Chapter 192: God’s Descent
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
What is a God? There was no way to actually answer this question since this colorful world contained too many existences known as Gods that really did reach the level of Gods in the eyes of people; however, in actual fact, Gods consisted of many varying levels.
The Elemental Gods, the True Gods of Order, the Evil Gods of Chaos, the Original Gods, and the others—they had all created their own organizations, and everything about their abilities and personalities was different. Not a single person could give an exact definition of a God, and even the veteran demons in the Chaos Abyss were able to become Gods, recruit believers, and bestow divine powers upon their followers.
And, to tell the truth, there were quite a few major demons that did this, and their believers usually hid in the shadows. Those dangerous demon worshipers were usually at the top of the most wanted lists.
As a matter of fact, there was actually more information on the Order Gods, the victors of the previous Holy War.
From a certain standpoint, since Lorci was an exiled Order God, she was still similar to a True God of Order as she had her own Divine Country and teachings, and she even protected the dark elf species.
In order to understand these undying existences, one would first need to understand the differences between the True Gods of Order and the other Gods. Most True Gods of Order had a direct connection with a particular divine task, and their existences were representations of certain Concepts.
First, Gods should never be treated as individuals. Yet while they were indeed high above mortals and would never naturally die, they had quite a few limitations as well.
They were on a divine plane, but their main bodies were also trapped in the divine plane. They combined with their Divine Tasks and Concepts and became incredibly powerful, but, because of this, they were partially assimilated by the Concepts and had lost their senses of self.
The side of Order was orderly, after all, and their God system was like a tree with many branches and leaves, with all the Gods being a part of the overall tree, and each Divine Obligation and God had various connections with each other.
Low Gods, Middle Gods, High Gods, Main Gods—this was only a rough separation of their ranks, but in a way, it was indeed the current situation of this world tree.
If each Main God were said to be at the top of the divine tree, then the strongest Gods would be the tree’s branches, and the countless souls and their worship that could be seen down the ladder constituted the source of nutrition supporting this tree.
From a certain perspective, Lorci was still the same Elf Order God from before; she was creating her own world tree so that she could become an actual Main God of the elves, and her first step in accomplishing her goal was to construct the Dark Elf Gods, with the Poison God Felix being the first.
After they became a part of the world tree and lost a part of their self-consciousness, these Gods could be considered to no longer be individuals. The closest analogy to their existences would be a country.
Each God had their own Divine Country, which was the combination of a Concept and group benefits, and these Gods would obtain the powers of administration. However, they were also tied down by the very same administrator powers.
Leaving their own divine countries? That was strongly forbidden, and as long as the Gods did not leave their divine countries, it would be impossible for them to truly perish. If their physical bodies that they sent out were killed off, then the only thing that would happen would be some loss of divine power.
And now that the Elemental Tide wasn’t very active in the current generation, the Gods’ physical bodies were rather limited in power, and perhaps a SemiGod-level physical body would be able to deal with normal situations. But when faced with veteran SemiGods who had been through hundreds of battles, they would typically end up as part of their enemies’ experiments on researching divine power.
Yet in order to allow their Guardian God to truly be able to assist them, the ancient Elf Kingdom—in this aspect, at least—was far more advanced than other kingdoms.
“God’s Descent!”
There were certain standards to be fulfilled for a True God to perfectly accept a body as a vessel—the body needed to be customized, and their soul’s wavelength needed to be adjusted in order to adhere to the True God’s soul’s wavelength. This way, the True God could use a power closed to their maximum.
If a God’s Descent succeeded, and the True God’s will perfectly aligned with the vessel’s, then its willpower and soul would transform into strength. And if the alignment ratio was over ninety percent, then with the vessel and will combining into one, the True God’s host would be able to wield power far surpassing that of a God’s physical body, and their combat strength would be almost at the level of a True God.
