Finally, the core had found an alternative to using Anba’s followers to test out the humans’ hidden potential.

While the god’s followers who had entered the dungeons had indeed granted the core some level of success, it had simply not been enough. The god was not one of the primary deities worshiped in most places, and on top of that, it was Hidde’s followers who were typically drawn to the dungeons, not Anba’s.

Fortunately, the highest leveled human had passively accepted enough of the core’s influence to allow the core near total freedom, provided the core was granted permission.

Even better, the man’s strengthened body already possessed a great deal of energy, which granted the core far, far more flexibility and options.

The only downside to the matter was that this option only became possible after a human had passively accepted at least as much of the core’s influence as that man had, as well as giving explicit and specific permission.

However, once those two conditions were met, the possibilities seemed endless. In fact, the core’s greatest struggle had been to limit the list of possibilities for the man while also offering the few details that the core had been able to determine for those specific options. Only a few things such as increased strength, vitality, agility, or mana affinities had been clear, while everything else, including physical appearance, could only be discovered after the changes were enacted.

The core simply lacked a sufficient sample size to be certain of how various changes would manifest.

As the years had passed, the core had become increasingly intrigued by Burt’s progress, not only in the dungeon, but also in how he had accepted the core’s influence and how the core had been able to enact changes to the man’s body. He was essentially the only person to be successful in challenging any of the dungeons all alone, which only occurred due to his unusual circumstances.

Burt had been a soldier with decades of experience even before his first time entering a dungeon, and he was also one of the very few soldiers with dungeon experience who had survived the fall of Farun.

The Savaren Empire carefully tracked all of their soldiers with dungeon training, as such people were regarded as the empire’s most valuable military assets.

Many people were continuing to delve into dungeons, but none possessed Burt’s experience and skill while also moving on their own. Most trained individuals understood the need of a team for venturing into places as dangerous and unpredictable as the dungeons, but during his military days, Burt had always served as his squad’s scout and woodsman. He had always been accustomed to acting on his own, and was far more comfortable doing so.

The core presented several available options to Burt, including the same ones that were possible for most humans, given the widespread presence of those particular hidden recessive traits that the core could strengthen and make dominant. Nearly every human could become an elf or a dwarf, but the core had also found several other options, as well as compatibility for humans to potentially combine with other creatures.

Using the humans’ terms for such things, Burt had been offered the options of dwarf, elf, a half fish, a partial cat, a half horse, and interestingly enough, half elemental.

Despite lacking mana, Burt had a surprisingly strong affinity for the earth and for life, and could become a half-elemental of either affinity.

Despite the core’s desire to experiment with never-before-seen options, Burt selected the predicted option, and the core initiated the transformation. It would be interesting to see what Burt would accomplish with his new abilities.

The core’s progress had greatly accelerated after Anba’s submission, as it had granted the core instant gains in several different Concepts. With only Yur continuing to resist the core’s full control of the Concept of life, progress had accelerated, and the creation of new species nearly always brought about an increase in the core’s control of the Concept of life and growth.

Interestingly enough, the creation of the fire bird, which Azthak had called a phoenix, had pushed the core’s mastery of the Concept of life further than any other single accomplishment had ever done. It would not be long before Yur was forced entirely out of the two Concepts.

The core had finally learned what all of the Concepts were, though it still lacked access to destruction, chaos, and stability. Still, it was already able to feel a slight resonance forming as its mastery of life, death, growth, and order all increased.

Unfortunately, Anba’s submission had also complicated things greatly for the core, as it had introduced the core to a great deal of knowledge that it was still struggling to fully process.

The idea of non-physical entities and how they interacted with the world did not mesh well with the core’s understanding of reality, and yet both aspects clearly existed.

Even worse, the core was yet to have found a way to incorporate the gods into its automated systems that were running so many of its dungeons. How was the core supposed to measure or evaluate gods using the same metrics as its creatures or the humans? The gods lacked physical bodies, which had always been the basis of all of the core’s measurements.

