The Marionette Lord's first test was "Seduction," a test Damien passed flawlessly.
However, there was a reason it was merely their first step to overwriting a soul. Those who fell to seduction were those who would never have a chance to enter Divinity in their lives, thus they were merely disposable pawns to the Marionette Lord.
The real hells came after.
Damien's spiritual world blurred and disappeared. His Avatar was dropped into a dark space filled with nothingness.
'My body feels real.' He immediately noticed.
He felt sensations that weren't possible through an Avatar. Even his All-Seeing Eye couldn't find a flaw in his senses, making it clear just how thorough the illusion was.
'What is this? Am I going to experience solitude?'
Damien was correct. The 2nd step after "Seduction" was "Solitude."
Even if a man couldn't be broken by a woman, could he survive his own thoughts?
Solitude wasn't something often experienced in the universe by those who didn't follow the absorption method of slow leveling. Most of the time, these people were together with their influences or battling their enemies to grow stronger, making true solitude a strange and unwelcome feeling.
And when that solitude lasted for decades, centuries, and even millennia, just what would happen to one's mind?
No, if the concept of time disappeared, if every moment felt like an eternity, the incongruity of feeling would make one extremely susceptible to emotion, breaking them even faster.
This was the last level of the Marionette Lord's game most 4th class beings experienced.
The solitude drove them mad and opened a hole in their mental defenses that the Marionette Lord could use to pollute their souls.
However, when it came to solitude, Damien didn't have many issues.
While he spent several years traveling the universe alone, true solitude was to be alone with one's thoughts in the void; without the starry sky as a backdrop, and without the aura of vibrant life of the universe.
Damien sat down and crossed his legs, closing his eyes and focusing inwardly.
'This is good.' He thought to himself.
Let alone the fact that void environments actually felt comfortable for Damien, he was currently in need of time to himself.
Developing techniques and comprehending laws took time, a great deal of it. Damien could always set up time dilations to grant himself extra time, but there were several universal restrictions on the usage of time, which made it difficult for Damien to use this strategy consistently.
Aside from that, he currently didn't have any room in his schedule for calm contemplation.
Since the Golden Dragon Clan's issue was almost solved, Damien would soon have to rush back to the Ancient God Clan so he could accompany them to the Grand Assembly.
Now, logically speaking, it was impossible to comprehend laws in a place void of them, but unfortunately for the Marionette Lord, Damien wasn't a being explainable with logic alone.
Traces of incorporeal pitch-black mana exhaled from Damien's pores and returned, converted into the law energy of Space, Time, Life, and Death.
Damien focused his mind solemnly as the energies entered his body. He immediately controlled them with his spiritual intent and reigned them in, separating them into their own sections and separately comprehending them.
He couldn't imagine what kind of catastrophe it'd cause if so many powerful and volatile laws collided.
'But, couldn't they mesh as well?'
It was always his first thought after absorption, but he'd never had the courage to experiment due to circumstance and safety.
'But right now, my body is an illusion.'
Damien was still a Spiritual Avatar, so while any comprehension he received would still be stored in his spiritual world, he wouldn't be able to directly affect his body at all.
Therefore, he could finally go all out without worry!
'Combine!'
He let go of his spiritual intent and let the elements flow as they wished.
Life and Death moved towards each other, as did Space and Time, and oddly enough…
The two groups slowly started to approach each other like wary dogs meeting their long-lost siblings.
Damien watched the process intently, losing track of his surroundings in the process.
'They're forming…a staircase?'
It was strange. As the elements approached each other, space and time grew larger while the inverse happened to Life and Death, layering them almost like steps in an ascending path.
Bzzt!
A connection formed,
The energies finally connected, and in that moment, Damien's mind exploded with light.
It materialized before him, that staircase. He stood on the step of Spacetime, the energy of Samsara pushing him from behind.
He covered his eyes with his hand to block the winds and gazed below.
There was no ground, however, Damien could tell that "something" was supposed to exist below Life and Death.
'Aha…'
The memory struck him abruptly. He'd remembered those same words many times in the past, but it felt different this time.
The 5 elements.
Life and Death.
Space and Time.
Creation and Destruction.
And finally, the unknown that existed before the elements of existence were born.
These were the utmost foundational pillars of universal order, the elements that allowed the universe to function as flawlessly as it did.
'I want to go further.' Damien thought to himself.
He tried to take a step, but he was blocked by an invisible wall.
There was a wall signifying the nonexistence of the proceeding step, a barrier that Damien couldn't break no matter how much power he put into it.
'I want to see the top, but I can't even see the path forward…'
Damien's eyes narrowed.
'I have to work harder.'
When the system gave Damien that advice all those years ago, it stopped its explanation after proposing the existence of "Nihility."
However, Damien was unresigned to this.
He could feel it instinctually.
There was something beyond that wall, something that hadn't even been theorized by the universe itself yet!
He wanted to climb up and find the truth behind his feeling, breaking through the watershed impeding him and—
Whoosh!
Damien's eyes shot open.
'It's over already?'
Around him was no longer a void, but a landscape dyed in red.
From the rocky and desolate ground below to the sun and smh above, the entire realm was dyed in a bleak red hue.
Damien calmly stood up and surveyed the surroundings.
'The survivability difference between Seduction and Solitude was marginal, but there's no way a Demigod would waste time increasing the difficulty level so lightly. They're trying to steal my body, not test me.'
Likely, it was his own fortitude that allowed him to pass Solitude so easily.
What happened from this point forward would only be worse.
Damien took a confident step forward, walking with his back straight as a sword.
He walked for an unknown period of time through the bleak landscape before he finally understood the identity of the test.
It was "Insecurity."
'The Marionette Lord's methods are far more methodical than their personality. After shaking the target's mental stability, they immediately attack the greatest insecurities that the target has. Unless one survives the previous attack without any damage, they wouldn't be able to help being shaken by something like this.'
Before Damien was depicted a scene so tangible he was almost sucked into it.
It was a scene of tragedy.
The tragedy that was Damien's final remaining insecurity.