It was worth mentioning, however, that God’s Descent was a double-edged sword. This soul contained much of the God’s power, and if this vessel, which contained pure willpower and force, ended up being killed, then the True God’s divine power would take a huge blow. It that God was only a weak God to begin with, then there was a high chance of the God directly perishing.
The Forest Guardian God Clareladin had personally descended with his SemiGod descendant as his vessel and had indeed managed to draw out tremendous power. He had even managed to force Lorci into descending into her main physical body, but it was precisely because of this that Clareladin had met his end when his vessel SemiGod Prescott died.
These requirements were incredibly high, especially regarding the willpower of the original vessel. And, of course, the closer the person was to the God, the better. If there was a bloodline relation or a synchronized soul wavelength, then it would be all the better. In a way, Karwenz’s descent was the Chaos Abyss’ version of a God’s descent, and it worked almost exactly the same as that of True Gods of Order.
But there were also professionals at summoning the Gods into themselves, and the human witches in the far west, the soul shamans of the beastmen, and the moon elves’ soul priests all had bodies specialized for Gods’ descents. Among these groups, the moon elves had the oldest traditions.
The moon elves had always been the tribe of priests, which was an important role in the Elf Kingdom. Throughout the great history of the Elf Kingdom, the greatest priests would always come from the moon elf tribe.
Their innate body structures were the most suitable for communicating directly with the Gods, and their high-level Divine Arts that borrowed divine power aligned with their racial talent to begin with.
And after Adrian had joined Lorci, the Spider Queen had unhesitatingly designated him as a future vessel for the Poison God Felix. Amelia had also been countered all the way up until now because she had been facing against Adrian, who had been borrowing the Poison God’s divine power that naturally countered her plants.
“God’s Descent!”
With Adrian’s muttering, a dark-black light fell down from the skies, and a mysterious black mist wrapped itself around Adrian.
Abnormal magical runes appeared on Adrian’s skin and caused him to moan in pain as he knelt to the ground, but all the human spears and arrows tossed in his direction were blocked by an invisible barrier.
“Poison God Felix!”
The already corroding ground around him was evidence of the identity of the descending God. It was the lucky God who had recently just ascended.
Felix, who had been born as a dark elf, had long since reached the pinnacle of a SemiGod. When Lorci had helped him steal the Forest Guardian God’s divinity, a change had occurred in his Divine Obligation ¹ of planting and guarding forests, which then combined with the poison assassin Felix’s original body’s specialties and transformed the Obligation into that of the Poison God.
Yet I didn’t even need the sight before me to confirm my opponent because my system wouldn’t possibly remain idle at such a critical time.
[Epic Quest: Slaying a God.]
[Quest Description: Kill the Poison God Felix, and make the foolish Lorci taste the feeling of losing her children again. Let her know the consequences of a double betrayal.]
[Reward: Depends on your performance, but a minimum of 50,000 Fate Points.]
[Punishment for failure: Believe me, if you fail, you won’t even need a punishment. Felix is such a weak God. You wouldn’t actually fail, would you?]
“Slaying a God?” What an overestimation of my capabilities. Even if Felix is a super-weak God who just rose up to the level of a True God, I’m still not certain of being able to defeat him.”
The Adrian before me was no longer in a humanoid form. The True God’s power had begun changing him, and with the distorted boundaries of reality, he soon transformed into a gigantic black spider.
He was more hideous than a demon lord from one’s worst nightmare and was fiercer than a colossal dragon. The eight eyes of this gigantic black spider were filled with looks of greed as its disgustingly large mouth was already spewing digestive fluids that corroded the ground in front of it, and poison kept leaking out of its tail. The ground where it stepped with its poison-needle-studded feet would transform into a poisonous swamp.
Divine power gave him powers far above the norm. Just its stare would cause people to feel despair, and just looking upon him would cause the weak-willed to go insane.
But…
“Fight him to the death! We have nowhere to retreat! At least we shouldn’t die like cowards!”
