Once again, the entire pantheon met. In recent years, they had all been paying varying degrees of attention to the developments that were clearly centered on the nation of Farun, but that had just changed.

Yur was only somewhat able to detect where the earth had been removed from her control, as it was a strange three-dimensional absence, and due to that, she was unable to observe anything about that portion of the planet.

However, the strange phenomena had just extended into Tamar, and when it had been discovered and reported to a priest at one of Ixel’s shrines, the god of death had finally been able to not only pinpoint where things were happening, he had also learned of something that defied him and his domain in a very open, very direct manner.

Upon learning that someone or something had not merely disturbed the dead, but had desecrated their sacred rest, Ixel had flown into a rage. There was something that was actively working against him, and that could not be allowed to continue.

Ixel had spoken directly to his anointed representative, the woman humans referred to as Death’s Matriarch, and ordered her to summon and send out the temple’s strongest fighters and most proficient mages, as Ixel had declared that the blasphemy needed to be rooted out and utterly destroyed.

Ixel’s entire attention had been focused on his forces, and he had granted each of the members of the expedition his blessings so that they would be better able to execute his will.

Because the god had been so incensed by the blasphemy that had been reported, he had insisted that only forces which could arrive by the next day be deployed.

Aside from Yur, the gods were not able to freely perceive all parts of the world. Their attention focused on their followers, temples, shrines, and places that were important to their particular domain. This was why Ixel had only learned of what had happened after it had been reported to his priest.

The gods also had no power except for whatever lay within their oversight. Ixel was the god of death, and he had no power except for delivering death and seeing to the peaceful rest of the dead.

However, not even he had known about the second aspect of his domain until it had been violated. After all, all magic had always come from the gods themselves, or from innately magical creatures, like the accursed dragons. Neither the gods nor the dragons had ever had the slightest interest in touching the dead, and so no magic related to that had ever existed.

That had changed with the recent arrival of the dungeons. The gods were all aware of the two existing dungeons, but had not been able to discover who or what was behind them. All that they had managed to discover was that a few humans had been selected and granted magical abilities that were somehow completely independent of the gods’ gifts.

This had initially been troubling, but the fact that only a single country was affected and that there had been no noticeable change in the number of prayers directed to the gods and that none of them had lost any followers had left the pantheon rather indifferent to the development and the existence of the two dungeons.

For Ixel, that indifference had been completely shattered with the revelation that someone was magically animating the dead. Such desecration could not be allowed.

Ixel had remained utterly focused on his people as they had entered the dungeon and descended into the bowels of the earth. He had felt his connection to them start to grow a bit thin, but it had not been anything that he could not force his way through.

Directly seeing the walking dead had enraged the normally stoic god, and he had almost entered a frenzy. The only thing that had held him back had been Hidde. As the god of battle, Hidde was invested in any sort of combat, and he had joined Ixel in following the developments within the undead dungeon.

When the god of battle had sensed Ixel starting to press into his own domain of power, Hidde had instantly and forcefully pushed back, and being rebuffed had helped to cool Ixel’s head. He had then simply watched as his priests and templars had cleansed the vile dungeon of all desecration as they pressed further and deeper.

When the expedition had stumbled upon the undead that still had flesh on their bones, Ixel had again needed to restrain himself. Seeing skeletons had been one thing, as he had never had an issue with seeing bones used as tools or weapons. It almost seemed a way to respect the dead and to carry on their memory, but the rotting, fleshy undead had not held the slightest bit of respect or acknowledgement of the departed. They were evil, which was something that Ixel had never felt throughout his entire existence.

In contrast, Hidde had been intrigued by the sight of something that allowed for fighting to continue even after death. This was something that resonated with the god, as battle and fighting was his entire existence. Falling in battle had always been seen as the greatest service his warriors could offer to their god, but at this moment, Hidde was seeing the possibility of continuing even beyond that, and it was a tantalizing possibility.

Unfortunately, Hidde quickly realized that this possibility would have to remain forever beyond his reach. Ixel was an older and more powerful god than Hidde, and there was a clear hierarchy within the pantheon of human gods. No matter how tantalizing the possibility, unless it could be hidden from Ixel, or Hidde could rise up to the same level as the senior god, it would be impossible for posthumous fighting to be granted to Hidde’s followers.

What a pity.

