Chapter 188: The daemon of choice.

Chapter 187: The Daemon of Choice

A lone stone saint crawled out of a broken settlement in the treacherous depths of the underworld. This particular child of Nether was weak and pathetic, barely even understanding what had happened to him and his friends.

He was a dormant beast, the weakest rank and class in all of existence, but he was also a first-generation stone saint made by Nether himself—a failed one, perhaps, but a child of Nether nonetheless...

How ironic it was that a daemon at the highest rank in existence was the creator of such a weak being.

The daemon of the underworld did not create the stone saints in his first attempt... it took him many failures and millions of tries to create fully functional stone saints.

But in the process of creating the perfect replica of life, he ended up creating flawed stone saints as well.

Those flawed beings met the requirements of being people in their own right, but lacked the prowess that other stone saints possessed, and most importantly, were unable to climb the path of ascension.

Those stone saints lived far from Nether’s city, where the ’True’ children of Nether dwelled.

They were shunned and deemed lesser simply because of how they were born.

Their inability to climb the path of ascension was why their kin cast them out—after all, there was no room for the weak in the society of the stone saints.

But where was the fairness in that?

Broken, angry, and afraid, the stone saint kept crawling, clinging to life desperately as he thought about his existence, and the existence of his people as well.

It wasn’t the mentality of ’The strong devour the weak’ that angered him; instead, it was the fact that he and his people had no choice in becoming strong in the first place.

The perfect stone saints were given a choice, either to die or grow stronger... But they had none in the first place.

And now, after a long time of surviving the darkness, a being from the abyss had found their little settlement.

It started slowly, kidnapping a member every month... Then it became a weekly occurrence, and finally, there was no one left but the weak stone saint.

They were helpless against it, and the stone saints from the capital refused to help them.

’Why... Father Nether, why must you be so cruel?’

He knew that his father had been scorned by the goddess of black skies, but why must they, who had done nothing wrong, suffer such cruelty?

The stone saint would never know, and so the creature of the abyss descended upon him...

Yet, it did not kill him.

Instead, the creature of the abyss seeped into his body and soul, puppeteering the poor stone saint.

For countless years, it walked the underworld using his skin, tormenting the stone saint and keeping him alive through its unholy powers, until one day, the daemon of destiny found something at the edge of the abyss, and formed an audacious plan.

He grabbed the being of darkness, which had parasitized the stone saint for decades, and experimented on it, inflicting the same kind of torture it caused upon others to fulfill his own desire.

Free of his captor, the stone saint tried to stand on his own feet. But he was too weak to do so.

His body had been ruined, his soul had been shattered, and his spirit had been tainted by darkness.

He looked upon the visage of his heavenly father, who was looking at him with an unknown expression, hidden by an endless veil of darkness.

The daemon of destiny was looking at the stone saint, undoubtedly, but his starry eyes reached far beyond time and space and beyond all reason.

He was destiny, and so all roads were open to him, the ones from the past and the ones from the future.

"Do not gaze upon the past of deities so lightly, abomination."

The stone saint could not comprehend his father’s words, but he knew deep within his soul that they were not meant for him.

Nether’s wings flapped and carried his heavenly avatar away, leaving the stone saint behind to die.

It seemed destiny had decreed that he would die today. But destiny was built on choices, and choices on circumstances—and in the end, fate triumphed over destiny.

The stone saint was not fated to die this day.

On his deathbed, the sky tore open, and four sacred gods hurled something into the depths of the underworld.

They were quite bold to disturb the domain of Nether himself like that.

But the reason they had done so did not matter; after all, why would someone like him care about the reasoning of celestial deities?

What the stone saint cared about instead was the thing they had hurled...

It was a beautiful relic, in the form of a gauntlet.

Weak and dying, he crawled towards it, surviving the impossible and resisting the pull of the shadow realm.

Until he touched the relic and bonded with it.

The divine relic fused with the stone saint, and as it did, his broken body, his soul, and his spirit were filled with tenacious energy.

The stone saint awakened, becoming one of Nether’s perfect children...

Yet he felt no happiness at that, nor did he want to be associated with the daemon of destiny ever again.

