CHAPTER 668: 668

It had made him stronger. Every new worshipper swelled his power, feeding his divine essence with their faith. But there was a price, a hidden poison in the gift.

The energy that flowed into his realm was raw and unrefined, tainted by mortal greed, fear, and obsession. It thickened the currents of his divinity, darkening them, making it harder to distinguish his will from theirs. His once-pristine ocean had begun to churn with shadows, each wave whispering conflicting desires born from human hearts.

He had ignored it before. Dismissed it as the necessary cost of strength. But now, after speaking with Ikem, he understood the danger more clearly. Power gained without discernment could just as easily become corruption.

His anger toward Erik would not fade, nor would his intent to act, but he would move carefully now.

No longer would he pour his grace so freely into mortal hands. He would choose with precision, ensuring that only those truly worthy or truly useful would receive his blessing. The rest would be left to their own folly, their prayers soon unanswered would stop on its own.

The danger of unrefined faith energy, the chaotic residue of mortal devotion was a constant threat to any ascended god. Left unchecked, it could warp the divine self, eroding the boundary between god and worshipper until even immortality became madness.

Tide looked out over his realm, watching the slow undulation of the waters. The surface shimmered faintly, reflecting his solemn expression back at him.

"I will not fall," he murmured. "Not to mortals. Not to myself."

Months after the frenzy stirred by Erik’s defiance, the world was shaken once more. This time by an event that stilled that chaos entirely.

A new god had ascended.

Krogan, the Beast God.

His rise came as a thunderclap, unexpected to most especially those of the western continent, who had been too consumed by Erik’s upheaval to notice the quiet gathering of power elsewhere. Yet among the vast Nana civilization, whispers of Krogan’s ascension had already spread long before the skies opened for him.

Where Erik’s act had been an outrage, a mortal reaching beyond his station. Krogan’s was something more deliberate. His ascension had been prepared.

While the world’s eyes fixated on Erik, they forgot about the beastfolk who recently made an apperance. Their curiosity only lasted for a while before it was over taken by Curioisty and gossip on Erik’s action.

Manye waiting to see how the godlings would react and so the beastfolk continued their mission undisturbed or questioned.

To most, they were a curiosity. To the nobles and scholars, they were an omen.

While others watched the unfoldingdrama with Erik, these nobles kept their gaze steady on the beastfolk, quietly documenting their customs, tracing the strange energy that seemed to hum within their blood. Their vigilance made them among the first to discern the truth, a new god was preparing to ascend.

Before his apotheosis, Krogan had been meticulous. His teachings, rituals, and creeds had already spread like the beastfolk to those willing to listen and understand.

His teachings were no secrets, they were proclamations, etched into stone, carved into bone, and sung by tribes that wandered the wild frontiers. Alongside his growing faith came the revelation that a new race, the beastfolk, had entered the world’s fold, a people born of untamed nature yet capable of civilization.

The nobles, understanding the magnitude of this development, did not sit idle. Using their wealth and influence, they extended patronage to the beastfolk, helping them settle, thrive, and integrate within their territories. Their generosity, however, was far from selfless. They sought favor with the god-to-be, hoping that by aiding his people, they would earn his blessing once he ascended.

When Krogan finally rose to godhood, his roar echoed through the World. The mortals called it the Awakening of the Wilds.

Yet even as he received the devotion of thousands, Krogan himself could not rest. The prospect of ascension filled him with restless anticipation. For him, this was not merely a rise to power, it was liberation.

He would finally cast off the demonic taint that had shadowed him since his birth. He would no longer be the fallen fragment of Murmur’s consciousness.

For Krogan knew what Murmur truly was, a being of impossible cunning, the very embodiment of temptation and deceit. He had seen, through the shared memory of their essence, the heights Murmur once stood upon.

And he also knew the irony of Murmur’s fall, how fortune turned its face from him, how he was devoured by a child of Kaos, his goal which was at an arms reached denied from him.

And yet, even in ruin, Murmur endured.

Through sheer will and cunning, he carved out a new path for himself. Though far from the monstrous grandeur he once possessed, he was far from weak. Krogan, who had watched him longer and closer than most, knew this truth well, the current Murmur was perhaps even more dangerous than the one who had ruled the Abyss.

The old Murmur had been volatile, cruel, unpredictable, and fueled by endless malice. His strength was raw, terrifying, but scattered. Now, since his fall into this new world, that chaos had condensed into something colder, sharper, and more calculating.

Still, Murmur struggled. Krogan had often watched him be thwarted, time and again by the Origin Gods, who always seemed a step ahead of him. Whenever Murmur plotted too boldly or drew too close to their domains, they crushed him, their power pressing him back into the shadows. It was almost pitiful to watch: the once-great Demon King forced to slink in the dark, his pride gnawed away by humiliation.

Krogan could almost pity him. Almost.

He understood that this defeat cut deeply into Murmur’s very being. A creature who once ruled over legions now had to live beneath the feet of gods who treated him as a pest.

But then... everything changed.

Murmur went silent.

The subtle stirrings of his shadow, vanished. Krogan watched, uneasy, as the Demon King withdrew from the world. When next he appeared, it was in a form that none could have predicted: that of an old human man.

It was like a mockery and a disguise, a frail aged body masking an immortal will. Murmur seemed to have abandoned the shadow and instead choose to instead walk among mortals.

Krogan didn’t buy this and so he continued to observe, keeping track of his movements through visions and divine scrying.

Until, one day, even that trail went dark.

The old man disappeared. No trace and no whisper. Krogan searched across the mortal continents, through the cracks between realms but found nothing. Murmur was gone.

That absence disturbed him more than Murmur’s presence ever had.

For Krogan knew, when Murmur was silent, he was never truly still.

And whatever he was becoming next... it might already be too late to stop.

Hence the disappearance brought no joy to Krogan. When Murmur vanished from his sight, a constant sense of danger took root within him, an invisible weight pressing against his spine. It was as though something was breathing down his neck, unseen yet ever-present.

Not even within his own pocket dimension, his private dominion between worlds did he feel safe. The realm, to the outside world, seemed like a place he created to distance from the chaos of the mortal world, which is mostly true.

But Krogan knew the truth. His realm had been built out of fear.

It was his answer to that gnawing, unrelenting dread, a cocoon to keep the unseen threat at bay. Yet the larger his pocket dimension grew, the more suffocating the dread became. The walls that should have protected him only amplified the sense of danger. The very essence of the place pulsed with unease, as though the dimension itself shared in his terror.

Still, this growth brought with it an unintended gift. The more his realm expanded, the more attuned he became to its feedback, to the faint vibrations of reality that it gathered from every corner of existence.

And then, finally, he understood. The danger did not come from the outside, it came from within.

From something that belonged to him, something he had claimed long ago as his own, and which now pulsed with the same energy that once coursed through Murmur.

It was the source of his power, the wellspring of his strength... and, he realized with dread, the root of his undoing "Murmur’s heart"

Once Krogan pinpointed the source of the unease, he had never felt more conflicted or more proud of the bestial body that now housed his consciousness.

For the first time since his awakening, he truly regarded the form he had taken: the great jaguar, the vessel that had become his new self. He had always admired its strength, the raw power that came with every motion, the fluid precision of its muscles, the primal grace that came naturally to the beast.

He had long dismissed many of its peculiarities as mere bestial instinct, the twitch of an ear before unseen danger, the subtle bristle of fur when magic stirred in the air. Such things were common among magical creatures, after all. He thought little of it.