Epic of Caterpillar

497 The Story Behind Palikoi

[LEVEL 095/250] [EXP 11.177.972.659.805/14.640.000.000.000]

There was another weird dream last night.

It was one of the weirdest ones.

It felt as if I was transported into a world of volcanic lands, I think I was a Lava Golem or something.

I just used my Uroboros to eat and absorb anything that tried to attack me, and I ended up assimilating the earth whenever I walked.

I think I spent thousands of years there, but now they felt as if they were just a few hours… It is not like I gained much wisdom or something from it, all of that time was spent being a mindless monster.

But even then, experiencing being a mindless monster brought some enlightenment to me, perhaps due to having consumed a Fire Attribute Divinity Fragment from one of Marnet\'s children (Racoon Dog Living Deity), I was able to start learning more about this attribute.

Well, I was already quite close to it when I learned Overpowering Sun, but no matter how much you conjure a skill, it will not increase your knowledge and deep understanding of that attribute it represents.

Apparently, for gods, it takes hundreds of years to gather such knowledge and understanding. And also, a mortal cannot raise into godhood without having gathered the inner understanding of a certain attribute.

But it seems that I can gather it through either eating gods and dreams. Perhaps they feel like an eternity because it is a lot of time spent inside a dream to learn a bit of that inner understanding of a certain attribute.

I still remember the dream that I had about the Life Attribute…

Ah, well, everything was most likely just a dream… although I acquired a new skill.

The hammer of Hephaestus? Can I really summon that? I will have to test it.

Then again, just like Gungnir, Aegis, and Metis, they are just skills named after them, not the real deals.

"Hephaestus? That\'s my father\'s name"

Yeah, Hephaestus, your father\'s name.

…Wait, who did talk right now?

"Me? Don\'t you remember me? You even gave me a name!" said the voice of a young woman.

…Eh?

"For real! You do not remember me? In the Dream World? You rescued me from my father\'s, Hephaestus, seal!"

That dream… Ah!

Just as this voice spoke those words, my mind and memories became clearer, and I remembered what I did back then.

I remember being attracted to… a blaze. And then rescued her from a seal.

"Yep, that\'s me! Blaze!"

"I named you Blaze...? And you can read my thoughts? I want some privacy, could you not?"

Then, I finally remembered it all.

"Ah…! Oh, this is… I really went and did that"

"Yep, you did- hey, what do you mean?!"

I moved Blaze away from my thoughts and created a slight barrier separating my mind from her, so she could not read my internal thoughts besides those that I allowed.

That dream last night was not exactly a dream created by me, I was transported to the Dream World of Hephaestus, where he sealed Blaze… which seems to be his daughter.

I then lived there for thousands of years as a Lava Golem, slowly moving towards a volcano where Blaze was sealed. In the way, I ended assimilating the entire Dream World.

When I met Blaze, the entire Dream World was already mine, and when my consciousness left it alongside Blaze, it was… added to my [Inner Realm: Dream World] Skill.

And Blaze… has somehow merged with me. She did not seem to have a physical body of her own, as her entire existence was made of ethereal Divine Fire.

So I\'ve just stolen Hephaestus\'s daughter… oops.

It was not my intention, really, mister Hephaestus.

Hopefully, he can understand, and we can come to good terms.

Or well, I will have to eat him… What a pity.

"Hey listen! You named me, but you never gave me YOUR name! And I cant hear your thoughts anymore…" muttered Blaze.

"My name is Kireina, but you can call me on whatever name you want. You cannot hear my thoughts anymore because I isolated you in my soul. I need some privacy, you know?"

"But… our connection! Our passionate bond!" said, Blaze.

"We are still connected, you know. You pretty much fused with me"

"Ah! Well… Hehe" laughed Blaze.

"I would like you to go in detail about your father… and why did he even have you sealed in the first place... seriously, who would seal their own daughter?"

As Blaze explained to me her situation, I decided to multitask and wake up. I went to the bathroom, then I took a bath with my sleepy family, and then began to have breakfast.

To summarize, Blaze\'s real name is Palikoi, and she is Hephaestus\'s youngest daughter… although she was born when Genesis was still a planet.

Due to the war and Hephaestus\'s foolishness, her mother perished in a fight, and she was left alone living inside of her father\'s Divine Realm.

Despite this, she always showed a passionate personality and was always trying to improve or help her father in anything she could.

Due to her properties as a special race of Living Deity Species, her entire composition was of Divine Fire, a powerful Divine Material capable of burning through almost anything.

Its intensity is also strong, and it\'s quality superb. Such fire is used by Hephaestus to forge artifacts on his furnace and after seeing how Blaze was just made out of it, he decided to use her for that purpose, as she wasn\'t good at fighting due to her young age.

However, due to her attitude and passion, she would mess around too much in the furnace, to the point that Hephaestus got so angry and was such a bad father to not be able to educate his children well enough that he ended sealing her inside a Dream World that he asked Freyja to create. This even seemingly happened after the Ragnar?k. When Genesis was split into many realms.

Although in the outside world it has been a few hundred years, the time in the Dream World goes faster, and Blaze had been living in isolation for thousands of years. Hephaestus would use his authority and power over her to force her to give him her Divine Fire and fuel his furnace.

This was the only interaction she had with her father since then… and since she has no believers in either church to pray for her and give her strength, she had been slowly decaying inside the Dream World, only being feed with a measly few Divine Energy Crystals every time Hephaestus used her.

