Chapter 370: Sin and Insanity

Arthur

As he watched the man’s left leg fully regenerate in a matter of seconds, even while diseases and curses ravaged his soul and his access to the power of faith was somehow completely severed, Arthur felt envious and rageful.

Laws were hard. The more you advanced them, the more tiny Law fragments you needed for the next qualitative change in their power, and every individual monster or cultivator’s affinity to each fragment was wildly different. So, the more one advanced their Laws, learning the easier fragments first due to the power they could bring, the less affinity they had for the rest of the fragments they would need to learn to increase their power.

This is why Law bottlenecks were the most common reason for cultivators and monsters to become stuck at the peak of their given rank, and it was the main reason no factionless A ranks had become gods in the Prime Material for the last 45 trillion years after he, Primordius, and Quandra had given the order to kill any mortals who deliberately tried to gather faith energy.

Yet Primordius had been hiding his ability to advance one of his True Laws to the high grade level and had advanced two more during the fight. And even he was nothing compared to his grandson.

The boy was less than two million years old, yet Arthur had sensed thirty-six true Laws from his aura, with at least three only a few fragments away from middle grade. And Arthur was pretty sure the boy could have advanced them if he wanted to. He was just trying to devise and then practice the 21st level of his cultivation technique, something which required balanced Laws, so he was delaying their advancement.

Arthur had believed Quandra and her son had been the most talented Law advancers in the Prime Material, but they were nothing when compared to Primordius and his grandson.

Even when it came to race and racial abilities, the facets of Arthur’s own power that allowed him to compete with other elder gods even while previously only having one middle grade True Law, Primordius was his match while the man’s grandson left them both in the dust.

Primordius had nearly endless energy regeneration, ridiculous stats, and energy quality several levels higher than other elder gods. While his defense wasn’t at the level of Arthur’s own, he could regenerate from wounds at an extreme rate. And he was fast, with a reaction speed that enabled him to fight multiple elder gods at once. In fact, in the history of the multiverse, he probably had the highest reaction speed of everyone.

Yet his grandson had managed to ambush him twice.

Sure, the boy had used the sensory deprivation effect of one of the most powerful portals in the multiverse both times, but still. He was only an A rank, not a god. And yet his energy quality was at their rank, his stats were at a level where he could fight them, and, if Arthur was doing his math right, which he always did, the boy’s soulstructures had to be a whole three levels higher than Titanic given the energy he could feel from him, which was insane.

The boy also had thirteen of each type of basic soulstructure, a soul quality that seemed to be of a higher level than even any of the elder gods, and, somehow, the unique racial abilities of all three top dragon races of the Prime Material at the same time. And this was only what Arthur could sense from the brief ambushes the boy had succeeded with, not even counting his unheard of ability to travel through portals of any rank.

Influenced by his emotions, Arthur’s True Laws of Envy and Wrath advanced to middle grade, joining his True Laws of Sin Flames, Greed, and Gluttony, which he’d already raised after devouring Quandra and her offspring, finally making use of some more of the many Law fragments he’d gained from eating them in a qualitative way. And these Laws advancing then caused a cascading effect in his mind, helping him to break through the bottlenecks of his True Laws of Lust, Sloth, and Pride as well.

Suddenly, he had nine middle grade True Laws, a higher amount than even Quandra’d had, and, while eight of them weren’t fully built into his foundation like his True Law of Devour, the qualitative increase from having all seven sin Laws at a higher grade was huge.

His power increased, allowing him to much more easily defend himself from Primordius’s attacks while fighting the man, and add to the damage the human was receiving. His true body’s form underwent a qualitative change, absorbing power from the Prime Material at a ridiculous rate. And, most important to him, he felt he could now break the slave seal Elandra had put on him at any time.

The woman no longer had control over him, and he was now his own player in this previously four party fight.

***

Javandra

Javandra Cova, the Highest Shade, was enjoying the result of the four party battle so far.

Born in the Prime Material as the result of a human faction god raping a human empire’s princess three trillion years before the fall of the monster gods, she’d managed to rise to A rank on her own after her empire had fallen during her youth and had then made the mistake of gathering faith energy in the territory of her divine father, being killed by the man for her trouble.

Thankfully, at least for her, the undead, as normal for the time, had been invading the Prime Material, and an undead necromancer god, one of the Prime Lich’s students, had taken this chance to attack her father, driving him off before her soul could be fully destroyed. And, using the blood of her father, he’d then experimented on her in the undead’s main universe.

As a result, she’d been reborn as a Demigod Avenger, and the result had been far more powerful than the undead god had been expecting, giving her the power of both her old life and a new one.

She’d escaped from his control in a matter of just a few trillion years, taken her revenge on her father during the undead’s main assault on the Prime Material 45 trillion years ago, and eventually become the most powerful undead elder god in history.

But, after that, she’d felt trapped in the undead’s universes, unable to fight as she liked as the multiverse at least partially allied against them.

Unlike the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s sister, who’d reportedly been reborn into her same race, Javandra hadn’t maintained her full soul before the rebirth process, a quarter reconstructed by the ritual itself, and, as a result, she was a true undead avenger.

She wanted to kill. She wanted to annihilate. She wanted genocide of the entire human race that had made her previous life miserable. And she didn’t have many other desires.

Sure, she could control herself. Sure, she could suppress her desires for long term gain. But, in her heart of hearts, she didn’t care about spreading her influence. She didn’t care about spreading the power of undeath or personally gaining authority like the other undead elder gods. She just wanted to watch humanity destroy itself, and participating in a battle where the two most powerful human gods were trying to kill each other was about as much fun as she’d ever had in either of her lives.

Unlike the Supreme Lord of the Nightwalkers and the others, she was a big fan of the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his wife.

They’d killed more human gods than even she’d managed to after all, and they were no longer humans themselves.

So, even though by this point she was pretty sure she and the others had been tricked into thinking the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his wife wouldn’t be able to advance to divinity, she didn’t care. And, even though—unlike Khashvarax, the Corpse Devourer, the only other undead elder god still alive—she was pretty sure the other undead elder gods other than Nastorix had all been killed by the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s modified royal lightning, not by one of the other elder gods in the conflict, she wasn’t worried but excited.

The Heavenly Spark Soul King’s lightning had absorbed the power previously contained in all the undead of the multiverse other than her and Khashvarax, an incredible amount of energy, and the man was reportedly the best crafter the multiverse had ever seen. He and his wife were planning something with that lightning, something big, and she just hoped she’d survive long enough to see what that plan was, as it was definitely going to be awe inspiring.