Its been a long time coming but Volume 1 is finally complete, or rather the first draft of volume 1 is done. THere are plenty of errors and probably a ew logical falacies, but I have faith that any RoyalRoad reader who pics up on one of these issues will be quick to throw it back into my face with a sneer and a laugh.

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Long ago, in a time before people, planets, and even gods there was a single unending chaos whose existence inadvertently maintained the stability of the dimension’s space and for hundreds of trillions of years, it did just that. Within the confines of the primordial chaos, there was no sound or light, no air, and certainly no living creatures. The only thing present in this void was an energy known as “The Will” and later redubbed “The Way” or “The Dao.”

This chaos has existed longer than any records, be they of man or god, could describe. From its genesis it had always remained in the same state, tranquil and undisturbed. Yet one day the chaos began to stir, rotating and rotating in an endless vortex.

For an unimaginable amount of time, the stirring continued unceasingly before slowly ceasing.

Once all things became still, as they had been in the beginning, a cataclysm occurred.

The vortex that once infinitely circulated "The Will" within it now gave birth to a consciousness.

It was an existence without a body, yet it contained a will. It was a being that existence became the catalyst for the Age of Gods.

The consciousness recognized its power to be limitless, both in vastness and potential. Yet due to the strangeness of its creation, it would be impossible for it to fulfill the one desire that blossomed forth after its birth. It was impossible for it to take any large actions. Continuing on with its duty to maintain stability expended much of its attention. So it devised a plan; If the being could not, of its own ability, fulfill its desire then, it would create beings born purely with the purpose to do so.

The being named itself “Primal God” in reference to the primal chaos from which it gained its initial awareness. Though the Primal God was without a body, and thus lacked a proper conduit by which to master channeling its power through, its boundless energy allowed it to create lesser beings with a similar consciousness to it.

The Primal God stressed its control over the vast space and created nine bodies for these consciousness’ to live with each vessel bearing a distinct color. The Primal God gave its children one command, to fill the void from which it was first created. It conferred upon its children the title of “Second Generation Deities.”

These children of the second generation were all different from the Primal God, even though they were created in its likeness they managed to swiftly develop personalities and goals separate from their original purpose.

The Primal God who had disbursed all its accumulated energy to create the Second Generation Deities had given them only one directive before falling into an eternity long slumber, “Create a beautiful world.”

This was the Primal God’s desire, to see the cold and desolate space be transformed into a place that housed life. It was a wish or rather a yearning that blossomed from the core of its existence. A strange idea coming from a being that simply “appeared” within the confines of the primordial chaos, how could it possibly have a concept of beauty, nonetheless its final wish was delivered to its children.

The nine-second generation deities were left with a choice: they could choose to work together and create a single large world, using each of their individual talents and skills, or they could each individually work to create smaller worlds in an attempt to fill more of the void.

Naturally the first instinct of these deities was to work together, between the nine-second generation deities there existed no ill will.

These beings were naturally unaware of what steps were required to build a “world,” in fact each of them hardly knew how to do more than operate their own powers. Since all of them were created at the same time there could be no hierarchy based on “age” and yet someone had to take control.

The 9 Deities: Grey, Brown, Purple, Black, White, Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue stood together in confusion. Naturally these colors were not the names of the deities, or rather it would be more accurate to say that they simply didn’t have names. It had never been necessary for them to have names, ever since the first instant of their creation they had been able to communicate telepathically with one another. While they did not possess a hive mind, it was still remarkably simple for them to share experiences and thoughts.

Unfortunately, even though the ability to communicate via telepathy was available to the deities that did not mean that there would be no differences in perception and perspective. Each deity was unique; having been constructed in such a way that their combined abilities could rival the Primal God, they were naturally shackled by the same kind of regulatory force that their progenitor had been.

The Grey Deity was given the ability control gravitational motion and weight.

The Brown Deity was able to create many forms of earth seemingly from nothing.

The Purple Deity could do something with primal energy.

The Red Deity had absolute control of temperature.

The Blue Deity was made to be able to control water and its nurture of life.

The Green Deity created the seeds for thousands of flora and could accelerate the speed at which they grow.

The Yellow Deity could control electricity and magnetism.

The White Deity was granted the ability to set foundational rules within a defined area.

