Chapter 680: – Ancient realm |
Zurvan watched as his subordinates tested and measured the effect of his latest creation. They were located inside a vast laboratory that stretched for hundreds of metres, filled to the brim with the most expensive equipment that money could buy, as well as that which it couldn’t.
What the titan had produced wasn’t a new spell per se – just the most recent iteration of his third Decree – something that he had originally cast half a million years ago. Having run out of more creative names, he had dubbed this one “Slumbering Deity’s Decree”. It was an object-type that had bought their older gods and goddesses a lot of extra time, so nobody felt like complaining.
He didn’t enjoy having to enchant each coffin separately, since it was a long process that lasted several years, but casting the Decree at scale would have greatly weakened its effect. At least, the objects would last forever – unless a powerful deity deliberately tried to destroy them – so spending a few centuries to upgrade them all would help the alliance greatly.
That said, Zurvan would only bother replacing the coffins if the new model proved significantly better than the previous one.
“What does the chronometer say?” Fodthal asked as he scrutinized the enchanted coffin with great interest.
The latest model was smaller and more barebones than the previous one, but the deities who used it wouldn’t be conscious, so the lack of comfort was a small price to pay if it resulted in a stronger effect.
“0.0034!” Mekina replied, her three-coloured hair fluttering excitedly.
Having recently reached the peak of the Self-Discovery stage, she had completely mastered the fire, air and light affinities, with both her internal world and the magical mane granted by her ancestral Decree reflecting that.
A deity’s internal world already contained several times more mana than a demigod’s core, so the extra storage capacity provided by the Decree would have been negligible in its original state. Fortunately, the Denytes’ ancestral Decree had been designed with that limitation in mind, developing a new function upon its owner’s ascension to the Concept realm.
Fodthal nodded approvingly, though his own thirty-one coloured hair remained much calmer. “A deceleration of nearly three hundred times. That’s roughly fifteen percent slower than the previous iteration. Lord Zurvan… you have outdone yourself once again.”
Slowing down the flow of time was admittedly much easier than accelerating it, but even the most powerful titans rarely managed a deceleration of over a hundred-and-fifty times. Zurvan had already been hailed as a universal genius upon first revealing a stasis coffin with a two-hundredfold deceleration, yet he had never stopped working to improve it.
The titan sighed tiredly, not nearly as enthusiastic as his subordinates about his grand accomplishment. “Better or not, it’s still just a half measure.”
His own scalp was smooth, despite his mastery of six base elements, or thirty-two stable combinations. Unfortunately, he had ascended to divinity long before their ancestral Decree was cast.
“Lord Zurvan… this is still extremely important for our deities. It might just buy us enough time until somebody figures out how to safely reach the next realm,” Fodthal said.
Zurvan nodded. It was a common misconception that gods were immortal. It was true that their bodies didn’t age or get sick, but a different timer loomed over their heads. It was several times longer than what mortals had to deal with, but finite all the same.
At over three million years old, Zurvan was also getting rather close to his own expansion. After reaching the peak of the Elemental Acquisition stage, the growth of his internal world had slowed down for a while, as he had stopped adding concepts to it for hundreds of thousands of years. However, it had already grown large enough that he often had trouble controlling it.
In the next million years or so, it would tear his body to shreds, turning into a true world and forcefully elevating Zurvan to the flawed Ancient realm. In theory, his power would grow by several times, but the process would rob him of his sense of self, turning him into another planet eternally orbiting a star of his choice.
Due to his mastery of the five common affinities, he would likely turn into a large and healthy planet, where life might flourish one day. His lack of the life affinity might delay the emergence of life, but his mastery of the time affinity would probably accelerate the earlier stages of the planet’s development.
All things considered, becoming an Ancient was a noble end. Every living creature in the universe relied on those that had come before them to exist, so this was just part of the cycle of life and magic. However, there weren’t many deities who were happy with the idea of losing their individuality and becoming mindless rocks that would swat aside any foreign Concept mage who approached.
The Ancients did experience odd glimpses of lucidity every now and then, but they were short lived and barely allowed them to interact with the creatures that they had birthed.
‘I should probably start using the coffins too,’ Zurvan thought.
The sooner the better. Using his latest creation, he could stretch his remaining time to roughly three hundred million years, which was more than enough for the universe to experience countless changes.
After all, the currently recorded history barely spanned a twentieth of that. Nobody knew what had happened to the factions that had comprised the previous generations of deities – the ones whose celestial bodies all the current factions had emerged on.
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What the Void Hand and their rivals did know, was that they had no intention of sharing the fate of their predecessors. After the first few mishaps with gods exploding into new planets, most factions had recognized the necessity of placing their older deities in stasis. This was something that both lesser and greater springs did – at least the ones that had interacted with other worlds enough to know what was in store for them.
The difference was that weaker factions didn’t have the luxury of powerful titans with time affinities casting specialized Decrees, so they had to make do with much more limited enchantments that only achieved a fraction of the deceleration and had to be replaced or maintained often. It wasn’t a problem yet, but those gods were bound to run out of time a lot sooner than those benefitting from Zurvan’s handiwork.
Zurvan wouldn’t be able to continue his research while asleep, though the alliance would at least be able to wake him up in case they got into a war or required his help with some major project.
The hope was that future generations of gods would figure out a solution to the problem. Many believed that learning how to acquire rare elements and entering the third major stage of the Concept realm was the answer, though nobody knew how exactly it was going to help.
