Chapter 142: Valerius

“Who are—?!” Red shouted, summoning his interface.

The golden entity vanished from the pedestal and instantaneously reappeared directly behind the obsidian throne. He leaned over the glowing console to scan the active map grids with his solid gold eyes.

“I am at the right place, after all,” the towering stranger stated, his multi-layered voice vibrating through the digital monitors.

Red spun around to face the intruder, sweeping his hand to pull up a defensive command. The entity vanished again and rematerialized in his original position.

Suddenly, a massive hand shot forward and wrapped completely around Red’s throat.

The giant effortlessly lifted the Red off the floor. Standing nearly triple Red’s height, the divine being easily suspended the struggling human in the empty space.

“Who are you, and how are you here?” the golden giant demanded, his flawless features twisting as he bared his perfectly white teeth. “Where is the God of this sanctuary?”

Red gripped the glowing wrist of his attacker and kicked his legs against the indestructible ivory garments. He clawed at the colossal fingers to pry them apart and draw a breath into his burning lungs.

The divine being stood nearly triple Red’s height and easily suspended Red in the empty space of the sanctuary.

The infant Void-Weaver leapt from the throne with a vicious hiss.

The ash-silver fox launched its body at the glowing giant and snapped its tiny fangs toward the divine face. The entity uncurled his fingers to drop Red onto the dark floor of the Void and caught the hyper-dense anomaly mid-air.

He held the squirming creature at arm’s length and leaned in to study the swirling emerald eyes.

“An apex anomaly,” the stranger noted, observing the corrupted sparks spitting from the fox’s nose. He shifted his burning golden gaze back down to the shadowy figure in the suit. “I will ask you one final time, usurper. Where is the Architect of the Lost Land? Where is the Steward of the Seventeenth Continent?”

Red straightened his deep crimson tie and brushed invisible dust from his dark lapels while climbing to his feet. The ancient title instantly clicked in his mind. He vividly recalled the colossal titan composed of cracked sandstone and drying clay, with moss growing in his skin’s fissures and hollow eyes devoid of light.

’So this is one of the higher powers,’ Red thought, looking up at the towering giant through the shifting shadow of his face. ’He actually knows the crumbling statue that dropped me into this mess.’

“I am the God of this sanctuary,” Red stated, adjusting his cuffs to look the giant directly in the eyes. “The Steward expired. He failed his millennium mandate to cultivate faith in a dead wasteland, and the system deleted him.”

The golden giant narrowed his solid eyes and tightened his grip on the struggling fox. “A deity cannot simply expire and leave an active world behind. The server requires an anchor. The Phylum must be contained, or the physical continent shatters into the void.”

“He ripped the Phylum out of his own chest,” Red explained, resting a cloud-formed hand over the glowing magma and starlight core burning inside his own spectral torso. “He told me the wind blows where it chooses, called us both the refuse of our respective worlds, and forced me to eat the core before he turned to ash. He made me the new anchor.”

The towering entity stared down at the shadowy Architect in absolute silence. He processed the impossible information with streams of microscopic data flashing rapidly across his golden eyes.

“Who exactly are you? The game engine strictly forbids unauthorized entry into a personal sanctuary. How did you bypass the dimensional barrier? And what was that violet glitch, the Void-Eater, you just tore in half?”

The golden entity gently placed the infant Void-Weaver back onto the seat. The ash-silver fox immediately curled into a tight ball and watched the giant with wide emerald eyes.

“I am Valerius, God of the Tenth Continent.” The multi-layered voice vibrated through the dark expanse of the Void. “I am a Native God of this realm. I am a true deity. You are simply another fake god who wandered into a domain you do not belong in.”

Valerius raised a massive hand and pointed a glowing finger directly at Red’s chest. “Entities like you have been coming and going lately like a plague. On this entire Seventeenth Continent, every single deity except one is a fake. You are just a temporary occupant.”

Red crossed his arms. “Explain the anomaly. If that glitch was an actual entity, then what was its purpose?”

The microscopic data streams flowing through the giant’s solid gold eyes accelerated.

“You call it a glitch.” Valerius paced across the floor of the sanctuary. “Its true name is the Null-Engine. It was the ultimate insurance policy created by Gorgoth, the Steward you replaced.”

“Insurance against what?”

“Against me. Against the other true deities.” The golden giant turned his gaze toward the monitors displaying the ruined physical map. “All Native Gods possess absolute, equal strength. When we clash, entire continents shatter into the abyss. Gorgoth created the Null-Engine to ensure no other Native God would ever attempt to assassinate him and steal his territory.”

“He divided the engine’s core and hid the fragments across his world.” Valerius swept his hand toward the digital screens. “If Gorgoth was killed, the creation would automatically awaken to avenge him. It would consume the entire continent, naturally absorbing the hidden cores along its path. Once it gathered the fragments, the engine would achieve its true awakening.”

’So the gathering of the fragments did exactly what the lore stated,’ Red thought. ’It just completed a doomsday weapon instead of a shield.’

“Well, when I found the first fragment or core as you call it, it was filled with radiation and the system didn’t provide any information about it except that it was pre-calamity era and all that. And then decrypting the texts on it, I thought that gathering the fragment was a way to stop that… Null-Engine or whatever. But it was actually the opposite,” Red sighed.

“Oh, no. Your deduction was actually correct.”

“Hmm?” Red raised a brow with a confused yet curious look on his face.

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