The language that the centipede spoke with was old. It took the goddess exchanging the required knowledge of this language with a Labyrinth Coin to decipher and learn it. The Centipede did not know how it came to learn this language, only knowing that it was part of his bloodline inheritance.

This bloodline inheritance was incomplete and it could not access all of it, but it knew enough for it to survive and grow. Inside this beast was a void that it was unable to fill, no matter how much it ate or grew. The relationship with Minerva helped a bit, but that void remained.

The question of the centipede brought about intense winds like a hurricane as it spoke, but they parted before reaching Minerva, who folded her hands on her chest and smiled at her increasingly favorite beast.

She considered what to say to it for a few seconds, wondering how much she was willing to invest in it. Like Golgoth she knew that to achieve total power over someone, then keeping them ignorant was essential, their dependence on you would become an instinct and they would forever remain weaker than you.

This consideration was pushed aside when she recalled the true reason she was here and what she had felt inside the hall of the God King.

Minerva was a goddess who could smell the energy of death all around her, from every creature, both mortals and immortals, but inside the halls of the God King she had smelled something else.

Not living… Not dead… yet intensely alive in a manner that placed all concepts of life to shame. There had also been a reaction from the Web linked to this centipede, amongst all her threads, this was the only one that detected this presence alongside her.

This raised certain questions that she urgently needed answers to. If Golgoth had found a new partner that could cause such a considerable disquietness inside her heart, she needed to learn about it. She could not allow the God King to be the final survivor in this battle, and any hidden powers he was setting up must be destroyed.

All these thoughts happened in less than two seconds and she replied to the beast,

“Oh that question is easy to answer my child,” she patted the sharp edge of the pincer, “the damned universe is dead, and the wind you smell comes from its corpse that has begun to rot.”

The body of the centipede rippled in agitation, causing earthquakes and darkening the skies for miles.

“I once attempted to see how far the winds could blow when I radiated it towards the void. I lost count of the number after it crossed this galaxy,” the thundering voice of the centipede went soft like the whispers of a dozing child, a stark contrast to its size, “apart from revealing your might to me, the only time I have ever felt such true awe was before the size of eternity. What could kill such a thing mother? Should I start preparing for my death? I think I will need to travel to the edge of the sea Mother, I saw a field of blue roses there, it was the only thing that removed the stench of death from my body. I would love to be buried beside them.”

Minerva went silent, this was the most she had heard this beast speak at one time. She suddenly came to a stark realization that no matter how much she tried to limit the growth of this beast, it was different from the gods of Trion. Its roots were far more noble and there was a dignity inside it that could not be contained for long.

Perhaps she needed to take the steps to shift to another direction. The fact was that she could no longer be assured if what her partner was after was for their collective interest anymore, and she needed a wild card. Telmus and his daughter should have been enough, but she felt she required more… her hands had been forced.

Minerva rose into the air and stopped at one of the eyes of the centipede that were blacker than night, “Oh, do not fear child, for the death of the universe is the beginning of a grand meal beyond comparison.”

Minerva flew up to the head of the centipede and stood upon it, “Go into the stars and hunt my child, nothing is holding us back any longer, you must grow stronger if you want to be my right hand in the battle that is to come. That scent in the wind was not a sign of your death, but a signal for your rise.”

The beast shivered, “Mother, am I truly permitted to feast? You know that I will not stop, I have held back my growth for far too long, and the prey I eat is no longer fit for me to barely survive with.”

“You can eat until the blood of the universe runs dry my child. Do not hold back, for whatever wounds you shall suffer in battle will be borne by me your mother. Challenge the greatest and arise from their corpse. Let your roar touch the gates of eternity and then you shall see the true breadth of the universe and then your fear shall become ambition!”

The Centipede roared in exultation and pushed itself away from the ground.

Its weight, which was countless millions of tons, shattered the earth for thousands of miles, killing hundreds of millions. It created such massive commotion that it could be heard all around Trion, but Minerva’s eyes flashed and one of the webs inside it quivered and the eruptions, the sounds, the earthquakes all vanished as if it never happened.

Those who died stayed the same, but the memories that they had ever lived were taken away. The survivors never knew why they felt an emptiness inside their hearts. Nothing had changed in their little lives, but somehow they all knew that something was missing.

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The goddess and her pet beast were barely a hundred miles off the ground when the centipede was already reaching light speed. With a shriek of joy, the beast tore through reality like tissue paper and entered the Underverse, leaving a massive tear in reality that took an entire minute to close up.

Inside the Underverse, it roared, an apex predator exerting its dominance, it sped through the Underverse covering countless miles in the blink of an eye before tearing its way out of the Underverse back into the material universe.

It arrived before a thriving galaxy that was similar to the Cerulean Galaxy but this galaxy was closer to the center of the universe and the power structure here was much more developed, with plentiful gods and monsters roaming through it.

This portion of the universe was destined to become its power center in the future, but that future would no longer arrive.

Minerva regarded this galaxy with discerning eyes, there were plentiful gods and powerful monsters to slaughter, and this was the first step she would be taking to create a new Wild Card. Minerva no longer cared about maintaining the balance, with everything that happened she was on edge.

The beast roared its challenge to the galaxy and was about to head towards the most powerful Auras it could sense when Minerva stopped it.

It roared in irritation, but the loyalty for its mother had been ingrained into it and so the beast stopped and listened,

“Little centipede, you could sense through my web something strange in the throne room of the God-king, your senses were the most important reason why I could detect something like that… tell me, what did you feel?”

The centipede shook his head in frustration, “No, I don’t want to remember what I felt. You have my eyes, Mother, and my ears, so you don’t need me to tell you again.”

“Little centipede…”

The beast roared, cutting off Minerva, whatever he remembered was more devastating than her wrath and this memory was driving it to evolve, to beat that growing void inside its heart that had multiplied when he sensed that… thing inside the room with his mother.

It surged forward into the Galaxy, where dozens of shiny bright lights had been gathering for warfare.

The great powers in this universe had detected his presence and they gathered together to either destroy it or deter it away from their territory.

This would turn out to be a lost cause.

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