Chapter 361: Beginnings of the End

Mila

As he could sense her and would immediately attack, watching Primordius was pretty much impossible—while the other elder gods of the Prime Material were nowhere to be found—but the senses of the undead elder gods weren’t as refined. So, for thousands of years, Mila kept a half dozen doppelgängers always watching them from several galaxy clusters away.

She wouldn’t usually focus on what they were doing, instead sending what she was seeing back to a team of dedicated analysts, but she would check in whenever their movements were large. So, when all six gathered together and started yelling at each other using their mana, she grew interested and risked sending a disguised clone to an empty planet next to a portal to one of Aalam’s universes, a clone which held her main personal artifact, the Twin Dragons of the Divine Empress, the Supreme grade A rank version of her old Twin Dragons of the Future Divine Queen.

And there she used the twin dragons in its scope form. With the enhancement it provided to the abilities she gained when using her full Watcher divine role with her fully mastered Supreme grade Watcher skill, she could sense the mana waves from the elder gods’ conversation even from so far away. And, given her very first racial ability, that meant she could easily understand everything they were saying.

“We should kill that Heavenly Spark Soul King,” Lovinar, the Supreme Lord of the Nightwalkers, sent out angrily, standing with the rest of the undead elder gods in an open air pavilion made of bones.

The progenitor of the nightwalker race, the same race as the undead nobility she and Aalam had met back on Hira all those years ago, he had the same coloration as his progeny, looking like a human from a black and white photograph with black and white then reversed, his skin a nearly black gray, his eyes black with white pupils, and his hair shoulder length and gray.

The nightwalker race had had many gods who’d gone to rule their own universes, cut off from any of the universes elder gods could easily enter, and Aalam had killed almost all of them as he took over their universes and wiped out the undead contained within in his quest to increase the power of his Universal Undeath Cleansing Chain Lightning. So, the Supreme Lord of the Nightwalkers hated him, and had even forced open the portals to several of his subordinates former universes to forcibly take them back, something that, at the time, Aalam had had no choice but to allow him to do.

“Bah.” Nastorix, the Prime Lich, the second strongest of the undead elder gods and an ancient skeleton made up of silvery bones, spoke in response. “He’s a mortal and, by all reports, he’s cut off his chance to ever advance. All we have to do is wait for him to die.”

It was telling how pervasive this belief seemed to be among the gods and elder gods of the undead, especially given Mila had done absolutely nothing to propagate it, revealing quite a bit about what the other forces against Aalam’s grandfather were doing behind the scenes.

“Primordius is alone in the Prime Material and he hasn’t managed to completely take it over yet.” Javandra, the Highest Shade, the ascended ghost of a long dead human demigoddess and the unquestionably most powerful of the undead elder gods, was the next to speak. “But it won’t be long until he does, so we should strike soon.”

“Agreed.”

“Yes.”

“Of Course.”

Yulia, Empress of Vampires; Khashvarax, the Corpse Devourer, ruler of ghouls; and Xerkses, the Mummy Lord, all gave their approval almost instantly.

“Nightwalker?” The Highest Shade’s voice was questioning.

“Alright.” The Supreme Lord of the Nightwalkers sounded conciliatory. “Then we take back some territory from the Heavenly Spark Soul King just for fun?”

“Sure.”

“I see no problem.”

“Agreed.”

“Yes.”

“Of Course.”

“Alright then.” The Highest Shade flew out of the pavilion, followed by the other five, and headed toward the universe’s portal to the Prime Material, a smile on her face. “Let’s kill the bastard.”

“Aalam.” Calling her clone back, Mila turned her main body to look at her husband, who’d been in the middle of trying to optimize the current standard non-magical connection port used by most machinery in his universes to allow for weaker but cheaper materials, something he’d been attempting off and on for the last several thousand years. “Everything’s starting. Are you ready?”

“Yeah. It’s about damn time.”

Smiling, Aalam teleported away before splitting himself up into multiple clones. And then Mila did the same.

***

Arthur

Envy. Gluttony. Greed. Lust. Pride. Sloth. And wrath. These were the sins Arthur embodied. These were the sins he liked to bring out in others. These were the sins he used to manipulate, the sins he used for torturous fun, the sins that made up the very core of his being.

But, for the last million years or so, he hadn’t been able to experience them at all. Instead, once he fully healed from his fight with Quandra, his new master had forced him to return to the Prime Material and hide as a mortal, where she’d tasked him to do at least seven good deeds each day, all without a single action that could be considered evil.

He’d worked in a soup kitchen. He’d worked as a teacher. And he’d even saved lives as a doctor. All hundreds of times.

He’d worked in hospice. He’d worked as a therapist. And, by his own dark divinity, he’d even worked at a suicide hotline and talked people away from the edge.

It had been torture. And, if he hadn’t had his free will taken away from him by Elandra’s slave seal, he would have killed himself long ago.

Instead, he’d just had to endure, waiting for the day someone would kill the bitch, maybe Primordius.

So, when he felt the energy of undeath emanate out from the former Endless Battlefield, he couldn’t help but smile. And then the emotional bitch appeared next to him in his small studio apartment on the F rank planet he’d been living on.

“Hide yourself and watch.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, her gaze off toward the location of what would soon become an elder god level battlefield, but Arthur could sense the suppressed excitement in her aura. “Wait until Primordius is injured badly, or until the undead are at a severe disadvantage, and only then get involved in the fighting. Your only goal, at the exclusion of everything else, is to see Primordius dead. And you will do everything in your power to see that happen.

“I’ll have further orders for you during the fight.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Against his will, Arthur bowed, his mortal disguise fading as his divine childlike form took its place. And then Elandra was gone, the noxious woman off to cary out her own plans. And Arthur had to follow her orders.

***

Primordius

Primordius was tired of waiting, tired of not being able to access his enemies without potentially risking a sneak attack, tired of not knowing where Quandra or Arthur were, and even Elandra and Corinon for that matter. Most of all, however, he was tired of having nothing to hit.

He was not a sneaky person by nature. He didn’t like big complex plans.

He wanted to know where his enemy was, and then he wanted to hit said enemy until they were either dead or completely under his control.

Instead, however, for the last million years, he’d just had to wait.

Then the Prime Material had started to weaken ever so slightly, the portals connected to it growing stronger, and he knew that meant his grandson had finally reached A rank.

Something was about to happen.

But then it didn’t. And he’d just had to wait some more.

So, when he felt all six of the remaining undead elder gods enter into the Prime Material, he didn’t feel worried. He didn’t feel scared. And he didn’t feel vigilant.

He felt excited.

He knew his own trump cards. He knew his own power. And he knew his own history of dealing with tough situations created through the manipulations of schemers.

He was ready, and the upcoming fight was going to be fun.

“Bellessia, Tallia, come here.”

His two daughters, his last remaining children and the last gods under his command still alive, came over from their own mansions on the A rank planet and he teleported them into a storage space inside one of the three rings he was wearing on his left hand.

Then, smiling broadly, he tore open a lightning wrapped hole in the Prime Material and appeared in front of the six undead elder gods.

“The six of you are being manipulated.” His smile grew wider as he read their auras, gaining a better understanding of their goals and emotions. “And it seems obvious you don’t know by who.

“But let’s tangle anyway.

“I’ve long wanted to kill the final six of you.”