POV: God of combat.
By the third day, I had already completed the construction of the planet. I added a little more terrain diversity to give the participants a harder challenge.
All that was left to do was choose what went where. Due to the massive influx of mana, putting in the same creatures as before would've put the participants at an unfair advantage. They may not have recognized it immediately, but the mana present in the air had already created significant changes within their bodies. For some, I had to intervene directly as their bodies couldn't withstand the changes, but most of them managed to adapt to the new change.
At the same time, I couldn't just put the strongest creatures that that level of mana allowed. That would be unfair to them as they would never experience what fighting a real magical creature feels like.
'I could proceed in waves, creating fun events along the way to justify the changes. That'll make things a bit more interesting.'
I returned to my domain and started to look through my little private zoo. It was finally time to feed those poor little creatures as well as analyze them to see which one of them was fit to be sent there.
There was a snake that captured my attention. It was about 10 meters long and had a triangle-shaped head. It hunted using its extremely deadly venom as well as using an invisibility skill to both hunt or escape from other, much bigger predators. It also knew how to use aura, and each member of the species was adept at using wind aura to fly.
"I think that's overkill, brother. At best, we should stop at animals that are able to perform mimicry. Invisibility comes far too soon for these inexperienced warriors. "
The God of War appeared behind me, followed by his usual followers.
"You think so? Maybe I overestimated them." I said while searching for another giant snake that was fit for the role.
Immediately after, he created a portal to his domain and dismissed his followers.
"Brother, the seals are..."
He said while creating a special mirror that reflected the state of the major seals, they were constantly trembling and seemed to be cracked.
"I guess they're barely holding back the mana. How much time do we have left before they collapse?"
"They can still hold well, but if we destroy another couple of seals, they'll start a domino effect. The living cannot survive the sudden release of so much mana."
He seemed genuinely worried.
"Is there a way for them to survive?"
"Yes there is, don't worry. I have already prepared all the necessary preparations. Trust your brother. " That was a lie.
I had some countermeasures prepared before, but they were all useless. I was unprepared for the sheer amount of mana that was released with the destruction of only one seal.
"We could imitate the folks down on the second tier." I proposed to my brother while looking at the many magical beasts that I was taking care of.
"Of course, with an appropriate rework on the whole system, we're not trying to block their potential, we just want their bodies to be ready once the rest of the seals are broken." I said while giving him a quick look.
He was clearly thinking about it.
"Then, once their body is ready, we can simply remove it since they won't need it anymore."
I kept talking to see if he was truly listening to me, and then he finally spoke.
"What about the irregularities?"
"That's... we can leave those problems in the hands of the golden army."
"Aren't they busy repelling the armies of demons? Last time I checked, most gods have started to produce demons in order to—"
I then burst out laughing. Demons, by godly definition, are beings that are not living beings; they just mimic living creatures. Most of them do not have free will, and the ones that do have free will are not capable of going against the wishes of their creators. If it breathes, eats, drinks, and sleeps, then it's a living being. If it doesn't need any of that, then it's a demon.
"Just how pathetic must they be to not even be able to produce living beings? Even humans can produce demons; some of them are even capable of producing and modifying the living, yet those gods can't?"
A god that couldn't create a living being with his own hands was so pathetic that it was actually funny. It took me a while to regain composure. In the meantime, I created many mirrors to check if it was true. Sadly, it was.
"Sorry, sorry, what were we talking about again?" I moved the many mirrors above me so I could still see the many animals in my personal zoo.
"If we proceed with your idea, how would we deal with irregular living beings?"
The first things that came to mind when thinking of irregularities were, for the most part, witches and mutants.
The sudden growth of the irregularities would most likely cause harm to the other living beings, especially when they need to grow to at least twenty times their current power in the span of the next two years.
"Maybe... We should create some sort of mandatory tutorial that lets them grow only after they manage to surpass a certain level of control over their powers. " I said while creating a small cat to keep in my arms. It had four tails, white fur, short legs, a pink nose, and lastly, it was heterochromatic to make it even more exotic.
'Just a small flex in case they're also watching me.'
The cat was coddled up in my arms and immediately started purring at me upon receiving the gift of life.
"Now-" As I walked by the various cages, I started noticing some sort of white dust loitering on the floor. Most of my animals had started to avoid it while also showing obvious signs of distress.
