Leveling through Lust

“What are you doing!” the yet-to-be-named angel shouted. The moment he did, I could see some kind of black corruption spreading through his wings.

“Destroying an abomination,” I shouted back, doing my best to lean on the worst aspects of a Light Spark. Direct to the point of recklessness, confident to the point of zealousness. After all, my current identity had already achieved its greatest mission, and it was time for it to die.

“So be it,” he shouted, the dark corruption spreading even more.

This time, I was too familiar with the Divine Sparks to miss their conflicting nature. His conflict was between Darkness and Light, similar to Mariel’s challenge. Well, somewhat. His Light Spark felt similar, but the Darkness spark he used felt different.

The one that the princess used was calm, and soft, like a shadow. His Darkness spark was bright, angry, and changed. I could sense that it was somewhat forced to shift its nature. My guess was that he did so to counter his Spark.

His rain of attacks, a mixture of dark and light, came even stronger than I expected, making me glad that he was barely a demigod. I would have hated him to fight if he completed it.

While Mariel’s unique brand of Spark, which I termed Twilight Spark, had brought some unique advantages, its destructive capabilities came mostly from its Light aspect.

It wasn’t true for my enemy. His brand of Darkness Spark was almost a weird reflection of Light Spark, with a sense of destructive capability to match it. They weren’t blended, but balanced, even the slightest touch enough to send the balance careening.

A dangerous path. I didn’t want to imagine just how much of a nightmare to fight against him if he was an actual god. With the combination, he would have a good chance of winning against the other gods even as a mere avatar. His concept of destruction was just that good.

Luckily, in his demigod state, he was far more busy trying not to kill himself, making him a much more easy enemy. If I didn’t need him to find the base of the Eternals, I would have killed him easily. Instead, I defended his attacks in the worst way possible, and took his attack with my walking castle.

And channeled the resulting explosion to kill half of his men, and used the opportunity to mark several with some very obscure beacons that would start signaling a while later, somewhat similar to the working principles of the beacons we designed for Primordial Aether.

I didn’t expect that to lead me to the real base. The soldiers would probably be transferred to a sub-base, but my bet was that it would go unnoticed, especially since, for all intents and purposes, they were on a secret mission, and would be trying to cover it up.

Of course, that wasn’t my only trick. Oeyne clone was another. I had been hoping that, once I ‘died’ her value as bait would be gone, and they would imprison her again, ideally in the same base they held Titania.

“Is this all you can do, ugly abomination,” I shouted. In response, I received a primal shout that surprised me with its intensity. He didn’t seem to appreciate an insult to his physical features. His response was an even bigger wave of bolts, each hit destroying bigger chunks of my castle.

He was playing right into my hand.

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While I already had two baits, one that led to a potential barracks, and one to a prison, I still needed a third one. One that would lead to his secret sanctum … which definitely existed. Keeping the two different Divine Sparks was a very dangerous process, the kind that any disruption would be deadly. Combined with its relatively hidden nature, I had no doubt that he had a nice base that no one else knew just for balance.

I just needed to give him a reason to use it.

As he attacked once again, the castle had already turned into a rubble. I triggered an explosion, using the opportunity to fake my death … but not before sending a blade of concentrated light, far too fast and intense for him to react.

And severing his wing.

His cry of pain was a balm to my soul. His reaction was intense … which was understandable. I had been with Mariel enough to know that their wings were bound to their existence even tighter than the rest of their bodies. Cutting off his arm would have been less painful.

As he collapsed, trying to contain the sudden disorder of Darkness and Light in his body, I wrapped myself with a Darkness cloak and moved forward … and forced a link with the Spark remnants in his wing.

One that would allow me to follow him to his base.

Then, I retreated before someone could notice my presence. My reckless last stand had come to an end, and another infiltration mission was about to begin.

Only after I moved a distance away from the battlefield, I teleported back to the capital. Or, more accurately, right under the capital, next to Oeyne.

