The plan had been to go to the hotel directly behind the restaurant. That was not to be though. As I was about to step into the hotel twelve beings teleported around me in two concentric circles of six. I could have reacted but thought it might be more fun to see where this was going as someone carrying a shotgun stepped up behind me and hit me in the back of the head. While it didn’t hurt and did negligible damage, I allowed my body to act as if I’d gone unconscious and turned all of my pain receptors off. I also closed my eyes and looked out at the world through the chaos immediately around my body.

“That was too easy,” a large man in flamboyant hunting attire said, “Dirk check him.

Another man stepped up to my body, opened my eyes then took out a dart and stabbed it into my arm, then my stomach, and finally my testicle. For the testicle, I allowed my chaos to seep into Dirk, he was going to die first. I was picked up and a portal appeared before us that I was dragged through. Once everyone was through, the portal closed, and I found myself inside a cave where Devan and 6 others sat on chairs crafted of stone against the far wall. Off to each side, a total of nine succubi were strung up, impaled, and bound. They were still alive. I knew this because I could see their hands and feet struggling to move while held against chains that prevented them from doing so.

“What did you do to him?” Devan asked the leader of the 12 that had ‘caught’ me.

“We popped in and grabbed him like you wanted. I just hit him in the back of the head with my shotgun and he went down like a sack of potatoes.”

“He’s faking,” one of the other lesser deities said.

“No, he’s not, Dirk checked him good, show them, Dirk.”

Dirk stepped forward, grabbed my limp left hand, and plunged his dagger through my hand, then pulled it out quickly, “See, he didn’t even twitch, he’s out cold.”

“Then why isn’t there any blood coming from his hand?”

“No blood coming from his hand?” the leader asked questioningly as he looked at my hand.

Dirk lifted my left hand to see where he’d stabbed it only to find perfectly healed skin then said, “Oh shit,” Just before I ordered my Chaos to rip him apart. Dirk’s entire body turned to mist and then evaporated as he was turned into more chaos for me. Now that the gig was up, I levitated myself into a vertical position then landed gently on my feet and looked over the 7 lesser deities.

“Hold,” Devan said as the eleven people behind me readied themselves to attack.

“No need,” I said as eleven tendrils of chaos reached out from me, one to each of the eleven people behind me. The chaos spread over them, converted them, and drew itself back into me in less than 3 seconds.

“Impressive,” A young-looking woman on said. “A chaos spell that he can control and is usable against eleven people at the same time. Very interesting.”

I looked at the nine succubi that were impaled and wriggling to my sides then said, “If you liked that, I have a couple of other things to show you.”

“I bet you do,” Devan said. “Did you think you could just torment and kill me and I wouldn’t be able to get free? I am a GOD DAMNED Lesser Deity of Hades, the succubi don’t eat me I EAT THEM!”

I thought about doing the whole evil guy, I’m more evil thing with this guy but decided it’d be a waste of time. Using a single DP I dilated time for myself while moving my mind to machine speed. The effect was as devastating as I assumed it would be. I had time to pull out my Chaos Blade, activate the Destruction Aspect of Blade then moved to Devan and sliced him in half starting at his groin and exiting through the top of his head. I was moving so fast that I was able to make two more strikes before the destruction started to rip Devan’s body apart. I then moved back to my starting point, assumed the exact pose I’d been in, and released the Chaos Blade back to storage.

To the other deities watching they might have noticed a flicker run through my body then Devan’s body fell in half, then quarters then eighths. I still appeared to be where I’d been standing though I had moved and already returned to my starting position

“What?” One of the other Lesser Deities asked.

“Give it a second,” I said.

“Devan, what’s happen…” the female Lesser Deity started to ask before she cut herself off and an orb of darkness appeared in the center of Devan’s corpse which hadn’t even started to fall. As the orb appeared Devan’s body was pulled into it as if it was a black hole until the body was gone.

You have annihilated Devan, Neophyte of Hades.

