Chapter 360 – Big things have small beginnings

Chapter 360 – Big things have small beginnings



“What the hell Gaia, where is the four-kind combination?” John complained out loud and glanced at his phone clock. He had like 20 minutes before he should get moving to Romulus’ palace. Was that enough to make a contract? He obviously would need to take the Light Elemental here, as the other two choices were absolute garbage, and he wanted that anyway.

He could also have postponed the ritual until after the fact, but it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. Usually, these rituals didn’t take hours though, more like ten minutes, tops, that felt like half an eternity.

He picked the ritual and looked at the costs.



‘Well, why would I ever not go for Tier 4?’ John thought and shared the blueprint for the needed circle with Gnome. They went back to the mansion, and then the stone elemental immediately put the circle into the ground, and John kneeled down to do the thing.

“Gonna be interesting to see you get a light elemental,” Rave said; “I bet it’s gonna be that moon chick that I didn’t want!”

“Maybe,” John teased and activated the skill.

Immediately, he felt his vitality drop, and the connection to everyone of his familiars became dull to the point where he couldn’t feel anything aside their existence anymore. He had expected to be surrounded by blinding light, but instead he was standing in the vastness of space.

It was quite the breath-taking sight, countless stars glittering around him like oceans of diamonds and other sparkingling gemstones. Suns and reflecting surfaces all together in perfectly patterned chaos, some of them moving so quickly they were just lines to the naked eye, others so slowly they would have seemed to stand still if gazed upon for decades.

Unlike the night sky, however, John knew that he could have actually reached one of these stars if he tried, the one he spotted when he turned around. It was so enormous that John wondered how he could even have missed its white-gold light. It probably was spherical, but from this close, it just looked like a giant wall.VIssịT n0(v)eL/b(i)(n).com for the best novel reading experience

Not a wall, as John came to realize when an eye opened behind it, a membrane. John put his hand on it and stared back at the eye. Whatever was inside had to be about as giant as Nathalia, and it was a scaled beast as well.

I wonder what to think of this?

The voice that entered his mind did so uninvited and in a very much unwelcome way, speaking not as a telepathic voice but as John’s own thoughts. ‘Who are you?’

I am you.

‘No. You aren’t,’ John asserted quite clearly; ‘I have been hit with my fair share of mind meddling, I know when there is a voice that isn’t my own in here.’

You are right, yet you are wrong. For me, I might be the Father of Light, but for you and for the purpose of this talk, I am you.

This made next to no sense to John right now, so he had to dig deeper into whatever the Father of Light tried to be to do right now.

I wonder what to think of this?

The question repeated. John took a deep breath and just acted according to the elemental primordial consciousness’ wishes. ‘I find the idea of having an elemental of this size thrilling, although I hope it can turn into a hot dragon chick or something.’

But what if he is dangerous?

‘Way to dash my illusions. If HE is dangerous, then he falls right in line with me.’

What is it going to destroy for my ambitions?

‘He is going to destroy what we need to,’ John answered, ‘which hopefully will be as little as possible.’

Who am I to judge?

‘Someone with intact American values,’ John answered, ‘Freedom, Democracy and all that stuff.’

Am I going to give up power when I have taken over the US?...Who am I to judge?Who am I to judge?Who am I to judge?How could I enforce that for everyone? Freedom?But Romulus had failed. He hadn’t had the expertise to put a system into place that was truly self-evolving. He is from a time where civilization barely started. I have knowledge and the vigour of youth.So do I even deserve to try at all?Why?

It was a crocodile, scales of gold covering his whole body, patterns forming out of darker shades of bronze, and silver eyes looking up to John. Quite hard to believe that this thing was supposed to be the same monster whose eye alone had dwarfed John. However, common sense barely applied in the Abyss anyway. “What is your name?”

The crocodile only made a cute little squeaking sound, tapping a bit forwards and then sliding into John’s sleeve. Now that was absolutely not what John had in mind; the little rascal was making his way through the gap between vest and shirt and eventually came out at John’s neckline.

He opened his jaw wide and made a further series of squeaking sounds. “His name is Stirwin, and make no mistake, he may look like a hatchling...” the Father of Light was the one to answer John’s question. The contract formed between him and the light crocodile seemingly on its own, John could have resisted it but found no reason to do so. “...but when time comes to an end, he may be the last light.”



John suddenly found himself back in reality and almost keeled over backwards as this thing called gravity became something real again. Immediately, Stirwin crawled out of his vest and into the open grass. Thankfully, unlike a normal crocodile, this sun lizard was everything but well camouflaged.

“Noaw,” Rave jumped in front of him, “look at ya, being all not a hot babe and stuff” She slowly extended her hand towards the tiny croc, who stood still and let her pat him on the head. When he started squeaking and pushing against her finger, Rave squealed like a fangirl. “He is cute!”

“He also threatens my pet monopoly,” Copernicus commented, tapping through the grass over to the hatchling. Raising one of his paws, the sun cat tapped his fellow light elemental once on the back, which caused Stirwin to whirl around and try to snap at the cat, letting out the cutest of hisses from its throat, the flesh inside copper coloured.

Copernicus answered in kind, and now there were two angry light elementals hissing at each other. However, in this particular duel, John would have bet on Copernicus every day, the cat was at least twice the length of the little crocodile and generally faster. That was because Stirwin’s Stats:



Were absolute trash. He had one Stat for each level, which put him a whole four under the standard five. Actually, this was the first time John saw someone who got below average stats per level, there had to be something up with this. Also, the part about Tier 5 and ‘celestial devourer’ combined with the thing John had first seen left him doubtless that there was a lot more to the hatchling.

‘Can you speak?’ John asked through their mental connection.

‘Hungry!’ Stirwin answered in a single word and then emotions flickered over their connection with the honesty of a being that didn’t know the concept of lying. It was far different from Undine, who often opted to just send what she felt rather than talk, the golden croc was simply incapable of making the difference. He was more like a scaled puppy.

“Can you find something small we can feed him?” John asked Aclysia, who nodded and hurried on ahead back to the mansion to get something out of the kitchen. In the meanwhile, he reached his hand down to the crocodile. “We have somewhere to go, want me to carry you, Stirwin?” The infinity elemental, which was a rather interesting title to have, climbed on John’s hand without hesitation. Rave was shaking her head in the background, giggling a bit. “What?” John asked.

“Stirwin is such a boring name,” she declared; “He shall now be known as Chompy!”

“Chompy?” the little crocodile actually seemed to be able to speak, a voice like a chipmunk. From his position in John’s breast pocket, which finally found a usage for something, he repeated that one word over and over again, “Chompy! Chompy! Chompy!”



“He likes it,” Rave commented the obvious.

“Of course he likes it!” Sylph declared whooshing by; “It’s a good name, the best name! You are now Chompy, Chompy, and you shall chomp on all the chompable chumps! Chimichanga! Chick-Chuck, bamboozle di-da-do, Pri-papa!”

John had no idea what that talk had suddenly devolved into, but Sylph had fun making weird grimaces in front of the crocodile. Stirwin was greatly entertained by this, his mouth hanging wide open in what seemed to be a smile. The expressions of a magical crocodile were something John would spend some time to figure out. Not that he needed to, Stirwin’s feelings were broadcasted into his brain after all, but it would be a nice thing to learn either way.