….What proof do we have? The words of soothsayers long dead? Texts that have been reworded time and time again across the annals of history? Divinity is such an abstract concept— an idea that there exists entities that have always been, and always will be, seems to go against the concept of Potential and Evolution, and yet, no bremetan has ever progressed beyond the mantle of King. Does that mean that the legends are true? That Divinity exists beyond the scope of evolution? That no matter how one progresses, one cannot transcend mortality. Cheat it, perhaps, but not truly transcend it. You can regenerate your lost limbs, you can purge the contamination of your soul, you can soar to the greatest heights of strength and despite that, you can never touch the Gods.

No one has, they say. Not in the thousand years of the Asukan Empire, they say. Is that not proof enough?

And yet, when one looks at civilizations of the Time Before, the rules change. When I read about the Father of the Aesir sacrificing himself for wisdom, and resurrecting himself out of it, suddenly I’m not so sure. Scriptures of the Goddess Freyja mention the vast Ginnungagap, the primordial sea of Creation. Yet the Empire professes the existence of Primordials, the Creators of the Gods themselves. Which is real? Why would Gods, Masters of the Plane by their own right, lie about their origins?

Unless—

Lukas lowered his book, the tent shaking slightly from the furious wind blowing outside. He was glad that Zuken had provided him with a translated copy of an ancient treatise on Divinity before they had left for this trip. There was little else to do during this trip.

Fortunately, the book was fascinating. Fascinating and eerie. The author, Kvasir, held a deep mistrust towards the Empire’s preaching, classifying it as propaganda, and yet, he couldn’t help but notice the proofs that spoke in the Empire’s favor. What was worse was that the Ginnungagap, known as the cradle of Creation in Norse Mythology, was referenced alongside the primordial Izanagi and Izanami — the original ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ of Shinto Mythos. Tales of both existed back on Earth, and yet, one of them had to be lying. Kvasir had hit the right question — Why would the Shinto Pantheon, Gods in their own right, lie about their own origins? And if they didn’t, was it the Norse deities that were to blame? The Ginnungagap— a vast sea of chaotic turmoil from which everything was created, seemed eerily close to an anomaly, or perhaps a Singularity or even a Realm, however it might appear to be. And all that was without including the Haze, which certainly existed, given he had actually entered it with Solana’s help.

Yeah, this was starting to give him a headache.

It wasn’t exactly the sort of text that would get him anywhere close to getting Inanna back. When pages of the text weren’t filled with speculations about Creation, something Kvasir was clearly obsessed about, it was packed with internal contemplations and lengthy ramblings. Kvasir seemed to have a love-hate relationship with Father Odin, or as he referred to him, ‘Crooked One-Eye’, describing him as a hustler beyond imagination. At the same time, he speculated that the All-Father might have revealed something sinister about Existence, something so dangerous that the Asukan Gods destroyed the Nordic scriptures post Ragnarok.

Closing the book, he replaced it back into his pouch. The pendant’s translation ability — as mind-boggling as it were, worked on the written word just as smoothly as it did on the verbal. Obviously the translator hadn’t been able to get everything down pat, for there were scripts that looked proto-Germanic and were probably parts of the original nordic script. Maybe, when this was all over, he could use the pendant and get himself the job of a transcriptor?

Lukas chuckled at his reveries, and grabbed at the single water bottle in his tent, turning it upside down.

Not a single drop fell.

“Empty again,” he said, with all the dryness of the surrounding region.

Closing his eyes, he focussed on his reserves, and began conjuring a small orb of water. He had allowed the Marid or ‘Shahxith’ as Olfric called it, to take over, and added its skills at Water Creation and Manipulation into his Schema.

Filling the bottle up to the brim, he drank it until it was half-empty, and left it where it was.

Exhaling, Lukas muttered to no one.

“Show me.”

The Screen followed his commands.

OMPHALOS ATTRIBUTES

Energy Reservoir Capacity

∞

Current Energy Level

686,487,187 units

There it was. The unsolved mystery. The drop in his reserves. Lukas had meticulously written every single incident that had happened since he had last checked his reserves and the moment he had found out about the drop. Out of that, only three things stood out.

