Arriving at the cathedral, the feeling inside Ren's soul just grew stronger.

  "What have you used this pce for?" Anya asked as they walked in, admiring the old building's architecture. While inside, the sun shone through cracks and the holes in the roof, illuminating the broken statues and faded paintings on the walls, making the cathedral look eerily beautiful, like a mirage from the past.

  "Not important." Kang said, "Big but many holes, wind is strong, rain falls inside. Feel… bad here. Not like it."

  "Yeah, the whole pce gives off a creepy feeling to us." Shaman nodded. "You may feel differently, but for us, this pce is… unnerving."

  "Maybe because this was once an important pce for humans?" Isha thought, looking at the apes.

  "It's more like their instincts are still working." Ren commented, looking at the floor, "It comes from underground. I feel it, too. There must be a crypt down there; is there any way down?" She turned to Kang, who shook his head.

  "Then it's hidden." She muttered, thinking, "Mom, can you find it?"

  "I'll try. If there is a way down, water will find a way." She nodded, and when she summoned thousands of droplets from the nearby river, they slowly rolled over the floor, like she was cleaning away the grime and dust of the passing centuries. Soon, everyone saw the water start to flow down through the cracks near where the old altar had once stood, clearly indicating there was... something down below. "There."

  Kang walked up, grabbed the frame of the big chunk of marble altar, something that, who knows how heavy it really was, and, by sheer strength, ripped it off the ground, tossing it aside without any problems. His little stunt was followed by a loud bang, scaring the gorils who were curiously watching them from the broken windows and cracks in the walls, making them retreat at once. What revealed itself to the group was a damp, musty staircase leading downward into the darkness and the unknown.

  "Creepy… I don't really want to go down there…." Isha murmured, trying to see where it led.

  "Well, you are out of luck. We need your fmes to light the way." Ren giggled, making her moan frustratedly, but she just summoned a small fme over her hand as she started to descend, closely followed by Zern, then the others.

  Going down the stairs was like descending into a different world, and soon, looking back, they did not see the light from above; only Isha's orange fme gave out any color around them. Kang and Shaman had to almost crawl as the pce got smaller and smaller. They even got stuck multiple times because the whole pce was designed for humans, not the tall, bulky apes and their massive forms.

  After about five minutes of continuous walking, they arrived at an underground chamber filled with otherworldly, bluish-green light from strange crystals embedded in the old pilrs that supported the ceiling from colpsing. It looked like any ancient crypt would, where important people were id to their final rest, not to be bothered by the living in their eversting respite. The only difference was that at the far end of it, on a small altar, there was a simple, unadorned, wooden goblet and a crystal the size of a heart, floating and slowly rotating above it.

  "I feel… like…. Someone is sitting on me." Isha whispered, breathing hard, rubbing her body, in the middle of her chest, as the others also found it hard to breathe. The most significant indication, though, was how Kang's and Shaman's fur stood on end, making them shiver involuntarily.

  "This pce feels dangerous. Too dangerous." Shaman murmured, gulping hard. "We should go back. I like discovering things, but this pce is best left in the dark, where it belongs!"

  "Of course, it scares you," Ren said calmly, looking directly at the slowly rotating, floating crystal that was murky and bluish in color. "You stand in the presence of a God."

  "That's… the God Core?" Feynor mused, slowly approaching, while Anya stood close to her daughter, not leaving her out of arm's reach.

  "Yes. That's it. It was suppressed here..." Ren nodded again, unable to blink, watching it with a cold heart.

  "Suppressed?" Anya asked as Ren finally slowly looked up, and, following her gaze, they could see that the ceiling was filled with tiny, colorless crystals that formed a giant circle, with an intricate, foreign pattern drawn around them.

  "That is a formation made by another God." She whispered, "See those crystals? Those are all a life... They are cores... of demigods."

  "What it mean?" Kang asked, darting his eyes all over the pattern, soon noticing some cracked crystals.

  "As I said, to cultivate a God Crystal had to be hard." Ren muttered, "Just think how many years have passed, and how long our history may go back? Hundreds of thousands of years? More? Millions? Who knows. Time always moves forward, and the old days are forgotten and lost the further they fall from the present. Yet, for a God, time means nothing. But I'm rambling…" She shrugged, shaking her head, "Through time, talented people may reach the threshold but fail to form a perfect core... Whatever you want to call it... Those people were still on the top of the cultivation world and... they could be called Demigods, if you will."