Finally, the Black Deity was given the most restricted ability, the condensing and combining of the abilities of their fellow second-generation deities. The Black Deity was the only one of its contemporaries whose ability was limited by the need to have the permission of all of their “siblings” at any given time to use its ability, meaning that a lack of approval from any of the other deities would completely cripple its capability to use any of their powers.

There was an extremely loose balance of power between these deities, not only were all nine of them extremely inexperienced with their powers, but they were also unaware of the abilities of their “siblings”.

The deities spent millions of years getting a feel before testing the effects of their individual abilities and making conjectures on how they could serve to create a world.

The deities spent millions of years learning, tirelessly exploring the limits of their powers and practical applications of them.

The deities spent millions of years growing, both in skill and emotional strength. Back when the nine deities were first created, they were only able to manifest a basic recognition and understanding of “self.” Their self-awareness could not even be compared to a human infant. When creating them, the Primal God decided to leave them with that “flaw.” After all, in an endlessly vast and empty plane of existence, there would be nothing that could harm them anyway. What harm could possibly come from allowing them to develop their self-identities over time? In the end, to both the Primal God and the nine Second-Generation Deities, the concept of time flowed a manner that mortals could never comprehend.

Eventually, enough time passed for several of the nine deities to have confidence in their own abilities and they gradually began to convene. First was the White Deity who after about fifty years was followed by the Blue Deity who came while dragging along the Red Deity who had planned to spend the next trillion or so years creating a ball of gaseous heat they would name “Sol.” The Blue Deity decided to take it upon itself to bring the Red Deity along to meet their siblings first. Within the next few centuries the Purple, Green, and Yellow Deities joined the group in rapid succession.

After waiting for around seven millennia with no sign of the Grey and Black Deities showing themselves; the seven, who had gathered together, decided to begin preparing for the imminent genesis.

First, the assembled deities discussed just what kind of world model they would make. They began in the broadest sense, by discussing just what exactly their creator meant by “world.” If what the Primal God wished to see was the space in which it originally awoke to find filled with many dazzling new sights and wonders, then it may actually benefit the deities more to work separately.

In particular the Red Deity voiced out a plan where the deities would make universe centered around the “Sol” that they were originally planning on creating. This idea was hastily shot down due to the fact that the use of this model would first and foremost drastically increase the value of the Red Deity over the others, they would be a near sure-win for a leader position if and when the next opportunity presented itself.

The Deities were hardly shortsighted and knew that whatever decision was made by them would determine how well they would complete their purpose. The idea was raised for the gathered Deities to wait on the two remaining Deities to join their collective or even to actively seek out their “siblings,” and while it was met with opposition at first from the White and Blue Deities, the other five agreed that it would be best to gather in full before any major decisions were made.

As if beckoned by the decision the Grey and Black Deities appeared almost immediately after the agreement was finalized. Even though the two Deities appeared a full fifty million years after the other deities had already convened no one amongst them was interested in voicing a complaint.The conversation starts up again.

The next ten thousand years were spent with no solution in sight. The Red Deity’s patience had finally ran out leading them to leave prematurely . Brown followed soon after, unable to stand how the conversation was stagnating with no conclusion in sight.

The next to leave were the Blue, Green, and Yellow Deities who were interested in working together with the Brown Deity who’d left just before. Leaving only the Grey, Purple, White, and Black Deities together.

The last four Deities chose to do something that no one from the previous group had felt comfortable doing, completely revealing the limits of their abilities.

The powers of these beings were originally a secret, there was never really a reason for this, simply that the moment the Primal God imbued them with their abilities it had also given them the freedom of decision. They were able to communicate telepathically and so it would never be a problem to explain their unique gifts to one another, but looking at it another way, there had hardly ever been a need for any of the nine second generation deities to share the information on their own powers without compensation.

When the three other Deities heard about the restrictions placed on the Black Deity’s power they all instinctively frowned. The Black Deity expected such, they knew what kind of reactions their siblings would give them, and originally they felt that they were ready for the pitying looks. They were wrong.

The Black Deity had an idea, but for it to work it would need to combine all of the different ideas given earlier, to satisfy this idea it would elect itself to be leader of the project to create a world, and would leverage the fact that if any of its siblings disliked the direction that all it would take to stop the plan in it’s tracks would be for any one of them to stop giving the Black Deity permission to its power.

