Epic of Caterpillar
chapter-369

In the distant Realm of Dreams and Nightmares, Fólkvangr, which was once part of Alfheim, the Realm of Bright Elves and Fairies, the Great Goddess that represents the Dream Attribute and possess the Divinity related to Dreams and Nightmares, Freyja, glared at her pinkish crystal ball.

Her beauty was fitting of a Great Goddess… her eyes were scarlet red, gleaming in an eerie and cold light. Her purple hair was long and silky, and covered in black rose thorns. She had two large red horns growing from her forehead, giving a great contrast to her angelic beauty. Her nose was small and pointed, and she had long elf-like ears.

She seemed conflicted.

Since long ago, she was the first one to obtain the Dream Attribute and manipulated it to her heart's content, with such power, she was able to become an important figure in the war between Gods countless of years ago.

Now, given the task of ruling over the Dreams of all Mortals after Genesis was split into Realms, she dominated the Dream Attribute and even offered several services to Gods, like communication or other things… their wildest of dreams could be accomplished in dreams, and most came to pleasure themselves in her Realm, this created a large and stable source of income for her in the form of Divine Energy Crystals, which she hoarded greedily to slowly raise her God Rank.

However, in the thousands of years that Freyja had lived, she had never seen any other god nor mortal grasp the power of Dream Attribute like her. Some would use it barely, manipulating small things, or powerful Succubi would be able to enter the lewd dreams of humans to drain their Life Energy… but that was it. There wasn't anyone capable of manipulating Dreams like her or her selected group of children, all of them being Demi-Gods at minimum.

But… that changed a few days ago… in a faraway Realm which she had never had any connections to except a few gods wanting to communicate with a special mortal named 'Kireina', the Dream Attribute was strangely gathering around somewhere, or something. A certain mortal was constantly having special Dreams, which she used to increase her power and awaken special Skills.

And interestingly enough for her, this mortal was Kireina, the same one that all those lowly Beast Demi-Gods wanted to speak with and ask for her help…

"My Dreams… drifting away? Who is this mortal? How dare she…"

Freyja was deeply attached to her powers, she was the first one to be able to manipulate dreams and use them as a weapon and as a shield, and she had the mentality that someone else capable of such things would never appear aside from her children, born from her own womb.

She glanced as the Dream Attribute, represented as large accumulations of purple-colored clouds spiraled uncontrollably around a certain area in the Realm of Vida.

"My Dreams… come back to me!" she ordered, infusing her might and Divine Energy into her arms, from thousands of kilometers away, she ordered her divinity, her own Attribute, to come back to her…

But it didn't, the purple clouds twitched for a few moments, but kept spiraling in the same area, ignoring her completely.

"WHAT?! My divinity… ignored?! Impossible! Is that Kireina a Goddess? Could it be, she is a Dark Fairy?! But those are only born from my own womb! Damned System! Giving away the powers of gods and their races to mere mortals!" she raged.

Her uncontrollable rage made the clouds of Dream Attribute inside her Realm tremble chaotically, creating countless drifts in space, to dreams filled with destruction and suffering… thankfully, no mortals were present, or their soul would have been sucked into such worlds, to never wake up again.

The Dark Fairies, her children, were still deeply frightened. Their beloved mother, who usually has a very calm demeanor, was raging in frustration as she had never done before.

"Mother, please, calm down!"

"Mother!"

"Freyja-sama!"

As her children tried to calm down the Great Goddess's tantrum, Kireina was once again engulfed in her strange Dreams.

She opened her eyes and her consciousness quickly gave her the ability to understand where she was now.

She saw herself… as a plant.

A small green sprout, over warm and healthy dirt. Several other plants like herself were at her side, and the sun shined brightly.

She could feel her own body absorb the wetness of the dirt alongside the light from the sun, naturally creating photosynthesis and feeding her with energy.

It felt relaxing… but things seemed to be slow as well.

She saw as she slowly lived like this.

She wondered if one day she would awake from this dream, or if her previous life was the real dream and she was always… just a plant.

Her body grew larger and larger, strong bark covered her body and branches pointed at the sky, a beautiful coating of green leaves dressed her body.

She was now a Tree, and experienced living as one for several years… so many, she couldn't count them all, everything was going so slow… so relaxing, it was a peaceful existence. Her previous memories drifted away, and she didn't even remember what she was before, she only knew that she was a Tree and that she feeds on the sun and the rain.

Countless small living organisms lived in her body, feeding on her juicy fruits or her wood and roots. Slowly, she decayed… grew older and older and couldn't produce leaves anymore.

