Stygon
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Chapter 148
🕑 Added 2025-07-07 16:22:41 +0000 UTCOnce the people had calmed down, they started rallying together in smaller groups and appointing leaders, pooling their Gods’ resources and
Once the people had calmed down, they started rallying together in smaller groups and appointing leaders, pooling their Gods’ resources and whatnot. It seemed that the original plan, to each approach him independently and swindle him, had fallen through. Now they were looking to actually get as much faith as possible through legal means, and chose to share resources because Dei’s faith was simply worth too much. There was no way they could buy it all using mortal resources on their own.
The old man also chose to step down as the speaker, fading into the background to let someone else be the face of whatever little club he’d joined. Dei guessed that he had badly scared the poor guy, as he’d held Dei’s full attention when he’d let his Presence out, and that was an uncomfortable position to be in.
Rather than over a hundred offers, it was broken down into three large groups of people making offers, around thirty five to forty in each.
Their representatives all flew forward after making several deals with the others, and were finally ready to talk.
Dei smiled, “I am happy everything has been sorted. Now, I am aware you all have a huge list of things to offer, but I won’t be interested in the majority of it, so I’ll tell you all the things I am interested in, then we can work from there.”
The three glared at each other, already in competition, but quickly refocused on him.
Dei smiled, he was sure he’d get a good deal if they were all going to fight to make it as low as possible.
“First, I’d like a sample of every single mana type. As many as you can get me off the list of recorded affinities.”
He expected them to falter, but they dutifully wrote stuff down on their little clipboards.
Thinking of his Earth family, he said “Second, I’m not sure if this is possible, but I’d like a way to send messages out of the quarantine.”
Their brows scrunched, but Inyuden stepped in first. “I apologize sir, but that is not physically possible.”
“How come?” Dei asked, “I have an ability that can send messages through the Conceptual Plane. As long as I had an anchor to send it to, I imagine I could send it out of the quarantine, as the affinities themselves are not locked off.”
“It’s true that the affinities exist in both places, but it’s much easier to send messages in than it is to send them out. Affinities are intangible, and cannot be infected. Your messages could. If you tried sending a message out of quarantine, it would quickly be stopped and sent back by the System.”
Dei snapped his fingers, ‘Drats, I’ll have to get something else for them to remember me by.’
“Third, malleable clothing that can keep up with my shape changing.”
All three looked down, in sync, at his clothes.
“Yea, I’m naked right now. This is me shapeshifting my body to resemble what they were before.”
They struggled to keep from laughing, and he just kept going.
“Fourth, a list of any places in the multiverse which are readily accessible and recommended to visit. Practical things, not beautiful landmarks. I’m not really sure what’s even out here, or if there is anything like that. I’m trying to build power as quickly as possible for obvious reasons.”
More scribbling.
“Fifth and finally for the general stuff, I want some kind of container that can house life. I’m a beast tamer and I’m about to venture the multiverse… if I run into some animals, I want to take them with me, so anything like that would be quite useful.”
They wrote it down, but he also sensed some questions in their gazes as they subtly looked him over, likely trying to spot the beasts he spoke of.
Dei simply smiled, I don’t have em all on me right now. Most are still back in quarantine, and you wont be able to find every one I have hidden away currently.”
Specifically, Wild Chains. He didn’t doubt they’d be able to find Perumah, but Wild Chains was hidden, and he’d consider it a summon or beast friend. It was, after all, completely autonomous.
Still, he intentionally misled them a bit. They’d probably find Perumah and nothing else, assuming they simply failed to find his hidden army.
‘Gotta keep these bastards in line.’
They nodded in understanding, and now it was time to get down into the nitty gritty. He had a vast open market before him, he was gonna get some magical artifacts for his friends.
*
Dei frowned as they posed their estimates for the cost.
“I could do that for… eighty percent of the faith!”
“Scammer!” another said, “I could do it for seventy nine point five!”
On and on they went, slowly going down by fewer and fewer increments. They would undoubtedly stop at seventy five percent of his faith.
How convenient.
‘Hey Value Sense, what's the lowest one of these three goons would be willing to settle for, in percentages of the total faith?’
‘Nine point eight seven three six percent.’
Dei sighed, and the three shut up instantly, sensing the change in his posture. He’d come to a conclusion.
“Nine point eight seven three six percent of the total faith, final offer.”
The three raised their voices, blustering and waving their hands around animatedly, talking about the outrageously cheap price and how it was untenable.
The old man from before raised his voice, “Iten, take the deal!”
One of them stood straight up, stopped yelling, and immediately said “I accept!”
“WHAT?!” the other two shouted.
The old man from before said “Dammit, he has Value Sense. That’s the exact reading it gives back.”
