Chapter 113

Watching a mythical —yet innocently sexy— angel blush as I flirted with her was a unique pleasure, especially considering the said angel was the legendary headmistress of Silver Spires. I would have loved to spend the next half an hour teasing her.

Pity that her expression soon recovered into a smooth calm, showing the benefits of her centuries of experience.

“About the alliance,” she spoke with an inflectionless voice, without the slightest stirring of emotion. However, that actually entertained me more, because that specific way of speaking was very familiar to me. Titania had been speaking like that before I had suppressed the emotional suppression from her ability.

The difference, it seemed, our resident angel could clearly use that as she wished rather than constantly staying under it.

“I can’t speak for the rest of my organization, but we’re not a close-knit group in the first place,” I explained. “As long as we continue to fight against the destruction of the society, we’re free to work with other groups,” I said, basically selling her the opportunity to eventually pulling the rest of my group into her alliance despite poaching one of their members. It was a tight rope to walk, but hopefully, she was desperate enough to grab the opportunity despite the slight inconsistencies in my story.

She said nothing for a while, lost in her thoughts, before she finally spoke. “I need to examine your power in detail,” she suddenly said as she raised her hand, not even asking for my permission as her mana invaded my body.

I could have fought back. While her mana was potent and her control was strong, I wasn’t exactly a weakling. But why would I, when I could use my focus to reinforce my fake soul space, including the dummy Companion Node that I created based on the mark my power had left on the girls?

I had put a Companion Node despite the risk of making her more suspicious, because I had no doubt that, eventually, she would either check Titania or start spying on the girls around me. Either way, she would discover the Companion Node, and through that, my involvement. With that, I would at least have an excuse. So, as her mana explored my fake soul space, I put my whole attention on maintaining the facade... While I considered the opportunity to push back and explore her soul space, but after sending a couple of mana strings, I failed to discover even the general location of her soul space, so I pulled back.

Then, she pulled her mana back without a warning!

I stiffened, fearing that she had discovered the fake, and decided to act. The last thing I expected was her to pull back with a disgusted expression before speaking. “You carry the mark of the Degenerate.”

I didn’t need to fake the expression of surprise on my face. When she pulled back like that, the last thing I had been expecting was an insult. “I’m carrying the mark of what, now?” I asked.

She explored my face for a moment, like trying to assess whether my expression was fake or real. “You don’t know the source of your extra power?” she asked.

“Hey, I think we have already mentioned the limited historical information my organization carries,” I said. Combining with her earlier explanations about the history of the world, it wasn’t hard to guess the Degenerate was a historical figure. “What exactly is this Degenerate, and how does it links to my abilities?”

“It’s about the rest of the explanation,” she said, her tone once again attaining her earlier calmness. “We were talking about how the Eternals was using the remains of the Divine Avatars as a weapon.”

“Yeah, and I’m assuming that’s significant,” I said.

“Very,” she said. “In their own domains, every god is essentially untouchable,” she murmured, though a twitch in her face as she said so made me suspicious about the accuracy of that particular detail. My instincts were telling me that she was hiding something about that, but it wasn’t time to push her about it, so I let her continue. “However, to affect the material world, every Divine being needed to use their own essence, their Spark, to create a body for themselves.”

“And therefore making them vulnerable,” I commented, and she nodded.

“Yes, and not only that, losing the avatar is no simple matter. Depending on the power they had invested in their avatar, the consequences of losing the avatar ranged from a slight inconvenience to injuries that would take centuries to heal,” she explained seriously. “And that’s assuming they could recover their essence.”

“And with the Eternals weaponizing that essence, I’m guessing that things had changed quite a bit...”

“Yes, it did,” she murmured, the slight trembling in her tone despite her best attempts making me doubt that whether she had just read that in a history book, or had a more direct knowledge... Maybe even living through it... “It wasn’t something Gods had expected to work so well, so the initial attempts to punish them was limited to sending a few lower-level battle gods and loyal demigods. No one expected them to actually succeed in using the Divine Spark in a few months, so the attempts to punish them only strengthened them.”

“Still, the gods seemed to have such a strong advantage, how did they lost, assuming they have lost of course,” I added, though considering their absence, their loss was a given.

“At that point, the Eternals counter-attacked,” she explained. “Many gods had their avatars across dimensions, especially the weaker gods trying to establish their power bases, not to mention hundreds of demigods and an untold number of Divine-touched serving as priests and servants for the gods. No one expected the Eternals to hunt them aggressively. Before the gods' counter-attack, many minor gods’ avatars had been slain and their divine essence pilfered, weakening them significantly.”

Strength: 41 Charisma: 53

Precision: 35 Perception: 37

Agility: 35 Manipulation: 40

Speed: 34 Intelligence: 44

Endurance: 34 Wisdom: 46

HP: 5370 / 5370 Mana: 6600 / 6600 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [97/100]

Expert Speech [70/75]

Advanced Craft [50/50]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (1/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia - Level 21/25]

[Helga - Level 17/21]