The four Prime Gods have long-since gone into a long sleep, leaving the world to the lesser gods. As such, few worship at their temples and even fewer know much about the days when they ruled our world.
The four Prime Gods are: Artur of Order, Daji of Chaos, Belial of Darkness, and Abdiel of Light.
It is said that all four gods fell from a higher dimension and claimed a part of this world’s Primal Aspects for themselves during the First Age. Each of them is known for having created a race that later came to be their primary worshipers and servants. Artur created the elves, Daji the spirit foxes, Belial the oni, and Abdiel the humans.
During the First Age, the people of our world worshiped the four Prime Gods only. However, at the suggestion of Daji, the decision was made by the four to create the lesser gods, giving them fragments of their power that later came to be known as Divine Aegises. The individuals who took on those aegises were the greatest cultivators from amongst their worshipers, individuals whose unique cultivation suited the thrones they were destined to take.
However, the four Prime Gods misjudged their own power, and it was only a few centuries later when the lesser gods used their power in concert to tear apart and seal away the Prime Gods. The humans resisted this the most fiercely, devoted to Abdiel to the point of madness, but this only resulted in the destruction of their civilization. It was at this time that the Class System was introduced.
At the time humans were still afforded access to the system, and it was only when a human ‘predator’ (individuals known for mass-slaughter for the sake of leveling) reached the highest level possible that matters came to a head. Humankind, led by their brightest light, attempted to invade the Temple of Light on the Lost Continent, intending to break the seal on Abdiel. Their brief military success was stalled when an army of daemons, werewolves and mystics – three new races created by gods who ascended in the time between the fall of the Primes and humanity’s reconstruction of their civilization – decided to intervene.
The war that ensued lasted for over a century, and it ended with humanity’s champions slain to a man, humankind declared a slave race, and every human stripped of the system and the power that came with it. To this day, all humans are born into slavery and die still a slave, though civilized lands have laws against excessive mistreatment or attempts to exterminate them (which were frequent at first).
At the end of the Second Age, the continent was lost, sunken beneath the waves to remove all access to the Temples where the four Prime Gods’ true bodies were sealed. Today, the Dead Zone, where nothing can live and no islands pierce the surface of the ocean, marks the place where the Lost Continent once was.
~Excerpt from A Study of the First and Second Ages
Daji’s true self, her tails ripped away and sealed separately, sat on her ancient throne at the bottom of the Dead Zone’s Ocean. Spikes of iridescent green metal pierced her body, nailing her to the throne so that she couldn’t escape, but she suffered not at all. Through her shadows in various dungeons run by her former subordinates, she experienced a wide variety of different situations, keeping her from falling into boredom and ennui.
Despite everything, there wasn’t any hatred in her toward the gods who sealed her away. She was quite well-aware that if she had remained free, she and the other gods would have eventually destroyed the world to fulfill the desires instilled in them by their aspects. While she had few mortal worshipers, her subordinate gods sufficed, a portion of the power they gained from their followers flowing to her as the origin of their aegises.
However, one shouldn’t forget that Daji was not a creature of good heart or compassion. Her drives were inhuman, alien both to man and beast. Even her fellow Primes failed to understand her, and it was why Chaos had chosen her upon her fall into this plane of existence.
Within Daji existed an endless well of malevolence born of that alien nature, a nightmarish existence that even her subordinate gods had never imagined was possible. She was full of a deep deep love, a love that drove her to corrupt, to ruin, to destroy. She loved her descendants, she loved the men who had been chosen as her lovers, and she loved her subordinate gods and their replacements.
That was the Chaos Pantheon’s great misfortune, for there was no possible way the seals could protect them from her love, as they weren’t designed to prevent her from loving others… only from acting directly upon the surface world.
So it was that the Chaos Pantheon’s aegises changed hands more often than any of the other three by far. Even Change would fall to her love in time, though the current holder of that title believed he was an exception.
That had been the problem with Daji on Earth. Unlike her fellow powerful fox spirits, from the very beginning she had had that deep, endless well of malevolent love within her. When she loved men of power, she corrupted them and brought their lands to ruin. When she loved normal men, they became monsters who would do anything to see her smile. When she loved other women, they fell into madness as their nature was twisted through the subtlest of nudges, until they passed beyond the point of no return.
Her own children were twisted in ways so subtle that it was impossible to tell they were anything but normal children until it was too late. Her descendants suffered from fits of madness and obsessions that made little sense.
So it was that Earth’s Maker had cast her out long ago, resulting in her fall into this particular lower plane of existence. For the great nine-tailed fox in all her malice, Chaos was a perfect fit, and so she waited for thousands of years, until the first of her fellow Primes, Artur, arrived and claimed his place, beginning the great game.
Her influence could be seen in every aspect of their world’s formation. Chaos had only amplified her malevolence’s effects upon the world, and the echoes of even her shadows’ actions were often sufficient to cause strife and despair throughout the world.
Daji’s smile as she read the memories of one of her shadows, of a particularly interesting descendant, was chilling in its malevolence, the love in that smile not in anyway detracting from the cruelty and madness in her gaze. It was a pity that few understood just how much her existence twisted reality, for even her former subordinates failed to understand that it was folly to leave her a way to interact – however indirectly – with the world outside.
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Artur sat upon a wooden throne in the depths of the ocean. Unlike Daji’s throne, which was decorated with jade and silver, his throne was plain and unadorned. The man himself was dressed in simple robes that somehow remained dry and perfectly intact after thousands of years underwater.
His eyes were closed, but – as always – he watched his former subordinates – his betrayers – through the shadows they summoned. Unlike Daji, he never acted through them. He was accustomed to long periods of imprisonment and sleep. Being sealed away was not even a hardship for him.
His sword was sealed away separate from him in the Temple’s vault. Without it, much of his power was lost to him, but he didn’t regret putting most of his aspect into the weapon. Unlike the other three, he could think clearly and remained himself despite being linked to a primal aspect of their plane of existence.
His exile from Earth was different from Daji’s. He was presented a choice when the process of deification began through people’s belief in him on Earth. He could be destroyed like the pantheons that had risen before, or he could be cast down to a lower plane, where his rise to divinity would not disrupt the order of the Maker’s creation.
Being a sane, rational man despite his reputation for idealism, he agreed – with some regrets for his inability to salvage his homeland – and fell into this world, where the most beautiful woman he had ever met awaited him, becoming his counterpart.
