Dei was halfway through extracting all the foreign affinities when he came upon his latest victim- one of Patchwork.

'How would you even use Patchwork as an affinity?' he thought as he walked into the cell, seeing a person with half their flesh replaced with a fabric-like material and one button eye.

He stopped dead when he recognized this Elite.

"Loretta?" he asked hesitantly, and she gave him a surprised look, but smiled sadly and pointed at her own throat, before shaking her head.

'Oh my God, is that why she abruptly left Perumah and I behind when I was clearing out the first facility? Did Daniel command her away so he could run experiments with the Patchwork affinity?'

He grimaced, as her transformation did not seem painless at all. Loretta's power, last he talked to her, was to make wounds scar at a supernatural pace. It wasn't healthy, but could keep you alive in a pinch. It was Patchwork.

He quickly made his way over to where she sat lazily in a chair, putting his hand on her shoulder and draining the massive excess of energy. The fabric pieces fell apart, and her button eye turned back to normal.

Clearing her throat, she took a deep breath and said "Thanks. I thought I'd be stuck like that forever." She eyed Perumah suspiciously, and Dei didn't blame her.

Perumah still insisted on walking herself everywhere, but she now had the cloak lowered, and it responded by obscuring her face. It was a star cloak though, so while it could hide the fact that she was a monster, it was still very flashy.

It wasn't usually an issue though. Dei was still far too massive to be reasonably ignored, meaning he was the first thing people looked at. Perumah was more than happy for their attention to slide from her while she continued to work on her vocalization, making it more seamless.

"What happened to you?" he asked to bring her attention away from Perumah, though he likely knew more about it than her.

"Eh, weren't you the one to kill the mind controller? I felt the control slip when a 'passing wizard' or whatever they're calling you nowadays removed the need for sleep."

"I did, but I want to know from your perspective."

She shrugged, "Not much to say. I got orders I couldn't resist to fly here and start running experiments on my own body. The voice was panicked too, so I think you scared him bad. He had this idea in his head that if he could utilize my Patchwork, he would stand a better chance at killing you. Maybe by healing himself as he fought? Dunno."

'You know, that might've actually worked if he'd managed it. If he could've quickly stabilized The Dream to stop it from all flowing into me, I wouldn't have had nearly as much success… huh, I guess Patchwork really can be powerful in the right circumstances.'

He talked with her for a bit, glad she was doing well mentally. Some of the foreign users were cracked in ways he couldn't repair, such as Jean and his Duplication, but Loretta still shivered at the idea of utilizing her affinity more, so she was still there mentally.

* * *

Afterwards, Dei now knew some of the lesser known affinities. He was mostly familiar with the life-based or underground affinities, because he was alive and spent most of it underground, but there were more for inanimate objects and the surface as well.

Light, Pulse, Spore, Gloom, Tarnish, Blight, Vapor, Star, Bone, and a lot more. They came in all kinds of flavors, and Dei was even lucky enough to see something of an evolutionary table for the Cosmic line.

At the top was the Cosmic affinity, which broke down into Celestial and Void (Hey, he finally found Void's tree!). Celestial worked kind of like gravity magic, but really it was the manipulation of astral bodies in general.

Void didn't break down further, but Celestial became Star, Planet, Drifting, and Expansive. Drifting and Expansive ended the line with them, but Star and Planet supposedly blew up with concepts, each breaking down into fifteen or twenty.

Most weren't here, but he was lucky enough to experience Cosmic, Celestial, and Star in succession.

Many of the victims were changed by their experiences, but there was nothing he could do for them. Luckily, the Church of The Champion stepped in here, and grabbed up all the victims to be safely transported to agartha and watched. They did not want another Jean situation and have a mad Elite harken the apocalypse, no matter how brief it would be with The Champion watching over them.

Dei wondered why the church had such expansive legal rights, but figured it worked like the Illuminati where they were some kind of shadow power that could more or less do what they wanted, choosing to stay in the background instead of acting directly most of the time.

When he'd finished with the facility and asked about the third, he was informed that there actually was no third facility.

Apparently, Daniel's original plan was to take him somewhere remote after he'd cleaned all the people of mana and face him there, but Dei's rapid growth in power forced him to act early.