She slowly saw her life drift away once more, her consciousness blacked out and she died.

And then, she woke up, she inspected her body, and saw herself as a small rat, feeding on a dying tree wood, which was infested by small critters of all shapes and sizes. She was the rat that once feeds on her previous life body.

She feeds her belly and carried bugs to her family, countless of small rats awaited her, she was a mother of hundreds of children, she feeds them well and then let them drink her nutritious milk.

She protected her children from snakes and poisonous bugs and saw all of them grow larger and stronger, until one day they left her den to find a couple and mate, creating new children to continue the existence of their species.

She didn't even remember that she was once a tree, she lived slowly and as time went by, she became weak. As she was about to grab on the fruit of a tree, a large pigeon grabbed on her… and she died.

Her consciousness drifted once more, she was the pigeon's chicks, hatching from their eggs and feeding the body of a rat. The delicious flesh nurtured her body and she grew stronger as her mother brought her prey every day.

Long after she grew feathers, she practiced flying, but failed at the last moment, falling from the tree and dying, and her consciousness blacked out once more.

Kireina kept living as other animals… constantly. For so many years, hundreds, thousands of years.

She was a bug, a fish, another tree, a small grass, an ant, a bird again…

She didn't even remember what she was, she just appeared in a new body and survived as much as she could.

She experienced… Life.

She gained the inner understanding of Life, an endless cycle of Life and Death, coming together hand by hand. She Lived and Died.

And as she did, she finally understood what life was... at least in her perspective.

Life was Death, and Death was Life. Without Death, there wouldn't be Life, and without Life, there wouldn't be Death.

From the corpses of the death, life survived, thousands of small critters feed into Death. While Death feeds into Life, taking it away from it.

"I see… It was so simple…" she murmured. Her consciousness once more back to normal, and all of her memories came back as well, these were also coupled with when she was countless animals for countless of years. Her eyes seemed strangely wise, but her demeanor was the same as always.

"I am Life… and Death"

[The Skills [Spiritual Oracle's Purification of Nature and Earth], [Nature's Whisper], [Shining Life Beam], [Healing Life Aura], [Sudden Vitality Increase], [Life Infusing Breath], [Vigorous Life Dragon Claws], [Environment Life Infusion], [Venomous Life Poison] have merged!]

[Kireina] has awakened the Unique Skill [Root of Life Attribute Magic; Level 1]!]

As Kireina woke up from her Dream, more Divine Existences, Gods, felt a strange presence.

Every god that had Life Attribute magic as part of their divinity felt the same tingling thing, as if someone similar to them, oddly familiar, appeared.

Morpheus and his siblings already knew who this was.

"So Kireina learned Life Attribute Magic…" her murmured, glancing at the vast field of yellow flowers that made his Divine Realm.

"Brother, did you give her your Dungeon expecting this to happen?" asked Levana, who was at his side.

"Not really… I didn't expect her to get Life Attribute Magic, such a mystical Attribute and essential to all things… the [Devour] Skill is truly capable of devouring it all and assimilating it all"

"And Kireina-sama not only obtained Life Attribute Magic but its superior version… The root of Life Attribute Magic! How wonderful, she is really the one who will change everything we know, all of the boundaries will be changed, not even the World's Will can stop her! She is inevitable, a natural change in this world! It was about time that things changed, everything has been so stale for countless of years, this will be exciting!" said Agatheina, fanatically closing her hands as if praying to Kireina.

"Grandmother… please don't worship Kireina as a goddess… a God shouldn't pray to a Mortal… even if its Kireina we are talking about…"

"But Levana, it is Kireina-sama who we are talking about! She is the sole exception of this world! It is because of its HER, that I pray to her! I don't care about what I am, I shall offer my prayers to the one who will change everything!" Agatheina said, scaring the two Demi-Gods over her obsessiveness with Kireina.

"Sigh… More importantly, brother, will you tell Kireina about the Demon God that you sealed inside the Dungeon?" asked Levana, glancing at his brother who was peacefully resting over the field of flowers.

"I was planning to, but after considering that it is Kireina. I don't think she will have many problems; she probably will naturally learn about it in the next days… It will be a nice snack for her"

Agatheina walked towards the two, with a mischievous smile.

"Indeed! It will certainly be satisfactory to see one of those Demon Gods be driven to despair and suffering by Kireina-sama"

"Hmm… I'm still worried… Can you tell me again from where this guy is, brother?" asked Levana

Morpheus nodded.

