Chapter 79 - The Eye Of The Storm

Only after Ais had confirmed that Isaac was still able to control his Divine Aura, even after all of these upgrades, did she choose to follow in his footsteps. Previously, she had been a bit worried about whether choosing this option, which basically amounted to a shortcut, would lock her out of entering the dungeon, therefore in the long term ending up being disadvantageous for her.

However, Isaac's apparently easy success finally gave her the confidence that she had needed. Even should it be difficult to suppress her Divine Aura, it definitely wasn't impossible.

As to why she hadn't told him that she was able to buy the same upgrades? She had wanted to surprise him a little, which she undoubtedly succeeded at. Seeing that momentary astonished look on his face made the corners of her mouth curl up in amus.e.m.e.nt.

Just like Isaac, she had held herself back during the expedition, as she could have bought the first upgrade then and there, or even before they set off. Still, as the detailed plans relating to their foray into the dungeon had already been made, she didn't want to endanger everyone by adding an unknown variable into the mix, especially considering that she was one of the pillars of the familia. Because of Isaac's lack of such a position, he had been able to throw caution into the wind easily - but she had a lot more things to worry about that served to restrain her actions.

After switching places with Isaac, she emulated him and closed her eyes, giving the onlookers a clear sense of foreboding. Even a simpleton would be able to tell what was about to happen. Without wasting another second, she bought the Ichor upgrade.

Before she had met Isaac, her most important goal had been to become stronger. Of course, this objective of hers hadn't just disappeared. Instead, it had to step back to the second place on her priority list. Now, with an opportunity to grow far, far stronger placed in front of her, one with no apparent dangers at all, she simply wasn't able to resist.

Although Ais was a lot less experienced at sensing the changes in her body compared to her beloved, she still felt the blood in her body… changing. Sadly, she wasn't even able to put into words what exactly she was feeling, she could only silently look on and wonder. Her strength rapidly increased and a golden glow, accompanied by a mist of the same colour, surrounded her. This, coupled with her breathtaking looks, made the whole scene indescribably beautiful.

Right before the system would have sent her a notification about her obtaining the Divine Blood Skill, however, something changed.

A tingling pain erupted all over her body, and it felt like her blood had started to boil. Her veins were squirming underneath her skin and she couldn't help but clench her teeth in discomfort. Moments later, the golden mist around her was picked up by a gust of wind, which slowly formed a cyclone around her. It grew increasingly faster and soon, the weakest amongst the spectators began to slightly worry about their safety, their hair madly fluttering in the strong air currents.

Thankfully, it was at this moment, where they felt like they would lose control over the situation, that Ais' expression finally relaxed. Everyone's quickened heart beats calmed down markedly. Isaac couldn't deny that he had been a little worried about her as well. He had his suspicions as to what exactly just happened, but he kept quiet, as he didn't want to interrupt this process.

Together with the Divine Blood Skill, the system notified Ais about another Skill, causing her to raise her eyebrows in surprise, before a sour feeling sprouted in her chest.

[ Daughter of the Wind: (Passive) The effects of all Magics related to the wind increases by 50%. ]

While the slightly indistinct figure of a golden-haired woman surfaced from the depths of her heart, a tear slid down her cheek. Still, it was quickly accompanied by a gentle smile.

'Mom… you're still watching over me, aren't you?'

After taking a couple of moments to reminisce, Ais steeled her heart and resolutely continued on this path to further strength. She knew that perhaps, she could have made it to the place that she was about to reach on her own one day. But arriving there earlier would enable her to grow so, so much more. And she knew that she needed to do exactly that.

Just like what had happened to Isaac minutes prior, her body soon turned into Divine Energy, then reconstructed into an even more flawless physical form. Contrary to Isaac's, her own Divine Energy contained a slight hint of green. Thankfully, this second upgrade hadn't been accompanied by any unusual changes or violent storms.

Finally, Ais arrived at the same last step. But the option that the system presented to her was slightly different. Instead of 'Creating a Divine Soul imitation', it was 'Upgrading the secondary host's soul to a Divine Soul', while the cost was the same. The only reason that she noticed this difference was that her beloved had secretly told her the exact details of what he had done when she had asked him via the system.

Although she knew that what she was about to do would differ slightly from what he had done, she didn't hesitate. Her scarily large pool of AP got reduced by a somewhat noticeable portion. Of course, she had made sure to spend the additional 50,000 to keep her Falna intact.

