Matthias lay on his bed with an ice pack on his head. The cold had long since melted into lukewarm dampness, but he did not bother replacing it. Even that minor act felt like too much effort. His temples throbbed in slow, punishing waves, each pulse echoing deeper than bone. It was not a mortal headache. It was something larger—like reality itself was grinding against the inside of his skull, protesting the changes he had forced upon it.

  “You should not have pushed so far,” Lucy chided softly. She sat near his shoulder, her newly radiant plumage catching the ambient light of the room and scattering it in gentle rainbows across the ceiling. Her feathers rustled as she adjusted the compress, replacing the melted ice with a fresh one. Her plumage had changed after his ascension. She now had shimmering rainbow feathers and tanned skin. To Matthias, she looked more like a bird of paradise from myth.

  “That is what he gets for not taking us,” Chloe added, though her tone lacked real bite. She now had obsidian scales, solid red eyes, and a crown of bones around her skull. She even had a long black reptilian tail that hung behind her, curling idly along the mattress. Her hair was no longer curly. It fell straight now, streaked with red highlights.

  “It was all on a whim,” Matthias complained, squinting against another spike of pressure behind his eyes. “Just one thing led to another.”

  The words sounded weak even to him. He could still feel the echo of divine resistance—the sensation of pushing against something ancient and immovable and winning by sheer stubbornness.

  “And that led to you having to compete with a god,” Lucy pointed out. Her fingers brushed through his hair, slow and deliberate, grounding. “Sure, you traumatized her in combat, but it seems she still wants to push back against you.”

  “Of course she does,” Matthias admitted. His voice came out rougher than he intended. “The gates of her heaven are fully welded shut now.”

  “What?” Lucy and Chloe asked in unison.

  He winced—not at their surprise, but at the way the sound vibrated through his skull.

  “Oh, yeah. Probably should have told you,” Matthias confessed. He lifted one hand, then let it flop back down to the mattress. Even that brief motion sent a ripple of nausea through him. “I spent a bit of my ascension energy to close their gates from our side too. So long as I am around, they cannot get out.”

  Chloe shifted closer, her scaled hand resting lightly against his ribs. The touch was cool and steady.

  “That seems a bit unfair,” she noted. “Surely you are not a stronger deity than they are.”

  “They are older,” Matthias murmured, staring up at the ceiling as another pulse thudded behind his eyes, “but not all that creative.” He exhaled slowly. “They wanted stagnation so nothing could threaten them. And that leads into an entire theological debate. But it basically equates to having them trapped in a pressurized room. The pressure in their room is lower than the pressure out here, since nothing changes in their realm. So if they want out, they would have to equalize pressure before they could even attempt to open their gates.”

  Explaining it helped distract him from the pain—slightly.

  “So,” Chloe tried to translate, absently drawing slow circles against his side, “they have to allow change if they want out. But if they change, then you have already won.”

  “Basically, if they want out, they have to let someone in first,” Matthias corrected. “But I think it is safe to assume that no one will try to get in.”

  “Oh, and how can you be so sure?” Chloe asked.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “The world spirit and I reworked the way dungeon cores ascend,” Matthias explained. He closed his eyes as a sharper spike lanced through his thoughts, like divine static. “They interact with reality differently now. They can still eventually reach our level of power, but they cannot ascend like Order did.”

  Lucy’s hand stilled briefly in his hair.

  “You know that there were at least forty other gods besides Order in their divine realm, right?” she asked carefully.

  He cracked one eye open.

  “Nope,” Matthias admitted. “No idea at all.”

  The admission hung in the air. For a moment, even his headache seemed to pause in disbelief.

  Chloe flopped onto his bed next to him, though she was careful not to jostle him too much. “So, what happens next?” she asked, her tail draping lightly across his legs like a weighted blanket.

  “We have a few more people to visit,” Matthias admitted. “I am going to pass that cup around a bit. I’m going to get as many people as possible to give up on the leveling system as possible.”

  He rubbed at his brow, immediately regretting it.

  “And what about the Empire?” Lucy asked as she eased herself onto the edge of the bed. One wing folded partly around him, shielding him from the room’s glow. “With life surging across the land, food is not so scarce. So there is a reason to conquer land that was once useless.”

  “I think they will soon have their hands full,” Matthias admitted. “I am the Father of Monsters, after all. The plant life is just to sustain the bottom of the food chain.”

  The words were steady. His breathing was not.

  “You can’t be serious,” Chloe drawled, though her hand tightened faintly against him.

  “I am,” Matthias admitted wearily. A faint tremor ran through him as another divine aftershock rolled past. “Look, I know people will die. But it will soon be a whole new world out there. Not everyone can win natural selection.”

  The statement cost him more than the headache. He felt it settle somewhere heavy in his chest.

  “People will curse you for that,” Chloe pointed out as she shifted closer, resting her forehead lightly against his shoulder.

  “People will always find someone to blame,” Matthias noted quietly. “At least they can put food on the table now.” He swallowed. “It is also not like I am just unleashing manticores across the land,” he added. “The distribution of life happens in waves. Besides, the Empire also got our recently awakened sapients.”

  Lucy’s thumb brushed gently along his temple, smoothing tension that would not truly yield.

  “I was surprised by the Naga,” she admitted. “I still don’t understand why snakes need hands.”

  That got a faint, pained chuckle from Matthias.

  “The Arachne will be interesting to keep an eye on,” Chloe mused.

  “The Satyr were so much easier to get to evolve than the Centaur,” Matthias noted dryly. “Who would have thought that evolving two rib cages would be so hard?”

  “Should we be worried that the Naga worship hydras?” Lucy asked.

  “People will worship anything,” Matthias grumbled. He shifted slightly, and Chloe immediately adjusted to keep him comfortable. “Who am I to tell people what they can and cannot worship?”

  “Says the man who just killed the avatar of the god of Order,” Lucy scoffed gently.

  “Or the guy who used a miracle to forcefully ascend another dungeon,” Chloe pointed out.

  “They had the energy already,” Matthias groaned, pressing the heel of his palm carefully to his eye. “The Turtle Dungeon was just a mess. By giving his everything to free his fairy from the gods, she was in charge of their ascension. But being a divine servant meant her paths forward were heavily pruned. They were weaker than the god they were trying to get out from under. Using his core as a stopgap was actually pretty smart.”

  “How so?” Chloe asked softly.

  “The gods can command their fairies,” Matthias pointed out. “They cannot command dungeon cores directly. So he was free to ignore the incoming orders.”

  He fell quiet for a moment, breathing slow and shallow until the pounding receded from unbearable to merely awful.

  “Speaking of fairies,” Lucy began, her wing still loosely curved around him, “we have had a sudden surge of them. There are a lot more than four varieties.”

  Matthias made a noncommittal sound.

  “It’s fine,” he brushed off after a moment. “We should be getting new dungeons for them to bond to soon. Just make sure they are trained properly.”

  “You can’t expect us to train them all,” Chloe protested, though she did not move away.

  “Write a book or something,” Matthias deflected weakly. “I still have too much of a headache.”

  Both of his fairies chuckled at his expense, but the laughter was soft—careful.

  Lucy leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead, right at the edge of the ice pack. Chloe’s fingers intertwined with his.

  “In that case, get some rest,” Lucy allowed quietly. “I am sure there will still be plenty of work when you wake up.”

  Matthias exhaled, finally letting his eyes close fully. The pain did not vanish, but with their warmth anchoring him, it became something he could endure rather than something that defined him.