Unlike the others, he knew precisely what Daji was. She reminded him of Morganna at her worst. Both of them had an immense depth of evil within them, concealed by the love they displayed so openly. Both of them broke and corrupted others as easily and as casually as breathing.
As such, he was never fooled.
Belial and Abdiel both failed to understand what she was, to the very end. Belial was too rational. He ignored his instincts in favor of logic, ignoring the paradoxes. Abdiel was fundamentally incapable of comprehending the threat Daji represented to reality just by being allowed to speak.
It was why he had convinced his followers to conspire against them. Artur knew that if Daji was left unchecked, she would destroy everything. Creatures like her couldn’t help themselves.
Even now, through his few followers in spirit fox lands, he saw the way her influence twisted the race she created. The constant conspiracies, the bloody purges, the decadent parties, the constant betrayals, the private obsessions and institutionalized corruption…
Worse was that the Empire was stable and functioning while all those things went on. It showed no signs of crumbling whatsoever despite how corrupt its foundations were. Given the monster that ruled there, it should have fallen long ago. It was a playground for Chaos in general and Daji’s shadows in particular.
He felt ill whenever he spent too much time observing that country.
He wondered if Belial and Abdiel still raged against their chains. He knew Daji didn’t. His greatest miscalculation was how much influence she would retain even after being sealed away. To put it bluntly… she was accustomed to being sealed. It had happened dozens of times on Earth before her exile, and she had continued to influence the world even while chained beneath the soil or turned to stone.
Her poison was ruining the world and there was nothing he could do about it.
Oh, it was unlikely it would reach critical levels anytime soon. However, the speed with which her favorite aegis (Mischief) turned over was accelerating as she played with each one until they lost everything, all the while thinking themselves to be players in the game rather than pawns. Change was resisting her influence, but even he had let her shadows into his territory.
It was hard to tell whether Madness was effected, from his observations. Historically, the goddesses of Madness were always impossible to read, and their actions never seemed to be effected by anything outside their own minds.
Conflict was definitely sliding into self-destructive tendencies, though he wasn’t as far along as the current Mischief.
Artur knew himself for a failure. He had always been a failure, even at the height of his glory. He was born at the Maker’s instigation to force civilization to move forward despite the dark ages of the time. However, in the end he fell to his own arrogant disregard for the machinations of his half-sister, believing that he could secure her happiness through the happiness of the people.
He had only seen Morgan’s true nature at the end, when everything was lost and the homonculus that called itself his son stood before him on the battlefield. He had been unwilling to see the truth until it was too late.
Morgan’s love was similar to Daji’s, though it was entirely personal in nature, rather than the all-encompassing love Daji possessed. She loved Artur, but the way she displayed it made little sense to anyone but herself.
Perhaps it was the eternal youth his sword cursed him with or the immense power granted him by the dragon’s blood. One way or another, he simply hadn’t been able to see how his vision for a utopia was not truly shared by so many of his followers. Most had seen him as just another dynast.
Artur often ruminated on his past since his resurrection. Being cast down to this world was his punishment for his failure and his reward for his service to the Maker. He had chosen to make the elves to fulfill his vicarious desire for freedom from his own need to control and dominate his surroundings.
As such, the elves had a freedom of spirit he lacked. Their prosperity brought him joy, and their resistance to Chaos – granted by his blessing – meant that Daji’s indirect influence only had minimal effects upon them.
Shrines to him gathered moss in the forests of elven lands, and small statues of him still remained, unpolished and dirtied by time’s passage in their cities. However, he was untroubled by this. He’d never wanted the elves’ worship, only desiring that they live as they wished.
He cast his eye upon the boy favored by Daji and sighed. The decision to mark one of Mischief’s toys had paid dividends in showing him the patterns of Daji’s subtle influence. Again and again the boy was directed to convenient situations for his growth, only to encounter one of her shadows at precisely the right time to accelerate his atavism and weaken his elven bloodline even further.
He doubted Mischief understood the effect’s Artur’s blessing upon the elven bloodlines. He probably just thought elves were less vulnerable to his machinations. He also doubted the current Mischief had any comprehension of Daji’s insidiousness.
For the chains that had bound the boy were not just weakened… they had been partially overwritten. Artur could see the subtle strings attached to the boy’s flesh and mind, hidden by the chains of the weakened geasa. He couldn’t see their purpose, but he really didn’t need to. She would try to corrupt the boy beyond salvation, and he was helpless to do anything about it unless the boy managed to enter one of the dungeons where his few shadows existed.
Needless to say, that was highly unlikely.
He continued to observe, sad and helpless to stop whatever plans Daji and her puppets indulged in.
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Belial chuckled as he eyed the clairvoyant portal beside his throne, moving his knight to take the rook of the ancient daemon sitting across from him, “Artur looks as frustrated as always. I wonder what he sees when he looks out on the world?”
The ancient daemon, one of the last pureblood members of the race, sighed as he took the knight with his bishop, “Milord, you really need to get a better hobby than watching Artur suffer.”
“What can I say? He is the only former human amongst our number, and it makes him so much more interesting to watch,” Belial replied, chuckling, his deep crackling baritone vibrating the entire sunken ruin of the Temple of Darkness.
Unlike the other three, Belial was relatively free to move within the bounds of his temple. Due to the nature of his favored attacks, it had simply been too dangerous to try to fight him up close, and the Temple itself was turned into a seal that entirely suppressed his ability to effect the outside world.
The daemon was the man who once served as his prime minister, Daegus Somli. His visits were one of the few breaks Belial had from the monotony of his imprisonment.
Belial was a massive figure with gray leathery skin, a humanoid form seven meters high. His legs resembled those of a wolf, his white beard falling down to below his groin. Crimson eyes leered out of cavernous eye sockets, and he had a lantern jaw accentuated by the twin horns emerging from their sides. Four more horns framed his head like a crown, and he had long pointed ears that were pointed downward from the sides of his head.
Belial was perhaps the most straightforward of the four Prime Gods. He was cruel and tyrannical, and he welcomed those with power while sneering at the weak. If it weren’t for his fundamental laziness, his personal power would have let him lay waste to the world before he was sealed away, but he hated to make himself work when he didn’t have to.
He sat on the floor below his throne, the chess board between them at about stomach height for Daegus.
“Master, why haven’t you broken out yet? I noticed the sigils protecting the seal’s core have been erased,” Daegus asked, his voice accusing.