The blaze had already given up on her life, and was now resigned to die in isolation, and used as a tool by her heartless father, that didn\'t even saw her as a daughter but as a thing, an item, or a material.

It was even more shocking to me when I heard that Palikoi\'s mother was a Fire Nymph, a Living Deity Species born within Gaia and Uranus, two giants that were the children of Supreme Gods. Despite being of different factions, they loved each other and created countless children, but both of them met tragic ends in the war.

Uranus was overwhelmed while trying to protect his father and was greatly damaged. In the war, he fell to the \'Abyss\' of Genesis and was then parasitized and assimilated by \'aberrations\', which I assume are some type of monster… after the destruction of Genesis and the creation of Realms, his location is unknown.

And in the war, Gaia\'s soul was split in half by Zeus and his family (how ironic). A piece of her soul alongside her body was sealed in Genesis, while the other half disappeared. Some speculated that it might have been eaten by a god. After Genesis split into realms, Gaia\'s split soul and body were intact and formed the sediments for Aztlan, the Realm of Ruins and Jungles.

Blaze never met her grandparents but investigated about them before her father sealed her, so she knew that much.

However, I presume that the strange soul, which is akin to the divine that lives inside of the Shield of Gaia might be that split soul… Well, it is just a theory, it might just be a soul copy made by the system like Athos\'s sword.

I tried to talk with Gaia\'s Shield, but she seems too sleepy, she barely speaks and does not remember anything of her past life. She cannot do much other than to be a shield.

Maybe I could do something about her… but not for now.

I talked to my family about these events, and there were mixed feelings.

"Honey, what do you mean you fused with that woman in your dreams?!" roared Zehe.

"And she is inside of your soul?! W-Why are we not fused with you then?! We came first!" shouted Nesiphae.

"That\'s right, you tell her Nesiphae," said Brontes.

"Masta, we have fused before, but never like that, guu!" protested Rimuru.

"Why are you all just interested in the fusion in the entire explanation…?" I asked.

"Because it is important!" said Zehe.

"Who cares about her grandparents or whatever? Those are old tales that no one cares about anyway!" said Nesiphae.

"Guuuuu!" said Rimuru.

"I think you girls are acting a bit too rude with Master…" said Wagyu, who had been invited to have breakfast with us alongside Kekensha, Truhan, and Celica.

"I think that it is a very tragic story… I wouldn\'t want to be in her shoes," said Kekensha.

"You don\'t even wear shoes Kekensha," said Wagyu.

"Oh, that\'s right," admitted Kekensha.

"Wagyu, it is a figurative term…" said Celica.

"What is a figurative term?" asked Truhan.

"Not this again… Truhan, I have explained it to you thirty times already," said Celica.

"Well… if you don\'t want to you don\'t have to," muttered Truhan.

"Hahh…" sighed Celica.

"Master Kireina, it is not like we can do much, right?" asked Wagyu.

"Indeed, we can only take good care of little Blaze!" said Kekensha.

The two wolves were sitting at each side of the room, their sizes were immense, but when sitting they only towered around four meters. My room had been remade many times to fit in the size of my big wives like Nesiphae and Nixephine, even the doors are over forty meters tall, so there should not be any problem in this regard. There is plenty of space for everyone to sit and talk, even Truhan and Celica who are giants were sitting on the floor while sharing food with us.

My wives were worried because Blaze fused herself with my own soul, but was not devoured or anything, it was as if she was living in harmony with my soul. I have never seen such development within souls possible.

"I am not little!" roared Blaze within my mind.

"Kekensha, don\'t call Blaze little, she is older than all of us, even all our ages combined wouldn\'t be as old as her," I said.

"Ah, I apologize Blaze-sama," said Kekensha.

"Ah! I am not an old hag either, you know?!" roared Blaze within my mind yet again… I decided to ignore her this time though.

As the chatting between my wives settled down after I promised to each one that one day, we would fuse as I do with Rimuru, some worried expressions surged.

"Kireina-sama… rescuing Blaze is a very noble act… but wouldn\'t it be dangerous to provoke Hephaestus like that? After all, he seemed very possessive of her," said Sofelaia.

"That is right, it is just as my sister says! It might be dangerous to… what if he decides to come in here?" asked Sofarpia.

"Ah, that would be ideal, so we can kill him," said Truhan nonchalantly, while eating the roasted leg of a dragon.

"Truhan, how are you so confident?!" shouted Adelle.

"We are not alone in this, don\'t we? I have Celica-chan… oh, and master and all of you I guess," said Truhan.

"Hahaha! That is right, Truhan! Do not fear anything, lady Sofarpia, and Sofelaia. You are in our care" said Kekensha.

"And above all, we have Master, she just defeated a demigod, didn\'t she? How hard could it be to kill a god? The more direct he is, the better after all, so we can resolve things quickly," said Wagyu.

"To be honest, due to Blaze\'s opinion, I would like to resolve things peacefully. But if he gets too grumpy, I will have to just eat him. Blaze does not mind this after I try to make peace with him," I said.

"Yeah, just ask him at the very least… but if that old man is still stubborn, I don\'t care if he dies, at this point, I barely hold some appreciation to him…" said Blaze within my mind.

"Hm, so we will have Blacksmith God flesh for dinner soon? I ask for his heart!" said Nesiphae.

"I can drain him out of his blood if he doesn\'t mind, fufu~ I can\'t imagine how delicious it might be!" laughed Alice.

"Oh, talking about other things, I wanted to inform everyone about something very important…" said Truhan, hugging Celica\'s shoulders.

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