Chapter 86

Back at the Eternal Party, few of the unoccupied prime and high gods were gathered for a meeting.

"So, it's true that Lucifer failed! He got caught by local Shadow Mages. Why weren't we informed sooner?!" Prime god of Life, Fufluns, angrily shouted, while nervously tapping on the table with a wooden staff.

"It was not important. He pushed the Entity to the first evolution, allowing us to unravel a bit of its existence!" Architect defended himself, raising his perfect hands.

"By a mere fluke! And for what price? Orbisia's forces and Shadow Mages now know about it. And he pushed him towards the path of the butcher instead of the protector," The first Beholder, All-Gaze, god of Fate, barked at him.

"That doesn't matter. We have a perfect agent to steer it towards the path of the guardian." Architect proclaimed, his white beard shifted in the Elementum's gust.

"Who?" The prime god of elements, Elementum asked with a voice resembling a hurricane.

"Her," Architect waved his hand and a construct of a big ant with lightning stripes on her thorax showed in the middle of the Table.

Everyone incredulously looked at him.

"An ant?" High-god of Festivity and Acting, Hirsche, asked, his theatrical facemask showing a smile.

"Yes." Architect answered, and silenced Hirsche with a profound glare. The rest did not care; all mortals were ants to them.

"What about Lucifer?" Luvia, goddess of Love asked.

"Failure is a failure. He is mortal now, so who cares."

"His fate is hidden." Until now silent god of Karma, Roland, added.

"It's because of contact with the Entity and their unusual… connection. Nothing to worry about." Architect replied to Roland, who looked at him funny. Architect barely noticeable, but nervously shifted.

"What are you hiding?" God of Karma sent a divine message directly to his mind.

"... Nothing… And don't try to peek inside my memories. I learned from the Entity how to protect myself."

"Uhuh…" Roland grinned, but didn't say anything aloud.

"I have heard that the system keeps acting up around the Entity," god of emotions, Passione squinted.

"Nothing serious. I will update it later with the newly uncovered knowledge." Architect dismissed it, but a flash in his third eye betrayed his true emotions; concern. "Now, onto another matter; the Taint is spreading faster than I thought. We can suppress it and slow it down, but not stop it."

"Do we know where the Taint comes from yet?" Hirsche worriedly asked.

"No. We only know it spreads from the outside of our Universe." Architect replied.

"How long do we have left?" One of the ascended high-gods staying behind their respective prime-god, asked.

"According to Chronos, around 5 000 years of linear Core time." Again, Architect was the one to answer.

A nervous murmur from the gods spread over the table. Some were arguing, some were nervously trying to think of a different approach. In the end they were silenced by the Architect, who suddenly appeared in the middle of Table.

"So. Let's vote! Will we meddle with Orbisia's fate once more and risk that Big Guys will notice or will we let it be on its own accord and risk the death of the Entity?"

"Stone." Conjurarum suddenly said.

"What?" Architect asked.

"That's its name. Stone. Lucifer named." Conjurarum did not know if he should laugh or cry.

"Meddle."

"Meddle."

"Disagreed."

"Meddle."

"Disagreed."

…

In the end, the only ones disagreeing were Hirsche and Conjurarum.

"It's decided then. We will meddle with the Entity's progression once again for the last time," Architect said, "I repeat; one, last time. Otherwise, Big Guys will notice."

All of them gathered around the Table and cast an unison spell of Fate, connecting it to Orbisia and nearby realms. They carefully steered the fate of the world with All-Gaze at helm. They made changes here and there, changed the probabilities, helped others, while subdued the detrimental beings.

After all was done, all of them disappeared to their realms or returned to the Eternal Party to continue their debaucherous festivities, leaving the space empty, except they 'forgot' to disable the spell.

A black portal appeared in the corner and Mortalitas emerged from it. He carefully looked around, and walked towards the spell.

He raised his long, pale finger to it and added one single change.

"Now, we are even, Luci…" He murmured and entered his portal back to his Realm of Death.

☁☁☁☁☁☁

"Are we really letting them do it?" One of the unnamed Administrators asked as he planted a card with a picture of a star on the simple, metallic table.

"Yes." The other player simply replied, conjuring a star above them and planting a black hole over the first card.

"It's breaking the rules." The first Administrator stated, conjuring a black hole next to the star. It began to slowly consume it.

"What the Will of Origin doesn't know…" A third Administrator chipped in and drank from the Black Hole as he could not place another card.

"How very… mortal of you. We are here to protect the Core and uphold the rules." The first Administrator threw a card with a white hole on the small pile.

"The Taint is threatening the Core. We all know that. These changes will be for the last time. I attest to that." The second Administrator said, negating the black hole.

"Fine. I will let it slide. Now… Where were we? Ah, yes… You drink!" The third Administrator handed him the Keg of Eternal Beer.