CHAPTER 249(Man-Made God)

Please read the author's notes.

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CHAPTER START---

"Airmid!" Hephaestus nearly trips over herself running into the hospital room.

Airmid, Yang, and Freya stare at her, seeing the goddess cradling a metal prosthetic like her life depended on it.

"Is tha---"

"Yes!" Hephaestus cuts Freya off, leaving the wide-eyed goddess stunned silent. She wasn't sure how to explain the divine aura from that object.

"Alright let's make this quick," Yang says, readying himself and staring into the Divine Mirror, resting his arm on the bedside table for Airmid to get to work.

"Right," Airmid nods and moves to take the hand only for Hephaestus to pull it away.

"I don't think you should touch it, this is...something new...it may react poorly to any mortal aside from Yang."

Airmid looks confused but doesn't question it, "um, alright. Then just follow my instructions."

"Is this what we felt earlier?" Yang asks as Hephaestus and Airmid begin preparing his arm.

"Welf made divinity," Hephaestus says, still a bit of disbelief in her voice.

"What do you mean he 'made divinity', that's possible?" Yang asks, his gaze still not leaving the Divine Mirror, seeing Thalie and The Angel brawling in the air.

"No, its not...it shouldn't be," Hephaestus says. "But he did it anyway."

"Is it safe?" Freya asks, seeing the hand being lined up with Yang's stump, dangerously close to touching his flesh.

"He made it for Yang so I assume so."

"You assume?!" Freya curls her fingers into a fist, glaring at the prosthetic.

"It's the best shot we have," Yang says, giving her a warning look. "What will it do to me?" he continues focusing on the fight, seeing Thalie losing more and more ground by the second.

"Nothing more than let you touch Arcanum, I think," Hephaestus says.

"Can you confirm anything!" Freya shrieks.

"This isn't something that's been done before!" Hephaestus angrily screams back.

"Focus!" Yang commands, snapping everyone back to the task at hand. "Just do it already."

"Once you connect them his magic should do the rest," Airmid says, pointing to the piece of metal still attached to Yang from the previous prosthetic.

"Right, here goes," Hephaestus takes a deep breath and barely touches the pieces together before the prosthetic glows.

"Argh!" Yang groans and immediately passes out, eyes still wide open yet he slumps forward.

"Yang!" Freya yells, rushing to his side, nearly shoving Hephaestus to the floor. Concern and fear overwhelm her as she sees the glowing light spreading through his veins, illuminating them through his skin and clothes.

Bright white streams of divinity flowed through him constantly at war with itself, to either pull him apart into nothingness or to bind with him.

"What's it doing?" Airmid asks.

"Binding with him," Hephaestus says. Freya whispers words they couldn't hear into Yang's ear, cradling his head to her chest Hephaestus spoke to Airmid. "Mortals can't comprehend divinity so he blacked out, it's permeating his body and saturating him, he's...ascending."

"To become what? A god?" Airmid asks.

"No, that's still---" Hephaestus cuts herself off, no longer believing in the word 'impossible', especially not for this team. "He's something entirely new, it'll be up to him to decide what that means."

While the three women were helplessly watching the process, they turn to see Thalie invoking the Champion's Challenge, locking herself in a cage match with The Angel.

And while the entire world held its breath, Yang was in a black void of nothingness.

Standing in an abyss of nothingness, yet he could hear voices, a billion voices. Chaotic, desperate, terrified.

All begging for help, all begging for him.

"Please help us."

"Will you save us?"

"Dear Dungeon Emperor sir, please beat the monster."

"Dear mister Shen, please win."

"Please win."

"Can you please save us all?"

"You'll win right?"

"SHUT UP!" Yang screams, clutching his head as the voices endlessly badger him. Pulling him in every direction, not giving him a moment to think, overpowering even his own voice.

"Focus on me," Freya's soothing voice pierces all the chaos, like a whisper in a storm.

Yang closes his eyes, straining his senses, picturing her, imagining her warmth.

"I'm right here," she says. "It's only us, we're the only people in the world," the volume of her voice rises.

Yang tries to steady his mind, and many of the desperate voices fade away, Freya gets closer to being the loudest voice.

"Just the two of us," she says. "Focus on me, on all of me, only me, nobody else."

He hears her voice as if she were standing beside him.

"Come back to me," she pleas. "My beloved, come back to me. Come back to me! Please!" she screams in his ear.

"Gah!" Yang jolts awake, feeling his body burning, mind confused.

"It's ok, it's ok," Freya tries to calm him down. He was still in his hospital bed, her sitting beside him, holding his head to her chest and carefully stroking his hair.

"What the hell was that?"

"People were praying to you, you could hear their prayers, their intent, its as if you command a domain, only those few gods receive prayers..." Freya explains.

