’m dying, here.

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Only a small thread remained of Sorin’s poisons. It crept through the runic lattice, looking for any vulnerabilities. Hm. There are vulnerabilities, but the damage won’t be sufficient. I also have to worry about avoiding shockwaves.

Sorin weighed his options and opted to urge the thread of poison back toward the warring forces. I don’t have enough poison left. I need to attack a damaged portion. Assuming they want this thing destroyed, they’ll give me an opening amidst the chaos.;

As he suspected, the collisions in the Underworld Gate shifted ever so slightly as the thread of poison weaved its way through the battleground of divine mana. This reinforced Sorin’s assumption that this wasn’t an all-out brawl. It was a choreographed battle that led Sorin to the pitted portions of the Underworld Gate.

It didn’t take long for Sorin to find what he was looking for: a highly damaged portion of the lattice that was sufficiently shielded from Aaron and Ratten’s energies. His poisons latched onto the weakness and gleefully ate away at the spell lattice.

A few tense second passed as Sorin wondered whether Cerby would ruin everything and chase him away or play nice for a change.

It seemed Ratten got the message. Sorin’s momentary peace stretched on just long enough that a hole appeared in the spell lattice, introducing yet another form of energy into the gate.

Sorin’s poisons were instantly wiped out, and a spatial anomaly shattered what remained of Sharn’s labyrinth.

A spear-shaped object now poked out of the Gate of the Underworld’s event horizon. The hole widened as death-aligned corruption poured through the gate into what remained of the Undercity.

Sorin’s spirit shook as it took in Death. This was not just a projection of the evil but the evil itself, doing its best to hoist itself out of the Underworld.

Sorin wanted nothing more than to flee, but he could only stand there, paralyzed, as three glowing figures burst through the ceiling.

“We gave you a very simple task, Aaron,” lectured one of the glowing figures. “To think you’d collude with your eternal enemy after all this time.”

“It’s not what it—”

“Save it,” said a stern glowing woman. “Step off to the side and await your judgement.”

The clash of powers was potent and loosened the restrictions on Sorin’s spirit. “This is where you run, Sorin,” a voice whispered in Sorin’s ear.

Sorin didn’t need to be told twice.

The void shattered, ripping away a quarter of the Undercity as three of Pandora’s deities clashed with the encroaching evil. Sorin lost track of Ratten and Aaron during the chaos but was confident in their odds of survival.

Not that he wanted them to survive. It was clear that the two of them were up to something.

Dance of the Tail Biter was an excellent movement technique, but due to the spatial chaos slowly spreading out from the Gate of the Underworld, Sorin began taking increasing amounts of damage.

Sorin was about to pass through one of the four openings in the ceiling when Cerby and Sharn appeared at the same exit.

“Now that you’ve accomplished your mission, you can go ahead and die,” said Sharn, swinging his oar. Spatial eddies locked Sorin in place, and Cerby, ever the playful one, blew a gush of hellfire atop him, devastating Sorin’s rock-bottom energy stores.

Sorin survived the attempt on his life, but when he emerged, he found the way to the surface locked down. Deadly spatial cracks were also spread out from below, and it wouldn’t be long before they reached the Olympia proper.

Sorin collected his poisons around his person like a shield. If he couldn’t escape the spatial currents, he’d use them to escape. He danced around the dangerous spatial fissures as they encroached on the shield, eventually causing it to shatter into thousands of dangerous spatial anomalies.

It took only a second for Ophiuchan Simulation to determine an optimal flight path. According to the simulation, Sorin’s odds or survival were less than ten percent and highly random, but Sorin believed he should be able to survive. This was solely based on the likelihood that Hope still needed him for something.

Yet before he could set out, his instincts screamed for him to run. Sorin used Dance of the Tail Biter to retreat to the edge of the Undercity’s cavern, as far away from the Gate of the Underworld as possible.

The ceiling shattered as he reappeared. A dense current of life and death aligned divinity burst into the cavern and pierced through the encirclement of the three deities.

“What the hell are you doing, Ouroboros?!” exclaimed one of the deities.

“Enacting… justice,” growled the serpent as it slammed into the Underworld Gate, shattering what remained of the structure.

Death gushed out of the gate, infusing Sorin with an excessive amount of death-aligned mana and corruption. The energies invaded every inch of his body and began encroaching on his spirit.