With the Black Deity leading the helm the group of four went about contacting their siblings one by one via telepathy. Only one thing needed to be said to convince the others, “there’s a method to make all of our ideas come to fruition.” The possibility having their ideas come true was more than enough incentive to convince them to listen.

With the allure of having all of their suggestions coming true hanging over their heads, the deities who previously abandoned the group of four returned within the time it would take to boil a kettle of tea.

After taking up the mantle of leader the Black Deity immediately sat and listened to the ideas. Wild ideas were spat out by the other deities, everything from planets with a core that was both Molten and solid, planets with varying gravitational pulls, oceans of stars, and even an enormous sunflower rooted in a once empty plot of space whose center would be the very Sol devised by the Red Deity were stated and the Black Deity spent extra care to listen and find ways to implement them all.

The next four hundred and ninety-six trillion years were spent by the nine in full-on creation mode. A plan that was drafted using the ideas gathered from the deities that was not deviated from by even the tiniest margin. First, they created the so-called “Ocean of Stars” that was requested by the Blue Deity, next was the Red Deity’s long awaited “Sol” project, the original “Sol” that they had imagined was created rather quickly with the help of the nine deities, unfortunately the gasses emitted from the big ball of heat were hazardous. Fortunately the Green Deity was very resourceful and suggested making a giant plant that would sprout from the “Sol” and convert its fumes into something harmless. This resulted in a change in the name of the eventual product from “Sol” to “Sunflower.”

Next, it was decided by the nine that at least for the moment there would only be one planet in the galaxy. The majority of the Four Hundred Quadrillion years were actually spent on the construction process of the planet.

The Nine Deities had all of their initial ideas satisfied, but seeing the galaxy completed as they’d hoped only served to add an even more fuel to their creative fires. Suddenly making just a planet wasn’t enough.

This entire galaxy was created by the joint effort of the nine-second generation deities, but now they wanted to work on their own again. On that planet created by the mutual effort of the nine deities, there were no living being save the vegetation requested by the Green Deity. Who among the nine wouldn’t want to create the first creature to walk upon that soil?

Aside from the Black Deity who was denied use of their power by one of their siblings, all of the deities began to create species of animals to represent them on the planet, the so-called Divyne Beasts.

The Red Deity used a seed from the Sunflower to create a pair of Golden Crows.

The Blue Deity used a liter of water from the planet’s first freshwater spring in order to create a pair of azure and green Turtle-Snakes.

Unlike the two previous deities, the Brown Deity didn’t need a catalyst in order to create their Divyne Beast, a pair of mammoths.

The Purple Deity created a Manticore

The Grey Deity created a pair of Kirin.

The Green Deity created a serpent of Ouroboros.

The Yellow Deity created a pair of azure phoenixes

The White Deity created a pair of white tigers.

Each of these Divyne Beasts were innately gifted in controlling the laws regulated by their parent deity. Each Divyne beast species was placed on a continent which would become their home, it didn’t take long for each of the species to create offspring.

With each successive herd of offspring born to a Divyne Beast the more they began to idolize the deity that gave birth to them, this idolization lead to the consolidation of a new strain of energy which came to be known as “Faith Energy.” In small doses Faith Energy had no noticeable effect on the deities, and indeed none of them had even realized when they first began to absorb this power. Over time, however the deities began to notice one by one that their original powers began to strengthen, even if only incrementally. Suddenly a silent competition to gather more faith energy was started amongst the eight participating deities.

This competition lead to a certain problem facing the light, for species like the Turtle-Snake whose body color can be either Green or Blue had no idea which deity that they should focus their idolization on. This resulted in a feud between the Green and Blue Deities, it was by no means the only one of such feuds.

The Black Deity was naturally the last to know of the situation, since they were incapable of creating a Divyne Beast they were naturally also unable to absorb Faith Energy. It had taken them more than two hundred thousand years to notice the subtle tensions between its siblings, and even then they hadn’t learned the full situation until the White Deity figured the time had come for their “leader” to step up and find a way to curb the bad blood between the siblings.

The Black Deity’s solution was simple if the root of the problem was that the Divyne Beast’s didn’t know who specifically to pledge their faith towards, then giving its eight siblings names would solve the issue.

