My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 884: Chapter 885: Less Than A Passing Thought

“Maggots, all of them lowly maggots.” His voice was calm and cold. There was an indifference in his tone that showed just how lowly he saw the entities before him.

He stood on a burning building, the flames rolling and snapping around his feet, yet they did not seem to bother him in the slightest. Fire washed over the stone beneath him, heat distorting the air, but his posture never changed.

How could lower realm flames bother him?

His form was small. No surprise there. It was the body of a little girl with short black hair. She wore a small dress that reached her knees, clean and well made, and from how neatly she was dressed it was clear her parents must have held some significance.

But her eyes were dark.

These eyes did not belong to her anymore.

“What a hassle. A noble nightmare such as I, trapped in another nightmare.”

The voice was the voice of Ittorath as he observed the proceedings below, his gaze heavy with disdain.

After escaping through the Lake of Tears and coming into this world, he had been met with disappointment. This place was nothing more than a dream.

Ittorath carried the same disdain he always held for lower realm creatures.

Nothing about them was sophisticated. Their magic was flimsy. Their alchemy was trash. Their understanding of cultivation and comprehension of the Dao was nonexistent.

How Ittorath felt was similar to how someone from a vast city might feel upon discovering a rural village. No, worse. It was like finding an uncontacted island populated by savage natives.

“Savages. They are savages.” His face scrunched up in genuine disgust, his lips curling as if the very sight offended him.

He was not wrong.

The world of Aetherus had many prohibitions and restrictions, far more than most lower realm worlds. For one, the sky itself was sealed away by the Goddess of Doom. Ittorath’s true body in Lysithara could still sense her power covering the world like an invisible shroud.

He opened his eyes slowly.

He had come into this world through the Metaverse, with some help from that wretched ant who called himself Mugu.

Everyone had their agenda for coming here. Some wanted power and believed they would achieve grand comprehension of the heavens and attain the Dao.

That was mostly cultivators, like the blind old Daoist.

Then there were those who thought the Goddess had hidden the secret of Akasha here, and others who believed Ataraxia could be achieved within this world.

Of course, all these old monsters knew it was a stretch, but they came anyway. One way or another, there would be a great treasure here. Something that might help them reach a new rank.

More than that, someone had been spreading rumors about the secret of the True Beings.

The risk was small. After all, this was a mere lower realm. And more than three hundred thousand years had passed within this world, sealed away and imprisoned.

No matter.

That was not a particularly long time.

Not much time had passed where they came from.

Though Ittorath came here for a different reason. He had been hoping for something.

He acted cruelly, sought out the prize more relentlessly than anyone else, not because the prize mattered to him, but because this was a chance.

This was his chance to earn the favor of his creator, the Unknown God.

“I am but a wisp of His nightmare.”

Even if the Unknown God knew he existed, Ittorath was too small and insignificant. Less than an ant. Not even equivalent to a passing thought.

The Unknown God would never care.

He raised his hand to the sky as Lazarak and Seraph Null battled above, divine power tearing through the heavens.

“If only I could be graced by your magnificent voice just once. Just once, and I would be fulfilled until the end of time. My god.”

Of course, that was merely a fantasy.

The Unknown God would never answer.

“Ittorath.”

A voice called out inside his mind.

Ittorath sighed, his shoulders lowering slightly. He had dreamed of this for so long that he was already hallucinating.

“Ittorath.”

The voice called again.

The little girl’s eyes widened. Her face suddenly paled, color draining from her skin.

This voice.

Ittorath knew it too well.

This was the voice from whose nightmares he was born.

It was different from what he remembered, deeper and heavier, but this was undoubtedly the Unknown God.

His knees buckled as he fell to the ground, collapsing onto them as his heart felt like it was about to explode with joy.

“My… my god. You have not forsaken me.”

Somewhere far away, in a place that seemed like the inside of a house, a figure with silver hair held a book, his expression hidden behind its pages.

Then he smiled faintly as he muttered,

’It was a calculated step. Giving him fate manipulation resistance and the Deathless skill created an impressive paradox. One I can exploit.’

Within the pages of the book, everything was written. The battle between Lazarak and Seraph Null. Damon fighting Sylvia and Lilith. Everything.

Including Ittorath kneeling in reverence.

All of it was part of what he was writing, and if he did not like it, like editing a novel, he could change it all.

Authority. Dream Maker.

’A dream was still reality, but one without witnesses. And when the lone observer woke, it ceased to be. What is not observed is forgotten, and what is forgotten belongs to Oblivion, the devourer of dreams.’

Naturally, he could not do this in the world ruled by the Goddess of Doom, so he had to lure them into a nightmare he created here, where he was able to use his absolute power without another absolute god interfering.

The theory behind it was simple.

It was not because he was weaker, or because Doom was stronger.

What happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force.

The omniverse itself would break as easily as glass before a conclusion could be reached, reducing them to nothing more than two children in a schoolyard playing make-believe, where the rules were whatever they decided them to be.

Thus came the need for obedience to the No Absolute Accord, and why gods limited themselves to certain rules.

Of course, with rules came loopholes.

And schemes.

“I call you, Ittorath. Hear me.”

Ittorath trembled violently, unable to tell whether it was joy or overwhelming fear that shook him as he faced the Demon God himself.

“I am able, willing, and ready. Unseen Sovereign. God of the Abyss. This lowly nightmare humbles himself before the God of Dreams.”

The Unknown God gave him a task.

With its completion came the promise of a boon.

Ittorath felt as if his heart would burst.

Then the presence vanished.

He slowly rose to his feet, a smile spreading across his face.

“I shall not fail you.”