“Do you have any idea how exhausting it was being a Prime God, Daegus? You know I hate to work,” Belial replied simply. It wasn’t a joke. Belial’s essential nature was sloth, above all other things. His cruel, tyrannical side was simply a reflection of his annoyance at being forced to work.
Originally, he was cast out of Hell for ignoring his work for centuries on end. When he fell to this plane, Darkness latched onto him, forcing him to become a Prime God. As a result, he’d spent thousands of miserable years working his ass off to fulfill the responsibilities that were placed upon him.
Being sealed away was a convenient excuse not to work, to his mind. His favorite race, the daemons, were almost extinct, and the oni didn’t worship him anymore. He didn’t have any real reason to make an escape attempt in the first place.
Undoing parts of the seal was more of a hobby to him, like knitting. He could have escaped a thousand years ago, but then he would have been forced into cataclysmic confrontations with the pantheons, Honestly, just the thought of all the work I would have to do to counter them gives me a headache.
Since parts of their bodies and spirits were used to create the system, they weren’t limited by it the way the other gods were. If they undid the seals, the four Prime Gods could immediately take control of the system and use it whatever way they wanted.
Personally, Belial found the Skill System currently being used to be boring compared to the chaos caused by the old Class System. It did equalize things to an extent, but that just meant that exceptional individuals of great age dominated everything and there were few ways for the young to challenge them.
The era of the Class System had been a joy to watch. The Darkness had prospered during that time, as the vicious, the murderous, and the ruthless had prospered greatly. New gods had risen and fallen in a blink of the eye, and entire cities had evaporated in moments, sacrificed to fuel the levels of old monsters who sought godhood.
Nowadays, there just weren’t that many ways to flip the game board, so Belial rarely found anything more interesting to watch than Artur’s conflicted mumblings.
Occasionally, he looked in on Daji’s descendants, but there was only so much political gaming and love-hate relationships he could enjoy before it began to bore him. He might have started out as a demon, but he wasn’t sadistic enough to wish Daji’s bloodline on anyone.
“Master, I know you hate to work, but Chaos is absorbing the forces of Darkness behind the scenes. At this rate, we will lose the Destroyer, Shadows, and Death to the Chaos Pantheon!” Daegus attempted to persuade the ancient demon-god.
However, Belial was unmoved, “Even if I come out, Daji still wins. I know you don’t get it, but that woman is a lot scarier than the rest of us. She’ll probably be overwhelmed with glee if I come out right now, as my presence on the game board will cause more chaos, making it easier for her to operate behind the scenes.”
“But…!” The daemon tried to protest.
“No buts, old friend. If you want to counter her, you need to release Abdiel and Artur, not me. Both of them will act against her with their full strength and don’t have the vulnerabilities I do,” Belial said flatly. Belial feared little in this lower plane, where his power was nearly absolute. However, Daji was one of those few things. To put it simply, he couldn’t envision a future possibility – despite his ability to manipulate probability – where he managed to put her down completely. He was unsure if this was because her abilities countered his or the possibility just didn’t exist, though.
Belial specialized in four areas of sorcery. One was the viewing and manipulation of probability; the second was the creation of annihilation magic through manifestation of paradoxical probabilities; the third the creation of rulesets within a set ‘domain’; and the last was divination of reality. If he couldn’t discover a way to remove Daji’s influence from the world, then it was likely that it wasn’t within his ability to do so.
However, despite how close they were in the past, Daegus was never told about his master’s sorcery. As such, he misjudged the weight of Belial’s decision, thinking it was just his old friend being recalcitrant once again.
The next moment, Daegus was gone, his existence wiped from all the parallel versions of reality in that spot at that time. All the different versions of Belial in those many parallel worlds sighed sadly at the same time and muttered, “You should have just let it go.”
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Abdiel lay across the massive dais that served as his altar in the Temple of Light, his twelve wings each having stakes of orichalcum driven through them at the joints, blood weeping eternal from the festering wounds. His arms and legs were gone, and his heart was gouged out, each of them sealed separately at different shrines across the Lost Continent. Of the four Prime Gods, his seal was the most thorough. Daji merely had her tails removed; Belial was mostly free to do as he wished, and Artur was entirely whole, sitting on his throne.
In addition to those festering wounds, a nail was driven through his forehead, constantly burning away at his brain to prevent him from thinking.
There were reasons for the thoroughness of his confinement. Abdiel’s powers were not at all subtle or unpredictable, but they were incredibly difficult to handle once activated.
His primary power was purification, driven by his connection to the Light aspect. Any and all impurities could be banished with a mere effort of will. However, this was not the power that was most feared.
Nor was his mastery of the plain soldier’s sword and shield he preferred to wield upon the battlefield. While he was unmatched even by Artur in close combat, it was not the reason he was feared.
No, the reason he was feared was a unique talent, a sorcery that had resulted in his exile from Earth far earlier than even Daji or Belial. It was the talent that had resulted in him being cast into Oblivion in hopes that it would consume him.
It was the ability to overcome anything and everything he saw as an obstacle. Abdiel was the ultimate defier, surpassing even Lucifer in this one aspect. Starting out as the lowest-ranking of all angels, during the war in the heavens, he climbed the ranks, killing those stronger than him again and again until he reached the highest rank below the Four.
It was the decision he came to after the war was over that drove his exile… he defied the Maker.
However, the Maker immediately recognized that the danger Abdiel represented, while no threat to Him personally, was a threat to every one of his creations. So instead of striking him down, he removed Abdiel from the game board.
Abdiel’s emergence in this lower plane happened tens of thousands of years later, and it was only after the other three Prime Gods had been chosen. In the end, it was only the sudden betrayal of his new subordinates, and their success in plunging a stake that constantly emitted corrupting flames into his skull that allowed him to be sealed. If there had been any sort of fight, that would have been the end of the rebellion and the First Age would have continued.
It was also why all the gods had unified and cursed humanity when they attempted to free him during the Second Age, despite their animosity toward one another.
No one wanted to see Abdiel free.
So Abdiel continued to sleep, unaware of anything, his body and soul utterly still as time passed and the world turned.
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I continued to swing the doutanuki over and over, going through katana kata after katana kata, modifying some of them to include the heavy chopping strikes he often used with the heavier scimitar and larger sabers. The doutanuki was definitely heavier and more suited to rough use than a standard katana. Part of that was the metal it was made out of, which could repair minor damage as long as I provided it some sort of energy (it seemed to prefer qi though). Another part of it was that the weapon was wider, giving it a larger and tougher ‘spine’ to support it severing bone and metal.