“Is it done?” she asked as she hugged me, clearly worried. I didn’t blame her, considering my last encounter with that angel. I ended up lost in Primordial Aether.

“Almost. Currently, they are kidnapping your double. Others had already teleported away. I could sense their location…” I added, then paused. “In the sky.”

“On a mountain or something?” she asked.

“No, right at the sky,” I said with a frown. “And, their locations are too far apart. Either they have several flying locations that are moving in perfect harmony…” I murmured.

“Or their base is far bigger than we expected,” she added.

“Maybe. But if it’s true, it’s big. Several times the capital big.” I paused, feeling the location of Oeyne's clone … which was definitely not in the sky. “At least they’re secret prisons in a different location,” I said, then felt the location of the angel I had just maimed. “And so is the secret chamber of that angel.”

“What’s the sequence,” she said.

“Three steps,” I said, but I didn’t have much time. The beacons I left wouldn’t last long, as I deliberately made them underpowered. And, the city’s location feels weird, like it’s occasionally shifting in location.

“Probably a defensive method,” Oeyne suggested. That was probably the case. They might have nothing to fear from people of the material plane — well, except me, but they didn’t know that — but the same thing didn’t apply to their divine enemies.

Even assuming they had no enemies — which was an absurd assumption — most gods would be to weaken their bargaining position. I had no doubt that their base had been defended very aggressively.

“I need to go,” I said as I kissed Oeyne, and she nodded.

First, the prison. Hopefully, Titania would be there.

I didn’t teleport the location directly, but instead targeted a location that would take several minutes to travel even if I flew on a fake elemental. And, without it, the travel took even longer, but I didn’t want to trigger any alarm in the process.

Not when my favorite librarian’s life was at stake.

It turned out to be a good choice, as I had to bypass several detection wards in the process, each supported by an artifact. Though, as long as I approached them carefully, they were easy to bypass. Their need for secrecy prevented them from building an impenetrable prison.

Instead, they decided to bury the prison deep, relying on magic to conceal themselves from the beasts, and limiting the number of guards to avoid betrayal. A smart choice.

Too bad that it left them particularly vulnerable toward my skill set. I didn’t even bother engaging with the guards, using another cloak of darkness to bypass the wards. Soon, I was at the center of the prison, where Oeyne’s clone was, trapped in a complicated array.

And, next to her, there was Titania.

The moment I had seen her, I had decided to murder that corrupted angel painfully, because the scene in front of me was worse than I expected. Titania was locked in an array, her body glowing with Light Spark.

But not just that. Her Light Spark was Tainted. At first, I assumed it to be another divine spark, Spark of Water, but it was not.

The Divine Spark, regardless of nature, gave a similar feeling to a soul. Concentrated and directed, but still somehow human.

Whatever tainted her felt more like Primordial Aether, but a wild version. But, whatever it was, it was strong, enough to devour and destroy her spark despite being much smaller.

I frowned. I wanted to destroy the prison for daring to do such a thing. I didn’t know the thing that tainted her soul, but I could see that, without my unique set of skills, it would have been deadly. And, even with my unique skills, it wasn’t a trivial situation.

I suppressed the desire to destroy the prison as I searched the place, hoping to find something that would give me an idea about her situation. But, there was no information.

I took Titania away to another base I created for her, leaving a clone behind to warn me when someone started to experiment on them. Meanwhile, I needed to do some experiments.

But, before, I needed to deal with a corrupted angel.

{Strength: 115 Charisma: 115

Precision: 115 Perception: 124

Agility: 115 Manipulation: 122

Speed: 115 Intelligence: 151

Endurance: 168 Wisdom: 122}

{Purified Divine Spark: 1.147,577}

{ADDITIONAL SPARKS

Twilight - Chosen 30

Nature - Chosen 10

Knowledge - Chosen 10}

{GODDESSES

Elven Goddess

Goddess of Knowledge

Twilight Archangel

Goddess of the Forge}