As I stood in front of Seldanna, I said nothing for a moment, focusing on assessing the differences between an Avatar and the actual presence of a god ... and found the difference suffocatingly different. No wonder that, for all her inexperience and her lacking power, Seldanna managed to defeat the Avatar easily.
Without my latest burst of Stats, her presence would have been suffocating ... and even then, the only reason I wasn’t collapsing was because she wasn’t using her power on me directly.
At her current state, I would have no chance of winning ... now that we were face to face, even escaping her would have been challenging. Luckily, even if she decided to suddenly go crazy and betray the man who had not only saved her people from certain extinction but also helped her to ascend to divinity, I could have used the incredible amount of Divine Spark I had collected from the defeated Avatar to increase my stats...
And with that improvement, I should be able to escape successfully.
Of course, the fact that I was making various plans to escape as I faced Seldanna told nothing nice about my state of mind ... but after living as an utterly powerless being for most of my life, I was not comfortable facing someone that outclassed me significantly.
Luckily, the long battle between the two, combined with the scraps of memories I had received, gave me a better understanding of how they fought. Both the undead and Seldanna were overly reliant on their environment, without abilities that could deliver a burst of damage.
If it wasn’t for my experience with different types of Divine Sparks, I would have assumed it was a weakness that was shared by all gods ... but I knew that sparks like Light certainly didn’t have that vulnerability.
A problem for the future, I thought as Seldanna landed in front of me in her real form, letting me take the differences. The biggest was her clothes. Gone were her robes, replaced by a living dress made of leaves, each brimming with enough mana to make a weaker mage go blind. And, that was the most minor difference.
Her hair and skin had also changed. Her skin maintained its flawless quality, but turned green. Luckily, it was the soft, soothing green of flesh leaves, somehow adding to her beauty than distracting from it. Her hair was a darker shade of green, living flowers peeking through its lushness.
Just by standing, the surrounding aura of decay and destruction disappeared, replaced by thick grass and the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen, their smell alone more intoxicating than a strong drink.
I didn’t need to feel the way she connected to every being with a Nature Spark — except mine which I kept locked behind a tantric ward — to be assured of her true divinity.
“Someone had been being a bad boy, lying quite a bit,” was her first words.
I smirked, amused by the direction she chose, which was far better than the alternatives, showing that her new power didn’t destroy her sense of humor. “Well, I wouldn’t say lying. More like creatively re-interpreting the truth rather than flat-out lying.”
“Very creatively. You should be a storyteller rather than a ... mage,” she said, though the last part hesitant. I could sense that she wanted to call me something else, but lacked the words to define me. Which was not exactly unfair, as I lacked them as well. I was not a mortal, but I also wasn’t a god, not the way the other gods functioned, at least.
Though, considering I could feel Seldanna being linked to the very land, which empowered and imprisoned her at the same time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be one. Not with the Eternals inevitably poking around. They were not an enemy that I could just bunker down to defeat.
“I’m a man of many skills,” I said, letting my smirk turn salacious. “As you very well know.”
I escaped and she chased for hours, making it a fun but exhausting game out of reforming the plane after the undead assault, the most critical aspects of the land recovering under our incredible chase. However, as she chase me, I could see significant signs of exhaustion on her...
And that was with her using the God Forest as some kind of weapon to spread life. Without it, even for a goddess, it would have taken weeks and months of hard work. Combined, it was a good, fruitful activity, not only entertaining, but also repairing the worst of the damage that was delivered to the undead.
I slowed down, letting her trees surround me and cut off my path. “You’re surrounded, I win,” she declared.
“Oh, really,” I answered with a chuckle, and teleported behind her, hugging her from behind. “It seems that you’re the one that got caught...”
{Strength: 30 Charisma: 30
Precision: 30 Perception: 30
Agility: 30 Manipulation: 30
Speed: 30 Intelligence: 30
Endurance: 30 Wisdom: 30}
{Purified Divine Spark: 237555}
{Pseudo-HP: 1103 Mana: 2410}
{ADDITIONAL SPARKS
Light - Chosen 7.4
Nature - Chosen 10}
{MINIONS
Elven Goddess - ???}
[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]