While his decimation of every god who’d tricked him began, a different instance of Ben opened his eyes in another realm, seeing who waited there.
Sitting on the floor, not moving at all, was Myriad. He gave no signs, how could someone without a face do so if they weren’t going to speak or move, but it was clear enough he was inconsolable while Helori sat by the cube’s side, gently rubbing him and trying to provide whatever comfort she could, neither of them noticing him until he cleared his throat.
“Gosh, what’s with the atmosphere up here? You’d think someone went and died.”
“Ben?” Myriad perked up with Helori, his god rising in the air with his apostle’s voice and shot towards it, sounding like he’d be crying tears of joy if he were able. “Ben! You’re alive!”
“Of course I’m alive. You think anything in reality has the power to take me out?”
“That’s beginning to seem less and less likely every single day,” Helori laughed as she joined them. “You really are alive, though? This isn’t just your ascended form, with your flesh rotting in hell?”
“Of course he’s alive,” Myriad said, indignant on his behalf. “Look at him! With the twisted, freakish, warped soul he has, do you really think his divine form would look the same as when he was human?”
“A good point.”
“A hurtful point. Goddamn, I literally only just got back and you’re already trying to murder me again?”
“So, how did you do it?” Helori wanted to know, ignoring his complaint. “How’d you escape hell?”
“Did your failsafe actually work?” Myriad asked as well, knowing that Ben had that emergency backup prepared in his church but had lost faith when it hadn’t immediately activated.
“Ugh, no and yes. Going up from hell is apparently a fair bit harder than going down to it, so my key wouldn’t work. Long story short, I managed to exploit its fractal properties with the skills I have to break through reality enough to get out. Honestly, aside from the pain and the general sense of betrayal I went through getting shoved down there, it was actually a really interesting experience. It let me exploit my alien sense in a really unique way and seems like it helped awaken it too, so if I go back at some point I could see just how much more powerful the exploit would be now, which would be cool-”
“In all that’s good, don’t start planning a trip to hell when you only just got out!” Myriad yelled at him, all thoughts and depression over what Ben had to have gone through out of his head now that he was once more faced with his apostle’s madness.
“I mean, I’ve proven I can get out, and another awakening I got is probably going to make it a fair bit easier too. I’ll have to look into what planar manipulation does later-”
“What did it grow from?” Helori asked him, the name of the skill driving her own curiosity as Ben answered.
“Condemnation and realm access, and I can at least already tell what it did for the latter. Not only did it grow my realm to something bigger than any other I’ve seen up here, it seems like I can now forcefully grow it myself, even if that seems like a bit of a slow process. Still, it’s going to be handy for all of my future experiments-”
“I hate the way you experiment in your realm,” Myriad grumbled.
“I’m literally giving your old biology a head start so you won’t have to grow things from single cells and wait for natural evolution to take its course. If you ever stop by, I can show you all the different terraforming trees I’ve designed using what you’ve given me alone. Let me drop some on an iron-rich planet and you’ll have it looking so full of life, no other gods would ever guess how it was all made.”
“Dare I even ask how many different quote-unquote trees you have?”
“Currently? I hit three thousand designs I’m happy with and decided to take a break from there. I’ll get back to it later.”
“Trees spitting out three thousand different horrors based on the life of my dead world…”
“Hmm? Ah, I see where you made the mistake. Myriad, just because the one you saw me fighting with could only produce one type of creature, there’s no way the ones I’d made you would be so simple. It varies a bit, but as things stand, each one can spit out roughly a hundred different types of creature, so the grand total is going to be closer to three hundred thousand. Of course, I’m going to keep improving them and pumping those numbers up, and I’ll need to confirm that if I ensoul the initial seed that all of the creatures the trees’ birth will be ensouled too, but so long as that all works, there’s no need to worry. We’ll make you a planet as rich with variety as any other.”
