She continued, "If the god was awake, it would barely be able to register your presence. But it would definitely know that you're harming it and would retaliate."
"But the god is asleep. Its consciousness is adrift. It is not even certain if she will ever wake up. She might just die when too many trees have been cut down."
"However, it is also possible that she will wake up. It is actually unlikely that she will be able to wake up, as doing so will interrupt her breakthrough process, which might lead to her death. But even if she wakes up, you certainly won't be the first thing it will squash."
"It is just like that pompous god said; she will have better things on her plate to deal with than some puny mortal scratching her body."
He ignored the several shots she took at him in her explanation and said, "Thank you for your input. I appreciate it."
What he said got her attention. She turned to him and narrowed her eye sockets.
He asked her, "Why are you looking at me like that?"
He felt that she was suspecting him of something.
She replied, "You were extra sincere with your thanks earlier, and it rubbed me the wrong way. Something about you has changed. Either you have been enslaved by that rotten god, or I am in an illusion."
"Neither should be possible as he can't enslave you, and I am immune to mental manipulations. This leaves the option that the source of the problem is you and you're scheming against me."
He rolled his eyes at her. "I'm not scheming against you. You could just be experiencing an illusion. If you were so immune to mental manipulation, you wouldn't have been fooled earlier when Aganju stood beside us and you didn't notice."
She said, "I wasn't fooled."
He was surprised again. "What?"
She repeated, "I wasn't fooled. I knew he was there beside you."
Kelvin asked in surprise, "Did he know?"
She nodded. "Yes, he did."
This increased his surprise. But then he realized something. So he asked, "So I was the only one who didn't know that a god was standing beside me?"
She shrugged. "Ignorance is bliss. You didn't know, so it didn't affect you. If you knew, then you would have been panicking, which isn't good for your health."
"I didn't tell you because I was protecting you. Also because I thought he was going to do something interesting, and I didn't want to spoil the fun. I didn't know that he was such a scheming, low-down, cunning bastard of a god that..."
Her shadowy figure shattered again.
This time he just sighed and walked over to the tree line so that he could start his mission.
On the way there, he thought to himself with a dry chuckle, "This time Wrath has met her match. Aganju is probably laughing his head off somewhere."
On one side is his companion, Wrath. She is a fun-loving person who is always hoping for bad things and calamitous events to happen so that she will have fun. As long as anything is exciting, she is up for it.
On the other side is a violent and volcanic god who is bored enough to stalk a mortal.
The two of them have clashed. One of them is hidden somewhere watching the fun while the other is being constantly scattered.
Unless Wrath is a masochist, he believes that Aganju is winning the competition for fun. So she has become the source of fun for another being.
He doesn't mind that. After all, Aganju is very powerful. If he is bored, then he can do anything for fun. It is his right because he is mighty, and might makes right.
However, he hopes that Aganju will be content with just harassing Wrath and won't try anything that will involve himself.
He is worried about this because Aganju said that gods are predators that take and take until there is nothing left to take.
His worries made him sigh as he formed a diamond blade with his hand and swung it at a tree trunk.
The diamond blade sliced cleanly through the trunk. Three more slices later, it began to tilt towards the ground.
He had cut the trunk in such a way that it would fall within the cleared area. But he also went ahead to push the tree so that it would fall exactly where he wanted it to fall.
After he felled the tree, he used Life Core to siphon all the life force from the stump in the ground. This would ensure that the tree doesn't grow back to its previous height in less than a day.
The other soldiers were also doing this. Only that they were pouring a toxic cocktail of chemicals on the stump to kill it completely.
The area that they had just cleared will remain clear for a while. New plants and trees that try to grow in this area will be cut down again when they reach a certain height.
Cutting down trees and destroying their stumps became his day. It was a monotonous and joyless activity that gave him too much time to think.
What's worse was that there wasn't much to think about. Only his decision to trust Wrath or not kept swirling around in his head.
He is contemplating trusting her because he wants to be immortal. It is imperative he finds a better way to avoid death because he doesn't think any of the plans he has made will be able to save him if he is left alone with a demigod for more than a second.
Like Wrath said, he is a coward. He can admit to that. He wants to keep his life at all costs, and he is not ashamed of it.
If he can trust her, he will be able to use the Gemini ability with her and gain some form of immortality that will help preserve his life.
Seeing her get scattered again and again only to return to curse out the god that shattered her form has only increased his yearning for that kind of assurance.