The groups collectively scowled, one of the two that were now cut out of the deal saying “What was even the point of this?” before flying away angrily.
The other one who hadn’t received anything from it simply bowed respectfully to him, thanked him for his time, and left.
The crowds dispersed, and Iten’s group was all that was left. A purple haired lanky boy with pointy ears, four arms, and dark skin.
Dei just shook his head and chuckled. He wouldn’t give them a nickel more than was required, because he needed it for Aloran. They should have offered the minimum price themselves, simply because he was actually going to fight the demon. They shouldn’t be trying to make him weaker.
‘Ah well, that’s greed for you. I guess it exists everywhere.’
Iten spoke up when all but the people behind him were gone. “Okay, um, so if you’ll wait here a moment I promise I can get a container for it, but faith can’t really exist physically. It can exist within your body because you’re a union but the moment it leaves that it’s going to dissipate, then it’ll be a free for all for the Gods… is there any way you could wait here for a few hours while we make something to hold it and carry it to the proper temples?”
Dei frowned, ‘more waiting?’ “What happens if a part of me that holds the faith is cut off?”
“Um, because everything but the upper layer of Soul Strength is still structured physically, as long as the faith was in your flesh and not your skin, it would still remain safe and intact for you to potentially reclaim, so you don't need to-”
Dei had already been pushing the designated amount of faith into his pointer finger, and he formed a claw on his other hand. In the blink of an eye, the claw came down on said finger, severing it.
Several of the businessmen screamed.
Dei rolled his eyes. There were worse kinds of pain than physical, and he’d used Knowledge to ensure he wouldn’t be taking some kind of major soul wound from having his soul-infused flesh removed. He’d forget the name of a random restaurant he’d passed by in Alabama one time, and that was it.
He didn’t have that much Wrath in Cycle of Sealing, so he couldn’t exactly rely on a fast healing agent, but he wasn’t in combat so he just kinda… transformed the wound away.
In seconds, they saw him regrow his finger.
Normally that wouldn’t be possible, as it required him to manually link up blood vessels, capillaries, pores, everything specific, and it was an overwhelming process. Certainly not something he could do in combat.
Here though? Eh, he wasn’t using his extra mental speeds for anything.
Iten nodded robotically as he went down to the finger, placing a hand on it and making it disappear.
Dei saw him pause for a second, then break out into a wide grin.
‘Did I just give him an Achievement of some kind?’ he thought, amused.
*
In about two weeks, he’d get all the stuff he was asking for. Some of it was to be delivered sooner, such as places to visit that would increase his power or the clothing he ordered, but generally speaking, it’d be about two weeks before everything was ready.
In that time, Iten became his personal advisor and guide to the city- much to the boy's mild dismay. He was happy in some ways, likely because he was gaining Skill and Profession levels rapidly for dealing with Dei, but it seemed like he was always nervous around him too.
Right now though he had a different mission. Deliver a message to the proper authorities, the Cathedral in the center of the town.
For a moment, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to fit in the building, but he realized it was unfounded when he saw which building he was going to. More specifically, when he was told which building, because there was no possible way he could miss it.
It was three times taller than Dei, and he’d initially thought it was a fancy castle of some kind. When he said this, they told him it actually was, because they were a theocracy and the royal family lived there on the upper layers.
That’s not where he was going though. The public portion at the bottom had been cleared of people coming to worship for “Divine reasons” and would remain empty as long as he was there, so he was free to pack into the physical realm, becoming visible to all.
The windows were tinted, and with a loud rush of air displaced from his arrival, Dei appeared before a curved wall of thousands or tens of thousands of statues of Gods.
“You entered the Physical realm… very quickly” Inyuden said behind him.
“Yea.”
“...Ok. Well, I’ll take my leave and let you get on with all of this.”
Slipping out the door, Dei was left in an empty room with statues. Shrugging, he said to the open air “I’m going to cast a spell that breaks off a piece of my soul. This piece is what carries the message. Don’t be alarmed.”
He took the complete silence as agreement, then activated Wild Chains, insisting that it come out slowly.
He needn’t have worried. The fat bastard came out waddling.
It was still wildly overweight… actually, he was pretty sure it looked even fatter since the last time he’d seen it.
Almost instantly, an explosive fury descended upon the room. The walls and floor grew icy spikes, and one of the murals began to glow with a flaming cyan light.
“How DARE you depict a Leviathan as such. You will be flayed for this! We are elegant, sleek creatures. Not… that.”
“Cool it somewhere else,” Dei snapped, “It looks like this because I let it devour the soul of The Mother in my previous universe after I killed her. It’s just digesting its meal.”
