"Made your decision?"
Corwin drifted back over after a long stretch of silence, glancing between Caelum and the card in his hand.
Alaric’s public claim on the Forbidden Technique had done exactly what it was meant to do. Most of the vultures circling Caelum had backed off completely. Greed was one thing. Crossing Alaric Sylvaine was another, and everyone in the Pavilion understood the difference.
What changed was the way people looked at Caelum.
The pity had faded. So had most of the open greed. In its place was something almost stranger, a distant sort of superiority. The look people gave someone standing several rungs below them on a ladder they’d already climbed.
Caelum ignored it.
One card after another passed through his hands before drifting back into place. He kept searching until only one remained.
He studied it for a long moment, then sighed softly.
"This one. The Murloc."
At the center of the card, surrounded by the familiar yellow cloud pattern of a low-grade card, was a creature with an aqua-blue fish head attached to a roughly humanoid body. Its webbed hands gripped a steel trident, and its expression seemed determined to look threatening.
It failed.
The pair of flat, lifeless fish eyes somehow made the entire pose look more ridiculous than intimidating.
Corwin stared at the card.
"Caelum, this thing’s constitution is weak even by Murloc standards. It’s not even in the same league as a Kuo-toa, let alone a Sahuagin."
Murlocs sat near the absolute bottom of the follower hierarchy. Even among low-grade races, they were practically a punchline.
Kuo-toa and Sahuagin represented the stronger end of that same tier, with considerably better physical abilities and combat potential. The creature on Caelum’s card looked somewhat similar to a Sahuagin, but thinner and weaker, as though it had been bred from an inferior strain.
And Murlocs weren’t anything like Merfolk.
Murlocs had fish-like heads, humanoid bodies, and all the ugliness and fragility that came with them. Merfolk were almost the exact opposite, with human upper bodies and fish tails. Their ranks included Mermaids, whose beauty was famous throughout the divine world, but their appearance wasn’t their only advantage. Their magical aptitude was genuinely formidable, placing them firmly in the mid-grade category.
Mermaid royalty stood even higher, with potential that could rival Elves.
"My Sanctuary can’t support anything bigger anyway," Caelum said simply.
Corwin frowned but didn’t argue.
He wasn’t wrong about the Murloc’s potential. It was sitting at the absolute floor of what a deity could reasonably choose.
But that was precisely why Caelum had chosen it.
Nothing left to lose meant everything left to gain.
The Creation Pearl changed the equation entirely. The ceiling that applied to ordinary deities didn’t apply to him in the same way. If the Pearl could transform an entire bloodline, then even something as unimpressive as a Murloc could become the foundation for something extraordinary.
’Unpolished jade.’
Caelum turned the card over in his hand.
’That’s all this is.’
He handed it to Corwin to handle the purchase.
Once they returned to Cloudspire, Caelum pulled him aside and lowered his voice.
"There was an Environment Card back at Skyvault that caught my attention. I want you to go back once the crowd clears out."
He gave Corwin the exact coordinates.
"Buy it and bring it here. Keep it discreet."
Corwin raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask unnecessary questions.
The card itself was ordinary enough that no one would think twice about someone purchasing it. Still, Caelum preferred not to take chances.
About the time it took to finish a cup of tea, Corwin returned.
He handed over the card without a word.
"I’ve got a livestream that’s already late. I’ll see you later."
Then he was gone.
Caelum watched the door close behind him.
A faint smile touched his face.
’Brave when it matters. Knows how to read a room. More importantly, he knows when to step forward and when to disappear.’
He almost laughed.
’Compared to raw talent, those qualities might matter more in the long run.’
He wasn’t fooled by Corwin’s excuse. The man had clearly realized Caelum needed privacy and deliberately given him one.
Having an ally capable of thinking that far ahead without being told wasn’t a small thing.
Caelum looked down at the Murloc card again.
Something fervent burned behind his eyes.
’I fell from the peak.’
He closed his fingers around the card.
’I can climb out of the valley too.’
