Chapter 99: The Truth of Transcendents (2)

Finn kept silent for a few seconds, trying to wrap his head around the existence that was a Transcendent.

But the man continued.

“They are just a set of people lucky enough to be born at just the perfect threshold that enables their soul to remain powerful enough to retain consciousness…” he spat with a viciousness that took Finn off guard.

Finn glanced up from his own musing and raised a brow at the man.

“Don’t you have a Transcendent fragment yourself?” He asked. “You talk as if you are separate from the Transcendents.”

The man snorted with deep scorn and his face immediately soured. He clenched his jaw for a second then met Finn’s gaze.

“What do you think happens when people with power that is broken enough to render the laws of reality useless just keep on… living?”

Finn let out a sigh, then immediately said the obvious.

“…They get bored.”

Finn almost didn’t want to hear what the man had to say now.

As someone that studied Gods and Demons from different cultures and mythologies back on earth, he could already see where this was going.

Absolute power and an unending amount of time to live… Those were just two ingredients that together, spelled utter chaos and unspeakable evils. It broke down morality entirely.

Even the kindest person, so long as they had human feelings, given enough time, would lose the anchors that held them steady. Things that held them in place from committing certain acts would eventually seem fickle before them.

The small ’forbidden things’ would start to look harmless. All it took was one act, and the walls would come crumbling down. Until nothing became wrong to them anymore.

And eventually, nothing would satisfy them any longer…

Finn sighed. “Yeah… they get bored.”

The man gave a slow nod, as if Finn had finally touched the real core of the issue.

“Bored is putting it lightly,” he said. “Everything in the world, every system, every challenge, every law of nature… eventually became so predictable to them that it stopped meaning anything. Some Transcendents… a very few… even chose to end their own lives because of it.”

Finn blinked. “They killed themselves?”

“Some did,” the man said with a shrug. “But many others didn’t. Especially the ones who held Abstract concepts that were chaotic by nature. Concepts like Disorder, Turbulence, Collapse… And most notoriously… Chaos itself.”

He looked Finn dead in the eye.

“Those ones wanted excitement. And they found it somewhere else.”

Finn felt a chill. “Where?”

The man leaned back in his seat, his expression darkening.

“Chaos breaches.”

“The same breaches that should normally be dangerous disasters to the world now became playgrounds to them.”

“They didn’t care about the stability of the world’s veil anymore. They started creating the conditions for chaos breaches on purpose, fiddling with the exact ingredients to open doors into new exotic planes,” he said gravely.

“And not just any kind of exotic planes, but planes that were full worlds with their own rules, their own strange races, their own civilizations…”

The man’s voice lowered.

“And once they got inside, they treated each one like a novelty. They were no longer bored…”

Finn felt his stomach twist.

“They explored. They fought. They destroyed. And they… indulged in unions with anything they found. It didn’t matter how the creatures and races looked, even if they weren’t remotely humanoid…”

The man spoke in a weary matter-of-fact tone, without any trace of shame or disgust directed at the Transcendents.

“Most of the time, nothing came from their unions. The species differences were too big. But sometimes… something did appear. And usually, they were monstrous things that never should have been born. Many times their existence was a punishment alone… But once in a very rare while…”

He gestured to himself.

“Something humanoid… Something that could survive… comes out of such a union.”

“We’re one of those rare results,” he said. “My race came from a Transcendent’s boredom and an exotic plane’s inhabitants. And we were just the lucky ones that came out well…”

His fingers drummed on his thigh once before he spoke again.

“So, yes. When you ask why I speak as if I’m not one of them…”

His eyes hardened.

“It’s because I’m the afterthought of someone’s boredom. And I’m very aware of it.”

Finn went grim-faced.

He watched the man carefully, observing his features with new eyes as his thoughts spiralled at the implications of the man’s words.

He thought back to the Husk from the other side of the Stagnant sea. Were those also a part of the union of Transcendents and an exotic, alien species? One of the more tame, yet still terrifying horrors they bore as offspring?

Finn almost wanted to ask.

The question was at the tip of his tongue. But the man spoke first before he did.

“But I’m not finished,” he let out a deep breath after coming out from thoughts of his own. “I have not yet explained where you come into play in all this…”

Finn stared at him with rapt attention as he began to speak:

“It is still tied to the Transcendents’ wanton revelry in their pleasures and debauchery,” he started. “They kept on doing this, each time topping their excitement with an even bigger one in the next plane they conquered…”

His eyes glinted suddenly.

“That is, until they stumbled into my race’s original world.”

A pleased expression spread across the man’s face — an expression almost like satisfaction, or vindication as he leaned forward in his chair.

“Even though it happened at a time long, long before I was born,” he said, and there was genuine joy in his voice, “it still brings me immense pleasure to know that the Transcendents suffered.”

Finn watched him carefully, noting the shift in his demeanor.

“They entered into my ancestors’ world thinking it would be like any other,” the man continued as his smile widened. “Thinking they would subdue the highest powers in that world, no matter how mighty they were. Just like they always had with every other exotic plane they’d conquered.”

He paused for dramatic effect.

“But they were sorely, sorely wrong.”

The man stood and walked to the window again, gazing out at the distant Stagnant sea as his body fidgeted as if he was retelling a tale he had seen with his own eyes.

“In the world that my ancestors told stories about — the world we came from before we were forced into this cursed place — there were beings called Gods.”

Finn felt his heart thump hardly against his chest.

“True Gods,” the man emphasized, turning back to face him. “Beings that controlled aspects of reality just like the Transcendents did. They wielded power over concepts like death, like war, harvest, storm, love, vengeance… all the fundamental forces that shaped existence.”

He walked back towards the center of the room, pacing in a circle as he brimmed with excitement.

“But unlike the Transcendents, whose powers were based on mana…” the man’s eyes gleamed with something fierce, “in our world, there was no mana at all.”

Finn’s heart continued to thump loudly against his chest as correlations formed in his mind.

“There was only Faith.”

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A/N: Don’t forget to drop Power Stones and Golden Tickets! They help a lot.

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