The Path To Perfection

Chapter 36: Pantheon

Jurdelious, Krene, Ozia, Stylaff, and Ris exchanged glances. "*sigh* Clearly, someone has stolen it."Ozia spoke in that monotone robotic voice of his.

"Yes, someone powerful enough to avoid our detection," Krene stated as she rested her back on her chair.

"What do we do?" Ris asked.

Jurdelious answered, "I'll take care of it in the future. Since everyone here has used it, we won't be needing it anytime soon, at least this person didn't hurt Al'ravee."

Al'ravee was stumped. ‘That thing was literally inside me.'

"Why wasn't I able to choose the concept of reality?" He asked.

"I'm guessing that this was a thoughtful intervention on the thief's part, even if you had gotten it, you would have not been able to use it properly. It would have caused a concept lock." Krene answered.

Al'ravee still didn't know what exactly a concept lock was.

"Anyways." Krene waved her hand to grab everyone's attention and to change the topic, before turning to Al'ravee, "You said you got the concept of force?"

Krene had her own thoughts on this matter.

"Yes, I haven't tested it out yet but I can make some guesses on its uses," Al'ravee said while scratching his head. "If only I had some guide to follow". He looked up with a bit of expectation.

Al'ravee knew from Ris's age that it would take a very long time to become stronger. Now that he heard that Ris was previously just a wandering god, Al'ravee had concluded that it was either Ris was just taking a very long time or he had no guidance.

Al’ravee was not willing to accept such a slow rate of progress.

Jurdelious and Krene turned to look at each other, their eyes flashing dangerously with glints of terrifying intelligence. They then simultaneously looked at Ozia and Krene gave him a knowing nod.

"Very well," Ozia spoke out.

Al'ravee was intrigued by the quick and silent e

Jurdelious stood up "Let's not take too much time. Al'ravee, you are the only one in this room who doesn't know that I and your mother were involved in a very interesting battle thousands of years ago. That vision you saw was just a portion of it when we were still world-level gods. Our souls were nearly obliterated out of existence and we only managed to survive by scaring off enemies and forcing ourselves to go into hiding.

Thousands of years later, we have both gotten stronger. We made sure to hunt down each of those gods and either sealed them or destroyed them.

As for the cause of that fight. Hehe, like we said, gods can be very troublesome..."

Al'ravee didn't know how this was related to what he wanted but he listened attentively.

"... During one of those days I was trying to comprehend the concept of annihilation and the concept of apocalypse, I destroyed tens of worlds. That wasn't much of a problem in the first place though. Because back then I was so strong, other gods would have had to swallow their anger and move on with the souls in their possession, voyaging for a new world.

But Krene who was with me then took all the souls. You can imagine it's like forcefully taking away your source of income.

They had no choice but to band together to fight us but our concepts weren't for show. Even getting the help of another world-level god only created a stalemate for a short time. I won't lie, that battle was legendary." Jurdelious said that last part as though he almost wanted to go back to that time.

"Anyways..." Krene said awkwardly. Jurdelious made it sound like she was a thief, well technically she was, so much for her motherly image.

"...Our souls were damaged during that fight and we managed to heal a bit after some time.

But the only way to heal a soul permanently is with another soul. For us extra powerful gods, we would need a vast amount of mortal souls to completely heal.

We are at a level where our souls are so fragile that we would have to enter a Slumber for the recovery to be effective. Our followers would send us souls during that time and no one would be able to interrupt us as our realms would naturally be shut off from the universe."

Al'ravee understood the gist everything he heard within a few moments. "When do you guys plan on starting? I'm also guessing you did not tell me this just for the sake of it." asked.

Krene sighed, "We originally would have begun five and a half centuries ago but then you came along". Krene said with a smile. "... As soon as we prepared you for your travel, we would have started but now we no longer have the Pathfinder.

We were planning to let one of you use that Pathfinder to covertly gather pantheon members of different strengths but it seems you all will have to improvise."

Al'ravee nodded slowly but he never planned on going through with what they were saying.

There was so much to explore, so many things to do. He wasn't going to use his time to recruit gods… for now. This was something he better left for when he was stronger.

"Sign this contract everyone!" Krene called out. She waved her hand towards the table, causing four rectangular papers to materialize in front of Stylaff, Ozia, Ris, and Al'ravee.

Al'ravee frowned, looking over, he quietly read the contents of the contract.

The contract was simple, it simply stated that whoever signed this contract was agreeing to a couple of things.

To joining the Allgod Pantheon.

That the hierarchy system was based on the number of concepts each individual had.

That the god or goddess with the highest amount of concepts was the leader and was to be given utmost respect and obedience.

That there could only be sixty-nine members of the Allgod pantheon.

That the conditions and name are liable to change by the leader.

And that going against the contract would leave the signee vulnerable to any punishment decided by the leader.

It was a very loose contract with many loopholes. If Ozia or Alravee ended up gaining more concepts than Krene or Jurdelious, wouldn't that make him the leader?

If there could only be sixty-nine members for now, then it would be easier to manage them. This would also put less burden on him when it comes to recruiting.

And if anyone decided to go against the contract, they could just be punished by the leader as he or she saw fit.

If the punishment was not worse than the very end of their existence, what would it be? banishment? Or maybe something else.

Looking around, Al'ravee could see that the others had already signed the contract and were waiting for him.

He looked down at the pen that had just materialized beside the paper. *sigh* After realizing that there was no escape, he signed it.

Immediately, Al'ravee felt a mark appear on his soul. He was now a member of the Allgod pantheon.

If he wanted to recruit someone into the pantheon, he just had to will it and a new contract would appear.

"Now that that's settled, let's move on." Krene stood up and said.