Salvation had come from the distant skies, and with the relic at hand, the stone saint set out on a long journey to escape the underworld in order to gain a better life.

He grew stronger day by day, learned the art of combat, and mastered the powers of the relic, which granted him countless forms and shapes.

His nature as a stone saint influenced the relic, making every transformation within it made of stone and darkness, turning the green light into black and purple light—something that had proven beneficial in the depths of the underworld.

Ascension was hard, but not impossible now, and after countless years, he became a Transcendent, escaping the confines of the underworld and challenging the perils of the hollow mountains.

The entirety of existence sprawled before the onyx saint, promising endless wonders and endless adventures.

He journeyed the world, learning and growing each day.

The world was in a calamitous time, with the empire of war god falling after the death of its avatar, and the four spirits turning on each other for control.

The six great gods grew ever so distant as well.

The daemon of hope escaped her imprisonment, and many whispered about her vengeance against sun god.

The golden age was coming to an end, and war was upon all of existence.

The onyx saint did not waver; instead, he continued marching forward, exploring the world, growing even stronger, and gaining more enlightenment.

He entered the realm of heart god, fighting alongside the native humans of that land against the spawns of an insidious parasite, and meeting the world tree itself, heart god’s divine avatar.

He met the jade queen in a distant mortal realm, the most beautiful horror, and found kinship with her. They were both touched by daemons, after all.

He crossed the storm sea, the divine ocean of storm goddess, and had a conversation with her avatar, learning of love, responsibility, and hate.

In his travels, the brave onyx saint crossed the paths of a few mad supremes and more than a dozen rampaging spirits, but in the end, he survived them all.

He walked wearing many faces as well.

Sometimes he became a human, donning the visage of a brave Champion, or at other times, he wore the face of a humble blacksmith.

Sometimes he became a mundane animal.

Sometimes he became a harrowing parasite and lived within Transcendent and supreme creatures.

Sometimes he walked among the sky race people, flying the skies of the sun realm.

Dragons, giants, serpents, ghosts, and all kinds of creatures were stored within the relic, and so no name was foreign to him, and with each life, he formed more soul cores, rising in class.

He lived so many lives in such a short amount of time, and in the end, the onyx saint rose to supremacy, becoming a supreme Titan, the strongest rank among mortals.

The innate ability of the stone saints—the ability to assimilate source elements into themselves—allowed him to gain a true name and become the prince of darkness, gaining authority over true darkness.

His second element was the relic itself, making him unique among his kind.

With control over both elements, the prince of darkness returned home to the underworld.

What met him was six princesses, each one ruling over the underworld and the prosperous civilization of the stone saints.

Each one of them had been born a perfect stone saint, which was something that angered the prince of darkness.

To him, none of those monarchs deserved their thrones, and so the hatred that had been brewing in his heart since birth matured into a promise of vengeance... A promise of ruin.

And in the end, he brought war with him.

***

The underworld was burning.

The castle of the last prince of the underworld was scorched to the ground.

Their armies were destroyed, and their wills had been made feeble by the prince of darkness, who wore a thousand faces.

The venerable Jade saint, a supreme terror who was exceptional among her rank, crawled away from the prince of darkness, much like he had crawled away from the creature of the abyss a long time ago.

He was transformed into a pyronite, his figure woven out of black flames and molten obsidian.

Looking down on his fallen sister, the prince spoke:

"Did you think you were chosen by our father just because of your birth? Oh my fallen kin, how hateful you are."

The last princess of the underworld attempted to call upon her will and her supreme powers... But it was of no use.

Her spirit had been extinguished, her soul had been shattered, and her countless bodies were destroyed.

Still, she had her pride, and with that pride, she laughed.

"It doesn’t matter... It doesn’t matter at all. You see, you are too narrow-minded, too selfish, and too weak to see the truth..."

The prince of darkness’s will fell upon her, and his dark gaze was full of hate and madness, making her tremble.

"What are you talking about, wretch..."

She remained smiling.

