Beyond SSS-Rank After Getting The God System-Chapter 249 - 248: Endings Lead To New Beginnings

The instant they heard Illerion’s warning echoing across the quickly dwindling battlefield, they immediately had Tiamutael evacuate everyone to his private space, where they asked for the story.

"...You said Carl’s ascending?"

"Yes, it happened so suddenly I couldn’t do anything. How the hell does someone double their power in a few minutes? What I felt and saw was insane!" It was strange for them to hear her sound genuinely panicked, but that only made them feel worse.

"Sweetie, we need your eyes, can you show us your Dad?"

"I think so, but even my vision is getting distorted. I’ll need Razi to boost me to see clearly, but shes with Ki-ko."

"Don’t worry, fuzzy is fine, just show us."

Tiamutael nodded then linked his senses to all of theirs, what they saw made any of the ascensions they had seen before look like a baby’s nocturnal flailing.

When Illerion had looked over, what she saw was two orbs of luminous silver forming around him, each one holding as much power as Faylorna.

It made no sense, until she realised that Pandora was completely drained of divinity, which meant that Carl had been absorbing it all and using the daggers to just filter out the Chaos mixed in.

She also hadn’t seen him expel, restore and reabsorb his own divinity after Pandora had left it toxic.

"Illerion, I don’t think you did your math right when you said his power doubled." Kyubi said as they got their first fuzzy glimpse of what was happening and they saw that the two orbs had become five and held as much power as Kyubi when she first met Carl.

What left them fearful however, was the fact that they were still growing.

"This is bad! He won’t be able to absorb this much, his body isn’t even fully developed!" Kyubi was about to have Tiamutael send Nergal to siphon some off, but then they saw Sis arrive at his side.

Carl wasn’t conscious, he was frozen in position halfway fallen to his knees, the silver orbs still expanding. "Sorry Carl, I know you’ll be upset I did this, but I’m just sleeping. One day, I’ll adapt, it might be years, centuries or even longer, but one day we’ll see each other again.

In the mean time though, you better do a better job than our parents.

I’ll have to steal a bit of your power to do this, I’m not strong enough as I am, but I’ll keep it to a minimum.

I love you Carl, Klaire, Kyubi, all you kids that are probably wondering how I got where Tiamutael couldn’t go, all of you.

Take care everyone."

As she finished, she jammed her hands into one of the orbs, her divinity channels reaching a point of oversaturation so extreme it lt made her body reach a point it started to fall apart.

The others heard her words, but watching it destroyed them. She was family, sacrificing herself before their eyes. Necessary or not, temporary or not, they were watching someone they loved disappear to save someone they loved.

It was sick.

They couldn’t be happy that Carl was being saved, not when his sister was taking his place.

How could they be?

Not only did they love her, but they would have to look Carl in the eye and tell him.

"Carl, your sister ripped herself apart and disappeared saving you. She had no choice, because you chose to save Pandora and absorbed too much divinity, the only blood relative who didn’t betray, abandon or use you had to disappear." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

They knew already, no matter how they phrased it, that’s what he’d hear.

Dad is alive, but the kids crying over their lost aunt is what he would see.

Sis is with you, but her absence is what he’ll feel.

"Tiamutael. Stop watching and tell everyone else to. Let them have this moment, it won’t change for the better." Klaire said, her voice a solemn whisper.

The truth was selfish, she simply didn’t want the kids traumatised by whatever happened and she didn’t want to see it herself either.

Back on the nameless world, the quickly deteriorating Sis wrapped her arms around Carl.

As her skin continued to crack, her skin began to look like tarnished porcelain, giving her appearance as a whole the look of a broken doll.

"Do me a favour please. I know it’s asking a lot, but could you try to forgive them? When I see you next, I would love it if we could have what we didn’t this time around, family both chosen and blood..."

She paused briefly, wincing as her hair, ears and shoulders began to turn into particles of pure divinity that were absorbed into Carl.

"...It’s strange. I was so happy to have you and the others at first, but watching the kids and how much they love their parents made me greedy I guess.

I want it all. I don’t want us to waste eternity despising our family, I want us to have parents, for your children and maybe one day mine to have grandparents.

I won’t ask you to make promises like Amaterasu did, don’t worry. I just want you to give it your best shot, okay?"

As the last word left her lips, Carl’s eyes trembled, red tears began to fall and finally his eyes managed to meet hers.

"Hey now, don’t strain yourself big brother, you’ve suffered enough for me. All I’m doing is returning the favour, the only promise I’ll make you make is that you don’t make the others worry..."

With those final, unfinished words, her body reached its limit and burst apart before the nebulous mist of particles were absorbed into his.

They moment they had, Carl lost consciousness again.

Despite the portion that Sis had stolen, the amount of divinity in the silver orbs continued to grow and number had increased, until there were ten orbs that ranged from the power to that of Cocytus all the way up to Nergal.