"He was one of the Demon Gods who used to have good relationships with me and our siblings… However, he betrayed us and tried to sell our people to demons. Unified with my siblings, we punished him before he could do anything worse… we torn apart his soul and then sealed it inside a Divine Artifact… To think that he would awaken after so many years and would slowly move his strings around the monsters of my own Dungeon…" Morpheus said.

"He is planning on killing all the Sphinxes and use their sacrifices to make his vessel, the Empress of Giant Snakes stronger, so one day he can possess her and come back to life…" said Levana, sad about thinking on the death of the Sphinxes.

"Well, his plans were already ruined the moment Kireina entered the Dungeon," said Agatheina, with a pleasant smile.

"I think that you two are being very irresponsible in not telling her beforehand! I will tell her anyways, grandmother, please lend me the artifact that you use to talk to her" Levana said, reprimanding the two Gods.

"Oh? Very well, do as you please… Kireina-sama would have already predicted these things, she is very cautious, but assist her if you desire it so much"

Levana then contacted Kireina, who had recently awakened from her long dream.

"Kireina, we need to tell you something very important!"

Kireina grabbed on the artifact and heard the words of the Demi-Goddess of Bat Beastmen, which informed her about the being moving the strings behind the Giant Snakes raiding the Sphinx Village.

"I'm still dizzy after my dream… but okay…"

Kireina then learned about Megusan, the Demon Demi-God of Venomous, and Long Critters. He was once part of the Demon God Pantheon of the Thanatos Kingdom; he gave birth to the Insect Demons and Snake Demons alongside other Demon Gods.

Megusan was exiled when he was found making his children sacrifice the other Demon races to him as offerings, the Demon Gods, his siblings, were enraged, they ripped apart pieces of his flesh and then exiled him from their combined Divine Realm, drifting without purpose and with his Children taken away by the other Demon Gods, he felt resentment against them.

He was then taken by the young Beastmen Demi-Gods as a companion and ally and helped them in developing the prosperity of the Beastmen… However, this was only but his plan, as he, later on, used the trust he built with the rest to betray the beastmen and bring them to the other Demon Gods as a sacrifice and a gift, so they could accept him back on their Pantheon.

The Demon Gods tricked him and accepted his offering, only to betray him back, expecting that he was planning something similar, and exiled him once again, to the voracious and angered beast Demi-Gods, who destroyed his physical vessel and torn his soul apart into pieces, sealing them in an artifact, as they weren't able to kill him no matter how much power they could muster, and the Great Goddess of Beast didn't even care, not offering her help.

Morpheus then built his dungeon for his child to thrive and sealed the artifact in the depths of the last Biome, in a secret chamber protected by a strong seal connected to his Divine Energy.

But as time went by the seal weakened and Megusan awakened, his split souls slowly merged back together but he only had but a fraction of his original power, resigned to hide in the shadows like the critter he was, he offered the power to a Giant Snake and her children, making her grow stronger until she evolved into a powerful Lamia-like Monster, the Giant Snake Empress.

By slowly cultivating power within her, he planned to convert her body into his new physical body and use the System to grow stronger and stronger, until one day he would retaliate back to all the gods who did such things to him…

"So that's how it is…"

"Yes… but we don't know his whereabouts, he's using the leftover Divine Energy within his Soul to create a powerful barrier around the hideout of the Giant Snakes, as much as Morpheus looks into his Dungeon, he can't find him"

"Don't worry, leave it to me, Levana, this information is good enough,"

"Ueh? R-Really? Okay then, Kireina, please, be careful"

"I will"

As Levana stopped communicating with Kireina through the artifact, she glanced over the window of the portable house where she was resting. There was an artificial moon illuminating the night.

"A weakened Demon Demi-God… It will be a nice snack; I wonder what powers could I obtain by eating a Demi-God? I honestly cannot wait… but I cannot be careless, no matter how weakened he is, there is the possibility that he could take me off-guard, to that possibility, I must be cautious" Kireina said, as she began to manipulate her body and generate countless of Red-colored Slimes that moved through the cold night of the Desert Biome, these slimes shapeshifted into snake-like beings and turned into ghosts, as they started to explore the entire area and next floors with amazing speed.

She could see the floors through the Dungeon Map made with Automatic Dungeon Mapping, but it wasn't enough, as several details were lost on it.

Meanwhile, Megusan kept unfolding his scheme, unaware of Kireina's crimson eyes targeting him as her next prey.

The Crystal Ball where he was sealed trembled for a moment.

"Hm? What was that eerie feeling? A God? Impossible… It must be my imagination"