As I got closer to check what it was about, my brother stopped me and shouted. "Don't touch it!"
The answer was obvious; the process of decay had somehow managed to reach even the domain of the God of Combat. I was deemed unfit for my title by the universe.
"We don't have much time on our side. We probably can't afford to wait ten years to complete our plans to take over the tenth tier and change the administrator. "
'At this rate, I might get stripped of my title or even killed for probably less than what we originally wanted. Is this what they were truly aiming for? Do they really think that once they get rid of me, they can control the next God of Combat? Or do they intend to have one of their paws win the title?'
A million other questions swarmed my mind.
"Is that why you seem in a rush, brother? Are you also suffering from the same problem?"
He shook his head in response. Since I didn't trust his response, I immediately opened up a portal that led to his domain, and he immediately jumped in front of me to stop me from going there.
"This confirms it. You all have gone mad in the past three hundred years." I said
I noticed that all the gods reflected in the mirrors had stopped creating their army of demons and were now staring directly at me.
"Weak ones use trickery to win against stronger opponents, but this time your trickery won't work. The universe itself is rejecting your cowardice and has already started to enforce its will upon us. You know what that means, right?"
"Brother, it doesn't have to end in this way."
"Get out of my sight!" I shouted back.
"If you only made the right decision, we wouldn't all be stuck in this position!" shouted one of the gods in the mirrors.
"That's right, if you only decided to listen to us and fight back the-" said another figure in the mirror.
"You shouldn't have allied with that man-"
"It's all your fault if we are now risking our lives as well."
"Why did the administrator even agree to create your stupid little game."
"Why do you constantly refuse to do your job?"
And many others were all shouting those kinds of things at me.
"The God of Combat!" I shouted back.
"Is not some kind of loyal dog you can just use as you want. I'm the strongest, and my job is to reward and encourage fighting. Never once was it stated that I had to fight someone that wasn't a challenger. "
"We are not asking for anything ridiculous this time!" The God of Love and Luck responded.
"Brother, please recapitulate. If the emperor gets what he wants-"
"The emperor will get what he can get. If you don't want him here, you can just fight him like the gods in the ninth tier did."
"It's easy to say for you since you're the strongest being!" Some other unknown god responded.
"That's right, we don't hold the amount of power necessary to drive him off."
They were all seeking excuses now. It was true that they didn't hold the power to fight him, but they never even tried to gain more strength for themselves, nor did they try to gain knowledge. That's why they couldn't even create a functional living being.
"I don't care about this. This universe will not magically end just because a few trillion people from another universe immigrate here."
"But Brother the Gre-"
"I will keep following my duty to the letter till my last day and none of you will ever convince me otherwise." I said as I created a portal that led me directly to the planet where the trial was being held.
I then started creating many lifeforms and giving them life; creating plants and balancing them appropriately; then I started populating the oceans, the skies, and the floating oceans.
'And here I thought I had at least an ally in my battle.'
POV Maxim Giova. To remind you who he is, he's an actor. His race has a special power. From birth, they have some sort of special tattoo that they can manifest into reality. Maxim had a tree on his back that connected a starfish, bird wings, flying blades, and a clone of himself. Their skin is red, except for Alex Giova, who's a special case.)
"I'm sorry, but today I won't go easy on you, Max." He said.
Many weird black spots started to appear on his pure white skin. At first they didn't have a clear pattern, but then they assumed the same forms as my crests.
'Don't tell me.'
He then lit up the three. He then connected the wings and the blades. Shortly after, wings appeared on the back, as well as some floating blades.
"What's wrong? Why aren't you activating yours?" He taunted me.
I also activated the three and connected the blades and the starfish. Many tentacles started to appear on my back as well as the blades. We both had eight floating blades.
He immediately made the blades fly towards me in a straight line at high speed. Using mine, I interjected them. In the meantime, he got closer. Too close for my tastes.
I tried to attack him with one of the tentacles, but he managed to cut it with the blades.
He threw left straight. I half-assedly dodged his punch, but then I got hit in the back of the head by the flap of his wing. I didn't realize just how strong those wings were till that moment.
Without giving me a second to recover, he proceeded to hit me in the face with his knee. I then barely managed to get back up, guarding my head with my arms, only to get hit in the stomach by a kick. It didn't hurt much, as the purpose of the kick wasn't to hurt me but to push me.
