Ascend to godhood, huh?

  Viktor chuckled under his breath. It can’t be, can it?

  In his past life, he had reached Level 60 and was working toward unlocking the level cap.

  Yes, there was a level cap, much like what he had right now.

  The difference was that his current cap was artificial. It existed only because he hadn’t had full access to his module. Getting the first Key had pushed the ceiling up to Level 10, so he guessed the second would raise it to Level 20, the third to Level 30, and so on.

  In the previous life, however, there had been no cap, not until Level 60. That was when he was required to do certain tasks in order to break through that threshold.

  He had been in no hurry to do it, though. After all, there was a lack of motivation. What was the point anyway? He was already the most powerful man in the world. There was simply no one who could challenge him. Of course, it turned out that he had been wrong, but at that point, he had no idea.

  The reason he had become a Thaumaturgist in the first place was to gain the power for his revenge. He had had that revenge long ago. He became a king, then an emperor. And ruling an empire demanded far more of his time than the endless cycle of fighting and getting stronger. After that, came Celestia. So advancing further along the path was no longer a priority.

  But...

  What if he hadn’t stopped? What if he had kept climbing?

  Could I become a god as well?

  He doubted it would be easy. Not only was the process itself grueling, but the existing gods probably didn’t take kindly to new competition.

  Nakhran and the Bearded God had waged a war that had lasted centuries, a war that nearly destroyed their world. And they were not the only ones. According to Bjorn, the Abyss had once threatened to consume the entire world, and the Eternal Flame had descended from the heavens to stop it.

  The Eternal Flame, huh? The sacred fire worshiped by the Northmen. Was that a god as well?

  Viktor wrote down “The Eternal Flame” on the parchment, drew a line from it to “The Abyss,” and labeled it “war.”

  Also, he remembered a story, memories from a Reliquary about a different world. A king, tempted by the Great One of the Deep, had waged war against the gods, and ended up being obliterated by the Storm Titan.

  That was not a direct conflict, but he made a “war” connection between “The Storm Titan” and “The Great One” nonetheless.

  Looked like there were actually two groups of gods.

  The first was the orthodox gods, the established powers: the Storm Titan, the Bearded God, Iseth-Ra, Lord Monkey, the Eternal Flame.

  And the second was the upstarts, the would-be deities: Nakhran, the Great One, the Abyss.

  In other words, the Ascendants.

  But that put Thaumaturgists, like him, in a weird spot. If he was an Ascendant, then he should belong to the second group. Then why was he charged with the duty of keeping the dungeons, including the Abyss, in check?

  Furthermore, Celeste was also an Ascendant, so why were the servants of the orthodox gods, like Khenemhotep, Haku, the mermaids, working for her? Why were the followers of the Great One of the Deep and the descendants of the Storm Titan serving the same person? It just didn’t make any sense. Did the gods not know? He doubted it. Then, they must have allowed it.

  Why?

  His thoughts turned again to the war between Nakhran and the Bearded God. The other orthodox gods didn’t help the Bearded God to strike Nakhran down. Instead, they sought to mediate the conflict. And in the end, both of them had accepted the rulings of the assembly of gods.

  So maybe it was not a war between two clearly defined factions. More like a mess of personal grudges and feuds. In that case, orthodox gods could plot against orthodox gods, and Ascendants could fight Ascendants. There was certainly no shortage of backstabbing, temporary cooperation, and secret alliances.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Now...

  Viktor wrote down “The Mysterious Traveler.”

  The man who walked between worlds, the one who had given him the power to return from death.

  Who was he? Was he an orthodox god? Or an Ascendant who had claimed godhood? And most importantly, what was he really after?

  When Viktor received that “gift,” he didn’t think much about it. Either it worked, or it didn’t. Did he have anything to lose? The giver had handed it over on a whim, and the receiver had taken it on a whim as well.

  That happened before things with Celestia had improved. Otherwise, he would have asked more questions. He would have asked for her too, or he might have refused it entirely. And he would have stayed dead instead of coming back to life alone like this.

  But here he was.

  Well, what was done was done. No point in wasting time on regrets.

  Still, he couldn’t help but wonder.

  Did that gift—the power of reincarnation—have anything to do with the plan the Six Heroes had carried out to kill him? Had the Mysterious Traveler foreseen it all along and prepared him for it?

