901 [Ascendance Of The Goddess of Sins and Virtues] 22/?: Mammon Surprise
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Within the Interdimensional Plane of the Gates of Hell, deep within the layers of hell which extended almost endlessly, where many demons and demon beasts constantly fought for supremacy while devouring each other's souls, one of their leaders, the Archdemon Mammon, sensed the death of its Avatar.
No, it was even more than that, it was eaten by an abyssal power it had never felt before.
It was so strong, and it had such an enormous ability to devour and assimilate things that it even devoured and assimilated the ethereal, demonic connection between the Avatar and Mammon himself.
He felt as if she ate a piece of him, the enormous pain, after eons of existing, mad ethe Archdemon scream in pain.
The loud cry made everyone alert that something strong enough to damage an Archdemon had somehow shown up… but who was it?
Many other Archdemons contacted Mammon, and even Lucifer himself, but the Archdemon decided to keep silent, he couldn't possibly tell them that he was damaged by a mere Goddess within the world of Genesis, one of the many their Realm was connected with.
I couldn't show any weakness, the Archdemons were not like a family, they were allies, yes, but they wouldn't doubt if they were allowed to crush one of their allies to gain more power over the Gates of Hell.
Because of this, the Greedy Mammon decided to remain within his Demonic Realm, deep within his Castle, shielding himself from anyone that were to dare come to him and use this opportunity to attack him.
Mammon was already trying to cope with the ridiculousness of the situation, and he didn't want any disturbance, closing his castle from any of the Demons that served him, which only were left hoping for Mammon to recover before any other Archdemon was to know about what has happened to him.
Mammon didn't simply think its Avatar wouldn't die or something, but it never expected that it would be used by the World's Will itself as a Heavenly Calamity for that world's Goddess, an entity named Kireina who had recently begun to become the main topic of all the entities within the world of Genesis… to think that his avatar would be used for such a thing made him even more angered.
"Damn Genesis World's Will! So it used my very Avatar as a way to attack one of her eyesores? …And it surprisingly didn't end well for her, that being… Kireina… possess outstanding powers, that even I, an Archdemon, have recognized… She is even more gluttonous than Beelzebub himself…" sighed Mammon.
"But I wouldn't have cared either way what happened to something I had already discarded, that Avatar was of no value for me anyways… Even if it were to be used for the World's Will, I wouldn't have cared. And even if it were eaten by Kireina, I wouldn't have cared either. However… she didn't simply eat the flesh, she ate the ethereal, demonic connection between the Avatar and me! She ate it! And it felt like she bit my very soul! Ungh… I felt it! She assimilated part of my powers and used them to become an Archdemon… How is it possible?! This is… this should be impossible!" thought Mammon.
But this was more… more than the Archdemon had believed.
The wound itself, within the enormous demonic soul he possessed, which resembled a gigantic, almost endless sea of darkness was not very big, in fact, it could be insignificant.
But it has been so long since he was actually damaged that he became terrified by the surprise and screamed like a little girl.
He felt a bit of embarrassment, of course, as many had heard him.
Mammon began to harbor great hate against Kireina since this day, which was also coupled with some fear.
Fear for a being that wasn't even comparable to his Realm of power yet had the power to make him scream… She was indeed unique.
But for the moment, Mammon decided to calm down and assess things out, there were not many ways he could intervene with a being from another world, but he could have some things he could do, or at least a few threads he could pull around…
As he schemed, the Archdemon was completely unaware that Kireina already had him within the palms of her beautiful and delicate, pale-white hands.
Within the small wound that had already recovered a great part, within Mammon's Demonic Soul, there were small, incredibly small bacteria-like soul fragments, so small not even Mammon could detect, even less when his Archdemon Soul was so vast…
These bacteria-like soul fragments held the will of Kireina, as they merged with Mammon's soul ad slowly ate it while eating themselves, generating a cycle where the enormously strong Archdemon was being eaten without even realizing it, slowly becoming her…
However, his body and power were so big that such an act might take eons.
But unlike the System Master who knew about Kireina's parasitic powers and managed to not let her parasitize his soul when she bit him, Mammon had no way to know about such a vicious power.
Mammon continued to plot while unaware of this great truth that would, quite literally, come bite him in the back later on…
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Huh, it seems that it worked.
I guess Archdemons are not as knowledgeable of the world of Genesis or me as I thought they would be.
The System Master had immediately neutralized my parasitic soul clones when I bit him, but Mammon hasn't even realized I am parasitizing his soul.
Well, this works wonderfully in my favor, of course, the more I can eat, the better!
…Though, it will take a good while before I can even do anything particularly noticeable against him.
But I can more or less slowly learn about him through his memories which I am slowly eating, and I can hear faint thoughts sometimes, he seems to be angry at me, and he's plotting something.
If I manage to parasitize enough, I could even slowly encroach his mind and change his thought process, perhaps even canceling out his desire for revenge, or even better, letting him do it but it is undoubtedly filled with loopholes I can abuse.
