Chapter 1017: Eldritch Gods. 3
"A lot of things... A lot of things," Siena said solemnly as she thought about the 'rituals' some very 'fanatical' faithful performed.
Due to the rules of the religion, the blood god's faith did not attack innocents, but all criminals were fair game, and let's just say they were VERY creative when it came to punishing these beings.
"The imagination of mortals can shock even demons and gods at times. I completely understand you, Siena," Nyx said.
"Hehehe, my little lambs are doing well," Lily laughed.
"It was you, wasn't it, Lily!? It was you who taught them those things!?" Siena pointed her finger.
"Of course, if they represent my Emperor, they must be the best at torture," Lily nodded proudly.
The demonic ladies simply gazed at the hell sky with a distant look as if remembering the 'arts' that Lily used against Victor's enemies in hell.
Honestly, it wasn't a pretty sight to behold, even by their standards as demons.
"Your art is quite impressive," Azathoth spoke.
"Hehe~, to hear that from you makes me very proud, Azathoth," Lily laughed.
Violet, with a face a little paler than usual, just shook her head and then clapped her hands.
"Let's set aside this conversation for a moment and focus on Darling's plan."
"...Oh? This is new. What has Victor planned for this time?" Pepper asked.
"Oh, Pepper doesn't know about this yet," Violet said.
"Neither do I," Zaladrac said.
"Me neither," Gaia raised her hand.
"Well, if you stop sleeping and read the report we've made, you'll know," Sasha sighed.
"Laziness," Pepper commented.
"Boring," Zaladrac spoke afterward.
"I'm busy keeping the planet running," Gaia said.
"Sigh..." Sasha put her finger between her brows. "Fine, I'll explain briefly."
"Basically, Darling has decided to unite everything under his domain."
"... By everything, you mean..." Pepper asked cautiously.
"All the remaining pantheons and putting Earth itself under his domain," Sasha said.
"... So, another war," Pepper sighed.
"Not exactly," Velnorah denied. "Instead of an unproductive total war, it would be more of a silent invasion."
Velnorah began to explain about the dragon heart, about the clones, and how all the souls of these clones would be under Victor's control. Then she began to explain about the tower of nightmares and turning it into a place of trials where mortals could step out of their status as common humans and become something more, changing their race.
"... Where did this sudden Korean Manhwa plot come from?" Pepper asked incredulously.
"Now that you mention it, it's quite similar, huh," Siena spoke.
"From the perspective of this plot, we are the gods who created the tower or dungeon, and they are the mortals we will nurture for war. Shall we call ourselves constellations now?" Pepper asked, a little more excited than usual. She would always support this kind of trope. After all, it's fun to play something she saw in the novels and manga she reads.
Ignoring Pepper's excitement, Scathach spoke. "Will the rewards from the tower of nightmares mostly be race changes?"
"Yes, we plan to include some weak divine artifacts that mortals can use."
"Why change race? Can't they remain as humans?"
"I mean, they can if they want to, but to be honest, without external support, humans are undeniably the weakest race."
While dragons, vampires, and werewolves are born with naturally stronger bodies than normal, humans don't have that; they have to rely on external things to grow, usually an artifact, an energy that isn't theirs, like blessings or something similar.
But on the other hand, if they work together, they can achieve great results; their adaptability and ability to innovate in situations of extreme danger are incredible... But even with that, it won't be enough to deal with beings in the future.
While they have incredible creativity that has created various things over millennia of history, all of this becomes useless in the face of pure power.
None of us here feel disdain for humans, and the reason for this was Scathach herself—her martial art was created by observing various martial styles, whether supernatural or human, most of the time being human styles.
Due to their weaker bodies, they would have to be creative to fight beings stronger than themselves, which was their greatest strength.
Observing this for millennia, she created a martial art that was exceptionally deadly. Now, she was trying to adapt this martial art to the robust body of a dragon.
"But that's not the point; we are trying to nurture adaptable soldiers."
What they are trying to do here is create an environment where they use this creativity to improve everything. The reward of changing race will exist there, but it will depend on the humans themselves whether they want to change race or not. But here lies the main point: if they change race, they will still have the thoughts of a human and will have to adapt to their current situation.
After all, changing race will not guarantee a very strong power. They still have to train to become stronger.
Victor wanted to use the potential called 'adaptability' and 'creativity' to create an environment where strong soldiers could be created. He was living proof of how strong these two components are.
"I don't understand... Haven't the clones already fulfilled this need?" Maria asked.
"Yes, they will," Velnorah spoke.
"So why do this?" Maria asked.
"Even to us, creating BILLIONS of clones is ridiculous." Velnorah pointed out. "In future wars, we have to use the population of the planet we build on. You could say that what we are doing here is an experiment to do in the future on other civilizations."
