Ank

The interior of the temple was dark, and I was able to navigate it to the last room only thanks to my high [Perception], where a pair of barely alive braziers shone some light around. Between the braziers, a tall rock pillar with the image of a warrior carved into it.

The priest was kneeling before the pillar.

“I guess that the commotion who draw the guards outside was your fight with the mighty [God] who kept the road safe”, he was an old man in luxurious robes and ornaments, like all the priests seemed to be.

But he wasn’t the [High Priest], of course. He stood right beside the Emerald [Goddess] all the time, and was too skinny and pale, almost skeletal looking. That man wasn’t the one who coordinated the torture of mine, my sister, and everyone that I knew. But I still hated him.

“Yeah, and if you can guess that, you should also have the brains to know who won if the two of us are here”, Hunah said.

I shared her feelings, I also wanted to see that frail priest just as frightened as his victims should have get whenever he sacrificed them.

“Hmph, they sent kids this time”, the Cloud Fortress City [Priest] scoffed, getting up and looking back at us with disdain; he didn’t even seem to care about our implicit power, overwhelmingly superior when compared to the [Level: 13] floating over his head. Displaying a crooked smile, he continued: “I’ll dumb things down so you, brainless servants, can understand: the [Goddess] Umi may not be a ‘High God’, but she wouldn’t be able to found and grown her kingdom while being exactly powerless. So, why should we change sides?”

“Oh, we’re not here for politics, old man”, I told him, remembering the words of the man who skinned me alive, and this time he actually seemed surprised. “We’re here for a massacre.”

My sister and I stepped forward, and the priest stumbled backward, finally realizing what kind of situation he was in.

“Wh- What? I- I know all the correct rituals! You’d be doing a mistake by killing me, whoever you have in mind, is probably fooling you! They will say the wrong words, and drawn failed symbols! They will be stealing your power!”, the priest bumped into one of the braziers, scattering ashes and sparks, when he seemed to remember something, and ran to the stone pillar, begging: “Please, mighty [God]! Show these fools how necessary I am!”

[God]?

Once I stopped to think about it, hadn’t he said “why should we change sides”?

I starred at the stone pillar:

[Species: God, Type: Stelae, Level: 300]

Both our auras, my twin sister’s and mine, washed over the room, filled with our killing intent. And they shocked themselves against the deity’s own aura.

“…Necessary?”, the image of the warrior burst off the stone pillar, almost two meters tall, fully made of stone, and heavily armed and armored. Coldly, he turned to the old man on his knees, the begging [Priest]. “More like, convenient”, the corrected concluded, piercing his follower through the heart with his long spear. “[Cosmic Children]”, the [God] concluded, absorbing something from his victim.

“So scared that you’re trying to get as much extra strength as possible to fight us, hu?”, just like Hunah with the [Priest] just before, I provoked the deity.

Normally, neither of us would bother with such petty things, but… when it come to that trash, it seemed that we couldn’t just hold back. Even then, hatred bubbled inside of me, painfully, just to be staring at yet another one of those things.

“Don’t make me laugh: just like a thousand [Level: 1] trash can’t even dream about facing a ‘Creator [God]’, you two are not real opponents to me”, the stone pillar deity said, walking forward and spinning its spear over its head.

“[Ruler Bender]”, I conjured, bringing forward dozens of low-level summons and immediately commanding them against the [God].

“Pathetic!”, the enemy screamed, slashing with its spear so quickly I could barely see its blade moving, and absolutely destroying my creatures before they could even touch it. The deity hadn’t even slowed down in its track toward my twin sister and I.

Hunah then dashed forward, jumped onto a wall, and back against our opponent, her sword meeting with the stone spear.

And I still had plenty of low-level creatures.

In the single second my twin sister kept the deity still for, a wave of little monsters climbed all over the enemy’s body, biting, scratching, hitting and slashing, even the petulant stone pillar [God] was surprised and confused by the amount of damage the weak summons were dealing thanks to the “Dungeon Finder” [Title], which doubled the damage against corporal protection; and, apparently, being made out of stone counted as being covered in this type of defense, like I guessed after the fight with the [Apacheta].

The [Stelae] kicked the ground, killing some of my summons, and jumping high enough so to hit Hunah against the temple’s ceiling; my sister dug her sword onto the rock above her, to not fall right over the enemy’s spear, like this one seemed to have planed, but the falling deity quickly changed plans, and wiped out the rest of my little creatures I summoned with a single motion as he touched the ground again.