The soul was something that Ais had a hard time to even conceptualize. In fact, she didn't know anything about souls and couldn't detect them at all. Needless to say, she didn't notice any of the true changes that she underwent. Still, there were a few things that even she couldn't miss.

It all started with her memories of the far-off past becoming less fuzzy. Very soon, she even began to recall the most minute of details, as if all of these events had literally just happened. This had both a positive and a negative effect on her. On the bright side, the smiles and warmth of her parents, which had grown incredibly vague over this exceedingly long period of time, began to reappear in her mind as good as new. On the other hand, though, there was the darkness. She had locked it away deep within the recesses of her memories, trying desperately to forget it, attempting to escape the seemingly endless loneliness that she had experienced. But now, all of it returned at the same time, causing her to tremble and shiver uncontrollably, unceasingly shedding tear after tear.

She didn't even realize that her strength increased by many times. She didn't even notice that the system sent her various notifications. And she also wasn't aware of the raging tempest thundering through the courtyard, with her being its origin. None of the changes that she and her environment were experiencing were perceived by her. There was only endless darkness.

[ The Divinity 'Wind (I)' has been obtained. ]

[ Wind (I): One gains full control of the wind. In areas without air to manipulate, Divine Energy can be used to create it. ]

After what felt like an eternity, a pair of strong and warm arms wrapped around her, enveloping her in a soft hug, like a ray of sunshine. With difficulty, her eyes opened, only to come face to face with a gentle and familiar smile. Soon, just like the ice after a harsh winter, the darkness weighing down on her melted away… or rather, it disappeared for a time. With an expression of relief plastered all over her face, Ais smiled brightly.

No words were necessary between them, and she also didn't know what to say. She wasn't blind. Even though her view was slightly distorted courtesy of the tears in her eyes, she could still make out that Isaac… looked to be quite dishevelled. And so did everyone else. The entire group was desperately holding onto each other, they were all bunched together. Meanwhile, all of the chairs and sofas had disappeared.

While patting Ais' back gently and trying to provide her with some security, Isaac couldn't help but smile wryly. He hadn't expected for her to get assaulted by her repressed feelings like that. The reason as to why he was unprepared was that he hadn't gone through the exact same upgrade to the soul, so he simply couldn't have known that this would happen. He could have ventured an educated guess, but that would have been about it. Just the short moment where he had needed to come up with a plan was already enough to endanger everyone's lives. After all, unless one was mad, one shouldn't enter the surrounding void...

Normally, Ais' ascension to a divine lifeform would have undoubtedly been accompanied by strong winds of some kind - but they shouldn't have been that out of control. Rather, they should have instinctively provided the entire group with protection. Thankfully, he had quickly managed to shepherd everyone together so that they could hold on to each other, making it harder for them to be blown away. At the same time, he had improvised and used his mana to create countercurrents to as many of the gusts of wind as he could, therefore lightening the pressure that they had to bear.

Luckily, this had been enough. Otherwise, he would have had to… well, he couldn't have done anything else, besides spending AP to resolve the problem, which would have felt like a waste.

A sigh escaped his lips while he waited for everyone to regain their bearings. Ais quickly returned to normal and reined in her Divine Aura. She was even surprised by how easy it was to do. Whilst the now even more ethereally beautiful girl smiled happily to herself and inspected her Status, rejoicing at seeing all of her stats having doubled just like that, enabling her to rival even the strongest of Level 7 adventurers once she utilized all of her Skills, the system returned them to the world they had come from.

At this moment, the laws of the world noticed the changes that the two had gone through, but as they had already had restrictions placed upon them, they didn't make a ruckus and didn't attempt to suppress them.

When she noticed that her powers had returned, Hel immediately hid under her cloak again, disappearing from view. During the emergency earlier, she had been revealed to everyone else, and most of them hadn't even met her before. Quite a few confused looks were shot her way.

Her cheeks were burning up and for now, she intended to sneak away, to calm her rapidly beating heart. The whole situation had just been far too embarrassing! But before she could get anywhere, a hand suddenly pressed down on her shoulder.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Slowly and jerkily, like a puppet that hadn't been oiled for a while, Hel turned her head and glanced behind her. The saintly, heart-warming smile on Isaac's lips seemed extremely ominous to her right now. Still, she honestly didn't know what to say. She hadn't thought this far, so she completely blanked out.

"Don't you want to know more about what just happened?"

These words made her tensed-up shoulders relax. The fear in her eyes nigh instantly switched to curiosity.

"Yes! Please explain!!"

Like a child excited to hear her parent's story, she grabbed his arm with sparkling eyes, all the while staring directly at his Divine Soul instead of his face. There was something odd about it, but she just couldn't explain what it was.

