Chapter 145

Floating above the glowing scale-slash-egg, they all got into their positions and readied whatever defensive spells they had, as they weren’

Floating above the glowing scale-slash-egg, they all got into their positions and readied whatever defensive spells they had, as they weren’t completely sure The Mother would go down without a fight. A lack of Identity and the major soul damage she was facing should’ve removed all chance of attack, but they all knew by this point that just because The Mother couldn’t try to stop them, didn’t mean she couldn’t succeed in stopping them.

He’d offered to give Perumah a chance to leave before it all went down, but she simply scoffed. She wanted to be here for the death of a Primordial Child, and that was final.

Patting Wild Chains on the back, he said “Alright buddy, no sense in really delaying. Do your thing.”

The salivating Leviathan needed no more encouragement, shooting forwards and snatching the egg in its jaw.

The egg was, ultimately, a simple representation for The Mother’s core, the center of her soul. The beginning of her. The moment Wild Chains tried closing its jaw, the entire soul shuddered, but resisted. Severing the core from everything would kill The Mother, and it was possible with titanic effort, but that wasn’t their goal.

Wild Chains didn’t just want to kill her, it wanted to consume her entirely. It didn’t try to chew through the strands attaching the core to everything else. It left them intact, then inhaled.

The core was sucked down its gullet, and the strands holding it to the rest of the soul went as well.

The memory flickered, its structure falling inwards, collapsing into the Leviathan’s mouth. The layer peeled back, the scenery changing slightly until that, too, flickered and disappeared, giving way for the next.

For the first few moments, it was the shuttering of a reel as the world changed, frame by frame. It quickly turned into something of a timelapse as everything accelerated, before turning completely incomprehensible.

Decades, then centuries passed in seconds as the world around them changed. They followed The Mother’s body as she occasionally made her way to the surface for one reason or another, glimpsing the changing world before returning underground.

Even that disappeared eventually, as the higher layers started to lose their integrity. The foundation of The Mother’s soul fell away faster, the existing memories finally becoming too unstable to see as a blur of multicolored light replaced the walls and ground, all of it flowing into Wild Chains’ mouth.

He didn’t even know how to describe the flurry of lights around him, so he didn’t try, simply watching it all fly by.

It would’ve been a wonderful, memorable moment. If not for the growing weight in his arms.

Wild Chains’ body simply could not interact with raw faith, so Dei saw white lightning begin flowing from its back, and into the ball in his hands. With each strike, it grew rapidly, and the acceleration of The Mother’s collapse went hand in hand with his own troubles. All the faith stored in her soul went through his body, collecting itself in the designated ball that grew scarily heavy.

He quickly started to levitate slightly above Wild Chains to ensure he didn’t put unnecessary pressure on his spell, but he didn’t know how long he could keep that up.

When it grew to be as large as himself, he had to position it on his back, holding it like Atlas, yet still it didn’t stop. He found himself falling down, on a collision course for Wild Chains as he had no ground to stand on.

‘As much as I want to stay and watch the process, I need to return to my body. I’ll be able to flex my spiritual AND physical muscles, not to mention it’ll take more weight off Wild Chains.’

Perumah chose to stay, but Dei kept hold of the faith, dragging it back to his main body.

*

Opening his eyes with a gasp, he found himself forced down. The ball of faith was only designed to exist within his soul, so he no longer physically held it, but the nature of his soul forced it to manifest itself somewhere in his body.

Directly between his lungs, back down to the size of a marble, he could sense it continue to grow. It was not as large as it’d been in the Realm of Mind, but it would be a massive problem if he didn’t do something about it.

Pushing his body to his knees, he stood up and looked around at the wide area he still had. Tapping into his Fluid Shape racial ability, he started to grow.

If left alone, the faith would start pressing into his lungs. He didn’t know if it’d get large enough to collapse them both, but he didn’t want to let it come to that. Especially when it risked rubbing against his heart as well.

As he made himself larger, he also tried exerting his will onto the shape of the ball of faith. He didn’t want to change its shape too much, just into more of something flat or discus, so he wouldn’t have to grow and give it space as much.

