Chapter 813 The Laughter Of The Gods
Powerful members of the Noble houses, especially those under the Ancestor's direct bloodline began to feed the poor sections of their families to themselves. The case of Circe that would have shocked Trion a few months ago became nothing special.
Life had no meaning in Trion except for the pursuit of power. The true face of the world was revealed to be nothing but a jar filled with poisonous insects all meant to devour each other, so a Poison King could be born.
In this case, the end goal was to become an Earth god, no one wanted to fight the Holy War where the gods themselves would wage a war against Mages and Demons and be pushed to the sidelines.
When a Dominator grew in power by devouring others, this cannibalistic trait could not be hidden, for the eyes of the Dominators would turn red with no white to be seen, their teeth would transform into fangs, and an unquenchable thirst for blood and flesh would be born inside of them, but the price they paid was worth it to become Earth gods and fight in the greatest of battles.
This vampiric trait was now fashionable among the powerful of Trion, who in their madness now saw this as the ultimate representation of power. The capital Aroth stank with blood and the beautiful Crystal Lake that would entice the senses of anyone who witnessed it now stank.
It had become filled with bodies from millions of people butchered daily that the lake had turned black. No one cared that the glorious capital city now smelled like the dead, and its beauty had turned to delirium.
The air of Trion began to warp as madness infected the world, and the screams of the slaughtered and the laughter of the victorious did not cease. The eyes of the gods could be seen all over Trion as they feasted on the air of slaughter and despair.
Their laughter constantly rang over the horizon, empowering their subjects to more deranged acts, as even newborn babies were eaten. Nothing was off limits.
A single Earth god was more valuable than a hundred thousand Third Circle Dominators, and so this action of eating their people did not reduce the might of Trion, instead it multiplied their strength exponentially.
A Dominator at the Earth god level was technically as strong as a god, and every moment a million Earth gods were being born on Trion as the endless slaughter continued.
No one else seemed to care about the future, everyone only looked forward to the war.
In the past, perhaps millions of soldiers would head to the battlefield each year, primarily from the Tiberius Family, but now that number had ballooned to the billions, and more was coming. The Dominators headed for the battlefields in massive ships that were as plentiful as the sands on the seashore.
They all carried a single chant–War.
They all knew that this battle was entirely theirs, and they did not doubt they would ever lose in their home world. The invaders would be drowned under the relentless tides of numbers and the great weapons and treasure that they all wielded, their only worries were if the armies of the enemy would be enough to go around.
Somewhere along the line, the direction of this battle had changed, it was no longer being fought to glorify their god or seek the next Emperor, it was simply to slaughter. Soon there would be no weak family member to consume, and an unearthly hunger had overcome the Children of Trion, now their nature was slowly changing, becoming something foul.
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Circe stood beside a shelf filled with books made from bones and metal, she had discovered it among the treasures that Rowan had sent alongside the Spirit Guises, it contained the hidden histories of the houses as collected by every Ancestor in the Boreas line for the last million years.
In the last seven hours, she had been slowly reading through it, discovering the glories and the horror of her previous family, although reading was not her favorite pastime she had already collected another ten thousand candidates for Rowan, and she had made sure that this time they were all properly vetted.
The two Spirit Guises were at the bottom of the Crystal Leviathan which housed a massive hall, where another one hundred million candidates were being interviewed.
Alongside that number were another five hundred million Children of Trion whom Circe had rescued from the slaughter above as the madness reached a fever pitch. With her powers, this was the most she could accomplish without being discovered. She had placed all the Children of Trion to sleep and kept them in a special section of the Crystal Leviathan.
Originally before this madness began, Circe thought that she might have gone a bit too far with the instructions she was given as she had chosen many slaves for this selection process, but she was sure that she had read between the lines, whatever preparation Rowan had been making should have neared completion, and the time of subtlety was over.
She became thankful for this step she took because the slaves were among the first to be butchered in the senseless violence that swept through the planet. If she had not gone overboard on trying to find enough candidates for Rowan she would not have been able to gather a million slaves talkless a hundred million.
Trion had gone mad, and the gods alongside it.
At first, she had thought that the announcement from the gods would destabilize the entire plan laid out by Rowan and that they would not be slowly infiltrating Trion as she had once thought, but after carefully thinking over the words Rowan had said to her the last time they were together, she felt as if he had anticipated such a change. He did not care if his activities were discovered and said that the new gods he was creating would be serving another purpose.
She had discovered that with Rowan there was always a plan beneath the plan, and it was useless trying to figure out how his mind worked, she could only follow his instructions and interpret his words as best as she could manage.
Nowhere in her wildest imagination had she imagined what came next. The slaves she collected were close to the inner workings of the capital and they had first detected when the slaughter and cannibalization had begun, Circe had dismissed this event as an anomaly soon to be crushed by the enforcement from the family.
The fact that the Crystal Leviathan now swam through a river of blood and bodies had proven how wrong she was. From the few thousand people she wanted to collect for the organization, the number had bloomed to a hundred million.
She had fled the surface when the madness became too much for even her to comprehend. What was happening above was so terrifying that her mind had gone numb.
The only escape for her senses was to follow her duties and prepare the candidates for godhood. The appearance of the eyes of the gods of Trion and their endless laughter only filled her with rage and she knew if she allowed herself to deliberate on it, she would go to war against them even if she died as a result.
Anything to stop their laughter.