” What is your choice? Life or death? ” Max asked Zogaroth, who seemed to study Max’s red eyes curiously.

” I’ve met your kind on the battlefield before, a truly ferocious race, however, I’ve never seen one with such an exaggerated ability to control blood.

You are stronger than your brethren” Zogaroth said as he sighed deeply and began conceding to Max’s demands.

” The sealing method of the gods is in essence the same technique as sealing an area without mana.

The main difference between gods and mortals is that their bodies are stronger than that of mortals and can use a more conservative form of energy found in the universe called ‘ Divine Energy ‘.

An attack laced with divine energy is several fold more destructive than their normal mana counterparts, whereas pure divine energy attacks are what give god’s the power to destroy entire planets if they so wish to.

Usually Divine energy is not easy to produce and replenish naturally, the most effective method of possessing it is either looting from the corpses of other god’s or developing godly colonies on planets which have not yet integrated with mana and make those colonies worship an entity.

This is a big reason behind why the A.I. the queen controls the universe now, as she strictly monitors the ascension of all god’s to tier6 and allocates them some unawakened planets to establish their colonies on.

While mana based barriers can cut off a god’s supply of environmental mana, it cannot prevent them from using divine energy attacks, which is why after tier6 it becomes increasingly difficult to seal an existence.

During the grand war, there were often times that god’s fought and defeated other god’s, but having no proper method to restrain them or imprison them, the only option they had was to kill them.

Back then I was an abyss mage who had researched alongside my brother Arandale and my master Uptamel the tier8 sealing move the ‘ Black Prison ‘ .

It was a move that nobody was able to escape and it brought me a lot of fame as a mage even though I was only an apprentice at the time to my master.

In our arrogance we believed black Prison was impenetrable, however, while the attack was impregnable to break out of, it was still possible to break into.

Even a tier3 warrior could break the black prison spell from the outside if they attacked hard enough and that was a big issue.

To solve this problem, I was hired by Odin to create a sealing method that was even better than black prison and that’s how my obsession with it started.

For years I began researching ways to seal god’s until one day I found a paradox which when inscribed created a barrier which repelled everything perfectly.

I created a wall that was impossible to break even by Odin himself and the only thing I was left to achieve was to transform that wall and inscription into a spell to seal someone.

It sounded simple enough, but in theory it was impossible to do.

It was only because of the inscriptions and the special set-up that it could achieve the paradox needed to repel everything and no matter how I drew the spell pattern, I could not recreate the same effects.

I needed more funding for my project, but unfortunately at this stage of my research Odin suffered a terrible loss at the hands of the Coward turtle Kremeth and had to cut my research off.

My snake of a brother Arandale offered me a hand during this tumultuous time as he promised to provide me shelter in abyss city and highest grade research privileges.

Since he was an administrator of this city, he had a lot of sway and I believed that since we are brothers he would not wrong me.

Initially I even let him and his disciples join me in my research, he even began calling me ‘ Master ‘ instead of brother, and I mentored him wholeheartedly and encouraged his ideas and progress in my project.

But I soon understood that my brother’s intention to invite me to abyss city was anything but noble, as he was only being good to me so that he could steal my project from me and take all credit.

Once he understood all the basics of my project from me, he began using that as a foundation and launched his own research project.

When I learnt that my brother intended to steal my work which I had spent centuries working on, I hastily created a dangerous prototype which was unstable and decided to stupidly use it on Hades to make my mark on the universe and take all credit for my research’s success.

Naturally the seal crumbled and Hades cursed me with the aura of death which turned my life into living hell.

I barely reached abyss city before I died, but since I was connected to the codex I was reborn again, but my corrosive soul put a lot of strain on the codex and my brother had to choose between letting me die and letting other people in the city stay connected to the codex.

At the time I thought it was out of filial pity that he decided to save me, as we mended our ways and restarted research on the sealing method of the god’s together, hoping to someday sell it to Hades and ask him to remove the curse of death from my body as repayment.

For 300 more years we researched and perfected the method, until one day my brother revealed his true colors once more and tried to terminate my connection with the codex.

Apparently he had realised that he could not complete the project on his own and needed my help, which was the only reason why he decided to save me, as it was selfish motives that drove this decision of his and no filial pity whatsoever.

Unfortunately for him, after his first betrayal I had become cautious and secretly modified the codex so that my life and death were not in the hands of the administrator.

My brother failed to kill me, and a massive fight broke out between us, where I severely damaged his four disciples and gouged 3 /4 of his liver out.

On the other hand he managed to seal me within the 3rd basement level and we had a stalemate ever since.

After that I’m not sure what happened, but my brother must have tried to leave the city to sell our creation.

But he would have been unable to do so since I had modified the codex such that the moment anyone connected to it walked out of the Special-Zone they would instantly lose soul force and turn to ash.

As long as I live, my brother cannot remodify the codex and escape the city.

Although he imprisoned me, I imprisoned him within this empty city too and spent years specifically underneath the mage tower, concealing my corrosive aura and redirecting it towards the tower to make sure that my brother’s life became a living hell ” Zogaroth said as he explained to Max his entire life story which was slightly sad to hear.

———–

/// A/N – Chapter 17/20, the last day starts///