Both his size increasing and altering the shape of the construct were slow going, and he quickly began to feel a stabbing pain in his chest as flesh parted to give way to a tiny and dangerous construct.

‘Aloran I know you were struggling to make this, but for the love of YOU, I would’ve preferred if you’d not accidentally put it between my two of my most sensitive organs.’

*

Dei’s soul sight watched the last of the soul drain away. Wild Chains had effectively killed her almost immediately after starting the process, but the bodily functions only now shuttered and ceased as she was finally bereft of any fragment of soul. 

At long last, The Mother was dead.

He sighed in relief as he realized the process was finally over, and he could stop growing. It was getting… cramped.

The people of Agartha had come out to watch and take photos, because right now, Dei was effectively a kaiju. His endless growth had drawn attention a while ago, but he couldn’t stop.

If he could stand up to his full height, he’d likely be hundreds of feet tall, which felt ridiculous to him. He assumed there’d be an upper limit to how large he could grow, but was apparently quite wrong.

A side effect of his new size was the increased strength, which was probably the only reason he could still carry the ball of faith. His stats, even if they weren’t visible, did still work as a multiplier for what already existed. More size, more muscles, more strength. He found his SP draining faster than usual when he moved, and was forced to keep up a weak levitation to prevent himself from sinking into The Mother’s skin, but it was manageable.

When he finally saw Wild Chains pop out of the ground, he sighed in relief. He wanted to get out of here already.

Looking at it though, Dei saw it was much larger. Not as large as himself, but it’d clearly grown, and he could tell it wasn’t simply because he’d gotten bigger. Killing The Mother how he did resulted in a tangible strengthening of his pseudo-affinity, the concept Cycle of Sealing was based on, as well as levels and a full evolution for the spell itself.

The gains hadn’t even been fully realized either. Wild Chains looked a bit… chunky, much pudgier than it’d been when it started, and Dei knew it was because Wild Chains hadn’t finished digesting The Mother’s soul. It would slowly dispense her Potential into Dei’s node, but until that was done, it’d struggle to do anything.

He watched as it lethargically phased into his chest, stopping in its designated position and flopping down to rest.

“Did you put on weight?” Perumah asked in his mind.

“A couple thousand tons I think, yeah. It was either that or let the ball of faith in my chest collapse my lungs and heart, so I did what I had to do.”

Perumah was about to say something else, but paused. He wondered why for a second, until a force took hold of him, and his view changed.

Rather than a cramped cavern, he was somewhere in space. He couldn’t see Earth, but there were a few celestial bodies around, including what he guessed was the sun. 

‘I think I’m still in the solar system’

From the sun, a massive golden figure emerged, solar flares exploding outwards as it breached the surface. In a flash, The Champion was close enough for him to see in detail, the golden dragon studying him while he flew circles around Dei.

Tapping into his Union half to make more “Conceptual” sound than “Physical” sound, Dei asked “Why am I all the way out here? This doesn’t really feel like a banishment as you haven’t attacked me yet, but you don’t look too happy.”

“Correct,” The Champion said, sounding displeased. “When people pray, they generate faith. If it’s to an existing God, it goes there. If not, it goes to the nearest one. For the past six millenia, I’ve received most of the faith generated by Earth, but a non-insignificant amount has still gone to The Mother. Around twenty percent went to her, for the past six millenia. I assumed I would be recouping this loss when she perished, yet I have not, and I spot the manifestation of it within you. I’d like that faith back.”

Dei felt his Wrath spike. This faith was his, he’d killed The Mother and earned it himself. The only other person who had any right to it was Aloran, and the man had already told Dei he didn’t claim any. 

“No, I’m the one that dove into her soul and risked my life. I will decide what to do with it.”

The Champion narrowed his eyes, and the barely suppressed aura he’d held back until now exploded outwards, slamming down on Dei. “Perhaps you have killed her, but I am the one who has guarded Earth for this long. If not for me, there would have been no people to pray. No generation of faith at all. Surrender it.”

