In a small wooden shack, an old man wearing a tattered old robe was sitting in a black chair.
If he wasn't still breathing, anyone would believe that this old man was already dead.
"Mequik, you're…" the old man finally spoke up after a long while of silence, but his wrinkled face quickly became stiff.
His wrinkles began to recede bit by bit, slowly becoming supple once again, filled with the vitality of youth. All of his messy grey hair also fell out as more strands of black hair visibly grew back.
"Hah, it's my loss this time. But from the looks of the situation, everyone else will also lose, I really couldn't imagine…" the old man's next words were completely erased before they could even be spoken. Life Bearer would never allow her information to be leaked in any way.
Looking at the small wooden shack around him, Stim Allenz felt his thoughts to be unprecedentedly clear. He perfectly understood that this was the result of Mequik's existence eroding his existence. Under this state of complete erosion, he was already helpless to resist, so everything in his past was being revealed, then taken over.
At that point, the being who used to be Stim Allenz would become nothing but a clone of Mequik.
Around 5000, or perhaps 8000 years ago, he was still a student who didn't understand anything. Those few years, compared to the rest of his life, were so insignificant that even he believed that he had forgotten it all.
As a clueless student, he transmigrated into a wizardry world and became the apprentice of a wizard. If he didn't have what claimed to be the '23rd-century chip' in his head, he wasn't sure if he would have been able to survive.
Those were the toughest years of his life; at the time, his house was a small wooden shack just like this. Whenever he went outside, he had to be careful of Darklight Crows that consumed human eyes for sustenance or running into a werewolf from the forest who came out to hunt.
Those from the Dark Sorcerer Tower were always looking to inflict someone with two of three curses to turn them into experimental subjects.
By relying on the chip, Stim eventually arrived at the peak of the wizardry world, becoming a Star Wizard, or a Demigod as this world called it. It was at that time that he discovered that the world he was currently in was only a Sand realm.
And so, the ambitious young Stim searched for and eventually found the coordinates of a greater realm. He believed that he would be able to continue his glory in that place, and in fact, he survived there perfectly fine, being able to manifest his Pathway and ascend as a Legendary Wizard.
However, the events that followed were hard to describe in words. His Pathway was stolen, those damned polyhedrons harvested him like a farmer does their crop, the so-called '23rd-century chip' broke out from his body, taking with it his Pathway.
It wasn't impossible for someone whose Pathway had been stolen to manifest another Pathway and return to power; but for Stim whose 'golden finger' had left him, the most he was able to achieve up to this point in his life was returning to the level of Demigod. His capabilities alone were no longer enough to manifest a new Pathway.
This venture was his last attempt to manifest a Pathway, which was no different than playing with fire; by cooperating with Life Bearer, he hoped that he would be able to return to a path to Godhood. He still had his trump cards, and he was once a Pathway-level entity; in fact, he used to be the Protagonist during that period of time, but unfortunately, he had underestimated Mequik, who was much more terrifying than what she had displayed.
『 Is that so, the product of those ones' nurturing 』Mequik seemed to understand the polyhedrons somewhat, but after a short moment of silence, she continued to erode Stim.
"So this is how I die" Stim's memories were rapidly flashing through his mind. In the end, the memories stopped just after he had transmigrated. Those were his most clueless moments, which made them the harshest moments, but also the happiest.
"Do I regret it?" Stim asked himself, then answered: "No, I do not. My life has been more than colorful enough"
When the old wizard finally returned to the prime of his youth, his existence had also been completely taken over by Life Bearer. After adjusting his tattered robe, he pushed open the door to the shack, letting a ray of sunlight to peer in and illuminated his visage.
"Father…" Akasha Allenz appeared outside the window, but she was standing a bit further away than normal.
『 Akasha, was it? 』Mequik: 『 What a sensitive child indeed, a creation made based on those polyhedrons? 』
Hearing this statement, the young girl took another step backwards.
『 The reason why Stim couldn't carve out another Pathway for himself despite having so many advantages was because his life was influenced too much by those ones. From the very moment he first obtained supernatural powers, he had walked his path under their influence 』
『 While he had taken care to prevent this issue, knowing that it existed, he still became influenced by his past, and you were the product of that influence, Akasha 』Mequik's gaze towards the little girl was completely clear, and yet it caused Akasha to feel an extreme chill.
『 No need to worry, you simply need to continue managing your Grand Library. I will walk on my own path; there is nothing interesting in getting involved with those ones in any way 』after stating this, Mequik's expression slowly changed, then left a personality not unlike the past Stim to take over this body.
"Akasha, open the vault, the Mana Banquet is about to begin. It's going to be quite lively tonight" Stim rubbed his nose and smiled wryly as he said that.
In the darkness, a certain unclothed creature was hanging her head. Every inch of her skin was attached to a glittering elongated thread, and just the mana flowing through one of these threads were enough to drive any mage from the House of Mages to insanity.
This naked female creature was around 7 meters tall, her figure was slender, but her belly was bloated. No, rather, this was no longer at the level of 'bloated', as the size of her stomach had already taken up over half of this female creature's total body mass. Her pair of 3-meter-long legs looked more like a pair of feelers that stuck out from her belly.
Looking at her as a whole, the creature looked like a person lying on top of a giant sphere, and this was the Mana Fetus.
Occasionally, some slender arms or twisted humanoid faces would break out of the belly, only to rapidly break and crumble into dust within the darkness.
The majority of the Evil Gods within the Moon Tree world were previously elven Gods, and this Evil God was one of them. She used to be a dependent God of the Scion of Life, one of the three elven Lord Gods, but as the elves lost the war, the elven race as a whole became cursed by the Seven Gods. While she didn't die, she did lose her rationality and become an Evil God that wandered the Moon Tree world.
After that, she was captured by Stim and turned into the Mana Fetus.
This Mana Fetus could be considered to be one of Stim's open bargaining chips. While these elven Evil Gods were completely incomparable to the Seven Gods, they had still previously been the rulers of this world, and if they were used well enough, they could still pose a few issues to the Seven Gods.
Of course, the majority of these Evil Gods were actually still under the Seven Gods' control. In fact, they were one of the methods they used to keep control over this world, so the fact that Stim was able to completely control an Evil God as his Mana Fetus showed just how much power he held.
As the threads began to twist, the Mana Fetus' body began to roll around itself, the gigantic belly began to reflect even more faces and indescribably strange things, the mana could be visibly seen swelling up.