“As interesting as all that is, you can go back to making Myriad sick later,” Helori told him. “About the infinite hells-”
“More like 1,864,592 hells. No matter how I moved down there, it didn’t split me more or less than that. There was technically more area beyond where I was being fragmented, but the place definitely doesn’t just split you infinitely.”
“And as interesting as that is, and as much as I look forward to probing you on your experience there later, that’s not the point. Now that you’re back, what are you going to do?”
“Ah, yeah, I guess we haven’t touched on that yet, have we? Well, I’m already doing it.”
“... Meaning?”
“So, I kind of lied earlier. I didn’t just get back. Sorry I didn’t let you guys know sooner, but it’s been a bit over an hour. I didn’t want to risk any of the assholes who dropped me down there getting a heads-up.”
“Should I even bother asking what you’ve done with them?” Myriad said, in that regard willing to accept anything Ben decided. Those gods had attempted to murder his apostle, his friend, and that left them meaningless to the cube, even beyond whatever minor value they might have been able to contribute to the war.
“Well, not done, but actively doing, and they just got me to the ninth level of evil god of sacrilege,” Ben said, letting different parts of himself worry about the notifications he was gaining. “Which I guess makes me a… I wanna say super-contender, but that sounds dumb. We really should come up with a better name for it.”
“There’s no point,” Helori told him. “Give us another billion years and we won’t see anyone else get there.”
“The great spirits are having more kids, and half-spirits live a long time, never say never,” Ben shrugged. “If Bloom hasn’t been careful since I last saw him, he might even have a few dozen on the way.”
“Not the point,” Myriad told him. “You’re now a contender for the fourth tier. I can’t imagine… how do you feel?”
“When it comes to the gods of this world? Unstoppable. At this point, even if all of you teamed up against me together, I don’t think you could beat me.”
“Horrify.”
“Yet true,” Ben said. Even just appraising the two before him, he knew they couldn’t affect him in any way that would be meaningful, while he had endless options. If he wanted to, he could take them apart with a thought or merge the effects of his sacrilege with any other skill he held and, if he were being truthful, he’d been at that point for a while. Even so, he couldn’t let himself get conceited over it. Even with all of the power he held, he’d still been tricked into falling into hell. There would always be ways to beat him; all he could do was prepare the best he could.
“And what about gods not on this world?” Helori asked, her point clear enough.
“Still abysmal, I’m going to focus on getting more awakenings and trying not to think about it,” he groaned. “At least, once I’m done with everything else I have to do today.”
“What else could you possibly be doing?”
“Oh, loads. Like I was saying, I’m currently torturing and testing out my new sacrilege level on the twenty who thought killing me would be a good idea, I’m having a fun little talk with Lehie and father Yan, two I know from when I first came to this universe because I needed a communal church to track down the realms of the assholes who attacked me, and who apparently thought I was insane this whole time-”
“They would be correct.”
“And, when I’m done that, I’m going to have to race home to Stonewall to hopefully meet up with Thera, because now that I’m back, she should be able to feel it with bind-”
“She’s taken what happened to you very poorly,” Myriad mentioned.
“I know, she’s great.”
“She’s destroyed every church and monument dedicated to the gods who attacked you, cursed the lands they were built on, and kidnapped their core believers. Anailia won’t let anyone talk to her or even poke around in her head, so none of us know what she’s planning on doing with them.”
“You don’t have to try and sell me on my girlfriend, Myriad. I’m already crazy about her.”
“The issue is that she’s a very well-adjusted person, right up until it seems like you’re dead. I can only dread what’s going to happen if anything ever does kill you off in a way you can’t come back from.”
“I’m sure it will be fine. Anyway, that’s not all I need to do.”
“Alright, what else then?”
“Set up a meeting with the other gods so I can announce my return. I’m already aware that, even if they didn’t directly participate with the ones I’m currently dealing with, plenty tried to let them off the hook. I’m done negotiating with the divine in good faith. It’s time we make things clear. Whether anyone likes it or not, the pecking order of this reality has changed.”