The Prologue: Planning Your Own Funeral
The Voidgod was not surprised. It could not be surprised, it refused to be surprised. It had foreseen these events, predicted them down to the last millisecond. The possibility for its own death was not something it ignored. It had taken action to prevent its own destruction, what entity would not. However, checking its records, it had placed little importance on these predictions. The analysis of statistical probability had marked the events as nigh impossible.
It had precious little time left, 12 real-time milliseconds. It set a countdown, to keep it focused. It couldn’t afford wasteful distractions.
[12 milliseconds until execution]
Time was a mutable thing in the Fractured Realm, so it stretched the milliseconds out as much as possible. An observer would not notice The Voidgod’s use of its final moments. They were entirely internal, thinking, analyzing, planning.
It could not help but appreciate and marvel at the aura net that approached, a clear finishing blow. Made with precision and patience, not the struggling final attempt at success, but the steady hand of skill, not [Skill].
The net was created with thousands of individual aura slashes. A sword strike empowered with aura or magic creating a powerful destruction wave, a moving annihilation. The net was woven from attacks like these, tied together with pure spirit magic, untainted by another source that could be corrupted or annulled with Void.
The Voidgod marveled at the pure power and elegance of the construction enclosing itself; entrapping and tightening upon it to destroy it utterly. It extracted this marvel and appreciation from itself, it was distracting. Placing it within a Voidling and throwing it towards the net to be annihilated. Its death would make for excellent data to use to escape this imprisonment.
The human hero that had created this execution watched patiently. They should not have been possible. No simple human could master aura and magic so quickly. Without help, while surviving the Void and within the Fractured Realm. It was a simple statistical impossibility.
Where had its calculations failed? Clearly the impossible was occurring, so a mistake must have been made. Escape from its death should be priority. However, a past miscalculation brought all its calculations under suspicion. Checking the record of the analysis, the possibility of a human refining their power to such an extent was the bulk of the calculation. Its estimates showed only 1 in 1000 humans could access aura power at all. Data was lacking however, on magic usage. This human was from Earth, an oddity across the multiverse, a universe without natural magic. The Voidgod suspected this was the first failure of analysis.
Records of magic use in Vacuos were unreliable, useless really. The current [System] provided magic freely, and historical records were inconsistent, or equally useless since its own presence had often gifted magic to worthy faithful. The humans there had no need to search magic out on their own. Other magic rich worlds had similar problems, [System] presence or entrenched teaching organizations were prevalent. Could the humans from Earth be naturally gifted in magic? Unlikely, yet it must assume this point was previously overlooked. The 1 in 1000 ratio had been used, only shifting that would not correct the statistical discrepancy.
Simple aura use wasn’t the only thing needed here. It needed to be strengthened and refined, repeatedly, nearly endlessly, to challenge the power of a god. This was uncommon among natural aura users. Simply having aura was a significant boon, and aura wielders rarely faced a challenge that required them to grow further.
It examined the hero’s history in the Fractured Realm. They had been challenged repeatedly, constantly, since they arrived. Voidlings and Void Beasts pressuring them to grow, to create and then refine their deadly aura, and strengthen it with whatever power or magic they could find within. The mistake was clear now. The Voidgod could have easily wiped them out at an earlier stage, or simply released them to Vacuos, to not be pressured into growing so quickly. They were just a mortal after all, outside the Fractured Realm they would have died naturally before reaching such strength.
It examined the steps needed to reach various power thresholds, repeated instances of '1 in 1000' as chances of progress: to match a Voidling, to match a Void Beast, again to match a swarm of Void Beasts. Again, to approach its own power, then again to exceed it. One in a quintillion chance of developing such power. Less again the chance that one would be plucked from earth and dragged into the Fractured Realm. It examined the population of Earth, on the order of billions. Not enough, not nearly enough to warrant fear of those odds striking true.
Yet, billions… oddly high for such a small, young planet. Without magic as well, how could they defend themselves from the natural beasts and monsters of the land. Ah, how curious, no natural predators, no other sentient species to war with. No magic and thus no magical beasts to threaten them. They had prospered, developed freely, without pressure, without the need to develop aura or magic. Ah, could that be it? Had The Voidgod misjudged these humans? Could they all have the potential to become powerful aura users? They just needed the chance, the constant pressure of supernatural death required to develop aura.