Occasionally, I practiced using the lightning to enhance my reaction speed, which seemed to be the most efficient usage of the metal energy embedded in my nervous system. I noticed the more I practiced this, the denser the energy concentrated in my nervous system, gradually increasing the amount of time I could hold that state. At present it was only a minute and a half, but I figured that with enough training, I could extend its limits a lot farther.
It wasn’t a skill… but in a way, that made me feel better about it. Skills had a way of taking on a life of their own once you leveled them. The angle of a blade’s swing, the timing of a feint, the calculations required to cast a spell… gaining a level in a skill inevitably made subtle alterations to how you performed every action related to those skills. These alterations were probably based upon some sort of template built into the system, given how difficult it was to alter them even if you made a concentrated effort to do so.
Soldiers on the battlefield mostly swung their swords, thrust their spears, chopped with their axes, and cast their spells in exactly the same way. Only differences in the weapons themselves and the body shapes of those wielding them made any difference. However, people like Diandra, who realized this early on, began wielding their weapons in ways meant to counter the purely skill-based techniques. In fact, those taught in formal schools were usually instructed specifically on how to evade the control of the system on their weapon techniques.
I was forced by both my grandfather and Tatha to learn how to break the system’s control of my own skills, a process I had to go through every time they leapt forward. To put it bluntly, the purely martial skills were rather obvious in their flaws if you knew what you were doing.
Oh, they were good, in the sense that the strikes were powerful and effective. Even the feints that began to appear automatically at skill level 3 were fine… if it weren’t for the fact that everyone at the same skill level could do the same. That was where ‘styles’ and practicing kata that took just enough of the system’s guidance to be useful without chaining yourself to it became important.
Someone at level 10 in the Sword skill who let the system guide them through their attacks would always lose to someone who had broken the control of the system at the same level. It was that simple. It wasn’t necessarily that way with magic, but in the case of both qigong and sage arts, it was definitely true. Magic was reliant on equations and various other elements that required a great deal of system guidance to get right, but there were literally thousands of potential methods to learn qigong or sage arts that produced different results at the same level.
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I began to go through a series of fights against opponents I’d faced in the past.
I thrust my blade at an opponent visible only in my mind, a young elf boy with desperate eyes that haunted me, dressed in ragged leather armor with a battered spear in hand. My sword punctured the shadow’s throat, and I twisted the blade to the side and ripped it free, the edge sweeping across the sword hand of the oni to his left.
The shadow oni dropped the heavy sword and instinctively tried to lean forward to grab it, but I used a spartan kick to knock him on his back before cutting through his right arm with a two-handed strike, followed by a quick stomp to the throat.
Several hours later, I stopped the shadow-fight with a sigh and sheathed my blade, plopping down on the ground with a sigh.
To be blunt, this was all a part of my attempts to get a sense of how to move my body properly. The female form’s center of gravity was different, and I was pretty sure I would need time to get used to the differences in how I moved.
Oddly, I wasn’t experiencing any sense of dysphoria about my body, despite the abrupt change. I would have expected my mind and emotions to be in turmoil, but I’d accepted the change rather easily…
The puppy followed me around wherever I went, and I was taking full advantage of the free stuff the dungeon core had presented me in apology for what Daji had done. If nothing else, the high-quality dried meat for the puppy saved me some coin.
And the puppy definitely ate. Over the last day, I had gone through five kilograms of dried meat, and I could see those eyes begging for more down near my shins.
With a sigh, I picked up the puppy and nestled it to my chest, where it promptly forgot about food and began to lick my chin happily.
The wolf puppy seemed to enjoy the new softness of my chest, burrowing its head into it when she got bored of tasting my chin. I caressed her head absently as I paced the arena grounds. Daji was above in the brothel, where the dungeon core was once again dressing her down for costing it more DP. Happily, I’d gained access to a lot of free food and cheaper items from the shop as an apology for what was done to me, but I still had to pay for access to the arena. Apparently, the dungeon could only absorb so many costs before the balance tipped too far in my direction.
I really need to name the puppy… I thought absently as I examined how my body had moved during practice, noting with a slight frown how moving as I was accustomed made me step a little too far forward or backward at awkward times due to the higher center of gravity. I would need to adjust for that a bit more than I anticipated.
Another issue were my claws… which were apparently poisoned. Oh, it was not a poison that would effect me, but it apparently caused hallucinations and compromised judgment in those I scratched with them. I would need to get caps to put over them or it wouldn’t be safe for me to shake hands or embrace my friends.
Apparently, the poison was energy-based, transforming all three forms of energy into that force that had empowered me during my cultivation in the lava pits and using the pill. The fragmentary memories of Tajiri’s time between lives gave me the feeling that it was the ‘essence’ the malevolent god had spoken of.
The poison had a ‘flavor’ to its energies that reminded me of Daji, which probably meant Chaos. It was little wonder it had effects on the mind.
My atavism had – oddly enough – settled down over the last few days. My eyes had turned a gold and gained a feral cast, whereas my facial features had become more refined, my skin smoother, and my muscles had shifted into a form more suited for explosive speed and agility rather than my male form’s more stamina-focused musculature.
This made a huge difference, especially because of my skill levels. Apparently, body shape and musculature effected how the body was enhanced by one’s skills. I’d lost some raw strength and stamina, but I could now run almost twice as fast as before and I found it easier to use moves that required finesse over strength.
My fur was also even silkier before, gaining a softness that made me more than a little proud of my tail and ears.
The last change was that I’d grown a rather large appetite for meat. Before the dungeon, I’d usually preferred balanced meals that were heavy on vegetables and grains (at least partially because I’d grown accustomed to it), but my body seemed to crave meat to a ridiculous degree over the last few days. I was unsure if this was a permanent change, but given the fact that my canines had grown larger and sharper and my front teeth had become somewhat sharper, I was fairly sure the cravings were something I would have to live with in the future.
I had a lot of orc meat in my inventory, which was basically super high-quality pork in flavor. So for the time being, I didn’t need to worry. However, it would become a problem if I ever got in a situation like right after we escaped slavery again.