The presence within the mural seemed to pause, but a second voice joined the cacophony, one of the stone statues, pulling itself from the wall with its many spiderlike arms and claws. “YOU! You have slain a Mother! You have silenced the voice of monsters… I will kill you! You will never know peace, for as long as you travel the multiverse, you are marked for death.”
Dei rolled his eyes, “The Mother I killed had its consciousness wiped away already. A human had started to puppeteer her body, trying to reshape the world in his image.”
“THE BLASPHEMY!” She screamed.
“...Does that mean I get off of being marked for death?”
“...Yes.”
He shrugged, then a third presence joined the fray. “What’r we talkin about?” an amused male voice said.
This one glowed an earthy brown, and its statue was all but invisible. He had to squint hard, seeing it as a tiny spot at a random part of the wall. The figure was just… a guy. Human looking too. The carving was about the size of Dei’s thumbnail when he was regular sized, and seemed to be waving with a smile at the person carving his likeness, or perhaps whoever was looking at the tiny decoration.
Dei felt the other two presences scowl, the pressure rising on him as they prepared some kind of vicious insult upon the interloper.
A fourth slammed down like a hammer on all three, and the familiar voice of The Champion said “GET OUT OF MY REALM!”
The Mother quietly returned her statue to its place and slipped away, while the Leviathan looked ready to stay and fight. The random brown-lit figure, what he’d assume was a Titan, ran away laughing like a maniac.
Alone in the presence of The Champion, the Leviathan finally turned tail fin and swam away.
The Champion grumbled for a moment, then left.
[Achievement Gained! Eye of the Storm]
[Eye of the Storm
You’ve been in the presence of all four types of Primordial Children simultaneously during a moment of warring, and survived.
Increased affinity for the path of Dragons/Titans/Leviathans
Become noteworthy in the eyes of monsters, causing them to listen to you more frequently
Increases Soul Presence]
Alone in the silence, he glanced around, seeing a handful of the larger statues light up in their various colors. None of them really said anything though, so it took it for them just being stunned at what’d happened, and how quickly it did.
“Anyway” he said, moving on, “I’m here to drop off a message from Aloran, God of Eternal Refuge on behalf of the Gods trapped within quarantine. This construct is more finely crafted, so it shouldn’t require me to take off a finger or two to hand it over,” he said, pointing at the glowing ball on Wild Chains’ back.
A statue of a well armored man standing with his hand resting on his sword said “Indeed, it seems this transfer will go much more smoothly. If I may counsel you though? A few of the requests within this packet will require more faith than is provided, and may fail. Your God states that this is fine, and there are alternatives provided for if the payment is not enough, but to get the best outcome for your quarantine, I recommend adding approximately six or seven percent extra from your remaining personal pool of faith to the packet.”
Dei tapped his chin thoughtfully, asking Value Sense if the God was speaking the truth by posing questions like “How much to add for the best benefits to the quarantine universe,” or some variant of that.
“We cannot possibly ignore the events that have transpired here!” another said “This church has been blessed by the presence of four Divine Children at once! We must mark this day in history.”
Dei’s Value Sense gave back numbers of somewhere around “five point nine percent” or some amount here, but he also realized that the God he was speaking with was likely a soldier, and did not have Value Sense, so it was a reasonable or honest estimate.
“You’re right, Value Sense says about five point nine percent more to get the full use, so I’ll add that to it. Since we’re working on exact numbers though with no space for error, I’m assuming the more business- minded Gods will help you work out all the deals?” As he spoke, he transferred the designated amount into the packet, watching it grow significantly.
“Hush, mortal. We must-” the fanatical one said, but was quickly talked over by the sword-wielder.
“Yes, I will ensure this gets to the proper hands. On my name as Rodor, I vow to put my best effort into getting the most for your people. Will you bring the manifestation of your soul closer to me so that I may take hold of the construct?”
Dei heard muffled struggling from the fanatical statue before it went dark, but ignored it, gliding Wild Chains over to Rodor and watching Aloran’s message break off from his spell, floating into Rodor’s statue.
Wild Chains returned to him, settling back into his soul with a near-audible sigh of relief with how exhausted it was from that super long outing.
“If nothing else is required of me, I’ll take my leave, as I must figure out a way to shrink myself soon.”
“We will not hold you any longer. Please, once you are more moderately sized, enjoy what our city has to offer. We will send for you once everything is taken care of.”
“I will. Thank you for your help. See ya.”
Phasing back into the spirit realm, he left.
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Edit suggestion: Dei simply smiled, I -> Dei simply smiled, "I
Erebus Dread
....why is Wild Chains getting chonkier? Is it gonna explode like mentos&coke?
