The air in Sorin’s cultivation chamber hummed with potential that gnawed away at the isolation runes sufficient to hold back a demigod’s power. It wriggled like a living organism, threatening to break fee from Sorin’s control.

Existence was pain. Only Death offered an easy escape.

The situation was as purposeful as it was untenable. To incorporate both Life and Death into his cultivation, Sorin had to first balance out these warring forces.

Death currently had the advantage. It weaponized his blood and his bones as it sought out the rebel forces of Disease hiding inside his body’s many blind spots.

Occasionally, the two forces clashed. Sorin’s body took the brunt of these attacks. Thanks to Toxic Metabolism, Sorin was able to endure so far, albeit by pushing the limits of his Divine-Tier skill.

Death Hated disease. Disease was jealous of Death’s advantage. What else could occur but Strife characterized by Madness and Violence.

Disease armed itself by appropriating Sorin’s poisons. Little by little, an equilibrium was established. The guerrilla forces stockpiled strength while Death was forced to grow cautious. Strife forced them into constant clashes, reducing their available forces until Life and Death were present in equal amounts.

A tentative peace was brokered. Equilibrium was reached. Yet even equilibrium took its toll on Sorin’s body. Cycling death and propagation forced strained Sorin’s cells to be breaking point. Toxic Metabolism skill to destabilize.

Sorin filled the increasingly large gaps in the skill with fragments of the Ouroboros. Divine scales supplemented the failing skill, adding life, death, space, and time to Sorin’s poisons and corruption.

Soon, it proved too much for the skill. It burst apart, reducing its fragments to dust that threatened to disperse into Sorin’s surroundings.

This was where the Scales of Life and Death came in handy. The opposite swirls pressed the skill back together, creating something that exceeded divine rarity. A name lit up inside Sorin’s mind: Chaotic Constitution of the Ouroboros.

A wave of divine power filled Sorin’s body as it pushed past the peak of Flesh-Sanctification and into the realm of Demigodhood. The transformation was a welcome one that granted him respite from the violent energies assaulting him.

Sorin made use of the brief respite to incorporate the final hundred-poisons in his body, Call of the Ferryman and Symphony of Blood.

His blood became unstable, forcing him to incorporate additional poisonous permutations until finally, Red-Eyed Devourer reached the 1000 poison level with a total of 9,999 lesser poisons.

Sorin’s mana surged with potential waiting to be unleashed. He’d long since surpassed the limit of a body with a sealed Gate of Life and Death.

The temptation of power almost caused Sorin to blast open these gates, but in the end, he was able to hold back the urge and still his poisonous blood.

Sorin’s sanctification level did not increase, but thanks to the upgrade in his body and poisons, his senses grew sharper. His control over corruption expanded, lighting up section in the Web of Strife he’d previous ignored. This included the clear effects of other forms of corruption instead of intuitive results.

The Web of Strife was not the only thing that grew sharper in Sorin’s mind. Threads of karma connecting him to others grew especially pronounced. The red thread of blood feud between him and the Grand Elder was now clear as day. Chief Elder Adrian’s threads were also visible now; ironically, he was nothing more than a mediating force. The Sovinger Branch clearly wasn’t just a logistics branch, but the glue that kept Sorin’s fractured clan together.

“But enough of that for now,” muttered Sorin. He picked up a shivering Lorimer from his pocket and nicked his finger. The rat licked up the droplet of blood to absorb its strength and further incorporate the disparate forms of corruption that existed on Pandora.

Lorimer’s transformation would take quite a bit of time, and the Order of Phantasia could still hold out. More than long enough for Sorin to get to the bottom of this mysterious ninth form of corruption.

To that end, Sorin produced a corrupted divine crystal from his Hero Medal and peeled away its many layers. He first stripped off the five base corruptions, Violence, Madness, Jealousy, Hatred, and Strife, then stripped away the three major corruptions, Hope, Death, and Disease.

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What remained was a thin, intangible wisp that taunted Sorin as he grasped for it. “Impossible.” The whisp scattered into smoke. “It was there. I sensed it.”

The third, alien form of energy was unstable as always and reacted violently to Sorin’s corruption and divinity.

As for the divinity itself, it melted away. As far as Sorin could tell, it was untainted by any form of corruption. Unless… A possibility occurred to Sorin. It couldn’t be. A strange feeling bubbled up inside him. There was one other possibility. One he’d overlooked. One everyone had overlooked.

With Lorimer unconscious and the mystery of the crystal still unsolved, Sorin spread his spiritual senses out into the city to gauge the general situation.

War was ramping up. Benjamin Riss was currently executing sweeping raids incorporating lesser forces into his growing war machine that would soon become unstoppable.

The city’s God Seeds and Heralds were not idle either. Each of them was busy fulfilling their roles in the absence of greater powers. Sanctification levels that had long since stalled had pushed their way8 past 80 percent and were still in the process of rising.