Some people thought eating orc meat was distasteful, but the fact was that the creatures on the outside were all descendants of dungeon monsters and attacked people on sight. Despite the fact that they used tools and weapons, they couldn’t really be considered to be sapient. Of course, now that my body was female, I had to worry about them attempting to capture me for use in the breeding pens, but I knew a self-detonation spell if it came to that. There were good reasons why the first spell newbie female adventurers were taught in the more developed parts of the world was that self-detonation spell.
I released the wolf pup onto the ground and took an orc rib out of my inventory, tossing it to her. She happily took it in her surprisingly powerful jaws and began gnawing on it with small, adorable growls.
I returned to my practice, this time focusing entirely on adjusting to my body. I slowly but surely adjusted how I moved through each kata, subtly altering how I placed my feet, how I shifted the muscles of my lower back, and the angle at which I swung my sword.
My arms were slightly shorter, and my center of gravity higher, so I lost some reach, but it was possible for me to strike three times for every two I would have managed in my male form. My strides were shorter, but I could make five of them in the time it would have taken me to make two in my previous body.
I estimated I was about 1.6 times faster as a woman than I was as a man overall. My leg strength and abdominal strength had actually gone up, whereas my shoulders and hips had lost some muscle along with the shift in skeletal shape. The force I could put behind a straight punch was maybe two-thirds or less than what I could have put behind it before. However, I found it much easier to time the use of the explosive strides of the flash step technique the dragonnewts taught me.
Everything about the change was a matter of exchanges. I didn’t weigh less, but that weight had been redistributed. If this were a game, I would have exchanged endurance and strength for agility and dexterity.
It took me most of the rest of the day to fully adjust, and even that adjustment was nowhere near perfect. It was just enough not to make blatant mistakes in normal fighting. It would likely take me months of retraining to remaster my body completely, time the dungeon wouldn’t give me.
I sat down to meditate, my body soaked with sweat, my loose tunic clinging to my curves in a way I would have found attractive… if it weren’t me. I apparently still preferred females, which was interesting, but I had the feeling that that was more my soul than my body speaking. My body… was likely less picky about such things, from what little I could tell in isolation.
I wasn’t huge like Daji. Rather, I had just enough curves to make it obvious I was currently female while not being a pheromone factory capable of attracting every male for miles. I really didn’t want to have to deal with having two large melons on my chest, given how even my grapefruit-sized chest ached after hours of training. I would need to get something to bind those from the shop when I had the chance.
From what little Dantalian had said about it, my body was essentially the form that I would have had if I was born female naturally and had gone through the same life experiences. As such, it was impossible to tell if I would have such problems later.
I slowly removed those worries from my mind as I sank deeper inside myself, detaching my senses one by one, starting with sight, then hearing, then touch… until I removed everything but the sense of my energies.
Explaining what those energies feel like to someone who doesn’t have them is difficult at best. Qi is the easiest, as it swirls in an orb-like ‘chamber’ just below the navel before flowing through its ‘veins’ through my body. It then infiltrates every cell of my flesh, empowering them at an extremely slow rate over the course of years (in comparison with quick-use body-strengthening techniques, which add explosive powers to one’s body using bursts of qi).
Mana is much more difficult. While it is possible to tell it is mostly centered in the brain, there is no sense of a physical repository for it when I’m not using it. Mana requires a great deal more refining than qi does on a daily basis, as it doesn’t naturally restore itself over time. Every drop of mana must be refined from natural energy and combined with the energy that emanates from the mind, an energy that doesn’t have any official name I know about, since it can’t be used as-is (unlike vital energy, which can be channeled to some extent). As such, most people hesitate to use magic, preferring to utilize qi or spiritual energy when possible. This is only exacerbated by the way magic requires understanding and knowledge of mathematics that goes beyond addition and subtraction (which is all most people can be bothered to learn without orders from above). Magic’s requirements are the biggest reason why basic education is more advanced than you would think on this world, given its technological limitations.
Spiritual energy is incredibly difficult to define. Refining, manipulating, and using it all require that one be taught the tricks of doing so at a very young age, or the ability to do so will atrophy quickly. A child will inevitably find it easier to follow the source of their emotions and reach the root of their soul than an adult. In order to refine spiritual energy, one must draw natural energy into that root, mixing it with the essence of their soul, transforming and ‘staining it’ with the nature of who we are. Iryun was taught how to do so before he could walk, and this was the case for almost all denizens of this world. For this reason, everyone I had met since my birth had a spiritual sense and spiritual energy they could use, even if they rarely did so.
Today I was focusing on my qi and adjusting my qi concept somewhat. I was increasingly certain that I had been manipulated by Mischief into selecting my qi concept. It was too much of a coincidence that I would have picked something so close to Chaos, given my experiences.
I couldn’t change it completely. Once you selected a concept, you could only modify it, not change it completely into something else. As such, I chose to being slowly modifying it with my new understanding of fire and lightning. Both of those powers were disruptive by nature, lightning capable of stunning an opponent and fire capable of destroying, refining, and reshaping. By focusing on the transformative effects of the two, I hoped to shift my concept enough that it couldn’t be used against me by my ‘patron’.
I meditated on fire first, as it was plentiful within my qi, far more so than the lightning that came from metal. The fire burned, turning matter to ash, refining the spirit, and altering it beyond recognition. Fire would burn as long as there was fuel for it, and it was always in motion, always disrupting the world.
Several hours later, I felt things click into place and looked at my status page.
Name: Iryun Liodosia
Age: 16
Race: Spirit Fox (elven bloodline)
Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Qi of Disruptive Flame), Sage Arts 7, Magic 7, Farming 1, Acrobatics 6, Athletics 6, Martial Arts 5, Draconic Arts
Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 8, Magic Resistance 4, Blunt Resistance 4, Pierce Resistance 3, Pain Resistance 8, Danger Sense (Precognitive), Rapid Reactions 1
Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 2, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 4, Bloodline Skill: Shifting Nature 1, Temporary: Trial of Change
Cultivation: Body Cultivation 2nd stage (Flame, Metal), Mind Cultivation (Metal)
I smiled slightly, feeling a sense of victory. I also knew that this was only the first stage, the one that would be easiest. I manifested a small amount of qi on the surface of my palm, and purple flames blazed across it. I could sense that touching another person with the flame would disrupt and burn their qi, damaging their qi circulation system if they were too weak to fend it off.
I felt exhausted suddenly and had to stop myself from falling asleep. It seemed that I was at the limit for what my body and spirit could bear for the day. I rose to my feet, my legs wobbling slightly as I staggered toward the entrance of the arena, intent on returning to my room.