The best-case scenario was that mastering every known element would automatically stabilize one’s internal world in some way, fundamentally changing what came next. Alternatively, there might be several hidden stages between the two realms, and obtaining rare elements was just the first.
There was also a chance that there was a solution out there that had nothing to do with rare affinities, which was why the peak factions tended to diversify their research into several frontiers: studying rare or calamity affinities, developing new Decrees, breeding mortals with interesting bloodlines, and many more.
Finally, it was possible that there was no solution regardless of what anyone did. That losing their individuality and turning into planets for new people to live on was simply how things were meant to be.
Perhaps, the deities of the previous era had simply accepted the inevitability of their demise. After trying countless things and failing to find the answer, they might have chosen to surrender to their fates and let the cosmos begin anew.
Zurvan didn’t believe that. He felt that anything and everything was possible with magic, so he chose to place his trust on his successors. The only reason he hadn’t commenced his slumber yet was…
“Do we have any news from Maradion?” he asked.
“Ah!” Fodthal slapped his forehead, showing more emotion than he had after their successful test. “Apologies, Lord Zurvan. Your daughter arrived earlier today. I was planning to inform you, but I got too carried away by our experiments.”
“How did she do?” Zurvan asked.
It was rare for a god as long-lived as him to have only sired a handful of children. For the longest time, he had been too preoccupied with his magical training to even consider starting a family.
Unlike his colleagues, he didn’t think that being a proper father to his children was any less important than leading the alliance, and he had been too busy to do both. Consequently, he had refused to have offspring until the end of the Elemental Acquisition stage had been in sight, and until there had been many other talented gods in the alliance to take over most of his responsibilities.
Of the two sons he had fathered over a million years ago, only Ervan had managed to attain divinity. Most gods would be thrilled if half their children followed in their footsteps, but Zurvan had been heartbroken to see his first-born wither away. This was why he hadn’t dared to father another child until recently.
Once his first and only daughter came into the picture, the titan had decided to delay his slumber a little longer. Whether or not she managed to attain divinity, Zurvan had every intention of being around through the entirety of the girl’s life as a mortal.
“She lit up the Seventh Circle in three of the five tests during the first phase, ranked second in her group during the second phase, and made it to the semifinals during the elimination phase. It was the eventual champion that took her out, so there is a good chance that she could have been the runner up if she’d been a little luckier with the draw,” Fodthal patiently summarized.
“Send me the recordings later. I want to watch all of it,” Zurvan said with a nod, though he frowned upon noticing something strange in his subordinate’s words. “If there was only one person stronger than her in the whole tournament, how did she end up second in her group? Was she unlucky enough to be placed in the champion’s group as well?”
“No, Lord Zurvan. She lost to a strange Thess’kalan who had been escorted to the tournament by a god from Tauros. They both fled Marador Prime shortly after the conclusion of the competition, after which we discovered that the deity was one of Metatron’s spies. Apparently, he has defected from Tauros a very long time ago and has been feeding information to the Vault since. We would have probably not uncovered his betrayal if not for his recent movements.”
“Interesting. So, this mortal not only defeated my daughter, but was worth Metatron giving up on one of his spies to send him to the tournament?” Zurvan asked.
“Well… he didn’t defeat Zurvanai directly. Kassorith actually conceded without even fighting her and didn’t last a minute in the elimination phase. His combat strength is exceptional for a member of a weaker faction but still falls short of the tournament’s top brass. He owes most of his success to his extraordinary performance in the special events,” Fodthal explained.
“I see…” Zurvan said.
He honestly didn’t care that much about Metatron’s antics. That bottom feeder was more of an annoyance than a genuine threat, and a single mortal wouldn’t really change the fate of the artificial world anytime soon, no matter how talented.
“I should also mention that Ishkuria got involved with the Thess’kalan before his treachery was uncovered,” Fodthal added. “She’s come forward with this information herself, apologizing for helping him.”
Zurvan clicked his tongue. “I swear that woman is too obsessed with her research. I understand her desire to improve her Decree – it’s a useful one – but rare affinities are more important. What did she give him?”
“Just some first-generation tea from her personal stash, and a magical aid meant to help him study the storm affinity. It didn’t cost the alliance much, but she did injure herself to produce her gift.”
Zurvan nodded. “A small loss. Maybe this will teach her not to act as impulsively in the future. What was she thinking? Trying to go around our rules? Getting involved with an unknown mortal from a shady background?”
“Should we issue any further penalty?” Fodthal asked.
“Let her be. Foolish or not, Ishkuria has done a lot for the alliance. Besides, it sounds like she’s already paid enough of a price for her mistake,” Zurvan said. “What of my daughter’s second core? Have you prepared the criminals?”
“There’s no need. She already activated it before returning to Denytos II, though she refuses to say how.”
Zurvan couldn’t help but crease his brow. He had no idea how his daughter had found enough sacrifices on Maradion, nor why she wouldn’t talk about it. At the same time, he knew that her morals would have prevented her from harming innocents, and he trusted that she had a good reason to keep her silence.
“Did she go for space or karma in the end?” Zurvan asked, recalling that the girl had been torn between the two elements before leaving for the competition.
“Space. She awakened a pure core and claimed the rare affinity-changing treasure as her reward for reaching the top four of the tournament. I reminded her that we could have provided her with one if she wanted to claim a different prize, but she wouldn’t hear it,” Fodthal said.
Zurvan smiled with pride. His daughter was now a time and space mage!
If the Ancients willed it, she might even be the one who would one day prevent her old man from turning into a mindless chunk of dirt.
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