Chapter 177: Cursed God (2)
How was it that this profane deity came to be?
After all, if it was truly the concept of stagnation, then did it not mean that it was forever stagnant and thus resistant to the influence of the void, which was ever-changing?
Corruption did not care about the laws of the world, and so the once radiant goddess of stagnation became a cursed deity despite her concept denying all change.
She remembered being pure once, she remembered being glorious and sacred, as well.
Before the daemons waged their cruel war against the gods, she was a mere human who had climbed the path of ascension alongside her father, until she eventually became a sacred being...
A spirit who was doomed to be a sacred creature forever due to the fact that she embodied the concept of stagnation and so she could not rise in ranks as that would have meant changing and evolving.
Her people, whom she governed, could not advance under her banner, but she still loved them nonetheless and they loved her, basking in her blessings.
All was well, until war came and left, destroying everything and dooming the entirety of existence.
And in the end, her realm and her people were not spared...
In the end, the spirit of stagnation dreamt the nightmare of the forgotten god.
***
Ki Song's body had become an ocean of blood, drowning the land in its entirety, and the cursed god as well.
The sabertooth, who was already chained, could not breathe while being submerged in blood.
Breathing was not a problem for sacred and cursed beings, however, Ki Song could use her Abilities to make her blood toxic and poisonous, which would damage the body of the cursed Deity, eventually.
The fur of the cursed god took on a greener look, slowly becoming rotten and poisonous.
Before the authority of stagnation could negate the damage and restore its original state, the wound became even worse.
Ki Song was using her dormant ability once again, and this time she was empowering it using her will, defying the concept of stagnation to inflict damage upon it.
The cursed devil realized this, but instead of panicking... It simply focused its will, and spread its storm inside the ocean of blood.
Her ocean like body turned cold and slowly froze, at the same time she could feel her soul and shadow being frozen... Even her spirit was being dulled by the cold.
Why was she even fighting it? To protect humanity? To ensure its development and progress, like War God had wanted?
A seed of doubt was born in her heart.
But why even bother? War God was long dead and the dream realm was slowly consuming her realm and changing it... Stagnation was the enemy of progress and change so naturally, it would also be the enemy of the void and of corruption which are ever-changing.
Is that not Ki Song's enemies, as well?
So perhaps, stagnation was the answer...
'No... what am I thinking.'
Ki Song regained her mind and pulled the torrents of blood away from the cursed god, making sure to keep a great distance between them.
The cursed deity had been able to use its concept to cloud her mind... Whether that was an innate ability all sacred and cursed beings had, or perhaps a unique ability of this deity, she did not know.
What she did know was that drowning a god was definitely not an option.
But her audacious plan had not been useless.
The body of stagnation was poisoned and sick, with its movements having grown sluggish and slow.
Her power had had an effect on it, in the end.
But more importantly, there was a reason why the cursed god had not recovered...
That was because Ki Song had managed to make her blood, the divine ichor of beast God, enter the body of the dreadful cursed god.
The body of the cursed one was almost a realm in of itself, and the blood of beast was spreading through it viciously, controlled by Ki Song.
If she kept this going for a few days, then Ki Song would undoubtedly emerge victorious...
But unfortunately, she did not have that much time.
Suddenly, the sabertooth once again fused with the storm, hiding its body and clouding it in mist.
'Is it hiding?'
Ki Song did not understand what it was doing, but she sent a few projectiles towards the storm to cut it open before the cursed god could do anything else.
The storm collapsed on itself like a star, and sent ripples throughout the world, destroying the blood projectiles easily.
A magnificent four-winged dragon appeared from the storm, its scales of ice bathed in mist and white brilliance. White hair ran down its neck like a waterfall...
The Cursed Devil had taken on a new form — that of a colossal, pale-gray dragon with a long, slender body and four legs. Four pairs of large, leathery wings spread from its back, and a long, narrow tail trailed behind it. Sharp spines ran from its head down along its neck, back, and tail. Unlike the few dragons Ki Song had witnessed, this one's limbs were thin and skeletal-looking, with four-toed claws. Its face was angular and somewhat skeletal, dominated by large, shadowy eyes.
