The Primordial Record

His attendance to the summoning from Golgoth had given Rowan everything he needed to find the gods of Trion in their respective Vaults. The Rune that the God King took precious seconds investigating was like an address and a beacon and while Golgoth was busy checking the durability of the vaults, Rowan was busy copying it.

He had never expected to be given such an opportunity, because he knew the God King checked the status of the vault merely two decades ago, and before that he had checked it a million years back.

Perhaps the death of the universe and the paranoia of the God King was what made him recheck the status of the vaults, but his careful actions only opened him to the influence of Rowan who did not miss this opportunity.

Rowan was presently inside the Sea of Destruction in the Vault of Hekaton, so he only needed to create a similar Rune to the god he wanted to hunt and a resonance would be created between both Runes allowing him to locate his target. He no longer needed someone like Circe to bring him into the vaults of the remaining gods.

This was the advantages of entering the inner circles of the gods, Rowan would be able to increase his speeds into taking over Trion with his presence inside it.

If Rowan was to pick the next god that would fall then he would pick Volgim next to die, after Boreas, he was the one with the least influence amongst the gods, and he could easily replace him without any fear of unknown interference.

He spent the next thirty minutes going through all he knew of Volgim, who controls the Pathway of Iron. Volgim was the most benevolent of all the gods. He brought inventions and knowledge to mortals, did not pursue war or power, and was responsible for most of the technological advancement in Trion.

From creating a reliable source of electricity, transportation like the Sand Lines and many others, to housing, medicine, he had touched nearly every facet of the lives of the mortals. Volgim had shown he would go beyond what was expected of a god of Trion. What was notable was that he did not even use bloodline as a measure of his generosity. He distributed his boon equally among the mortals.

Volgim may have little influence among the gods, but it was opposite when it came to the mortals where he had the greatest influence.

This trait made Volgim very interesting to Rowan and also made him incredibly dangerous.

Rowan was aware that for the gods of Trion, staying in their vault was not a picnic. Every second they were inside the vaults, they were all tortured by the Aura of Destruction outside of it, madness was a mercy, and according to his inferences, it would be impossible for the gods of Trion to remain sane for long.

Why was Boreas seemingly unaffected by madness to such an extent that he could be so considerate to mortals, there was more to this story and Rowan was sure he might know the true reason for this, but the only way to confirm his suspicion was when he was killing Volgim.

Every god of Trion was unique, and the clues to his past as well as answers he needed in the present could be found inside all of them. They were like detectable feasts for Rowan and he intended to savor all of it.

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The period after the gods vanished from the fields of Elysium, their consciousness was shredded to nothingness when crossing back to the vault through the sea of destruction, the God King did not care about the consciousness when they returned as he created no portals for them to return with, but for a god, such injuries form a destroyed consciousness pieces were merely annoyances.

Due to the fact that Rowan was using Boreas consciousness power alone, during his return back to the vault, it did not last long inside the sea of destruction, nevertheless with his complete control over the consciousness of Boreas, he was able to preserve it until it reached the gate of the Vault of Hekaton before he dissipated it.

He had achieved what even Golgoth would consider impossible. It was like transporting a single flake of snow through an active volcano.

Inside the vault Rowan's eyes opened and he summoned four Spirit Guises. Spreading them in the air, he began to craft.

With a wave of his hand, he disassembled their bodies, revealing the numerous divine materials used in creating them, although Rowan had already stripped eighty-five percent of its internal components, this change had instead led to an increase in the powers of the Spirit Guises, pushing them towards the peak of a Major God level.

Boreas only solution to increasing the power of his Spirit Guises was to add more precious materials into it, an incredibly wasteful move but it gave Rowan part of the materials he needed for crafting his Forge.

Golgoth did not give the gods of Trion knowledge, only riches and power, more than they knew what to do with it, because the God-King understood a unique philosophy,

"If people have too much knowledge, you will have trouble ruling them." This philosophy extended to the gods of Trion perhaps more than the mortals in Trion. Golgoth did not show them their true nature, did not reveal how their powers truly worked and never allowed them the opportunity to explore the universe.

He wanted to rule them, for the unenlightened were slaves, and the enlightened would be kings.

However, it was this fear in the heart of the God King who turned to the weakest point in the defense of Trion which Rowan had gladly exploited.

The rest of the materials taken from the Spirit Guises were to be used in the creation of his Forge with the rest to be exchanged for using the Labyrinth Coins.

Rowan was presently nearly twenty percent in the designing of his Forge, which was remarkable progress considering he had only one stream of consciousness available to him.

Inside the opened bodies of the Spirit Guises, he began to craft the shadow Rune that would match the resonance of the gods' vaults. Duplicating the Runes was not difficult for him, perhaps to a Mage these Runes might exceed a Higher Order Rune and could be called a Taboo level Rune, it all made no difference to Rowan who had an instinctive understanding of power and its applications.

The challenge was finding the correct energies that would match each god. A single second of brainstorming revealed the solution. It came in a lesser-known Divine Metal called Vorpal Essence. It was a rare metal but it turns out that he had enough on hand.

Rowan had harvested millions of tons of the ore when he fought and killed his first Minor god Dao Ma. Battling this Cerulean god had been challenging to him at that time but he did not regret that battle and the methods he had used in fighting it.

Those were simpler times, when the universe seemed so vast, and mysteries were hidden in every corner. With Envy in his hands, he had gloried in battle.

Rowan still remembered that fight with a degree of fondness. It was the first time he had extinguished divinity entirely with his own hands and as parts of his spoils he had gained a sizable chunk of Vorpal Essence.

This Divine Metal although not too powerful was capable of perfectly mimicking any energy incorporated with it. He had not needed these properties of this metal before now, because he had his Angels who could search through the universe and gather materials for him, and now he could finally make use of it.

Separating the Vorpal Essence equally to all the four Spirit Guises he began to craft the Runes for each vault.

A rather unique transformation occurred when he integrated the Vorpal Essence and transformed them into the outline of the Runes of each vault; the bodies of the Spirit Guises began to shift until they all took the forms of the gods of Trion.

Kuranes, Tiberius, Bacchus, and Volgim seemingly appeared inside the Vault of Hekaton and Rowan looked at this change with a degree of interest before dismissing it from his mind. What was important was that he could feel the resonance between these Spirit Guises and the vault.