Chapter 264 Sigils

Long ago, in the Era of the Gods, when the continent of Krione had an abundance of Higher Beings living in harmony with its people, there lived beings with a value close to such higher beings.

These beings were the Ascension Dragons. Supposedly the descendants of the world’s first Dragons, the True Dragons. Inherently, each and every single Ascension Dragon was akin to a natural disaster due to their bloodline.

Amongst these Ascension Dragons, the most popularly known was Fafnir, the first and only King of Ascension Dragons. Dragons, being naturally arrogant creatures were mostly never seen flocking in groups of more than 4. This was even more so a fact for Ascension Dragons who saw themselves as the true rulers of the world.

Yet, they were all subdued and made to follow the rules of this one Ascension Dragon, known as the closest to the True Dragons.

Even with this status, the truth of the matter was that there existed beings still stronger than these Ascension Dragons. The Primordial Gods who ruled over Krione for example.

Attaining a seat amongst the Primordials was more than enough to prove that Fafnir truly was one of the greatest gods.

The dragon felt he deserved a seat amongst these great gods, so he rudely demanded a position amongst them. This was the beginning of his downfall.

The lowest ranked Primordial, the Great Dark, took offence in Fafnir’s action, so severely weakened the dragon and banished him to spend the rest of his never-ending life in the flesh of humans, with the mind of a beast.

For decades, Fafnir, now known as a Fallen God, went on a rampage, causing destruction in his very wake. That is, till a renowned S rank adventurer was dispatched to kill him.

In what was supposed to be his end, Fafnir found a new beginning. The adventurer saved his life, helped him regain his senses. Fafnir and this adventurer fell in love and this love birthed twins. Demi-gods. A boy and girl. Their names, Erin and Eren.

This new life was short lived, as a human couldn’t handle being so close to gods for so long. Their power was slowly killing her. In a desperate attempt to save her life, Fafnir sought help from the very beings that caused his descent into madness.

One of the Primordials, heard him out, with the condition of the Fallen God selling his soul. In a heartbeat, Fafnir agreed. His soul was bound to a certain group whom the Primordials owed and every single action of his was going to be decided by this specific primordial.

Unfortunately, it was too late. When he returned, she was dead and her soul had been destroyed with no hope of recovery whatsoever.

His children also died of the most mundane cases, leaving him an empty husk. His only purpose now, to serve the one he sold his soul to.

*

“We’re here.”

Fafnir’s voice bellowed as he dropped Minerva down on the ground. In front of him, there was a stage made of marble with seven uneven pillars rooted around the stage. These pillars were pearly white and bore several cracks in them.

“You see, this fallen dragon god was made to go round collecting certain artefacts. Exactly seven of them.”

He walked up to the shortest pillar and took out the pouch he had tied to his waist. From within the pouch, a small golden item appeared. Its appearance resembled that of a medal. The form of a cloaked reaper was etched into the medal.

“Holy items, seals, artefacts, emblems. Sigils. Several names for these tiny, yet immeasurably powerful items.”

The Black Knight raised up the sigil for Minerva to see.

“This, the reaper signifies the god who governs over the dead and anything dark. Themmir, the Great Dark.”

He scouted the pillar for any openings that was the same size as the sigil. Once he discovered it, he shoved the sigil into the pillar. The pillar glowed with a black light before dimming down.

“That, I acquired in the bowels of hell. Was no easy feat, I promise you.”

Slowly, he marched towards the next pillar. From his pouch emerged another golden item, but with a different symbol. A woman with three wolves.

“The Maiden of the Moon. Also the mother of all lycanthropes. The god who controls the night and its monsters. Ruotl, the Moonlit Goddess. Oddly enough, this was hidden somewhere in the Dourean desert.”

He fixed in the sigil and a silver light engulfed the pillar. Fafnir moved to the next pillar, going in order of ascending size.

The next sigil was a tree that had little creatures surrounding it, alongside a figure sitting and praying to the tree.

“Mother Nature. Need I say more about the cruellest of the gods? Haha! I found this in Larm Forest. To think this was hiding inside Goliath’s body. I now see why ‘he’ put such a curse on me.”

Once he placed the sigil in, the pillar glowed green. Next, he took out a sigil with a very odd figure on it. It was a person with the torso of a human woman and the tail of a fish, holding a trident in hand.