I tripped on a small rock and fell. I used the tentacles to shield myself from a kick. I used the small window created by the tentacles to get up, and I used the tentacles to grab his legs and pull him down.
I wanted to kick him while he was down, but something from behind kicked me on my left side. He could've aimed at my head and ended the spar right there and then, but he instead chose to hit me in the sides.
I immediately turned over to see who hit me, and it was the clone. A quick look was enough to tell me that he had turned off the blades to use the clone. The clone somehow still had the wings.
So I used the blades that were still floating in mid-air to attack him.
Alex's blade appeared once more to stop mine from hitting the clone, and one of them stopped inches away from my neck.
"How many times do I have to tell you this? Don't overcommit on the blades; make them move in a straight line and then just keep fighting using your other tools. If you keep using them like drones, it's obvious that you're going to sit still like an idiot and enemies will be able to sneak behind you." Said Alex while deactivating his crests.
He had turned off the wings to summon the blades once more, yet the clone still held the wings even though the original didn't.
"You also underestimated the wing's-"
"Ok, ok, I get it. I need to train more when it comes to close-ranged combat."
It had become very rare for an enemy to get any closer than twenty meters before it got sliced up by my blades.
"Yes, but the main problem is that you don't understand the true power of your abilities since you rarely ever use them in combat. If it weren't for this trial, you would have probably lived your life without ever using them to harm others. "
He wasn't exactly wrong. I did use my crest sometimes for a couple of shots during my career as an actor but I knew that if I tried to correct him there he would've probably slapped me.
"Are you listening to me?"
"Huh? Ah yes, sorry, I was thinking of something. "
"As of now, I doubt the theme of the next 4 stages will give us trouble. We'll stop after we complete the thirtieth stage, then we'll start focusing on improving our combat capabilities."
The theme of stages 21–30 was mainly centered around games. We even played a board game where, for each round we lost, we had to square up with a fucking bear. Every game had to include fighting in some shape or form, but that was to be expected from the God of Combat's trial.
'Anyway I didn't expect the wings to hold such punching power.'
"... are not just for flying. You have to think outside the box. Take the blades, as another example. They don't hold any mass and aren't really affected by gravity. Once you throw them in a particular direction, they won't stop unless they either flash against something or you order them to stop."
He said this while creating a couple of blades. He made one fly in a straight line at a slow pace and made the other one clash with the former to show the validity of his words.
"Next up are the tentacles. You could've used them in a much better way. Since they come from your back, you can use them to stop yourself from falling as well as prevent others from sneaking up on you. The clone is a tricky one that needs to be paired either with the tentacles or wings to maximize efficiency. Last but not least, the three that connect the ability, no it's too soon to be talking about that." He wouldn't shut up no matter what.
"Yeah, I saw that."
"But it's not the first time I showed you this and yet you still didn't use them that way." he said after pulling my ears.
"Excuse me? When did you show me?"
"Stage 4" he responded without hesitating even a single bit.
'What was stage 4 again?'
"Are you sure you're not making this up?"
"Yep."
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" shouted Giovanni from inside the house.
"Well, I think I gave you enough time to recover. It's time for round two." He said this while activating the wings and blades once more.
"Wait, shouldn't we discuss first how best to use my abilities?" Someone could say I was pathetic for trying to back away like that, but those people don't know my brother. When it comes to training, he becomes extremely serious and ruthless.
"This is the fastest method; get ready!" He said, while charging at me.
Before I could utter another word, he threw one of his blades at me. So I also activated the blades and created a wall by stacking the blades on top of each other to protect me from further attacks.
Then, from under the ground, a tentacle appeared and grabbed my leg.
"Wait!" He didn't wait.
He immediately started pulling me in towards him.
Then I remembered I had the blades out and used them to cut the tentacle. In the meantime, my brother had managed to walk around the wall of blades and used his tentacles to launch himself towards me.
I dissolved the wall of blades and launched the blades at him, only to get hit by the clone. He was flying high in the skies and used the opening to drop down and tackle me to the ground.
"Time out!" I shouted moments before being pummeled to a pulp by the clone that had already mounted me.
'Where did his overprotectiveness of me go?' I thought before getting knocked out.