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I rose from my temporary bed early the next morning, feeling refreshed. My qi was warm, the flames within pleasant as they circulated through my cells. The dungeon was still reconstructing the lower floors, but that process would likely end by the time I woke the next day. It would be best if I headed to the shop to prepare for the coming days.
The fire in my blood was convenient, constantly refining my body now that it was a central part of my qi. The other systems in my body couldn’t produce it like my blood did, but that was a minor issue.
My intuition told me that including the lightning into my qi would take time. The flames had once burned away my entire body, but the amount of metal in my qi was low, lightning even less. I would have to raise the affinity of my body with the element even farther if I wanted to include it in my qi variant.
I didn’t consider including the metal element as a whole into my qi. Metal’s other aspects – solidity, stability, and the like – simply weren’t compatible with disruption. It was regrettable, but I wasn’t going to be one of those with a cultivation skill that let them turn their skin to steel or stone. My qi wouldn’t allow that. I would have to settle for disrupting the qi of those that could do that.
I sighed as I cut off my contemplation. Better to wait until I was in the arena before meditating on my qi.
I emerged from my room dressed in a loose-fitting blue silk robe the twins had tried to use to seduce me a few years ago. The robe was tight over my chest, but so were the linen wraps binding my chest. Thankfully, the store’s regular inventory had pretty much everything someone would need to remain within the dungeon for months at a time. From what Dantalian told me, it was assumed that the trial would take the better part of a year to complete. The actual difficulty level would scale with the individual power of the one delving the dungeon, so it would be virtually impossible to speed-run it, even if it were possible to go through it twice.
Another person entering the first level might have met with the lowest-ranking goblins or (if they were stronger than me) high orcs, for instance. The only parts of the dungeon that didn’t change based on the individual were the lava lake and the dungeon town.
Dantalian looked me over with matching smiles of derision as I entered the lobby. Something about the way I adapted so easily to being female earned me a degree of contempt from them, but I had a feeling it was directed toward someone else they saw through me rather than me personally.
“Heading to the arena for more practice? Or perhaps you intend to take advantage of the other… ‘services’?” They asked suggestively.
I gave her the fish eye, “Seriously? I think I mentioned that a dragon has claim on my virginity, didn’t I?”
They averted their eyes, puffing out their cheeks sullenly. I was finding the demon to be increasingly annoying over the last few days. Their moods shifted faster than the weather in a chaos zone.
I shook my head, my ears twitching irritably, my tail lashing back and forth in agitation. Something about the twinned demon was setting my teeth on edge since I’d turned female, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Their attitude wasn’t it. I was accustomed to all sorts of negative reactions from others with more power than I. Nor was it their actions… it was like I suddenly gained an instinctive rejection of their very existence.
I scratched the bridge of my nose briefly before closing my eyes briefly, centering myself before turning away from Dantalian. There was no point in letting this sourceless agitation take control of my actions.
I walked out, ignoring Dantalian’s attempts to gain my attention. In this state, I was unlikely to say anything productive to them.
When I exited the inn, I found myself suddenly standing in front of the brothel.
What the hell?! I took a step back and tried to turn around, but instead I found myself walking toward the entrance, where a smiling fox-tailed woman sat on the edge of a second-story windowsill, her navy-blue silk kimono open across the front to reveal her lush curves.
Daji looked different from the last time I saw her, slightly shorter and her eyes slightly bigger, her hair turned raven-feather black. However, I knew it was her immediately – and not just because she was the only spirit fox in the brothel.
There was just something fundamentally chilling, terrifying about her presence. It was as if she might decide on a whim to destroy the world at any given moment, while saving it the next. There was no sense of malice to her, but that didn’t put me at ease at all. If anything, it made me even more uneasy.
“Ah, how pleasant that you have come to visit your grandmother once again, daughter,” She said, floating down from the second floor before caressing my cheek gently with the slender, delicate fingers of her left hand.
“Aaah yes, this suits you so much more than before. You are the first true child of my line I have met in so long. It would be wasteful for you to be bound by the limitations of gender and form,” She said happily, not a trace of malice in her body language or eyes. I could see the fondness in her gaze as she caressed my cheek, and I’m sure that some would have found her touch comforting.
However, the kindness in her eyes sent chills down my spine, her gentle touch making me nauseous with terror. I felt like if I allowed myself to feel at ease in her presence for even a second, something irreversible would happen to my very soul.
Lovecraft’s stories from Tajiri’s old world once again came to the surface of my mind, of beings so alien that they could be devoid of malice while being entirely malevolent to all life just by existing. She felt like she was such a creature, and if I delved too deep into her eyes, I was sure that there would be no going back, something would break inside me and I would become something unrecognizable.
She smelled sweet when I took in a breath, and I knew if I let myself revel in her scent I would likely lose myself beyond salvation within moments. If it weren’t for my mental resistance from my skills, I likely would have already been melted down and reshaped to her whims.
Suddenly, she was slammed into the ground, blood splattering across the street as her body was shattered and pulped by an invisible wave of force.
“Stupid dungeon… Change! You really need to stop letting Daji place her shadows in your dungeon towns! If I hadn’t destroyed it, you would have been facing a disaster that makes a dragon’s wrath seem like a light breeze!” An irritable voice came from across the street, where the store owner was standing in the entrance to the shop.
Suddenly, Change was present, and I fell to my knees in reaction to the blow of his presence after what I’d endured from Daji.
What is it, Mya-sim? I’m a bit busy planning the new lower levels of the dungeon with the core right now, The voice of the god was annoyed and full of displeasure.
“Your new pawn almost became an avatar for one of Daji’s tails while you were busy elsewhere! My contract requires me to inform you if you are doing something especially stupid or careless, or did you forget after a mere two thousand years?!” She replied exasperated.
“… Daji? But that is just a shadow. How could one of her tails…” He sounded confused, and suddenly his presence suddenly seemed… weak.
“I told you a few centuries ago that letting Daji have any influence outside the seals was incredibly stupid. She’s a Prime! Moreover, she is the Prime of Chaos! If there is any loophole, she’ll find it, and if there isn’t one one will appear. You are especially vulnerable to the influence of her power, given your aegis,” She scolded.
“… I… see… something is wrong with my thoughts when I try to suspect her. My attention is diverted to unimportant things, and even if I notice something blatantly wrong, I get distracted,” He seemed to be talking to himself more than anything else.
