Diana

  “Don’t you just love curses?” Nana Xara’s voice sounded excited as Diana watched Mila and Aalam activate Aalam’s first true God rank artifact creation, a forty meter tall three-sided stepped pyramid made of a black marble-like substance formed by mixing A rank cursed stone essence with the crushed up bones of two of the gods they’d killed, King Selrah and Ralphon Tari, representing the element of lightning along with the divine role of rulership and the element of metal along with the divine role of smithing respectively.

  They’d done something Diana didn’t understand to make the structure super durable and capable of holding a ridiculous amount of natural energy. Then Aalam had filled it up to bursting with his abundant natural energy reserves, a process that took several days, and Mila overloaded the entire structure with karmic sin to the point it almost radiated black flames. Then they let it sit in the aura of the Radiant Behemoth’s skeleton for 12 years, Aalam coming by every once in a while to reinforce the runic array channels inscribed into every cubic centimeter of the structure, and the end result was the most evil looking building Mila had ever seen, an evil looking building her brother had then stored away in his own soul and brought to this lifeless non-integrated planet in the Prime Material.

  “No, Nana Xara, I don’t love curses.” Diana shook her head as Mila took out several million vials of blood from her own personal storage space, the result of the latest boon Aalam now granted. Each was filled with the blood of the leaders of every force under the Primordial Humans yet to surrender and not ruled by a god, and Mila telekinetically poured all of their contents into the large black basin at the very top of the pyramid. “I’m normal. And curses are creepy.”

  “If the first statement is demonstrably wrong, does that mean the second is as well?”

  “Come on. I’m normal.”

  “Diana,” Mila turned to her, completely ignoring the incredulous look on Diana’s face, likely because she was even more used to Nana Xara than Diana was, “it’s time.”

  Then, as previously discussed, the United Federation of Planets’ three mortal gods each moved to a different side of the pyramid and placed their hands up against it. Aalam’s energy, truly at God rank unlike hers or Mila’s, filled and powered the pyramid. Mila’s energy filled the runic array in the pyramid responsible for triggering and targeting the curse. And Diana poured her energy into the runic array responsible for the curse’s effect.

  The artifact triggered, sending out a pulse of curse magic that would reach all its targets in the universe within a few hours, and then Aalam put the pyramid back into his soul and all three of them quickly escaped through a temporary portal the Primordial Humans had almost no chance of finding to one of Aalam’s universes.

  “Diana, you just powered a curse that will not only kill millions, but will write a threat onto their skin in a way designed to inspire fear.” Nana Xara sounded cheerful, likely imagining the words Diana had designed the curse to write, ‘Time is up. Your new leaders will now have a three month grace period in which to decide if you still want to support your false gods or surrender.’ “You are not normal. And it’s great.”

  * * *

  Uvandra

  “What do you think I should do?” Bjoran Kembra, the first son of the former leader of the force Uvandra had been hiding in, asked his younger brother, the two having tea in their father’s old quarters. “Father’s spatial storage ring has gone missing and I don’t know where it is. Father’s contract seal was almost certainly inside, and, without that artifact, we can’t meet the United Federation of Planets’ demands.”

  “We could disband.” Bjoran’s brother sounded excited, the young idiot seemingly just having realized the idea. “If our force doesn’t exist, how could we surrender?”

  Then, as usual for the two, the elder brother hit the younger over the head. “First, disbanding doesn’t work. The Seven String Kingdom tried that a thousand years ago and their entire royal family were dead by the end of the next harvest season. Second, we don’t have access to the System anymore for anything other than surrendering. We can’t disband even if we want to.”

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  “What about praying to the gods to help?”

  The older brother leaned back in his seat dejectedly and sighed. “What can they do? So many have died, and even the Lord of Twilight Flame and the Lady of Hellwater are reported to be trapped. The gods are useless.”

  As the two C ranks continued to discuss, Uvandra finished pouring tea, perfectly hiding the smile that kept trying to appear on her face, and exited the room. Then, instead of heading for her quarters like she usually would, she went directly for the C rank planet’s primary teleportation platform and teleported off world.