The best comparison the core could make was that measuring the gods’ power with its current systems that it was testing was much like trying to measure a human’s mana capacity by using vitality as a standard. It was simply impossible.

It looked like the core would need to create a new measurement, but for that, it needed to have a much greater understanding of the gods and their power.

Just one more mystery that the core needed to explore.

Fortunately, the core had nearly pushed Yur out of the Concepts of life and growth and Ixel from the Concept of death, and progress with other Concepts was proceeding quite well. The core felt a tremendous feeling of satisfaction by completing something, as it was much like adding a new treasure to its hoard, and such accomplishments could not be stolen no matter what.

As time passed, the core was increasingly being drawn towards non-tangible treasures, as such things were often far more secure than physical treasures, though there was no denying that physical treasures made it much easier for the core to deal with many creatures, including both humans and dragons. Both of those foolish creatures coveted the shiny wealth of the earth that the core could gather all too easily.

The core had already pushed Burt’s transformation over to its dungeon system when it experienced the oddest sensation of its entire existence.

Someone was praying to it.

***

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Hidde was less than happy at the fact that he needed to speak to Anba. While Hidde was fairly certain that Anba had betrayed the human pantheon, the lack of total confidence made approaching the god of the sun an extremely risky endeavor.

Unfortunately, there was no choice.

As soon as Hidde left Azthak, he reached out to Anba. Gods were odd entities that not even they themselves truly understood. They incorporated aspects of the natural world, Concepts, mana, and the faith of their believers to even exist, and yet despite such extreme limitations, their power within the scope of their Authority seemed to be nearly without limits.

Unfortunately, Authority complicated things far more than Concepts, as it meant that each god was essentially living on a separate divine plane, and they could only truly interact with each other in the physical realm. Gods could reach out to each other, provided they knew the other’s Authority and could target it, but to actually interact, they had to go to the physical realm.

Because of this, Hidde formed a minor avatar in the world, and then reached out to Anba’s Authority and asked for the other god to enter the physical realm as well.

Anba had always been insufferably arrogant, as though being the god of the sun and sky somehow made him superior to the other gods. Just as Hidde had anticipated, Anba took half a day to even acknowledge Hidde’s request, and then a further half a day to arrive with his own avatar.

Even before he sensed Anba’s arrival, Hidde was staring at the sky. Exactly as he had anticipated, Anba descended from the sky in line with the sun, attempting to provoke the illusion of descending to earth from the sun itself.

It was a bunch of foolish theatrics which only impressed mortal worshippers, and yet Anba insisted on the same method of arrival every single time.

Hidde suppressed his irritation. He was the one asking for a favor this time, and that inferior position rankled more than the god of battle cared to admit.

Anba slowly, oh, so painfully slowly, descended from the sky. By the time he arrived before Hidde, the sun had moved a quarter of the way across the sky, and even an immortal god like Hidde was about to try to murder the insufferable god of the sky.

“Hidde, my comrade and companion, what can I do for you that you have requested my presence here?”

I need him. I need him. Just get the information, and then break him. Hidde suppressed his irritation and mounting rage. Only after reducing the roiling emotions to a steady simmer did the god open his avatar’s mouth. “Anba, I hope that our past… history will amply demonstrate the importance of what I wish to discuss.”

Anba grimaced at the comment, as it had not been too many years since Hidde had grown bored of the humans’ petty squabbles and had decided a divine opponent would be more entertaining.

The fact that the god of battle had declared a holy war against Anba’s followers in the southern continent had slightly weakened the god, and he was yet to fully recover from that particular ordeal.

Still, Anba currently held the upper hand at the moment, and he was not about to lose it. “I barely even remembered that minor incident before you mentioned it. However, now that you have brought it up, you leave me curious as to what prompted you to reach out to me. Is there something the matter?”

Hidde took a moment to gather himself. He had spent time considering his arguments for speaking with Azthak, but had not prepared nearly as much for speaking with Anba. It was not ideal, but at the same time, Anba was not the same caliber of an opponent as Azthak.

“It has become clear to me that there has been a shift in the balance of the world, and because of that, I wish to ensure that I am with the final victor.”

