Julia sat within a wide forest on an alien world, with a certain halfling goddess standing in front of her. The elf’s body radiated a faint divinity, indicating that she had already taken the first step towards ascension, that of ascending her soul. “Are you ready, Jules?” Aurivy asked in a concerned tone, standing in front of her friend.

“I’m ready, ‘my goddess’.” Julia smirked playfully, and Aurivy grabbed a giant toy hammer out of nowhere, slamming it down on her head. Julia dramatically swayed to the side, before falling back, cracking an eye open to grin at Aurivy.

“You know better.” Aurivy pouted, but she couldn’t stay upset at her friend, knowing it was just a bit of friendly teasing. She waved the toy hammer threateningly at the elf. “Now, remember. This is going to hurt more than anything you’ve ever felt before. I’d give you something for the pain, but… any medicine that would work on the ‘perfection’ body would be useless on a divine body, and vice versa.”

“You’re going to have to bear with it and not resist me. That’s the important part. If you resist, then this is going to fail…” Aurivy shuddered a bit when she said that, a sad look in her eyes. “So please, don’t…”

Julia sat back up, nodding her head gently. Aurivy had told her before how another goddess had lost one of her friends during this step. She did not have any desire to end up the same way, so she was going to take this very seriously. She just had to play that little trick first to ease up some of the tension. “I know, ‘Rivy. Like a bandaid.”

Aurivy gave a small nod. “That’s right. I’m going to be doing this as quickly as possible. That’ll make it hurt more, but it should be over quicker as well.”

When Udona lost her friend, it had been because she wished to ascend on her own, so there was nothing that the goddess could do to help her. That was the biggest reason that Julia had chosen to become Aurivy’s subordinate, to prevent a situation like that from repeating itself.

Julia closed her eyes, relaxing her body. “My life is in your hands, Rivy. Make a goddess out of me.”

Aurivy hesitated, before slowly walking forward. She had studied the ascension process, even making contact with any gods she found to be interesting. She knew that the best time to ascend the body was when the divinity of the soul was on the verge of overflowing. That was when the process would be able to occur the most smoothly.

Holding her hand out, she focused, taking control of Julia’s divinity. It had been months since she ascended her soul, and she had only been practicing with her abilities enough to imprint the concept of ‘wood’ upon her divine energy. Aside from that, she had spent the time building it up, waiting for it to hit the limits of what her physical body could handle.

When Aurivy flexed her control, commanding Julia’s divinity to mingle with her ki, the elf’s body began to dissolve from the top down. From the outside, it looked as if a golden wave were crashing over her body, descending and reshaping her. First her head, then shoulders, then her arms and chest.

Julia grit her teeth, muffling the cry that attempted to rise past her lips. Her body tensed, but she made sure to never resist Aurivy’s influence over her energies.

Soon, the golden wave was at her stomach, then her legs, disappearing into the ground as Julia’s body reformed. Her clothes, ripped and tattered from her Perfect Self body shattering beneath them, were instantly replaced by more pristine clothing thanks to Aurivy. In total, the process took roughly ten seconds.

“That… wasn’t so bad.” Julia groaned, falling back and sprawling out as her body gained another layer of golden luster. “The soul was way worse.” Unlike her body, which had already reached perfection, she had missed the chance to upgrade her soul. Thus, forging a divine soul had been far more excruciating to her.

“We’re not done yet.” Aurivy reminded, creating a golden shard in her hand. “Are you ready for the final step?”

Julia blinked, looking over and seeing the shard. “Oh, right. Divine Will next, right?” She let out a sigh of relief when she realized what Aurivy meant. Unlike the other steps, this was the simplest, with practically no risk of failure or pain involved.

Granted, that’s not to say that there were no risks. Rather, those risks could be avoided by following one simple rule: Don’t try to be subordinate to multiple gods. Since that wasn’t the case here, Julia felt no need to worry, and nodded her head.

Aurivy walked over, pressing the golden shard against Julia’s head, and willing it to merge with the latter’s mana. There was a golden flash, and Aurivy could tell that Julia had completed her ascension. Now, her divine energies were intermingling. Her soul, body, and will were linking together to become a single, comprehensive force. This was the reason why people typically passed out during this step, as the mind was too busy connecting with the other forces to maintain consciousness.

“So, how’s it looking?” Aurivy asked suddenly, despite nobody else being present besides an unconscious elf-god. At least, not until the air next to them rippled, a lycan goddess walking out into the forest as well.

Accalia chuckled, shaking her head. “Sorry, Aurivy. Her top three choices are Wood, Eternity, and Games. No two-word options available for her.”

