They all agreed and crowded the dungeon core in anticipation. Ode was not at ease but he too was curious. He changed the view of the dungeon core to the tunnel for them to watch. The main plane had been silent, but now they were finally moving. What could they have planned for them? They wanted to see.
To an invader, it only takes a second for them to enter the portal and appear in the dungeon. But to the defenders, it feels like 10 seconds. They get notified as soon as the invader enters the portal, so they have time to prepare and wait before the invader actually appears. So they prepared and waited.
Ode didn't give any orders to the defending army. It was routine at this point. Nothing unusual had happened since the creation of the dungeon. The attacker would enter the portal and come face to face with numerous attacks that will shred them apart. Then something unusual happened. It was so unusual that the gods were stunned.
"Huh," Ode exclaimed.
But his voice was drowned out by the sound of the collision.
The attacker was an aberrant. Whatever it was didn't know what acceleration is. Then they watched as the attacker reaped through their defenders.
"This should be impossible." A celestial god complained.
They had bet their entire lives on this enterprise and yet they were failing right from the start. It was like betting on all the horses in a race except the one with an amputated leg. Then you watch as the three-legged horse beat out the other horses. A bet where all the outcomes are favorable to you except the impossible one. Soverick was making the impossible possible. Except he isn't three-legged but six-legged. He is a mutant, an outlier.
The battle ended quickly. The defending army was cleared and pushed back from the tunnel in less than a minute. Then the vision of the tunnel went dark. The gods became incapable of seeing what is going on there because that portion of the dungeon has been claimed.
It wasn't claimed because the outlier had said, "I'm laying claim to this place in the name of the Virut plane. Come and take it from me if you refuse."
It is claimed because the gods have lost their influence in that portion of the dungeon. The darkness of the tunnel made them panic. They turned to the one that had forced them into this bet.
"You have to do something."
"This can't be happening."
"We can't let that thing, whatever it is, out of our sight."
"We have to know what's going on there."
"Make the dungeon core show us."
They clamored and complained to Ode.
"Silence." He shouted at them.
They all became silent. He might not be the god-king anymore, but they weren't complete gods anymore too, so he still had power over them.
"I can't control the dungeon core. I can only use it to give orders and monitor the dungeon. We will just have to send in angels to recover our influence." He said to them.
So more angels entered the tunnel at the bid of their gods only to die again. It wasn't working. That six-legged mutant was not going to go down.
"Enough of this. We are just feeding him. The more we send to die at his hands, the more he will be able to fight. We still have the main army. We will stop them at that point. The outlier will be overwhelmed by numbers. There has to be a limit to how many he can take on at a time. His usefulness will reduce in a large-scale battle."
What Ode said made sense. They agreed with him. But it still grated on them that a wench had been thrown into their plan.
"What is he anyway?" A celestial god asked.
Yes, what is he? He looked like a vitality core stage battle sage monkey. They could see that much. But he wasn't behaving like one.
"Could he be an aberrant of refinement?" Another asked.
There are some people, for one reason or another, that can break the conventions of refinement. One such convention is that a vitality core stage cannot fight a mana entity. No matter the difference in skills, the power of a mana entity will overwhelm the vitality core stage.
One of them asked shakily. "You mean like the sages?"
The first sign of an aberrant is being undefeatable by anyone in their stage of refinement. It was the first definition of an aberrant. The Sages were the first aberrant of the battle sage monkeys. They were undefeatable by anyone in the transcendent stage.
"No, I mean like the dragons. Or even worse, the realm lord." The celestial god answered.
There are some who could go beyond fighting someone above their stage. They can even defeat them. The existence of these people made the first definition of aberrant obsolete. The effect of a royal bloodline can also make a transcendent undefeatable in that stage by others without a bloodline. So that definition was scrapped. Now aberrants refer to those that can even beat those with royal bloodlines and those above them without a bloodline.
"Could he be the descendant of a sage?"
"Did you notice his eyes? Isn't it similar to those of sages?"
"Even if he is, they only begin to show their prowess in the mana stage. That's why we limited the entry into the dungeon to the vitality core stage. Could they have broken that rule somehow?" Someone asked Ode.
The children of sages are also one of the reasons why the first definition of aberrants was scrapped. Still, they wouldn't be able to do what Soverick is doing at this stage. No vitality core stage refiner, aberrant or not should be able to do what he is doing.
So have the main plane managed to fool the divine dungeon by making a mana entity look like a vitality core stage refiner? Has far-fetched as it sounds, they would rather and easily believe it than believe that Soverick is a vitality core stage refiner.