Eventually, the humans had reached the furthest depths of the dungeon, which had never happened for either of the two older dungeons, and so even the gods were discovering what lay at the end of the dungeons.

While the warriors had no idea what the final chamber held, both of the gods and all of the mana users present were unable to look away from the egg-sized gemstone at the center of the chamber that shone with a terrifying brilliance to all forms of mana sense that landed on it.

While the two gods naturally possessed more mana than they saw in the small stone, neither of them had ever used so much for a single task, nor were they aware of any who had. There was an ocean of mana within that tiny stone, and if Yur or Anba had been present, they would have sensed the presence of the Concept of life also present within the stone, but since the Concept of life was outside the domains of either death or battle, Hidde and Ixel sensed nothing more than the sheer quantity of mana, as well as the assorted affinities that were present. This stone was somehow able to freely manipulate multiple affinities of mana, either cleansing or altering the nature of the mana in a manner that was incomprehensible to all who looked upon it.

After a moment of stunned stillness, Ixel had prodded the high priest in charge of the expedition, and a warrior had been sent forward to smash the gemstone.

The moment the stone shattered, everything had changed. The obstruction that the two gods had been forcing their way through had completely and totally vanished, and the dungeon itself had started to tremble and collapse.

The humans had fled back to the entrance, needing to use magic to create lights, as all of the torches and sconces had gone out the moment the gemstone at the end of the dungeon had been shattered.

Many of the people had stumbled and tripped as they had fled through the chambers and tunnel, racing up the long stairs.

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When they had finally poured out of the false mausoleum in the graveyard, they turned to see that the building had already started to crack and crumble, and it had soon collapsed completely.

As they had recovered from their frantic escape, they realized that at least four of the villagers who had been in the dungeon had not returned with them, and at least one priestess and two warriors were nowhere to be found.

Clearly, they had been swallowed by the dungeon’s collapse.

With the dungeon destroyed, Ixel was finally able to calm down. He checked his priests and warriors, but found nothing wrong with any of them, even the ones that had been touched by the dungeon’s strange powers.

The only additional thing Ixel did before moving on from dealing with the blasphemous dungeon was deal with his follower, Allan. It was clear that the man had been mistaken in interpreting the dungeon as a miracle from Ixel, but as far as the god was concerned, that merely reflected that Allan had been inexcusably ignorant of the god’s teachings. The only thing that had saved Allan from being summarily executed was the fact that the very first thing he had done had been to report what he had discovered to one of Ixel’s priests, which had informed the god of the unforgivable desecration that had been carried out.

As time had passed, Ixel had paid slightly more attention to the other two dungeons that were known to exist, though that was rather difficult, given how few followers and clergy he had in the nation of Farun. Still, despite the number of deaths that had occurred in the wake of the undead dungeon’s destruction, Ixel had not learned of a single additional instance of any undead existing, which had been a huge relief to the god.

Another, though smaller, relief was felt when Allan finally offered the final sacrifice to Ixel, paying for his trespasses and earning the god’s clemency. Ixel was not particularly forgiving, but he did consider himself fair and just to his followers.

***

Following the destruction of one of its subsidiary dungeon core, the core had entered a frenzied panic at the loss of self from the theft it had suffered. After that, it had worked to push further expansion, using the Concept of life that it had touched on to further transform and change its creatures, and it had also started one additional project.

After touching upon the Concept of life and the various revelations that had spawned from that transformative step, the core had made the logical deduction that there had to be other Concepts as well. If it had touched upon the Concept of life after reaching a threshold with its life mana affinity, then it would make sense that it would be possible to touch upon other Concepts by increasing its other affinities.

For that reason, the core started absorbing as many affinities as possible, and it soon reached the threshold for its earth affinity as well. The other affinities needed to be improved further, and for some reason, with the earth affinity, the core felt a strange impression that reaching the threshold with its earth affinity was not nearly enough. Unlike when it had reached that limit with life affinitied mana, it felt like there was something more missing with the earth affinity, as though it was incomplete or just one part of a much greater whole.

It started seeking out pockets of mana that were more potently tainted with various affinities in order to absorb them and increase its own affinities. It managed to quickly improve its water and air affinities, and it also found a few areas that had some decay affinity. However, it was never able to find another place with death mana, which was frustrating.

It almost felt like the death mana had been removed somehow, which did not make much sense to the core.