That was when they changed shape, coming to resemble his traitor’s ice-form, it’s fiery variant, lycan-form, his demon-form, his vermillion-bird form, its icy variant, his sun-form, his vampire-form and finally his Nergal-form.

The amount of power gathered finally pushed the ravaged world past its limit.

The atmosphere bulged briefly, then ruptured and went into cataclysm, before the local sun’s unfiltered heat and radiation caused it to combust. As the flames, heat and lethal radiation raced to be what destroyed Carl first, the ten bodies of divinity burst and wrapped him up in a silvery cocoon.

From outside, all that could be seen was the ground falling apart as countless fissures opened and magma bursting forth from the compromised core of a world as desperate to get at least a little revenge as Gilgamesh had been.

As the world broke apart more and more, it appeared as a monster growing more and more savage as its every attempt to destroy the last of its abusers failed to satisfy.

Then finally it grew tired, its strength faded and as if to echo what had happened to Sis, it burst apart. Exploding with all the fury the dying world had left, Carl’s cocoon was bathed in the fires and explosive force that it produced, sent hurtling into a planet on the outskirts on the far side of the solar system.

The impact alone ravaged the unsuspecting world dragged into a conflict it had nothing to do with. First by the shockwave that resounded around the entirety of the planet, then by the ensuing dust explosion that resulted as the air was filled with debris the shockwave had kicked up and broken down before it was ignited by the fire surrounding the cocoon as a result of atmospheric entry.

As the fires burnt out from lack of fuel, that was then followed by a massive burst of divinity that originated from and finally returned to the cocoon.

The moment the wave of divinity returned, it was absorbed by the cocoon and its silvery surface began to shift, wobble and flex. Whilst unseen from the outside, when it finally settled on the outside the inside grew spikes which shot into Carl.

Impaled a dozen times, the cocoon released another pulse, which upon returning was fed into Carl through the spikes acting like hypodermic needles to facilitate the infusion of the divinity.

After the third pulse, the planet had absorbed enough residual divinity to begin rapidly terraforming.

After the fourth, it had not only kick-started naturally occurring life with puddles of primordial ooze forming on the ground, but the cocoon had visibly shrunk.

By the time the ninth had finished, the planet was blanketed in lush alien greenery that had never existed anywhere prior, rivers, oceans, seas and whilst still invisible to the naked eye life had taken several steps towards multi-cellular fauna evolving.

The cocoon had also become skin-tight, making it look more like a silver statue placed in a grand memorial garden to honour Carl, which might have struck a viewer as grim foreshadowing if there were any to see it.

The moment the tenth pulse returned, the silver casing was turned to another burst of divinity that Carl subsequently absorbed.

"Damn it, Sis. That was low, so low. What the hell did you mean by returning the favour, why the hell didn’t you bring the others to share the load and how the hell did you know what was happening?

Damn it..."

Carl restored his hoodie as he scrunched it in his right hand at the centre of his chest.

"Rest well Sis, I’ll try to make sure the world’s a better place by the time you wake up."

Carl took a step and appeared before the others in Tiamutael’s, no longer private, space between realms. He saw the grief in their expressions, so much was there that it drowned out the surprise of his feat in appearing before them.

To rouse their spirits, to comfort them, they were things out of his hands and attempting to do so would only achieve making him a hypocrite. The reality of the situation was that the only reason he had been able to keep moving was because he was letting himself take the low road.

Despite her big words about being a mother for once, Ishtar left and failed to be there when they needed her help, whilst Margo was still busy trying to bring existence to an end.

Carl kept going, for no reason other than to make them answer for this latest heartbreak they had failed to do anything to help or avert. He knew it was petty, that it was childish and not even really their fault, but losing the only blood relative he could bring himself to call family was gnawing at his insides worse than Pandora’s infection.

Carl walked over to Pandora, then gave her an infusion of divinity. It was unintentional, but the small amount he gave her was based on his old abilities and the moment he did, she immediately regained consciousness and screamed as the intensity burnt her divinity channels.

Klaire and Kyubi snapped themselves out of their grief and dogpiled him, worried he’d snapped and decided to torture her in his grief.

"...I won’t say "I’m good", I hate it all. It was an accident though, this new divinity will take some time to adjust to is all. Besides, at least she can start healing herself now.

Tiamutael, can you bring Nergal here to keep her company and then send them wherever he wants to go? I need to keep going or I’m going to crash completely."

Tiamutael didn’t answer, he wasn’t crying, but only because he was trying so hard not to and it was clear that if he let himself get distracted for even a second that would change immediately.

"You go, I’ll stay with them until he can. Stay safe you two." Klaire spoke as she kissed Carl and Kyubi goodbye, then climbed off Carl and went over to comfort their son.

"Are you sure? Right now I think he needs your firepower more than my healing, which are we going to fight next."

"Mobius, I want to ask him something." Carl was being vague, but he had a dangerous look in his eye which made Klaire and Kyubi nervous. They still weren’t entirely convinced that Carl was going to be able to keep himself from doing something insane.