  "Those are cores of… demigods?" Leinor asked with awe in his voice. "I counted more than two hundred up there…."

  "Yeah…" Ren grimaced, "Their cores formed a pattern that kept the regeneration of this God Core at bay. It... stopped the owner of this one from coming back to life..." She muttered, snapping her head at the apes, "You said there was an earthquake? The formation above us is damaged. Its suppressive effect waned... The God who is slumbering here started to regenerate. It must be an unconscious reaction as it had to be unconscious... Yet this one is still a... God. Just by existing, it siphoned away your tribe's soul."

  "Fascinating…" Feynor whispered.

  "This rock evil? Killing? Then destroy it!" Kang roared, clearly enraged, and stepped forward, trying to smash it. Looking at him, Ren only signaled to the others not to move, letting it all py out.

  As Kang's fist nded on it, a clear, bell-like ringing was heard, and the giant goril flew backward like a bullet, crashing into the wall, shaking the whole underground crypt while he spurted a mouthful of blood onto the floor.

  "Don't even try it." Ren spoke up, "Even the other Gods would find it challenging to destroy something like this... It would require too much effort. Why do you think it's pced here? Because they couldn't finish the job."

  “Why… not say…?” Kang gasped, standing back up.

  "You wouldn't listen to me anyway." She smiled, "Now, you can see it yourself... So... We have two options: repairing the seal or having you move out and find a new home. As I said, you will be fine; just give it time."

  "We move." Kang nodded, wiping his mouth. "Now."

  "Good. Also-" Ren wanted to continue, but soon a tremor swept through them, and all the color, few there was, was washed out from reality. Only Ren's purple eyes retained their light, and the still-floating God Crystal began glowing, now that it stopped rotating. "So you are conscious…." She spoke, yet her mouth didn't move, as her body was frozen in time and space. Yet... her thoughts rang out clearly inside the now bck-and-white crypt.

  "Who.. are… you?" came an old, dry voice, undefinable to be a man's or woman's. It felt foggy, weak, and distant, like a dying patient trying to speak up from behind the veil.

  "A girl."

  "No…"

  "Sorry, but yes." She replied with a calm voice, and soon her body started to shimmer in a brighter light, as a corporeal soul, looking the same as Ren but naked, appeared above her head, "I am just a girl, through and through." Ren's soul smiled as a small crystal fragment pulsed in the middle of her soul's chest.

  "That…" seeped out a dark, bluish gas from the God Crystal, formless and shapeless, but soon it was blocked by an invisible force, pushed back into the God Core before it could take shape, "You were once... like me... Yet not my... child..."

  "I don't know who you are or what happened to you, but it seems Alfina and Oynega did something nasty. Or maybe all four of them?" She asked, her purple eyes narrowing, "I wonder when it happened, or did they already forget it? It must have happened eons ago, huh? Probably this is just another prison for you through the countless years passing by." Ren mused, watching the swirling, bck mass in the goblet under the God Crystal that was clearly binding it still, trying to swallow it back and to suppress it.

  "My… children..." came the answer, with unmistakable sadness, as the smoke, the suppressed soul of a God, began to swirl.

  "Rex. I'll come back when I'm stronger… and we can talk." Ren chuckled, "But right now, you are in my way of getting allies! This was only a backup if I met one of my old friends before I was ready..." she expined while tapping on the fragment inside her soul, "But, unlucky for you, it is enough to deal with you in your current state... For now." She mused, but then couldn't help herself from grimacing, "Only, they must have felt I'm back… oh well! They won't find me easily; everything is fresh, even my soul; only my memories stayed." She ughed as her fragment broke into even tinier pieces, shooting out, surrounding the God Core, suppressing the dark smoke, stuffing it back into the crystal as it moaned tiredly, then went silent once again.

  "This feeling..." The disembodied voice muttered, slowly fading away, "You touched the Cosmos..."

  "What...?" Ren flinched, her eyes widening, but there was no chance to ask more questions as the 'ritual' was already done.