Ki Song's frown deepened.
'Just what is this? Two transformation abilities...'
She would have understood if the cursed one embodied the concept of change, or transformations, but that was not the case at all.
The cursed devil could change forms at will, which seemed to be a completely separate ability from its nature as a concept.
'It likely has other forms in storage... How wonderful.'
This form seemed much more powerful than the last, after all, dragons were the firecrest of noble creatures.
One of them had even become War God's avatar, a long time ago which was quite ironic considering war god and the spirit of stagnation wielded opposite concepts.
'My blood is still poisoning it but it'll take a while before it can severely damage it... I should change my approach for now.'
The devil was not the only one with tricks up its sleeves.
Ki Song, still an ocean of blood, made sure to gather the remains of her titan puppets—which had been destroyed by the cursed god—and brought them into her crimson body.
Then, using those pieces and the blood making up her body, she shaped herself into a magnificent Phoenix using her will and control over blood.
The flesh of the golem formed her spine, the flesh of the wolf formed her head, the flesh of the carapace titan formed her legs.
And lastly, the blood formed the outer shell of the form, creating wings that were both terrible and beautiful, layered with lustrous blood feathers.
This was a blood incarnation, something Ki Song had created during her fourth nightmare, when she was a mere saint who was experimenting with her Transcendent transformation.
If she used her Transcendant form, and the bodies of her puppets, she could create new puppets for her to inhabit, ones made from blood and flesh.
Blood Incarnations were not true Formlessness, not really, but they did the job when needed.
The cursed devil stared at her coldly, deep malice burning within its frozen black eyes. Then, it flapped its four mighty wings, which encompassed the heavens themselves, and took to the skies.
Ki Song followed after it in her blood Incarnation, soaring through the frozen wasteland.
The sky of this frozen realm was broken and fragmented, with cracks in reality everywhere in sight... The mist of nothing seeped through every corner, drowning it in white fog.
Ki Song wondered if this was the doing of the unholy one.
There was one new terrifying thought that she needed to worry about, but thankfully she could ponder about it later, if she survived this battle.
The two Monsterous beings clashed in the sky, tearing it even further and twisting the laws of reality using their wills.
Blood flowed from Ki Song's body, reshaping into missile-like projectiles that pierced the wings of the cursed god.
'This is... Unpleasant.'
Ki Song's supreme battle art was built on the principle that confrontation meant defeat. Earlier in their fight, she had attempted to end it quickly multiple times, relying on projectiles, her puppets, her decay ability and her poisonous blood.
Now, she was confronting the abomination in an aerial battle and using all of her will to survive its Terrifying authority.
This was mainly due to the fact that she had not prepared for the emergence of the cursed devil, and was forced to engage it directly.
The cursed devil's claws latched onto her body, pinning her in place and attempting to bite her head clean off.
Spikes of blood found their way to its eyes before it could do that, and Ki Song cut its neck using blood feathers and retreated away.
The injured dragon flapped its four wings, creating a terrible vortex of ice and winds... But more importantly, of stagnation.
The attack was infused with cursed will, and anything that it came across, from time, space to flesh, would be frozen forever.
It was an attack capable of annihilating entire realms, in fact if it had been unleashed on earth then it would've destroyed the planet, or forced the whole earth into an ice age.
By all means, it was a world ending calamity.
Ki Song's phoenix libody allowed her to fly around the devestating attack but some had still managed to hit her wings. Strangely though, Instead of crystalizing and freezing, the wings were perfectly fine...
That was because she had used her Ascended ability, transference, to transfer the damage done to her current body into another one.
Somewhere among the vast army of puppets, one of them suddenly froze and fell to the ground, shattering into hundreds of fragments.
She still felt the pain, but she was long accustomed to such things.
The white dragon and the crimson Phoenix clashed once again, exchanging hundreds of tenacious attacks that spread shockwaves across the world.
They were like celestial gods, dancing together in the fragmented heavens.
In ancient times, such battle would have been recorded in the archives of history and spoken about for hundreds of years...
But now, no one knew of Ki Song's existence as a sovereign, and as such, no one will remember her, or her struggle to protect her domain.
