The montum of the clash died at once.
Skullius, Elita, Fulgardt and Rias turned to look at the First Horn. He didn't flinch at their collective stares. After pulling off what might have been the ballsiest move of all ti for a mortal, he had to stand his ground despite being weighed on by the imnse pressure of the Divine-level experts before him.
Each of them, except perhaps Rias, could kill the First Horn before he could blink, but they had to comnd him for accentuating what his guards had only hinted at before - utter fearlessness.
Fulgardt broke into a boisterous fit of laughter.
"Oh dear, you're a man amongst man!" he cried with a twisted smile and casually waved away the giant Corrupted Deity behind him. It vanished into thin air. "You singlehandedly killed my mood. But that's not entirely a bad thing."
The Immoral glanced at Elita, who had stopped just a few centiters from him with her sword, and then at Skullius.
The fresh Divine had halted the activation of [Instant Embodint of Perfection] and his exploding reserves of Amras were quickly dying down. Quite contrary to its na, this Andori which he had rely on to access his War Body took a few seconds to perform. Of course, this wasn't the Andori's own fault. The War Body had a trendous amount of components packed into it that were hard to parse for a re Grand tier Andori, hence why it was not-so- instant.
In any case, Skullius had stopped the activation of the technique for the sa reason Fulgardt dispelled his Corrupted Deity. The fever for destruction and slaughter that had tugged at him a second ago was gone. Besides that, he had a feeling that as Fulgardt had said, if all of them clashed at full force, there was not going to be any one victor. They would all most likely die. Elita's mask vanished from her face, and she dashed back to Skullius. She too desisted from attacking once the mont was disturbed. Her reason was a lot more reasonable: she had yet to recover all her Voided Death Essence. Using high level abilities sapped a lot of her essence and if she could save her powers, she wouldn't hesitate.
"Tsk. If I had known this was how it was going to turn out, I wouldn't have wasted that red khopesh," she muttered to Skullius frustratedly.
"You didn't waste it. You took away Fulgardt's chance to make the first move with that mont the khopesh bought. Whatever attack that ca from that... thing, would have overwheld us," the Hybrid Warmoth said.
Rias' deer head vanished, as did the raging greenish-black fla around him.
"This would have been a waste," he said in a boyish voice, and turned to Fulgardt. "And all because you couldn't keep it in your pants. I thought we had a deal."
Fulgardt laughed.
"Forgive ," he said. He ant it. "I'm used to living on the edge, where I'm from...rather, when I'm from." He looked at Skullius. "Now, does this an we can reach so kind of diplomacy? Quite honestly, other than detesting your nature, I sympathise with everything else about you from before you ca to Aigas."
Skullius narrowed his eyes.
Fulgardt then turned to the First Horn.
"May we be allowed to sit in Your Eminence's palace?" he asked in a voice livid with sarcasm. As he received no response, Fulgardt sat down anyway. A simple chair made of darkness ford under him. "It wouldn't do to sit on the floor."
And indeed, while it wouldn't harm a Divine, the floor was red hot because of the clash of imnse powers just now - mainly the evocation of Skullius' War Body.
"What diplomacy do you think is needed between us? If you have my mories, you know I want nothing more than to be rid of you," Skullius said and he conjured two chairs for him and Elita.
"I'm aware. But I also know you're not above making deals with people you're fond of. Marriages of convenience. That's how you had to live before, right? You had none of those Unlimited, or friends... You were all alone - forced to fend for yourself against Direction," Fulgardt said.
Skullius frowned.
"So?"
"So, I'm hoping you will allow yourself to make one last deal with an enemy. Quite frankly, I won't give you a choice. You see, I am ready to die in a blaze of glory. Your coming here is just as much a sweet miracle as it is a scythe of true death on my neck. You could say I yearn for either. The short of it is, we either leave here alive or we all die together."
Skullius folded all four of his arms before his chest.
"Before I ask about whatever deals you might want to make, just what is your purpose for being here? I doubt that you're still driven by the desire to kill the Deities. You must have already sensed Boron. He's in a very vulnerable state at the mont, thanks my lady here yet you haven't made a move," he said. "You can leave and enter Aigas as you wish as a native denizen in the past as well - the Rules won't stop you."
Fulgardt smiled.
"Ah, yes. Killing Deities," he said with a chuckle. "There was a ti when I was foolish enough to believe that could be done by a mortal. I suspect that most in this ti wouldn't know, but that goal of mine fell apart rather quickly in the light of new, more feasible prospects. My older self - as I can tell now - resorted to a cheaper trick for spitting in the face of Aigas' gods."
Skullius knew what he ant at once. When he had t Fulgardt in his Reflection of the Soul, the apparition had told him that his corpse in the Labyrinth of Yoke was part of a secondary plan of his. If people failed to earn his legacy, the powers the corpse collected from the failing challengers would eventually give it enough strength to leave the Labyrinth and destroy Aigas.
The corpse was, after all, Fulgardt's divine body, and none on Aigas could have stopped it, especially with Quintess and Listafelle gone.
"My desires are different now. Once again, I can only delight in my miraculous encounter with you," he said to Skullius, and then looked at Elita, "and you."
"What's that supposed to an?" Elita asked with a frown.
Fulgardt chortled.
"He's the deal I'll make you, skullius," he said, ignoring Elita's question. "I don't have access to the Labyrinth of the Yoke in this ti. Back in mine, it's hardly as sophisticated as it is here since I have only just begun collecting all the other elents required - other than the sacrifices necessary to help reach Divinity, that is. They were first things I added. As I see it, if I'm being denied access, that ans there's a kind of special permission I must have made after completing the Labyrinth. A key. Ah, a Voiding Key. You have it."
Skullius didn't like where this was going.
"What do you want really?"
Fulgardt grinned.
"Give permission into the Labyrinth and in return, I will ally myself with you when you go
to retrieve your soul from that Lich. If you refuse, then, I'm afraid Maqi will have to beco a dark, barren hole on Aigas, with the remnants of all our existences, Broader or mortal, floating still within it."
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