“The most mysterious of all the Primordials, surprisingly. Even I know not much about her. Found this somewhere in the Bewildering Sea.”

He wasted no time in fixing the sigil – a blue light glowed- and going to the next one. The new sigil showed a man in thought with the sun above the man.

“The Pondering Sun. Some people mistake him for the King of Gods given his intense presence and wisdom. However, he is merely the son of the King. Sol, the Undying Fire, God of the Sun that rains down mana. This was kept in the Red Magic Tower of the demon country.”

The pillar was swallowed up by flames instead of simple light. The ground shook mightily after this. An earthquake so powerful that even Fafnir couldn’t help but feel some form of discomfort.

He stumbled back and gulped. There were two more pillars left, but he was getting a bad feeling about this. Before deciding on whether to proceed, he looked at Minerva. She was clearly unhurt and still glaring at him.

Seeing that everything was alright, he shrugged then walked to the next pillar. He took one of the last two sigils he possessed. An armoured man in a chariot charging at something.

“The Flying God of War. Chief Commander of the armies of the heavens and the one who sees everything. Truly worthy of the title, Horizon’s Strongest God of War. I duelled one his subordinates once. It was a good fight, but I clearly wasn’t ready to face him yet. I found this sigil in Ongril’s tower. Amusing, right?”

Once he placed the sigil in the pillar. Several streaks of lightning flashed, thunder boomed and the clouds swarmed, darkening. Harrowing winds screamed as if telling Fafnir not to continue any further and the temperature dropped severely to a barely manageable degree for the residents of the mountain.

Fafnir didn’t really feel the change in temperature, but same couldn’t be said of Minerva who was shivering. This would be the first time in years that she had felt so cold.

The pillar crackled with grey lightning and Fafnir shrugged. He had just one final pillar left, so he couldn’t wait. He walked quickly and took out the last sigil.

“This was supposed to be in the city of clouds, but that place was razed to the ground by someone. I traced it to somewhere in the south of Larm. A common village of beast men had it, can you believe? They wanted to fight me, so I entertained them. Didn’t end too well though.”

The headless, robed saint.

“With this, Horizon shall open up!”

He raised the sigil up with a maniacal grin on his face.

“The saint, Messiah, Saviour! King of the Gods, Lord of the First Light! Creator of the World! He who possesses as many names as there are believers. Ovlo, the god of Light.”

With the final sigil placed in, the storm settled down. The sky was still darkened due to the clouds occupying the sky. However, now all the pillars started to interact with one another. Light spread from one pillar to the other, till all of them were touching in one way or the other.

At the centre of the connecting rays of light, one concentrated beam shot out to the heavens, parting the clouds. A shockwave powerful enough to send Fafnir slamming into a wall erupted. The Black Knight fell down next to the hob-goblin.

As a higher being, Fafnir was privy to sensing an unnatural rip in the space of any dimension he was in. Unlike teleportation which was simply moving spaces in a single dimension, traversing between dimensions required more power and gave off a completely unnatural feel as such a thing was never supposed to be done in the first place.

He had done it.

3 decades of tireless searching and he had accomplished his goal. Even better, he found a remnant of his once destroyed family.

It was almost enough to make him cry tears of joy.

He sat up and grabbed Minerva, pulling her in closer. He pointed at the stage where a tear in the dimension had been formed.

“That, is the gate to Horizon. Very soon, the gods will swarm this realm.”

As he spoke, a hand reached out of the gate. However, Fafnir’s face tightened when he took a closer look.

“W-What is that?”

For the first time in her life, Minerva asked a question shakily out of pure dread. The dragon god dropped Minerva and took out his claymore.

The hand – claw – wasn’t that of a god. At least not that of the gods of Horizon. Another claw popped up through the portal. Both pulled hard, widening the rip.

‘This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. Wait… this energy… it’s chaos energy.’

The evil nature of the energy being released from the rift sent Fafnir a trip down memory lane. Still, he wasn’t really concerned.

Certainly, Fafnir was a very confident being. In the past, he assumed he was the strongest there was. Even now, he still thought of himself as the strongest in the mortal world. As he looked at the being escaping through the rift, Fafnir couldn’t help but wonder why the being was so weak.

He dropped his sword, perplexed.

The being escaped from the rift and floated right in front of the rift. Energy shot up from the sigils as they shot out rays of light at the being. The indescribably grotesque creature wailed in pain as it was attacked from all directions.

