There were two Thralls standing on each side of the Throne Room doors, one set of two in front of them, and two behind them. They opened and then closed the doors whenever I entered or exited the room.

Walking to my bed, I pulled the journal out of my Spatial Ring, and lay down. Soea knelt before my bed and then crawled up it and over to me. I decided to ask her why she did it like this.

Her response was, "I don't feel right walking your bed, and my Lord seems to enjoy watching me crawl as I approach him--" When she spoke about me watching her, she grinned slightly. Raising an eyebrow, she poked out her tongue slightly and licked her lips sensually, she then giggled as I felt heat in my face.

I looked away from her and opened the journal, deliberately ignoring my snickering pet.

She crawled up next to me and curled up around me, holding me while still giggling quietly. When I didn't look up from the book--though I was a little distracted to read it--she stroked my face with her fingers, and wrapped her tail around my waist.

Finally, I looked up and met her eyes.

Soea smiled and then burrowed her head into the crook of my neck.

After a few seconds of watching her, I turned my attention back to the journal and cast the 'Divine Divination' spell, using quite a lot of mana, more than I could easily wield before my Transformation.

The secret was revealed.

On the original seemingly blank page of the journal was drawn an incredibly high-level alchemical formula, drawn in an ink that was a deep crimson, like blood. But the ink also emitted the same Holy energy that the feather did, like the Angel drew it themselves.

Though the way it was drawn gave the feeling that it was forced, like the Angel was somehow coerced to draw this formula. Written on the side of the page was some highly forbidden magic, just seeing it made a chill travel down my spine.

It seems that the Humans managed to get their hands on a weakened Angel and managed to extract more than one feather, and then forced it to draw an alchemical formula and explain a high-level forbidden transformation magic, magic that was so advanced that it made the spell I just used look like it was scribbled by a three year old with very little knowledge of magic.

This magic had to have originated by either a high-level Younger God, or a low-level Elder God.

Gods had ranks, like any other being, and each rank had three sub ranks within it, which were: Low-Level, Mid-Level and High-Level.

First there were the Younger Gods, those whom had ascended or been 'born', developed sentience, a maximum of forty thousand years ago. They were the weakest and most numerous of the deities. They governed only a single Domain, their levels went up depending on their level of control over their Domain and the energy that they stored within it.

Then came the ordinary Elder Gods, with a minimum age of fifty thousand years, and unlike Younger Gods, they had stored enough energy and started developing their second Domain. These Domains would be weaker Domains, or Sub-Domains of their Primary Domain. This second Domain, functioning as a second power storage and generator meant that their power was exponentially higher than the Younger Gods.

There was the rank that was part way between Elder Gods and the Ancient Gods, nicknamed the Transcendent Elder God, Elder Gods who had two completely established Domains and a single Sub-Domain, and usually they were around one hundred thousand years old.

The Transcendent Elder Gods were called this even by their compatriots and were the most powerful beings still recorded to sometimes visit this world.

Usually once a being reached the Mid-Level to High-Level Ancient God rank, they migrated from their world of origin to higher order worlds.

Ancient Gods, no one had any concrete idea how many Domains and Sub-Domains that these beings governed, or even their ages.

There is a rumour that a single Ancient God was born and evolved on this world, and still exists, hidden and watching. This God is believed to govern the Younger and Elder Gods, as well as the Transcendent Gods that decided to stay.

The God of Reincarnation/The Source of Magic/The Source of Life. These aren't ranks that can be gained by beings, they are a single entity that governs over each of these aspects. These transcendental beings are so powerful that they are believed to be incarnation of laws, with only the God of Reincarnation known to be sentient.

Invader, or Alien Gods: These Gods originated on other worlds and migrated to this one when they either reached a sufficient levels, or in the rare occasion, tried to invade or conquer this world.

Other than Arre, I had met only one other God.

At first, she seemed like she was a completely normal human girl, until she helped Master and I out of a tight spot and vanished. I have no idea what she looked like, beyond the broad strokes of being female, she seems to have erased that knowledge from my memory.

I also think she said something to me before she left, but she erased the knowledge of the content, but Master seemed to be able to remember, but she would never tell me.

Domains are just what they sound like, they are the lower versions of Laws, except they could also function as both batteries and generators of Divine Power.

Examples of Domains are: Life, She Soul, Darkness, Death, Fire, Water, Earth, Air...etc. There are virtually limitless Domains, and each Domain has countless Sub-Domains. For example, some of Life's Sub-Domains are: Blood, Bone, Birth, Growth, Healing, Plants, Medicine...etc.

Though some Sub-Domains are shared, Life shares the Sub-Domain Plants with the Earth Domain.

A Law is the culmination and complete mastery of a single Domain and every single Sub-Domain associated with it, to utilize a Law, someone would require both absolute control and absolute knowledge of every aspect of the Domain and Sub-Domains that the Law governs.

I only have a basic understanding of Laws and how they work.

It is believed that an Ancient God can control a single Law.