"Oh, you're thinking ahead, huh."
"Yes," Velnorah nodded.
"The population we conquer will be the infantry soldiers, and the clones will be next in the hierarchy, becoming something like commanders or more specialized infantry, and then there will be the elites," Violet began to speak. "The two main bases of this hierarchy are very important to us because they will be our workforce."
"Correct," Velnorah nodded.
Violet now understood: "In the end, we are doing this to take the gems from the trash. Those who are talented and strong will naturally stand out and possibly become elites; we cannot deny everyone's potential, so we are doing this."
"But even if they become elites, the clones will be our main force because we will have complete control over them. They will be the ones we invest the most in. A force that never dies and adapts to all enemies. That will be our main fleet."
"Exactly," Velnorah nodded. She had the mentality to use everything she could, and she would not let an entire civilization sit idle when they could benefit from these beings to increase their influence in the cosmos.
"Show me the clones' projects. I'm interested now," Violet said.
"Okay."
"I want to see them too," Anna said.
"Me too," Sasha said.
"Send them to me as well," Aline said.
"Okay, I'll send them to all of you," Velnorah said.
...
While the girls were doing their things, putting Victor's plans into action, Victor himself was back in the coliseum watching Nero.
At some point, while he was waiting, Ruby suddenly appeared and stood beside him.
"How is she?" Ruby asked with visible concern in her voice when she saw Nero floating with pain on her face.
"The hard part is over, and she awakened her divinity. Now, she needs to break the loop."
"How will she break the loop?" Ruby asked.
"When she accepts herself for who she is."
"... Does she need to accept that she's a hybrid or something?" Ruby asked.
"Wrong. She needs to accept the situation she's been placed in. So far, she's thinking, 'What if I had this power?' 'What if I had this family?'"
"Weakness isn't bad; staying in weakness is the problem. And what she's doing is the worst of both. She's ignoring her weakness," Victor sighed as he looked at the timer counting down from 1000 years.
"I see, so it's the same situation as mine, huh."
"Yes... Although you didn't have as intense trauma as Nero, you still thought about the incident when you were kidnapped. By understanding that you had no choice, accepting the things that happened, and embracing that feeling, you awakened your divinity."
"Divinity, in essence, is fully accepting who you are, all the ugly parts, all the beautiful parts, all the flawed parts. You have to accept yourself. Until that happens, there will always be something holding you back from continuing your journey."
"Something extremely difficult to do considering people always want to ignore the ugly part of themselves that they hate."
"Yes," Victor nodded.
A quiet silence fell over the place as husband and wife just watched their daughter as the timer continued to decrease. Conveniently, they were ignoring the goddess of destruction meditating nearby.
When the timer reached 900 years, Ruby asked:
"What is Nero's divinity?"
Kali's ears visibly perked up when she heard that question. This was something she was also curious about, but she pretended not to be interested.
"Apocalypse. She is the goddess of apocalypse," Victor spoke naturally. "As a result of her divinity, she can create a cosmic cataclysm that destroys all dominant powers of a domain. The types of apocalypse she can bring are calamity, cataclysm, disaster, and large-scale tragedy. She can also alter cause and effect in an area to intentionally create events that would cause an apocalypse that would destroy a civilization."
The unsaid part of all this was that she could do this unintentionally, and her very existence could cause all these events at once because she's not a normal god but an Eldritch God.
Just by stepping into a city and letting her divinity loose, that entire city will be destroyed for various reasons that already exist in the city or will exist in the future.
"... Holy hell." Ruby clearly knew this; hence, she was shocked. "Are there means to counteract the influence of her divinity?"
"Gods with divinities related to Order and who are stronger than her can somewhat counteract her influence."
The unsaid part is that even if these gods exist, because she's an Eldritch goddess who operates under a different set of rules, her divinity will still be triggered, but it will be on a smaller scale and much more distorted due to the influence of 'order.'
It's impossible to completely avoid the chaos created by an Eldritch God. They are just those kinds of beings. Unless the enemy was ridiculously stronger than the Eldritch God, they could not avoid all the chaos.
Eldritch Gods are contradictory and corruptive by nature, and these characteristics affect their very concept as well.
"You need to keep an eye on her, Darling... We don't want her to cause the apocalypse in our city, do we?"
Victor chuckled. "Don't worry, I'm used to dealing with this. Remember our daughters."
"... That's true," Ruby sighed.
What Nero can do is relatively 'harmless' compared to some of Victor's daughters, like Yol herself, who can bring the unreal into reality.
Breaking into a cold sweat, Kali promptly decided to ignore the level of bullshit she just heard and just focus on her meditation.
'I'm too young to deal with this shit. Let's just ignore it all,' Kali thought.
.....