NOVEL NEXT Chapter 29
In the beginning, two gods were born.
One god was benevolent. He bestowed his kindness upon all living beings and created a world where everyone could live abundantly and peacefully.
The other god was cruel. He believed that the existence of creatures was solely about greed and destruction.
They would tear each other apart, competing against one another to become stronger.
Only the apex predator would feast upon all prey. He truly believed that only such a world could awaken the essence of creatures and make them strong.
The two gods clashed. It was only natural, given their vastly different philosophies.
It was nearly impossible to find a common ground on a single planet, as their pursuits were too divergent.
Thus, they split the world into two.
One part became a realm overflowing with abundance and kindness, a place rich in resources and ample sustenance. There would be no sudden natural disasters sweeping everything away, nor would monsters appear unexpectedly to disrupt the peace.
It was simply an endlessly peaceful world. And the god who created this world was referred to as the Goddess.
The other god was different. He shaped a realm characterized by scarce resources and an endlessly stagnating environment.
He diluted a minuscule part of the energy that made up his body a million times and scattered it thinly across the planet. This energy would rot the plants, ignite the earth in flames, and perpetually create disasters.
It was a world where only the survival of the fittest reigned supreme. To survive, one had to devour their own kin—a hellscape.
The god who created this hell was called the Demon God.
They seemed to live in peace, not interfering with each other, fully enjoying their respective worlds.
To be precise, only the Goddess was like that.
The Demon God was dissatisfied.
He didn’t like a world where everything was peaceful, as if kids were playing make-believe without any suffering. Therefore, he hypnotized the world’s coordinator into wanting to stray from the rules and severed a small part of his own body to create an abomination.
The Demon King was the creation of the Demon God.
Naturally, his goal was the invasion of the peaceful human realm, not the chaotic Demon Realm.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been impossible. No matter how powerful the Demon God was, the Goddess was also a primordial god who protected the human realm.
Even if a Demon King disrupted the portal, there was no way to connect the two dimensions.
But.
It was possible.
He had brainwashed dragons for thousands, even millions of years.
He made the world’s coordinators throw off their own rules. It was a remarkably simple thing. The more one instilled an obsession with adhering to rules, the more, like the warm sun stripping a traveler of their clothes, dragons couldn’t help but want to escape the constraints.
The world’s coordinators fell into corruption. Those who had devoted themselves to creating the world everyone wished for attempted to smash and invade the realm they had cherished.
They were strong. The beings called “world’s coordinators,” made from parts of the Goddess and the Demon God—two primordial deities—were powerful enough, after millions of years of becoming stronger and corrupting, to deal significant blows to the Goddess.
In the process, countless dimensions were destroyed, and her influence over the human realm diminished.
From that time onward…
The Demon God began to meddle in the Human Realm.
He established a cult that worshipped the Goddess, one of the primordial deities. They reverently prayed and showed respect solely to the Goddess.
Why did the Demon God do such a thing?
The reason was simple. By doing so, it would be much easier to capture the hearts of humans.
The greatest order that the Goddess had over the Human Realm was:
The Demon God must not come into the Human Realm.
Because of that, it was impossible for him to exert direct influence in the Human Realm. After all, the realm clearly belonged to the Goddess.
Therefore, he aimed to break that essence. He sought to brainwash the leader of the Holy Empire, Eiros, a religious state that utterly believed in the Goddess.
The outcome was successful. The highest authority in Eiros, the Pope, began to ruin the Human Realm, all while claiming it was in the name of the Goddess.
Among all this, the one thing the Demon God was most concerned about was the Saint.
The Saint was a trump card left in the mortal realm, meant for the Goddess to descend directly. As long as the Saint existed, the chances of the Demon God’s plans succeeding were very low.
Of course, he could partially descend through the Demon King, but since the Human Realm was the Goddess’s domain, he would naturally bear severe penalties.
Thus, he set out to undermine the Saint.
With the Pope’s distorted regulations, he wore her down, staining her future with an everlasting darkness, turning it into a horrifying hell.
The path the Saint was to take? That road was already tainted by the Demon God’s energy.