'Not like it helped, ha!'

Either way, that meant he was now done with the U.S. and their Elites, so he readied to head out to other countries. By working with the Church of The Champion, he wouldn't suffer from the lengthy official processes of getting into the country or dealing with the government to gain access to their Elites; he would go down into Agartha, get sent somewhere that needed help, cure them all, then come back and repeat it.

They were still getting organized though, so he had an hour or two to kill. He could've gone home to say hi to his family, but had another idea when he remembered the last time he was in Agartha.

It was a beautiful city with an incredibly realistic fake sky and everything a population would need, plus one massive dark cathedral. It wasn't as grand as the one at Gate City, but The Champion's Cathedral was still nothing to scoff at, and Dei decided to pay a visit.

* * *

He sighed as, once more, a holy building had to be cleared out to give Dei time to talk with the figure of worship. He was flabbergasted at the screaming crowd that met him when he appeared in Agartha, but he didn't hate it. True, he didn't want to stick around for long, but it was nice to feel loved, and even better to have it confirmed that he would be getting a reputational Achievement once a month had lapsed from the time he started making waves.

He wanted to sit on one of the pews but was afraid of breaking it. Instead, he just stood in the aisle and looked towards the marble statue of a dragon sleeping atop a large semi-sphere.

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He closed his eyes and started to pray. 'Hey Mr. Champion, no clue how this works but I'm hoping I'm on the right track. I'm filled with faith which stops me from shrinking too much but I'm slowly turning it intangible. Still, it'll take weeks to go through enough of it to make myself more reasonably sized. I'm going to be visiting a lot of other countries, and I'm not going to assume that all of them will be as accommodating to my size as the American facilities. I mean seriously, have you seen some of the rooms there? They get huge. Either way, I wanted to thank you for not taking all my faith. You're a respectable God who clearly loves Earth, and I would give it all to you as thanks if I didn't know that would be completely stupid of me. Aloran and the quarantine in general needs power fast, and this faith will save countless lives when I return with it. I don't mean to make it some kind of consolation prize, but I hope you'll appreciate this little piece of faith. It's not much, compared to the entire thing, but I'm sure it's worth a few hundred years of me praying constantly. AND I'll be able to shrink myself.'

He tried tacking on the piece he was willing to give away- a pathetically small sample- and was happy to see the piece disappear.

He was about to stand when he heard a deep grumbling in his head. "I thank you for the tribute. Though it would be nice to have more of it, I will not begrudge you your hard-fought prize, and I am not in desperate need for more. The drain from my followers has been negligible for all of history, and by this point I am overfull; I do not need the faith, I am simply a greedy Dragon."

Dei thought that would be it, but The Champion kept the line open and Dei could hear some quiet complaining that got louder as he started to address Dei once more. "More than greedy, I am prideful. I've believed myself virtuous for my actions, yet I see now that I do not truly lose anything by remaining aloof. I am no paragon, and your willingness to give up a piece of your victory towards me shows a selflessness I should express. I tried to take your faith once, despite not truly needing it, and now I feel shame for doing so. I sense the genuine emotion in your prayer, and know that you respect my purpose despite my poor showing.

"I don't need the faith you've given me. I don't even need all the faith I currently have. I do nothing all day, while there are other Champions out there living up to their name, still fighting against powers unfathomable as I once did.

"The divine construct within you is flawed, though you are working to fix it. I'm aware I've done nothing to deserve the trust, but would you grant me your heart for a mere moment, so I may assist you? So I may complete the work of your God?"

He was stunned, but closed his eyes and quickly sent out a hesitant 'Yes, of course.'

He didn't entirely know what The Champion would do, but he opened himself to the Dragon. He knew The Dragon was serious, and someone he could trust.

He felt like he heard more embarrassed grumbling at that, but the words never made it through. Instead, Dei felt a warm sensation spread over him and resonate with the faith inside him, turning its state into what it should have been from the start: an intangible mass that could easily hide within the folds of his soul.

Not only that, but he felt The Champion tack on significantly more faith, nearly tripling what was already inside him. It looked different, more flavored now, but it was faith.