After motioning to everyone to continue their training, Isaac brought both Ais and Hel to the main manor. He knew that it would only be a matter of time until their new brethren would notice something, especially after Ais had acquired a Divinity pretty much for free. It would be best if he took this chance to let Loki in on the 'secret' as well. But was it really one if he didn't even do much to hide it?

-----

For some time now, the trickster goddess had been subjected to a rollercoaster ride of emotions. When Ais, Hel and Isaac had entered the room, she had already noticed that… there had been a change. But when both Ais and Isaac released their Divine Aura in front of her in full force, her heart became a complete mess.

Partially, she was relieved about this development, as it meant that both of them would be as safe as they could ever potentially be, unless they did something remarkably stupid. At the same time, she was happy to have them join the ranks of the gods. Yes, she was also extremely confused as to how this had even happened, especially because the one who had undergone this metamorphosis wasn't only Isaac - there was also her Ais! Still, she knew that they wouldn't have exposed this to her if they weren't prepared to give her an explanation.

Coupled with all of these, what overwhelmed her was a whole slew of negative thoughts. She was afraid for them, as she knew that gods with the same Divinities or Arcanums would undoubtedly prey on them. But even more than that, she was heartbroken, because she thought that the two were now… no longer a part of her familia.

Seeing Loki's expression change rapidly, Isaac helplessly shook his head, before hastily interrupting her pessimistic musings.

"We're still a part of your familia, you know?"

These words caused Loki to blank out completely, she even blinked in confusion. This should be impossible, right? After all, they were deities now…

"Just take a look at our Status."

Shortly after, Loki was still staring at the two of them, her confusion not lessened in the slightest.

"How did my Ichor turn into Primordial Ichor? I'm not one of the primordial gods."

A slight smile played across Isaac's lips, then he leaned back into the sofa.

"Hold your horses. Let me explain everything from the very beginning."

What he proceeded to tell both Hel and Loki didn't differ from what he had told Ais and Lefiya back when he first arrived in this world. While both of them were shaken at the revelation that worlds besides their own existed, especially worlds that had no connection to theirs whatsoever, they weren't too taken aback.

Loki had already expected something unusual to be the case back when they first met, so although the theories she had come up with were wrong, as a result of her limited knowledge, she could accept all of this. She was also far too experienced at spotting lies to be unable to tell whether or not Isaac was speaking the truth. Fooling her was many multiples of times harder than deceiving most other gods.

Hel's thoughts didn't differ too much from Loki's. She had never met anyone like Isaac before, so what she had expected was something entirely new and different. This was why she managed to stay relatively calm. Well, she still grew antsy from excitement the moment that she realized that there was far more out there for her to lay her eyes upon.

The reason that Isaac had decided to trust these two, or rather, to reveal so much to them, was that Loki was very close to Ais. Her behaviour was often unacceptable, but at her very core, she was still extremely caring nonetheless. While he had made his preparations, just in case, he truly didn't think that she would betray their trust, especially once she realized that she could encounter more potentially interesting things by simply not getting in their way, or possibly even supporting them. Hel… well, besides the soft spot that he had for her courtesy of Ereshkigal, she had done a lot for him over these past few weeks. Many of these things, nobody but the two of them knew about. There would come a time when they would see the light of day, but it certainly wasn't now.

Isaac didn't fear betrayal, but he also didn't aim for it to occur. These two ultimately seemed to be quite unlikely to stab him in the back, so it was worth a shot. If he should happen to be wrong, he could always rid himself of them.

"But what does any of that have to do with me being unable to see your soul, and with what happened today?"

Although his explanation had shed light upon a number of things, Hel was still far from satisfied.

"I was getting to that."

Isaac could only smile helplessly. She had interrupted him right before he had arrived at these points. Her timing… really needed some work. And so did her patience.

"To put it simply, the very laws of this world aren't capable of perceiving my soul, as it outscales it too much. What I created today was an imitation of a Divine Soul that can now actually be recognized by them and can be seen by you and others. Oh, by the way, Ais got a bonafide Divine Soul."

Just this small revelation already shattered the two goddesses' worldview. What kind of concept was it for one's soul to outscale their entire world? The sheer notion of it was mind-boggling and, admittedly, scary. Before they could even wrap their heads around this, Ais chimed in from the side.

"Isaac gave me access to a few of his abilities. Because of those, I was able to do the same things as he did."

It took a while, but finally, an exasperated sigh escaped Loki's lips.

