"...56, 57, 58, 59... Well damn, looks like you really did win."

Seth said with a soft smile and a gentle sigh, turning to Honey who had already prepared its smug look. They were both standing in the middle of a field filled with corpses, at least that's how it looked at first.

In reality only some of the beasts were dead, the one's that his puppets had killed at the start of the invasion. The ones he was counting, and that surrounded the unlikely pair, were simply unconscious.

Although judging by the sorry, bruised state of some of them, it was hard to tell if they preferred to have their lives intact or not.

Honey herself was standing on top of the body of an elephant with bone-like armour plating. Her entire body bobbed up and down as the mighty beast breathed. In fact, this elephant was not actually unconscious.

It had been for a moment, after the badger known as Honey headbutted it so hard she cracked his armour. It had since woken up, and was fully conscious of the fact the tiny creature was standing atop him like he was some prized trophy kill. But, despite the fact she was small enough to crush under his foot, the elephant remained completely and utterly paralysed in fear.

Its chest was only moving due to its breathing, and even that was a struggle for it. It was keeping its eyes clenched tightly closed, hoping to avoid all detection in the desperate hope that if she forgot about it then it would simply let him go.

After all, he knew about the tiny corpse maker. They all did. He was just hoping to not be her next one. Maybe... if he got out of this alive he could tell the females that he defeated her. That would definitely get him the best mate, or even two!

Of course, Honey herself was oblivious to the elephants machinations. She knew that he was still alive, he was breathing for gods sake, but she didn't care. She was too busy bathing in the feeling of the human's admittance of her superiority.

Shad lifted herself onto her hind legs, her front paws crossed in front of her chest as her head was held high when the human turned towards her. That feeling, him admitting to her that she had won, that she was better than him.

It was... amazing. Not only had she beaten him, but he was still around to worship her and tell her how strong and awesome she was. Maybe this human really was onto something after all!

"Wa ha ha! Of course worthless human! Did you really think you could have beaten me! I am the most wonderful, supreme creature in this miserable world. You should be grateful, you have earned yourself the pleasure of taking me to my next opponent, and the chance to witness my greatness once more as I defeat them just as easily as I have defeated you!

Wa ha ha!"

As Honey laughed like some haughty teenage girl, she placed her paws on her hips and stomped down her little foot a few times. Each stomp caused the poor elephant that she was using as her victory pedestal to flinch and tremor with fear.

Seth spared the creature a pitiful glance, not just for its current fate as a stepping stool, but for the fact that it was probably convinced that its 'corpse act' was Oscar worthy. Or the elephant equivalent of an Oscar.

However, besides its flinching and incredibly obvious breathing, things that corpses generally didn't do, there were multiple occasions in which Seth caught it opening its eyes to sneakily look around.

Of course, the elephant didn't notice that he saw it. But it was plain as day. It would look around, even lift its head slightly, before clenching its eyelid tight once more. Truly baffling.

"Yes, I suppose I have. Lucky me. Would you like to go see them now? Or would you like to bask in your victory some more? Remember, until you defeat that worthy opponent you aren't allowed to hurt anyone or anything else."

"Yes yes human, I remember your silly little rules. I am a badger of my word. Besides, you have introduced me to such a wonderful concept of subjects and servants to bask in your greatness.

Why would I want to harm any of them once I have defeated your champion?"

Honey hopped off the elephant, causing it to let out a very unsubtle sigh of relief, before she waddled over to Seth. He bent down to scoop her up, but paused for a second. The Avatar's eyes lost focus as it stared off into nothingness.

His body swayed slightly, almost losing balance from his position, before he snapped back to reality a second later and caught himself before he could fall.

It was only a second he had blanked out for, but it was a second that made Honey think that Seth was, rightfully, bowing to her instead of trying to pick her up.

So she simply made her own way up. Her claws dug into the legs of his Avatar, not enough to tear a hole in the metal but just enough to give her grip, as she clambered up him like a tree.

She scampered up, finding a comfortable seat atop his head, making it look as if his Avatar was trying to hide a bald spot with the world's most obvious and worst looking toupee. But Honey didn't care, this spot had such a wonderful view, who knew it was this fun to be tall?

Sighing softly to himself, Seth refrained from the urge to shake his head, lest he lose his new passenger, as he stepped aboard his floating log and surfed into the skies once more. He just hoped that this creature of pure chaos had enough patience to last until they arrived at their destination. And the bladder control not to tinkle on his head before he even arrived at the pick up spot.

A spot that he had not decided yet, causing his flight path to strangely resemble a man called 'Jeremy Bearimy' signing his name in cursive, as Seth tried to kill time.

***

On the ship, Seth's real body peeled open his eyes, which had grown extremely heavy despite the fact he had been napping- I mean meditating the entire time. The process he was carrying out, although it involved no effort on his body's part.

Instead the excretion fell entirely on his soul. Not just because his spiritual energy, rather than his mana, was fuelling the change. But also because it itself was being changed and altered by the process on a foundational level.

Since the 'black blood' from Prometheus had somehow fused into his soul, with every drop of Prometheus' aura that he cleansed from the blood and replaced with his own, it was not only changing the blood itself by changing his soul.

The more it changed to become a part of him, the deeper it integrated with his soul. Which caused it to change, slowly being altered bit by bit so that it could be worthy of being called the soul of a god. Whatever that would look like.

After all, even if you only did it drop by drop, you wouldn't be able to change a lake from water to oil without eventually killing the fish. The less water you had compared to the oil, the quicker the fish would die and along with them, the environment they lived in, until it was unable to resemble what it had once been.

Of course Seth's process wasn't as needlessly destructive as that. Perhaps his was more akin to changing a fresh water fish tank to salt water. It would still kill the current fish, but new ones could be introduced to replace them.

That was currently what he was going through. His soul was 'dying' in a sense so it could be reforged stronger as something new.

Naturally this process was extremely exhausting and not very pleasant, but it had to be done. So as Seth forced his eyes to open, he was flooded with a feeling of lethargy. His face was deathly pale, more than usual, and his hands rested in his lap limply with his arms feeling as if they were made of lead.

Pain he could handle, he was used to it. But there was something sinister about true exhaustion. It simply ate away at you until there was nothing left, and any attempt to fight it just fuelled it more.

Even still, as Seth gazed at the sun in front of him with lifeless eyes, he somehow managed to find the energy to switch his vision and check on Astra's progress.

Her soul had completely withdrawn to the core of the star, bathing in the heat and the pressure as she underwent her own forging. She was doing well, but she still had some time left in the oven, so to speak.

With great effort, as if he was trying to lift an entire mountain, Seth lifted his hand and input the command to a round trip to earth and back. He briefly glancing at the coordinates that the computer decided, before his lead-filled eyelids slid closed once more and he fell back into his Abyss.

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