1525 The Dreaming God

Immortal and Icarus remained on the outskirts of Paradise, on opposite sides of it so that neither of them knew of the other's presence.

But they both had the same thought after their clone died.

'I need to get her!'

Isadora was instrumental for Immortal. She was necessary for him to become the god he's meant to be.

For Icarus, she was the tool to get the slivers—the gateway to the glory of Nexus, the rejuvenation of the Sera tribe and emerging as a power equal to Jai.

Even though it might take a few hundred million years, Icarus saw a future where Nexus could grow as strong as Jai and face it off directly.

By then, these two puny one sliver 'Empires' wouldn't need to exist.

Either the Jai and Nexus would split them between themselves or better, Nexus would attack the unsuspecting Empires and grab the slivers.

The glorious future was beckoning and all he needed to do was grab that woman.

The two men were under fierce pressure.

Eventually, Immortal shook his head and left the place.

'Without being a divine ranker, I can't defeat the owner of Paradise. Anyway, I can find Isadora once she's out of that place. If she stays inside for a few more years, then I'll have to change my plans.'

He waited for centuries already. Waiting for a few more years wouldn't be a big deal.

Of course, if she exited Paradise tomorrow, he'd hunt her tomorrow.

While he could wait, Immortal didn't want to if he could help it.

Icarus, on the other hand, found himself in a different situation.

'Gone! It's gone! The marker is not working anymore!'

The marker on Isadora had ceased to function at somepoint. The divine ranker didn't know why it happened even though he had been dreading this.

But with losing the only way he had to track the perfect hybrid, he was forced to make a choice.

He could either grab Isadora now from Paradise, even if it meant going against Fabricator or he could clamp his tail and wait for another opportunity to find one single person in the vast alliance.

The second choice meant he'd be betting all his aspirations on luck, which, honestly speaking, hadn't been very kind on Nexus Empire for hundreds of millions of years.

The only choice left was to take the matter into his own hands.

No matter how difficult, he'd have to grab Isadora from Paradise.

Very difficult but not impossible. Icarus didn't think he was overestimating himself.

He's a new divine ranker. Not so new that he brokethrough laster year or the one before. It's been over a century already.

While his grandfather Equilius still considered him as a fledging newcomer who couldn't even adjust his powers properly, Icarus knew that he was being weighed against a very high bar.

Perhaps it's due to his lineage or perhaps his innate talent, but he had confidence in beating any new divine ranker as long as they didn't hold a thousand year experience.

Of course, no divine ranker was going to reach the mid rank 1 in that short window. So, fighting a sub-rank up was out of question anyway.

Fabricator, the creator of Paradise, a madman who rarely shows himself in public yet remains a legendary figure in the discourse of divine rankers was a peak rank 1 powerhouse.

He's a genius by all measures.

Rock by rock, planet by planet and rule by rule, he created tens of thousands of 'worlds' that make up the system of Paradise today.

Rumors remain that he's the descendent of a powerful Nexus figure and recieved quite a lot of help from the friends in Genesis and Mors who helped shape his world.

In exchange, he was said to feed the the treasures they left behind to help advance their paths.

If it's just a couple thousand planets, it wouldn't be a big deal.

A peak rank 9 celestial himself could make attacks that would easily destroy couple of duchies. Controlling a few thousand planets shouldn't be a problem.

No, the issue was that each of these worlds were demanding in two ways.

One, they all had abnormally strong average denizens. Most had at least a rank 7 as their strongest. Rank 8s were not frequent. Rank 9s were not rare.

Heck, there were more than more than a thousand reported worlds with divine rankers alone!

It's still acceptable until this point.

Even if it's a thousand divine rankers, a peak rank 1 could easily manage them. Due to the vast power difference between them, Fabricator could defeat even a hundred thousand of them without a big problem.

If the power differential in celestial ranks was tremendous, this was astronomical!

So, a thousand divine rankers was a burden, but manageable nonetheless.

Two and the biggest issue of the entire project—Rules.

Every world had its own rules which meant a specific set of Order and Chaos laws presiding over the world at all times.

Some worlds were deliberately created in the field of 'Sword & Magic', disallowing use of any divine path.

A few worlds had towers that you'd have to climb and clear to gain powers.

There were also a couple worlds threw you straight into an apocalypse—zombie apocalypse, end of days apocalypse or mind virus apocalypse—you had to survive it all while gaining power from 'shooting' the targets.

All the powers you get in such worlds go only to enchance your shooting skills and do absolutely nothing in terms of your divine ranks.

Like these, there existed tens of thousands of worlds with their unique systems.

This was precisely the problem that Fabricator had to face.

Even a peak divine ranker of the first realm could hardly maintain so many 'dynamic systems' running.

So, the man made a crazy decision.

He went into a deep slumber and been at it for thousands of years already, even forgoing any attempts to hit rank 2.

The 'Paradise System', the manifestation of his 'Will', continued to enforce the rules, seeking more and more entertainment for the being in rest.

It sounded straight from the tale of a cosmic horror in ancient myths that sounded very much contrived to Eden's culture, but Fabricator was a sleeping god of the worlds he created.

He would dream of everything happening in these worlds and everything would keep happening because he was dreaming. If he woke up, the worlds would be collapse.

It was an eerie line of thought that many would not want to get into. But at this point, Icarus had to.

Considering that he's only going to break into Paradise and grab Isadora, there's significantly less chance of Fabricator using his full power to meet him.

He could probably fight a low rank Fabricator despite that man's extensive experience and manage to escape.

The chances of actually pulling this off weren't very high. But it's the only way this could ever work.

"Fuuuu~" Icarus exhaled and his eyes glowed with white light.

It was a pure white of Order, the shade closest to the one displayed by the slivers themselves.

"For Nexus!"

After roughly 10,000 years, another divine ranker barged into Paradise.