The Red Deity was given the name Conrad. The Blue Deity was given the name Inna. The Green Deity was given the name Aethir. The Purple Deity was given the name Uriel. The Brown Deity was given the name Ila. The Yellow Deity was named Era. The Grey Deity was named Xipil. The White Deity was given the name Shiro. The Black Deity never considered a name for itself.

Somehow this system works to remedy the different deities. Inadvertently though it lead to the Black Deity’s siblings to once again feel pity for it. What had the Black Deity given all of them? The chance to make their wildest imaginations roam free, the ability to create a lasting life on their planet, and even a name. Any one of these things would garner never ending praise not just from the nine second generation deities, even the Primal God would be impressed if it were awake to see just how little time it took for them to create such a massive world.

The eight deities made a decision, not only would they all give the black deity permission to use its power, they would also willing offer up a small portion of their own individual strengths to be used in the process of creating the Divyne Beast.

Having received not only the boundless affection of its siblings and the permission to use its abilities, the Black Deity wastes no time and immediately begins to create a being who’s body is compatible with the aspects of all nine second generation deities.

With the birth of a new Divyne Beast soon to come, the remaining eight gods formed together in order to make a new continent for this Divyne Beast to live on. Out of nowhere an impossibly dense swarm of “Dao Energy” began to ripple out from the direction of the Black Deity. The other Deities didn’t even bother to guess what could have caused this strange predicament, but when they arrived they immediately learned what transpired.

The birth of a new Divyne Beast had been completed, the species created by the Black Deity was a single silver furred fox with a thousand tails. The Black Deity named her Yuzuriha.

Simply looking at Yuzuriha left all nine of the Deities stunned, they’d never imagined they that would find a being with more potential to create a universe themselves, they believed even less so that the creature that so defeated them would be the baby Divyne Beast that they just gave permission to be created. Yet, it was impossible for Yuzuriha not to shake the confidence of the other deities, she was after all the only being ever created in this world that so vastly outstripped her create her. This was to be expected though, in history there have only been two being that have grasped the abilities of all of the nine second generation deities without limits, the Primal God and Yuzuriha.

She was not someone the Deities could allow to live.

….

“Is that enough yet?” the hazy spectral outline of an immortal being lazily ventured the question. There wasn’t much of a response, only sound of a blade whistling through the air and the scent of burning hair.

“You’ve already gotten paid for the last three jobs why can’t you trust me a little,” a coquettish voice responds lightheartedly.

“You’ll have to excuse me about not finding the creation of the universe a very interesting conversation piece. Not to mention that child’s history shouldn’t even be given at this low a price.”

“You think my hair counts as a low price?” She responded swiftly armed with righteous indignation.”

“Your hair is part of your identity, something you obviously don’t care much about Maia, no if I recall correctly it's about time for your next change, no?”

“It’s Tyshira,” the fox stated matter-of-factly.

“Masterful Teacher, so you really do intend to take the boy under your wing?” The deity’s spectral form, for a moment seemed to frown, if it had it would have been impossible for anyone aside from Maia, or rather Tyshira to see. “So then I take it this will be our last transaction?

“Course not Hitogami, if Umi’s child can’t gain insight into the Shundo technique’s most powerful attribute, dimensional movement, then he obviously wasn’t meant to learn it. I have a feeling we’ll still have chances to talk in the next two or so decades. Oh right, one last thing before I forget. Why did you choose to cash in your only ‘Truck-Kun’ reincarnation token on him; moreover, why send him to that damn village?”

Hitogami stayed silent for a moment, most likely contemplating on how to answer her question without flat-out making her irate. it was rare to find a person who isn’t dead or directly created by them who can also speak freely to them. “Well, originally the person to die wasn’t going to be that ‘Felix’ no, he goes by ‘Rune’ now. The person who was originally planned to be sent over was that man who was supposed to kill Rune. When the plan was altered it didn’t take it to mind too much, especially considering how powerful his soul was, but even with all that he was still not as suitable as that murderer so I gave him a little ‘push’ by gifting him an extra ability.”

“Are you saying that saying that you planned to release a killer into my home?”

“That human’s soul would have been cleansed by original chaos. Only it's innate curiosity and naturally higher sense for natural elements would have remained.”

“Does this mean that you expect something big to happen?”

“I’m just repaying my debt to you, this world isn’t in my jurisdiction so my power is limited.”

“Thanks for trying.”

The deity’s form faded away.