ERROR DETECTED IN PERSONAL INFORMATION.

ERROR ELEVATED

ERROR RESOLVED

ERROR Resolution. Your current level of 279,201,353 and XP does not match your current power level.

History reviewed.

Level and XP corrupted upon gaining Soul Ability “Chaos Incarnate.”

Level corrected to 1.21E+121.

NOTE: Personal Growth System modified due to Soul Ability “Adaptable.” XP is no longer Tracked. Your Class Level Attribute now indicates your level of Rank Disparity to a normal mortal. As you are not a divine you may not earn divine class skills or abilities. Each time your Class Level increases your power level is increased by an order of magnitude.

NOTE: Class Level can now be increased in only two ways.

The First way, DP can be spent to increase your current level for 1,000,000 DP per level. At your current Class Level of 121, it would cost 121,000,000 DP to increase to Class Level 122. As you do not generate Divine Points your Personal Growth System has adapted a second way for you to increase your Class Level.

The Second way, defeating a Divine of Neophyte or higher rank will immediately raise your Class level by 1 for Neophytes, 100 for Demi-Gods, and 1,000 for Gods. This award may only be earned for each individual Divine defeated once. This award is increased by ten times if the Divine is utterly destroyed.

NOTE: defeating a Neophyte awards 1 Class Level. Finding that same Neophyte after they have reconstituted and destroying them utterly nets only 9 more Class Levels, not 10 more.

You no longer gain XP for any reason.

Congratulations you have destroyed the Neophyte Devan. Your level has been increased your Class Level from 121 to 131. Attributes have been adjusted accordingly.

I took in the messages quickly and would think about the ramifications of the changes in a minute. Right now, I had other more important things to think about. Specifically, the six lesser Deities in front of me.

I looked up to see the other six Lesser Deities rising from their seats

“What did you just do?” a new Lesser Deity that looked like a male demon asked angrily.

“Me?” I asked with just a little bit of mockery added, “I may have just destroyed Devan, you saw him, he seemed to be getting angry.”

“Hold him!” the male demon declared. I looked around for the threat and was a little surprised when a huge hand reached up through the crumbling floor and closed around me as it squeezed and tried to crush me into a paste. A giant of some kind? I felt the pressure build around my body and allowed my body to flow into its blob form. As the hand holding me squeezed I was pushed out of his palm. I imagine I looked like play-doh being squeezed out of a hand as the hand closed.

As I was being squeezed, the hand withdrew me from the room I was in down through the floor, and into a large cavern below. I heard the male demon declare, “See, that is how you deal with upstarts that think they can do whatever they want.”

Not to be outclassed on the melodrama front, I reformed instantly and moved to stand behind the male demon as I whispered in his left ear, “I really don’t think this is going to go the way you thought it was going to go,” I said loud enough for all of them to hear. I moved and spun as I conjured my Chaos Blade and stabbed into his right ear and out the left. Then I yanked the Chaos Blade up splitting his skull in two. Not wasting time, I executed the other lesser deities as well.

I disregarded the prompts that appeared but noticed that my Class Level increased to 191. Permanently killing these neophytes was gaining me some levels. I had to admit that it kind of sucked that I couldn’t earn XP anymore but if I was being honest, there wasn’t anything normal that felt like a challenge anymore.

I noticed that the succubi were still suffering and sent tendrils of chaos out to remove the poles and shackles from them. It was Hades, and they were demons, but having suffering caused by my actions? Either I was going to put the creature or being down or I’d leave it alone. Suffering for extended periods had never sat right with me. With the poles that had impaled them removed, the nine succubi lay on the ground panting and groaning as their wounds closed and their natural regeneration healed them

I looked around the chamber and down at the giant that had tried to grab me. Not so much a giant as a titan-sized humanoid golem. As we made eye contact its arm started to reach back up into the hole it had made to grab me. I held out my left hand and sprayed Chaos at it, allowing it to break down and convert the golem into more chaos. As the process finished there was an explosion which was absorbed and deflected by my chaos. I recalled the chaos once it was done eating the Golem. As the Chaos streamed back into me I had it repair the floor that had been destroyed.

