An old man lounged in a reclining chair outside Skyvault Pavilion, looking as though he might fall asleep at any moment.
Every student entering the Pavilion had to pass directly by him. Rumor claimed he was a True God assigned to guard the Divine Cards stored inside. Once, a student had attempted to steal a card. The old man had noticed immediately, shattered the thief’s entire divine domain on the spot, and had them expelled before sunset.
No one had tried again.
As Caelum and Corwin passed his chair, the old man’s eyes cracked open.
"Hm."
The soft sound followed them.
He watched Caelum’s back for several seconds, his cattail fan continuing its slow, rhythmic motion.
"So this is the one who tried to evolve his Hobgoblins."
He spoke quietly, almost to himself.
"Talent like that doesn’t come around often. What a shame."
The chair continued rocking.
He said nothing more.
Inside Skyvault Pavilion, thousands of Divine Cards floated in midair, arranged in shimmering rows that stretched from floor to ceiling. From a distance, they resembled a waterfall frozen in place, each card glowing faintly as it drifted within its designated position.
Students moved between the rows, searching through the endless selection. Every so often, someone would snatch a card from the air, and an excited expression would immediately spread across their face.
Caelum had only ever visited the mid-grade tower before. This low-grade Pavilion was new territory.
A quick glance told him the basic layout was the same. Only the cards themselves differed.
He took a breath, rose into the air, and summoned the Pavilion’s cataloging intelligence.
A series of parameters appeared before him.
He entered his requirements.
Dozens of coordinates immediately populated the display.
Caelum selected one at random.
Somewhere below, a card flashed.
He crossed the distance in a single motion.
The card floated neatly into his open palm.
It was surrounded by a ring of yellow cloud patterns. At its center stood a small green figure clutching a crude wooden mallet, its wide eyes filled with an almost comical amount of rage.
"A Goblin."
Caelum examined the card.
"Low intelligence. Almost impossible to cultivate meaningful faith. Minimal development potential."
He turned it over once.
"But they reproduce faster than almost anything else. Leave them alone for a few months and they’ll strip a domain bare."
He placed the card back.
Goblins weren’t what he needed.
His immediate priority was faith.
He needed a race capable of generating enough faith to restart the flow of divine power and give him the strength to begin purging the corrosive force still eating away at his domain’s foundation.
Combat ability would be useful, of course.
But that came second.
As for the quality of the race itself, Caelum wasn’t particularly concerned.
With the Creation Pearl in his possession, even the weakest bloodline could potentially become something extraordinary.
Beside him, Corwin watched him examine the Goblin card.
His face twitched.
He’s not actually considering Goblins, is he?
Goblins were near the bottom of almost every deity’s list.
They were ugly, unintelligent, and infamous for certain habits that polite society preferred not to discuss.
A deity openly known for building their primary retinue around Goblins could practically forget about ever being taken seriously by female deities.
Is he really this desperate?
Corwin glanced at the card again.
Anything would be better than a Goblin.
Fortunately, Caelum returned the card without comment.
"Search that section."
He pointed toward another row.
Corwin nodded and moved off.
Caelum continued searching on his own.
The next few options weren’t much better.
Gnomes possessed sharp minds, but their loyalty was notoriously tied to profit rather than faith. There were even documented cases of Gnomes turning against the very deities who had cultivated them.
Kobolds were closer to Goblins in temperament. Their intelligence was limited, their behavior rough, but their combat potential was considerable. They were a popular choice among combat-focused deities.
Rarely, a Kobold bloodline could even awaken Dragon ancestry.
Those variants possessed extraordinary magical talent, sometimes rivaling mid-grade races.
For most deities, discovering one was a once-in-a-lifetime stroke of luck.
Lizardmen occupied a similar position. They were another common choice among combat deities, reliable fighters with respectable physical strength.
But neither was suitable for Caelum’s current situation.
His Sanctuary was only a quarter square kilometer.
Trying to support either race with such limited space would drain his remaining resources before they had any chance to become useful.
’This is becoming a headache.’
Caelum rubbed his temple.
He kept searching.
One coordinate after another.
Nothing.
Then, as he drifted past another card, a strange sensation suddenly ran through his body.
It was like a current of static electricity racing up his spine.
Caelum stopped.
His eyes narrowed.
The Creation Pearl.
It was reacting.
And not merely reacting.
It was yearning.
’What the hell?’
The sensation was unmistakable.
’The last time I felt something like this was when the Hobgoblins were on the verge of becoming Orcs. That surge of creative energy...’
His gaze shifted toward the card nearby.
’Is there something here with the same energy signature?’
He slowed his approach, making sure not to reveal that he’d noticed anything unusual.
When he reached the card, he deliberately picked up another one first.
A decoy.
His attention remained fixed on the real target from the corner of his eye.
It was an Environment Card.
Low-grade.
Completely ordinary.
Environment Cards existed to enrich a divine domain’s ecosystem. Trees, flowers, small animals and other minor additions that could make a barren landscape feel more alive.
Most serious deities considered them a waste of a valuable card slot.
Only support deities, particularly those who were already well established, occasionally bothered with them. At that stage, they weren’t building their domains for survival anymore. They were refining them.
Making them beautiful.
’This card?’
Caelum stared at it.
’This is what triggered the Creation Pearl?’
He found the idea difficult to accept.
But he trusted the Pearl.
After everything he’d witnessed, he had no reason not to.
It had awakened only after consuming the enormous life force released when his entire retinue died.
And from everything he’d learned since then, its ability to reshape and evolve bloodlines alone placed it in the same category as several high-grade Divine Treasures.
High-grade Divine Treasures were coveted even by True Gods.
Most treasures circulating throughout the divine world were only mid-grade.
High-grade treasures were exceedingly rare, possessed by only a handful of beings standing at the very peak of the divine path.
Whatever the Creation Pearl truly was, its value was beyond anything Caelum could currently measure.
He memorized the Environment Card’s exact location.
His expression didn’t change.
He lowered the decoy card and released it back into its original position.
Then he rose into the air as though nothing unusual had happened.
Streams of colored light crossed through the Pavilion around him as students moved between the countless rows of Divine Cards.
Every now and then, someone recognized Caelum.
The reaction was almost always the same.
A brief flicker of surprise.
A whisper.
Then another head turning to follow him.
His fall remained one of the biggest stories of the semester.
Most students outside Class Three had never seen the remains of his shattered divine domain themselves. To them, he was still something closer to a rumor than a reality.
A former prodigy.
A fallen genius.
A story that had somehow become real.
Caelum ignored them.
He continued working through his list of coordinates.
He was reaching for the next one when another streak of light descended beside him.
It condensed into a familiar figure.
Garrick Thorne.
The Class Head of Class Seven, one of the ten classes in their year.
He commanded two thousand Kobolds, a retinue considered among the strongest in their entire cohort.
"Caelum. It’s been a while."
Caelum’s eyes narrowed slightly.
An old rival.
Before everything had fallen apart, Caelum had been the Class Head of Class Three. Third overall in their cohort, and climbing rapidly toward first place.
Thorne had been far behind.
Caelum had never considered him a serious threat.
Thorne had felt differently.
He’d never respected Caelum’s sudden rise, dismissing him as an upstart carried by luck rather than ability. His own family possessed far deeper roots and considerably more influence.
Their rivalry had never been particularly subtle.
And now Thorne had approached him.
Uninvited.
Without warning.
Caelum didn’t need to guess why.
Whatever had brought him here, it certainly wasn’t simple curiosity.