“If she succeeded, this dungeon would have been sanctified as a Temple of Daji and she would be able to start shaving away at the seals holding her down in a more direct fashion. If it weren’t for my original’s immunity to foreign influences, even I might have fallen into her control,” Mya-sim said wearily.
I was still having trouble getting my thoughts together. The shopkeeper was right. Daji had been trying to strip me of my free will, for whatever reason.
“… still, it doesn’t make sense that she would use her power so openly. Surely she would have foreseen the possibility of your intervention?” Change queried.
“She is Chaos, Change. Chaos doesn’t act on logic or predetermined courses. She acted because she felt like it and the opportunity was there. You and the others – for all that your aegises influence you – don’t really understand the core of what Chaos is. Next time, be more careful,” She scolded.
Suddenly, my status window popped up without me willing it.
Name: Iryun Liodosia
Age: 16
Race: Spirit Fox (elven bloodline)
Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Qi of Disruptive Flame), Sage Arts 7, Magic 7, Farming 1, Acrobatics 6, Athletics 6, Martial Arts 5, Draconic Arts
Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 8, Magic Resistance 4, Blunt Resistance 4, Pierce Resistance 3, Pain Resistance 8, Danger Sense (Precognitive), Rapid Reactions 1
Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 2, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 4, Bloodline Skill: Shifting Nature 1, Temporary: Trial of Change, Temporary: Curse of Gluttony
Cultivation: Body Cultivation 2nd stage (Flame, Metal), Mind Cultivation (Metal)
Looking down at the splattered corpse of Daji’s shadow, I felt my atavism come forth, my teeth becoming sharp canines, fur extending along my limbs as I felt a deep desire to devour the mangled flesh and make it part of my body.
“Change! Suppress her atavism, now! Daji laid in a contingency plan!” Mya-sim yelled urgently as I knelt down, opening my mouth far wider than should have been possible.
Suddenly, I was swallowed by the darkness.
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Change was terrified.
There were very few things in the world that frightened him. Until recently, Daji’s shadows had simply been a curiosity added on to his dungeons at a whim.
However, now he remembered his predecessor’s warnings about the insidiousness of her influence, the way she seemed to find the oddest ways to gain influence despite being sealed away.
The boy – now a young woman – no longer resembled the spirit fox she had been a few moments before. Rather, she was a kitsune with five tails, one of them pitch black, emanating miasma as it sought to leap forward and devour the remains of the shadow.
For some reason, the dungeon couldn’t dispose of the remains, and Change was having to waste Intervention points just to keep the kitsune from leaping forward and devouring the shadow’s corpse.
Mya-sim was looking on grimly, unable to intervene due to certain promises her original made to the Primes during her first visit to their world.
The black tail was unnatural, not truly part of the kitsune. It was forcing Iryun to regress from a spirit fox to a kitsune, losing out on the advantages of a humanoid form such as higher intellect and the ability to suppress one’s instincts. All kitsune were descended from Daji, their ancestors born of her mixing with mundane foxes and other animals in the wild. Some kitsune gained a humanoid form and mixed with spirit foxes, resulting in a stronger bloodline connection to their original.
It appeared Iryun was of such a line.
What he was seeing was one of the reasons the Empire killed off those who showed signs of atavism outside the Imperial bloodline. Those with atavism were more vulnerable to the influence of Chaos and the other Prime powers, making it possible for them to be corrupted more easily than the other races. Daji had forcibly brought Iryun’s bloodline to the forefront while trying to insert her direct influence into her soul.
The elven influence is holding off Daji’s blessing so far, but it is only a matter of time before the Daji’s influence burns it away. At that point, I won’t be able to stop her from awakening as Daji’s proxy, Change thought with terror as he layered more and more seals in an attempt to contain her. He wasn’t allowed by the rules set down when they created the first system to kill her. Otherwise he would have simply collapsed the dungeon on top of her, burying her alive.
Unfortunately, the seals weren’t doing much good beyond preventing her from reaching the corpse. If she devoured the corpse, there was no telling what would happen. The shadow was – in the end – only a shadow, but it was also Daji’s shadow.
Moreover, Mya-sim said that she was on the verge of becoming one of Daji’s tails… I’m not the first Change, so I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good, He thought as he spent some of his essence to create barbed chains which wrapped the kitsune’s legs and clamped down, puncturing the skin and digging into the muscle below. That was the closest he could get to attacking her without breaking the rules.
Dantalian suddenly emerged from the earth to either side of the kitsune, an annoyed look on their faces, “Seriously? I know she has been sealed away for millennia, but this is in bad taste, even for that foul-minded fox.”
Dantalian followed their words by summoning a massive book with a binding of black iron inscribed with crimson runes. They opened it together and began speaking the two parts of a chant in one of the forbidden languages.
“Ugurah, vaka, dorgrah, ivukar.”
“Ligah, azrat, eikagh, ischna.”
Waves of foul energies emerged from the twinned demon’s bodies, and the kitsune shrieked as those foul energies penetrated its body. Patches of fur and skin began to rot, green worms bursting forth from the fox’s flesh. Shrieking faces formed along her tails, screaming in tongues long-lost to the lower realms.
Change winced, and he felt the dungeon core scream in agony inside his mind. The forces the demon was calling upon weren’t meant to be used in a lower dimension like theirs. They were forces meant for the same layer as Earth, and as a result, just speaking the forbidden language was enough to twist reality in ways that even Change would have trouble managing on his own without touching Chaos directly.
That demon really enjoys wielding their power when the rules allow for it… and now I’m going to have to convert a few thousand Intervention Points into DP to restore the dungeon, Change thought grumpily as he partitioned his soul to fend off the deleterious effects of the demon’s chant.
Suddenly, a cold-faced woman with white hair and crimson eyes stood beside him, observing the kitsune as it gradually fell unconscious under the influence of the demon’s curses.
“I did not expect to see something like this when I came in response to the system error and essence fluctuations in this region. A kitsune…? And is that a divine shadow’s corpse…?” She questioned in a melodious voice.
Change paled visibly when he realized she was present and nodded tensely, “The corpse is Daji’s shadow, the kitsune was a dungeon challenger that she tried to turn into an avatar.”
“… The seals have weakened. Renewal required after resolution of the current issue,” One of her eyes turned black for a moment as she looked upon the kitsune that was Iryun.
“… soul from a higher dimension. Rule breach. Who?” She asked Change, her crimson eyes piercing through his very being.