She was destined to face a miserable and terrible death.
The first step in this plan was to strip her of her senses.
It wasn’t a difficult task. The object that the Pope kept most treasured, believing it to be the Goddess’s relic, was steeped in the Demon God’s deep-seated hatred and curses.
As long as the Saint was within a 10,000 km radius of the relic, its curse would surely lead her to that horrifying future by any means necessary.
He robbed her of her senses. The individuals around her, who valued ‘discipline’, caused human hearts to rot away.
It was a perfect plan. The Goddess, still recovering from her wounds, couldn’t dare to intervene.
No, it would be impossible for her to even check on the Human Realm.
The Goddess would find it difficult just to inhibit and impose restrictions on the numerous portals connecting to the Human Realm.
All she could do was occasionally create a Solitary Hero to summon warriors against the Demon Realm.
It was perfect. Humans were gradually being pushed back by the forces of the Demon Realm, and the Saint withered and decayed day by day.
Yes. It should have been perfect.
[So it’s you.]
[……!]
An anomaly occurred. One of his tiny fragments.
Among those, it was the most important fragment implanted into the Saint that began to rebel. A strange entity entered that place.
[Snake?]
The Demon God couldn’t help but chuckle. A snake dared to challenge him.
Just a little snake. Was it even 300 meters long?
It might be considered big in the Human Realm, but….
[This is my domain.]
That was something he couldn’t care less about, even if it was a tiny fragment.
The Demon God’s size began to increase. To eliminate this audacious little snake that had entered his territory, his fragment swelled in stature, looking down on the snake.
[You seem to be overflowing with confidence, calling yourself a divine being….]
You ought to know your place.
A Demon God, now infinitely larger than the snake that dared invade his territory, swung down his colossal fist.
Boom!
The shockwave swept through his dark dominion. A massive crater shook and ripped apart the black space around him, creating a miniature black hole from the sheer pressure.
Such was the overwhelming power of the primordial deity.
Even though it was a mere fragment, a insignificant insect that had only recently attained divinity could be easily dealt with.
Just as the Demon God was about to shake off any lingering interest—
[Just a worm, huh…?]
[Worm? I wonder who the real worm is.]
[…How?]
A voice echoed back at him. Surely, his strike should have shattered the divine essence, right?
The Demon God hurriedly turned his head. Yet the snake-shaped deity was nowhere to be found where he had struck.
It was simply too small.
Could it be that his massive form couldn’t see it?
No… no way. The Demon God quickly raised his gaze.
And there it was…
[Infinitely tiny, indeed.]
A giant serpent.
Err, could it even be called a serpent? Its size was so colossal that it made even the most primitive divine beings look puny, but this was on a whole other level.
It was endless.
From the Demon’s fragmentary perspective, he could only catch sight of a minuscule piece that comprised the serpent.
[What is… this…?]
He had never seen such a being before. No matter how divine, there had to be size limitations.
Most deities max out at several kilometers, with the largest reaching a few dozen kilometers at best.
But that thing…
Was different.
It was a massive wall.
The Demon God realized that he was staring at only one scale among the countless ones that made up the beast’s body.
That alone was enough to demonstrate how incomparable in size this serpent was.
Overwhelming.
It had been so long since he had felt such a sensation.
But the Demon God sneered.
Did he think that the size of a god was the only thing that mattered?
[If so, then that’s a huge mistake.]
The Demon God reached out his hand.
A wave of death energy surged into his grasp in an instant.
A dreadful force that would annihilate even ordinary deities upon contact.
But—
[Insignificant.]
Boom!
His laughter shook the world. A massive wave shattered his entire dominion and scattered the energies that had been gathering in his grasp.
The Demon God chuckled at the absurdity of this divine being.
[There was a being like that…?]
Surely, there should be no light in his domain.
Yet, for some reason, he felt the shadow of death creeping closer.
[Die.]
That was the end of it.
The overwhelming divine energy of Jörmungandr swept everything away with its command.
The world began to crumble into ashes.
The Demon God felt his own body turning to dust, staring blankly at that collapsing reality.
[Unbelievable.]
Was this your hidden card?
Goddess.