The draining attempt by the svartalfar pillar.

His use of the dranzithl’s rejuvenation during the fight with Hreidmar, followed by all that mana he had churned out of himself to burn him alive.

And finally, his use of a form of Kinetomancy that he had never used before.

The first didn’t count, especially because the Omphalos in him had drained a far larger amount of energy from the pillar during that period.

The second was a reason for drainage, especially because of extreme mana synthesis, but it was nothing special. Hell, he hadn’t even felt exhausted, and even that would mean production of around ten to twelve thousand units of his reserves. Instead he was missing several hundred million.

That left the final one. His sudden use of an unknown form of Kinetomancy. Of Motion Negation. Whatever he had done, however he had done it, it had also consumed a little less than five thousand soul capacity, equal to a Level-3 skill. But Levelling-up on skills drew on soul capacity, of which he had an endless amount. It had nothing to do with Omphalos reserves.

So, even that wasn’t it.

Lukas scratched his head. “What am I missing? Am I wrong about Kinetomancy? Even the Screen shows it as a broken skill.”

Inanna’s words came to mind.

—Do not liken Kinetomancy to a mortal technique. It’s the culmination of what allowed me to butcher gods and demons alike. You have no more chance of bearing it than an ant can bear the weight of a mountain—

Yes, yes, he knew all that. But mortal or divine, a technique was a technique. It took form in the body of the skill-bearer, regardless of its origins. He wasn’t looking down on the possibilities of the power, but just because he had gotten it from a goddess….

The rest of his thoughts died as it hit him.

“A… goddess. A skill from a goddess.”

Could that really be that simple?

Could it?

Lukas grabbed his hair, and stood up. He had been looking at it the wrong way. At the wrong things. He was looking at Kinetomancy when it should have been the other way around.

The relevant fact wasn’t that it was Kinetomancy that he had gotten from Inanna. It was the fact that Inanna, a goddess, gave him the kinetomancy skill.

Two very similar things. And yet, they made a world of difference. Kinetomancy wasn’t an arcane skill. He hadn’t gotten it by having faith in Inanna. He, or rather, anyone, could have kinetomancy. Inanna had gained it as a mortal. She had killed Gods with it as a mortal. It was the culmination of every single spark, every single development, every single step of growth that a mortal girl went through to become the Supreme Queen of An and Ki.

The same Supreme Queen who had reforged his soul with her divinity. Granted him kinetomancy. His soul had been reforged through Inanna’s divinity.

He had used a kinetomancy technique that he had previously thought to be beyond him. Unlike any other skill, kinetomancy was an Apex skill. Rising in it was equivalent to leveling-up in perhaps a hundred different related skills. All that extra skill-information had to come from somewhere.

Yes. That must be it. Like Sherlock said, when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It was more likely that just like Blob held the information that once belonged to the Crypt of Fiendish Worms, Inanna’s divinity also held information about her, about her skills, her instincts, her powers.

Not unlike a Monster Prototype, only in her case, it was a Goddess Prototype.

Quickly, he went through his Monster Prototype Array.

Yurei. Reiki. Thoggua. Neothelid. Marid. Dranzithl. Svartalfar—

There was nothing about Inanna there. Absolutely nothing.

Tell me about Divinity.

Insufficient Data

Damn it. Okay, tell me about my soul. Prime Host.

Accessing information about Prime Host

Displaying…

PRIME HOST

Unconditionally superlative among all Monster Prototypes

Alpha Condition Raised to Maximum (Level-5) granting an Absolute Mind free from external influence from Monster Prototypes

Amplified Resistance to mental intrusion and enthrallment

“I already know this,” Lukas all but growled, punching the ground in growing irritation. He had spent multiple nights at this problem, only to arrive at nothing. And now that he finally had something to go on, something that could actually lead him to understand something about Inanna’s divinity, the Screen was being stupidly unhelpful. Like the only thing he knew is that somehow being reforged by her divinity had made him the Prime Host and…

Wait.

