Floating high above the Earth, a dozen specs of light hung in the thin air.

Incredibly stable, they each sat without even the slightest tremor of movement – anchored absolutely to the ground below.

One by one mana began to pool and gather as each spec expanded outwards. Mana slowly swirled into an avatar for each of the gods.

The holy mother and Mortimer now stood in the air facing each other. Mother’s avatar was a swirl of cloth – as if thin transparent white sheets were wrapped around an invisible woman.

The imprint of her face was warm and kind – contrasting the sharp glare her cloth eyes were making towards the undead god.

In comparison, Mortimer looked like a handsome mortal man in a simple black tunic.

His skin was healthy, his eyes a bright and cheerful blue.

The only sign of his undead origins was a single skeletal hand – grey skin flapping against polished bone. The smooth ivory fingers were clasped loosely around a short red rod of some unknown metal that looked almost like crystalized blood. This rod began to spin and twirl about in the silence like a stage conductor's baton.

The two dragon gods appeared next.

They had no names and few followers and so they were simply known as the red and black dragons.

Next the god of goblins and gold ‘Baba’. The god of gnomes and pranks ‘Trix’. The god of elves and nature who refused a name ‘elven god’. The god of dwarves and smithing ‘Myth’. The god of orcs, duels and war ‘Honor’. Even the god of merfolk ‘Pael’ was there – appearing as a single drop of water falling through space while maintaining its absolute position.

“Lets get this over with” Mortimer spoke clapping his hands together – wand gone one moment and then back again the next.

“I have by far the most experience with soul work so I’ll go first?”

“Prudence, whelp.” Baba spoke. Her hunched form of shawls and bones and smoke stepped forward into the center of the space.

“As the oldest and wisest, I hope you’ll allow me to lay a proper foundation.” The witch cackled.

“We don’t have time to argue over minor things” Mother spoke still glaring at Mortimer. “We need to work together as hard as that may be for some among us.”

“What are we making? What do we hope for it to do?” Trix spoke – pulling out a pen and beginning to jot down notes beside her in the air.

“We wish to create something to watch over and guard our children. Prevent the pain and luck involved with cultivation. Help create prosperity and lower conflict.” Mother began.

“I propose we simplify cultivation down into a steady increase in strength through age. Raise up the max-age of everyone slowly but surely – evenly and fairly giving everyone power. Magic for everyone.”

“Absolutely not. I am not participating in a neutering session – nor will I let my kin grow soft and dumb with coddling” The red dragon spoke.

“I suffered so others must as well? That’s no way to change the world for the better” Mother smiled, holding out her arms and letting them fall to her side.

“We already agreed to split responsibilities, No two races can be treated in the same way. Gift your kin your own boons and I shall gift mine, mine – I’ll have no part in helping you create your charity.” The red dragon rumbled the last words in a low roar.

Three divine half gods appeared around the mother defensively. One made as if to angrily yell but was stopped by a cloth softly blocking their movement. “As my pantheon is the largest I can take in all the poor unrepresented souls as well.” Mother began but was cut off by another.

“You are one to our two” the black dragon spoke for the first time, Her voice traveling strangely through the thin air like it was coming from far away.

“Red will take the dragons of the land and skies along with their spawn and the monsters they came from” Black began,

“Black will take the dragons of the sea and sky along with their ilk” Red continued.

“Just because you’ve enslaved those seeds and others doesn’t mean we don’t outnumber you”. Black started again.

“They are not enslaved, They are each my children!” Mother's voice rose a tick.

“They haven’t crystalized their own divine shell and by prematurely giving them a body made from your own divine mana they can never do so. Is that the sort of system you want to make? Minor gods, no one ever joining our ranks again?” Red spoke.

“You can undo your spell at any time destroying their body – sounds like you hold all the power over them,” Black spoke.

“We’ll take the strays…” Red started.

“…and help them fit in with whatever mess you create” Black ended.

“Children!” Baba snapped.

“The tapestry of fate is strong today. We need to start.” She continued after calming herself again. A loom appeared in front of her – thin lines of divine fate wrapped back and forth into a lumpy cloth filled with frayed edges and misshapen stitches of ‘other’.

“Guess it's time to stop enjoying the show, Always nice to see someone else call that hypocrite out” Mortimor laughed and strode over to Baba’s loom to peer down at the threads.

Mother looked over at the threads lightly before turning away and ignoring them entirely.

“Let's start the process Tea” she spoke unfurling her body – divine mana continuously spooling out in a long white parchment.

“I’ll start the rules then. We only have one shot to set this up. Give me a time or two” Trix stood back and blurred suddenly.

Her little spark of mischief became a dozen and then a hundred – little golden clones each moving about at an insane blur of speed as they ripped the cloth into separate sheets and enchanted line after line. Waving a metal plate, the dwarven god pulled a meteorite into orbit beside him and then blurred as well – compressing years of time down into a minute, as he forged pillars and chains out of space iron.

