"You defy me." A soft voice echoed in Cain’s ears as he suddenly found himself before a tree whose size was too absurd for description to justify. The height of its roots before the trunk was over thirty-five thousand feet tall.
Which meant only the roots could be spotted below the clouds. This wasn’t an imagination, it was what an Ancient God could see.
Lesser beings saw what couldn’t even be considered a fraction of the tree’s true size. It could be said the Mana Tree wrapped around all worlds.
"Defy you?" Cain folded his arms. "I never obeyed you to begin with."
"You are just a spawn. I created you, entertained your antics and ambitions. I allowed your deception, but it would seem you are just a fool whose ego is a thousand times his size."
Cain chuckled when he heard that.
"Return to that dungeon and ensure Godfrey Daniels does not emerge."
When Cain heard that, he chuckled. "If staying out of this means I break out of your shackles of control, then I will stay out. Let the game continue, let the stakes be high. That’s when true evolution is born."
There was a short period of silence.
"I created the Chosen Ones because I wanted to know. Can responsibility create the greatest being? I made the Fortunate Ones because I wanted to know, can greatness arise without better opportunities? Can the piece worthy of being discarded change the future..."
"Then e the Favoured Ones. What happens if someone is given overwhelming freedom and power? It sounded like they would bee the greatest. They had all the qualities and no burdens. However, I have discovered time and time again the madness of creation, a weakness that is embedded too deep."
"You, a free man, burden yourself with matters. You and the other have chained yourselves to ambitions that have blinded your sight. You seek to control a chosen world, the other seeks to annihilate all that is not from his home world. This I can allow, but when you receive word from me and blatantly reject it, I will no longer indulge your madness."
"You don’t get to tell me when to harvest my plant. Earth is my farm. Thank you for all you’ve done, but the rest is mine," Cain responded.
"Godfrey will gain the ability to bee an Ancient God after this dungeon. Once that happens, you won’t be dealing with what can be controlled anymore."
Cain tilted his head. "Godfrey’s end remains the same. But this step, I will allow. I like it when you sound shaken. I guess your experiments have gone out of control."
Whatever Godfrey was going to bee, he would deal with it. And if it proved to be too much, he would simply run and live to fight another day. There was no big deal, for at last the shackles of control finally had a crack.
Cain found himself back in the sanctuary. He squinted.
However... What exactly was Godfrey going to bee?
***
"Arghhh!!" One of the infantry from the hundred saw Godfrey brutally cut down ten of his rades and lunged forward with a loud war cry.
Godfrey tilted toward him. The man’s yari spear jammed Imperial, then the soldier pulled it back and kept stabbing, but at last the wood shattered.
"You have honour," Godfrey muttered. The soldier took two shaky steps backward, hastily reached out for a dagger and pulled it out.
He lunged for Godfrey’s throat, but his dagger just couldn’t pierce through the armour. However, Godfrey felt the impact of the blow and, without a signal, slapped off the man’s head.
Driving forward, Godfrey slammed his knee into another footman. The impact folded the soldier in half. Before the man could recover, an elbow crashed into his helmet, crushing steel and skull alike.
At the rear of the formation, one soldier collapsed. Scrambling upright, he turned to flee. His feet never found the ground again.
An invisible force pulled his head straight into Godfrey’s left prosthetic arm.
The soldier dangled from Godfrey’s arm, his head crushed.
A hundred Paragons wasn’t a force to be dismissed, even for a demigod. But with the Immortal Armour, which could not be damaged, his rage, and Mastery, Godfrey was certain he could decimate these soldiers.
Boosting himself with Lysander’s agility, he sliced through their ranks, hacking, slashing, and ripping people apart, even with a slap from his left hand.
A minute later, he stood on a bloody battlefield littered with mangled corpses. His sword was deep within the chest of the last one.
The soldier stared into his one eye, every muscle on his face trembling with pain. "Monster..."
He whispered.
"Aren’t we all?" Godfrey pulled the sword upward, splitting the soldier’s upper body. He leaned back, looked at his bloodstained golden armour, then faced the settlement up the hill.
"You seem off," Imperial spoke solemnly. "I’ve seen this several times to know."
Godfrey didn’t respond.
"You’re lost. I suggest you hide yourself until you deal with your emotions, or they clear off after you leave this dungeon, or..."
"Or what?" Godfrey’s voice was hoarse, each breath working his diaphragm, which had nothing to nourish it for nine days.
Imperial went silent.
Godfrey went to the settlement and found a samurai sitting on a horse in the middle of the street.
His right eye widened in shock at the sight. "Ken..."
Asahi pointed at a rooftop. There, Ken sat on a rooftop holding a leaf he had been tearing apart. Piece by piece.
He wasn’t wearing his armour anymore. Godfrey could see that one part of his face had been eaten off and was already rotting, while a centipede slowly moved as if breathing where his spinal cord was supposed to be.
It bulged so much that even though Godfrey could only see Ken’s side profile, that bulge was still visible.
Ken tossed what was left of the leaf. He turned his head. "You know... I was relieved when we fell. I thought to myself, at least I won’t have to kill myself or go back and face Mrs. Fukushima’s rage. She’s done a lot for me."
"You won’t get me to hate you with that." Godfrey’s black sclera retreated, revealing white sclera and blue irises.
"When the boss pulled me out and I didn’t see you, I just knew you were ing. And you did. You made an epic entrance." Ken chuckled.
"We’ve made it to the island. Once I kill the boss—"
"I’ll die," Ken interrupted. "You see, I now have a centipede for a spinal cord, and they’ve done quite the damage to my system. I’m only alive because, you know... I can’t die as long as they’re in me. I’m even rotting."
He rose to his feet. "I am the gift the demon has sent you. I have been ordered by Mrs. Fukushima, the highest official in Japan, to take your life, but I won’t. I won’t fight you because of the demon’s control or Mrs. Fukushima, but as one prodigy with another."
"I told you the star shines brightest when it’s about to die. Honour me with one final duel."
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