Chapter 224 Hunger, hatred and helplessness
[Changes in plotline detected.]
[Quest issued.]
[Please ask the host to check it as soon as possible to be better prepared.]
Rio read the notification and smiled. He wasn't surprised about it, as he had doubted that something was wrong the moment he saw all these heroines sitting in the open, with Leon who's present in the same restaurant. And when he tasted the food in front of him, he had already noticed what was wrong.
'Warzy, my dear old friend. I've been waiting.' Rio said in his heart while taking another bite, and munching on it.
{Hela scoffs at the fools who are trying to use poison on her chosen. She feels proud of her blessing, and asks the host to punish these ignorant ants.}
{Nyx smiles, saying you should kill them in a way that sets an example for others.}
{Loki looks forward to your performance. Make him laugh.}
{Odin and Indra casts their eyes at you. Hoping to see your progress with their own eyes.}
Rio read the notifications of some other gods too but he ignored them. It wasn't surprising that some of these guys came to watch the drama. Since an attack on floating island was worth watching and interesting enough for them to waste their energies willingly. He expected it, but then he saw something that got his attention.
{Den of Devils starts a gathering, batting on your chances of survival.}
{Ythranor looks at you and scoffs saying 'what an ant'}
'Guess Dante was his favorite huh.' Rio wondered as he read the notification of Ythranor, who looked like he was in a bad mood.
Den of Devils was a group made up of many evil members belonging to several myths and legends from all kinds of worlds. It was a collective community of many high ranking members of evil gods of evil races like Demon's, Asura's, Oni's, Ifrit's, Djinn's, Ghoul's, Lamia's etc.
At the beginning of Emergence, several righteous gods got pulled into Arcadia, and they started a hunt to kill all the evil gods and their followers, to wipe out the traces of evil from this new world and to secure their ruling position. While also trying to increase their reputation so they can get more faith power for themselves.
The righteous gods spread myths and legends of the cruelty of their enemies and called them evil races, riling up the people to Arcadia to kill them. This way it created a time period where all those righteous gods gathered up their followers and enjoyed the hunt of their lifelong enemies.
Everyone who was even slightly associated with evil gods, or who prayed to them or was chosen by them as their follower or an avatar - was banished, burned and killed by the righteous army. Making bodies pile up in mountains, while their blood flowed like rivers, dying the whole of Arcadia red.
When the evil gods and those who were now branded evil, felt the threat of life - after constantly losing avatars and followers, they all decided to form a joint front and oppose these so called 'righteous army.'
This is how the Den of Devils was initially formed. A gathering of gods branded as evil.
The collective front of evil stopped the hunt of righteous gods and their followers and both parties finally formed a momentary peace.
But then the tides started to turn, various gods and different races started to join the Den of Devils, pressuring the righteous gods into a corner.
After all, what Den of Devils promised was the freedom to do whatever they wanted. There were no rules which binded anyone, and if they had strength all their supporters and followers were free to do everything, their gods would back them up.
The allure of darkness and evil had always been something that was hard to resist, and just like that, Arcadia was pushed into an era of evil. An era, where lawlessness and crime were at peak, where lives weren't considered precious anymore, and evil became the new justice. Where looting, rioting, raping, killing etc became the new measures of prestige and power. That was the darkest period in the history of Arcadia.
Some history books say there used to be no sunlight seen for days in that era, as the world would always be covered in the gloomy shadow of darkness. That blood rains never stopped, as the will of the world cried daily seeing the state of Arcadia.
And one day, the ray of hope shone in the world, ending this dark era.
The avatars of many primordials and origin gods joined forces to fight against the Den of Devils. But instead of hoping to achieve the fool's dream of completely eradicating evil, the chosens of primordials put forth the condition of peace and coexistence - like how they've been doing in their own worlds for eons.
This way both the forces of evil and righteousness stopped their war, and decided to develop themselves and advance together in this new world. Instead of fighting and dying amongst themselves, and making the world system of Arcadia stronger.
Rio kept eating the poisoned food, and other than the fact that his taste buds were suffering, like they were forced to chew something unpalatable, he felt nothing else.
His expression to that bad taste and detail of poison didn't even make him frown, as he faced worse of these things when he was trapped in that godforsaken dungeon for two years.
After all, in a failed world, infected with death energy, the first thing that goes extinct is food. The world couldn't grow anything new, and whatever there ever was, was now corroded and filled with the death energy of that red sun.
Even though he liked to always prepare extra for everything, he couldn't just store things that could last him for two years. He had to keep everything in storage rings at that time, instead of the unlimited system inventory - and storage rings gets easily filled.
Once all the food he had on himself, and what he got through the rings of other students, which he looted or picked from their corpses, ended - he had to do everything to make sure he survived.
He couldn't go hungry for days, as once his mana ended, he needed to use his aura to fight against all those creatures who came for his life - and for that aura, he needed his physical strength.
Not to mention the aftereffects of mana and aura depletion which made his hunger go beyond the limits. And it hurt more as he couldn't waste his mana on suppressing these little effects.
As even more time passed and he got affected with EMMSY and started facing the mismatch of energies within him. He started losing his connection with mana, and it started taking longer and longer to replenish it. While in the beginning he could get his full mana back in a few hours, which later turned into full days, and by the end, he needed nearly a week if he wanted to get all his mana back.
Not to mention all this time he had to keep using his mana sparingly always to keep EMMSY from spreading uncontrollably and turning him into a zombie too.
The feeling of hunger, hatred and helplessness had nearly eaten away at his sanity. And it was probably only his luck that he survived all that time, until he got out.
Against all that, and what he had to eat there, this wasn't even a warm up.
Rio looked at Rebecca, Saisha and others, and saw that all of them were eating their food without any complaints or notice of danger. Ayla and Rubina weren't avatars yet so it was fine that no God could talk to them freely here. As for others, he knew the characteristics of Rebecca's goddess Selene and Esme's God Camazotz, both of these gods were too stuck up high horses, so they probably turned this into a test to see their chosen one's strength.
It was all within his expectations.
But the one who really surprised him was Saisha. He saw her eating her food without any care while talking with Ayla and Rubina - and he couldn't help but think, just what's going on with Gaia.
In the novel, the all mother Gaia literally doted on Saisha, as if she was her own daughter. She also helped her many times, and even acted to save Leon once since he was Saisha's friend. And yet that same goddess mama bear was watching the drama from the sidelines, without warning her avatar at all.
''Nyx, do you know something, what's wrong with Gaia?'' Rio asked as he rubbed his fingers over the mark of dark moon, which was Nyx's symbol on his hand. .
{Pay back my last favor and I'll let you know.} Nyx said, reminding him about the promise he made to her in return for using her name, so he can hide about the system power ups and him ranking up overnight. Nyx had kept silent and no one knew that she didn't help him in that regard at all.
'You got so much power of faith due to my publicity, can't you just answer a little question.' Rio said stating facts, hoping she'd answer. After all, with his little fiasco and reputation Nyx got so many new followers.
But Rio got no reply from Nyx again. 'She just had to go silent now.'
'Damn it, this is gonna be a headache.' Rio cursed in his heart, as he failed to understand anything about Gaia or Saisha.
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