Why was he supposing that?

What decides if a soul is a Prime Host?

Spiritual Presence

There!

Lukas threw a fist in the air in exhilaration. Spiritual Presence, or in Inanna’s case. Divinity. His own limited experience said that Spiritual presence was equivalent to Mass, only one was measuring souls. If an Omphalos was an array of souls, and every soul was just a data chip filled with skills, instincts and maybe memories, then the ‘spiritually heaviest’ soul was the Prime Host.

Now Lukas knew he was hardly the heaviest thing in his Anomaly Box. The Dranzithl alone was far greater in spiritual presence than he was. Hell, just being possessed by the yurei earlier on had all but shoved him away from the wheel and only with Inanna’s help had he gotten his body and mind back. He had been a Base Host back then, just the soul that happened to have the best working efficiency with the Body (Anomaly).

But after being reforged with divinity, he had become PRIME HOST. That meant—

“Divinity contains information. Skills, Instincts, maybe even a prototype for Inanna herself. But…. but how do I get it out? How do I…. activate it?”

Insufficient Data

Okay. Here’s a better one. Analyze Lukas Aguilar.

Analysis Complete

Rendering…

Status

Prime Host

Type

Human

Constituent

Living Tissue

Deciphering Spiritual Constitution…

Decoding…

Rendering Complete

Nature

Amalgamation

Number of Skills

19

Spiritual Core

Divine

Information Redacted

Redacted. Now wasn’t that interesting?

To his knowledge, the act of redaction was to intentionally obscure certain information citing security or other legitimate reasons. Unless ‘redacted’ meant something entirely different for an Omphalos, which he severely doubted, this meant that there was a ton of information in his ‘Divine’ spiritual core, but certain protocols kept the information out of his reach.

Kind of like how the Babysitter Protocol had limited his ability to access Omphalos functions.

Was it possible that Inanna’s divinity was doing the same? An autonomous system that was acting despite being a part of another system? One that had enough Spiritual presence to make the Omphalos unilaterally, but enough protocols within itself to keep itself out of his reach until he fulfilled certain criteria? And if that was so, just what were this criterion, and how was he going to find those out?

Lukas exhaled. Every time he came close to an answer, he found an ocean of new mysteries behind it.

Damn it. I need a break.

Zipping the flap of his tent open, he crouched out, shutting the flap right after. Letting the Eternal Light emanate out of the tent would paint a neon sign upon them. Given the creatures that abounded this region, doing so would be a terrible idea. It took him a few seconds to get adjusted to the darkness, and only heard a strange sound, like an echoing wind… but without the wind.

Lukas smiled. Guess he wasn’t the only one out there.

He looked on with narrowed eyes, ready for even the smallest movement. One had to be tough and prepared to survive out there, and sometimes, one had to be a merciless fuck.

Something moved in the darkness, amidst the brittlebushes.

Prey Found You

That was enough.

Thrusting his right hand, he sent out a wave of pure force at the bush. Something dark and all too fucking fast jumped out of the darkness behind the bushes, evading his force blast like it was nothing. Lukas tensed his body and readied himself to jump— but the little bastard didn’t go for him. Instead it went for the largest yucca tree in his vicinity, slashing the thick trunk over like it was paper with its freakishly strong paw and sending the giant thing spiraling down on him.

It might have worked on anybody else but him, but the creature with fur as black as the blackest night was already moving to attack him from another angle. The fucker was smart, but not fast enough to make it count.

Flexing his left hand, he slowed the tree’s descent. With his right hand, he grabbed the motion around the creature and yanked it towards him, right in the path of the falling tree.

1 Prey Eliminated

+21 Experience

Lukas breathed hard and felt slightly dizzy, the sudden spike of adrenaline leaving his body. It had been over so fast that he had barely felt the surge of any lifeforce. Crouching, he looked at the creature he had just killed— a janje, this world’s variant of a panther, with three pairs of manes arising out of its head and the size of a large dog. It was unmoving and most certainly dead — just an average hunter out looking for some food.