  And if so, why?

  His quill hovered over the parchment. The more he considered it, the more questions popped up in his mind.

  Like, how did the Six Heroes even steal his Thaumaturgy from his dead body in the first place?

  Sure, there were many things he didn’t know about what worked and what didn’t. But he doubted a bunch of random people could just transfer the power of an Ascendant to someone else. There was probably an intervention of another Ascendant, or a god.

  Which meant, the Six Heroes themselves were just pawns. There was a powerful being who had orchestrated the entire plot, and it was this being who had taken his power and given it to them.

  Once again, why?

  Why did a god want to kill him? And if so, why didn’t they just do it directly? Why did they have to manipulate the others to do the deed?

  Perhaps... their end goal was not to kill him. His death was just the beginning, the first move to set the whole plan in motion. He would return from death, and naturally, he would want his stolen power back. In other words, everything he was doing right now was exactly what that being wanted to happen. Thinking it that way, it was even possible that the one who gave him the power of reincarnation and the one who plotted his death were the same person.

  He wrote down “The Six Heroes” and “The Mastermind.” He drew a line between them, then labeled it “manipulated.” He drew another line connecting “The Mastermind” to “The Mysterious Traveler,” with a question mark: “The same person?”

  If that were the case, then maybe many other things were not merely coincidences.

  For example, Celeste. She had been left alone for three hundred years in his ruined castle, even though everything else had been taken away. Perhaps it hadn’t been chance. Perhaps someone had willed it to happen.

  Or Dagnar, strolling into Daelin of his own accord, practically inviting Viktor to lure him into his dungeon and finish him off. Very convenient, indeed.

  Of course, Viktor knew better than to start suspecting everyone and everything. There was only madness awaiting at the end of that road. Still, there was a way to test this theory. If, in the near future, another one of the five remaining targets appeared in Daelin, then it would definitely be abnormal. One occurrence might be a coincidence. Two? Absolutely not.

  He exhaled slowly, letting his gaze drift over the growing web of names and connections. Was there anything else?

  Ah, yes.

  He picked up his quill again and wrote down “The Emerald Order” and “The Matriarch.”

  The Matriarch... she could very well be an ancient mage from the Age of Gods, so she might have some connection with the Forgotten Gods. Or perhaps, she was an Ascendant, and her path had somehow given her an absurdly long life.

  According to Lloyd, the Emerald Order had changed a rule, one that had stood for thousands of years. That change had caused the schism of the Order, and that change had been made shortly after Viktor’s death.

  Was it, again, a coincidence?

  Or did his death somehow trigger it? He couldn’t imagine how, though.

  Or maybe, both his death and the schism of the Order were necessary steps in the Mastermind’s plan, and they were executed roughly at the same time.

  Writing everything down like this, reorganizing the information he had gathered, was certainly helpful. But it was not enough. There were still too many gaps. Too many missing pieces.

  And what am I going to do from here?

  Well, regardless of what the Mastermind wanted to achieve, there was little he could do but keep moving forward. He would reclaim his lost power. And then he would push even further.

  He had stopped at Level 60 in his past life. That was a mistake.

  This time, he would not stop.

  This time, he would keep climbing.

  Keep ascending.

  Because in the end, to be weak was to be exploited. Only power, absolute power, could ensure that no one—not even a god—could ever fuck with him again.

  God, huh?

  A few months ago, that was the word that haunted every corner of his mind. It had bred paranoia and fear. But now, after learning that even godhood was an achievable goal, he was finally at ease.

  Also...

  If... he could become a god, then maybe... he would be able to bring Celestia back to life.

  Of course, the road ahead would not be easy. The Mastermind wasn’t going to let him grow strong enough to challenge them.

  Yet, if his deductions were correct, if they truly wanted conflict between him and the descendants of the Six Heroes, then they would hold off on sabotaging him for now. In fact, they could even help him. They wouldn’t turn on him until he had reclaimed the last Key.

  Fine, then.

  If that was how the game was played, then he was going to play.

  He still had time. Time to prepare. Time to gather more knowledge. Time to accumulate more power.

  And then, when he was ready, he would have a face-to-face chat with the one who sat behind the curtain.

  He had already died once. What could be worse than that?

  If he had to pick a fight with a god, then so be it.