Name: Heretical Devourer (System assigned name)

Class: Divine beast.

Only a few tendrils had reached the first atmosphere of Primus, the atmosphere above the flying islands. From what Rafe could feel, these tendrils gave off power similar to a D grade. Most of the beast was still unable to fully descend.

So the promotion event was no where close to finished.

Not that that mattered to Rafe. He was too busy finally starting to enjoy the damn battle. In his opinion, it was interesting if a battle was hard, but it was boring if you were just being trounced too.

There needed to be a delicate balance of give and take.

Exactly like what was happening now. The Chosen was wary, and so he had decided not to take Rafe on in close combat.

His solution though, in Rafe's opinion, was the wrong one. The Chosen decided to try and fight Rafe through long range magic spells. This was just the second phase of the fight.

At this time, Rafe realised something. Even though, logically speaking, the Chosen's aptitude for magic should have been terrible, the guy was a surprisingly accomplished water mage.

In fact, the Chosen was far more than an ordinary water mage, controlling both fog and ice, two advanced levels of water element. And the spell forms he used were far too complex.

So then the matter was true, Rafe realised. Aside from having a class that combined a bit of magic and swordplay, the Chosen also had a pure mage class. Two classes meant almost twice the normal amount of stats most people did. Too bad most of these stats were probably mental stats in the Chosen's case. If it was Rafe, he would be putting all those stats into his physical stats and he would be unstoppable.

Rafe thought it was such a waste. It was the only reason he was confident he could push the Chosen to the brink. After all, Rafe was specialised in fighting against mages.

He pretended to struggle for a minute, but then he was suddenly cutting the Chosen's spells before they were even formed. He fought over control for spells that required water manipulation as a skill.

And he found new ways to deal with more advanced spells. After all, stronger spells needed to make use of ambient mana in order to be cast. If Rafe blocked this process, many of these spells failed to even go off.

This was something he hadn't done before, because on those occasions a direct assault was possible. Just this second phase of the battle took almost five whole minutes.

Rafe started to think this Chosen wasn't a very smart opponent. Why was he not changing his fighting strategy? Couldn't he see fighting as a mage was useless?

At higher levels, when fighters had resources that could last for days on end, fights could last months, sometimes even years. But even though Rafe had outstanding endurance for his level, his resources were still too low compared to his opponent. For him this fight couldn't even last more than five hours.

A sinking feeling started to settle deep in Rafe's gut. He did not kill Filoria, and now there was a chance he was going to fail to kill the Chosen.

Around them, the speed of the bubbles had finally slowed down. Primus was almost empty.

Rafe had almost achieved the objective the gods set for him. He had bought them more than ten minutes of time, and that seemed to have been enough. It would probably still take more than thirty minutes for things to completely settle down, but now more than sixty percent of Primus's population must have entered Deufont.

The Chosen finally realized things weren't going well for him, and he sighed and stopped casting spells.

"Boy, you are making a terrible mistake," he tried.

The giant golem shrugged. Rafe wasn't the talkative type, but occasionally, bantering during a fight could produce some opportunities. Rafe was a veteran fighter who knew every single tool mattered at some point. For example, if he wanted to kill this enemy, then he could only aim to attack him mentally a bit.

"A terrible mistake?" Rafe said with mock shock. "Please enlighten me."

"The forces at play here are beyond your ken," the Chosen said, his expression darkening.

Rafe laughed, recognizing the chance for some obscure reference. "Well, your Ken can kiss my Barbie."

The Chosen blinked at him in confusion, but then he shrugged. He looked up at the sky. By now the two of them had already left the flying islands and were already back on the ground.

"All your efforts are in vain anyway. The master's pet will soon arrive here and eat all your friends. With the world's population reduced to this extent, the gods will not provide enough sustenance, but at least they will die."

"That ugly thing wants to eat the gods of Primus? Too bad I've already eaten half of them," Rafe said with a cruel smile, rubbing his belly symbolically.

"As long as the planet's core exists, they will never truly die!" the Chosen said. "And as long as the planet's core exists, I will never lose a fight on Primus!"

As he shouted, the Chosen's armour suddenly exploded off him as the man's torso grew, exposing an exaggeratedly muscular torso. His body grew in size right in front of Rafe. It was a lucky thing his pants didn't explode as well.

Rafe did not interfere, giving the Chosen the minute it took to fully transform into a giant. This would be his last gift to the gods. An extra minute.

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After this, the battle between him and the Chosen would probably enter the last phase. He still had about four lives left by now. Even if he didn't die, every wound took a lot of divine power to heal, so gods were dying even though Rafe had not died over the last seven minutes.

Looking at the Chosen's weird transformation skill, Rafe supposed he maybe could die once more, but after that things would be over.

"As long as the planet's core exists, huh?" Rafe said, looking down with his eye gleaming golden.

There was someone Rafe had not seen since he entered the cave with Ma'la early on. The gods had their own arrangements. They knew more than Rafe did. All Rafe knew was how to fight. So he would fight.

The Chosen charged first, the transformation turning him into something of a brute.

Rafe took a stance and waited. And then the battle was joined.

Rafe had always been fighting people stronger than him since the beginning back in the Skyholm legacy trial. This time was no different, but it was entirely different.

Back in the trial, Rafe could fight someone a hundred levels higher than his own. That was because even a hundred levels in, they only had insights to rely on.

Concepts were a far more insidious power. Every punch the Chosen sent was like a rough wave banging against the shore. Not every punch landed, but those that did eroded the golem's body.