Whatever he's planning, it won't work anyways.
My connection with these soul fragments is very dim, however, as these parasites are all the way into another dimension/realm thing, so it is quite dim.
Now that everything was over in here, I flew through my Divine Realm for a while, calming down while reaching the Yggdrasil Sprout.
At the side of the tree, there was the big Elven Kingdom… which didn't even know they had changed places.
Yeah, only a few people discovered this when they walked out of the territory, but not many had realized they suddenly appeared somewhere else.
This was an easy task to do through Illusion Magic, which was enhanced now thanks to my Illusion and Dreams/Nightmare Path Jewel, alongside Spatial Magic and Spatial Architect Abilities, helping me in creating a special, designed space I could freely move around.
Unlike the tree, the kingdom of the elves was way smaller, so no formations or anything fancy was needed to be done.
However, before anything, I flew to my castle and had lunch with my family to calm down, no Gods were chasing me down at the moment as I was now Baltis, and I was telling the Gods down there that I was still "calculating" or something.
Since we became Gods that we had been eating a diet of Divine Materials and Divine Beasts, and even the claws of Kaggoth and her sister as well, which were delicious.
Everyone that I sent to fight came back even stronger, as they had eaten a very fitting god for their divinities for the most part (except Scarlet, but she still benefited from it).
After a bit of that, I decided to talk about the thing I fought, and about becoming an Archdemon, and more…
"Wait… the giant thing you fought was not a Heavenly Calamity, Kireina-sama?!" asked Agatheina, almost having a heart attack.
"It was the Avatar of the Archdemon Mammon, it was strong, but nothing I could not handle on my own. Though I was tired afterward, if it weren't because of the evolution recovering my energy, I would have fallen asleep… perhaps for a few weeks…" I sighed.
"Is that so…?" asked Zehe while widening her eyes.
"Well, who even sent that thing to you? Don't tell that the World Will…" sighed Brontes.
"Yeah, it seems that the Worlds' Will was feeling pretty funny today. She's such as funny entity… In the end, I ate it and became an Archdemon anyways. And I even parasitized Mammon to boot," I said.
"I think I should be surprised right now, but we are so used to mother doing so much crazy stuff that I feel like something like this would sooner or later have happened anyways," laughed Amiphossia.
"Yeah, mommy just does crazy stuff," said Vudia.
"But even then…! It is Mammon we are talking about! What Gaia had said about the Archdemons is that they're incredibly powerful beings from the Gates of Hell… Well, they can't get out of there, but they will surely do something…" said Agatheina.
"Yeah, I believe he will, but it won't probably work, I can more or less hear part of his thoughts," I said.
"Is that so? Well… I guess that's that then…" sighed Agatheina.
"So now you're going to eat the Yggdrasil Tree?" asked Nesiphae.
"Eh? No! It would be too much if I ate it, it is better to fuse with it," I said.
"Fuse, guu?!" asked Rimuru.
"Well, it is already midway through the fusion, as it is deeply rooted into the Divine Realm, which is inside of my Divine Soul, I just have to do it manually," I said.
"Fuse with the Yggdrasil Sprout… the branch that fell from the Yggdrasil Tree that existed in the ancient Genesis… such a tree contained a large amount of power within, its branch has grown to be a small copy of it, and now you will fuse with it, Kireina-sama? Do you have an idea on how to do that?" asked Agatheina.
"More or less, I have figured out something. I have a bit of inner comprehension behind the Law of Life after having eaten some Gods related to Life, alongside that dream I had where I experienced life through many reincarnations," I said.
"Life Law Comprehension… Laws, the power that not even Gods can touch yet…" said Agatheina.
Laws represented all basic attributes in existence, although Gods had divinities of attributes, their comprehension of laws was often very dim, however, by eating and getting the memories of many Gods, I had begun to over accumulate comprehension, giving me some more inner understanding.
However, to actually begin the journey through the comprehension of such Laws, I require to become way stronger than I am already.
By stealing experience and memories by eating other Gods I can more or less hasten this, but it is still a long way to go.
After spending some time with everyone and chatting, I quickly flew back to the Yggdrasil Sprout ad sat down right over a large root that there was sprouting from the ground.
I sat down over there as I began to expand my soul like an endless sea of colors, connecting my soul with the large soul of the tree.
Suddenly a shock of info rushed into my head, and it made me slightly dizzy.
These are the memories of the tree.
I kept putting my soul inside, controlling I like rivers of ethereal essence, making it flow through the roots of the tree and slowly covering more and more of its insides.
More sparks enter my mind, memories, strange memories of the origins of this tree.
There is a transcendental connection that connects it to something else, something else delving deep within the universe, transcending many spatial walls.
There was… a gigantic tree.
No, this… can you even call it a tree?
Wow…
It was an enormous, tree-like structure, with billions after billions of leaves and fruits… and each one was millions of galaxies.
This…
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