Rise of the Cosmic_Emperor

Every still living member of the Sapphirine Cult knew exactly who that serpent was and they could all also very easily detect that she was different.

Sassy's usually emerald and beautiful scales were now glistening with mysterious energy and her horns were ever longer and ever more dangerous looking.

Curled around the magnificent building that was the Monument of Ordinances, Sassy was consistently tapping into the energy that made the structure as powerful as it was and she was using that to strengthen her bloodline.

With her cultivation tied to Hal's and being unable to improve without him, her bloodline was all Sassy had to personally improve and she was doing very well at it.

When the eyes of the godly forces fell on her, Sassy let out a hiss that sounded so devastatingly hard in their ears that they all had to plug said ears but that hardly helped.

Sassy's hiss in itself was now toxic and traveling by sound waves, the gods had to actively defend against lest they be poisoned and they had to do so while battling the Devil beasts that just would not stay dead.

Being gods did not give any of them a free pass...

It had only been a few minutes since Hal made his physical escape but as the Monk had said, those few minutes could very well have been months' on account of the weirdness that happens to the flow of time within the Monument.

Sassy had long to refine and improve her Bloodline with Hal's help. When Hal first faced the Monk, Sassy was already curled up in a different section of the Monument and tapping into the power for her development.

With her development at a new height, the gods required actual focused attempts to get rid of the toxins and while they were busy with those, Melinda stood to her feet completely healed of her injuries.

Her Life essence was at its absolute peak and she felt a new bolstering of Life energy that felt absolutely infinite.

Her view changed... Everything around her went black and the only radiance was the presence of a Sovereignly glowing Hal who smiled at her with a hint of sheepishness.

"I'm sorry," Hal said.

"For what?" Melinda asked, genuinely confused as to why he would need to apologize.

"I came too late... He touched you," Hal said.

"Oh, he'll pay... He WILL pay, right?" Melinda asked with wide eyes and Hal nodded with a grin,

"Of course, he will... He very well will," he said.

"So how much of the plan do we have to change?" Melinda asked.

"Only the middle and a bit of the end... The true finale remains the same... We put down everyone, not on our side," Hal told her.

"I like it,"  Melinda said with an enthusiastic nod after which Hal planted a kiss on her lips, gave her a wink, and pulled away to allow her to return to the normal world where not even a second had passed.

Some might have wondered why Melinda blinked hard and suddenly had a bashful smile but in all honesty, not many had the time to actually give it much thought.

Melinda took off into the air around the same time that Karmit returned to his feet.

The Asura general struck out an attack but before it could take shape or even make contact with Melinda, it was hit aside by a blast from the Monument.

"Grr," Karmit growled at being interrupted and turned to glare at the monument before beginning to conjure another attack only to have it blasted out of his hand once again with incredible precision.

A third time he tried and this time, his hand was knocked aside before he could even be considered to have begun.

The Monument then glowed in warning and readiness to let out yet another blast and for that, Karmit took into the air and delivered a massive blow to the surface of the structure.

*BANG!!!*

The ground of the Imperial Palace shook and it began to fragment. A long crack appeared on the ground and the crack continued to stretch all through the Imperial City and even past it.

Disasters were happening all around but of course, Karmit could not care less.

The area he hit on the Monument cracked but the resilience of the Monument should never have been underestimated... It was a Divine Artifact of multiple stars and while Karmit's bulking godly frame was clearly a match, it was not enough to demolish the structure in a single hit.

Plus, the fact that Karmit made direct contact only made it easier for him to be struck fully with Ordinant disruptive force. 

In Paradise where divine energy is so readily available, having an Ordinance was not a requirement for advancement into the god realms and funny enough, it was harder to gain insight into Ordinances (Elemental and Abstract) in Paradise as compared to worlds lacking divinity such as the Nexus world.

It was almost as though, in a push for the first god in those worlds lacking divinity, the task of Ordinance comprehension was made considerably easier. Hell, they even had a Monument of Ordinances touring the Worlds to make it even easier.

Hal had a theory that it was only harder in Paradise because the ruling class of gods, the Primevals, willed it so.

Case in point, Karmit was one of the few to possess an Ordinance in Paradise, and although he had had to comprehend it on his own and by his own merit, he owed the opportunity to his lord Zalser, the Primeval Asura and that ultimately strengthened his loyalty.

Anyway, even if Karmit had lacked an Ordinance, he still would not have been safe from the reciprocatory attack of the Monument, and things were only made worse for him by the fact that he had an Ordinance.

The disruption caused by the Monument's attack caused Karmit's Ordinance to go out of control so that it was attacking him from the inside.

Meanwhile, Melinda, who had taken to the air and was undisturbed, cast a spell of her Ankh bloodline energy, constantly supplied with Life essence from the Infinite pool Hal had given her and she got to work healing the injured and bringing the dead back to life.

The bringing back of the dead had required mental trips to the Nether realm but Melinda succeeded and they all opened their eyes to a single order from Hal resounding in their minds;

"HOLD!"

A good bit of the gods, the ones not too overwhelmed by Sassy's toxic hisses, were still in battle against the Devil beasts and it was a battle that they should have won... In fact, it was a battle they had already won many times.

It was just that the Devil beasts never stayed dead.

Decapitated... And the head would rejoin the rest of the body.

Crushed... And the body would reform.

Blasted to pieces... And all pieces would seek each other out to rebuild.

Burnt to a crisp... The body would heal and return anew.

The worst part was that with every kill and every return, the Devil beasts became more savage with their killing intent always doubling... It got to the point where their killing intent was attacking better than the beasts themselves.

Making the previous Demon beasts into Devil beats had never been the end of Hal's planned evolution of this section of his force and with control of the Monument and a massive pool of Ordinant energy, Hal decided to create a mixture only he could possibly attempt.

He mixed life and death energy as a being with perfect insight into both and then, with power gotten from the Monument, a three-star Divine Artifact, he created a reincarnation ring that he ingrained into the very makeup of each of the Devil beasts.

Nothing... At least nothing below the Mid-World God realm could put a permanent end to their lives.

For reference;

The God realms are listed in order of ascension;

Lesser God realm, 

Mid-World God Realm, 

Higher God Realm, 

Exalted God Realm, 

Quintessential God Realm, 

Immemorial God Realm, 

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Primeval God Realm.

The gap between the Immemorial God realm and the Primeval God realm as opposed to the lack of distance between the Immemorial and Quintessential God realm is to illustrate how much the Primeval God realm is in a league of its own.

There is no contest whatsoever... 

It's not even really a realm of progression... There are no stages... Once you're a Primeval, you are supposedly beyond improvement... Perfect in might and that is both a source of pride as well as a source of frustration for the Primeval Gods.

Anyway, of all the gods that had been brought to the Nexus World, None was yet beyond the Mid-World God realm.

Even Karmit, with all his world-destroying might, was only a Peak Mid-World God, and ordinarily, that should have been enough.

The Lesser gods should have all been enough but Alas, Hal had thrown them the curve ball that was the implementation of a Divine Artifact created by the Avatar of Order himself.

And this was only the beginning...

As Karmit fell into the ground and caused more shockwaves and more earthquakes, there came from the Monument, Multiple runes... Numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

The runes came together to form Rune circles and those rune circles came together to form an Array that stretched all over the Nexus World...

... Even going as far as to create an Array Dome around the entirety of the World.