Chapter 1883 Clash of the Titans [12]
Once upon a time, in a world far, far away, two brothers were born. Their births took place only a few minutes apart, however, the way they were treated was different from birth.
The elder brother was showered with love. He was found to have an extremely rare talent during his birth, and all eyes had been on him from then.
The younger brother wasn't untalented, but compared to his elder brother, he was nothing special. That was the origin of the Dark God.
The Worldwalker, the man who established the system in the True Void Universe, was originally a member of his race, and his blood-related older brother.
The Worldwalker was always a mysterious man whose intentions could not be understood, and his talent far outstripped anyone else.
He was loved by the people, he was loved by the heavens, he was loved by women, and he was granted everything he wished.
Meanwhile, the Dark God was stuck in his shadow.
The woman he loved used him as a stepping stone to reach his older brother, his talent was mediocre in comparison, and frankly, he wasn't loved by many at all.
Damien was watching the story play out through his perspective, so he couldn't tell if this was entirely true. He definitely saw that the Dark God was treated poorly in comparison to the Worldwalker, but that was truly just in comparison.
It looked like they came from a good family so the Dark God still had both parents and a safe and secure childhood environment. Maybe he didn't turn heads everywhere he went, but his ordinary life was just fine.
However, the Dark God's perception of the world was skewed from birth. Because his brother was heaven's chosen, he expected that kind of treatment for himself as well. He thought that the life of a heaven's chosen was what every person was supposed to have, so to him, his own experiences were terrible mistreatment. He had maids and servants who genuinely worried for his safety. His father and mother definitely neglected him more than they should have, but rather than their negative feelings towards him, it looked more like they were struggling with their own matters and couldn't pay attention to either of their sons very much.
Damien could tell. The look on their faces in the few memories where they went to see the Dark God was the same as the one his mother used to wear.
However, the Dark God's perception of the world was skewed from birth. Because his brother was heaven's chosen, he expected that kind of treatment for himself as well. He thought that the life of a heaven's chosen was what every person was supposed to have, so to him, his own experiences were terrible mistreatment. And, his hatred for his brother was formed out of a deep, seething envy. In the Dark God's mind, the Worldwalker became the cause of everything. When he needed to concentrate his hatred on something tangible, the only answer he found was his own brother.
His resentment grew with every passing day, until finally, a prophecy was granted upon their world.
The prophecy chose a hero, and both he and his brother were hero candidates.
The Dark God saw this as a chance to surpass his brother, and worked as hard as he could to become stronger before the day of the chosen ceremony.
However, on that day, the Worldwalker simply declined the position and left without a word.
It was the work of an existence whose life was only given meaning by someone else's traces.
That was how Damien perceived it, at least.
To say that the Dark God's entire life story was built on delusion was wrong. After he fell into depravity, he definitely experienced real struggle.
His energy was corrupted by his own darkness into something new. That something new gave him traces of Nonexistence, from which he later extrapolated Existence as well.
He did not go to the Land of Nothingness. He did not earn the six concepts of Existence before gaining control over it.
He consumed cosmos after cosmos and artificially raised the strength of his concepts. Any improvement he made outside of that was achieved by toying with the Sacred Abyss to the point where it was destabilized and he was forced to take the place of its Cosmic Core.
In a sense, he could be praised for making it this far while walking that twisted path.
However, Damien seemed to realize something from his memories. He realized a truth about the "core" of the Dark God's existence.
Even in these memories, even as Damien watched him grow up from a baby into a monster, he remained covered in that same black veil.
In his own memories, the Dark God refused to acknowledge his own face.
This was a past he tried to hide not because he was embarrassed by it, but because he was trying to remove himself from it. If he reached the Void, he was prepared to change every timeline in every cosmos in order to give himself a different story.
His first step, the step that turned him Supreme, was his action of erasing himself from his own Legend.
Damien had his own thoughts on the matter. He considered them as his ego took form.
When they finished viewing each other's memories, concurrently, they reformed their detached auras into bodies. They stood on a plane that could no longer be described. The background was a mixture of flashing colors. The Dark God was a bundle of blackness, and specifically in order to contrast him, Damien appeared as a bundle of whiteness.
Though their power had not changed and they technically had not managed to do damage to each other yet, something seemed to have changed.
The air between them was different.
It became evident that a clear power dynamic would be established between them soon.