Divine Apostasy Book 6 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Ruwen sat cross-legged on the floor of his shed, wearing the red Overseer armor he’d left Legion’s Fifth Vault in. Gate runes covered the walls, but he couldn’t get any of them to work. Outside this cube he’d created lay immense darkness, empty and cold.

Despair crept into his thoughts, and he smashed it with a mental fist. He’d wanted privacy for months, and now he’d found it. Once he’d accomplished everything he wanted to do, he’d let himself get properly depressed. But for now, he didn’t want to waste any time.

Four items topped the list of things he wanted to accomplish. One, he needed to explore the Architect Role and understand what it contained and how to use it. Two, centered on essence recipes for spells. He’d experimented creating them in the Spirit Realm and wished to expand his spell list. Perfecting his Bamboo and Viper Steps came in third, while reaching peak Diamond came in last.

The Step training didn’t require Mana or Spirit, but everything else did.

When Ruwen had crushed New Eiru's Elders into bloody puddles using the Architect Role’s gravitational power, he’d learned it consumed all his Mana before tapping his Spirit, and Fortifying his body to peak Diamond would probably require a ton of Spirit.

Creating spells with essence would consume Ruwen’s essence reservoirs. But that shouldn’t be a problem, since all twelve had filled to around sixty percent when he’d absorbed that chaos storm in the Spirit Realm.

Ruwen thought about the twelve different kinds of essence, and the fact that Mana consisted of a perfect proportion of each one. He wondered if it might be possible to refill his Mana reservoir using essence.

But that didn’t help with the Architect Role. After it burned through Ruwen’s Mana, it would tap his Spirit. He still had almost twenty-two billion Spirit, but he honestly didn’t know if that was a lot or not. His experience with the Architect Role’s gravity manipulation had proved he had little idea about costs or consequences.

The logic led Ruwen to a clear conclusion. He could practice his Steps and experiment with essence recipes, but until he found a way to replenish his Spirit, he should avoid the Architect Role and Fortification.

Ruwen knew no one was coming for him. He figured if he couldn’t reach his friends or familiar places, they couldn’t reach him either. That meant the first step to getting himself home depended on figuring out exactly where he had ended up, and that required the Architect Role and Spirit.

Ruwen decided to discuss his options with Overlord, and triggered Last Breath, entering the mental construct for the first time since Overlord had gained his own existence.

When Ruwen had first created his mental construct, a place he used to protect his mind, it had been a small island in the middle of an endless sea. When Rami had chosen the path of Bookwyrm, her Codex of Evolution had boosted his mental abilities, and that had turned his small island into a mountain.

At the library in Malth, Rami had triggered a level seventy-five Literary Aneurysm trap. If Ruwen hadn’t pulled the trap’s damage to himself, she would have certainly died. He hadn’t remained unscathed, though.

The billions of letters, each a tiny razor, had sheared Overlord from Ruwen’s mind, giving the persona existence. Ruwen and Overlord had battled against the tsunami and survived. When Ruwen’s mind had calmed enough that the peak of his mental mountain had reappeared, he’d left Overlord to his own devices.

And for the first time, Ruwen saw exactly how Overlord had spent his time.

Ruwen stood at the top of a tall tower that stretched upward from the mountain peak. The largest fortress Ruwen had ever seen surrounded the entire top third of the mountain. Odd-shaped creatures flew in the sky, hovered in front of the walls, and walked the battlements.

And everything consisted of letters.

No, not letters: sentences, paragraphs, and sometimes chapters.

“I call this tower the Citadel,” Overlord said.

Ruwen continued to stare, shocked disbelief keeping him silence. The sea far below churned with unused letters, and flying sentences swooped down like seagulls, collecting letters instead of fish.

Overlord continued. “Originally, I was just smashing the letters together. Then I noticed some sections were stronger, and I figured out the reason.”

Ruwen turned to Overlord.

“Cohesion,” Overlord said. “The more context you surround the letters with, the stronger they become.”

A deep voice floated upward, and Ruwen peered over the edge of the Citadel. A spinning vortex circled on the battlements below, a dozen filaments waving in the air, catching the letters dropped by the flying sentences.

“What is that?” Ruwen asked.

Overlord looked down. “Oh, that’s a Narrator.”

“A what?”

“When I figured out giving the letters order made them stronger, I needed a way to efficiently accomplish that. So I looked through the books in your head, and created Narrators for those that I felt made sense for the fortress.”

“That’s a book?” Ruwen asked.

Overlord nodded, and they both listened to the vortex for a moment.

The Narrator’s voice floated up to them. “A leader leads by example, not by force.”

A five-foot sword emerged from the vortex of letters, the just spoken sentence wrapped into the shape of a blade. It spun in the air and immediately dived to the base of the fortress, where Ruwen now noticed hundreds of other weapons and shields, all circling the walls, protecting them.

Overlord pointed at the Narrator down below. “You picked this book up in Blapy as you started the Ink Lord quest. I think you took it from the Mist Wraith, Talker. It’s called the Art of War. Very appropriate for our fortress.”

“You gave books a voice?” Ruwen asked in disbelief.

Overlord leaned close and whispered. “Between you and me, the Narrators kind of scare me. They take plain text and give it life, strength, and power. I’ve created over a hundred of them and placed them in the walls. They’re reordering the mess I created when I initially made these structures.”

Ruwen looked down at the Narrator. “Was this a good idea? I don’t need another thing to fear inside my own head.”

The Narrator stopped and tilted upward, speaking to Ruwen. “If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

A hundred small shields, each shaped like a diamond, exploded outward from the Narrator. The mass flew upward and Ruwen jumped backward, preparing to defend himself.

The tiny shields, each the size of Ruwen’s thumb, rose over the Citadel railing and arced toward him. But instead of attacking, they rotated quickly around him, forming a sphere of shields. Each shield bore the Narrator’s sentence, the words circling to form a protective surface.

“Interesting,” Overlord said.

“Uru help me,” Ruwen said. “I think you need to be more careful with what you create in here.”

“Probably,” Overlord said.

Ruwen shook his head. “You know, I sound more like my parents, or worse, Tremine, every time I come in here.”

“Yeah, you seem pretty stressed.”

Overlord reminded Ruwen of the younger version of himself. When he didn’t have a ton of responsibility and the future still felt exciting and fun. Now he understood adults a little better.

Ruwen waved his arm, but the shield bubble compensated as if it were attached to his arm. “If the Narrators get out of hand, or too powerful, you can turn them off or something, right?”

Overlord tapped his chin. “That is a good idea.”

“Rami, you, and now a bunch of living books are floating around in my head. We really should stop putting things in here.”

“Yeah, you might be right.”

Ruwen shook his head again, knowing Overlord had no plans to stop. “This is amazing, though. Great job. It should make surviving future mental attacks a breeze. But it’s not why I came in here.”

“I know,” Overlord said. “You want my opinion on what to do next.”

Ruwen nodded.

Overlord punched at the spot next to Ruwen’s ear, but the tiny shields there formed a larger shield, blocking the strike. “Nice, I need to get one of these.”

“Overlord?”

“Yeah, sorry, those shields are just really interesting. But I think your first step is clear. You need to Harvest that distant star.”