"I now grant you all that I can spare in faith. The Mother was never active in her collection, and the majority throughout history went to me, so I can more than match what you received from her. Still, I do not do this haphazardly for your God to decide, no matter how much you trust them. I've locked this faith behind my own aura, and only another Champion may access it. When you return to your world, give him my encouragement and my gift, let him know that those on the outside will not forget him and his sacrifice.

"Not only this, but I've altered the construct to accept more. In every universe you enter, if there is a Champion, he will be notified. They will contact you and ask you what message I carry for them, and I want you to explain the quarantine to them. Tell them of the donation I send forth, and ask that they give whatever they can spare as well. By the time you re-enter quarantine, I have no doubt your soul will be utterly saturated with faith. It will not be enough to express the gratitude of the multiverse for keeping that being contained, but it will hopefully be a start.

"Go forth now, both of you. Save lives, change the land, and travel through the unknown.

"With my blessing."

Dei felt an explosive warmth expand through him, and based on how Perumah jumped slightly, she did as well. 'He BLESSED us?!'

He felt like blushing at The Champion's high praise. All he'd done was give him a little piece! But that must've been more than enough to make The Champion re-evaluate everything.

'He probably felt guilty at his previous outburst, and me thanking him for being good must've really exacerbated the issue… but I won't complain.'

He couldn't keep the smile from his face as he sent out one last prayer. 'Thank you. For what it's worth, I don't blame you for trying to reclaim the faith. I hope everything keeps turning out well on Earth, and I'll talk to you later! After I Ascend and escape quarantine of course. Love ya!'

He heard The Champion guffaw, and the connection slowly faded away as his boisterous laugh grew quieter in Dei's head.

'Not sure what he's laughing at- me saying I'm GOING to Ascend, or me saying that I love him.'

Coming here couldn't have turned out better. For barely even a fraction of his faith, he'd now tripled the total and gained a way to grow it further. And he could easily shrink himself!

He did so now, feeling comfortable in his natural height of eight feet tall. He merrily walked towards the exit, before thinking better of it and choosing instead to teleport to the designated location he would wait at before his missions. He still did not want to deal with the crowds of people.

* * *

Dei frowned at the pathetically small quantity of East Asian Elites. There… weren't even enough for each to get their own facilities anymore.

'Why are there so few compared to America?' he wondered idly, but a memory from his conversation with Daniel gave him the answer.

"I picked out my countrymen versus those of the enemy, and went to work. Hundreds of our enemies died in the first few days, but the experiments yielded results."

'Ah. He was careful not to kill the American Elite because of his sense of national pride… but nobody else got that luxury. He slaughtered them for the sake of progress… which means I'm likely looking at every East Asian magic user.'

There were only fifty two, and none of them had foreign affinities. An objectively sad amount when he stopped to think about how many there should've been. 'Everywhere else is likely to be the same, but I can't cure the dead. I can only help those in front of me.'

* * *

It took mere days to go through everyone else, and Dei had a budding theory as to why the magicians on Earth were all called Elite.

It wasn't a simple linguistic oddity, but a reflection of the Achievement they'd all managed to earn. They must've all had the Elite Achievement, which made a shocking amount of sense when Dei realized it.

Elite generally went through unimaginable training, and even then only had a one-in-five-thousand chance, or around 0.02%. On earth. The chance for someone to be born with magic was around 0.0015% if he rounded up, more than thirteen times rarer.

Elite were simply those who'd trained with an organization to become the best of the best. Despite not being put through agonizing or lethal training, they were likely given the Achievement because of their current environment- the rarity of magicians led to the bar being lowered, since it would be just as impressive to be a magician on Earth as it would to be an Elite anywhere else.

Scarcity led to a change in the requirements.

Dei was a bit peeved when he realized that he never got the Elite Achievement because, despite having magic, he'd never gone through the military training required. True, his life would've looked a lot different if he had, but he could only dream about the world where he did do the training, then everything else happened as well, and Dei became some kind of Elite Slaughterer. That would've been overpowered.

'There's totally someone out there in the vast multiverse living that dream right now, and I wonder just who they are. I've never met them, but I'm jealous.'

Once there was nobody suffering any longer, he realized it was time to accomplish something he'd been thinking about since he found out about Boris.

It was time to fulfill his contract to Void.

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