It felt like a command, an undeniable compulsion, yet Dei found himself unaffected. His own presence emanated outwards, shocking him as it cut cleanly through The Champion’s. He found his soul imbued with an absolute and utter hatred for… the world at large? The Champion was a force of nature just as he was a God, and that seemed to tick something off in his soul.

‘It’s the Wrath Curse,’ he realized, ‘Though it’s all gone now, I reforged my body with it. And it’s letting me reject the Champion’s compulsion without effort.’

The Champion clearly had a spell of some kind that let him exert influence over mortals, but it just didn’t work on Dei. The Champion had tried to swat a bug, and had his hand cleanly bisected.

Dei was seconds from fleeing, when The Champion sighed. “Insolent mortals,” he said defeatedly, “Always the same. Yet I suppose I have not changed either. Very well, keep your faith.” 

Then the dragon just… turned around and left. Going back into the sun.

‘Huh.’

He thought, as a God, The Champion would just try and force him to give up the faith. Potentially even attacking him. It was rather nice to see that he was wrong.

When he thought about it though, that did make sense. The Champion had kicked all the other dragons off of Earth because they supposedly had the self control of toddlers and were too destructive. That could only mean The Champion himself had a strong impulse control, and was rather merciful as a being because he cared enough about the mortals to reject his entire race in favor of protecting them.

The Champion had tried to get what he wanted without hurting him, and when that failed, he just gave up.

‘You know? He ain't so bad.’

“What now?” he heard Perumah ask on his hand, a miniscule dot considering how large he was now.

Shrugging, he said “Well I can’t exactly go back to Earth now. I’m way too large, so let's stop by the universe Aloran asked me to drop off the memory packet and maybe figure out what to do with the faith? When I had my prophetic vision, Aloran said something about being ‘free to buy’ stuff with the faith, so perhaps I can trade it away. Then I can come back and perhaps finally collect my payment from the Church of the Champion for taking that vow. They still owe me information on the Realm of Reality.”

“Hmm, I hadn’t considered selling the faith. I wonder what we’ll be able to get for it? Based on what The Champion said, we are quite rich in divine terms.”

“True, I’m rather interested in that myself. Ready to go?” he asked.

“There is no possibility of doing anything else. We are sitting in the vacuum of space and cannot return to Earth. Yes, I am ready to go.”

‘Don’t gotta be so snarky about it, I’m just asking to be polite…’

Rolling his eyes, he readied his spell then paused, dropping out of the Physical realm.

‘Knowing Aloran, I’m probably gonna be smack dab in a city center or pretty close to whatever cathedral he wants me to visit. Best I don’t scare the general populace.’

Already working on explaining himself, he raised his hands in front of him non-threateningly, then teleported.

*

When he came to, he didn’t even bother looking around, just saying “I mean you no harm, I’m not a threat” through a use of [Meaningful], also sensing his System was back online.

When he wasn’t immediately struck down, he finally looked around and saw that, yes, he was surrounded by flying people in armor holding weapons.

One in a particularly bright outfit heavy in decorations had stepped forward from the rest, raising her eyebrow.

“You appeared in the center of our capital, bypassing all our defenses by approaching from a direction our spells couldn’t detect. State your name and purpose, if not an enemy,” he heard in return from a similar Skill.

“I am Dei Grrata, Supreme Inquisitor of Aloran, God of  Eternal Refuge, here on a mission to peacefully drop off a message and potentially ferry one back in return.”

“If so, please shrink. I can see you are a Union, and should have no problem compressing your shape.”

“True, I physically can, but not right now. There’s a big artifact in my ribcage that’ll kill me if I do. Long story. I wasn’t actually able to choose my landing zone, hence why I’m here, so I’d rather just leave the city. Also why I chose to come to this universe while in the Spirit Realm, so I wouldn’t scare the population.”

He finally took a moment to glance around, seeing he was in the city square of a massive settlement with many marble buildings and walls, looking quite fancy and no doubt expensive.

Narrowing her eyes, she said “Very well, do not run. Let us guide you to a landing zone outside the city, and we will discuss from there.”

Nodding, he simply went along with everything. He hadn’t Identified anyone yet, but he knew an important city like this was sure to have several level 500 guardians.