The ironies of the world.

He heard tents flapping and found Tanya and Mori both awake, and peering out at him. He glanced back at the dead corpse, then at the twilight sky above and then back at them.

“Guess breakfast’s served, huh?”

“I hope there are no hard feelings,” Kradir told him as they stopped for the sixteenth time during the day.

“Hard feelings?” asked Lukas.

About this,” Kradir said, referring to their system of travel. The svartalfar traveled the same way he did everything — blandly. Complete stops. Every time they got the slightest sensation of something under the ground, they would wait and check, with Kradir mapping the terrain, finding the relative depth below which lava flowed, the chances of any predator attacking them and so on, while his compatriot sensed for metallic ores beneath the ground.

Wherever they were headed, it was going to take forever to get there.

Journeying through the Lava Ridge was long and arduous, not because of any actual difficulty involved, but because of the sheer boredom. Between himself and Tanya, Lukas was sure they could have gotten to those mountains further ahead in another day, maybe two if they decided to pull stops on the way. Instead, they were traveling at ridiculously low speeds, with the svartalfar pair walking across the terrain, mapping and sensing it all the way. Meanwhile, Tanya did her best imitation of a passenger pigeon, constantly fluttering in the air, looking around for potential predators.

“Trust me Kradir,” Lukas said, smiling at him— technically, “You don’t want me to get in touch with my feelings.”

Lukas felt Kradir’s eyes shift to him, and a little tension gathered in his body. His shoulder twitched. Maybe he was reconsidering his safety around Lukas. As good as he might be, Lukas had killed the seidmadr in open combat. That alone carried some weight. At least, so he thought.

“Don’t worry,” He told the creature, somehow holding onto that smile. It didn’t feel quite right, so he tried to do it a little harder. “I will not attack you. I’m just questioning if this is indeed the best method.”

The svartalfar exhaled. “This is important.”

“They are Asukans,” said Mori, her eyes shut as she sensed around, whatever that entailed. “Dense in the short term. One can only hope they figure things out, eventually.”

“We can figure out faster if some people stop sitting on their condescending asses and actually explain things for once,” he quipped.

That got Mori’s attention. She opened a single eye and peered at him. “What do you want to know, Asukan?”

“Why are we doing this?” he asked, cutting to the heart of the matter. “I can easily grab one of you and jump across one hill to the next. I’m pretty sure Tanya can pull off something like that, if not better.”

He didn’t say that with Hreidmar’s skill, he could just take both of them himself and not even sweat, but there was no way he was going to showcase any svartalfar-skill in front of the two. God knew he already had enough trouble to begin with.

Kradir scoffed. “We are svartalfars. We do not let Asukans manhandle us.”

“Manhandle?”

“And it is our duty to map this terrain, topologically by me, and metallurgically, by her. Neither of that is possible without traveling on foot.”

“The terrain is quite thin here,” added Mori. “We cannot terraport either.”

“Walking it is,” Lukas mumbled. “I guess that makes—”

His words were drowned in a cacophony of growls and screeches, as a wild, fierce smell hit his hindbrain and straightened the hairs on the nape of his neck. He glanced around and found large, black, fiery shapes materializing around them, surrounding them from all sides. The sound of dispelling wind told him that Tanya had landed next to him.

“Ifrits,” he heard her mutter. “Accursed things.”

Lukas tilted his head, observing the creatures forming around them. Easily his own height, they were four-legged, with bulging bellies and demonic fiery tails, the latter reminding him of Ryu, and monstrous canine heads with tentacles growing out of them. Crimson flames adorned their neck and raced down to their elbows and thighs, their sharp claws scratching the surface of the ground as they growled and screeched. Their toxic musk, the smell of what felt eerily like urine, rotten meat and lots and lots of sulfur exuded into the air.