As the last of the chaos fixed the floor and streamed back into me, the succubi stood. Eight of them exited through a door in the back of the room while the manager came to stand before me.

“Yes?” I asked politely

“Are they truly dead?” she asked as she looked to the last place the seven lesser deities had been standing.

“I looked back and noted that the six pulsating orbs of darkness had not evaporated. In fact, they were pulsating faster and faster. Confident I could take almost anything that was going to happen, I placed the manager outside of the room, closed the door, and moved back to the location the first orb had disappeared where Devan had died. I checked to see if a seventh orb had formed where Devan had died.

Sure enough, a pulsating black light floated in the air growing darker and darker with each moment. I checked my prompts; nothing had appeared since my Class Level change messages. I spent another DP and activated True Sight to look at the orbs, True sight registered the orbs as Death magic but that was it. I tried Analyze, still nothing. Finally, I tried Identify.

The object you are trying to identify is not an item.

While my spell and abilities were telling me nothing, the seven pulsating dark orbs were harmonizing their pulsating and size. Eventually, all seven were pulsating at the same size and frequency.

At that moment, a pinpoint of white appeared on each of the 7 orbs which my True Sight identified as Primal Chaos. The white spread rapidly over each orb until there were seven white pulsating orbs in front of me.

WARNING a Region of Primal Chaos now exists within Hades

I felt the Primal Chaos wash over me and felt no changes.

WARNING Primal Chaos saturation of the area has reached 70%

WARNING Primal Chaos has failed to affect you

WARNING Primal Chaos regions with a higher saturation percentage may be hazardous to your health

I watched as the seven white orbs shrank until they disappeared, and I received a prompt,

Primal Chaos saturation has returned to normal for this Layer.

So, destroying neophytes caused Primal Chaos to leak into the Universe. My normal response would have been “Holy Shit” but honestly, a saying one of the authors I’d read back when I was in college seemed more appropriate, “Celestial Feces” though I was pretty sure what had happened had nothing to do with Celestials.

I still had the spell True Sight up when I detected the telltale swirls of magic that indicated a teleport was incoming. I watched as a Human looking woman made of obsidian marble appeared before me with blazing red eyes. She looked around the room slowly then turned her blazing red eyes on me. I tried to Analyze her, which failed, as a smirk lifted her right lip.

“Where are my servants?” the obsidian woman asked.

“Dead, I think?” I said with a helpless shrug and a self-satisfied smirk

“Dead? How would a mortal such as yourself, “She started to say as I felt magic wash over me and completely immobilize my body except for my eyes and my mouth, “Where was I, Oh yes,” She continued in a seductive sultry voice that promised pain, “How did someone like you kill them?”

“With a sword,” I answered honestly

“Mortal, I am Aushree, Demoness and Minor Demon to Anthrax. You have cost me 7 of my best servants, for that you will pay,” she said as she moved forward drawing a wicked-looking obsidian dagger.”

“Let me guess, you’re going to curse me to give you XP or DP every time I die by poking me with that dagger?” I asked.

“Very astute, flesh bag,” then she looked thoughtful, “Why aren’t you afraid?”

“Because Aushree, daughter of, you know I don’t even care at this point. I have a feeling this isn’t going to go the way you or I want it to go.”

Aushree’s eyes flared, and she moved forward burying the blade in my chest with enough force that my hit points reached zero.

“Damn, that hurt,” I thought as my vision went black and my mind retreated to my Mind Space. As I’d thought the ability I had achieved so long ago came into play and as long as one of my nanites, now slivers of chaos with the identity of a nanite existed I could not die. I watched as the chaos of eight Cosmos lost cohesion from my lack of willpower affecting them and exploded while my mind resided in my mindspace waiting for my body to heal. Unfortunately, even with the amount of regeneration I had going on, healing damage from someone of a much higher rank disparity than me was going to take time. I had calculated that something like this would happen and was counting on it, though I had hoped to achieve my goals differently. As my body exploded outward I was able to keep my sense of self and identity. I watched as my body expand faster than should have been possible. Also, the effects of that expansion were devastating.