The other gods watched for a moment before joining in – each performing their own magics in their own way.

The dungeon god was not truly present – not in person like the rest of the gods. He couldn’t be. Instead, he had sent a proxy and spoke through them. A half-god dungeon boss mostly ignored by the others began pumping out materials the god had sent with him, most of his comments ignored.

Incredibly magical materials transported over and mixed in with the divine mixes the others had created shifting about into every part of the working but being overwhelmed and lost in his non presence.

“We are giving them a form of our own cultivation are we not?” The god of dwarves Myth spoke, briefly ending his sped up time to ask.

“Yes, breaking apart each of our cultivation methods into levels and experience. We reached godhood with these methods – I’m sure others can as well. Every manner of leveling is a manner we have tried and tested and proven to work.” Mother cut in.

“Cultivation is a personal thing, Can anyone really reach godhood following solely in our footsteps?” Pael spoke for the first time.

“It’s the best we can do in the time we have.” Mortimer added in. “…and our best is pretty good.”

Red curled his avatar – pulling his large frame down into a draconic humanoid who strode between each of the items his peers were making with a frown.

“I don’t trust any of these weak piddly spells you lot are making. You’re all half-assing it. Magic needs sacrifice and cost to be strong enough to really matter” He finally growled his feelings. Not leaving time for anyone to answer, Red lifted up his right arm and slashed down with his left claw severing it. The divine flesh fell down - solidifying as it did before being caught by the god of elves.

Blood floated in the air, meaning flashed and Baba’s loom thrummed like a harp. A spell created by the dragon's flesh willingly sacrificed.

“Going hard aren’t we” Mortimer laughed, flicking his wand and summoning all the dragon god blood into a sphere above him.

“…a beautiful material. Better even than divine mana for what I was planning, Thanks~” He spoke before twisting reality.

The gods were silent for a period once more before one by one they finished. Baba’s threads were now tied to each of their items – the thousand separate books of rules from the gnome, the massive several kilometer long chains and boxes from the dwarf. Slowly the last part of this ritual became complete as everything grew more metaphysical. Each of the rules of reality shifted as they fit themselves into Law space.

“We don’t need this do we?” Trix spoke while poking a lumpy block of rules about some fundamental aspect of reality.

“Could make more room if we tossed it”.

“Don’t touch anything unnecessarily.”

Slowly the [System] was woven through natural architecture. Nodes were placed around the world each containing a book of rules, a box of runes, a plant, or simply a lump of flesh.

After a certain point the [System] wasn't truly any of the nodes but in the links between them. It built like a web of neurones growing exponentially denser with each new node added.

And then they were done, A single spark of mana from all of them set the working and one by one [system panels] began appearing in front of everyone with a soul.

Mortimer pulled up a blank panel in front of him and asked everyone offhand to test their own connection.

“Why ever is my level so low?”

“Do not reset our displayed level to 0 at godhood – I refuse to be outleveled by a mortal”

“Sorry, it’s a relatively simple display we can change it now.”

“A newborn god is level 1000 – okay? Good base point to tare it to? Our cultivation after that point will be our level”

“That’s fine”

A simple twist and everyone’s status appeared in front of them for the first time.

“Cute” Mother spoke staring at her screen.

The Holy Mother

Level 2318.

Experience to next level N/A

Mana 12/100 Threads.

“We have to return again. Today we lost a lot, we can only hope we gained an equal amount” Myth said before slicing reality and throwing himself as deep into the void as he could.

One by one the rest of the gods followed, each rushing as fast as they could to return.

…

The Celestial realm was in trouble.

Earthling gods had abandoned their posts for several precious, precious hours to enact their planned system – leaving the remaining gods on an offensive retreating battle.

The battle. The only real battle. The endless battle against the void.

‘----~_~----’ The deity comprised of trillions of swirling motes of divinity grumbled – a hive god whose preferred avatar was a bright pink cloud of mist welcomed the gods back with frustrated flashes of thought-light.

“Don’t worry lil buddy. Our sacrifices today will be worth it. Soon more gods will appear – dozens of friends levelling into greatness with our grand system. If they bottleneck near the end we can help them the rest of the way.” Mortimer twisted into being first – his voice proceeding his void-walking travel to the edge of the universe by seconds.

{We have lost over a dozen light-hours of real-space for your thirteen-hour-long vacation. That’s space we will never recover – and we’ll lose more before the day’s over.} a buzz of lights assailed his divine sense.

A ripping noise appeared – space flapping about like a torn cloth as the rest of the earth gods appeared and took up their mantles once more.

“We agreed to do this, regret is for mortals and other fallible beings” the mother spoke, her voice carrying out into the vacuum of space with sorrow.

