Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Nothing.

In the ruins of the village it invaded, the demon and those under it searched for any clues that would lead to the one that had inflicted it with such terror, but while hints of that mage’s smell still lingered, there was nothing to point to where they’d gone, as if they’d been whisked away by the same space magic that he himself held mastery over. The only clue to ridding himself of that trauma, vanished, with no way to find it again.

No, the demon told itself. They’re on this world, nowhere else to go. If I keep hunting, eventually I’ll find them. A big enough attack draws others, which means I need a big enough swarm to be worth the attention. I will find them. I will pull them out of hiding as I feast on their world, and once I get them, I will finally be free.

The demon forced as much energy as it could into itself, instantly planning on how it would renew its efforts to gather and grow the swarm under it and it opened a portal through space to do exactly that, forcing the ones he had brought in his search back with him to go find more of their kin, driving them to where his senses told him the most were gathered but paused just before he stepped through himself for the feeling that appeared, as a flicker of divinity flashed across the world.

Compared to that of his god, it was basically nothing. Ignorable and forgettable in its weakness, just like any other god was in comparison to Oaun, but there was a familiarity to it he couldn’t at first place, stumping him until his eyes cleared, looking at the remains of the village his previous swarm had destroyed.

The other monster.

As much as the one he was hunting had implanted a lingering terror in him, it was actually the one he’d finished before that which had been the bigger threat. That first nightmare had annihilated his forces by the thousands in a way no others he’d found on the planet had, before ultimately being killed, ripped apart by space magic in a way that nothing could come back from. And yet, that one had borne traces of the same divinity the demon had just felt, leaving a new shiver to go down its spine.

He’d killed it from a safe distance, able to see just what a threat it had been to know not to get too close, and with it gone, he should have been free of it at least, but it was clear its god still lingered as well, an unknown variable and an unknown threat still present on the world, leaving only the question of how many other monsters that particular deity had under it.

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… No, there can’t be any others on the scale of that one, the demon told itself, trying to be practical. If there were more, then there’d be far less of my kin to be found. Something that could kill the way that thing did, there has to have only been one.

Even the one he was currently hunting hadn’t actually shown any great might beyond its fear spell before the demon had fled, there was no way it had a strength similar to the one that had come before it, but, with the feeling of that god having passed through, the demon lingered no longer, taking its portal and then creating more from there, trying to slip away where it couldn’t be seen.

Standing in a village, everything it could have gotten from the last stretch of woods it had been in long since claimed, demon and adventurer souls both comfortably hidden within his vessel, a flash of divinity filled the world and left Yotu frozen, holding his breath while he shrunk away.

The gods couldn’t have known he was there; they had no reason to suspect such a thing, but the sudden sense of another one of his kind left a panic in him he couldn’t escape.

What if he was caught? What if the various divine of the world had found him, and, even as weakened as they were, what if they pooled together their strength to try to kill him in earnest, or perhaps worse, send him back to hell?

The second really would have been the worst potential option. Sure, it would let him escape the horrors of that world’s current war, able to let the new flesh he was trapped in decay and rot away in that realm like the last without killing him in the process and then, in some distant future where someone else opened a gate to that level, use his freed soul to ascend to a higher realm again instead of getting trapped within a mortal, finally able to figure out how to break free of the binding on him, but that had far too many drawbacks to be worth the risk.

He wasn’t certain how long he’d been trapped the first time, but at the very least, it had been for thousands of years and, split as he’d been, thousands of years felt like an eternity of pain and madness. It was something nearly impossible for a god to endure, let alone the mortals that realm was meant for, and he wouldn’t see himself suffering through it again.

No, I won’t let that happen! I won’t be trapped again! The hells… have their uses, but they’re no escape. I won’t be contained and I won’t be killed, which means I need enough other strength to break free of this body, and when I do, I can take all of the souls I’ve claimed and flee this miserable world and even farther beyond!

It would mean taking risks, to act in far less subtle ways than he had been to claim more sources of faith, all at the risk of the other gods around finding him before he was ready, but those were risks he had no choice but to take and, with his resolve firm, he forced himself to move the moment the fear that burst of divinity had left him with had passed, leaving the village and all of the corpses it contained, off to find bigger settlements to turn into his followers for all of the work still to come while some of his previous patience shrank.