"Glad to see you're more careful with her than your actual goddess," Hephaestus's voice calls his attention to the far side of the room. She was picking herself up from the floor beside Airmid, the room appearing as if it was hit by a tornado, yet Freya and his bed were untouched.

"Sorry," Yang looks at the Divine Mirror to see Thalie slumped back and bleeding out, "I need to go." He hops out of bed and immediately drops to his knees, feeling a bit exhausted.

They notice the metal hand now a solid black, no longer seeming to absorb all the light it could. Completely sated. Where metal meets flesh they bind as if they were always meant to be.

Seeing Yang forcing himself to stand Airmid tries to get to him before he's out the window, "wait, we need to---"

BOOM!

Their eardrums are almost bleeding as he disappears, leaving a sonic boom in his wake. Rocketing directly down toward Babel plaza the moment he's out the window.

Yang descends as a ball of blue fire, and everything reacts.

The night air becomes scorching hot. Skin blisters, eyes dry up and lips crack. The fragile level 1 and 2 adventurers reel back, forced to look away from his radiance.

The torches littered all across Orario swell from small torch flames to massive infernos. Shifting from orange to bright blue, all dancing and leaning toward Babel, towards their master.

BANG!

One massive quake shakes Orario and the surrounding land.

BANG!

Another, and another. Seventeen quakes as Yang melts and crashes through stone, descending floor after floor in a straight line toward Thalie.

"That's gonna cost me," Hephaestus chuckles, standing by the window with Freya and Airmid as they stare down at Babel plaza. A massive ten-meter-wide hole of molten rock was spreading, threatening to pull in the surrounding tone and buildings. Directly where the fountain was.

Thankfully she sees a few dozen adventurers already desperately trying to bring water and stop the heat.

Down on floor eighteen, while Thalie's life was fading away, the sudden burst of inspiration reached her, the will to live on spread out from Yang binding with the Arcanum. Her desire to survive is once again ignited, just as pieces of the crystal ceiling crashes down.

"What the hell is that!" Lefiya's panicked voice cries out. Raising a hand instinctively to hide from the sheer heat radiating from Yang as he descends toward them.

Cutting off his Mage Armor he lands before them without a word, eyes in a dead stare at Thalie.

She barely manages to look at him, her eyes quietly apologizing for allowing it to come to this again.

Seeing Yang's state the present adventurers and viewers around the world stare in surprise.

Standing with just a pair of black combat pants, the ashes of his top falling off his body. The Chaos Mark was already in full bloom, bright red markings snaked around his body. And a solid white Elemental Wheel at his back.

And when he stepped forward and placed his new metal hand on the barrier separating him from Thalie.

His hand shone brightly. And the barrier flexed.

"C'mon!" Yang growls.

CRACK!

The barrier shatters and entirely disappears, Arcanum cracking Arcanum.

And while his arm glowed, that same feeling permeated the world, announcing to everyone exactly where their renewed desire to survive came from.

"Every time you use that thing I end up having to save you," Yang chuckles as Riveria is already casting a healing spell on Thalie. He takes a few steps to stand between her and The Angel.

Feeling the magic taking effect Thalie pulls the spear out of her gut and sits up with Lefiya's help. "What's the plan?" she groans, trying and failing to stand.

"Get her to the surface," Yang speaks without looking away from The Angel, seeing it slowly rising to its full height and glowing brightly once again, wings fully reformed, stronger than ever, staring at him with curious eyes.

"We'll take care of it," Finn says, sharing a look of concern with Riveria who was already chanting another spell, nearing Mind Down by the second. Ready to take Thalie away and give Yang the space he needs.

They didn't need to ask, they could all feel it. He cut the heat, but Yang was pissed. The worst kind of anger, silently boiling just below the surface.

As Finn helps Thalie up, The Angel reacts.

"Ng-" His panicked shrill is cut short.

The Angel bolted forward like a flicker of light, faster than any adventurer could react.

Almost any adventurer.

It reached out to grab Thalie and end her, removing the only perceived threat. Dashing right past Yang, expecting him to become dust like all the other people she touched earlier.

"Bad move," Yang grumbles, stopping The Angel from flying past him by grabbing its face, a deathly silence fills the battlefield as all eyes focus on him. The Angel flapping its wings but stuck in place, unable to get out of his grip.

His one hand holding its head, muscles bulging and flexing, "argh!" he swings his arm and pitches The Angel across the floor as if it were a baseball.

The draft from his pitch nearly tears them off their feet, only protected by the small barrier of wind he placed around them.

Uprooting half a small forest and seeing a massive crack spread up the far wall of the dungeon he just glares into the distance. Turning back to look at his allies over his shoulder, "go, I've got this," he gives them a vicious smile.

He'd most certainly be enjoying this hunt...

END CHAPTER---