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"Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame."

—Vikram, [The Office]

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Johnny Blaze was more than happy after getting back his lost love Roxanne. In fact, they were so happy that they had gotten too much excited with all their kissing and stuff as they couldn't keep their hands off each other. Rudeus just hoped that she wouldn't die or leave him for some reason in this timeline. But that would ultimately depend on Blaze himself.

Blaze had heartily acknowledged Rudeus' help and had even thanked him repeatedly before leaving. He had retained all his memories from his Ghost Rider transformation and had even apologized to both Rudeus and Morgana for trying to pick a fight with them.

Rudeus tried to offer him a job as a demon hunter in the new supernatural faction of his organization but unfortunately, Johnny considered himself a free spirit and only a part-time hunter of evil. So he didn't accept Rudeus' offer but he did promise to help Rudeus whenever he needed it.

Rudeus was of course satisfied with this since he loved doing people favors so that he could collect them later whenever he needed and he knew that a favour to the Spirit of Vengeance would go a long way in the world of Marvel.

After the angel-possessed stuntman left in style with his girlfriend on his motorcycle, Rudeus and Morgana both decided to return to the base as well. They portalled to Rudeus' mansion through a boom tube.

"So I assume you are done with conquering Avalon since you are here in the mortal mundane world?" Rudeus asked Morgana after reaching the living room of the mansion.

"Well, I didn't exactly conquer Avalon. It turns out that it's no longer the dream utopia that it once was, no longer the legendary piece of haven that I coveted to protect. Arthur and his stupid knights have ruined the entire nation. The development of science and technology has completely stopped there, even the quality of magic has deteriorated from its previous standards.

The current military of the nation is still mainly composed of knights wearing ancient steel armor and wielding swords. The remaining mages can barely be considered above the apprentice level. Even the quality of nature and the environment of the nation seems to have fallen as the forests and farms have lost their freshness. So I did the smart thing and ignored the dying country. After all, Otherworld is quite a big place and Avalon is only a small part of it. So I went ahead and just conquered the rest of the dimension of Otherworld except Avalon" Morgana said with a small proud smile on her lips.

"Wait, you conquered the entire dimension? Cool. But didn't the current people of Avalon try to oppose you since you just conquered everything around them?" Rudeus asked curiously.

"No, not really. The old fogeys were just happy that they were not the ones being attacked. More than half of them don't even believe that I am free now. They just think that it's some small rebel forces trying to take control of minor areas. The stupid idiots don't even realize that their entire country is now surrounded and I can take over their pitiful nation whenever I want." Morgana snorted.

'Hmm. I guess their weak-ass society is similar to the Wizarding World in Harry Potterverse. Maybe staying alone in a different dimension without any apparent threats does decrease people's intelligence.' Rudeus thought to himself.

"Anyways, as I was saying after I completed my conquest of most of the Otherworld, I was thinking about whether to come to fetch you to start your mystic lessons or to conquer Avalon as well. But then I sensed something extremely powerful and... wrong from this realm, I sensed something which felt very much like the phoenix force, only darker.

That's why I immediately came into this dimension to find out what was wrong. After I came to this dimension, I couldn't sense you anywhere no matter how much I tried. But then your little flying box found me and told me how you were sucked into a separate space by a demon. After that, as your new master of magic, I had to come and save you, otherwise it would have hurt my image as a sorceress." Morgana said as she flicked her hair proudly.

"Wait, did you say Dark Phoenix? Do you mean the dark Phoenix is free? Can you take me to her? I need to talk with her, I need some answers from the phoenix inside her." Rudeus said as he looked at Morgana with his all-powerful divine version of puppy eyes.

"She is no longer in this world," Morgana said, seemingly not at all influenced by his puppy eyes.

"She is dead again?" Rudeus almost screamed in despair. He hadn't considered the fact that the Dark Phoenix could awaken at a point when he himself would be busy in another separate space and somebody could kill the Dark Phoenix possessed Jean or she could sacrifice herself again to save people as she did in both the Dark Phoenix movie plots.

He didn't really wanna lose Jean. She was cute and kind and one of the few people he actually cared about. Plus he had a connection with her that he didn't have with anybody else. A connection that was almost... motherly or was it sisterly. Whatever it was, it felt right to Rudeus. He felt loved because of that, cared.