“Stop using mortal as an insult you old hag. I quite like the squishy god eggs.” Mortimer snapped back, the truce of [system] creation no longer holding his tongue.

“Myth, come help me man the celestial cannons. Three stars should be enough to regain our foothold – right?” The god of gnomes called over to the god of dwarves who drifted away from the bickering to assess the fight.

A twist of perception skewed everything into a less realistic but more accurate view of reality. The battlefield shrunk, the entire edge of the universe now in view.

Ahead of them a wall of void rippled forwards through the vacuum of reality – pushed forward and backed by three demonic planets.

The evolution of demonic whales.

Demonic whales 10,000,000km long. Blimps of demonic matter so massive, they warped the edge of real-space thousands of kilometers out from their positions.

Behind each of these planet-eating, universe-destroying creatures, hundreds of demonic whales “just” thousands of km long, rode. And, behind them, trillions of twitchy little demonic fodder swarmed – too many to count.

Mana had gods, the void and its anti-mana had…these “planets”.

A deeper switch of perception and Myth stood in a shredded celestial world. The “world” was a…metaphysical one without a real physical location. It existed by definition at the edge of the universe and as the edge was constantly under assault and currently being pushed back at the speed of light it too was shifting.

Demonic whales were hard to kill even for gods – they resisted mana to a truly annoying degree.

These planet sized ones? Even gods couldn’t kill them easily.

No matter how much power they magic ’ed into existence, it was still that…magic.

At least without cheating.

Myth moved forward and slid into place behind a cannon, running his divine sense over its creation and then unlocking its clasps.

These cannons were the trump cards. The last resort.

Myth pulled back the end of the cannon – its form closer to a sling shot at the moment as he wrapped its bowl around a nearby star.

The cannons were the solution to demons being resistant to magic. An ancient mess of spellwork made by an unknown god with a limited resource for ammo.

Pulling the cannon back, Myth dragged the metaphysical bowl over to the nearest star – loading the cannon. He was distantly aware of his fellow gods manning their own canons aiming for their own whales…but he had his own prey to kill.

As he manipulated the metaphysical construct, a swirl of space wrapped around a ball of burning hydrogen 1.5 billion kilometers across.

Divine mana swirled through the vacuum creating matter for the spell to attach to and space warped as the star was grabbed and carefully sliced away from reality.

The ball was loaded into the cannon – its shape now a long solid tube and Myth began final preperations to fire.

Divine mana was pumped out into the working – nearly all the mana the god had, rushing out and then into place. A hum of reality and the star was hurled out in a ball of space – tearing forwards towards the planet in front of him.

Severed space accelerated through real space before being carefully let go and unravled – the stars final few billion kilometers comprised of it moving “mundanely”, no real magic in its passage.

There was barely an impact as the sun hit the titanic demon in the lead – engulfing it completely even as it passed and continued on into the whales behind it.

Barely a change in shape or size as the burning projectile tore across the battlefield – wiping out countless whales the gods were unable to effectively kill themselves.

Myth felt sick looking at the carnage.

This attack was a double edged sword. It was single handedly the strongest, most effective weapon the gods could use – a wish upon a shooting star…but they came out at a loss in the end.

They were feeding the void after all. The energy of the sun attacked the void – slowing it down…but given time that would be killed – the sun snuffed out by the void and cooled into a solid hunk of material.

Given a millenia or two and this much mass would create many times the demons they had killed today.

The worst of the unkillables killed, Myth left his post to charge forward – holding a massive hammer forged in a dead star at his side.

Alone in real space far, far, far away from his fellow gods but side by side in the divine battlefield he fought.

He swung his hammer again and again, ripples of force travelling through kilometres of flesh in perpetuity. The endless battle. Void heart after void heart shattered.

Each demon he killed funnelled meaning into his cultivation – intent siphoned off into his anchor. Slowly but surely the encroaching void slowed, slowed and then stopped.

A stalemate once more.

The god of dwarves was not good at fighting. His section of battlefield was much smaller than others.

In exchange he helped fortify the realm in other ways.

As the battle stilled reality solidified more, a link to the dungeon god appeared before him. The dungeon god now spoke in blue boxes – he seemed to have grown attached to them in the brief time since the system had been made.

In many ways the dungeon god was the celestial realm – the dungeon’s body the actual ground he stood on now.

In other ways he was simply another god. A friendly guy who worked closely with Myth on many a project.

Moving to where the realm directed, Myth began to smelt space – reinforcing the biggest cracks and recreating their wall. His namesake was pulled into being as he worked - Mytheral the metal of creation.

That metal was used to plug holes roughly.

Myth drew rune after rune. He created a moat of sorts to keep the demons back. A massive tub of booze was deposited beside him courtesy of the realm.

He thanked the ground and took a swig.

Today had been a lot.