Chapter 171: Ch 171 : New Power System
Cosmos: "As a fellow God, I cannot simply stand by and watch any of you fall to an unjust death. I will take you all under my protection. You will not receive the full benefits of the Pantheon, but you will be safe. However, you will still need to sign a contract of fealty."
The message from God Cosmos was not a negotiation. It was a lifeline.
To the 500 million independent Gods, huddled in their isolated God spaces and staring into the abyss of a coming death, it was the bitter taste of surrender and the sweet relief of survival, all in one.
Unfair? Absolutely. But did anyone object? Not a single soul.
This had been Sunny’s intention from the start. He would unite the entire multiverse under his banner, the wise through alliance, and the proud through necessity.
The independent Gods, unaware of the immense passive benefits they were about to receive, saw only two things: a demand for their loyalty and a promise of protection from the coming storm.
They thought they were giving up their freedom and the dream of a Divine Embryo for mere safety.
But for them, in this moment, safety was everything.
They feared the ancient, powerful demon gods far more than they feared servitude to a new, benevolent emperor.
One by one, the requests to sign the contract flooded Thea’s network. All 500 million of them.
With that final, mass capitulation, Sunny had truly become the God of all the Gods in his home multiverse.
He was a Void-born, a natural force of the cosmos, and he now stood as the sole, undisputed ruler of a realm that was about to face its greatest trial.
Far away, in another multiverse, one forged by the ancient Void-born God Artifex, the God of Cards, a God that held a multiverse of power in the palm of his hand.
Sunny was aware of this God from the past, and Artifec was one of the few that he really liked, because most of the Gods were only good at one or two things.
But Artifex? He was good at everything; one time he would be using fist the other second he would slice someone with a sword.
But in the end he still died, and now a new God was beginning to take shape in his old multiverse.
This man stood in a vast, rune-etched chamber, his eyes glued to the simple, unassuming card he had just created.
It was a plain, unadorned thing, with a single word etched upon its surface in glowing, golden script: Strength.
But this was no ordinary card. It was an SSS-Grade Card, the culmination of a century of tireless work.
With a deep breath, he brought the card to his chest. A magical thing happened. The card did not burn or break; it dissolved, melting into his very being like a drop of ink in water. Power, raw and explosive, erupted within him.
His muscles, already bulging with a demigod’s might, swelled and hardened even further, his physique becoming a monument of force.
He felt as if he could shatter an entire solar system with the mere shockwave of a finger snap.
His sweat-drenched clothes, already strained, tore apart under the expansion of his new form.
He walked out of his chamber, a being reborn. A servant immediately bowed low. "Your Majesty, congratulations on breaking through once again," she said, her voice filled with reverence.
The man simply nodded, but as he did, he felt a strange, unnerving sensation. A minuscule fraction of the immense power he had just gained simply... vanished. ’What is happening?’ he thought, a flicker of confusion in his mind.
He walked through his palace, and with every interaction, every casual command given to a mortal servant, every simple touch of a palace door, he felt another tiny piece of his new strength drain away.
That night, he stood in his chamber, looking at his reflection. His physique was still immense, but it was visibly smaller than it had been that morning.
He had spent the day experimenting, testing his new limits, and had come to a single, profound, and lonely conclusion.
"So... I am a God now," he whispered to his reflection. "And a God cannot directly intervene in the world of mortals." The ancient legends he had studied were true.
l had spent his entire life climbing a mountain, sacrificing everything to reach the peak, only to find himself utterly alone in the thin, cold air, separated from the very world he wished to rule by the strength he had just gained.
This was the law of this multiverse, a system designed by its creator to be both rewarding and demanding.
Here, power was not given; it was forged. Lifeforms created ’cards’ by gathering rare resources and binding concepts into a physical form.
He remembered the eighty years it had taken to gather the heart of a dying star, the crystallized sorrow of a mermaid queen, and the essence of a thousand lightning bolts; all to forge this single, perfect SSS-Grade card that had pushed him over the edge into godhood.
It was a power system that demanded immense hard work, and he, its greatest practitioner, had just won the ultimate prize and the loneliest curse.
"According to the texts, now I can travel to different multiverses, fight them, and learn something new," he said, his lips forming a grin.
He didn’t want to live in this multiverse anyway; after all, he was the king who had ruled it for more than three hundred thousand years. He had done everything to make the empire stronger, but in the process, he had become something too terrifying for mortals. He believed it was time to leave and find equally strong Gods to fight.
But before leaving, he chose to make his crown prince the King of the empire, ensuring that even in his absence, the empire would always grow.
And then, with a casual jump, he broke free from his planet, escaping the solar system and then the universe itself. But escaping the multiverse was a different matter entirely.
He also needed to find many different materials to create other cards and increase his strength, as strength was the only thing that connected all the multiverses.