The Chapter of the Seventh Realm

I arrived in a half-realm. I had once been here with Rexus many centuries ago.

Unknown in my power, yet to even see the First Realm, how sweet the ignorance had been.

Now that I have returned I quickly made the ground for my side of the realm and on the other side I could see Rexus starting on his own house.

The realm suddenly lurched when it felt my influence as an owner of this realm.

Blue veins appeared in the sky going from the edge of the realm and then going up to the center of this realm where it formed a sun like sphere.

In several places, a white vein came up from the ground and I had no idea what these things did yet but there were only a dozen of them with nearly all of them on my side of the realm. Sanctifying my part of the realm with my influence, I went to work on personifying it.

I added a layer of lush black grass to the earth and placed tall black trees with red leaves. I know it may look creepy but if you add the few white veins in the ground and the blue glow from those in the sky.

Another interesting thing about those blue veins was that for a year they were very bright and made it look like day with a blue sky and after that year it took another for it to slowly go darker until it was night with an ever present blue full moon and that took 3 years before it brightened again.

Those few white veins sprouted a fire every time it had taken enough power from my realm. Those fires, which I called shades as they were basically pure power, gained more intelligence the more they aged.

The time for it took for them to appear was at the least a few dozen years and for them to gain sentience two centuries.

At least I calculated that it would take them two centuries with the current rate as I have eleven shades that I don’t know where to put and most likely another eleven coming up.

I ended up creating eleven great towers upon the white veins.

Now they are just appearing in a pit at the bottom of them and Eris checks up on them every so often and brings them to the higher levels.

I also created a few Lights that I gave human form. We had to teach them how to serve us though and then just had them teach each other and their few offspring.

They weren’t half bad.

In the middle of mine realm, there is my palace, which in turn is surrounded by five temples.

The palace is my home while my spawn live in the surrounding temples. The servants have several houses between them all and build new ones when their numbers require it.

Within the palace I set to tinkering with creating a truly new race.

I know that since goblins and other such races most likely haven’t ever been on earth they could be counted as never having existed but they are still an old race.

After a thousand years I came with this; The Carn, who are rather tall and slim at 2 meters average, have pale red tinted skin and small pointed ears.

They also look rather predatory with claws on their hands and feet and carnivore teeth, which means they only eat meat if you aren’t so bright.

With the Magic Corruption, I managed to twist it so that they don't need to eat as often as their physique would suggest due to mana conversion to sustenance and that there was a fifty percent chance for a Carn to have magic if their parents both had it too. Otherwise it should be twenty-five percent.

They also have a good intelligence and average strength compared to humans.

A side effect of the Magic Corruption was that their maximum mana increases with age but starts of very low, luckily they could age to several tens of thousand of years at the maximum.

They reproduce at the speed of 'a child every few centuries'.

When we use some of population here to colonize Unrec, we will have them offer up their lives to us when they are a hundred years old.

If I can’t stand them or need extra power then I will take their lights.

If not then they live for another thousand years before doing so again and then for two thousand years and then three, four, until they die. I am hoping that they will be talented mages though I don’t care about the sword.

I also plan on teaching them enchanting and architecture; just to be sure I don’t create a barbarian civilization.

After two thousand years I had a population of 159 from where I started with 30.

Just to be sure, I already started the offering tradition but I only took one bloody annoying little mortal who I gladly would have thrown into the Abyss.

As it was, it would have been better if I used him as food for the shades or enlarged my part of the realm in hindsight. Though I certainly would not have reincarnated or used him for as a soldier in a whole undead army.

The necromancy implied with that is quite complex too. I would imagine mortal necromancers would be able to capture whole lights, fires or other or if they are clumsy, broken ones.

You would then have to find a host to use them and a vessel to collect them. We gods are naturally vessels ourselves but mortals or even immortals have very little space inside their being for this.

They would have to figure something out for all that though since I certainly won’t bother.

Back to the beginning, I do think it would be useful to collect some sort of undead army.

I would have to train the lights, fires or some other being, to increase their skill but since they should all be whole; they would be able to learn.

These magics are quite interesting; I hope that my people will try to learn it themselves.

Just before I started preparing leaving for Unrec and looking for a spot, I noticed that a few of the shades had gotten to the lowest level of sentience. I of course visited them immediately.

They knelt as soon as they saw me.

“You may rise. Good. Tell me shade, what is your purpose?”

“To serve. To live. To create a new source”

“What does a source do?”

“Make new of us”

“And what can you do”

“Serve, live and create new source”

“Yes yes, you already told me that. I mean what makes you a shade?”

“Am shade?”

Eugh! I have better uses for my time than this. While I may have patience while working, I don’t have as much when talking. “See me when you are smarter”

“But see you now?” I could hear the shade say before I left.

I really did not have the patience for such a conversationalist. I doubt he would even recognize that as a word.