At almost the speed of light chaos erupted from me in all directions. Aushree wasn’t damaged by the expansion as I flowed out and around her. The chaos tried to affect her but initially had no luck. I checked my combat logs.

WARNING: You have been attacked for 5.00E+500 points of damage reducing your current health to less than zero. The curse of the Undying has taken effect.

NOTE: Curse of the Undying has been modified by the Soul Abilities “Permanent Addition” and “Adaptability”. This Curse has now become an aspect of all attacks done by you. Creatures you kill receive the Modified Curse of the Undying.

Modified Curse of the Undying – Creatures and beings you kill are automatically cursed, any creatures that are reconstituted in Hades are cursed to pay 2% of their XP and DP to Anthrax and an additional 1% XP and DP to Aushree. Additionally, they are cursed to lose a level and die every time they enter the Courtyard of Choice until they are level 1 at which point the curse is lifted.

Well, that sucked, The Chaos stored within my physical body went from a state of nothing to its natural state and filled up Hades in a radius of eight Cosmos. My mass of chaos converted everyone and everything it came across into more chaos to spread further and further. If I wasn’t stopped I’d eventually fill all of Hades with myself.

Initially, Aushree didn’t die and tried to teleport to various other locations to get away from me only to find herself within another part of my continuously expanding body. My body no longer acted as a blob. Instead, I’d taken on the properties of an energy wave that was scouring Hades clean of all of its residents. I kind of felt bad for the mortal souls I was killing, even the demons because they’d... In the middle of that thought, Aushree was killed. Not utterly destroyed, I didn’t have the Aspect of Destruction on, she was just killed. I quickly checked my combat log.

My combat log was full, I paused for a second and used a sorting function then did a search for Class level progression and watched as the counter went from 191 through 1,000 then continued exponentially Within a minute until I received another message

Congratulations, you have killed the Ruler of Hades, Anthrax. Would you like to assume control of Hades, Yes or No?

I closed the prompts and tried to exert my will over my body of chaos to see if I could slow it down. I wasn’t fully healed yet, but I was getting closer. It looked like I was on this roller coaster ride for a little while longer. I went back into my prompts and chose “No”

You have chosen “No,” Even so, for the next 24 hours you are elevated to the de facto ruler of Hades with access to all the privileges that entails.

The system did not just give me full access to the settings for Hades, did it? Oh boy! I looked at the time stamp of Anthrax’s death and committed it to memory. It was going to be close, but this was probably going to work. I also looked at my Personal information and realized that I had broken my sheet. Every value on it was an Error. Strength, Error. Hit Points, Error. My Character Level was even an Error. What good was a system where eventually those in charge couldn’t be measured?

“I also did a quick search and realized that I’d already killed Apolyn and the ring had been destroyed. Mission Accomplished. That would make Bri happy. Killing everyone in Hades might be a bit of overkill though.

Finally, my body showed fully healed, it had taken just over half an hour. I focused my will, imagined myself in my normal body, and teleported to the Courtyard of Choice. The teleportation seemed to take a little longer than normal before I found myself standing all alone in the Courtyard of Choice. I was myself again and the input from the Chaos part of me that had become the energy wave was gone. I reviewed my body and noted almost all the mass had taken up the identity of “nothing” again.

Just to be sure I hadn’t absolutely screwed up; I checked my Karmic Luck, and it was currently showing “Positive Error.” Closing the interface, I looked around, then conjured a nice computer desk and chair and pulled up my interface. The first thing I did was universally change the Modified Undying Curse.

