A difficult choice

During the next seventy years, Seth made his home in the depths of the underground springs of Endora, focusing mostly on increasing his strength.

It should have taken a dozen years less, but Seth’s plan of completely secluding himself failed since some of his wives would always find ways to sneak inside and take a few advantages of him, with Maya being the first one to make a habit out of it.

Having a hard time saying no to Maya and knowing that was unfair to the rest, Seth eventually gave himself a day or two each week to spend with his lovers before returning to cultivation.

In this manner, Seth’s sources slowly approached the limits of their sixth shell. Once all his sources had been filled and only his lust source was left, Seth had no choice but to leave the springs.

“Have you finished?” asked Maya, feeling Seth teleporting near her bed. She had also been cultivating most of the time, pushing toward the limit of her seventh shell.

“Almost, but I can’t progress further in the springs,” replied Seth, coming to sit beside her.

“Should I organize a new lust gathering for you?” asked Maya with a widening smile, opening her eyes and planting a quick kiss on Seth’s cheek.

“No need. I’ll do it myself,” said Seth with a shake of his head. “Lust has been trying to find a better way for me to do it, and she eventually did a few years back.”

“A better way?” asked Maya, her interest piqued.

“Well, it’s not the most ethical, but it’s much better than sleeping with the entire kingdom one by one. I was hoping you could order the ascended of Asteria to remove their protection over the city for tonight so I can take care of it.”

Maya raised an eyebrow, but with Seth simply smiling in reply, she moved to her desk and sent a few orders throughout the Capital. It took a few hours, and all the ascended tasked with protecting the city from ascended influence retracted their energies, leaving Endora’s capital more defenseless than it had ever been in the last half a century.

The space locks and all energy monitoring in the city were gone entirely, and Maya nodded toward Seth, “It’s done.”

Seth nodded back, and one of his eyes turned bright golden while the other turned pure black. Perception energy gathered around his body, pressing against his sixth shell until it broke through.

Under Maya’s confused gaze, perception energy expanded outwards from Seth, becoming a blanket covering the entire city.

All around the capital, the eyes of every single man flashed the same golden and black color as Seth’s. The only ones spared from the strange incident were the ascended, who Seth knew could resist the scattered energy.

Seth closed his eyes and carefully monitored the notifications in his vision.

<Perception source had progressed into the seventh shell.>
<Host’s sources are being damaged by the perception source.>
<Host’s body is pressured to take energy form.>
<Pressure from the perception source is increasing.>
<Warning! Host’s soul is spread too thin. Soul damage at 2% and increasing.>
<Lust source at 12% energy.>

After checking the notification, Seth’s vision broke into billions of different parts, and lust energy traveled through his soul, along with his perception energy, spreading along it all over the city.

Maya, who did not understand what was happening, turned to the side and watched as Henrietta and Hollie teleported nearby with panicked looks.

They were about to start speaking when they saw Seth on the bed and stopped abruptly, their mouths still open.

“What happened?” asked Maya, having noticed the sense of urgency in their eyes when they arrived.

Hollie was the first to recover and sighed as she said, “The whole city is in heat, and I got worried, but now that I see Seth is out...”

“In heat?” asked Maya.

“Let’s just say that you’re lucky you’re not an air ascended. I thought we were under attack at first…. Loud moans are coming from every house and apartment in the city. What is Seth doing?”

Maya explained Seth’s words despite her piqued interest in taking a look outside for herself, and Hollie immediately sighed in understanding.

Over the following hour, more and more of Seth’s wives gathered in Maya’s room, watching over Seth as the loud moans of women covered the entire city in a pleasant symphony.

After around an hour, Seth opened his eyes and bent forward, throwing out a mouthful of blood onto the bedsheets in Maya’s room. As the girls were about to rush and help him, Seth disappeared from the room, appearing far outside the city.

Henrietta wasted no time in tracing his teleport and bringing the rest along. When they appeared, Seth was sitting cross-legged, his sources leaving his body one by one and revolving around it.

Six colored energy radiated out of his sources, creating a pressure that pushed Maya into creating a barrier covering the rest of the girls.

Seth’s sources continued orbiting around each other, his body already being consumed by their energy.

As the sources gathered energy to break through, the destruction source emitted a shockwave that engulfed the three other primary sources, followed by lust and perception energies moving to keep the will-less sources stable.

Eventually, six-colored energy slowly materialized around the floating sources after a series of loud popping noises, first taking ethereal form before materializing to recreate Seth’s body.

Maya heaved a sigh of relief and removed the water barriers she had created, taking the lead in walking closer to her husband. As all of his wives approached Seth with bright smiles, congratulating him on his breakthrough.

Seth thanked the girls before moving the energies forming his body, trying to get used to them.

Destruction, lust, and perception were no issue, but Seth’s space, creation, and time energies felt strange, and it didn’t take long for Seth to understand the reason behind it, which Lust immediately confirmed.

