Chapter Sixty: The Naya Conspiracy

Seeing that the reality around Him had already been altered, Ael knew the other side had long since rewritten the world and had no idea where He was now.

"There are still a year left before the nine stars align. How did you break the seal?" This was what puzzled Ael most. Even He could not have torn open, without alarming a soul, the seal once laid down jointly by Asgard and the Stellar Spirit Empire. How, then, had Nyarlathotep managed it?

"It is simple. The so-called successful sealing was merely an illusion granted to you by the Aether. In truth, I always left myself a hidden passage." Nyarlathotep smiled at Ael, thoroughly pleased with having outmaneuvered Him.

"So Annihilation chose your side?" Ael had already begun to gather psychic power. Golden light flashed through His eyes. The Aether was both the Reality Stone and the Illusion Stone, and Nyarlathotep could not possibly create a world that was wholly real. The most likely truth was a tangle of reality and falsehood, and psychic power was best suited to breaking through such deception.

"Oh my, reality is so merciless. Are you going to strike already?" Nyarlathotep naturally did not miss Ael's move. With a light step, He drifted far away, yet His voice remained where He had stood. "Since you are so eager to fight, then if you want answers, defeat me first. After all, we each have an Infinity Stone."

Since things had already been torn apart completely, Ael had no intention of wasting any more words. Golden light flashed, and He gave chase at once.

This void, altered by Nyarlathotep, was exceedingly strange. As Ael pursued Him, He clearly felt the distortion of space and time, but He had not yet found the point where the illusion converged, so He could only chase while searching.

Naturally, Nyarlathotep would not stand by and let Ael destroy His plan. After flying a certain distance, He began to exchange blows with Him.

Ael condensed psychic power into a longsword and brought it down toward Nyarlathotep. At their level, the length and size of weapons had long lost any real meaning. Whether a longsword or a spear, a warhammer or an axe, to a demigod it came down only to personal preference. Manifested weapons could change shape at will anyway, and Ael used a longsword purely out of personal taste.

Nyarlathotep caught the blade with the fan He had shaped from the Aether Stone, and the two began a close-quarters exchange. Melee was the only choice for both sides; the trouble posed by the Aether Stone made long-range combat useless against it, or rather, none of the six Infinity Stones could be easily dealt with by long-distance attacks.

And in close combat, only artifacts of the same tier could contend. Although the Infinity Stones were the greatest divine artifacts in the universe when all six were gathered together, when a single stone fell into a mortal hand, there were still many artifacts that could rival them.

For example, Asgard's Gungnir and the Stellar Spirit Empire's Wheel of Order were both among the finest cosmic artifacts, and in a one-on-one duel they did not lose to an Infinity Stone, and might even surpass it.

But no matter how powerful an artifact was, it still needed a wielder, and that was why the battle between Ael and Nyarlathotep had become such a stalemate.

One side was an avatar condensed from the Creator God's own essence, wielding power from the same source and able to bring forth the full might of the Mind Stone. The other was the true body of the Child of Chaos. Though suppressed down to demigod level, He held the Aether, the Infinity Stone best suited to battle, and He looked far too experienced to be a novice.

For the first time, Ael felt a flicker of frustration. He had not even felt this way when fighting Yog-Sothoth. The Child of Chaos, armed with the Aether, was truly difficult to handle.

Still, during this period of constant exchange, Ael had also discerned something of His opponent's intent. After forcing Nyarlathotep back with a mighty technique, Ael asked coldly, "What exactly do you mean? Could it be that you want to betray your true self?"

"What true self? He is nothing but a mass of arrogant, decaying flesh. Only I am the true god of chaos." Nyarlathotep's smile remained, but His words were utterly without mercy. "Is betrayal so strange? Did He not betray you as well?"

Ael fell briefly silent. His relationship with Eamon was not easy to explain, but the intelligence gathered through the world's laws did, in fact, suggest a situation much the same as this one.

"Even if you want to become the god of chaos, you are still my enemy. There can be no cooperation between us." Ael refused calmly. To cooperate with an evil god was to dance with wolves; how could He be sure the other side would not renege at the last moment?

"I am the god of chaos, not the Blind Idiot God." Nyarlathotep waved His fan, still answering with a smile. "Your enemy is Him, is that not so?"

"You are His other half, His heir. Why would you want to betray Him?" Ael more or less accepted this explanation, but another question immediately followed.

"He regards me as no more than dirt beneath His feet, so I regard Him as my enemy. If He wants to be the eternal ruler, why would He need an heir?" Nyarlathotep said with a smile, shaking His head as though questioning the wisdom of the god of wisdom Himself.

Ael remained unmoved and continued to ask, "So you brought Annihilation into this as well? Who else knows? And how can you be sure you won't betray us in the end?"

"It was the Great God Annihilation who found me, pitied my birth, and gave me a chance." Nyarlathotep theatrically wiped away nonexistent tears from the corner of His eyes. "For now, only the three of us know. I can swear it upon the Law."

Swearing upon the Law was one of the more common forms of oath among the gods. There were other methods as well, such as swearing to the Creator God or swearing to the multiverse itself. Because the gods were too powerful, one had to call upon still greater powers to bear witness. Thus, swearing upon the Law was one of the few means capable of binding even a Creator God. Of course, it could only bind; if anyone truly played tricks within their oath, the Creator God would soon teach him what it meant to leave this world behind.

Hearing this oath, Ael studied Him thoughtfully. Both Ael and Annihilation were Creator Gods, while Nyarlathotep was only Eamon's other half, so His level of power would always remain one tier below Eamon's. In that sense, such an oath could indeed constrain Him, and it sounded rather sincere.

Yet Ael always held to one belief: making a bargain with a tiger leaves endless trouble. So He refused firmly, saying, "I will not cooperate with you, nor will I spread this消息. Fend for yourself."

With that, Ael turned and left, flying toward the point of illusion He had discovered during the earlier clash. Psychic power suddenly pierced this place of false and true alike, and the warped space-time returned to normal, but the smile on Nyarlathotep's face only deepened by a fraction.