“Devinn.” Alwyn screamed out.

Devinn’s chest showed a tattoo of a face that constantly changed its expression and even split in multiple faces.

He was holding his head in pain as he screamed as loud as he could. For a god like himself to do such a thing was unheard of.

“I am going to reappear in the material plane. Teleport me in the void once we are there.” Devinn said. His words sounded like a last will.

He reappeared in the material plane just like he said and as soon as his body appeared, Alwyn teleported him outside their Everworld.

“What happened?” Alwyn asked.

“The astral soul generated from all those souls has one thing in mind: consume me. All the memories were erased to leave one single word behind: hate. As long as I live, this power will corrupt me forever unless I harbor no hatred towards anybody or anything for it to take advantage of.” Devinn frantically said.

“You live above everything. What or whom could you possibly hate?” Alwyn found the whole thing funny as he continued: “You just earned yourself another power. Cheer up.”

Devinn looked incredulously at Alwyn. He finally remembered something. He screamed out: “Run as far as you can. Now.”

Alwyn stayed where he was: “I will do no such thing. Just calm that hatred down and I will teleport us back home.”

“This moron."

" The only thing I hate is that carefree bearing of yours. "

"The power of hatred just needs a sliver of hate to be found in me so it can take over."

" He’s in for a beating. I hope I do not kill him this time.” Thought Devinn. It was just before his complexion turned gray starting from the face tattoo.

His tail and claws disappeared as he adopted a human’s body.

His protruding horns turned black and grew to a staggering eighty centimeters.

The moving face tattoo glowed with joy.

The new Devinn looked at his new gray body and clenched his fist. That action put the surrounding space in chaos.

“Are you okay now? I see that you are stronger than me. I cannot create a space storm without giving my all yet you do it by clenching your fists…” Said the amazed Alwyn as he whistled.

The new Devinn turned to look at Alwyn and said: “Oh… the simpleton. You should have listened to your friend and run away, but you would’ve never been safe from me.”

Before Alwyn could say anything else, he saw the gray Devinn lightly wave the back of his hand at him.

A simple action that flung Alwyn into many universes of The Human Everworld.

Alwyn’s body was almost entirely turned to dust. He called on the divine power inside of him to summon any element he could control so he could protect himself.

It was too late as the Grey Devinn appeared behind him and said: “You see, you will always be too weak if you keep idealizing everything you see. Me for example. I am not your friend.”

“Who are you?” Alwyn asked. There was some kind of invisible power stopping him from using his divine energy.

“He can make my divine energy powerless against him. Goddamnit…we thought it was our trump card against the demons but it seems that they have a power source that is stronger than Divine energy.” He could do nothing but stall for time as he called for Dorian. The spectre was the only being around that could offer assistance.

“Who or what I am is none of your business. I am just itching to give you a good beating because I can’t stand your way of doing things. I wonder if you can survive a punch of mine… Let’s see…oh… I will allow you to use your useless divine energy.” The gray Devinn said.

Before the punch could even depart the universe they were in was instantly destroyed and then disappeared as the punch departed.

Alwyn summoned endless elemental shields after augmenting his body with the power of the elements. Even with that, he was not sure that he could survive. He teleported Dorian over.

Dorian looked around for a moment and did not ask any questions as he understood that his life was also in danger. He unleashed the darkness energy to reinforce the elemental shields and then shielded them both with his light element that he had previously acquired from Devinn.

It was all they could do for the moment. They kept channeling divine energy to reinforce all their shields buy they all ended in smithereens.

Before that, Alwyn, who took most of the aftershock, did not know that he could even bleed. He was reminded of his slave days when the violet smoke would heal him in a second.

Now, it was like he was nothing but a mortal being caught in a tornado.

The spectre, Dorian, was in the same state as he inquired: “Mind telling me why you summoned me for an early death? What the heck happened for your friend to turn into a True Demon? The war has yet to start yet we are being attacked by our own…sigh…”

“An experiment went wrong. We must find a way to bring him back to us.” Alwyn said as he coughed a mouthful of blood.

“Oh…you survived it. This is too boring. Your friend keeps trying to take back his body. I thought that I could stay for a little longer….” Said the gray Devinn before the third eye snapped open and the gray luster in all three eyes disappeared to be replaced by a violet shade. Other than that, he kept his gray body and almost meter long horns.

“Good thing…I could extricate myself from that prison in time.” Devinn said.

“You’re back?” Alwyn asked as Dorian beside him heaved a heavy sigh of relief saying: “You are all crazy.”

“I’m back. What you guys were fighting was the personification of a simple sliver of hatred that I had. We got lucky on this one.” Devinn said.

“How did you manage to come out?” Alwyn asked.

