As I stood in front of Seldanna, I said nothing for a moment, focusing on assessing the differences between an Avatar and the actual presence of a god … and found the difference suffocatingly different. No wonder that, for all her inexperience and her lacking power, Seldanna managed to defeat the Avatar easily.
Without my latest burst of Stats, her presence would have been suffocating … and even then, the only reason I wasn’t collapsing was because she wasn’t using her power on me directly.
At her current state, I would have no chance of winning … now that we were face to face, even escaping her would have been challenging. Luckily, even if she decided to suddenly go crazy and betray the man who had not only saved her people from certain extinction but also helped her to ascend to divinity, I could have used the incredible amount of Divine Spark I had collected from the defeated Avatar to increase my stats…
And with that improvement, I should be able to escape successfully.
Of course, the fact that I was making various plans to escape as I faced Seldanna told nothing nice about my state of mind … but after living as an utterly powerless being for most of my life, I was not comfortable facing someone that outclassed me significantly.
Luckily, the long battle between the two, combined with the scraps of memories I had received, gave me a better understanding of how they fought. Both the undead and Seldanna were overly reliant on their environment, without abilities that could deliver a burst of damage.
If it wasn’t for my experience with different types of Divine Sparks, I would have assumed it was a weakness that was shared by all gods … but I knew that sparks like Light certainly didn’t have that vulnerability.
A problem for the future, I thought as Seldanna landed in front of me in her real form, letting me take the differences. The biggest was her clothes. Gone were her robes, replaced by a living dress made of leaves, each brimming with enough mana to make a weaker mage go blind. And, that was the most minor difference.
Her hair and skin had also changed. Her skin maintained its flawless quality, but turned green. Luckily, it was the soft, soothing green of flesh leaves, somehow adding to her beauty than distracting from it. Her hair was a darker shade of green, living flowers peeking through its lushness.
Just by standing, the surrounding aura of decay and destruction disappeared, replaced by thick grass and the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen, their smell alone more intoxicating than a strong drink.
I didn’t need to feel the way she connected to every being with a Nature Spark — except mine which I kept locked behind a tantric ward — to be assured of her true divinity.
“Someone had been being a bad boy, lying quite a bit,” was her first words.
I smirked, amused by the direction she chose, which was far better than the alternatives, showing that her new power didn’t destroy her sense of humor. “Well, I wouldn’t say lying. More like creatively re-interpreting the truth rather than flat-out lying.”
“Very creatively. You should be a storyteller rather than a … mage,” she said, though the last part hesitant. I could sense that she wanted to call me something else, but lacked the words to define me. Which was not exactly unfair, as I lacked them as well. I was not a mortal, but I also wasn’t a god, not the way the other gods functioned, at least.
Though, considering I could feel Seldanna being linked to the very land, which empowered and imprisoned her at the same time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be one. Not with the Eternals inevitably poking around. They were not an enemy that I could just bunker down to defeat.
“I’m a man of many skills,” I said, letting my smirk turn salacious. “As you very well know.”
She avoided my gaze, even turning away to hide her face to hide her blush. I chuckled, amused that divinity didn’t prevent her from blushing. She followed it with a spell, and a bunch of plants appeared around her, hiding her from view. When they disappeared, she was sitting on a throne made of plants.
Which would have been more impressive if the only reason she went to that trouble was to hide her shyness.
“So, what were your plans when you arrived?” she asked, desperately trying to change the subject in order not to destroy any gravitas of her first true showing as divinity, unaware of the fact that trying that hard destroyed any hope of it succeeding. “Were you aiming for the slumbering god from the beginning?”
Despite the sensitive nature of the question, she didn’t have a hint of anger in her voice, and that was not because she was an amazing actress. Though, it made sense, as regardless of the answer, she didn’t have much to be concerned about, considering she ended up being a god rather than ending up as the minion of an ancient god with little care about the lives of his minions — a fact that Seldanna was aware of thanks to the memories she had received.
I delayed answering, letting my smirk widen as I did so. Instead, I waved my hand, creating a throne made of bare stone, just a bit larger than hers, making her eye twitch slightly. She fed it slightly more mana, which increased the size of her throne to pass mine.
“Truthfully, nothing,” I answered. “My aim wasn’t to arrive here, but to escape the group that was using the undead as a tool to expand their forces. The only reason I picked this plane among the others was that I could feel the undead invasion was ongoing rather than complete, giving me a chance to recover. Anything else, including our fortunate meeting, was just luck.”
I chuckled even as I let my throne grow to pass hers in size. “Don’t tell me that you’re unhappy about meeting me,” I said with an exaggerated needy tone. “I don’t think my poor heart could handle it.”
Her eye twitched in annoyance, making me wonder whether it was about my teasing tone, or the fact that my throne was higher than hers once more. “I don’t know, it’s hard to think that my innocence was taken by such a liar,” she answered, her throne growing further.
“Oh, it hurts, after everything I sacrificed,” I mocked her, my throne growing even bigger.
She smiled, trying to let it grow more … but only to experience a snag. An artificial one, in the form of a ward, refined her nature mana into pure mana, reducing the strength of her throne, and making the flowers that covered the surface fade.
“Oh, that’s how you want to play,” she growled in mock anger, and suddenly, several roots burst out of her throne, digging into my earthen one. I might have been able to defend if I had elemental mana to actually reinforce, but considering I was still using Pure mana as a proxy, it was impossible to win against natured mana.
Especially when said natured mana was used by an actual goddess.
Instead, I created a floating throne made of Arcana mana, but with a touch of light, enough to make her widen at the sudden trick. I was revealing a secret to her, and she knew enough about me to guess it was not accidental.
I was extending my trust toward her, which made her react favorably, and I abused that trust by…
Creating an even bigger, floating throne. “It seems that I’m the victor,” I declared with an exaggerated laugh.
“You bastard,” she growled, playful anger replacing her emotional state, and a veritable forest burst out of the ground, their branches trying to grab me. I dashed away in my floating throne, and she chased, creating the most impactful tag game imaginable.
I chuckled as she chased, going toward the destroyed landscape. And, as she chased me by creating more and more trees and other plants, we left behind a huge, growing forest … it would take a while for the animal life to return, but it was a start.
I escaped and she chased for hours, making it a fun but exhausting game out of reforming the plane after the undead assault, the most critical aspects of the land recovering under our incredible chase. However, as she chase me, I could see significant signs of exhaustion on her…
And that was with her using the God Forest as some kind of weapon to spread life. Without it, even for a goddess, it would have taken weeks and months of hard work. Combined, it was a good, fruitful activity, not only entertaining, but also repairing the worst of the damage that was delivered to the undead.
I slowed down, letting her trees surround me and cut off my path. “You’re surrounded, I win,” she declared.
“Oh, really,” I answered with a chuckle, and teleported behind her, hugging her from behind. “It seems that you’re the one that got caught…”
{Strength: 30 Charisma: 30
Precision: 30 Perception: 30
Agility: 30 Manipulation: 30
Speed: 30 Intelligence: 30
Endurance: 30 Wisdom: 30}
{Purified Divine Spark: 237555}
{Pseudo-HP: 1103 Mana: 2410}
{ADDITIONAL SPARKS
Light - Chosen 7.4
Nature - Chosen 10}
{MINIONS
Elven Goddess - ???}
[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]
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