‘You’re telling me that even gods can only live for a few million years?’ Percy asked as his entire worldview was shattered. ‘I’ve spent all this time fighting for something that isn’t even true immortality?!’
In hindsight, this explained what Aje had meant when she’d told him that gods could only grow by around three grades through the passage of time. It wasn’t like their internal worlds stopped growing after that – quite the opposite, in fact. An internal world would simply expand beyond the deity’s control and turn them into a celestial object before reaching an age of four million years.
‘Well… considering that most mortals cannot live even a fiftieth of that and that you have personally been around for less than half a century, I don’t see why it would matter to you this early,’ the disembodied god replied.
Percy forced himself to calm down. Zoris was right – four million years was still a ridiculous amount of time. Somebody as young as Percy could hardly fathom it, so it would be silly to worry about that when he hadn’t even become a god yet. Besides, he hadn’t aimed toward divinity merely for immortality’s sake. He’d always enjoyed practicing his magic and growing stronger, and this revelation hadn’t detracted from that one bit. If anything, it only made him yearn for those heights, as well as the challenges that they would present.
Still, he couldn’t help but press the ring wraith on the topic, his curiosity getting the better of him. ‘Have the peak factions found no way to extend that limit?’
‘No good way,’ Zoris replied. ‘Keep in mind that my information may be outdated, but last I checked, the only thing a god could do was place themselves in stasis. Even that only slows the growth of their internal world down while freezing their perception of time entirely. At that point, one functionally stops being alive and becomes a mere asset for their faction – a reserve to be woken up if there’s an invasion or their services are required due to a unique skill they possess. Unfortunately, they have to go right back to sleep as soon as they are done.’
‘And how widespread is this solution?’ Percy asked.
‘Very,’ Zoris said. ‘Even mortals with the time affinity can achieve some degree of dilation. Gods without the element can also decelerate themselves slightly with brute force, much like they can compress and expand space. This is all common knowledge, so even the weakest lesser springs understand the importance of stasis chambers as soon as they make contact with the rest of the universe.’
Percy pondered over the implications, thinking back to his own world. While Remior had produced around a hundred deities in its history, there were only thirteen currently active, including Phoebe.
The titaness had once told him that Kronos had killed some of his predecessors after ascending to the Concept realm, and Percy had assumed that the rest had been slain by gods from other factions while competing for resources. Evidently, that might not be the full picture.
‘I bet that we have at least another dozen deities or two sleeping somewhere on Mount Olympus,’ he realized. ‘I wonder whether Iapetus or Kronos are among them. Phoebe never said that they were dead.’
As it so happened, Kronos was a titan with a time affinity. With any luck, he was not only still around but had also provided his fellow deities with a more effective form of stasis than the average lesser spring had access to, allowing Remior’s sleeping gods and goddesses to outlast their rivals in the distant future. Then again, so many things were about to change due to Percy that a few additional deities might not even matter.
Far more important was the slumbering gods’ ability to defend their world from powerful threats until the transition to a greater spring was complete. Percy guessed that these deities were quite strong, since they had to be over twice as old as Phoebe.
Their advanced age didn’t guarantee that they had reached – or even approached – the peak of the Elemental Acquisition stage, as comprehending new elements was supposed to be extremely difficult. Those gods might have wasted much of their lifespan before even making contact with the rest of the universe and learning that there was something beyond the Self-Discovery stage. However, Percy wouldn’t be surprised if they were at least further along than some of the younger gods who were currently awake.
‘What is this Ancient realm like?’ he asked, turning his attention back to Zoris. ‘Does one completely lose control of themselves after transforming?’
‘Mostly yes, though it varies from planet to planet. Some only awaken into mindless monsters when a foreign deity tries to invade, much like the one you saw in the vision. Thankfully, they at least ignore those born or ascended to divinity on their own soil, recognizing them as their children. If not for that, becoming a god would have been quite inconvenient. Rarely, some ancients may experience glimpses of lucidity, allowing them to observe what is happening on their bodies and interact with the natives in limited ways,’ Zoris explained.
‘What about their strength? Ignoring how dumb the monster in the Broodmother’s memory was, it looked powerful enough to crush a newly-ascended god with ease, but quite weak compared to the deities fighting for the tree. Does the god’s grade before the transformation not matter?’
‘The short answer is that nobody knows,’ Zoris replied with a mental shrug. ‘As I have mentioned, most planets in the universe are remnants of some previous generation of deities from a bygone era. They have to be hundreds of millions of years old, while the current peak factions have only existed for around twenty million years. A few unlucky gods from the new era learned about the expansion process the wrong way, but they were all in the Self-Discovery stage. By the time someone pioneered the Elemental Acquisition stage, everyone was already placing their deities in stasis chambers.’
Percy nodded. In theory, the Moirai or the Void Hand could intentionally leave one of their Twentieth Circle deities awake for a few million years to test how the expansion process would differ for them, but such gods were priceless assets even for the peak factions. Nobody would consider sacrificing such a powerful being to conduct a few tests.
‘Still, there must be some speculation,’ he insisted.
