Chapter 783: 783

The evidence was everywhere once he knew where to look, in his past life, childbirth was a threshold of blood, sweat, and agonizing risk, a biological gamble where both mother and child could be lost. Here, under Mahu’s silent blessing, pain was a forgotten concept. Every birth was a success, every mother remained radiant, and every infant was born into a guaranteed safety that defied the laws of biology.

The weather was never "wild." Because of Jaus, the rains arrived with the punctuality of a clock. Storms were never destructive; they were merely dramatic displays of mana that refreshed the earth. The world was perpetually hydrated, perfectly tempered, and fueled by a mana-rich atmosphere that made survival effortless.

From Crepuscular’s perfectly timed sun to the orderly transitions of Kele’s underworld, the cycle of life and death had been sanitized. There was no terror of the dark, and no lingering ghosts of a "bad" passing.

On the surface, this was a triumph. Who wouldn’t want a world without birth pains, droughts, or existential dread?

But Ikenga saw the rot beneath the beauty. By being "always on," their divine auras had robbed the mortals of their agency. They never needed to innovate irrigation because Jaus provided the rain. They never needed to develop courage because Mahu removed the fear of loss.

Ikenga understood the bitter irony: they had accidentally built a gilded cage. By providing everything, they had stripped their people of the very friction required to sharpen a soul.

In this world, "Powerhouses" were born from talent and abundance, not struggle. They reached heights of strength simply because the air was thick with mana and the earth was overflowing with life-sustaining resources. But Ikenga has seen the truth of the cosmos, out there strength was forged in the fire of scarcity.

If his people stepped into the stars now, they would be like giants made of glass, immense in stature, yet shattering at the first hint of a real strike. They possessed the raw energy, but they lacked the will and the desperate cunning that only comes from knowing what it means to lose.

As if to mock his realization, the moment Ikenga had fully reintegrated into his realm after his long absence, the world responded. The slightly wilting crops he had observed in his absence suddenly stood tall, bursting with unnatural vitality. The soil turned rich and dark once more. His mere presence was a "glitch" in the natural order, forcing a bountiful harvest whether the land was ready for it or not.

"Our emotions are the chains," he realized.

The problem wasn’t their power; it was their humanity. Because they felt love, pity, and a desire for comfort, their divinity acted as a protective parent rather than an impartial force of nature.

This had to change but Ikenga decided to wait. His siblings were still recovering, their essences settling after their recent endeavors. But once they were gathered, he would present a radical shift in their governance.

They needed to separate their emotional whims from their elemental duties. To let the rain fall when it was heavy, not just when it was "timely." To let the earth be hard and the winters be truly cold. To let the "Aspects" they represented function with the cold, beautiful indifference of the true universe.

Removing the emotional constraints of the gods, the world would finally be forced to grow up. The people would have to fight for their resources, innovate to survive, and bleed to protect what they built. Only then, with calloused hands and tempered spirits, would they be ready to follow Ikenga and his siblings into the hungry mouth of the cosmos.

The realization hit Ikenga with a jolt of historical irony. Standing in the center of his silent, blossoming realm, he felt a phantom tether to his past life, a memory of scholars, theologians, and philosophers who had spent lifetimes debating a single, agonizing question:

If a Creator is truly all-powerful and all-good, why is there suffering in the world?

In his previous world, this was the "Problem of Evil," a logical knot no one could ever quite untie. But here, standing as a living god in a world without flaw, Ikenga had found the answer. It was a terrifyingly simple one.

He and his siblings were the "All-Good Creators" the ancient philosophers had dreamed of. They had answered every prayer before it was even whispered. They had smoothed every path. And in doing so, they had committed the ultimate divine sin: they had stopped time.

A perfect world, Ikenga realized, was a dead world.

In a world without hunger, there is no drive to invent the plow. In a world without disease, there is no pursuit of medicine. In a world where every birth is a guaranteed joy, there is no reason to cherish the fragile miracle of life. By removing the "Evil" and the "Suffering," they had stripped their people of their evolutionary momentum.

He thought of the "Powerhouses" of this world, beings of immense raw energy who had never known a day of true desperation. If they were to meet a warrior from a "broken" world, someone who had fought for every scrap of mana and bled for every inch of ground, his people would be slaughtered.

To be a "Good God" was to be a suffocating parent.

Ikenga looked at his closing palm, where the cosmos-key had just vanished. To prepare his people for the stars, he had to do the one thing his past-life philosophers would have called "Evil."

He had to become truly indifferent.

Shaking his head at the stray thought, Ikenga turned his mind toward a duty that demanded his attention.

He was bound to punish a mortal king, Nwadiebube, who had dared to steal from what was once his own garden. Looking down, Ikenga took a moment to observe all the king had accomplished. In a way, it pleased him; Nwadiebube had shown a profound, if unintended, a brief understanding of Ikenga’s own divinity.

In the king’s own mind, his actions were merely following the laws of the wild. Using his own strength and cunning, he had seized something he knew would be a salvation for his people. To the king, it was nature’s will to grab what one lacks to take by force what is necessary to thrive.

Watching the mortal justify his theft with such cold clarity got a raised brow from Ikenga. It was an honest reflection of the world’s oldest truths: survival of the fittest, and the victor claiming the spoils.

By the laws of strength, the king deserved a blessing for his boldness. Yet, by the higher principles of things, he could not be rewarded. He was, after all, a mere mortal who had dared to plunder from a god. Such an affront, no matter how skillfully executed, had to come with a price.

During his long absence, the price of the king’s transgression had gone uncollected; now that Ikenga had returned, the debt was due.

Yet, as Ikenga’s gaze lingered over the kingdom, his gaze gave way to intrigue. He noticed the distinct, shimmering mark of Kele’s blessing upon the king, and more curiously, was the king’s wife soul.

Nwadiebube suddenly was no longer a simple thief; he was the center of a swirling vortex of conspiracy.

Ikenga felt a flicker of something resembling pity. He could see the invisible threads of Murmur’s influence, the former demon king was already deep in dealings with the mortal.

Digging deeper into the king’s recent history, Ikenga realized the man was tethered to the global upheavals that had recently threatened all of existence.

Recognizing this, Ikenga stayed his hand. He needed a clearer picture of the world’s current state before deciding which punishment would be most fitting or most useful. From what he could see, Nwadiebube was destined to play a pivotal role in the grand designs unfolding for this world.

The punishment was already centuries overdue; it could wait a few more years. For now, Ikenga had found a new source of entertainment to pass the time until his siblings finally woke. He would watch this king closely, curious to see how the mortal would handle the weight of Kele’s blessing and the revelations it would bring to him.

A month has passed since the return of the two gods, a month that, for Nwadiebube, has been the most grueling and transformative period of his life.

He found himself caught in a pincer movement: on one hand, the looming shadow of the god he had dared to rob; on the other, the overwhelming "blessing" of Keles, the Goddess of Death.

Initially, Nwadiebube was blind to the source of the strange power coursing through him. It was only after consulting the Death Shamans, those grim intermediaries who walk the line between worlds that the truth emerged. They instantly recognized the unmistakable mark of Keles. Through them, Nwadiebube learned of the Goddess’s renewed presence and the dark grace she had bestowed upon her chosen few.

Only then did a cold calm settle over him. He stopped fighting the sensations and began to process the torrent of information his "new eyes" were feeding him.