“Tanya,” he ordered, “take to the skies. Create a thirty-feet perimeter around Mori and Kradir. Whatever comes close to your periphery, you turn it back or you blow it to bits. I’ll deal with everything else.” He turned to the svartalfars. “Make sure you stay within her perimeter.”

“How did I get elected svartalfar-nanny?” Tanya demanded.

“More importantly,” said Mori, “who put him in charge?”

Prey found you

Yes. Yes I know.

The ifrits growled and rushed at him. And just like that, Lukas was back in his comfort zone.

He was back at war, and his body was moving with instincts he no longer had to fight to keep under control. The only difference from here and the Crypt was that there were bystanders that could get hurt. He’d kill these ifrits and siphon them, but he had to ensure that the svartalfars were safe from harm. It only brought him the slightest amount of hesitation when he realized that this was the first fight since coming to this world where there were others he needed to keep safe.

He didn’t care to wait for her response, his Schema already telling him everything he needed to know.

IFRIT

Spiritual Parasite. Subspecies of KAMI. Energy Core constitutes mana forge for Fire and Ether. Capable of pyromancy and false construction.

False construction. Just like those yurei, only more real and with fire powers. Wonderful. Enough damage to the shell would probably cause them to disintegrate and then reform. Or, they could go all frenzied and try to possess him in which case, he’d gain some new prototypes. But what if the monsters realized that their attempts at possession weren’t working? Would they keep on trying? Would they run away?

One ifrit came rushing at him.

Lukas grinned. Time to find out.

Blob followed his mental commands, and instantly divided into two, jumping straight into his fists. Flooding it with lifeforce, Lukas hurled it head on, Blob extending out for several dozen feet, while still grabbing on to his hand. Had the ifrit been standing in front of a train, it might have been a bit better off. The aqāru whip, reinforced by several magnitudes by pure lifeforce, smashed into the creature with a concentrated burst of precisely aimed energy as focussed and directed as that of any martial artist. The creature’s body exploded, with half of it going rag-doll, flying back from the impact in an explosive crackling of breaking bone, only to disintegrate fully upon hitting a large boulder.

The shape that fell to the ground from the boulder was kind of… amorphous.

The other ifrits saw the encounter and let out a primal scream, as if recognizing him as a challenge that could not be ignored, and dashed in his direction. Lukas was already on his feet, his left hand hurling the aqāru whip, smashing through the bodies of two or three other creatures, injuring if not outright disintegrating them. Aqāru was a horrifically overpowered weapon against Metamantic constructs, which the ifrits were finding out the hard way.

Several mists arose of the disintegrating ifrit forms, zoomed into the air like an angry wraith and swooped in his direction.

Here it comes, Lukas told himself and readied himself for the mental battle.

But it never came. The Prime Host didn't struggle. Instead, Alpha Condition forced itself against the spiritual intruders with extreme prejudice, pushing them down and exerting Lukas’s rationality before he could even feel the shift.

MONSTER PROTOTYPE — IFRIT

APTITUDE

LEVEL

Fire Creation

2

Fire Manipulation (Physical Enhancement)

2

Temperature Manipulation

1

Decoy Creation (Conjuration)

2

Damn it. It was absolutely useless. He had all these skills already.

Remove them from my Schema.

Delete newly added skills from IFRIT?

Yes.

These were all Level-1, with maybe minor Level-2 skills. Cannon fodder, but nothing worth siphoning. Instead, the Experience from his kills kept rising steadily. As all the ifrits attacked from all sides, Lukas spread the whip wider.

The ifrits had noticed the lack of reaction and quickly changed tactics, belching out balls of flame in his direction. Lukas instantly pulled the whip back, just in time to spread it open like a shield, deflecting the barrage of flamethrowers sent to him from another direction, while swathing the whip on his right hand across the ground, tearing one ifrit down after another.

The entire place was clean in less than half a minute.

Lukas turned around and glanced at Mori and Kradir. “So, what do you think? Still gonna walk all the way through?”

The two svartalfars shared a mutual gaze before looking back at him.

“Yes.”

Lukas groaned.