Chapter 439: The Ranking of Gods

That is... a Minor God?

I studied the serpent-kin carefully. I was a bit surprised that I was able to come across gods so quickly after leaving the mountain. I had read through a lot of information at the hall of the Stoneborn, and as far as I knew, the gods in this era had no ranking, and there was no easy way to separate the strengths of a god, not until the System arrived, the so-called Great Fitting that changed everything and instituted the rankings.

It gave shape to chaos and from this point forward, everything changed. Dorrik was not part of the System, but he was able to gain information about this ranking, mostly because the Dragon God made sure that this information could be found in every corner of Terra.

First there were mortals who had touched the threshold of divinity, and the only thing missing was for them to ignite the Divine Fire, they were called Demigods, and there were many of them moving around in the world but their bloodlines were mostly dormant, and many of them would not be able to discover their nature for their entire lives.

Demigods do not fall into the ranking of gods, and the rank begins at the Minor God level. These gods had ignited their Divine Fire, and from that moment they no longer aged and could not be killed by any ordinary means. Extremely powerful with multiple supernatural abilities, Minor Gods were the most numerous and yet they could not be underestimated.

After Minor Gods were the Major Gods, these gods had created their Divine Kingdom, granting them abilities far beyond what a Minor God could ever acquire. At this level, these gods could only be killed if their Divine Kingdom was destroyed, and doing so was considered almost impossible, because the god was all but omnipotent inside their Divine Kingdom.

And it was only now, standing in a chamber of the dead with a Minor God forty paces away, that I fully understood what I had been living inside for a season.

Dorrik was a Major God. That mountain range was not his territory, it was his Divine Kingdom, and I had eaten at his table and slept on his floor and complained about his soup while standing in a place where his will was the local law. The corridor that was cut through the idea of stone. The forge that burned without fire. Food that appeared, bowls that cleaned themselves, and fifteen days that passed while I watched him work for what I would have sworn was a single night.

None of that was magic. That was a god being at home.

And the System had been eating that kingdom for three hundred years, pushing it smaller and smaller until all that remained of it was one range of mountains, and he had said it to me himself at his own table. A god of stone who can no longer be in all the stone. I had heard that as politics.

Above the level of Major Gods were High Gods, and Dorrik had no idea the sort of abilities they had, but their domain seemed to extend over an entire continent and was almost formless, and the last ranking, held by the Dragon God alone, was the rank of God King.

Looking at this serpentine Beastkin, I could feel the weight of his presence pressing against my senses, a pressure that reminded me of standing before Sovereign Caldus. This was not a being we could fight, and he was a full rank beneath the old man who had thrown a robe at me because I was naked.

It was almost funny that in the future, mages were taught that it was our Sovereigns that defeated the gods and brought a wave of peace and prosperity to all mortal life, but if a Minor God here was equal to a Sovereign, then there was no way they would be able to defeat a God King like the Dragon God who also had access to the System.

I glanced at the warband beside me, and they had gone still, their faces pale, their hands tight on their weapons. I could see fear inside them, but what surprised me even more was the anger and the determination inside them... even Tam.

If I told them to charge towards this god, they would do it without hesitation. I was sure that they understood they would be going towards their deaths, but they would not hesitate. There was one thing I saw that was greater than their fear, and that was hate.

"We need to move," I said quietly. "Now."

Ruggah turned towards me, baring his teeth, and then he slowly nodded, before his gaze returned to the Minor God. "Where?"

I looked at the vast field of bodies stretching into the darkness, and then at the tunnel that was filling with soldiers.

"We go deeper," I whispered. "There may be another way out of this place."

∞

We moved through the field of bodies, keeping low, and trying to stay as silent as possible. The warband followed me, their footsteps barely audible on the cold stone floor. The Shades had vanished into the shadows, scouting ahead, while the Drakespawn moved with surprising silence, their scales blending with the grey stone. It would seem, as we moved away from danger, the Drakespawn were more encouraged to be quicker on their... paws.

How far back does this chamber go?

We walked for what felt like hours. The rows of bodies stretched on and on, an endless sea of the dead. This was a place where life had been harvested and stored like grain, and I wondered what the purpose of this place would be even as I tried to escape it... I did not want to become tied down in various challenges that would waste my time and shift me away from my purpose.

The goal was to create my Grimoire, and along the way, explore more of my abilities so I could unshackle my soul from this weird seal.

The deeper we went, the more I began to realize that this place was larger than I had anticipated. Much larger. We were in a cavern, a vast underground space that seemed to have no end, and the bodies we had crossed must have numbered in the millions by now, and I could see how the weight of all of this was pressing into the minds of the warband.

I needed to keep my eye on them, they had shown surprising resilience all this while, but I did not know their true limits, and I did not want to be surprised at the wrong time.

Still, more than the bodies, or the Minor God inside this place, the one thing that was keeping me on edge was the damned altar with the unknown figure sitting upon it.

You would think after moving for hours we would have left that figure behind, but that is where you are wrong. It was still there, as if in every corner of this cavern, it was just a stone’s throw away.

No matter how far we had walked, glancing towards the front and the altar would be there, and I was noticing the confusion and the dawning horror in the hearts of the warband.

I stopped moving and Ruggah gestured to the others to relax, and moved close to me and he whispered, "Are we going around in circles?"

I frowned and looked around me, I could feel a growing darkness ahead that was increasingly feeling like a dead end. I turned towards Ruggah. "No, I looked at the faces of everyone we passed, and they are not the same."

Ruggah cocked his head to the side. "Are you serious? Every one of them?"

I nodded and cursed under my breath. "It seems we may not be able to leave this place by going forward... You may not have noticed, but the ground is slowly descending, and I fear that the only thing we would see, even if we move for hours, would be bodies. Like you said, a lot of people have died above us over the years, and this place has been gathering them."

Ruggah froze, and at this moment I saw him make the link between all these bodies and the history of Serrath, but I could not allow him to be distracted by something like this at this time, so I lightly tapped him on the arm. "We would need to turn back, and go through the tunnels."

I paused when I realized what this meant and internally shrugged... if that was the way it was going to be.

I placed my hand on Ruggah’s shoulder and asked him. "What do you know about the sons of the Naga?"