Modified Curse of the Undying – Creatures and beings you kill are automatically cursed, any creatures that are reconstituted in Hades are cursed to pay 3% of their XP to Adaline 1.5% of their DP to Adamantadine, and 1.5% of their DP to Adaline. Additionally, they are cursed to lose a level and die every time they enter the Courtyard of Choice until they are level 1 at which point the curse is lifted.

I made sure to use Adaline’s identifier so there would be no mistakes. Power leveling for the win. Though this was only going to… I stopped that thought and cast a telepathy spell that could reach Adaline. As the de facto ruler of Hades, I should be able to do that.

Adaline, I thought to her.

Adam, where are you?

I’m in Hades, finishing up the Labyrinth problem. How are things back there?

To be expected, we’re just handling monster manifestations and keeping people safe. With all the dungeons pretty much locked down were good.

Good, in about 23 hours for about 34 minutes you are going to receive a butt ton of XP. A lot. Make sure you’re in someplace safe and large enough that if you shift to Dragon you’ll be fine.

How much is a but ton?

1.5% XP of enough creatures and critters to fill at least eight Cosmos

WHAT!

Don’t worry, it’ll only be for a short time, I’m going to shut it off after a certain point.

Oh, kay? She said questioningly

I’ll try to be back right after the XP shuts off, just get to someplace safe, also give the ring, or rings to the others, after this, you shouldn’t need them if I’m right.

Okay Adam, take care of yourself.

Always do, Love ya.

Me too.

I dropped the connection after she said me too and sat down to wait. I allowed my chaos to spread back out and replace nonliving structures and plants on this replica copy of Earth. If Anthrax wanted more stuff rebuilt I was sure he could handle it. At 23 hours I pulled all my chaos back into myself and waited In absolute silence I heard voices and started receiving DP gain messages and XP error messages. As I could earn XP they couldn’t do anything. I watched this go on for 34 minutes until a microsecond before Anthrax had died 24 hours before. At that moment I cleansed the curse off of everyone in Hades, deleted all references to the modifications I’d made to the curse, and teleported to the Unicorn singularity in my Universe, just in case Anthrax tried to follow me out of Hades. I’d received a message asking if I wanted to allow Adamantadine to teleport out of Hades, which I of course allowed. My next two messages were what I’d expected.

Anthrax has risen! Rulership privileges for Hades have been revoked.

Hail and rejoice Anthrax Ruler of Hades has risen

No sooner had that message appeared than a portal opened, and a hand came through reaching for me. I slapped the hand playfully as I conjured air enough around us so my voice could be heard.

“I said no!” I said.

“What?” a voice boomed from the other side of the portal.

“Analyze me?” I said

The hand withdrew and a necrosis-filled corpse stared through the portal at me, then said, “How?

“A confluence of events that will probably never happen again. Regardless, everyone that came back before you lost a level and donated some of the XP and DP to me. By some, I mean a lot. So you do you and I’ll do me and we’ll be

Anthrax stepped through the portal and did something as he reached for me.

WARNING Anthrax has spent DP to stop time around you. You are unaffected.

WARNING Anthrax has spent DP to smite you, a mortal. You are unaffected.

WARNING Anthrax has spent DP to claim your soul to torment for eternity. You are unaffected.

Anthrax’s hand reached as if trying to reach into me to grab something and wrapped around my neck, which I let him do. Then I looked into his eyes as I said, “The lack of intelligence some of you are displaying concerns me that prolonged exposure to ultimate power might cause cognitive loss. Too bad really,” I said as My Chaos surrounded him and I activated my Aspect of Destruction as my nanites invaded, corrupted, and broke down every part of Anthrax.

As we were connected I felt when the last physical portion of Anthrax was consumed by my Chaos and the black orb of destruction formed from a spark of energy that had been there a moment before. Anthrax’s actual soul maybe? I watched as the black pulsating orb, quite a bit bigger than the seven I’d seen before began to pulse. I continued to watch as that pinpoint of white appeared in the orb and started to spread. Suddenly, I was sucked into and through something as I felt a ripping sensation, unlike anything I’d ever felt before, and lost consciousness.