“Become a god?” Mio asked with mild surprise as Hades nodded his head.
“Yup. I’m offering you a chance to become a god. I’m not sure what kind of divinity you’ll develop but the path to becoming a god is hard. There is a chance of death but with me as your guarantor, you’ll have one chance where there is no risk of you dying for good.” Hades smiled as Mio furrowed her brows before nodding.
“If this can help Shiro in the long run then so be it.”
Hearing this, Hades grinned.
“Perfect. Let me explain to you what a ‘god’ exactly is in the definition of the system rather than the biblical god. You see, when the system classes you as a ‘god’ per say, it means that you’ve reached a certain amount of power within a single concept. That is your divinity. Children of gods are born innately with a divinity that branches from their parents but there is a problem with that. You see, the children of gods are not able to truly get a divinity they want. They’re born with it and they don’t get to choose.
“The ‘normal’ way to become a god is to first reach level 1000 where you touch the threshold of Demi God. It is at this stage that you begin cultivating your divinity and the levels become irrelevant. There is no level 1001. The cap is 1000 and beyond that is the quality of your divinity along with the faith that you receive.
“We Greek gods already have a rich history so we passively gain faith through the stories that you mortals have told. For new generations like you, you’ll need to create temples, perform miracles and so on which Shiro has done amazingly so far.
“But that is the long road. While it’s the most common, it takes a while for you to be truly powerful against other gods.” Hades sat down and crossed his legs.
“Hence why my proposition is for you to ascend the path of divinity in the Hall of Divine.”
“Hall of Divine?”
“Yes. You can call that a hub area for gods. We see detestable faces there every day so we don’t like to visit much. Funnily enough, Shiro already has her own little area there. It’s small but the killing intent most can sense is pretty astounding. Normally, the path of divinity is what most gods use to refine their divinity to the next level. I want you to go there without a divinity and forcefully refine it to the next stage. With my power, the moment there is danger I can drag you out. But that is a one off. Once you complete the path of divinity, you’ll be raised to Demi God status and to reach god status, you’ll need to cultivate like everyone else but it should be easy enough.”
“Surely it can’t be that easy. If it was, plenty of gods would have tried to make more Demi Gods.” Mio furrowed her brows.
“Yes but there is a high chance of failure. Since you have no inherent divine energy and no feeling of what divinity feels like, refining it is quite difficult. Plus, the person who sends you in there, in this case me, will suffer two backlashes. First is the system backlash since I am sending you to the hall of divine to attend this test. The second is divinity backlash since I’m using a portal of my divinity to help you bluff your way into the test. Most gods are a little selfish so they don’t risk their hard earned divinity for a low chance of a Demi God. At this stage, individual power is important so if the god weakens themselves, their records will be affected.
“Temples being destroyed, stories being forgotten and so on.” Hades explained with a smile.
“Wouldn’t that put a target on you?” Mio asked.
“Oh of course. But that’s only if they find out it’s me. So when you do this, try not to give them any clues and say my name ok?” Hades chuckled as Mio nodded.
“Perfect. In that case then I’ll start the preparations. Time flows a bit differently in the path of divinity so I’m wishing that your mind can tolerate the passage of time. Mortals who only live for a split instance in the grand scheme of things find it hard to comprehend such a long passage of time after all.” Hades chuckled as he stood up.
Taking a deep breath, Mio thought back to Shiro’s figure in the med bay and closed her eyes.
“I’m ready.” Mio said as she opened her eyes. For Shiro who had endured an unknown amount of pain, this was nothing.
Smiling at her determination, Hades’ opened a portal as the two of them disappeared from the reaper realm.
###
Looking at the tablet with a frown, Nan Tian massaged his eyes.
According to Madison, there was another event happening but thankfully, it wasn’t as crazy as the rainbow relic. The rewards for this event was a high end tier 6 subordinate as well as a hidden title. With the system dubbing it as a high end tier 6 subordinate, Nan Tian could guess it was something along the lines of 800+.
Probably something stronger than most Queen’s right now.
It’s a bit annoying but compared to the danger that a rainbow relic brought, this was nothing. Thinking about it for a moment, Nan Tian decided that they should probably skip out on this event. There’s no doubt that more Queens will participate in this one and their main goal was to keep everything running.
Teleporting the city was a bit difficult now that Isilia’s anchor is gone so they didn’t have their most powerful escape option.
[Madison: Alright. I’ll continue leveling up with the rest of the demon legion. How is she by the way? Is she looking a bit better or the same as usual?]
[Nan Tian: She’s talking a bit more now. She understands her problem so it’s better than nothing.]
[Madison: I see. I’ll come visit after I finish leveling up a little with the demon legion.]
[Nan Tian: See you soon then.]
Closing the chat tab, Nan Tian glanced at Shiro who was having some decent rest and smiled.
Thankfully, after repairing her body, she was able to rest with more consistency but there was still a chance that she would wake up in a cold sweat due to the nightmares.
Nan Tian understood that forcefully putting her to sleep at this point was bad even if she was awake for a long time. It was best to let her rest on her own since she too understands that she needs rest.
The one thing that didn’t change was that she continued to keep a tight grip on his sleeve whenever she slept in fear of not seeing him when she woke up.
Looking back at his tablet, Nan Tian checked up on what Yin and Lisandra were doing.
Lisandra’s ‘pains’ were fading away so she could venture out for longer periods of time without being in fear of freezing up due to the pain. If she was to pause during combat, it could prove to be fatal hence why Yin was with her most of the time.
Yin had decided to resume her search for the remaining fragments with the help of Chen Yu’s assassin guild. While they were primarily used for assassination, their information gathering was by no means inferior.
They had already helped her discover a few signs of potential fragments and locations for one of them.
With Yin making her way to reaching tier 6, Silvia, Aarim, Chen Yu and Helion weren’t too far behind either as they progressed in their own ways. Helion was making more and more armour each day using all of the materials that Shiro had sent him during her travels including the strange marble that was highly resistant to corrosion and rot attacks that would destroy armour in an instant.
With Asharia constantly flying through the sky with camouflage activated, they would pass by a few make-shift settlements and help out. As much as they wanted to bring them onto the city, they couldn’t since they couldn’t make any more houses and Asharia was barely hanging on to begin with.
When they pass a settlement, Silvia will take some healers with her to treat them while Nan Tian had a few merchants give them some rations. Of course, there were a few settlements that tried to do things the primitive way by the victor taking all and the outcome was naturally their destruction.
Those that didn’t raise their hand would get help.
Feeling some movement next to him, Nan Tian stopped thinking about what happened and focused on Shiro.
Seeing her open her eyes slowly and look up at him, he smiled.
“Good morning.”
“Mn… good morning. I saw that the system has started another event. Is Madison going to participate in it?” Shiro asked hesitantly as Nan Tian shook his head.
“Don’t worry. She’s leveling up with her subordinates.” Nan Tian smiled as Shiro sighed in relief.
Laying on the bed, she thought about it for a moment before opening her mouth.
“I’m going to say something and will you promise that you won’t laugh at me?” She asked as Nan Tian nodded.
“I won’t don’t worry, do you need my help?”
“No- mn… maybe a little. I want to try to leave this room.”