Just like many other of my opponents before, however, the [Stelae] underestimated the physical power of a summoner, and I proved that the built my sister and I were investing in wasn’t a waste: still with my conjured hammer, I hit the back of the deity with all my might, and sent it stumbling forward.

As the angered opponent turned around to face me once again, Hunah was already back on the ground, and at the [God]’s back, slashing.

He finally seemed to have lost his patience:

“Enough!”, the deity screamed spinning its long spear in a circle, and pushing my sister and I backward. “[Children of The Cosmos: Loyalty]”, he conjured, and the blade of his stone spear, and his armor all broke into bright green emerald. Over his head and after his [Level], a plus signal displayed:

[Species: God, Type: Stelae, Level: 300 (+50)]

“It’s over, mortals… Know your place, of cattle, and be thankful that we even allowed you to exist in the first place!”

The enemy strode with renewed confidence, and I knew it wouldn’t fall for the same tricks twice; this if we could even surpass the [Attributes] of a creature almost a 100 [Levels] stronger than us: this battle could become just as dangerous as it was our encounter with the [Voider]. It was like I had guessed before, and how the 9th Guild Master told us: if we hadn’t heard about that type of [God] from our rank up yet, we weren’t prepared to face them.

So I looked around and tried to remember the designs of the building and city, hoping I could come up with a plan soon.

Stupid me, not expecting a [God] inside a temple… If they “protected” the roads, of course they would be inside the cities too.

“Welp, fighting with you pathetic piece of shit was just as disappointing as expected: we’re out of here”, I then said, giving my middle finger.

Hunah didn’t need me telling her to trust me and come along, but followed after me as soon as I ran to the depths of the temple, where the stone pillar still stood; the enemy standing between us and the only exit, the door from where we entered that room.

The following dash from the [Stelae] was faster than I originally expected, ready to impale both of us, twins, in a single thrust with its spear… but I did expect it nevertheless, the [Gods] being so arrogant to show their [Level] to everyone, and looking down on mortals: in one second, the wall at the back of the temple was there, in another, black acid had eaten everything away, leading to a fall from the top of the mountain. As expected of the attack of a [Level: 114] monster.

My sister and I jumped from the edge of the building, and right over my floating monster, which took us away, as the dashing [God] failed to halt its spear thrust in time, and slid straight off the temple and from the top of the mountain.

While it kept falling, the enemy turned around, staring at my twin sister and I, on top of my floating summon, its confusion as clear as the breaking new dawn ending the night.

“…Hey, haven’t we, like, get good at this fighting stuff?”, I asked Hunah.

“Yeah, right? I mean, we are barely getting all fucked all the time now”, she agreed.

Then:

“SWUUUUSH!”, a bright green spear pierced straight through my almost spherical summon’s body, killing it instantly, and pulling us, twins, into free fall; the [God] had hurled its weapon in rage.

“C- Call your birds!”, Hunah screamed as the quick wind distorted our faces into caricatures.

“Why do you think I haven’t called the [Apacheta] to fight this fucker?! I’m out of [Magic]!”

After a surprisingly long amount of time few, we were about to hit the ground, the mansion of the [Zemi] where we first saw the slave trader right beneath us, when Hunah seemed to have an idea, reached into her ever-increasingly heavier backpack, pulled her whip, and saved us both by making her snake bite into the rock on the side of the cliff.

As the [Stelae], or last enemy, finally hit the ground, it fell straight through the ceiling of the mansion, and the impact alone brought half of the building down. From there, over even the “You Leveled Up!” notifications, I heard:

“Lo- Lord [Zemi]! NOOOO!”

“…Ah, speaking of which, I was really wanting to learn how to summon one of those little woodmen”, I said, glad that we killed the shit [God] type I almost forgot about, at the same time we dealt with the stone pillar [God]. “To, like, complete the collection of [God] types in the end, you know?”

Hunah looked at me utterly uninterested, when she said:

“Get the stone pillar guy, and we go get Taffy back immediately; the [Zemi] is weak and you don’t need it anyway.”

I sighed, pointing:

“Maybe the [Zemi] has some nice treasures?”

We jumped straight into the semi-destroyed mansion… And took the fall as a way for the world to say that there was always room for improvement beyond sheer power.