Back in the trial, Rafe did not have to deal with veils. He had underestimated how much these things introduced by the system affected how user's grew. And the offensive manifestation, coupled with the Chosen's concepts. If a single punch landed on his head, he would lose at least a quarter of it.

He knew this wasn't his real body, but he instinctively protected his head nonetheless.

This time the fight lasted almost twenty minutes. Rafe's stamina started flagging, and using his Puppeteer's Rubber Body was a mostly useless endeavor. The difference in power was too big. Once he was unable to exert his full strength, he would be destroyed again.

Just then, an island in the sky exploded into a cloud of dust. Debris rained into the sea. The tendrils of the devourer entered the atmosphere.

"It's over," Bodhia Benhaven declared. "The master's pet has arrived."

Rafe frowned, but he wasn't sure which of the Chosen's words made him uneasy. Then he remembered something wrong with the Chosen's soul.

"Master? Does it have anything to do with the soul fragments planted deep in your soul?"

The gigantic Chosen stopped fighting for a moment and took a step back, shocked. Then his demeanor changed, his eyes got a reddish tint, a drop of blood formed at the angle of one, then flowed down like a tear.

"Impressive," a voice Rafe had never heard before boomed from the Chosen's mouth.

'Ding': Special quest completed.

Objective: Meet the second sign of the heretical times.

Rafe did not even look at his rewards, his eyes lurching onto the objective for the quest. He remembered seeing those words somewhere before. Sign of the heretical times…

"It's too late!" this time the Chosen's voice was back to normal. "Prepare to die, boy!"

But then a shockwave went through the world, and it wasn't the shockwave of the arrival of the D and E ranked tendrils of the divine beast. It seemed like the shockwave represented the death of something string and profound.

And just as the tendrils neared him, something burst out of the sea.

"Hahaha!" Goleon's laugh boomed as he grew into a gigantic golden titan. "Not yet a calamity beast, but I'll take it!"

And then the first tendrils arrived and Goleon went to deal with it.

Rafe watched the scene of the god of Champions cutting tendrils off the attacking beast before he decided to ignore it. He walked towards Bodhia Benhaven, who was looking at Goleon in shock.

Rafe did not know how exactly Goleon became a god, but previously, Goleon had been an E grade mortal. He had been the first Chosen of Primus, and this guy's master.

"Goleon," he had a shell shocked Bodhia Benhaven murmur. "What have you done?"

'Ding': A New Planet has been created under the system.

Special quest completed.

Objective: Participate in the creation of a new world.

…

You have the qualifications to be the Chosen of this world.

Error! Error! Error!

Title system not present. You cannot become a Chosen.

Choosing someone with a close relationship to pick up the mantle for the Chosen of Deufont.

Processing…

Rafe looked at the notifications once, twice, and even a third time. The system wanted to name him Chosen of some new world created for these Elemenoids of Primus? Rafe definitely had no time to become a Chosen of some other world. He needed to get back to Earth anyway.

But more than that, Deufont dungeon was now a world. He wondered what the world in there looked like now, but he kind of knew. The Ma'la claimed they were the Chosen race because most of Primus was covered in oceans. Rafe had ventured deep into Deufont before, and he knew how scarce natural water sources were there.

And the current bubbles flying to the black hole were filled with the underwater creatures the Ma'la used to associate with. Now they'd have to compete with them for the little water sources available. The Ma'la were not going to have a good time in their new world.

The Chosen tried to charge to where the golden figure of Goleon was destroying the few tendrils of the heretical devourer, but Rafe was the Chosen's opponent today.

He understood that a few decades before, Goleon, a Chosen had fallen at the hands of his weaker student. Goleon had once told Rafe that a Chosen was almost invincible in his or her world, so how had Goleon lost to his own student.

Even poison didn't explain that point well enough.

There was also the fact that by the time Goleon lost, most of the fire nation had already escaped from their cities. The war had already been lost. So perhaps Goleon didn't lose. Perhaps he willingly let a man he treated as his son defeat him. In that case, Goleon couldn't bear to kill the Chosen, even now.

"Get out of my way!" the Chosen seethed.

It took him three whole minutes to calm down. In that time, Goleon was still laughing like a madman, cutting tendrils off the octopus like beast. Even from two atmospheres above, everyone felt when the first C grade tendrils finally broke through the barrier and started to descend.

That kind of power. Rafe frowned as he realised the difference in power between C and D grade. It was a terrifying gulf.

"You are a very strong person," the Chosen said honestly, bitterly even. "You'll probably be able to fight across tiers in the future. You are giving off the aura of a mid ranked E grade, yet you managed to out up a fight against me. Sure , I'm just an early D grade, but—"

"The sign of heretical times?" Rafe said as something finally clicked in his head. "How does your master know Devila Vors?"

The Chosen's soul roiled again. "You know my wife?" that strange voice came out from the Chosen's mouth.

"Who are you?" Rafe asked.

The being in the Chosen looked at him for a few moments. "I am a god! You are not qualified to stand before me so impertinently!"

"A god?" Rafe asked, not quite believing it. "You are a god?! An evil god, no doubt. Still, you are a god, huh? So I cuckolded a god?"

"WHAT?!"

"Hahaha!" Rafe threw his head back in schadenfreude. "I, Rafael Kingsley can die in peace now! I did something right! I made a damn God a cuckold!" he screamed for this dying world to hear.

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