Chapter 189 - The Slumbering Evil
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Within the depths of Terra's tectonic plates, lays an abyss of eternal darkness.
A world submerged in constant chaos, a sea of highly concentrated Mana.
When Mana concentrates several times, it becomes corrupted, and it can even affect living beings negatively.
In small quantities, Mana can be a good thing, it often enhances a person's health, strength, and more.
However, when Mana is concentrated into great amounts, it becomes corrupted, and like radiation, it makes life change, mutate, and die…
When Terra was created by the Gods, there was a gigantic amount of residual Mana that these Gods, who were not as experienced as elder Gods in creating, ended up using to give life to Axitl.
However, Axitl was but a piece of such a large amount of mana that became miasma and acquired Chaos Attribute properties.
As the Gods saw that Axitl, who was a young little goddess, could not take more of this chaos, they ended up using the empty center of the planet to pour the Chaos inside, sealing it with their Divine Power until it was to be assimilated completely by the world's Origin Core.
However, they had not foreseen that because of falling into slumber due to having used too much power would cause the seals to weaken, and the Chaos Attribute Miasma to become unstable.
Through her many years of observing the world alone, Axitl saw such Miasma emerge over and over again, bringing Chaos, change into the environment, and more mutations into nature and life.
This was… in the form of an immensely strong monster, a Rank 10 Monster named the Demon King.
This beast emerged not every 100.000 years, but every 1.000 years.
It was formed by the Miasma and born in the Abyssal Darkness of Terra's core, a being born and made of Chaos.
Axitl in her early years of being a Goddess discovered that this entity was born by repulsion of the World's Origin Core, which concentrated the most toxic and destructive miasma into a single entity of pure chaos, which would let go free in the surface, so the planet's core could have some relief of such a strong contaminating substance.
The Demon King always destroyed the surface, and brought constant changes in the environment, the seas changed their course, the forest turned into deserts, and the entire world was left with miasma everywhere.
Eventually, when it was done using all of its power, the Demon King would perish, and fuse with the world, nourishing it as its residual miasma would once more go back to the core.
However, Axitl could not see such destruction unfold anymore, even if she was chaotic, she couldn't bear to see the world being wiped out over and over again, only to reform over and over again… entire civilizations lost, history, and people's lives, the tiny ants she loved to see every day, as she often had nothing else to do through her eternity of loneliness…
Pained by such tragedies, she began to slowly channel the chaos of the world and used it to save it.
How?
Dungeons.
Dungeons were not simply made by Axitl to grow stronger… No.
This was a truth that not even the Gods knew as they were sleeping through this whole ordeal.
Axitl channeled her powers that could even create objects, as the Chaos Attribute was an Attribute that was made by the chaotic combination of all attributes, eventually, after thousands of years of training her powers, she managed to channel the 'Creation' within her Divinity, and created Dungeon Cores.
Planting them like seeds all around the world, she used the Dungeon Cores to absorb the miasma around them and inside the world of Terra, making the dungeon emerge and grow within the surface.
Dungeons began to channel all the miasma in the surroundings of the world, cleansing it from this corrupted substance…
However, monsters emerged from them, and Axitl was feared as a chaotic and evil goddess that brought destruction to the world, even when she only intended to save it.
But Axitl took those burdens without caring.
She filled the world with more and more dungeons.
And although the people had to fight against monsters to survive, it was not near as enough as the same destruction that wiped entire nations, and turned entire continents into wastelands…
Although Gods granted mortals Mana Cores to fight back the monsters, Axitl grew more and more alienated with them due to what she had done, and through the dungeons, she cleansed the world and directed the miasma into her body, the only being that could bear such burden, and increased her power through it.
Without realizing it, she became feared by even her creators and parents… and became even more isolated…
Thinking that she would have been praised for what she did, but instead, she was seen as rare and dangerous, but too strong for them to do anything against her…
And as the Gods grew weaker, they became more sensible, and ended discussing, which led to fights, and weakened each other even further…
The races of the world that once lived together were separated by the gods that gave birth to them into certain nations named after the Gods.