  As instructed, she’d stolen all the wealth of the B rank lawyer she’d been serving for the last several decades after the Mistress of Oaths and Deception cursed him to death, storing his spatial storage artifacts in the new soulstructure she’d received after becoming a servant of the Heavenly Spark Soul King as a reward for accepting the quest she’d just finished, a soulstructure for secretly holding non-living items. And now she was finally going to leave the Prime Material and meet her hero, the Mistress of Oaths and Deception having sent her a message describing the exact times and locations of the teleportation platforms to use in her journey.

  * * *

  Ryan

  “Teacher, I don’t understand.” Ryan’s soul communication almost sounded like growling as he sat in his room near the Endless Battlefield, a battlefield that still, for the first time ever, had no one fighting on it. “I thought you were going to help me get revenge on the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his force, but you’re choosing to help them instead. Why?”

  Lord Var Quon laughed. “Helping them? The powerful mortal wants to kill our enemies and die in the process. We’re not helping him, we’re just evening the playing field a little so he can possibly take some of the primordial human gods out before he falls.”

  “But he annihilated all the undead in the Prime Material. What if he kills the human gods and manages to advance again? Won’t he be an even bigger threat?”

  Lord Var Quon’s laughter continued. “My little mortal apprentice, you don’t understand gods. What do you think the goal you’ve sworn to help with is? It’s not to kill the human gods or protect our fodder, it’s to take over the Prime Material, the largest and most connected of all known universes. And the threat to that aim is not a B rank who has cut off his path to immortality, but the Prime Material’s elder gods, especially Primordius, the Lady of Laws, and the Divine Child.

  “The Heavenly Spark Soul King and his wife, through the destruction of our fodder and their curse against those of our enemies, have shown themselves as a powerful threat, but not a major one. Were any undead gods in the Prime Material during that chain lightning spell, for example, the deity would have stopped it in its tracks far before it could do so much damage.

  “For the first time in a very long while, the natural repulsive power of the Prime Material is becoming weaker, and, if history from 45 billion years ago repeats itself, that weakening process will pause for a bit soon and then continue in a few tens of thousands of years.

  “By then, our elder gods will be able to enter into the Prime Material at will, and it will be time for the Prime Material to fall.”

  Lord Var Quon stopped laughing, but Ryan could still feel the god’s glee. “Our job now is to destabilize the Prime Material as much as possible until that happens. And the best way to do that is to help promote existing tensions, hoping our enemies kill each other before we even have to get involved.”

  * * *

  Uvandra

  Uvandra looked around the temple she’d been teleported into in wonder.From her magical senses, she could tell the main structure of where she’d arrived was a large sphere, probably the size of a moon, with a huge reactor in the center pulling in an ungodly amount of ambient energy from whatever universe they were in, but Uvandra was more focused on the large hall around her than the true nature of the space station.

  Twelve 144 meter tall statues surrounded the teleportation platform, each made of a different incredibly valuable A rank type of stone, and each showed a different aspect of the Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s divinity.

  One, made of death element stone, showed the Mistress of Oaths and Deception holding a scythe in the middle of a swing, and Uvandra felt her talents at assassination, especially her ability to find weak points and empower a single blow, would grow stronger if she were to prostrate herself and kowtow before it. Another made of fire element stone showed the Mistress of Oaths and Deception wearing a beautiful and revealing dress, dancing with a joyful expression, and Uvandra felt like worshipping it would improve her talents in charm, both her technical skill at seducing others as well as her charm magic. But the statue that attracted her attention the most was the one made of light element stone, showing the Mistress of Oaths and Deception holding a small humanoid statue and waving.

  It, along with four of the other statues in the room, almost glowed to her magical senses, and, if she worshipped it, she felt her talent in acting, in hiding her emotions and projecting ones she was not feeling, would grow drastically along with the power of her disguise skill.