Having lived through that brief disappointment, I went forth to organize around half of my Carn population for the colonization of Unrec and as they did that I went over to see how Rexus was doing.

When I came to the barrier wall, I send a request to cross it over to him. After waiting a cycle of day and night of my realm, I could feel the barrier mold to allow me passage to his side.

Don’t worry though, I can always return to my side when I want but he has to let me know when he wants to go there same for me to his side.

Rexus his realm was quite different from mine to say the least.

We may share the same ”sun” but there it really stops though. His realm is a plain covered in green grass but with white sand strewn between them.

Think of it as a mix of grassland and a desert.

In the distance I could see an enormous stone tree but then without its leaves. Of course Rexus his house just had to be between its titanic branches.

It was also very windy here. Ah, so that’s where that occasional breeze in my part of the realm came from.

It seems that just like Rexus had gotten my sky, I also gotten a few of his influences.

But just as the wind in my part is negligible, the sky here has an actual 24 hours cycle with roughly 15 hours of daylight and the others night. Interesting.

It also looked like a white vein was once here but with the barrier up, it died off.

So on my way to his house, I worked on a design of a dungeon, which I should be able to create with the magic corruption and at least a few blank lights or fires.

Maybe it would need some Life corruption for it to absorb power?

I wrote it in my book anyway, something to look in for later.

As I neared Rexus’s pretty tree, I could see no one nearby though I could feel his spawn up high in the tree.

It really was tall though, something close to two kilometers maybe? Rising up at a speed whereby I could get a good look at it all, I spotted Thorn climbing up the tree.

“Thorn! Why are you climbing the tree?”

“I fell! Don’t distract me! I don’t want it happening again!”

“Then why don’t you just fly or something?”

“Why take the easy path when you can take the hardest route!”

Idiot… Well, his choice but I am not letting him near Solhok.

That one is nearly as bad as Thorn without them competing. Continuing up and further ignoring Thorn, I went up to the biggest palace without wasting any further time of mine. Sensing a divine presence nearby, I came closer to see if it was Rexus.

I arrived to a pavilion with a garden surrounding it on top of one of these palaces. Rexus was sitting on a table there together with another person whom I believe to be Vera.

“So, how does your realm fare Rexus?”

“The same as yours or you would have noticed”

“I don’t know how but your personality has gone even worse from before”

“The true death of a spawn of yours does that not to mention my own temporary one. At least Vera has been returned to me, but if I hadn’t left then… No matter, what’s it that brings you here Asen?”

“I am about to set out for Unrec with a few dozen of a race that I made myself, the Carn, and came by to see how you fare. Seems well enough but still quite empty”

“Ha ha ha ah ha ah ha. You know, I should have expected that. I, in fact, am still quite busy in just creating its mentality. I know that they should be mortal and that its less important thus but that’s not actually true. If I don’t do it right now then go a few dozen generations further and they are all barbarians worshiping someone else or just one of my House and hate the rest.

Agh, but who am I telling this, you most likely have thought of all that as well, if not more. For your knowledge though, I am planning to create something that should resemble the Gnomes we once read about.

If you could help me with the planning of their instincts, that would be great. I am thinking of something along the lines of that the lives of all the gnomes are worth more than their own”

“That’s a little too unadaptable, take for example a rising commander or builder gets killed because a few other gnomes were in danger.

To prevent that, just have it so that the lives of those above them or more valuable have higher priority. Like a gnome in return for the lives of many of their children, their leaders or their elders. You would have the strongest get supported by the weak, which makes for a good foundation for a civilisation”

“Sounds like a fragile thing, but I will see if I can get a few of that mentality and a few of my idea and place them nearby to see who survives. Yeah, I think I will go for that. It will take near double the amount of time though… Ah, Asen, you are still here. Well I have to warn you that us black gods will be taking a lot longer to get to Unrec with a race than you white gods or even those red ones. Well good-bye then. Success with yours”

“Yes thank you, I see that you are busy once more so… I guess I will leave” I slowly said as Rexus began talking with Vera, who had remained silent the whole time, about his resurging ideas.

Having nothing to do anymore but wait or leave, I thought it would be time to get it over with and not ruin this potential head start.

Making my way back to my side, i could see that the population has once more increased to around 200, a hundred of which would colonise the new plane. I did leave them prepared for this for a few years but they had hopefully long enough life spans not to be bothered too much. Preparing to leave myself, I looked to where in the Abyss the realm should be around in and found it very quickly. I knew I couldn’t stay for long there even with some of my power returned because of the offerings of my people.

Getting them all together, I took them to their new home. Leaving this realm would open them to unknown changes but I got less power from their offerings here than I most likely would get if they were on the plane, probably due to the intervention of the realm. Ooooooh. Damn. Forgot to scout out a location…

Guess I will have to place them on that place where I instigated the magic core lines. I can always look for another site when we are there. My people would most likely also need the help of my entire House but I don’t know how they would cope on the planet.

Never mind, I guess I will find out anyway.