Chapter 52

Ion stared silently towards Michael from his chair before a smile slowly spread across his face.

"You have ideals I can't say I understand, but what I do understand is that you have just proclaimed yourself my enemy."

The bodies spread throughout the room suddenly rose up with blood dripping from their lifeless eyes.

"Order is a rather particular individual. While he would certainly send an apostle to interfere if I were to outright attack you, he doesn't much care for what our subordinates get up to. Hell, he can't even see what they do."

Michael looked throughout the room, towards the monsters that inhabited it, and then back towards the flesh god, "You're underestimating me. You know that right?"

"Oh am I? Then prove your worth."

The first of the monsters took a step towards Michael, and lost its head almost as quickly when his mace passed through its head as if it were nothing but paper. The rest of them rushed towards him, but Michael simply ignored them. His attention was firmly on the opposing flesh god.

Michael disappeared with a flash and reappeared over Ion poised to bring down both weapons on the deity, but the god teleported to Michael's side and the weapons only hit air.

Ion smiled, "You are a child, and I have lived to see universes fall. You won't even scratch me."

The flesh monsters throughout the room moved to swarm Michael, but with only a few swings of his weapons they all laid lifelessly upon the floor and splattered against the walls.

Ion laughed, "I can see that your body has been refined quite well, but that's to be expected I suppose."

Suddenly the floor began to shake, "I feel this needs to be said, but I don't fear that god's apostles in the slightest. They are strong I'll admit that, but I could rend half a dozen before I'd be forced to flee. The reason I haven't slaughtered you is because Order himself would make an appearance if he knew I was here. So I have to be a bit roundabout with my methods here."

Suddenly a giant hand of flesh rose up through the house, tearing through the bricks and wood as if they weren't even there, and immediately slammed into Michael and sent him flying into the air.

As Michael tumbled through the air with broken arms, he admittedly regretted trying to block the blow instead of simply teleporting out of the way, but life was about learning and in that short amount of time spent in the sky his arms had already healed.

Wings of flesh spread from Michael's back as he righted himself and could immediately see a behemoth of flesh breaking through the house.

It was similar to the ones he'd seen in the world taken over by the flesh that hates. It stood incredibly tall, with no building in the small town reaching higher than its ankle.

But Michael stared towards the monster undeterred as floating runes began to appear above his head taking the shape of antlers. Then in the next instant his wings moved, and Michael shot across the sky like a bullet.

So many creatures out in the world were monsters, and it seemed like every one of them wanted to see the world end. It was tiring, it was unfair, but most of all, it was annoying beyond belief.

Tendrils of flesh moved to intercept Michael as he neared the behemoth, but they all fell slack as they neared him and in the next moment his weapons struck the behemoths skull and Michael shot straight through its head and out onto the other side.

The behemoth stood still as Michael hovered behind it, and then it suddenly began to seize. All the tendrils that covered the behemoth suddenly fell lifelessly to its side as strength seemed to leave its body and it fell to its knees. A second later blood shot out from all over the giant's body and immediately circled back around and cut through it like blades, turning it into segmented pieces of flesh that fell to the ground.

The body crashed through the town center, but Michael wasn't concerned about collateral damage. There was nobody living left in this town. He was certain of that.

Michael turned around and saw Ion hovering behind him expressionlessly as the runic antlers faded away.

"Stealing the abilities of beasts wasn't enough, so you moved on to stealing the abilities of gods?" Ion grinned, "You truly are my kin. You'll see that one day."

The god bowed slightly, "Now it's time for us to part ways. The ritual that brought us here can only allow us access to this world for so long, but I do hope that you come to see the truths laid plainly to see. The world Order wants to build is impossible, and he will die screaming on the grund. You'll be beside him when it happens, you simply need to decide if you'll be there standing proudly or lying beside him."

With that space distorted around the two flesh gods, and Michael found himself hovering above the abyss.

"..."

"Keith."

"... yeah?"

"Are most gods like that?"

"Eh, more or less. Becoming a god takes a certain 'crush the weak' mentality,"

Michael flew up to a nearby ruined building where he then took a seat.

He sighed, "They're selfish."

"Of course."

"They don't respect life."

"That's a given."

"I… can't just leave them out there."

Keith chuckled, "Spoken just like a human."

"Oh shut up, you were human once too."

"Yeah, but I didn't have dreams of killing gods. Far too much trouble."

"Well I hope your ambitions are capable of some growth."

Keith chuckled, "Me? Ambitious? Never."

Michael laughed softly, "I hope you can support me in this, Keith."

"Oh were asking now? Well I wasn't really planning on going anywhere, so I may as well help you out."

Michael smiled slightly, "Thank you, Keith."

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The abyss was among many things, boring as all hell. Nothing fell from the portals, and nothing came close to the wendigo's hideout. Save for the shadow guy, which Keith explained to be an apparition of pit boys will.

That guy had powers he wasn't even aware of. He probably didn't even know that his actual body was an all devouring shadow kid currently being held in an SCP facility.

The two men who seemed addicted to their card game suddenly died during the night two days ago. They'd passed simultaneously, and it was probably a result of nobody doing any upkeep to the runes covering their bodies.

So Michael tossed them over the edge and soon came to a conclusion. There was nothing else living out there. He'd traveled the entire place and eventually made it to the indestructible black walls that seemed to make up the edge of the pocket dimension, and in all that time he'd found nothing left alive.

Then, like an old friend Michael felt the embrace of distorted space covering him as he was whisked off to another world.

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Michael landed on his feet when the shift ended and quickly surveyed his surroundings. Walls of ice that reached endlessly up into the sky surrounded the valley he found himself in, and vegetation filled his surroundings.

"Any idea on this one Keith?"

"Can't say just yet."

Michael stared into the dense forest in front of him before shrugging. There was no point in just standing there. There was a task to do, even if he had no idea what it was. So with that he set off into the forest.

He moved carefully, never taking his attention off his surroundings or the strange plants littering it. Many of which seemed to be mushroom-like in nature, if larger and stranger. Spores floated listlessly upon the forest floor and an uncomfortable silence filled the air.

Michael had learned his lesson when fighting death. He hadn't taken a breath since arriving in this place.

Deeper in the forest Michael could sense flesh, stagnant and unmoving. He didn't even need to think it through. It was clear that was where he was supposed to be going.

He marched towards the flesh with his weapons drawn, and after some time came upon what looked to be a rudimentary throne room.

It was crafted from mushrooms, bark and the spores that filled the air. At the sides of the room was the flesh that he'd been following. Human-like creatures lay in piles of the spores with their eyes rolled back into their heads. Some of them seemed like they could have just arrived in this place, while others looked like they'd been there for years, with mushrooms growing in great numbers from their skin and out of their eyes and mouth.

One of the bodies looked similar to Michael, at least somewhat. It was hard to tell with his chest ruptured open revealing the thousands of mushrooms growing within. The mushrooms growing across his face didn't make it any easier.

At the center of the room was a throne that seemed to have been crafted from nothing but spores, and splayed across it was a man roughly eight feet tall with long sharp pointed ears.

He lazily opened an eye to look at Michael before raising an eyebrow, "Now how did you get here?"