Yet there’s one God Seed I still can’t sense, thought Sorin as he swept the city. Gabriella. Vague karmic hints of her appeared near the Ratten Clan’s compound where the silent forces of the Underworld kept silent vigil. Did she escape the Kepler Clan to hide with her original allies? Sorin’s instincts told him her disappearance was related to the Death Tincture.

This brought Sorin’s thoughts to the Death Tincture in his possession and its mysterious ingredient.

It’s not a poison. That much is clear as day. Rather than support the body’s ability to resist Death-aligned energies, the compound provided a stay or exemption from Death.

The substance contained a dilute amount of Authority, something that only powerful God Seeds and demigods could begin to wield. Deities were the only ones who could use these forces in large amounts, but currently, Sorin was unaware of any who possessed.

A knock on the door interrupted Sorin’s reverie. “Come in, Mordecai.”

The white-haired man opened the door. Cradle in his arms was the shivering form of the Ant Queen that had produced many useful poisons for both Mordecai and Sorin.

“I’m here for two matters,” said Mordecai. “First, you asked me to let you know when the Nighthawk’s managed to fight their way through Benjamin Riss’s blockade. That moment isn’t soon far out. They will soon arrive at the Universitas Phantasia.”

“Noted,” said Sorin, checking on the Web of Strife. He still had roughly five minutes before his presence was required. “There’s something wrong with the Ant Queen. Can you please explain what you did and why you think his happened.”

“Well, since we were no longer generating useful poisons with her help, I thought I’d try a bit of a radical experiment. I added something to its diet. Something unusual.”

“You tried to incorporate all eight forms of corruption,” said Sorin, gesturing to the Ant Queen. The creature floated into his left hand while he prodded the creature with his right. “By the looks of it, you came to close to succeeding.”

“See, that’s the thing,” said Mordecai. “I specifically didn’t try what you said. Based on previous attempts, eight types of corruption would prove lethal.”

Sorin frowned. “But I clearly sense all eight of these energies inside her body, along with a large amount of divinity. Ultimately, it’s the conflict between these two forces that’s causing her body to degrade.

“Which is interesting in and of itself,” said Mordecai. “Because what I fed her was not the eight forms of corruption. And neither did I feed her divinity. Instead, I fed her was the third substance.”

Sorin froze. “You fed her the foreign energy. The one that reacts violently with anything it touches?”

“In my defence, the ant queen is excellent at mediating energies,” said Mordecai. “If it was eight different forms of energy, it might not be possible, but I figured that surely energy from a single source was something she could manage.”

Sorin’s heart pounded as he scanned its body with his spirituality. All eight forms of corruption were present alongside divinity. The divinity, strangely enough, perfectly suited the creature. Yet nowhere inside the creature’s body did he sense the foreign and incompatible energy.

“It broke down,” Sorin concluded.

“Into the two warring components, corruption and divinity,” confirmed Mordecai.

“Maybe,” muttered Sorin as he scanned the creature’s body and withdrew its corruption into his own body. The energies he extracted were as expected. Nowhere did he sense the reactive and violent energy found in corrupted divine crystals.

“Good work, Mordecai,” Sorin said after a few minutes “This sheds a lot of light on the situation. I’ll need to check with the Order of Phantasia to confirm a few facts.”

“Do you think this ant queen holds the key to harmonizing corruption and divinity?” asked Mordecai.

“Not quite,” said Sorin. “And I hate to say it, but you’re unlikely to hear the truth once I discover it. Not because I don’t want to tell you, but because it’s likely to kill you.”

Mordecai cleared his throat. “How unfortunate. But any tidbits you might discover…”

“I’ll let you know what I can,” promised Sorin. “In the meantime, I recommend you retreat to Kepler Manor for the time being.”

“You expect people to fish in muddied waters?” asked Mordecai.

“Just so,” said Sorin. “I’d especially be careful of Benjamin Riss. That said, it’s not impossible that the Pollen Clan attacks the Kepler Clan to forcefully reincorporate it.”

Mordecai scoffed. “We have five demigods holding down the fort.”

“None of which are a match for Michael as he currently is, or Administrator Pollen from Delphi,” said Sorin. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. It appears that the Grand Elders have a tacit understanding. That understanding includes having Charles assist Michael with his divine mission. He’s currently experiencing rapid growth, but that growth will eventually taper off. He’ll need to accomplish something that defies common sense to push his cultivation to the next level.

Mordecai accepted this answer and began packing up the hospital. The hospital’s administrators, noting the exodus of one of their clinics, took the hint and began their own evacuation.

In the end, the answers lie in the past, thought Sorin as he appeared outside the Order of Phantasia, where over a hundred cultivators were assembled and ready to charge up its ancient stone steps.