‘More than you know,’ the ring wraith confirmed. ‘Due to the way the radii of internal worlds double with every grade, gods at the peak of Elemental Acquisition already have internal worlds that are about as large as true planets. Since the weakest gods have their internal worlds grow a thousandfold upon their expansion, many scholars believe that the peak deities would produce much larger objects – like stars or black holes.’
Sol, who was also listening silently to the conversation, gasped at the scale of it all. Even Percy was shocked at the mere possibility that Remior’s enormous sun might have once been a mortal like him.
‘There should be a way to check if that’s true even without sacrificing a powerful deity,’ Percy argued. ‘If stars are also beings in the Ancient realm, their instincts should cause them to awaken and attack foreign gods. Not that I like the idea of sending even a weaker deity on a suicide mission, but I’m surprised that the peak factions haven’t tried it. They have a lot of less-talented Concept mages around, don’t they?’
The gravity and temperature on the surface of a star should be unbearable to a mortal close to the bottom of the Colour realm, but it was nothing to a deity. Even demigods should be able to shield themselves from the hostile environment, assuming that they had access to a reliable source of mana and oxygen.
‘People have tried it, though they’ve failed to elicit a reaction from the stars,’ Zoris said. ‘That’s why there is no consensus on this topic. Some believe that the internal world of a Twentieth Circle mage simply doesn’t grow as much from the expansion, producing a regular – or slightly larger – planet. Others insist that stars are ancients which ignore weaker gods in the same way that planets ignore foreign mortals, due to not perceiving them as threats. That could be settled by sending a peak god to invade a star, but that would again risk the life of a priceless asset.’
Percy didn’t disagree with that. The leaders of the Moirai and the Void Hand might have made the planet-sized golem look like a joke, but that didn’t mean that the monster had been weak. A lesser god wouldn’t have survived the abomination’s fury, and Percy struggled to imagine that level of devastation magnified by a thousandfold.
If an ancient produced by a Thirteenth Circle god was as powerful as a Twentieth Circle deity, one produced by someone at the peak of Elemental Acquisition might easily rival Thirtieth Circle mages. Nobody had climbed that high in the current era as far as Percy could tell.
‘Forgive the intrusion, but I may be able to offer some insight on this matter,’ the Broodmother suddenly said, causing Sol and a very-confused Doh to tilt their heads towards the colossal myriapede. ‘My kind has been around since before your current era, so we have seen things that your so-called peak factions are unaware of. Very few Elemental Sources are sentient like me, and there is no other that can traverse the cosmos with as much ease, so I am probably the only one who can answer some of your questions.’
Percy’s eyes widened, as he hadn’t even considered that. However, he didn’t interrupt the enormous creature, patiently waiting for it to elaborate at its own pace.
‘What the people of this era have renamed into the Ancient realm was once known as the Celestial realm. Suns are indeed beings who were once mortal, such as yourselves. The threshold that determines whether a deity will produce a planet or a star is around the Twentieth Circle – according to your system. I believe that a similar tipping point exists around the Thirtieth Circle, though such expansions were rare even among the factions of old. I have never personally witnessed one, nor do I know what it would entail,’ the myriapede patiently explained.
It was Zoris’ soul that shuddered with shock this time, as even the former deity clearly hadn’t expected to learn answers that the peak factions would kill for on this barren world.
‘The Celestial realm… Did the people of the previous era ever find a way to harness its power without losing their individuality?’ the ring wraith asked. ‘And do you know what happened at the end of the era to wipe out all the ancient factions?’
‘I do not know. I may be old, but I can only be at one place at a time, while the universe is vast and ever-changing. Even before, I used to spend tens of millions of years at a time hiding from the peak factions or captured by them, so my knowledge is limited. All I can say is that magic used to work a little differently back then. Mortals and deities alike manipulated a resource called qi rather than mana, and the universe operated on a different set of laws. The Colour realm also had another name that eludes me at the moment, though I believe that the Concept realm was still called that. The end of the previous era coincided with the change from qi to mana, so the two events are obviously related, but I am not aware of their cause.’
Percy had no idea what to make of this. Every answer he received only birthed ten more questions. He already wanted to know how qi worked, and what the Broodmother could tell him about the origins of the universe.
If all the planets and stars had once been mortals like him, then where had those people come from? The cosmos had presumably been much smaller in the past, but what exactly had that looked like? Had there been some kind of original planet? And was such a world still around somewhere, floating near the heart of the universe like a forgotten pebble? Had the myriapede even existed back then, or had there been an even older era that the current Celestials were too young to have experienced?
More pressingly, Percy couldn’t help but wonder whether the Broodmother could lead him to other Elemental Sources. Having already shown him a vision of the World Tree, it might be aware of where the rest were located.
But he stopped himself.
All the information in the universe wouldn’t do him much good as he was. His top priority was to grow stronger. What would be the point of finding a second Elemental Source when he had yet to take advantage of the one that was floating before him?
‘Let’s focus on registering the Basic Soul Control spell and returning to Remior for now. Everything else can wait.’