Reincarnated as a World

As if he was removing fog off a window, Eridel removed the remaining essence of destruction from the regular hatchlings. At this point, they had no hope of gaining an affinity with those laws and keeping it within their bodies would just slowly kill them.

In future, it was indeed possible to gain affinity with the Laws of Destruction and they even had better chances than any other life form - having experienced and even absorbing the Laws whilst in their gestation stage.

But unfortunately, it was very, very hard. Affinity was like talent, and such a thing could scarcely be changed after birth. That’s why 9 out of 10 times, rich families inject all kinds of drugs, divine treasures and more directly into their child's while still in the womb in hopes to increase their natural talents.

This would only ever benefit the child and never harm it if you knew the correct techniques. If you were foolish enough to mix in herbs with too much energy, or treasures that only suited specific races and weren't even the same as you…

You could only blame yourself when the child directly blew up, killing the mother in the process, or even came out completely crippled.

Eridel knew that the regular hatchlings had missed their most opportune time and they wouldn’t be able to gain affinity with destruction before that same destruction claimed their life first.

They had their chance and they missed it which was perfectly fine. Having 9 ‘dragons’ of destruction with 2 of them reaching perfect affinity was already a blessing and Eridel was satisfied.

Eridel also left the other 7 ‘dragons’ of destruction with the essence of destruction still inside their bodies. It was indeed still slowly killing them but Eridel didn’t care. It was not because he had confidence in his Primordial Essence removing the risk even though it did - but because he knew that they only needed their first true evolution (the one Gaia had already gone through) to become completely resistant and that would happen when he awakened magical energy in the planet.

Having the essence of their Law in their bodies when they breakthrough would be extremely beneficial and make the process smooth sailing.

It may seem like what the hatchlings had gone through already was an evolution, but it was not, it was more of a half evolution, commonly called a mutation.

A mutation was something that occurred because an outside influence had forcefully upgraded you, changing you, but not on such a grand scale. An example of a mutation was a Human consuming Dragon blood and gaining horns and wings.

An evolution came from cultivation, breaking your limits personally and causing a complete upgrade in your DNA. That was why Gaia was so much greater than her siblings.

After looking back one more time at the slumbering up and coming dragon race, Eridel turned his attention back towards the rest of the world.

Eridel had extremely stupendous plans for his planet. Ones that would cause immortals to hide and gods to fear, if they all came to fruition.

But first, Eridel needed to start with the basics - creating more species. Like he said before, residents were a World’s bread and butter. No residents, No progress. And with no progress, you could only wait for death. More on that later.

‘For my first created species… hmm, let’s go for snakes’

Eridel used to have a pet snake in his last life that he was very fond of before it died. At the time he was 12 and cried for quite a long time. Even now, despite experiencing 2000 years of solitude, he still got mildly agitated just thinking about it.

‘Hehehe… now, it is time to use my trump card, my own personal golden finger’

The reason that Eridel was so excited after realizing he became a World was because he knew that it came with the ability to manipulate all the Laws… granted you had the source energy for it.

But here was the twist. There was not a single World that had any kind of source energy. Source energy was a personal energy that was ‘GENERATED’ from you and for ‘YOUR’ personal usage, both of those two terms were key.

A World awakening magical energy was not for them. It was for the residents. In fact, a World did not have a single lick of ability to wield magical energy. For Worlds, awakening magical energy was like going through puberty. You had no say over it at all.

So how did World’s try their best to manipulate Laws? They don’t have a chance to own source energy so they looked for beings who did. The beings who were naturally born on their planet.

When a talented individual had come to a World's attention. The World can decide to offer a… contract. The god contract.

A god was someone who had complete affinity and sole governance over 1 Law in the world they were made in, they are now able to generate the essence of their Law inside their bodies instead of having to absorb and convert magical energy into it. Completely meeting the criteria of being a source energy.

But in truth, they had to follow the World’s every whims and could never leave it. Why? That was because the contract ensures that in exchange for power, ‘you must do my bidding’. These contracts brand the soul of the god and if broken would kill the god in retaliation.

That was why Immortals disdained the gods, calling them slaves. Immortals were those that achieved similar levels of power and obtained source energy, but completely by their own efforts. 

A god was also restricted in the changes they were allowed to make to the World and ironically, this was because of the contract, something that a World actually had no control of.

So while a World wields gods to control Laws, the level of control is simplified so much they could only do the most basic things. Only the god of creation was the most useful to a World, but how can a mere life form like that possibly have enough energy to truly create anything relevant?

When a World wanted to create a new species, they had to use the god of creation, the god of life, the god of death and all sorts of related gods, just to have enough energy to create 2 beings. 1 for each gender. Even then, each occasion would leave all involved gods on fumes for a very long time, we’re talking century or 2 here. That’s why they rarely did it.

In the end, the one thing gods did the best was to defend. When other Worlds invaded, they had to be extremely careful of the gods in their own domain. So when a god is out of commission - the World is naturally vulnerable. Just another reason why a World barely actually used their gods for anything and why they were so handicapped.

‘BUT IS THAT THE SITUATION FOR THE GREAT AND MIGHTY ME? NAY!!!’

Eridel looked all over his lands greedily, thinking about the Primordial Essence that had never stopped generating inside of his soul since 2000 years ago. If he still had a face, it would look embarrassingly perverted at this moment.