Chapter 963 A Thousand Years Secrets (4) Minerva's broken body was nearly unrecognizable, crushed and shattered, her body was scattered around for hundreds of feet, but her Demon King's frame was massive, so the pieces of her flesh that were scattered around were large, but these pieces were beginning to vanish, something was crawling among her shattered flesh, consuming every single morsel in their path, and before long, the culprit was revealed, it was a massive centipede. Well, massive by a mortal's standard. Nearly fifty feet long and possessing armor that reeked of the Abyss, the centipede's body resembled a living adamantium train. Its steps which had been silent all these while became loud as it was a walking mountain range, it appeared that the centipede was no longer hiding its presence. The attraction Rowan felt when he saw the centipede was immediate. Inside this centipede, he could detect an echo of his bloodline. This should be the arm he had lost while he was a mortal inside the Nexus and afflicted by the Flesh of Madness while fleeing from Lamia. With the benefit of hindsight, he could see how everything had changed for him after that day had passed. This curse had emerged from Minerva herself and was what led to the mutation in Rowan's Soul Reaver bloodline, which pushed him into a variant evolutionary path that eventually led to the creation of his Sheol bloodline. Without infecting his pure soul's bloodline with the Abyss, which in a convoluted manner led him to the lineage of the Celestials, he wondered what form his Soul bloodline would appear in. These were questions that were almost impossible to answer, the number of bloodlines in the Primordial Record was unfathomable, and the direction he could have taken was unknown, nevertheless, he did not regret what came off of it. He had detected the presence of this centipede before the battle had started all the way back in Trion as a one-dimensional entity inside the Vault of Boreas, and Rowan understood then that his lost left arm did not only contain the corruption of Minerva's Abyssal roots but unknowingly to even this Demon King, his bloodline had terrifying roots that were linked to a Primordial. How could the Demon King ever suspect such a thing? It was unknown if she was even aware of the presence of Primordials, talkless of detecting their Wills. This was not a particularly strange thing to happen, despite how old Minerva was, the Primordials were even older and they hardly left shining traces of themselves behind. Rowan was privileged due to the Primordial Record to figure out who were the beings at the height of creation, as far as he could tell, the Primordials were silent spectators, maybe not even that, perhaps all of reality was like a game to them, he had made peace to never understanding the mindset of a Primordial until he reached that level. During the battle, Rowan had whispered, and of all the combatants only Minerva heard him, and this was deliberately orchestrated by Rowan to confirm if the presence of the centipede was nearby. It was not Minerva who heard his whispers, it was the centipede. Rowan had used the language of the Chaos Blood that he had learned from Labaletai, the Chaos Door. Since this language was only understood by the bloodline of Chaos, the only reason Minerva could understand him was due to the bloodline of Chaos she had wrapped around her waist. Rowan suspected that Chaos himself had taken a strange interest in his bloodline and bestowed his favor on him by granting him an overpowered ability like the Chaos World Engine, a perverse ability that contributed a lot of Rowan's present greatness because his dimensional flesh and so many of his abilities were built from the foundation of this single ability. He did not know the reason for this favor, either the Primordial had detected the traces of the Primordial Record or any of the unique properties in Rowan's body. Whatever it might be, he was still safe only because Chaos was extremely limited in the actions he could perform in reality. However, the favor of a Primordial was not cheap, and even with his limited influence over reality, Rowan had almost fallen into the traps of Chaos, but due to his imprisonment, he was able to slip out of the chains of subservience to this primordial. He was not the only one who had taken advantage of Chaos's imprisonment, someone else had even gone further than trying to slip out of the leash of Chaos but was instead looking for a way to supplant him and overthrow his position. This creature had once been the strongest advocate for Chaos, fighting for the chance for the release of his Primogenitor, before he apparently fell into temptation and madness. At least this was what he had learned so far. Up till this moment he had not been able to devour the fragment of his soul left behind. Only one creature was mad enough in all of reality to attempt to overthrow a Primordial and devour their Will, that was the firstborn of Chaos himself, the Great Betrayer…. "At what scale does something begin to lose meaning?" A soft voice reached Rowan's ears. "For mortals, it is an easy thing to find out. The death of one might make them sad, a hundred deaths would drive them to a state of weakness, a thousand would terrify them, and a million would almost drive most to madness, but you see when it comes to a billion, then something truly special begins to happen. Don't you think so, Romion? But mortals are meaningless, we are here to discuss the immortal." …. Caine. Rowan had expected his presence, but he still hated the fact that he was right. At this time he was filled with a faint sense of tiredness and loss, and he did not want to fight. Rowan smiled. 'The slimy bastard, if he was not aware of his character, he would have easily fallen for the tricks of Caine. If the fight against the Reflections was the side dish, this was the main course.' Inside his dimension, Rowan was a hair's breadth away from crushing a million Soul Mountains and unleashing such an amount of devastation that in theory, he should be able to shatter at least a dozen universes at once. The voice that emerged from the centipede did not come from its head that appeared to be asleep and unaware that its body was being piloted, instead, it emerged from its back, where a bulge like a tumor began to emerge. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦 The bulge cracked apart the shell of the centipede as easily as a hot knife through snow, and two arms covered in a noxious fluid of birth—blood and pus and other unmentionable but rank liquids emerged from it. The arms were humanoid but were as long as spider limbs. They sought purchase on the bridge, before they began to heave, pushing the rest of the body out of the tumor with a disgusting squelching sound. What arose first was the head of Caine, but it was twisted around so his face was looking at his back before the rest of his twisted torso escaped the shell of the centipede. His legs which were also as extended as a spider were folded in the wrong position, and his joints were clearly not meant to be in that position for they were swollen and inflamed, the bones nearly tearing out from his skin. The head of Caine pressed down so it could find Rowan and his closed eyes opened, revealing two yellow diseased orbs. He looked at his warped body in amusement and sighed, "You are what you eat I guess."