‘Since you have yet to experience their concepts, you won’t be able to use them perfectly for a while now that they are tied to your own will. You need to take the time to become familiar with the absolute concept behind each of them.’

‘Can I form a divinity myself?’ asked Seth.

‘Your destruction divinity will change as you gain insight into creation, but your soul won’t be able to bear the weight of so many divinities. You can, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If they still had a will to bear most of that weight, you might have been able to, but not like this. Your will might crumble under such weight.’

Seth understood Lust’s logic and wasn’t too troubled about it. He already planned on having Henrietta bear the time and space divinity.

Now that he had broken through, Seth turned to his wives and said, “Since we’re all here, we might as well also complete your breakthroughs.”

The group immediately grew excited, and Hollie was the first to volunteer. After explaining a few things to the girls, Seth had Hollie proceed with her breakthrough.

Just as her source started breaking through the sixth shell and into the seventh, Seth’s eyes flashed a bright pink color, and his lust energy followed the link between the two, engulfing her source.

Blood started leaking down the side of Hollie’s mouth, and her face contorted in pain as her source started leaving her body, a hole appearing in her heart shortly after.

The pained expression disappeared once her source was out in the open, and Hollie’s body fell lifelessly toward the ground, her physical body shortly being consumed by Seth’s destruction energy.

The hovering source kept revolving, lust energy flowing through the vortex at its center as the sixth shell slowly cracked. When it finally shattered, a draft of strong winds covered her source, and Seth pulled his lust energy back.

A large tornado formed around the air source, growing stronger and stronger for the next hour.

Just as Seth was growing worried he might have to intervene, the energy forming the tornado disappeared; the dust settling and revealing Hollie’s newly formed body standing at the center.

Hollie lifted her hands, looking at her arms excitedly, her fingers slowly disappearing and reappearing with the activation of her energy.

“Congratulations.” Seth’s words broke Hollie out of her thoughts, and she lifted her eyes to look at her lover.

With a thought, her body turned into a gust of wind, circling Seth and ruffling his clothes. Her head and hands materialized first out of the wind, grabbing Seth’s neck and kissing his lips.

“Thank you.” Hollie’s voice echoed through the air despite her mouth still being busy kissing Seth’s.

Seth broke the kiss and said, “You’re welcome, but you need time to get used to it. You saw you almost lost control of your energy. Materialize completely.”

“When cultivating from now on, your progress will also be slower since Lust absorbs the greater will inside the air energy and funnels it inside the seed growing in Katy’s body.”

Hollie already knew that and allowed her body to reform before nodding. “I know. I was just excited.”

With Hollie’s breakthrough being a success, Seth turned to Henrietta next, who seemed almost as eager as Hollie.

With Henrietta being the next one to step into the ranks of demigods, Seth’s wives broke through one by one, all besides Aleena reaching the seventh shell by the morning of the following day. Aleena had been left behind due to disappearing from time, but Seth knew she would eventually catch up to the rest.

Encouraging the girls to get used to their newfound power for a while, Seth and Maya returned to the capital and dealt with the mess the previous night created. Seth’s possession of every human male in the city to harvest lust energy was sure to make waves in the Empire, but Seth didn’t mind it.

He asked Maya to make a public declaration that it was a side effect of his breakthrough and only kept the actual possession a secret.

Maya didn’t understand why they didn’t cover what happened, but Seth had his own plan.

The reveal caused a lot of negative perception energy to gather toward him, mainly from the male population. Still, an equal amount of positive perception energy came from the female population, who had experienced a night like never before.

After guaranteeing himself a steady supply of perception, Seth was about to return to cultivation when Maya said hesitantly, “Aren’t you going to deal with Lisa and Julie? It’s been years since Julie requested to meet with you. She thinks you’re angry that she stayed with Saif until he died. Even Lisa sought the others, asking them about what was going on….”

Seth sighed and thought momentarily before saying with a clouded look, “I guess I have to do it in the end….”

Before Maya could ask what he wanted to do, Seth disappeared from her room, appearing in Lisa’s apartment, where the mother-daughter pair lived.

Julie’s eyes widened and started turning red when she noticed Seth’s appearance, and Lisa gave Seth an unfriendly look, sitting up from her armchair. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

“No need,” said Seth sternly, making Lisa pause in her movement. Turning to the expectant Julie, Seth’s distant gaze didn’t change as he said, “I’m sorry, but you’re not fit to stand by my side. You can keep your youth and consider us even. Don’t look for me anymore.”

Seth watched as tears welled inside Julie’s eyes with indifference before turning around and stepping through space, appearing back inside Maya’s office.

Once he appeared before the surprised Maya again, Seth bit his lip and clenched his fists in frustration. ‘This better be worth it, Lust….’