Unfortunately for Hidde, Anba’s reaction was pure confusion. The god was better at verbal sparring that Hidde had known. After all, there was no way the god of the sun could be that clueless, right?

“A shift in the balance of the world? What is this you speak of? Have you been a part of some conflict that I’ve been unaware of?”

Hidde stared at Anba, uncertain of what to make of this response. Still, it seemed that Anba was forcing the discussion to be more direct than Hidde preferred.

“In that case, I will cut to the heart of the matter: I wish to submit to the same Authority that you have and join your liege.”

Anba’s confusion appeared to only grow stronger, though Hidde could not understand the purpose of the act. Submitting to another’s Authority was not something that was done lightly, and it was impossible for Anba to have done so inadvertently, so why was he acting so ignorant?

“Anba, correct me if I am mistaken, but you submitted to a greater Authority a few years ago, did you not?”

“Yes. Was I not just officially submitting to Yur? The submission happened quite automatically when that Authority and I made contact. It is clearly far more encompassing and complete than my own, so the submission happened quite outside of my control. Nothing was ever said of the matter, and Yur has not approached me since that moment, but I can think of no one else with an Authority so much greater than my own that I was unable to put up any resistance at all.”

Hidde stared at his fellow god, both appalled and enlightened. He understood Anba’s confusion to Hidde’s questions, though this also meant that either Anba was more of a fool than Hidde had ever realized, or some outside power had been subtly pushing Anba to ignore what had happened.

It was more a matter of self-respect than any sort of respect for Anba that Hidde leaned towards the second option. After millenia of interactions, Hidde refused to believe that he could have overestimated Anba, no matter how pathetic a god he might be.

It was times like this that Hidde missed the elves’ sun goddess, who had been Anba’s rival. She had possessed the Authority of heaven, rather than the sun and the sky, and because of that, she had wielded the most powerful Authority in the elves’ pantheon.

Fighting her had been the greatest pleasure Hidde had ever known, and defeating her had been a truly bittersweet moment.

Hidde’s mind raced as he scrambled to understand how to handle this unexpected development, but only saw one possible avenue before him. “I see. Well, as you are aware, my Authority allows me to sense the balance in any conflict, as well as sometimes the opportunity to shift that balance in favor of one side or another. Currently, I am able to sense a conflict at the divine level, but the balance has shifted, and victory is all but certain at this moment. My issue is that while I cannot sense that I am opposed to the victor, I am clearly not allied with them. Because of this, as well as the fact that I can sense that you have already joined the victor, I wish to submit to the same Authority that you have.

“Tell me, what Authority do you answer to?”

The god of battle’s frustration mounted as Anba gaped at him. Truly, Anba had to be the most useless god in the entire pantheon!

“All of that has been going on behind the scenes? I had no idea… Well, at least I’ve already picked the winner! How fortuitous!

“Unfortunately, I don’t have much to tell you about the Authority I submitted to, as merely a brush of it against my own was all that it took for things to be settled. The impression I received from that brief exchange was of, well, everything.”

“... Everything?”

“Exactly. You can surely understand my dilemma. How do I narrow down an Authority so all-encompassing that it seems to leave absolutely nothing out? I am truly sorry, Hidde, but I cannot help you with this.”

Hidde nodded. “In that case, thank you for your time and consideration, and please, let me know if you learn anything further.”

“Of course.”

Hidde allowed his image to fade away as he left the physical world. While Anba was ignorant and an idiot, he had actually given Hidde exactly the information he had asked for, even if it had been unknowingly.

Hidde reached out towards the Authority of totality.

***

Another one had defected. Yur could sense their absence. While she had always felt that the young gods could be so foolish and impatient, this time, she could not help but understand their behavior.

Yur was already defeated, so why not pledge themselves to the ultimate victor? Yur had always been the most powerful divinity on the planet, but she had never held total control to the point that she could truly rule over any of the other gods. Besides, her Authority simply did not allow for such things.

As she had assumed, Yur’s last years were proving to be quite interesting to observe.