After succumbing to the trap and losing consciousness, Jean lived through the eighteen remaining hells, the hells and domains of lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, pride, and envy, each one a harrowing zenith of destruction. Jean was not a moral man, but each one still repulsed and disgusted him. However, of them all, only lust terrified him.
In the void after lust's domain, he understood for the first time that lust is a catalyst to love, but unrestrained lust is the antithesis of love. Lin finally helped him understand that. Only after experiencing a genuine form of love is it possible to fully understand the destruction lust can wreak.
As a newly broken man, he wanted relief. He wanted to go home. He didn't care about the battlefield, the research, the notes, or anything else. He just wanted to return his family. What little ambition and will he had before had been tempered and nearly destroyed. He was an entirely new man.
For lack of a better phrase, he had been reset. Only the most resilient of his cares remained, of which there was only his love for Lin and desire for his family, but not his earthly family, his adoptive family.
Like a stream can transform a shard of obsidian into a smooth surface, his mind had been eroded by the torturous stream of sins into a streamlined but broken object. Few of the original facets of his psyche remained.
But when he opened his body's eyes again, instead of hope, daylight, or solace, he found a new hell was being created. A white beam shot from his chest to the clouds above. Its heat carved a hole through him as it rose and rose before coalescing into the 21-faced diamond he saw before. And when it was finally done, the heat stopped, and Jean lay still, dying again. It was ironic. The corpse the dead man was inhabiting was dying.
When the diamond finished forming, 440 other diamonds rose in similar beams, though these diamonds had already been formed. Jean's diamond completed the third array of seven sets of seven sets of three diamonds. Three legions of seven devils were being allocated seven sets of three 21-faced diamonds each.
Through the power of these diamonds, each devil carved out a new home for themselves on the face of the planet. And in these homes, these new dominions, they created armies so that they could conquer this planet for themselves.
But one devil separated from the other 21 and flew over to Jean. Of the 21 devils, there was one set of the past, one set of the future, and one set of the present. The present set of devils were the most powerful as they represented all possible forms of the past and future devils before coalescing the most powerful forms into a singular being.
The past and future are, after all, just presents that have either already come to pass or will come to pass. This makes the present ambiguous and unpredictable, as it can adopt whatever form of their sin that they wish to.
The devil that flew over to Jean was the present devil of pride, and with a gleeful smile on its face, it laughed and thanked Jean, saying, "Thank you, Jean, for your unwitting generosity." But Jean couldn't see him through the tears of pain in his eyes. "Ah, forgive me. Allow me to clear that up for you."
With a wave of its hand, Jean's chest was recreated anew as perfect skin covered robust ribs and strong pectorals. With a gasp of hot air, Jean's pain dissipated and a tingling sensation permeated the new flesh.
"Is that better, Jean?" Its smile grew wider. "Whether you recognize me or not, I was beside you when you suffered grievous wounds multiples of times worse than this. But take heart, for pain experienced in the moment will service you well in the future, though whether it be to your fortune or misfortune I will not say."
Jean took another gasp of scorching air and coughed before pride realized the harm his presence was doing and extinguished the heat emanating from his body. "Apologies. I always forget how fragile you all are, you in particular." With several blinks to clear the tears obscuring his vision, the devil was clear to his eyes.
It possessed the image of a warrior adorned in golden armor. It was nearly seven feet (213 cm) tall and exuded the demeanor of a warrior-king or a god. Some of its muscles were easily a foot (30cm) thick, but its speech was that of a scholar's. It was a genius polymath, a perfect warrior, a virtuous man, and more. It was the image of perfection.
In his mind, Jean yelled, 'Potestas, what's going on?! Why can't I move?! Show me my status!'
To stroke his nascent horror, a voice emanated from a grinning maw to the right of his body, saying, "Show you your status? Now, why would I do that?" It was pride. Pride was the one who replied, and its smile split its face. "Do you really want to know? Do you really want to know how we managed to create ourselves? It's you, Jean. We're here because of you. If you had just died, none of this would have happened."
A black screen appeared in front of his face. It was his status. "Your body gave us access to this world for the 441st time. We've been trying to get here for centuries, but you're the one that finally helped us create the last diamond."
Jean's thoughts flew around his skull, which the devil intercepted. At random, it chose to answer a few of the dozens of questions he had in one fell swoop while also injuring Jean mentally. "You ask why we are here? What are we? What am I? What are the others? They all have the same answer, Jean. We are Potestas."
It reveled in the revelation and the sense of connection it felt with the name for a moment before elaborating, "We are domination. We are power. We are control. We are and will be everything. We are split into many parts, but we are still one being. This precious world will be ours, just as so many others are."
Jean finally read his status, and it showed:
---
Active paths of power:
[Interface]
[Physical]
[Sociological]
[Mental]
[Spiritual]
[Magical]
[Psychic]
-
Stats:
level: 276
Experience: 782/1000
HP: ~1000/1000
physical attack power: .0112
Strength: .21
Defense: .06
Dexterity: .15
Agility: .1
Intelligence: 1274
(Typical stat range: 2-3)
-
Attributes (approximated from best available data):
Strength: .2
Deftness: .3
Endurance: .1
Intelligence: 143
Available Attribute points: 0
(Typical attribute range: 3-4)
-
Scalar Talents (approximated from best available data):
Strength: .5
Deftness: .5
Endurance: .5
Intelligence: 51
(Typical scalar talent range: .75-1.25)
-
Talents:
Cerebral: 1723
Hidden talents: 147+
Available Talent Points (scalar and non-scalar): 0
(Typical talent range (varies greatly): 5-20)
-
Skills: [Interface (-)]
Hidden skills: 34417+
---
Jean's eyes opened wide when he saw what had happened without his knowledge. "Oh, are you surprised with what I did? Well, I did tell you that I can change your status as I wish, didn't I? I just changed some of your earlier ones without you knowing. This one is accurate, though. You're not paralyzed, just so weak that you can't do anything. Your brief stint through the domain of wrath allowed me to gather enough spirits to do whatever I wished. I just didn't show you that I had any of them."
"You see, I needed your mind to help me create this magnificent gem. Normally, what I did with my other 440 prior hosts was encourage them to allocate everything into their physical stats so that it drew on their intelligence, and when they became a stupid, raging berserker that slaughtered thousands, they'd gather an increasing number of spirits through their wanton slaughter, and when I felt I had enough spirits, I would channel it all into intelligence, paralyzing them for a time and commandeering the new stats to create another diamond."
"But you didn't want to put anything into your physical traits, so I had to play it smart and use what little I got through the domain of wrath to blast through the remaining eighteen hells all in one step. It took way longer than I would have liked it to, but that's what you have to do when you have limited resources."
Pride intercepted another of Jean's questions and replied with a sneer, "These stats are mine. Everything is mine. You can't use the intelligence in your status because it isn't yours. You gave up your right to life itself. What makes you think you have a right to anything anymore?"
Tears flooded Jean's eyes as he sobbed. His chest heaved as bawls of fear, sorrow, grief, and anger escaped him. It was all too much, but the hammer hadn't even hit the anvil yet. Jean only saw the potential destruction the hammer of Potestas posed to the anvil of this world. Just then, the devil intercepted another thought of his. It was the same thought that had kept him sane all through the eighteen hells. The thought of Lin.