There is a rumour, an ancient rumour that is older than any recorded civilization, that the Source of Magic had an Avatar. This Avatar was a living statue, and when it was asked what the Source of Magic actually was, it answered thus: "I am but a shard of an Ancient God, but I am also the partial incarnation of my creator's Law."

It is possible that the originator of the two Sources are from the rumoured hiding Ancient God, who may be related as well to the God of Reincarnation.

This is Master's speculations, and I agree with her, after seeing a fragment of the ancient things long hidden which master had seen.

Anyway, back to the present.

It was worrying, the only conclusion that could be reliably reached from the information hidden on the last page of the journal.

An Angel feather, somehow stolen from what seemed like a still living Angel, if I were to judge the resonance from the Holy aura. An alchemical formula in a design that I hadn't seen before, and finally a highly advanced Transformation magic that seemed to be written by a very powerful deity.

Putting the pieces together, it seemed that someone was trying to create some form of Demicelestial beings, Human/Angel hybrids.

If Humanity was starting to again try to copy the creations of a deity, it may mean that they were starting to cease their complete reliance on Arre.

But something like this had happened in past epochs, and each time, the civilization was purged and the deity started their religion somewhere else.

If someone tries to slip out of the overly controlling thumb of a deity, they will be hunted and pinned as a heretic, shunned by their own people.

I hope that this was what was happening with current Humanity. For if that bastard god went on a purge, retaking control, it would decrease the Faith Energy available to him. Since he wasn't an Elder God, he still required that energy, and it would weaken him, increasing my chances of killing him.

 However, Arre would also be likely to get angry and summon more Heroes so as to cow Humanity. These Heroes would be used both to help feed Arre in the future, and to eradicate the rebelling faction of Humanity that was creating Demicelestials.

It was likely that a faction of the church was chafing under Arre's rule, and were doing this as a rebellion. I found this fact highly amusing, it demonstrated how a church, both under the control of the bastard god, and under human control, will always lead to suffering.

However, some of the people who I allowed to escape the town had screamed about a Hero coming to kill me in the name of Arre. I wasn't naive or stupid enough to just take this as a threat, though it likely was. It was very possible that Arre had already summoned more Heroes over the four years since my betrayal.

Though the previous Demon King was dead, the Demon's Prince hadn't been instated as the new Demon King. I had met the previous queen of the Demons.

She and I had developed a romantic relationship when we had been on the many adventures that we had shared together.

As for why a Demon queen would enter a relationship with the man who killed her husband, well, she was a noble who was abducted as a child and forced to marry. She bore her son out of duty, but always hated her husband, the Demon King. After freeing her from her husband, and then saving her life multiple times, and traveling together for a long time, love bloomed.

She explained that she was on the run, apparently she had been exiled because of factional warfare among the nobles as they looked for a new Demon King.

Her son, the Demon Prince, had been executed.

No Hero would be summoned for that, unless the bastard decided to use some of his power and raise a new Demon King immediately, the Demons would just stay in their territory and build their power for at least a decade or two.

However, it was possible that Arre had spoken through the Church and designated me as the new Demon King, but that was unlikely because he didn't seem to know that I was still alive.

Well, if a powerful Priest went to the ruins of the town I demolished and used a Temporal Viewing Spell, Arre could find out that it was me.

He knew that I liked that particular spell, he had seen both Master and I use it on different equations through the eyes of Priests.

But if he knew for sure that I was still alive, it worried me, because he hasn't come to kill me.

I was worried what he could be planning.

Looking down, I noticed that Soea was curled up around me, sleeping calmly in my embrace. I felt the need to protect her, and her presence seemed to help calm me down.

Arre might have decided to keep me alive as a way of uniting Humanity again, under the banner of killing a new Demon King or Demonic entity, as well as an excuse to summon new Heroes. Which of course, he would then use to get more food later.

He has long made a vicious cycle.

I had long known that I was definitely not the first Hero that Arre had summoned, a major example of this was the Earth-like technology that could be seen around the Capital.

It was very likely that I had to be always prepared for an assassination team comprised of one or more summoned Heroes sent after me in the dark.

Newly summoned Heroes would have up to two weeks of training before they were assigned to a party and placed on the front lines. It would require more than one Hero with powerful combat-type Soul Skills, as well as a long period of training in magic or martial arts before they could resemble something that could be a threat to me.

Well, not a danger, but able to stand up to one or two moves.

Of course, if Arre could wait, Heroes could become a danger. That is if they trained for five to ten years by an Ancient Monster or Elder Being, and I didn't improve at all.

I was trained by a millennia old martial arts grandmaster, who was also a Shureen when it came to magic, for almost three years. During most of that time, we were traveling through incredibly dangerous places and ruins.

I have been in this world, in total, for five years.

So I already have a massive head start.

Seems that I have a lot work to do, and I knew I needed to start soon. But Soea was sleeping so peacefully in my embrace, I didn't want to wake her up, so I took the chance to take a nap as well.

Normally, I didn't need to sleep. Of course, I could sleep if I wanted to, but I almost never dreamed.

With those thoughts in mind, I shut my eyes and slept.