He took a slow breath.
’Everything starts here.’
His eyes closed.
His consciousness descended into his domain.
The sky split apart above him.
Sunlight and moonlight hung together over a world still scarred by the collapse, while thunder rolled across the broken horizon.
Mountains crumbled in the distance. Rivers burst through their banks, tearing across the landscape as the remnants of his former domain continued to disintegrate.
Caelum hovered above it all.
Divine power surged through him.
He separated the sun from the moon, establishing a proper cycle of day and night. He adjusted the celestial rhythm, creating the foundation for changing seasons.
Then came the land.
He pulled earth together, raising the beginnings of mountains and hills. Water followed, drawn into channels that became rivers before eventually collecting into a small sea.
’A sea.’
He glanced down at the tiny body of water.
’In a space barely a quarter square kilometer.’
The thought was almost absurd.
Even with careful planning and minimal waste, the reconstruction consumed more than half of the divine power he had left.
Caelum stared down at what he’d created.
It was small.
Fragile.
Almost laughably insignificant compared to the domain he’d once possessed.
But it was his.
This was the foundation everything else would be built upon.
Within the quarter square kilometer of land, water occupied almost the entire space. Only a small patch of solid ground remained at the center.
From above, it looked less like a proper domain and more like a tiny island floating in an endless sea.
’The water should be enough for the Murlocs.’
His gaze swept across the remaining fish populations.
’The fish left behind from the old domain should keep them fed for a while.’
Then an old memory surfaced.
The sudden disappearance of his entire retinue.
One moment, they had existed.
The next, nothing.
Caelum’s expression hardened.
’I’ve already experienced what it’s like to lose everything in an instant.’
He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
’I won’t leave myself with only one path forward again.’
He descended toward the island.
With one finger, he pressed into the peak of its central mountain and carved out a shallow basin.
Water flowed into it.
Within moments, a small lake had formed at the summit, isolated from the rest of the Sanctuary.
Caelum then transferred a reserve population of fish into the lake.
They would remain untouched.
Left alone, they would reproduce naturally, building a private food reserve for the future. If the main food supply ever collapsed, this stock would give him enough time to replenish his resources from outside.
It was a simple precaution.
But he’d learned the value of simple precautions the hard way.
Next came time.
Most deities adjusted the time flow of their domains somewhere between 1:30 and 1:360 compared to the outside world.
At a ratio of 1:30, one day in the outside world became roughly a month inside the domain.
At the other extreme, 1:360 turned a single outside day into an entire year within the domain.
Most deities stayed somewhere around two or three months per outside day. Pushing the ratio too far could cause severe psychological and physiological disorientation when returning to the real world.
Caelum didn’t hesitate.
He pushed his time flow straight to the limit.
1:360.
One day outside.
One year inside.
Less than three months remained before the semester ended.
Even with the maximum ratio, that gave him roughly ninety years of domain time.
A Murloc’s natural lifespan was only around thirty years, with sexual maturity arriving at approximately thirteen.
The window was narrow.
But it was workable.
With sufficient food and no major disasters, ninety years was more than enough time for the population to reach tens of thousands.
That solved one problem.
The next was far more difficult.
He needed eight hundred combat-capable warriors to meet the minimum threshold for the freshman evaluation.
Eight hundred.
Caelum still had no idea why that specific number had been chosen, but it didn’t matter.
He had to reach it.
His thoughts returned to the Trolls.
He’d made the mistake of prioritizing numbers.
He had wanted a massive population as quickly as possible, so he’d given them everything they needed to grow.
Food.
Shelter.
Security.
Comfort.
The result had been a population that expanded rapidly but became increasingly soft.
The Trolls had grown accustomed to an easy life. Once adversity appeared, they lacked the discipline and determination to overcome it.
Their natural bloodlust had kept them combat-capable, but even that had barely been enough to place them among the stronger mid-grade retinues.
Caelum wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
He looked across the tiny island beneath him.
His expression hardened.
’Only fire and pressure forge something worth calling an army.’