Music for today:
Eternal Eclipse - Rival (Official Music Video)
https://youtu.be/wlKAgOKfVMw
Chapter 464: Arrival
Mid Afternoon - Mid Summer : Year ??? : Delphi
-----
*Woooosh* The gentle breeze that rippled my fur, the scents of ocean and forest, the distant bison grazing near the horizon without worry.. without thought... Everything about that world brought back memories of home.. to the extent it felt like it was all an illusion created from a culmination of my dearest memories.
...The perfect paradise.
No matter where I looked, my mind screamed it was a trap.. that it was too good to be true.. but at the same time, I couldn't find a kink in that supposed illusion at all.
It was all real, I just.. didn't know how...
With exceptionally strong gravity, dense soil, and denser mana, the fauna was kept smaller, looking more similar to the lower mana worlds we had seen rather than the highest.
Yet at the same time, despite standing nearly a kilometer tall and weighing so much I'd sink straight through most planets' crust if I didn't support myself with mana, Delphi was so dense I barely sank past my paws. -Woah...-
To be able to stand there without needing to manage my weight was.. a mind boggling sensation... It brought me back to when I was just a pup.. when I could exist without thought.. without the worry of the weight of my existence.
And that was calming to an extent words cannot do justice.
But unfortunately, no matter how badly I wished to merely lay down and rest, the moment after we landed, eyes landed on us.. not just from the local wildlife, but from the beings that looked over them.
Though I kept my divinity spooled in line with the being at the center of the star, the gentle fluctuations in its pace caused the presences scattered around the world to flicker like candles in a dark room—their gaze.. their intent growing more apparent with every blink...
Unlike most worlds where only a few gods were permitted to exist, dozens of gazes landed on us the moment we touched down, some hostile.. others curious...
But one stood out from the crowd...
Looking over my shoulder, my gaze landed on a group of humans, primitively clothed, but comparatively strong, coming to check Dagr and I out from quite a distance.. and with them, a goddess.
Unlike the rest, she wasn't nervous or tense... Even as I looked her cloudy figure in the eyes, she didn't shy away.. if anything, her gaze softened.
Dagr noticed her as well, but as he curled back with a lowered stance, thinned pupils, and flared divinity, I kept him in check. "Leave her." My voice was heavy and commanding. "We cannot make unnecessary enemies." And while I wasn't entirely sure how, I was certain she wasn't one of them.
Though that didn't mean we were free to walk.
Before the next ripple of wind could even curl our fur, two presences snapped, vanishing before reappearing before us on either side.
Shooting each other a glare, it was immediately apparent they weren't allies.. but even enemies would learn to shake hands against a greater threat.
That was at least, if they deemed us one.
Quickly sitting down, I used some mana to poke Dagr, expecting him to follow my lead. "~Hello, gods of this world.~" Speaking through divinity, using intent rather than language, I hoped to get around the language barriers like I had in other worlds. "~We haven't come to be enemies. Please be at ease.~"
The two opposing gods, both men, immediately passed a glance before hesitantly easing.
The first to speak was the young man on the goddess' side, young and scrawny, donning a light white robe and a winged, golden staff. "~Hello.~" He was cautious and punctuated. "~My name is Hermes, a god of the Pantheon.~"
"~And my name is Hermod.~" The other was an older man, donning heavy fur-lined armor and equipment with a small dagger at his hip. "~I am the messenger of the Aesir...~" He was far more reserved than the scrawny man behind me, remaining cautious, not just of Dagr and I, but of Hermes as well.
-Are they at war with each other..?- It was the first time I had seen multiple factions of gods in one world, let alone ones at ends.
"~It's a pleasure to meet you both.~" Dagr was the first of us to speak. "~My name is Dagr, this is my brother Nott. We are fenrir from a world far from here.~" Unable to keep his eyes from momentarily drifting to the sky, he finally sat down as well. "~We are here to make this world our new home after ours was destroyed many years ago.~"
Hermes tensed—his expression falling. "~Destroyed, you say...~"
Knowing what he was implying, Dagr snapped, flaring his nostrils and digging his claws into the ground as if the dense rock were nothing more than mud.
But I caught him before he could open his mouth. "~We were too weak to prevent its destruction back then, but can speak with certainty that such a fate will not befall this one.~" Unable to keep my eyes from drifting up to the moving darkness beyond the sky, I stiffened. -At least I hope...- Having to force a sigh to keep at ease, I turned my eyes back to Hermod. "~Whatever the case, we aren't here to disrupt your squabbles, and aren't here to ask for permission to stay.~"
"~Some audacity, you have...~" Hermes spoke with another wash of arrogance.
"~It's not audacity,~" Turning around, my gaze pierced his like a spear that pierced the flow of time, "~It's mercy granted to you by the being preventing this world from being eaten by horrors you could not possibly imagine.~" Pulling out mana through the vortex still funneling into my reserve, every particle in the air for hundreds of kilometers froze, not by the dilation of time, but by the grip of my paw. "~You don't have the strength to object. Don't get arrogant thinking it's an offer.~"
He instantly tensed—Hermod's expression similarly darkening.
"~You two are messengers, yes? Well please deliver a message for me.~" Standing once more, space itself bent to my will. "~This place will now be our home, and we don't wish to disrupt what we don't yet understand, so keep out of our business, and we will keep out of yours.~" Delphi was a new land—one unlike any other we had visited before. We needed to be cautious with how we approached it.. how we learned of the balance that had been found after eons of isolation in order to ensure we didn't destroy it.
