Chapter 48

Prologue In slow pulses, a cluster of crystals gently glowed in a sprawling, dim room. A woman lay there, eyes closed, as she quietly continued to slumber. She wasn’t resting in the human sense; she had no biological need to sleep in the first place. In fact, her consciousness was completely intact in this state, selecting who would receive her blessing from time to time. But to avoid wasting even an ounce of her strength, she slumbered. Her power came from the prayers of her devout followers. And how could she possibly squander the prayers of the pious, who continued to amass day by day? She had slept this way for two hundred years—until she felt a sudden chill run through her. What was that? Awoken from her long slumber, she left her body behind in the dark as her seeing eye shot into the sky. Heading in the direction of this ominous sensation, she flew over forests, over rivers, threading through the trees as fast as light. That was when she saw something horrific. The army fleeing in defeat. Soldiers hauling the bodies of three thousand corpses with gouged hearts. Far behind, she saw the one who had committed the atrocity, his face twisted in rage despite his calm observation of the army. He was a giant twice as tall as any human, skin a deep blue, with massive horns sprouting from either side of his head. It was a strange form, impossible to describe as human, housing explosive amounts of magic no man could withstand. —A demon! Her perfectly shaped lips pursed in hatred. The demons. Enemies to mankind. Dirty, nasty things. They had managed to live on, even after they had been pushed underground. I must annihilate him. The complete destruction of the demons—and their original sin. This was her reason for being. She had never once let wrath slip from her consciousness, even as it lay dormant for thousands of years. But now, it had awoken. “Hmm?” The giant blue demon suddenly looked in her direction, as if he had sensed her hostility. Immediately, she cut off her seeing eye that she’d sent away, settling back into her resting body in the darkened room. I must investigate. The demon on the surface had to be considerably powerful. But just how strong? Would her blessed believers be able to take him down? Undetected from a distance, she would need to monitor him closely, secretly, before making a decision. It would be best if her followers were able to defeat him on their own, for nothing good would come out of carelessly revealing herself in front of people. But if he was too much for them— “Then I will destroy him.” The Goddess Elazonia spoke for the first time in hundreds of years, fire blazing in her eyes.