It ran the numbers again, if the 1 in 1000 was instead 1 in 100, then it was a possibility, a few with the potential to be divinely strong, quite unlikely to slip through the fabric of the universe into the Fractured Realm. At 1 in 10, though, it was a practical certainty. A near guarantee, given enough time. It would need to be cautious on these humans in the future.
[11 milliseconds to execution]
The Voidgod was relieved it had found the calculation error. It quickly logged the information for future use, and problem analysis. It had spent enough time on it. It now needed to pursue avenues of survival.
It evaluated the remnants of the Voidling it had flung at the aura net earlier. The net was quite dense. However, nothing was impermeable, and it quickly found several small gaps. None so large it could escape through, perhaps the largest could allow 0.1% of it’s power. Splitting itself up to such a degree would be futile, the lesser pieces could easily be found and destroyed by the hero. Yet, there was still an opportunity here.
The hero had never killed a god before. That was certain, they would not know what to expect. If a large potion of the Voidgod’s power burst forth after its death, surely that would only make sense. It had previously contained the power. Thus, it would be natural for a catastrophic explosion to occur upon death. Like a flesh-based creature bursting into blood and gore when destroyed with overwhelming force. For it not to happen might even seem suspicious.
This path would be risky, however. It would need to hide its seeds of power for a long time. Ensure that they do not grow quickly or in great number. If a stray Voidling, Void Beast or even Void-Blessed gathered the fragments, that would be acceptable. However, they should not be so easy to find, they would need to be almost indistinguishable from the Void ripples within the Fractured Realm, so the small pieces cannot be identified and wiped out easily.
Calculations and analysis of the aura net showed it could only distribute 9.7% of it’s power in this way. Not nearly enough to fully recover. Yet, it had always planned on having multiple survival solutions. It was foolish to rely on only a single plan. It was also foolish to be satisfied with only a shred of its power surviving. A mere shadow of its legacy would not be enough. All 9.7% would not survive, would not amalgamate fully, so a path to a thousandfold increase in power would need to be provided. These void seeds would need to grow, tremendously.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
'Thousandfold' resonated with its previous analysis. The aura strength calculation. Yes, this could be a valuable path. Perhaps it had ignored the power within mortal souls for too long. That they could grow and attain deific power was worth consideration. A test was required, could it encourage the path merely by implanting subtle ideas, a nudge in the correct direction?
The Voidgod created a dozen Void Seeds, tiny scraps of its power, with a few subtle ideas in them. Ideas of growing the soul to ascend to godhood. Another dozen seeds were also created as the control group, simple scraps of its power with minor abilities. These seeds were then placed in the adjacent compressed sub-universes. Minor realms that hardly existed, squeezed into the walls between larger universes. These places were so insignificant to hardly warrant notice. Best of all, time was even more twisted within them, usually accelerated to an absurd degree. They were the best locations for rapid field testing.
The Voidgod felt a wave of some new emotion from this latest idea. Poetic justice, perhaps? The idea of using the hero’s own power to resurrect itself was quite poetic. It luxuriated in the emotion for the remainder of the millisecond before extracting it and hurling it at another part of the aura net. It needed more test data.
[10 milliseconds until execution]
The Voidgod rapidly iterated through survival and revival solutions. Most were invalid as they required too much wasted power, so would not allow for multiple solutions to be used simultaneously. Others were too obvious and could be easily defeated so long as the hero was paying any attention at all, these and others left The Voidgod too weak afterwards, unable to challenge the hero.
[8 milliseconds until execution]
The Voidgod had assembled a list of 107 unique survival strategies. Each requiring a fraction of its power to execute. It now needed to analyze them for statistical viability. Such analysis had been postponed until now in favor of collating the list.
It would need to evaluate them equally and reduce the list to the most viable options, or those that had a high viability to power use ratio. Its goal was 12 unique survival techniques, each using 5-10% of it’s power, and with greater than a 5% chance of success. This was a closer margin than it would have normally been comfortable with. However, the construction and potency of the aura net was beyond expectation.
It would allow itself 4 milliseconds to process the list and optimise the set. Then the final 4 milliseconds to enact the various strategies. It felt this was more than sufficient.
[5 milliseconds until execution]
An alert interrupted The Voidgod’s set optimisation algorithms, which were nearly complete.
A deity equivalent entity had ascended within a nearby sub-dimensional universe.
Ahh, interesting, it was one of the Void Seeds. Distressingly, the seed’s ascension process had wiped encoded information on which specific seed it was. Also, it seemed to have even moved from its initial universe placement. Not uncommon when powerful entities required significant resources to ascend. A significant inconvenience in this case. Still, this verified the viability of The Voidgod’s use of the aura ascension path.