  For everybody else, everything happened in an instant; the tremor they felt was like someone tugging on their souls, turning them dizzy. The formation on the ceiling suddenly lit up with multiple colors, pushing the God Crystal back to the wooden goblet and submerging it in the dark liquid, while Ren coughed up some blood and fell over.

  "Dear!" Anya screamed suddenly as her daughter looked pale, crashing, and coughing up blood.

  "I'm fine…." She murmured, but soon her vision started to swim, and every voice became a white noise, only "Fucking… backsh…." Ren whispered before fainting.

  …….….

  "No, no, the second ring is bad. Also, the fifth and ninth symbols are in dissonance," a young-looking woman said, maybe someone in her early twenties, stood over a middle-aged man who was drawing on a giant sheet of paper. A complicated, circle-shaped pattern decorated with runes and symbols was forming under his fingers, too dizzying to look at for long, yet the girl just yawned, leisurely correcting his mistakes.

  She wore a cream-colored silk dress, her chestnut, curly hair draping over her shoulders, a slight smile on her face. She crossed her hands under her chest, puffing up her breasts, revealing a beautiful cleavage, yet the man ignored her looks, no matter how enchanting she was.

  His face remained clear of distractions, and he only nodded as he made the changes, following her instructions without arguing. If Leinor or any of the imperial family were here, they would be surprised as he looked simir to them and Dermitos, clearly indicating he was of the imperial family... Yet... Who? After finishing the drawing, he fixed his schorly robes, standing up, nodding a few times before mulling over it once again.

  "I still feel something is missing. It does not feel right, Master. Master?" Levictus, who was no other than Aerthus II, the original conqueror's own son, asked, but when he did not get a response, he looked over, and his Master was already gone. "Unreliable. As always," he murmured, then just tore it up and started over from the beginning, following his instincts.

  His Master, just as she was about to tell Levictus what he was feeling was right, she herself felt like she had been electrocuted. The moment she realized what she was feeling, she immediately disappeared, reappearing above the massive tower they were in. It was set in the middle of a bustling, big city, next to the multiple rivers, as the wind carried a sweet scent through the fresh air, while dozens of ships were sailing to and fro, but nobody seemed to notice the girl floating above them all. She was, directly looking eastward, tears appearing in her eyes, wiping them away as she revealed a happy, overly excited smile.

  "He is back… Master is back!" She ughed cheerfully as if she had not ughed for decades while her voice was carried by the wind, but few, if any, people heard it. "He is back! Ahahahahaha!"

  …….…..

  "He is back," came the voice of two people at once, echoing in a dark room, like a small square in the abyss, carved out to be perfectly round.

  "I felt it; you don't need to come here and tell me that, you creeps," replied a male voice, cold and unfriendly.

  "Watch your tongue, baldie." They snorted, "The other fragments we collected showed a reaction, but it was too little to follow back to the source. We need to get ready... He has definitely been reborn."

  "Ready? For what? He is a mortal!" The angry voice snorted, "If he thinks he could return to where he was before, it's a fool's errand. He was lucky once and won't be lucky twice. You three worry too much..."

  "Don't underestimate him," a cold, female voice answered him.

  "I'm not. I'm just speaking the truth. You are the one who overestimates him. Still have feelings for him, Little Nilier? Was he that good in bed?"

  No answer came this time; only silence remained in the darkness as the bald man, sitting in the nothingness, gently caressed the rusty bde on his knees.

  …….…..

  "It was him, wasn't it?" Alfina asked, hugging Oynega in a hot spring while it snowed around them, as the steam rising from the water painted a misty, otherworldly picture.

  "Yeah. Don't worry; we dealt with him once. We will deal with him again and…." He smiled while kissing her neck. "We four have already dealt with a greater danger before... and he is no longer a God. Rex, Sis… we are enough for this world; there is no need for more Gods! Maybe… we would be alone enough in the end…."

  "What about his disciples? They are still stirring up problems all over!" She moaned as they were clearly doing more than just hugging in the water.

  "Insignificant. Their new ways are nothing more than a dead end. Bah... Nonsense! The people's faith in us is the true, new way! It is unshakeable, and you can't kill ideas; you can't kill faith! So you can't kill us~! They are trying to stop a river with their bare hands. Just forget about it. Enjoy the now~!"

  “Mmmh~ You’re right… don't stop~!" She moaned again, and soon they forgot about everything happening outside their realm.