Months passed, but the core refrained from creating any additional dungeons. It had not been able to learn what had happened to rip away such a large portion of its territory away, as well as take its undead dungeon and its access to death mana, but had deduced that the subsidiary core must have been taken or destroyed somehow.

This conclusion introduced a new reality to the core: the fear of death.

The core had finally come to understand that it could not only be injured, but that if its subsidiary cores could be taken away or destroyed, then its main self could as well. The feeling of mortality was far more terrifying than what the core had felt before when the mana users had attacked it.

At that time, the core had only really feared the possibility of having its territory and creatures destroyed, but had not even considered the possibility of being destroyed itself, which made this sense of vulnerability a disturbing realization for the core.

It started not only looking at how it could better protect itself, but also for other safeguards that would help it avoid total destruction. It moved deeper and deeper into the earth, and three months after losing its undead dungeon, the core reached a strange new region of the earth.

It had touched magma flows and pockets in the past, as well as the water table, caves, underground rivers, and many strange stones and a few odd liquids, but once the core started descending once again after trying to spread out laterally for several years, it soon reached an endless sea of magma.

This rather stumped the core, as it seemed that it would somehow have to alter this sea of liquid, burning stone in order to proceed any further, but every time it tried to do so, its efforts were burned up and swept away by the seemingly endless region blocking its way.

The only good thing to finding the seemingly impassable obstacle was the fact that after just a few days, the core’s fire affinity also reached the threshold.

With this, the core had reached a limit for its life, earth, fire, water, and air affinities. It had also made some progress with decay and death affinities, but it could also sense that there were other affinities. Unfortunately, it had such a weak connection to those affinities that it was impossible to even determine what they were, and oddly enough, the core had already learned about more affinities than humans knew existed, as they were ignorant of death and decay affinities.

More interesting, the core had felt as though a final piece had fallen into place when it had reached the threshold with its fire affinity. Something had formed from the combination of earth, water, air, fire, and life affinities, but the core knew it would take a bit longer to break past the limits restricting it from touching upon another concept, even if it had no idea what that concept might be.

While waiting for some sort of inspiration that would allow it to continue descending into the earth, and also to be able to break through the barrier that prevented it from touching upon its second concept, the core started a new project. It had noticed that the single location it had found with a concentration of death mana had appeared at the same location that humans had buried their dead for untold years, so the core decided to try to replicate that same situation itself.

While the humans usually made sure to take their dead back with them, and the core’s own creatures were reabsorbed by the core as their bodies were transformed back into the mana that the core had fed them to raise them, after the core’s tantrum, there had been a number of human bodies that had been left behind throughout the dungeon during the core’s frenzied state, and while the humans had waited to see if things returned to normal, the core had gathered all of the bodies that had been left behind after it had somewhat recovered, and had placed all of them in the ground in a hidden cavern.

From that point forward, every time another human died within the dungeons, the core did its absolute best to collect the corpse and add it to its collection. It had only managed to gather a few dozen bodies from its outburst and the following few months, but it could be patient and continue to slowly accumulate bodies.

While still hesitant to create another dungeon, the core also located a few places that it wanted to eventually use for additional dungeons, either due to the mana in that particular location, or the special proximity to human settlements.

Overall, the core spent more than a year to recover from its trauma, as well as prepare for the future and ensure it would never be destroyed.

It was a time of waiting and building up. The core needed for certain things to change so that it could continue to develop.

Finally, almost two years after losing its third dungeon, when spring was in full swing once again, the core felt the barrier that had been holding it back finally loosen and fade away.

At that moment, the core was finally able to touch upon another concept, but this time, it could feel that it was not just a single affinity that was connected to this concept, but multiple affinities: earth, fire, water, air, and even life affinities all surged as the core touched upon the Concept of growth.

While closely connected to the Concept of life, the core instantly understood that life was nothing more than a single aspect of growth. This was not a minor Concept, but a higher Concept.

Also, the core could once again feel that others had already touched this concept, and they also controlled far more of this mysterious, esoteric power.

Even so, the core was already able to sense how the Concept of growth would allow it to more quickly raise and develop its creatures, as well as expand itself at an accelerated rate. With the combination of the two concepts, as well as full mastery of several different mana affinities, the core was able to sense that it would gain far more freedom in designing, developing, and even creating new creatures. With this combination, it might even be possible to develop new forms of life, rather than simply modify or merge existing forms.