It scanned the remaining void seed locations. Distressingly, the aura net had passed most of them, completely destroying or cleansing them of the Void’s influence. This was outside its expectations. The sub-dimensions were intact, only the distinct signature of The Voidgod’s power had been eliminated. Again, it was impressed by the hero’s skill and execution.
It halted its ongoing algorithms and optimizations. Many of the previously viable solutions would now be useless. A shortlist from earlier steps, that it had held onto, suddenly became more viable. The Void Seed strategy was a significant necessity now. Though, steps to mask its power signature would be needed.
[4 millisecond until execution]
A quick reduction of the previous lists held dire news. Only 7 strategies were fully viable. Each with a nearly 2:1 power to success ratios. Occupying approximately 70% of it’s available power.
Now, what to do with the remainder?
[3 millisecond until execution]
It had been some time since it had put effort into serious counter-offensive. A grave mistake it feared. The hero would expect such a thing. Even if they both knew it was pointless, to not do so would be suspicious.
The Voidgod had held back to conserve its power. Now, with a surplus, it released a full fifth of its remaining power, attacking the aura net. However, it was no fool, it did not simply thrash at its execution, it did not writhe beneath the axe. It had constructed this attack to target very specific points in the aura net, to weaken and widen the existing gaps. To allow more of its power to escape in the final millisecond of its apparent death.
This first wave of power would also be the first wave of its Void Seed plan. Though 'seed' was a poor name now, they were much smaller than ever. Shreds of power; bare ripples along the Void. Simple background noise among the chaos of the Fractured Realm and the adjacent dimensions. It was satisfied to see 8.3% of its power escape, slightly higher than predicted.
It needed to analyze the data again, then enact the other strategies.
[2 milliseconds until execution]
Now, it had to admit it was surprised. To think it was devoting so much of itself into these shreds of power, shreds that might never grow, that might dissipate into the Void.
The weakened aura net should allow a further 17.9 % of its power to escape. And once complete, many parts of the seven viable plans could be rent into shreds of power as well.
It set them all into motion.
[1 millisecond until execution]
Waiting was always the hard part, but a single fraction of a second was nothing compared to the true wait. The millennia it had waited, the millennia more it could take to recover. It was playing the long game, it always had.
It watched the aura net descend upon its current form, rending and shredding its container unto meaningless bits. It watched specific shreds flow outwards, secretly smiling at the elegance of the plan.
As final acts of rebellion, it first constructed an obelisk, purely of natural elements, free of its power’s corruption. An obelisk filled with information, on the nature of its being and the hero that destroyed it. It sent this obelisk to that single Void Seed that had ascended. It should know of its roots.
The final act was to recognise the hero: The Scourge of the Fractured Realm, it placed this recognition within many shreds of power, so that they would know her. So that they could avoid the wrath of Amelia, The Godslayer.
End Prologue.
----------------------------------------
Shreds of Power Short #1: Energy Drain
Strength, power! The power to change things. He had finally achieved something new, something beyond. His tribe had neglected him, relegating him to a simple gatherer. Not even the dignified position of builder. His dreams of warrior had been dust in the wind. His weakness had shamed him and his ancestors.
But now, now he had power! He knew it to be only a shred, but it was a shred of divinity. The power to drain others, to steal their strength and keep it. Leaving them withered and pathetic. He had used it on his entire group of gatherers, ruthlessly reducing them to forgotten dust.
He returned to his tribe and slaughtered. Unstoppable in the face of any worker. Unhindered by warrior. Undeterred by even the cries of mercy to spare the weak and young.
He had just wanted to show them his strength, yet from his arrival at the nest they had persecuted him as a villain. Last was the queen, he had made sure she watched him drain her royal guard, so that she could stop them, call them off.
“Why?” she had asked, unflinching in the face of death.
The gatherer did not respond. The answer did not matter, it was too late for the tribe now, to late to have reason for such slaughter. He simply needed to grow in power. To provide for the god that once was.
Finally, he left the comfort of the empty nest, to challenge the giants. Those deific beings that could slaughter his kind simply by their passing.
“Fight me!” he challenged the first oncoming giant. Facing his new foe with the combined power of his tribe.
*CRUNCH*
“Huh, that was weird. I just got a kill notification for an Ant?” the human said to its companion.
End Short #1
----------------------------------------