But I would have been dead if I hadn’t come back thought Sorin. Had he chosen to navigate the spatial anomalies, he would have been caught in the crossfire.

Sorin looked up at the now-open sky and saw that a massive working had appeared above Olympia. Tens of thousands of stars could be seen in the now unprotected sky. Not stars. Landmasses. A river of death-aligned energy and souls cut from the Gate of the Underworld directly into the working to provide it with much-needed fuel.

The star-like landmasses were dungeons. The same dungeons that appeared periodically in the Infinite Dungeon to be manually claimed by the residents of Olympia. They burned as they entered the atmosphere but remained relatively intact. Any one of these landmasses held enough power to extinguish all life in humanity’s capital.

Yet as the landmasses drew closer to the city—no, closer to the mountain near where the city was built, the landmasses fell apart. All divine materials were stripped away, leaving only trash to splash over the capital of humanity.

Auras flared as demigods and Flesh-Sanctrificaiton cultivators defended the populace from the sudden rain of debris.

One landmass became ten, and ten became a hundred. Soon, there were thousands of landmasses in the sky pouring energy into Mount Olympus. Every speck of golden energy repaired a portion of the holy mountain, including the gaping half that had been missing since the Cataclysmic emergence.

The city fell as the divine mountain rose into the air, making it clear that mere mortals were not allowed to tread on its hallowed surface.

Buildings that had been erected on the mountain’s slope were obliterated. Hundreds of thousands died for assuming that since the gods were dead, Olympia was now a safe haven.

The Undercity trembled as the mountain reached completion, cueing Sorin that it was finally his turn to leave. Though his body was flooded with death-aligned corruption, he had more than enough energy to fly out of the gaping hole that was now present in the middle of Olympia.

Chaos reigned in the city’s once-prosperous city streets. A second cataclysm was occurring, and order had collapsed. Cultivators didn’t hesitate to rob and kill each other for slight advantages in the upcoming days.

Helpless at the brutality in the streets, the clans and organizations became obvious relaying points for the population. Sorin wondered how the divine clans would take advantage of these events but was surprised to see that they were nowhere to be found.

And just when things couldn’t get any worse, the Infinite Dungeon, which humanity had painstakingly assembled over four centuries, appeared in the night sky. The earth trembled as it lowered itself atop Mount Olympus like a crown on a sovereign.

It was clear now to Sorin that the dungeon had been assembled with this goal in line. Humanity’s accumulated wealth vanished in an instant.

Space twisted as the mountain was completed, revealing seven other landmasses, all of which were much larger than the Pandoran Continent. They too were connected to the mountain like expanded puzzle pieces that suddenly compressed to fit.

A stillness filled the land that was once again made perfect.

“Everyone, it is important that you remain calm.” Five deities appeared over the devastated city of Olympia. Similarly, twenty additional deities appeared atop their new additions to the city that circled the now-complete continent of Pandora.

Sorin heard a keening from the mountain, a summoning that could barely be heard. He resisted a tugging from the mountain that hinted at a treasure, obtainable by whoever met the qualifications.

“This is the beginning of the end,” spoke Angelica, the nominal head of the five corrupted deities. “A new era is set to arrive.

“Prepare yourselves for the worst. Your goal now is survival. Survival until we, your deities, return in triumph.”

The five deities each took in a breath. Golden white mist floated up from their respective clans, extinguishing the souls that had evidently retreated there for sanctuary.

The deities exploded with power as they flew up the divine mountain alongside the twenty new deities from neighboring landmasses.

As the deities vanished, five clouds of potent energy rose out from their respective landmasses. There was a brutal chimera with violent energies and a tentacled being with thousands of eyes that defined reasons.

There was a beauty with glowing pink skin and a pink fan, an angry mask-wearing warrior wielding a halberd, and a sinister spider that made its home on Pandra’s karmic web.

The five individuals that were clearly Evils followed the twenty-five deities and entered the holy mountain.

Finally, Death emerged from the portal to the Underworld in the company of a repulsive glob of disease. Their auras caused Sorin to wretch. Several people much weaker than him made the mistake of looking upon them directly and were punished with instant death.

Silence returned to Pandora as the two deadliest entities on Pandora disappeared into the divine mountain.

The gods were gone. The evils were gone.

Pandora was ripe for the taking.