However, as it turned out, testing their arrogance was the wrong approach.
"~To not ask for permission, and instead declare your arrival...~" Hearing a deeper, heavier, more authoritative voice rip through the space, my gaze snapped from Hermes to a man only just cresting the horizon.. a tall, muscular man donning a similarly skimpy white robe, and wielding a spear with a blade that looked to be made of lightning. "~Are all beings from beyond the stars as arrogant as you?~"
Seeing the hostility littering his face, I expected Dagr to tense, but in that moment we shared the same thought. -Weak...-
Compared to the gods of the other worlds we had visited over the years, he was the pinnacle of them all. Having a body so defined it hardly seemed different from flesh, his divinity, and in turn his strength, was incomparable to any lower gods we had met, and was most surely strong enough to give either of us a run in a one on one.
But his inexperience and naivety made him look like a child challenging their parent. -To not even gauge us before approaching... He doesn't know what death is...-
Eventually stopping in front of Hermes, he kept his head high, only lowering his gaze to us as if out of pity. "~Tch... To not introduce yourselves...~" His arrogance was so deep it was insulting. "~My name is Zeus, the king of this world.~"
Looking toward Hermod, I found his eyes on Zeus with a deep disgust and disdain tainting them.
But Zeus hardly acted like he even existed. "~Those who exist here can only do so with my permission. Now please,~" Sharpening his gaze, his presence grew heavy, "Introduce yourselves with some respect."
Dagr and I shared the same expression in that moment.. both passing the same thought once more. -Is he serious..?-
God or man was irrelevant in that moment... To stand before Dagr and I with such overwhelming arrogance was insulting beyond words—a disrespect Dagr and I had never accepted. -Perhaps even still, we must set a precedent.-
Turning to face him, I tore the space around him before moving him down beneath the level of my eyes, not lowering my snout in the slightest. "~Not even the fabric of reality can tell me what to do... So who the hell do you think you are?~"
It wasn't a question.
It was a command.
Before him was a being that had eaten worlds, carved gashes into stars, and been tempered by the silence of infinity.
This place was his home, and having seen nothing beyond his grasp, he believed he had power so unrivaled even distant anomalies couldn't defy him. "~You're courting death, dog.~"
But Dagr and I didn't care to entertain him. Snapping my gaze to the goddess still looming over the horizon behind him—her eyes still soft—her gaze still curious.. I paused.
I didn't understand why.. but in that moment, that gaze was what kept me from simply deleting the arrogant being beneath my snout from this reality. "~You're lucky, old man.~" Releasing him, I finally turned. "~If you caught me on a different day I wouldn't have let you walk away.~" Returning my attention to the other messenger god, I opened my mouth to once again echo both a greeting and a warning.
But not accepting such a notion, Zeus moved, closing the distance between us in a blink before carving his spear, hardly the size of a human, through my fur and into my skull.
Though, little did he know, the wide gash he saw carved through my head in his spears wake would heal so fast it'd appear like space itself bent my flesh around his blade.
In the dense mana of this world, I was hardly even mortal anymore—my flesh more akin to a construct of mana than something that had organic necessity.
And while he didn't understand the message it sent right away, Dagr made sure he'd receive it. *snap-CRRRRAAACKKK*
Space itself snapped as his paw, disregarding the resistance of the dense atmosphere, swung through the old man.
Before time itself could blink, Zeus' body was cleaved in two, the staff of the spear he held splattering into a burst of molten metal before he could even react.
Every god present froze in that instant, Hermes' arrogance vanishing with sharpened pupils as he struggled to even follow Dagr's movement.
Dagr and I both knew it wasn't enough to kill him, merely enough to send a message, but that was all we cared about.
Catching the impact of his strike to make sure not to blow a chunk of atmosphere off the planet, the air froze, momentarily ringing like a continent-sized bell before easing.
Zeus hardly knew what hit him, only able to watch with wide eyes as the staff in his grip was reduced to glowing liquid and his extended arm and lower body were scattered like clouds after a shockwave.
If Dagr wanted it, that strike would have been deadly.. and everyone present knew it.
But he held himself at bay.
Knowing going any further would push things too far, Dagr dug his claws into the ground, reigning in his anger before he swung again. "~You're lucky my brother is here to stop me, you arrogant fucker.~"
Snapping his gaze to the side, Zeus' arrogance vanished, replaced by an instinct-driven flare.
But it only made Dagr clench his jaw to the point steam rippled from it before I had to reign him in with a brush of mana. "~Tch...~" Snapping to me with a click of his tongue, he turned back to Zeus with a sharpness even he couldn't ignore. "~Get lost before I kill you.~"
And knowing it wasn't an empty threat, he complied, gathering what remnants of his soul remained below his waist before retreating over the horizon with Hermes in tow.
But all it did was make me wonder. -He's not a weak god.. and yet I only saw ruined cities from above...- Looking back at the primitive group below the goddess still on the horizon, my mind wandered. -Why are their people so primitive...-
-----
Read up to 5 chapters ahead of schedule, and get early access to artwork on My Patreon!
(In case Embedded Link doesn't work: https://www.patreon.com/TDOD )
-------------
Also, please feel free to check out our discord for all updates related to TDOD releases! https://discord.gg/Dv7G5bQD4v
All are welcome!
---
Also if you are looking for a new story, check out my new novel! Re: The System's Harvester
On RR, SH, and now Webnovel!