“My connection with the third eye was not severed. I was able to use it to come back.” Devinn explained.

“The good news is that now we know that it works. But the price we paid was a little too much.” Said Alwyn as he looked at the different universes that were destroyed.

“We can offer sacrifices to turn everything back to normal. I will bear the cost since I caused it.” Devinn said.

They took days to turn everything back to normal.

As Devinn experimented with his new powers, he discovered that he wielded the same Demonic essence that true demons wielded. It was of a higher tier than the divine energy, at the same level as the empyrean aura that the true gods of ancient times wielded before the true demon race eradicated them.

The path to becoming a true demon was a hard one as no one really knew how to thread it. Even the True demons themselves only inherited it. Only the oldest of existences knew some things.

Devinn had chanced upon it by pure coincidence and conjectures.

The power of fear and faith were formless and had no real visible essence other than the visible application of them in everyday life. It was what those two powers allowed to do that no one could refute their existence.

What no one knew was that It was those two same existences, faith and fear, that were a starting point for the future true demons and true gods.

The demonic aura was the stronger version of fear.

The empyrean aura was the stronger version of faith.

They both offered a considerable physical boost as well as dominion over all power sources but themselves.

Obtaining a demonic aura could be done in many ways.

Devinn had become a true demon of hatred and needed to feed on hatred to become even stronger.

There were different representation for Ture demons: Hatred, sin, avarice, gluttony, bloodlust, chaos, murder, etc…

Each needed to feed accordingly.

Devinn had to repeat the same process if he wanted to level up: make people hate him or create another astral body of hate to fuse with like what had happened previously.

The empyrean aura could be gained by ascending higher in power with the faith of your believers. They had to sincerely offer their lives to be part of their god's strength.

Devinn conjectures were proved right after his own experiment succeeded. Alwyn then started his plan to acquire the Empyrean aura.

An altar was constructed and the first ones to sacrifice themselves numbered in the billions.

Devinn was right. Some of them had lost their drive to keep living even in their paradises and the hope of being useful to their god had moved them.

Alwyn gained the Empyrean aura in weeks. He had become a true god.

Devinn was the strongest as he kept feeding on as much hatred as he could.

The power system inside the Elemental church Everworld evolved.

Adding the already existing mana, the divine energy was now omnipresent. Anyone could use his powers at the divine level. Something that the Divine dragon Everworld was incapable of doing.

The empyrean aura and the demonic essence was only accessed by the most trusted and devout individuals.

The |¤Self sacrificial art¤| was also only taught to those close to Devinn. Only powerful individuals could truly use it to fight.

There was no interaction with the other universes of the human Everworld. It seemed like they had all voted on keeping to themselves and single out the newcomers.

The residents of the Elemental church Everworld did not care and minded their own business.

“We have no idea when the True dragons are going to attack us and we have no idea when the true demons make their move.” Alwyn said.

“No one can attack even the weakest in our Everworld and survive the encounter. From the moment, we disseminated the divine energy, everyone reaches the cosmic level in years. Their kids are born at the stage before the complete fusion. We have no more real humans anymore.” Devinn said.

Instead of completing the fusion between mana, body and soul to reach the cosmic level, it was recommended to use divine energy to ascend. You could fuse with mana afterward or the empyrean aura or demonic essence if you had access to them.

Fusing with a power source granted you unlimited use of spells. The recovery was instantaneous. Of course, at that level, you were already invincible.

Dorian asked: “What do we do? We have nothing to do now. Are we going to wait for them to attack us?”

The three were presiding a council.

Kron who was now the spokesperson of all human alliances said: “Only the wielders of Empyrean aura and demonic essence should be the ones to launch a pre-emptive assault, if that is your angle. We cannot endanger the divine levels when we have no idea what we are up against.”

Dann, a huge violet winged man and Alwyn’s third son said: “I agree with Grandfather Kron. We should just assemble a small team and attack first instead of waiting.”

“He’s right.” Jen, Devinn’s daughter said. She was his second child.

“Who do we choose then? We do not have that many Empyrean aura wielders and demonic essence wielders.” Raeburn, Devinn’s son asked.

“A small team of ten should be enough. I did not include us three.” Devinn said.

There was a short silence.

“I pass.” Kron said. He added: “I’d rather stay and protect the humans just in case.”

“I pass as well. Too boring.” Raeburn said.

Of the already few that could come, almost all of them declined. They all mainly thought that the trio could handle anything and that they’d be in the way.

Dann and Jen were the only volunteers.

“It’s settled then, Dann and Jenn will come with us.” Alwyn said.

Devinn sent mentally to Alwyn: “Are you sure that bringing these two troublemakers will help?”

“Nope. But they are adults, they should know how to conduct themselves. Besides with us around, what could possibly happen?”