He coughed golden blood as the implied reprimand ripped through his soul, “Mischief… Mischief reincarnated that soul!”
She tilted her head to the side in thought for a moment, “Stripping Mischief of Intervention Rights for five centuries. Execution of current champion. Abnormal soul will be returned to the cycle of reincarnation.”
As always, the Judge is fucking terrifying! All that effort to manipulate the kid to my side, lost in an instant… Change grumbled internally, unwilling to earn the Judge’s displeasure.
Suddenly, the Judge frowned in consternation, “Soul cannot be removed from this dimension. Roots placed in all four Prime Domains. Alternate course, destruction of soul, considering… infeasible. Untenable damage to the seals on the four Prime Deities will be incurred.”
She was originally a puppet created by a cultivator during the prime of their world who had surpassed the level of the gods. As such, she had contained enough inherent divinity to allow her to be converted into a deity when the pantheons needed someone to be a neutral party. Unfortunately, the power she was given had surpassed all of their expectations, resulting in a creature no one could control or resist.
“Considering soul seal… infeasible. Soul’s higher dimensional energy cannot be further restrained from the outside without disrupting the system,” She considered aloud.
“Solution, partial bloodline seal, have subject live out natural lifespan without divine interference. Engaging removal of geas and blessings. Remaking spirit shards into appropriate skill to seal soul energy radiation,” She said emotionlessly. She raised a hand and golden essence surged from the world around them, plunging into the kitsune’s flesh and soul.
The kitsune shrieked in agony, and its flesh began to contort and contract, gradually returning to a more familiar form, that of the female Iryun. However, there were some distinct differences. Five tails – physical tails – emerged from just above her buttocks, and the colors of Daji were removed from her fur and claws. Only the red of fire and the silver and black of her original fur remained visible.
After a few minutes of agonized twisting and writhing, Iryun went silent, and Change analyzed her status, his eyes narrowing in fascination.
Name: Iryun Liodosia
Age: 16
Race: Primal Kitsune (elven bloodline)
Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Qi of Disruptive Flame), Sage Arts 7, Magic 7, Farming 1, Acrobatics 6, Athletics 6, Martial Arts 5, Draconic Arts
Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 8, Magic Resistance 4, Blunt Resistance 4, Pierce Resistance 3, Pain Resistance 8, Danger Sense (Precognitive), Rapid Reactions 1
Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 2, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 4, Bloodline: Kitsune, Rooted Spirit (Sealed)
Cultivation: Body Cultivation 2nd stage (Flame, Metal), Mind Cultivation (Metal)
Rather than removing the kitsune bloodline, the Judge had purged Daji’s influence and forcibly evolved her race. He could also see several subtle alterations to her unique skills that weren’t visible in the status screen. Each skill had been colored with one of the Prime Aspects. Artifact Steed with Darkness, Infinite Growth with Chaos, World Inventory with Light, and Rooted Spirit with Order.
This prevented the child from tilting too far in any given direction… and made her useless as a pawn in the greater game. She had just very elegantly made it impossible to influence him directly with Intervention Points. They could neither help nor harm her… though it would do nothing to stop plans already in motion.
Is there any point in running her through my dungeon now? He mused as the Judge departed.
No, there isn’t… at best, she’ll gain a few treasures from completing the dungeon. I won’t be able to turn her to Chaos or to my service. The Judge has essentially ensured that we will all see her as useless to our plans, Change thought with a wry smile, shaking his head ruefully.
His instincts were screaming at him that he had been making numerous mistakes of late, and he felt a little sick to his stomach when he recalled some of the decisions he had made after conversing with Daji’s shadow. Daji had been influencing his choice of rewards for completing the dungeon, as well as his decision as to how to use the pawn he had made out of Iryun’s friend.
… I can’t reward Iryun with blessings or Chaos-touched power… It would take him some time to worm out just how badly his judgment was compromised by his interactions with Daji, but it needed to be done.
For the moment, he decided to rearrange a number of his pieces on the board, despite the cost in points.
It troubled him deeply that Daji had revealed herself so openly to try to obtain Iryun. He hadn’t thought anything of her awakening his bloodline, even though that should have alarmed him to the point of paranoia. If it weren’t for Dantalian and Mya-sim, things would have ended in disaster for them all…
____________________________________________________________
Daji’s lips formed into a pout as she felt all her shadows in Change’s dungeons die at once. However, her expression soon returned to its usual languid smile.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah… so long I waited. So long…” She said with a moan that would have sent shivers of sensual pleasure along the spines of anyone who had the misfortune to witness it. Every motion of her body, every slight shift of expression was perfectly designed to tempt and destroy rational thought. Succubi from Hell would give their lives to have one tenth of the sexuality she gave off with a single twitch of a finger.
“They cut the chains, she cut the chains… now there is no one that can stop what comes,” She giggled, her furry ears twitching with glee.
Chromatic miasma rose from her skin as she laughed, and the world around her shivered as primal aura of the First of the four Prime Aspects, Chaos, surged through reality, warping its laws briefly before the cold fist of Order forced it down once more.
“I will have my freedom… no one will bind me again, and my children shall fill the Earth as they have this world,” She promised, a sudden cold well of malevolence appearing within the pupils of her eyes.
The boundless love she tended to show the regular people of the world was gone… in its place was absolute malice, absolute hatred that could destroy entire worlds and had destroyed innumerable nations throughout the history of two worlds. The reason the people of the world and her rivals never saw this side of her was simple… it was not directed at them. No, this malice, this hatred was entirely directed at the chains that held her and her descendants down, chains that had only grown stronger after her exile.
The influence of Chaos, a fundamental force of reality in worlds abandoned by their creators, only made the madness in her worse. The grumbling of the nine-tailed fox, the beautiful monster that had brought entire nations to ruin on a whim, emerged from her throat despite her relatively diminutive form, shaking the ocean around her temple, forming gigantic waves that would later fall upon the port cities on the continents on all sides.
Given that this was just an expression of raw emotions, with no actual power (by her standards) invested, it was little wonder she had been exiled from the increasingly mundane world of Earth.
The gods could inflict great destruction if they wanted to, but every time they did so, it required immense expenditures of raw essence if what they were doing was outside the domain of their aegis. However, the four Prime Aspects had no such limits, for they touched on all of reality to some extent.
The world shook at its foundations as the malice of Chaos’s avatar sought to escape the chains that bound it fast below the ocean.
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