Aurivy pouted her lips heavily at that. “Drat… alright, fine. Just wood is good, too. But… for Eternity to be an option, that’s probably because of that seed.” Although Aurivy had been hoping for the option of Eternal Wood, she had never asked Julia to use any powers related to time or preservation. That meant that the special aspects of the elemental seeds could provide unexpected results during the ascension process.

“Are there other special seeds like that?” Accalia questioned, not having paid as much attention to Natural Seed as Aurivy had. Unlike the halfling goddess, Accalia had not memorized the different types of seeds.

“A few, yeah. But none of them have any effects that people couldn’t train on their own.” Aurivy shook her head at that. If Julia had wanted the Eternity domain, it wouldn’t have been any more difficult for her to train. Ultimately, it came down to whether Accalia would accept someone with a particular domain emerging in the world.

Accalia nodded her head, reaching out to ruffle Aurivy’s hair. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I’m going to head back now. I already set her up for wood like you wanted, so there shouldn’t be any complications from here out.”

“What, were you busy somewhere else?” Aurivy asked in surprise, swatting away Accalia’s hand.

“Your dungeon god asked me if I could help him hunt down other monster gods to add to his collection. It sounded interesting, so I thought I’d give it a go.” Accalia grinned. “Right now, I’m in the middle of tracking down a rather elusive spider god that has a Space domain. Always teleports whenever I get too close to him, so I’ve got to find a way to lock him down.”

“Do you want any help?” Aurivy asked curiously, thinking about the compatibility between herself and such a domain.

“No, it’s more fun if I do it myself. The goal is to capture him alive, anyways. If I just wanted to kill him, it’d be a lot easier.” Accalia shook her head, turning to walk away as the air rippled around her again.

It was roughly an hour later when Julia first woke up, letting out a groan as she placed a hand on her head. “Is it done now?” She asked as if having slept off a massive headache. In the corner of her vision, she saw the notification from the system that she had successfully ascended to become the Goddess of Wood.

“That’s right!” Aurivy declared proudly. “Would you like to give it a little test run?”

Julia blinked briefly, nodding her head. Stretching out her senses, she felt a connection with the forest around her. Every tree seemed to be an extension of her will. With a thought, the trees twisted to the side, and began stretching out their branches. “I… shouldn’t have this much power as a new goddess, should I?”

Although Julia had never experienced such a thing before, she had done a fair amount of research into the subject. When a deity first ascended, they typically reported only having a small increase in power until they built up a large enough store of divine energy. However, Julia currently felt as if her energy were boundless.

Aurivy giggled faintly. “One of the perks of being my subordinate goddess. I’ve set it up so that about ten percent of the energy I receive from worship is split off and given to you. At least until you create your own following.”

Aurivy was worried that Julia would not be able to easily gather her own worshippers, as gods were becoming increasingly more common with the passing of time. Her best options were to either borrow power from Aurivy as she had set up now, or to find an uncultured planet to spread her name.

However, the second option was not as feasible in their current situation. In order to find an inhabited world where she could spread her faith, she would need to venture quite a ways away from the civilized areas. Otherwise, it was entirely possible that other explorers would stumble on her new planet and disrupt her plans.

Granted, she could instead explore other planes of existence, but doing so was arguably even more dangerous as the laws of physics would change from one plane to the next. Without the backing of an organization devoted to exploring the countless planes in the void, it was foolish to try to force her luck there.

“Oh…” Julia nodded her head, seeming to understand what Aurivy was thinking. She wasn’t really that concerned with her own level of power, having just thought that it was strange for her to be so strong already. Even if Aurivy hadn’t done this, she didn’t plan on establishing a religion of her own any time soon.

Instead, she simply smiled, slowly rising to her feet. “Should we go back, then?” She asked as she stretched her arms, doing her best to feel for any differences between her old body and her new one. “We had a raid planned for tonight, right?”

“Oh, right!” Aurivy recalled, her eyes going wide. “Tonight’s the Shadow Dragon run, isn’t it?” With a thought, golden mist wrapped around the two of them, sending them back to their home.

I shook my head as I watched the scene of their departure. I knew that the method Aurivy tried wasn’t listed in the information that I had purchased from the market, but I was still interested in watching the scene. After all, it was possible that it was either an uncommon or rare ascension method that could have surprised me.

Still, I wasn’t too disappointed in the results. At the very least, Julia hadn’t met her end from failing to ascend. If she did, I don’t know how long it would take Aurivy to get over that. Those two had been friends for a long, long time at this point.

Turning my attention away from the scene, I glanced at the time remaining before the invasion, seeing that there were only a few days left. Looks like it’s time to speed things up a bit for final preparations.