Kyubi nodded to Klaire, then stood herself and helped Carl to his feet, whereupon he opened a portal and was about to step through.

"Are you really going to leave the kin-slayer to babysit Pandora? No punishment? No justice?"

Carl froze, which he found ironic as a symptom of his blood boiling.

Before he even knew what he was doing, he was pulling something out of the god who had spoken out. It took him a second, but he suddenly realised he was holding the Elder-gods divinity channels in his hands.

He scared himself, he didn’t even remember moving, neither did he know how he knew he could remove divinity channels. ’...If I didn’t know I could do that, then what the hell was I trying to pull out when I moved?’

Carl returned the glowing rivers of divinity to their host, then bowed and returned to Kyubi and the others.

"Change of plans. I’m going home to talk to my mums for a bit. I need to clear my head before I do anything." Kyubi could see how much he had scared himself with that fit of blind rage, but she and Klaire were both more than a bit relieved it had happened.

As Carl disappeared, Kyubi snuck through after Klaire gave her a signal to follow him, thenIllerion knelt down next to Tiamutael. "Little dragon. I know you’re sad, but you should keep going. Sis, wouldn’t want you to be miserable and your parents need you to be their reliable little boy.

I know it’s a lot, but you can ask them to baby you and your siblings to make up for it later."

Tiamutael covered his face with his forearms, then nodded, as he did as Carl instructed, but Klaire could tell how torn up he was inside when he of all people asked for help finding Nergal.

In the end he wasn’t able to until Klaire scooped him up and began to comfort him, a deep grief she could understand as a banshee was eating him from the inside out.

"We’ve asked a lot of you kids. Too much. Unfortunately we didn’t have the strength to do this ourselves. We’re nearly there Sweetie, push just a little bit more and I promise you can enjoy being kids while we spend the rest of our lives making up for it."

As he finally managed to summon Nergal, Klaire explained the situation and Nergal decided to take Pandora back to the black city since it was easily one of the most secure realms they had to hand.

"Before I go, who is Carl chasing next?..." Klaire filled him in and he nodded, then after a moment of thought, he continued. "...A piece of advice, send the kids home before he goes after the mad prophet. Grief and madness go hand-in-hand, they’ll be much more susceptible now."

"Just the kids?" Illerion asked with unveiled suspicion.

"I made the banshee, they are resilient to grief by nature and Klaire perfected my design. Kyubi has become resilient over the course of her life and Carl has inversion.

Besides, from what I felt, I would imagine his divinity would act as a passive barrier to external forces. Still though, be careful, all of you."

He hadn’t realised it, but he had just sank even lower in Tiamutael’s eyes. The little dragon was grief-stricken and even though it was what he wanted, hearing Nergal say he should be kept out of it left him feeling like his efforts weren’t appreciated.

It was an emotional child’s misinterpretation, he was certain he was right, but for some reason something about it made guilt mix with his already unstable feelings.

He sent Nergal and his new charge to the black city, but it was then that he realised something was wrong.

"Who were they?"

"That would be my sister’s child’s wife, and their son. A son I fear I may have just wounded rather deeply with my advice..." Nergal sighed, the stump where his arm used to be burning slightly and throbbing.

"Why refer to them so broadly, could you not simply say "my nephew’s wife"?"

Nergal gave a loud sarcastic "Ha!" before a more sincere pained chuckle. "Look at the mess we made for them, the pain we caused them. When I first learned of him, I thought different, but now I’m not sure I could stomach him accepting any of us as family.

The immortals who have done the most for him are Lillim, his adoptive grandmother who led him on his first steps as an immortal and Kyubi of the fox-spirits, who is their lover. Quite frankly, I think I would destroy anyone who referred to me as his uncle despite knowing that."

Pandora considered responding, but prior to that, her only other opinion of Nergal was in regard to his moniker known and feared across immortal society. With that in mind, she decided to remain quiet and focus on making sure she was fully healed.

Klaire meanwhile had asked Tiamutael to send the Elder-gods to wherever Lillim happened to be, her thinking being that Samael was undoubtedly going to require an entirely different level of larger strategy.

It hadn’t escaped their notice that the villains were clearly distinctive in terms of difficulty and aside from Amaterasu, they could see Carl was working his way from weakest to strongest.

It started with Dracula, the ten star of progenitor-variant of his race, who only got involved due to his connection with Sophie.

The ensuing chaos led to the need to break the chain, but that in turn led to Margo appearing, which had struck everybody as a little weird in itself. The moment Ishtar recommended Pandora and none of the others intervened even though they were definitely monitoring each other, it became obvious why.

From what Klaire could tell, the next would be the mad prophet, then Mobius, then Samael, then Tiamutael’s future-self, then Margo himself. She knew she wouldn’t be much help against Margo thanks to what happened, so she was staying focused on an issue the others were ignoring to stay focused.

What she wanted to keep doing instead, was keep an eye keen to see the betrayal and twist coming.