"I see. Then what about the Primordial Ichor?"

Contrary to the lengthy explanation that she had hoped for, Isaac simply shrugged.

"I don't really know anything about that. My ability allowed me to preserve my Falna even after becoming a god. It just happened to end up this way. I'll look into it in the future."

Loki grimaced a little but nodded, then she took a deep breath and glared at him warily.

"If you're that powerful of an existence, why are you here?"

Hearing this question, Isaac couldn't help but smile.

"Did you forget? I told you already. One of my goals is to become an adventurer and grow stronger. As for why I'm starting out the way that I did… wouldn't it be boring to instantly achieve anything I want?"

For a moment, Loki was reminded of their first meeting. He had indeed said one of these sentences back then as well…

After she overcame this bout of nostalgia, she thought a bit about the rest of his words and soon had to admit that… her thoughts were the same.

'I really don't know what I even expected. Still, judging from the way that he is glancing at Ais, one of his other goals is obvious...'

It took some time, but soon, all questions were resolved. Even though the two goddesses were clear that Isaac hadn't told them absolutely everything, he had told them the gist of it. During their conversation, two system notifications had appeared.

[ 'Goddess of Death' Hel's fundamental beliefs relating to the expansiveness of existence have been changed by your words.

Quest 'Transform two people's fundamental beliefs.' completed. 200 Achievement Points rewarded. ]

[ 'Trickster Goddess' Loki's fundamental beliefs relating to the expansiveness of existence have been changed by your words.

Quest 'Transform three people's fundamental beliefs.' completed. 300 Achievement Points rewarded. ]

While Isaac was inwardly rejoicing over gaining a few more AP and finally seeing this kind of notification again, Loki's expression suddenly grew grave and she interrupted their jovial talk.

"Hold up. I almost forgot about this, but you need to be careful. Especially you, Ais."

-----

The moment that Ais and Isaac had returned, a lot of information had been spread via the laws of the world. It could even be argued that all of the worlds that this one consisted of underwent an irreversible change. Of course, there were some who noticed this.

-----

In a temple made entirely out of solidified wind, an old but gallant man exited the shower, lazily drying his hair. He created wind of a particular speed and temperature at his fingertips and used it as a hairdryer. Suddenly, his eyes widened in shock, before that was replaced with curiosity.

"So a new one's joined the fray? And they are in the Lower World?"

He hesitated for a while, then he nodded to himself.

"These brats will definitely gang up on them. I can still remember what happened back in my day… I guess I should help the newbie out a little."

A fraction of a second later, the man had finished drying himself and had already changed into his regular attire. Immediately after, he disappeared from the temple.

In many other places, gods and goddesses all perceived the appearance of another being that shared the same Divinity as them. Some only raised their eyebrows for a moment before ignoring this piece of news, some others grew excited at the spectacle that would soon follow. Yet another portion were overcome with greed and avarice, or even bloodl.u.s.t, before rushing out of their abodes.

-----

Multiple game boards of unimaginable size, looking somewhat similar to chess boards, were layered on top of each other. All of them were fairly indistinct, as if they didn't have a physical form. Nonetheless, they were definitely present. If one looked closer, it could be seen that billions upon billions of pieces were placed all over. They had various sizes and forms, and were grouped into a few tens of different colours. Still, the ones that made up the majority were white and black. At least 95 percent of the pieces belonged to either of them.

On these game boards, two unremarkable pieces suddenly changed their forms, becoming more prominent. The only weird thing about them was the colour that they sported - there wasn't any. They were entirely colourless, not white. They seemed almost invisible, but could still be perceived.

Two entities furrowed their eyebrows at the same time, and glared at each other across unimaginable distances. Seeing their own expression mirrored by the other didn't surprise them in the least.

'Do you think that I will fall for this? I know that you are just playing me. You definitely had something to do with this!'

Both of them thought along these lines and carefully scrutinized the unusual pieces, before adopting a wait-and-see approach. Many of the other pieces on the boards were already flocking towards these anomalies, so they could sit back and watch. The truth of the matter was sure to reveal itself in due time.

With that small distraction dealt with for now, the two entities refocused on other areas of the boards, where countless numbers of their pieces were either clashing with or slowly inching closer to each other.

They didn't even bother to glance at the third entity observing the boards, as they knew that it wasn't capable of doing anything. Because of this, they didn't notice the sparkle of excitement in its eyes.

'Have the two of you grown senile? Do you not even understand what this lack of colour signifies!? Heh, this is going to be fun.'