"There ya go!" Yarost bellowed, watching the human squirm and twitch as power surged through him, a blue flame bellowing over their body. Yarost formed a deep shadow in the room, pulling his lonesome figure above the awakened human, grinning from ear to ear. "You want me to kill all humans, I'll kill all the humans. But I don't think that's what you want from me. You've got a bigger goal than me killing every last human here right? That's why you brought me here! I know I'm valuable, I feel it! How broken you are! How weak you are!"
An elderly man covered in dark green robes, the colors of the forest, in a swath of blue fire appeared above the body. Yarost felt an awe-inspiring feeling of welcoming calm as the elderly man gazed upon him. Their figure flickering in and out like a hologram, their face was sunken, and eyes looked to be tightly shut to the point that wrinkles formed on his face. "Speak quickly." The monotonous voice sounded. "Else… You… Soul… replaced…."
Yarost could imagine the being in front of him being an artful creator, Afterall he subconsciously knew it to be the forest god, and what it was reduced to was to a state of an incomparable robot. As if it ran numbers and code through it instead of souls and thought rarely, and could barely form complete sentences rarely, but it brought out every single ounce of its being for a single conversation, that its former would view as revolutionary, man speaking to the creator, but it currently viewed as a process being completed.
What had happened before he came here? Could this being even create something as complex as him?
The forest was dying, there was no doubt about that, and Yarost knew the life in it was many, he could feel it, as that was what the forest had given him when he awakened.
Something so elegantly crafted couldn't have come from the hands of an inelegant robot, much less a broken one.
Yarost knew much about the forest. It was because of the information it fed to him through the pores of his skin. It was a perk, just like everything he gained from coming into this alternate world.
Power, true and untainted power… If he were to get stuck in an alternate world, he was going to rule it. His one track mind once again found solutions for power. As quickly as it devised ways to lead the poor human to the center of the temple to invoke the god, it quickly devised a plan to manipulate the god itself.
Yarost had no doubt that a god in a broken state would be easier to manipulate; they had no emotions to see through what was smoke and mirrors.
"I don't think you got a say in that." Yarost limbered forward, thoughtfully, he could feel power radiate from the being. "The first thing I heard when I came to your world was a thousand broken voices telling me to kill. The first thing I felt was the forest. It's dying, and you're in pieces. Then I see humans.." Yarost came closer and emphasized every single word. "I know humanity, and with your tampering on my feelings… I know that they are a plague to any environment."
"What do you want?" The forest asked plainly.
"You're the forest god." Yarost tried lying to himself, he truly thought that the elderly man was god himself.
"I am." The forest god said in a more hurried voice.
"You want to protect the forest and your children." Yarost looked at the body. "Ain't that right?"
The Elder quickly got fed up with Yarost, but he didn't show it. "Yes." He said, and the hologram got a little more unstable.
"Then give me everything." Yarost said, "Give me all of your power and I shall make sure to protect the forest. You're stretched thin as it is, and you're on a losing streak, pile all your strength into me and I'll make sure to drive a dent into humanity."
"Impossible." The Forest said. "Keep… everything… one…leads… demise."
"Then become me, I know you can't do much of anything. Like that… You're inefficient." Yarost tried to instill hope into the fallen god. "It'll lead to at least a chance of victory."
"Offering self to become a host?" The Forest's interest finally recovered. "Mix souls together…become one, interest restored, host… Reconstruction."
"I know there must be some reason you can't recover… You've spread your fragments into your children, and only slowed the demise of the forest. This is your only chance. When you've gathered together, almost an entire entity to join in one with me and becomes stronger." Yarost offered his bloodied hand, "Let's join hands and become a single entity."
The Elderly figure of the forest god froze in place, and it truly began thinking, it's entire being trying to foresee into the future ahead of time whether or not this was a horrible decision. Yarost's face twisted into a smile.
The Minotaur's power exuded an untold pressure in the room, but in front of god, it simmered into a shadow. "You know this is the best solution." Yarost said, hammering the nail into the coffin.
At some point Yarost felt his tongue moving on its own. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to lie.
"It's either this or annihilation, you must've thought of it before. Becoming stronger requires sacrifice and your plans with me always have a semblance of doubt." Continued Yarost, whose dark figure began stretching against the wall, the light of the forest god becoming a bit brighter.
"Procedure delicate… dangerous… can't…" The forest god said.
"I won't move a bit. I promise." Yarost persuaded. "My best interest is to keep the forest protected. I have no reason to attack you… If the forest dies, I die because humans hate monsters. That's how our fate shall be connected."
"Understood, deal."
[ Merge with soul of 'Lawgonal Tree Singer' ]
[ Warning ]
[ Soul will be eradicated ]
[ Do you accept? ]
[ Yes ]
When Yarost accepted 6 small rays bundled into two gigantic rays slammed into his chest, and Yarost could feel memories pour into his very soul.
He saw an empty field, and within that empty field, filled a group of magic users, casting a torrent of light and darkness at him. Then, he saw his body slowly split into two, the rage, the anger, he felt, was as if the ocean poured onto him bit by bit waterboarding him into submission. However, this connection did not last for long.
Yarost with a desperate punch, slammed his fist into the rays of light as it was going into his body. The rays suddenly burst out with an explosion of energy, throwing the old man, and Yarost back into the wall.
The Forest God felt his power drain from him, he had lost half of it in the transference process, and the thought of him being betrayed didn't register in its broken brain until they saw Yarost rise from the ground.
Yarost felt power surge through his entire being, and instructions, memories, theories poured into his mind, he quickly shifted through them. Then, with a cold darkness, he threw the Forest God back into its limbo, with it screaming and kicking against the tidal wave each time it tried to reconnect, was a more painful experience until it finally accepted its fate and dispersed back into a fluid energy.
Not before departing in a thousand different screams. "Demon!"
Yarost laughed in manic achievement. He had fooled a god!
It was almost laughable how easy it was to fool the god…
But as he continued laughing, realization dawned on him, if his gamble of power didn't work and instead they fused together completely his soul would've been erased and in its place a new one would've reigned. He could already feel the tampering of only half the soul of the god was doing to him, however, it was in broken pieces, and although powerful, could not reconnect to the main consciousness.
But that didn't matter, because now he had power, true power and it didn't come from a system, instead it came from himself. The god couldn't interfere with mortals physically but could fight matters via scion's on pawns. As Yarost tried to draw the power of the god's soul in front of him.
His eyes and brain began burning, as thousands of different pieces of information began overloading it. Yarost reared his head and began roaring, beams of energy pouring out of him, and straight into the sky, passing invisibly through the ceiling and the walls to form a pillar of energy in the middle of the forest.
He tried organizing the information, but he couldn't. It felt too unwieldy to be organized, and too complex to be understood. The energy ran rampant around him, and the forest god whose splintered ego could only watch in terror as Yarost began understanding the impossible, as dark rage fueled energy clouded the sky.
Distances away mankind's kingdom felt eerie premonitions rise and fall in and out of the air, as priests fell over dead. Wizards had manic outbreaks of violence, and blood began clotting their faces, and eyes.
People who could feel the magic felt tremors, and all who could divine the future felt it lose meaning.
A monster had been born, they could all tell, and each and every single one of them saw its slick figure drive a brand into their mind.