Capítulo 1184: Speading Of Decay
Within a short period of ti, especially from the point of view of ancient beings like those inhabiting the Divine Realm, several of their own had t an end that plenty deed impossible for supposedly ‘immortal’ entities such as themselves, but not only that, but a temple and sub-realm had been conquered.
Now, an area of the Divine Realm was crawling with rot and pestilence. The great temple of the first deity to be slain had been defiled by a manifestation of death, decayed and twisted–Contorted by force into an outpost of the dead, and already, undeads were flooding into the realm through there.
They got to work, and they worked fast… One would want to liken them to ants, and perhaps even the most intelligent, rabid of monstrous ants, but doing so was difficult when such insectoids were in fact mbers of the dead, and they could be seen working alongside the rest in harmony.
The Undead Empire was extrely heterogeneous in population. They absorbed all livings into their midst regardless of species, intelligence levels, or anything else… In fact, they even accepted beings who had once been neither living nor dead.
From an outside perspective, it seed as though being slain and brought back as an everlasting corpse was the ultimate form of brainwashing…
The residents of the Divine Realm were observing everything very closely, and they honestly felt strongly disrespected by just how nonchalantly the undeads were settling down like they owned the place completely and didn’t even need to worry about encountering setback.
They showed up, bringing materials, strange machinery, and all of their stuff, and just began building temples, monunts, shrines, cathedrals, and churches of varying sizes and styles. They truly did not care in the slightest about the fact that an entity of divine nature could appear before them.
That lack of worry only seed to crystallise when certain gods launched faraway blows, only to see their efforts amount to nothing as the re presence of the pure undead caused their demonstration of aggressiveness to rot and decay in the blink of an eye.
No matter what it was, it would simply fall apart and grow putrescent…
To add insult to injury, the many gods who were slain during the massacre within the lightning-aligned sub-realm saw their now onerous divine domains stolen and brought into the area where the undeads were.
Curiously, however, it was quickly noticed that so of the sacred places being built by rotten and skeletal hands were actually made for the slain gods. Which just seed like a very elaborate mockery… At least until one realised that it was proof of the dead’s confidence that the slaughtered deities would be reborn as undeads and join their ranks as well.
If such a thing were truly possible, then the pantheons would have to act fast before things degenerated out of control. Still, the gods had a hard ti finding common ground. They usually fell into three distinct categories.
There were those who were intimately aligned with their divine attributes to the point of fully embodying them. Such as a god of fertility who only cared for the state of growing crops and the reproduction of beings.
There were also those who were similar, but instead were utterly focused on their worshippers in particular and thus tended to strongly mirror the behaviours of their believers…
Both of those were similar to one another, and made for deities that were good at their job, but almost appeared inhumane, almost like they were living concepts rather than beings who thought for themselves.
These categories also included divinities who were literally concepts that had been given life through the prayers of populations. The power of faith was not one to be underestimated. When enough people believed sothing wholeheartedly, they might just be able to conjure it into reality by sheer force of will.
Those deities in particular weren’t exactly the sort to form groups or even interact with others at all. So of them were even chimaeric abominations brought forth by contradictory worship that sohow converged to a single source or target despite the vast differences in what the different groups of believers actually had faith in.
Such gods were all confined to a particular sub-realm due to their unpredictability and often surprising strength.
That was without ntioning the gods who had risen but had been animals, beasts, or monsters…
The third category of deities was those who were more akin to people who had rely happened to beco divine, in which Thor would fit in. They were their own people and had a strong tendency not to be that close to their worshippers. They did not feel any responsibility toward those who prayed to them.
Of course, gods tended not to fall flatly into a single category. They found themselves within a space between the three categories for the most part. Once again, Thor had had his own agency, but it was undeniable that, due to being associated with strength, he had sought conflict not only as a way to affirm his right to be called a deity of strength, but also to reinforce the notion that it was a part of him.
Vietna, on the other hand, also had her own personality and agency, but she was instead very much concerned with her worshippers… As it turns out that she was quite popular with undeads, it was just that she was popular with undeads who inhabited a realm the Empire had not yet discovered.
Apparently, the place she had hailed from had once been obsessed with necromancy. This category of magic was the main source of power and wealth, and it was what the main conflicts between the different living nations occurred over.
They sought to raise skeletons to endlessly and tirelessly plough fields for food, undeads to work constantly in all possible jobs, powerful corpse warriors to fight wars, and even fuse souls, spirits, and minds of people after death to manifest intelligent and knowledgeable undeads that could serve as advisors.
They played with necromancy without putting limits for far too long. However, what always happened fell upon them. Raising so many undeads, even with their refined knowledge and thods, was bound to create a few oddities.
The issue of those who live in death had been culled by perfecting necromancy to wipe everything about an undead’s previous life, only keeping a few things in so cases, but eventually, Vietna was reanimated as a skeleton.
And, unknowingly to her foolish necromancer, she had been smart enough to quickly learn about the world around her. Before her supposed master could even realise anything, she had already grasped death magic and used it to murder him.
This had kick-started a grand and glorious revolution of the undead, and eventually led to Vietna being venerated and greatly beloved to the point that she was made into a goddess.
She had beco such a big deal that the remaining livings had also begun genuinely worshipping her, which was probably the reason she had turned out to be so lively in her divine form.
As such, it was to be expected that she had a strong attachnt to her worshippers, so of whom she had worked closely with for freedom. But ever since the Great Silence, she had found herself unable to hear the prayers clearly. They were still there. They were seemingly still fine, but she could no longer understand and grant blessings upon them.
It might sound strange for an undead, but she had been sad for a long ti because of this… The possibility of undeads conquering the Divine Realm and shattering the Great Silence was thus extrely attractive in her eyes.
In any case, gods that leaned closely to the third category were the most common mbers of pantheons and other divine groups by a long shot, and as such, they all had every diverging opinion on how to handle the undead infestation.
Despite the massacre in the sub-realm, there was a sizable number who still believed that this should be dealt with via a direct offensive, many others believed that they should just try to discuss and buy ti for now until they could co up with a way to banish the dead, and a lot simply had their own unique thoughts.
The worst part was that the leaders of respective pantheons were not in agreent at all, either. They had very different personalities and styles of solving problems, but the current issue was clearly sothing that required a certain amount of cooperation, so they were forced to discuss and attempt to find so sort of middle ground.
Finding common ground between great, ancient gods was incredibly hard, and they also felt the need to convince the gods who fell into the other two categories as well, but that was also easier said than done.
So were advocating to release the chimaeric deities upon the undeads, but an equal number believed that this was a terrible idea that would imdiately backfire.
To put it in simple terms, things were not progressing on the side of the divinities…
Reviews
All reviews (0)