Chapter 161: Ch 161 : The Lovesick God
"Come back if you dare," the voice of the Realm Spirit, still mimicking the gentle melody of Freya, crackled with a childish, impotent rage.
"Why should I?" Sunny’s projection replied, his tone laced with a cold, amusement. He had already seen everything he needed to. "You are not sincere. You are not even willing to reveal your true self."
"What... what are you talking about?" The voice lost its arrogance, replaced by a flicker of genuine panic.
"You know what I am talking about," Sunny said, his words a slow, deliberate dissection of her lie. "I was there when your master created this realm."
"No! You’re lying! I was always with Master! I have never seen you with her!" the spirit shrieked.
"You only gained consciousness a century ago," Sunny stated, the simple fact a hammer blow to her entire facade. "So how could you have always been with Freya?"
"You caught me..." The voice cracked, the beautiful feminine tone dissolving into a panicked, masculine tenor. The air shimmered, and a physical form finally appeared before Sunny. "But you will have to die for it!"
Sunny looked at the being, and a wave of pure, unadulterated disgust washed over him. He wasn’t disgusted by the male form, or by the attempted deception.
His God’s Eye had already pierced through time and memory, showing him the full, pathetic, and horrifying story of the creature that stood before him.
"Now I am a male... so you feel disgusted? Aren’t you shameless?" the figure snarled, trying to twist Sunny’s reaction into an insult.
"I don’t care about your gender, Floro," Sunny said, speaking the name like a curse.
"Who... How did you know?" Floro stammered, his bravado shattering.
"I have seen it all," Sunny’s voice was as cold as the void between universes. "And your time is up." His own voice then shifted, deepening into a sound that was not a request, but a universal law.
"Kneel, you fool."
It was a quiet command, but it carried the weight of a collapsing star. Floro’s body slammed into the ground of the very realm he commanded, his knees cracking against the stone, his head forced down until his forehead bled against the dirt.
The memories Sunny had witnessed flashed through his mind again. He saw Floro, born three million years ago as the innocent World Spirit of this realm, a creation of Freya.
He saw the spirit’s adoration for its master turn into a twisted, obsessive love. He saw the moment he confessed his love and was gently rejected, Freya’s heart already belonging to Adam.
Then, he saw the poison. A whisper from Demios, the Lord of discord, planting a seed of jealousy. ’She could be yours. If only the God of Growth were gone.’
He saw Floro, consumed by that jealousy, making a pact with the demons, becoming their pawn, whispering his own lies into Freya’s ear, convincing her that the Demon Lords truly desired peace.
He had orchestrated the treaty that led to the great war, all in a mad hope that Adam would be killed.
But his plan had backfired spectacularly, leading to the death of the very goddess he claimed to love.
And in the million years since, devastated and broken by his own catastrophic failure, he had begun to imitate her, to speak with her voice, to pretend to be her, a ghost haunting his own creation in a pathetic attempt to fill the void she had left.
Sunny’s disgust solidified into a cold, righteous fury. He walked out of the serene bubble of reality he had created to shield himself from the realm’s power.
He grabbed the kneeling, terrified Floro by the hair, and with a roar of contempt, began to beat the traitorous spirit. There was no grand magic, no divine technique, just the raw, physical expression of his disgust.
"To think Adam’s downfall was because of a pathetic, lovesick fool like you," Sunny snarled between punches. "Thanks heavens your body isn’t ethereal. I can have some fun." The five minutes he had been in the realm were almost up, the faith drain immense, but he didn’t care.
"Stop! Don’t hit me! I will tell you a secret!" Floro begged, his arrogance long since beaten out of him.
"I know your secret," Sunny replied, his voice flat. "You have no value. You have no bargaining chips. You can die in peace." He chuckled, a cruel, mirthless sound. "Though perhaps you won’t even be able to die in peace."
With that final sentence, he activated his Combat Master talent. His hand, covered in a thick, shimmering layer of pure faith, became a blade of divine light.
With a single, clean slash, he severed the life force of Floro. The spirit’s soul, a screaming wisp of corrupted energy, tried to flee, but Sunny snatched it from the air with his fingers.
And in that instant, he felt it. The entire Realm of Advancement, its caretaker now dead, began to die with him.
"Well, what did you expect, sherlock" Sunny said to himself as the very sky began to tear apart like rotten fabric.
The beautiful garden dissolved into a chaotic swirl of energy. Entire continents; worlds that Freya had lovingly stitched together, began to peel away at the seams, threatening to fall back into the nothingness from which they came.
With an annoyed sigh, he unleashed a small portion of his remaining faith, a web of golden light that spread across the collapsing realm, temporarily holding it together.
He then manifested a new Divine Embryo. He didn’t shape it into a warrior or a beast. He shaped it into something simple, something fundamental. A formless, pure black slime. It was not a hero or a fughter. It was a solution, a solution to the current misfortune.
He poured his will into it, etching a single, SSS-Grade talent into its core.
[Controller]. A talent that would allow this new demigod to merge with the realm, to become its new heart, its new will.
It would be able to control every element, every law, every inch of this vast reality. It would be a true god here, but outside this realm, it would be nothing but a simple slime. A perfect, loyal, and eternally bound caretaker.
If would have been a SSS-Grade talent, but the restriction of only able to control a realm, made this talent fall to the SS-Grade.
The faith consumption was accelerating. He needed to act fast. "I need to give you a name before you come to life," Sunny said, looking at the nascent, ominous slime as the realm trembled around him. "Your name will be..."