Fafnir couldn’t help but notice that the amount of chaos energy the being had was being reduced overtime, as was the magic power of the sigils.

"What’s happening? Why are the sigils losing pow- no.”

The sigils were trying to eradicate the chaos energy the creature was exuding by using up their reserved Divine energy.

He needed the sigils to be at full power to keep the gate open long enough for at least the top gods to return to the realm.

“I have to kill that thing before all the divine energy is used up then.”

Fafnir raised his sword once more and got into a stance. He swept his leg back and dug deep into the ground. He took in a deep breath and commanded the mana in the air to gather around his sword. To accomplish his goal, he needed to first distort the flow of divine energy.

Unfortunately, divine energy, unlike mana, did not require a medium to work so breaking the space around the being wouldn’t have much benefit. Rather, he would simply need to cancel the very energy.

Divine and Chaos energy worked on the principle of Karma. Negative Karma equalled chaos energy and positive karma equalled Divine energy.

Fallen gods, naturally are supposed to fall under Negative Karma region, but Fafnir was only a fallen god in title. In truth, he was neither positive nor negative. He existed in the neutral space in between both and could never tilt towards one side.

To bypass this one weakness of his, Fafnir would simply dominate his surrounding space with [Dragon God’s Domain], creating a region in which not even Divine and Chaos energy can exist. This was the Fallen Dragon God’s trump card against any other higher being developed over the course of him searching for the sigils.

This caused the [Dragon God’s Domain] to develop a much more powerful variant known as the Ultimate skill [Neutral Domain].

Once the domain was casted, the flow of chaos and divine energy he could once feel had been cut off. In that instant, he thrusted his sword as hard as he could. He had no fear that the stage would be destroyed as it couldn’t even be scratched by the strongest of gods most powerful attacks.

A streak of light cut right through the being’s centre and it let an even more horrendous shriek than before.

Surprisingly enough, the being tore up into seven different parts. These seven parts all glowed with different colours; red, green, orange, violet, yellow, blue, white.

In that instant, Fafnir recognised what that being was.

“Shit.”

The seven parts were already scrambling in different directions. Quickly, he threw his sword at one of the seven parts, stabbing it into the ground and leaving the others to go away, unharmed.

“That… was unexpected.”

He walked up the part that was screaming on the ground and scratched his head while thinking about what to do with it. It was drastically weakened, but still impossible for him to destroy.

“FAFNIR!”

A voice boomed from seemingly nowhere. The dragon god let out a depressed sigh, knowing who it was. He turned around and, in his shadow, a pair of eyes were glaring at him.

“Primordia-”

“You were not supposed to activate the gate before the decided date, so explain to me why I felt more than half of my power disappear!?”

‘Oh?’

This was news to Fafnir. He didn’t expect to hear that opening the gate would weaken the god.

‘Does it have something to do with the sigil?’

He was only informed that the Primordials kept a portion of their power in the sigils in order to be able to still interact with the mortal realm, but if opening it was enough to cause them to lose about half of their power, then maybe…

“Explain yourself!”

“Sorry. I thought if I did this ear-”

“When you thought you could join the ranks of us Primordials, what happened?”

…

“What happened?”

…

“Answer me!”

“I fell from grace.”

“When you thought you could get a mortal family to replace your original family, what happened?”

…

“Do not make me repeat myself.”

“I lost them.”

“Now listen here, I don’t know how your brain functions, but clearly, when you think it never goes well. I am warning you for the last time. If you dare try to improvise on my orders, I will make you regret it. Is that understood?”

“Yes…”

Fafnir went down on one knee and bowed his head.

“The comet should be arriving in about 3 months. The hero has caught wind of this and will come here to stop you from accomplishing this goal. Your mission is to make sure he fails at that task and that the gods successfully descend. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

With that, his shadow returned to normal.

<A/N: Hey guys, it's been a while. Sadly, I'm not going to be writing for another month. I feel like I haven't really done this story any justice considering the kind of reactions I've gotten.

Ok, let me rephrase, I'm going to be writing a lot in the next month, I just won't be releasing next month. Going forward, I want my work to only be released after going through intense scrutiny. That means less grammatical errors, a more cohesive story and less chapters that feel "useless". For this reason, please excuse me to another month.

Also, secondary reason: My brain died after exams, Imma need to recover. Later!>