"No, I mean she is no longer on the planet. I tried to search the planet with a lot of spells but I couldn't detect her even a single time which lets me to conclude that she probably left the planet." Morgana clarified.

"Oh, I see. *Sigh* Searching for her is gonna be a hell of a lot of pain, isn't it?" Rudeus sighed at the fact that the love drama in his life is still not going to end.

He remembered that the Phoenix force's primary responsibility is creation through destruction. So when the phoenix force gets a new host, it travels to different galactic civilizations and destroys their entire race and planet if it judges them as not worthy of life.

But that's the job of the host of the pure Phoenix force. But the Dark Phoenix is different. It is a mere corruption of the actual cosmic entity. It has no responsibility but just a single obsession, to destroy everything, no matter if it's worthy or unworthy.

That is why normally the Dark Phoenix never leaves the planet on her own even in the movies, since this planet would be one of the first things it would want to destroy before moving on to another one.

'So the question is why did Jean leave Earth? Does she still possess enough humanity to show empathy for her own race? Or is it because of something else?' Rudeus wondered in his mind.

"Also it seems you need some training to control your divine powers soon. Your divinity has begun to actively start affecting your very existence, even your thinking process. You need to start learning how to properly use and control your divinity soon before you inevitably get corrupted like most of the gods." Morgana dropped a massive bomb on Rudeus.

"... What? What do you mean corrupted by my divinity? My own divinity can't hurt me, right? Aren't gods supposed to be almost impossible to corrupt or something?" Rudeus said as he couldn't believe what he just heard.

He didn't believe that something could influence him in this world especially since he had his two mental and spiritual protections perks.

"You didn't know? Haven't you heard of the term, 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'? In the case of gods that is very much true. You see a god although not the embodiment but still hugely affected by his or her own divinity. It basically shapes them into who they are. A war god is always war hungry, a love god loves sex, a lightning god is always prideful, a death god is always merciless, and a god of lies or tricks always scheming.

This is not exactly because their divinities are actively controlling them but because they are what their divinities make them. And the qualities of pride or being easily offended comes with mostly all divinities except a few. Most old-generation gods, therefore, are very much 'corrupted' like the Greek gods, the Egyptian gods, the Elder gods, the Outer gods, and many more. Most make stupid mistakes that any sane person would never make due to this exact 'corruption' Morgana informed Rudeus.

"Wait, does that mean the reason I stupidly charged into battle Blackheart in his own domain without thinking might have been due to me being affected by my suppressed divinity? So is there any way to negate its influence on me? I don't really want to turn into a more handsome version of twisted gods like Zeus or Loki." Rudeus shivered at the thought of turning into a massive fcked-up version of gods like them.

"Yes, you were momentarily being affected by your own divinity since you have been using your divine energy a lot lately. Normally the more you use your divinity and divine energy, the more you get affected by its nature. That's why Greek, Xian, and Shinto gods are some of the most heavily wild and 'corrupted' gods and why Asgardians are among the less affected ones since they do not use their divinities or divine energies too much except a few among them.

But yes, there are ways to prevent your divinity from influencing you. A few gods even have mastered that like Yahweh, Odin, and Gaea. Well, Odin was mainly able to do it due to a cheat he possessed called Mimir but who is counting? Although, you are in luck since I as a true fae god am one of the very few goddesses who are the least affected by their divinities. With my help, you would be able to easily deal with most of the influence from your divinity." Morgana calmed Rudeus down.

But Rudeus was still not sold. He knew a certain New god from the next-door dark neighbor DC who represented the divinity of evil or tyranny and he was most certainly tyrannically evil. Until now Rudeus always thought that having a divinity like Darkseid with the alpha effect would be pretty cool but now he really hoped that he would not have a divinity of a platonic concept like that.

Of course, he didn't think at that time that he just raised a massive flag, a flag that he would very much regret later.

"Anyways, Rudeus or Atem or whatever else people like to call you in this dimension, you should pack your bags for a trip with me to Otherworld. I think it's time that you start learning some magic before you get yourself killed just because some lowly demon cast a mere blood-boiling or bone-liquefying spell on you. Those are some basic curses but really difficult to defend against if you don't even know the fundamentals of mystic arts." Morgana said with a nostalgic expression on her face.

"Sure master. I have been waiting for a long time to learn magic after all." Rudeus replied with a barely constrained eager smile on his face.

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