"The truth is... our birth did not determine our destiny... It never did. Our father did not assign us posts, nor did he give us anything to inherit. Our people, our civilization... All of it was built by our efforts. Sure, he might have built the grand city and slain the corrupted gods inhabiting the underworld, but that was all he had done for us. The weak died and the strong also died, but there is a difference between those two—and you." She looked at him with hatred burning in her blazing eyes. "The difference is... both the weak and the strong used what they had, what they were. Unlike you, who took a shortcut... So, you are worse than weak... Worse than the strong as well."

"You can have all the power in the world... in fact, you can even go on and become a spirit, and even become a divine Titan. But at the end of the day, we all know you cheated. You don’t deserve any of your powers. Everything that’s special about you came from that relic... You never forged your destiny, wretch. You were simply fated to walk the earth with that hideous thing on your wrist... That is why you will never be equal to the weakest of our race."

The prince of darkness scowled.

"And you did not cheat? Your mere status as a true child of Nether changed everything! If I had the same opportunities you had, if I had the ability to climb the path of ascension then—"

"Then you would’ve been a failure... A third-grade stone saint, barely even ascended, perhaps. That is the one undeniable truth you can never reject, if you have any semblance of dignity left in your bones, that is."

The prince of darkness looked at her with a dark gleam and manifested a blade of dark flames, stabbing her in the head and ending her existence once and for all.

"Not so perfect now..."

The last of the princesses was dead, and the underworld had no true ruler now, aside from its one divine god, Nether.

And so, the prince of darkness took the throne and rallied the stone saints under one banner.

All stone saints... But the distinction did not matter anymore.

Due to the cruelty of the underworld, or perhaps time... The stone saints that had been born imperfect were all gone by now.

Each and every stone saint alive right now was born as a perfected saint and grew up in the city of Nether.

How ironic it was that the fate of the entire race was in the hands of an imperfect wretch like him...

It was done. All that had opposed him had died; some died to his human allies, the brave Transcendent champions who had ventured into the underworld, but most had died to his own hands, and Nether did not bring his wrath upon him, which meant that the daemon was satisfied with him ruling his dark realm.

How could he not be? He was the strongest of his kind, after all.

And yet, that brought him no satisfaction. The words of the princess haunted him long after her death, making him doubt his own worth.

She was right... In the end, he had reached this far thanks to the relic.

That truth remained embedded in his head, no matter how much power he gained or how many enemies he slew.

He had considered destroying everything, and ending his people, rampaging across the realm multiple times.

But no... That was not enough.

His vengeance needed to be more precise, more grandiose.

He needed to bring down the cruel tyranny of Nether himself, the one who had created him and the one who had made him endure all this suffering, to finally be satisfied.

Only then, when he stood atop Nether’s corpse as a true god and brought ruin to all that remained, would he be happy.

Perhaps he would create his own race and treat them better than Nether; perhaps he would be an aloof god who existed at the boundaries of existence, silent and unknowable.

The prince did not know how he could change in the future, but to find out, he needed to become a god.

***

Apotheosis was impossible.

The relic... The Omnitrix... It did not allow its wielder to become a god, as if it had been created with an absolute law that prohibited anyone who wore it from doing so—a law much too similar to the universal law of war god, which prohibited any mystical anomalies from existing within the boundaries of her divine realm.

The Omnitrix did not allow gods to wear it as well.

In a sense, it was the flaw of the Omnitrix, one that had been inscribed on it when it was created by the first thinker.

It only made sense now... After all, how can such a powerful relic exist without an equally devastating flaw?

The Omnitrix made its wielder stagnant and unable to ascend beyond supremacy... If the user wanted to become a god, they would have to use the sacred and divine imprints of the Omnitrix, or discard it completely to chase apotheosis on their own.

At first glance, it was not that bad of a deal; after all, there was always an option... But in the grand calculus of existence, the act of ascending using a relic would never be equal to a true god.

After all, even after becoming a god using the Omnitrix, your power would still be reliant on it. And so, that divinity would never be truly yours; it would be a borrowed divinity, one that was temporary and susceptible to external forces nonetheless.

The prince of darkness had gone mad from this realization, much like the first supreme human, Kanakht, when he was denied apotheosis.

He had contemplated his decision for years, until one day, Nether descended upon him, bringing the promise of war.

A war that would tear all of existence apart.

The doom war.