That, too, made her a little sad but she could not afford to think about it right now.
Even more puppets exploded from all kinds of terrible wounds as Ki Song made sure to keep her main body untouched.
Using her abilities this many times
Should have exhausted her soul core, however Ki Song received plenty of spirit essence from her domain, so she was not worried about getting drained.
As the battle raged on, the will of the cursed devil slightly dulled, becoming slightly weaker with every passing minute...
That was because ki Song's will, which had the affinity of decay, was slowly weakening the will of the cursed god. Making its existence more revolting with every passing minute.
Just like Anvil possessed a will capable of cutting concepts, Ki Song possessed a will powerful enough to decay them.
The spirit of stagnation's strongest trait was its spirit, which refused to budge. It refused to decay and refused to die... So, all she needed to do was force it to change.
All around ki Song, time began to shift slightly, slowing down and freezing at certain points, before stagnating completely.
The mist seeping into the world paused, and everywhere around them, the entire region was experiencing stagnation.
Her territorial domain suffered the most, though which weakened her authority.
She, however, resisted the influence of the profane deity and continued battling it in the skies.
'This is problematic...'
Though she could resist its influence on her main body, her soul was slowly beginning to feel the effects of stagnation. Her ascended ability was not capable of transferring soul damage — after all, she only had one soul
She needed to end this fight soon, or else her soul would simply freeze, becoming barren and empty for all of eternity.
An idea appeared in ki Song's mind as she evaded a wave of icy Projectiles and dove down beneath the white dragon.
If the cursed god was capable of influencing time itself with its abilities, then couldn't she, who was able to deny it, free time from its grasp?
Time was not frozen everywhere in existence, no, it was only stopped in the frozen wasteland, within the boundaries of the storm surrounding the region.
By stopping its influence, she could reduce its power and make it slightly weaker. After all, stagnation was its source element, and the devil had deliberately chosen to freeze time so that ki Song would be at a disadvantage — and so that it would gain far better control over the world.
Moreover, she would free her domain from the will of stagnation.
A portion of ki Song's will turned into a sharp blade and silently escaped into the metaphysical space of absolute laws.
There, the will of the cursed devil was forcing time to stay still, unmoving and unchanging.
Instead of trying to overcome it, ki Song did something much more effective.
She used the affinity of her will to decay the will of stagnation, making it infinitely weaker than its original state.
The firm grasp it had over time lessened slowly and after a few minutes, time was moving normally once again.
This did make the authority of stagnation weaker, yes, however it also made the cursed god angrier as well.
Its bites and slashes became much more ferocious, and its strength seemed to have doubled. The poison blood inside the dragon did not hold it back like ki Song wanted.
Soon, the crimson Phoenix was caught and the blue icy dragon maw devoured Ki Song's shoulder, but the insidious supreme was not going to fall easily.
She released her blood Incarnation in the sky and became an ocean of blood again, then she wrapped around the dragon.
Her fleshy parts, the leftovers of the titans, formed into maggots and she poured her blood into them to animate the Creatures.
Soon enough thousands of maggots spread across the cursed god's body, eating away at its scales violently.
Each of them was infused with Ki Song's will, and so the cursed god lost its balance and fell to the ground like a fallen angel.
It tore through the sky, until eventually it hit the ground and shattered the ice beneath, causing both ki Song and the cursed one to dive deep into the cold water of the frozen wasteland.
All kinds of abominations died from the impact, and as they did, they turned into Ki Song's puppets, courtesy of her supreme ability and domain.
The spirit of stagnation was still being devoured by the tiny maggots, so it did the only thing it could do.
The storm intensified and then it shrunk down to encompass the creature's body once again.
Ki Song recognized the fact that it was trying to change forms, but she was too late to stop it and the storm collapsed on Ki Song, causing all of her maggots to be disintegrated by the shockwave.
She recoiled from the pain and rushed away as a river of blood, feeling the cold water mix with her transformation ability.
The cursed devil, meanwhile, had assumed a new form, one made for the oceans.
Two slithered eyes, full of hunger landed on her formless mass. Moments later, a white serpent swam through the waters like an omen of death.