Sovereign of the Ashes-Chapter 997: Bone Lord’s Conjecture
Chapter 997: Bone Lord’s Conjecture
The Faelorian divine hierarchy was meticulously structured, with “wielders of weak divine powers” at the bottom and “wielders of mighty divine powers” at the top.
Despite their varied ranks, direct conflicts between lesser deities and supreme deities rarely occurred, except during the Avatar Crisis, which occurred once every ten thousand years.
The strength gap between these beings was simply too vast!
While Faelorian history had seen its share of “divine wars”, outright battles among deities of Rank Four and above had become increasingly rare over the recent millennia.
Apart from newly ascended deities, most had evolved to become extremely cunning and wise over tens of thousands of years.
Moreover, Faelorian history had proven that nothing good ever came from wars between deities.
The defeated deities fell from their altars, and their divine nations crumbled, while victors who won by chance inevitably paid a steep price.
Some never recovered from the ordeal, ultimately losing all their influence.
The continent’s annals were replete with such examples.
Consequently, Faelorian deities, regardless of rank, now generally avoid existential conflicts, opting instead for restraint.
The display of greater divine power by the Spider Queen, although only a rank above the Bone Lord, still made him wary, particularly with the impending Avatar Crisis looming just two hundred years away.
This event was usually accompanied by the emergence of new deities and the fall of older ones, with the most severe case involving more than a hundred deities.
The profound and long-lasting effects this had on the Faelorian pantheon and alignments were the true crisis of the deities.
During each Avatar Crisis, it was mostly the lesser gods who wielded weak divine powers that were displaced from their divine altars by the Tablets of Fate and descended to the continent as avatars.
However, this did not preclude certain devious deities from manipulating the crisis to cause lesser and intermediate deities to meet the same fate.
It was indeed unfortunate for Bone Lord, an intermediate deity, to find himself targeted by a greater deity with the crisis instigated by the Tablets of Fate looming just around the corner.
Moreover, he could not even identify his opponent through the fluctuations of divine power he detected!
“The opponent seems to hold portfolios of darkness, death, and other negative attributes. I don’t recall any greater deity in the Dark Alliance that matches this profile...”
Bone Lord’s usually pale face looked a shade paler at this moment, though it was unclear if it was due to his injuries or another reason.
The Dark Alliance was of the Evil alignment, so the deities of this faction were far from benign.
Despite the escalating conflict with the Justice League, rivalries and mutual exploitation were rife within the Dark Alliance itself!
Dark Lady, the leader of the Dark Alliance, was not fond of managing.
She was merely the strongest being within the alliance but had not actively led its members.
Moreover, she had vanished for tens of thousands of years, leading many in the Dark Alliance to speculate that she, one of Faeloria's most powerful deities, was currently in the lowest level of the Infernal Purgatory, exploring mysteries beyond the reach of ordinary gods.
It was widely believed among the deities that the leaders of Faeloria’s major camps had the potential to ascend to the Overgod realm and become the God of Gods.
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The Dark Lady was the strongest among them, and she had even gradually shed the constraints of faith-based power.
Among all the supreme Faelorian deities, she had the fewest temples.
Conversely, the God of Justice had the highest number of temples.
In every city under the Justice League’s sphere of influence, a temple dedicated to the God of Justice stood, with clerics spreading his divine message.
The alliance itself, named after the God of Justice, already showcased how immensely powerful he was.
The Elemental God of the Wings of Nature, though not as renowned as Dark Lady or the God of Justice, was the oldest Faelorian deity.
As an elemental creature, it had witnessed almost the entire history of the continent and committed itself to maintaining its peace.
Rumors suggested that the Overgod who had vanished was younger than this Elemental God, the living fossil of the Faeloria Continent.
Despite its advanced age, it was actually the most mild-tempered of all supreme deities.
Had Bone Lord aligned himself with either the Justice League or Wings of Nature, he might have garnered support from other powerful deities.
Unfortunately, his affiliation with the Dark Alliance of the Evil alignment precluded such alliances.
Internal strife and negligence were not uncommon within the Dark Alliance, and it was precisely these factors that had historically left them at a disadvantage against the Justice League.
The number of believers in Faeloria that the Dark Alliance controlled was merely two-thirds that of the Justice League.
Ironically, the demons of the Chaos alignment were, in a way, far more united than the native Farunian deities.
The “endless blood wars of the Infernal Purgatory” only involved demons below Rank Four.
These demons united when a demon monarch of Rank Four or higher appeared.
If not for their unity, these outsiders, who had refused to be integrated into Faeloria, would have long been eradicated by the continent’s major factions within the past two hundred thousand years.
The Wings of Nature’s Elemental God, though benevolent, harbored a particular disdain for this group of demons who refused to assimilate into the Prime Materia Realm.
The God of Nature also viewed their act of creating a three-level Infernal Purgatory in the far west of Faeloria as a desecration of the pristine Prime Materia Plane.
If not for the valor of the demons, their race would likely have perished long ago, just like every other species that innocently wandered into Faeloria but failed to adapt and integrate.
Bone Lord dispersed the divine power channel in front of him. Burdened with worries, he had lost the desire to continue working on the skeleton.
Two ghostly blue soul flames burned in his eye sockets as he contemplated reaching out to some of his allies and perhaps issuing an oracle for his followers to investigate this incident.
At the very least, he needed to find out who was preempting him before the Avatar Crisis.
In Faeloria, there were not many gods who mastered the dark laws, and the majority of them were of low strength.
The absence of high-ranking dark deities was due to the presence of the Dark Lady.
Anyone holding the portfolio of darkness would inevitably clash with the Dark Lady’s powers, and no deity was foolish enough to provoke such a formidable entity.
Although Masque, the God of Thieves and an ally of Bone Lord, also wielded darkness or shadow-type divine abilities, he was merely a lesser god, and the nature of his portfolio was not yet prominent.
“Could it be another ancient deity that has awakened from obscurity?” Bone Lord’s lips quivered.
The history of Faeloria was more extensive than one might imagine.
Due to the special nature of the continent, even a supreme deity found it difficult to escape this world, leading many ancient beings to grow weary of the world and choose prolonged slumber.
Gods were actually not truly immortal.
Those ancient beings might also choose to slumber at the end of their extended lives to conserve energy and prolong their existence.
Over time, their followers and temples might dwindle and eventually vanish.
Yet, one could not deny their influence and the remarkable feats they had once achieved.
The possibility of an ancient greater deity awakening during this Avatar Crisis to reignite their long-extinguished influence and restore their divine glory was also plausible.
With this thought, Bone Lord’s expression grew even somber.