And Axitl kept watching over the world…
Now, thanks to her, the Demon King emerges every 100.000 years and not 1.000…
But who was there to even tell her that she did a good job?
Who was there to even understand the burdens she carried over her shoulders?
No one.
Although one day, she found a little octopus and made it her pet…
And so, after 100.000 years, the cycle continues, and a new Demon King is forming within the planet's core.
Deep within the sea of eternally miasma and darkness, the abyss where no light emerges, an enormous fetus rests.
A being made entirely out of chaos materialized for the sole purpose of letting it all out for the world to relieve such stress over it.
The Gods, almost completely unaware or too weak to even do anything about it other than to bless mortals and help them grow stronger to do their work, the Heroes were these.
This was the truth about Terra.
The Demon King rests.
It is a being made of chaos, but its nature is not inherently evil.
It is an innocent life, a being who patiently and peacefully sleeps.
Its predecessors had all perished, becoming once more part of the world, which gave birth to it.
Yet it does not know anything.
It is a clean soul, being given the body of a being that only represents evil.
Axitl glanced at the Child of Chaos, the Demon King, as it slowly formed.
"Once more… you are here… Oh, Child of Chaos…" she said, her crimson eyes only pitied such a being, whose destiny was always to bring destruction and die.
She wondered if it could have intelligence.
What about feelings?
Was it afraid when it was born in this world?
What did it felt when it walked through the surface?
Was it scared?
Was it angered?
Did this being regretted what it did, or did it not?
Could it… talk?
Axitl always felt like the Demon King was similar to her…
A child born from Chaos…
Misunderstood…
Isolated…
Hated…
Feared…
It did not even know why it existed.
It did not even know how it came into existence…
It did not even know what was its purpose.
It only knew that it was Chaos and that Chaos meant destruction.
It only knew that it was Chaos and that Chaos brought catastrophe.
It only knew that it was… what it was… and nothing else…
It did not know what it could be.
It did not know what it wanted to be.
It did not know… what could it be of it…
"Frank… Will you kill it? The Child of Chaos… Or will you change history? I wonder… I wonder what you will do… I hope… you can wake up one day…" sighed Axitl, singing a song of sorrow while glancing at the starry sky above the gray moon.
Abraddon and Thineas rested within their Divine Realms, slowly regenerating.
It has been five months since they last spoke with Frank.
They were worried about him, of what could it be of him, and what had happened to him.
They were connected to him through Divine Protection, so they knew that it was still alive.
But it seemed as if he was… completely dead.
Frank was in a state between life and death, a coma.
His brain was dead, and his entire body seemed to be frozen in time.
Yet, deep within his body, he still gave small signals of life from time to time.
The two Gods glanced back at the world, feeling something abyssal deep within slowly beginning to grow bigger.
"The Demon King shall soon emerge… The Heroes… have they assembled?" asked Abraddon.
"It seems that although we all hate each other now, our siblings had done their given duty, the bare minimum…" sighed Thineas.
"That's… good…" sighed Abraddon.
"Are you worried about Frank?" asked Thineas.
"Yes… I am… What is going on with the boy? Always so energetic… but now… he's… sleeping so profoundly…" sighed Abraddon.
"Something is awakening within him…" said Thineas.
"You can feel it too?" asked Abraddon.
"Indeed… he is just as Zudithe and Judith thought…" said Thineas.
"He's… a Half-Overseer…" said Abraddon.
"That's right… A child born to cross the stars and wander the cosmos…" said Thineas.
"I've heard that Overseers belong nowhere, and live in the Outer Void…" said Abraddon.
"But does Frank belongs nowhere?" asked Thineas.
"No… I know that… he belongs to his world…" said Abraddon.
"But he also cares about ours, just as much as his…" said Thineas.
"What a foolish brat… He didn't need to be such a good person with us…" said Abraddon.
"After all… we are flawed and pathetic Gods…" sighed Thineas.
"Yet… he cares…" said Abraddon.
"Hm… He's indeed… someone we don't truly deserve…" said Thineas with melancholy.
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