Yes, this wasn’t the time to be wasting words repetitively. We had long since had nowhere to retreat to.
“Hmph! Lorci, I’m definitely going to remember this!”
I spat some blood as I lifted my Roland Sacred Sword again and led the charge. I was prepared to finish my Epic Quest.
With a descended God as our opponent, the battle pushed us to the brink right at the very start.
The gigantic spider was incredibly dexterous despite its size, and its enormous legs resembled an exquisitely well-controlled mecha as it moved. It easily tore through our defensive structures over the entire defense line.
Under the Poison God’s control, a black mist surrounded its body, which directly destroyed all magic spells and arrows before they could even reach him.
But the biggest headache of all was the poisonous mist he was emanating, as anyone who so much as touched it died on the spot—there was not even a single survivor.
“I’ve analyzed the divine power; it’s not just a simple poison. It’s the Concept of Corrosion and Withering! He’s distorting life into death! Definitely don’t touch that!”
Just as Harloys finished speaking, one of Felix’s gigantic eyes fixated on her as he spat a black gob of poison in her direction.
Felix was no mindless beast. He had senses far surpassing that of others, so even if Harloys only had the physical appearance of a black cat, he immediately classified her as the number one threat since she could point out his divine power’s nature.
And while the battle was raging on ferociously, not far away on an observation tower’s deck the beastmen tribe leaders were watching this scene with cold eyes.
“…Shouldn’t we send our forces to help out? Isn’t that our ally?”
The Boar Tribe Leader seemed somewhat confused. He believed that they were supposed to be the main characters on the battlefield, so why were they simply watching their ally fight while watching from behind? This wasn’t how beastmen would typically act.
“Help? Hmph, after that spider kills off the humans, if it doesn’t turn around and kill us next then I’ll thank the War God for protecting me.”
“Ally? Even though our ally has such strong combat capabilities, she watched us lose so many after last night’s battle and only now she sends Felix to fight? Isn’t this just trying to steal the battlefield achievements?”
Beastmen preferred using their fists instead of their brains, but that didn’t mean they were idiots. Lorci’s intentions were so obvious that even they could see them.
Amon reached out with his single remaining arm and collected a few snowflakes in his hand. They began to melt due to his body heat.
*Crack!*
Amon clenched his fist tightly as a ferocious light emanated from his eyes. The current him was the unmistakable Beastman King. “Everyone, prepare for battle. We must reorganize our squads before the snow gets heavier. In this battle, nobody—no species—is worthy of our trust. Warriors, prepare to die in battle. For our honor and for our ancestors’ land, even if we’re destined to be buried here, we must let this cruel world understand the courage of the beastmen!”
Suddenly, an ancient horn sounded out from far away—a summons from a true ally of theirs.
“They’re finally here!”
All the beastmen tribe leaders had joyous looks, and when I received my scout’s report, I was shocked.
“How are there still more beastmen? Haven’t they already used all their main forces?”
But the direction the beastmen reinforcements were coming from, as well as the tribal flag that the air cavalry scout described to me, instantly helped me understand the situation.
“The beastmen of the plains? That damned Emordilorcan!”
Since the plateau’s beastmen could directly reach the human territories through the Earth Elemental God’s tunnels, then the beastmen from the plains could surely do the same thing. Perhaps this was Emordilorcan’s true final trump card!
But right now, I was unable to do anything, because the highly venomous spider before us was already difficult enough to deal with!
“Harloys, make your preparations! If we must die here, we need to at least take these bastards with us!”
Yet, suddenly, another combat drum’s sound rang out in a familiar elven song, which actually made that huge spider reveal an excited and happy expression like a human.
However, when I listened to it carefully as well, I, too, smiled.
“It’s finally here!”
Note:
1. The Divine Obligation refers to a God’s area of specialty/Concept—like how Wumianzhe’s is Law, Felix’s is Poison/Withering, and Clareladin’s is the Forest.