Chapter 2346: Arad’s Avatar

Arad himself wasn’t fully awake, as this entire thing still felt like a dream to him. But being lucid, his mind was still fully aware and conscious. Standing still, feeling the waves of magic those monsters below released, he thought about his next move carefully. This was Pin’s body after all, and she wouldn’t like him using it to start a fight.

Checking how much power he could access, he was pleasantly surprised to find out that he could access almost 100% of his prior power. That was the catch: right now, his true body was far stronger than his adult form. But that was just this avatar, not his true power.

Pin’s cloak turned darker and covered her whole body, and Arad soon pulled the hood over his head, hiding his face. The moment he did that, Pin’s entire presence faded inside him, and he was the dominant soul.

Now, he could move without making a sound as he was floating, and those movements looked as eerie as Nyar’s moves were. With that, he decided to actually go down and check on those divines, unless he wanted them to attack him out of nowhere. So he moved, approached the door, and phased right through without opening it. He was a creature of nothing, and so could easily tunnel through matter.

Moving through the hallway, Arad couldn’t help but notice that time now felt to him the same as air, and it moved out of his way on its own. He didn’t even need to actively try to maintain his own time in the stopped time. He simply wasn’t affected by time anymore. It seems that his domination over space itself had grown far stronger, and it now even allowed him to easily affect time.

As Arad reached the stairs, he floated down without making a sound, and soon emerged in the tavern. Even though he stood behind them, the divine still didn’t seem to notice his presence. Was his Void Presence active? As he checked, he found that it was now on by default 24/7, and he didn’t need to maintain it. Like his mother, he needed to consciously allow himself to be detected, not the opposite.

He turned his Void Pretense off, and everyone’s head immediately jolted back, and some almost broke their necks as they violently turned back.

It felt far too similar to that of Nyar, a dark aura of pure eldritch magic so oppressive that it was almost bending reality itself. But in Arad’s case, his aura also carried hints of curses and divinity, signalling that unlike Nyar, he belonged to this universe.

This was the first Avatar of AO that had appeared since he died eons ago, and just feeling this again made Amaterasu sigh. "Since when you were awake?" She asked, and Arad looked at her, his face hidden underneath the hood.

"For a while now." He started floating toward them. Tiamat quickly assessed him with a glance and determined that he was just as powerful as he was before going into hibernation, meaning that any one of them here could easily defeat him, and Arad noticed that.

Instead of just doing nothing, Arad pulled on the Ten Avatars of Nyar inside them and stacked their Eldritch magic on top of his, rapidly skyrocketing his eldritch magic and making Tiamat pale a bit. Forget Arad alone; facing him now was like trying to face Arad and ten Avatars of Nyar working together.

"I still got more where that came from." He looked at her with his two glowing white eyes, and immediately stacked Kali’s destruction and his Nymph aura on top of it all, quickly turning into a nightmarish horror that would’ve made any lesser god just perish from fear alone. But he immediately pulled the destruction back, and even nine of the Avatars, as he noticed that Pin’s body wouldn’t be able to handle all of that power going through it.

To him, it was a necessary change, but to everyone else there, it looked like he was relaxing after flexing on them.

"Want a fight?" Yog stared at him with a grin, and he laughed. "Of course not, why would I fight you all?" Arad shook his head. "I just noticed you all stopped time and decided to come check on what is going on."

"Check?" Amaterasu looked at him with a smile. "You’re supposed to be sleeping, right? Why are you controlling poor little Pin?"

"Controlling her?" Arad shook his head. "Of course not; she is fully in control. It is just that her mind cannot function in the stopped time, so I’m taking over to make sure she stays safe." He approached the counter and stared at her face. "A little birdie told me that she was surrounded."

"Stop joking; we won’t ever harm her." She picked an empty glass and gestured for him to take a seat. "What do you want?"

Arad sat down. "On you, pick whatever you want." Hearing that, Amaterasu smiled. "Well, of course." She looked back at the kitchen and called to the Mother of All Life. "Gracie, come take over the counter. I want to use the kitchen." As Amaterasu walked into the kitchen, the Mother of All Life walked to the counter and looked at Arad.

"You look like a ghost. I can’t even see your face." She stared at him with an expressionless, emotionless face. Arad slowly lifted his head to look at her face, and quickly noticed that while she looked emotionless, she wasn’t really like that. Right now, she was a bit worried but relaxed.

"My void covers the host and protects them. It’s like how Nyar can turn any abomination into his avatar if he has enough energy to spare." Arad lifted his hand and showed it to her. His hand was completely black, as if made of dark flames that swirled and flickered.

Yog looked at him. "If you possessed Pin, then what about her curse? Can you access it?"

Hearing her, Arad looked inside himself and could indeed find Pin’s curse available for him to use. Curses worked similarly to how angels have alignments, which are in turn similar to portfolios. That easily made sense in his mind since devils are supposed to be descendants of fallen angels.

But in his hand, the Terror Curse had changed dramatically as it now was overcharged by his will and flood of eldritch magic.

"I have it. People’s fear of me makes me stronger, and if anyone fears me even a bit, I can snatch their souls." He extended his hand toward her. "Even you. One moment of fear and your soul would be mine. It also allows me to somewhat control those who fear me by using the fear to influence how they act. For example, I can make them flee, fight each other, or even kill themselves to escape my horror."

A second later, Amaterasu came in with the food she cooked very quickly, and for once, Arad started to question if there was anything this woman couldn’t do. Like... that was a full-course meal with dessert.

"Where did you even pull this?" He asked as he looked at the bowl of crystal-clear soup, fish, rice, strange dough-like balls, more fried fish, and even what looked like a salad.

"Pull the ingredients from my palace. I do love cooking." Amaterasu smiled. "You might not believe me, but I do cook almost daily for my private Archons and angels."