Creating an entire race with the existing specimens in the forest realm turned out to be harder than Balor thought.

  They were resilient hominids who had managed to create several stable settlements in a hostile ecosystem, but they weren’t compatible with serpent genetics. For this, he needed more drastic interventions, but he held off for fifteen years as he observed them.

  Three hominid settlements were as interesting as the ones outside. The forest ecosystem had put unique pressures on them to evolve in certain ways, and some of them had even devolved.

  A group of cave dwellers who hid from the leviathans and monsters that roamed the forest had turned pale white, each new generation being born blinder than the last, while their ears grew larger. They were great at sensing vibrations and hearing noises, but they were skittish and an evolutionary dead end.

  Another group of tree dwellers thrived in densely forested regions with towering trees, creating their settlements with various vine constructions. Their skins were as brown as tree bark, and they had grown smaller in stature. They were excellent at balance and agility, and they had a leader for the settlement based on their talent and knowledge of knotting.

  Balor had to scratch them both off the list for drastic physical changes. His race couldn’t project his will with these evasive mental models and weaker body frames. He wanted them to be as strong as Petrahns.

  I could always force them, but the second-order effects will be catastrophic.

  He needed to model this to emerge later down the line. Power handed on a golden platter never worked out well for the recipient or the others around them. The new serpent race would have to integrate with the outside world seamlessly.

  If they ended up in a war with Petrahns, that would lay waste to another millennium or two until things can start from a cleaner slate. He was about to make a key decision that may as well determine the success of this second experiment, and he didn’t want to get it wrong because it had gone so right so far.

  While looking for a suitable settlement in the serpent forest, Balor found a small village protected by a mountain range. Hominids there had the most sophisticated society in the forest, and they weren’t focused on evasion like the others. The threats that they faced came filtered through the terrain, and they had grown quite strong.

  They were sun worshippers, and they had discovered how to use ambient Source.

  They were more resourceful than Petrahns when it came to the amount they had access to. Ambient Source was something that Balor envisioned when he crashed the soul matter crystal on Veilthorn.

  It happened in a few ways. First, when the crystal entered the atmosphere, a considerable amount of it burned and released soul matter. Second, when it crashed on the ground, the shattered bits also released more soul matter. Third was the final step, letting the hominids mine it and release soul matter by using it for their purposes, like Petrahns.

  Soul matter always aggregates around more soul matter like a nebula in the atmosphere. Most of what was released concentrated around the crystal on this side of the hemisphere. By mining more Sky Stone from the crystal, Petrahns were releasing more of it that was initially stored in the crystal.

  This concentrated the ambient Source, gradually increasing the power they have access to the more they used it. It was working beautifully as planned, and this settlement in the serpent forest was the best example of it.

  They’ve figured out how to cultivate the Source in themselves without any crystals. Petrahns and others had figured it out much earlier, but this settlement had been forced to utilize it due to evolutionary pressures in the forest. Arguably, they used it more efficiently than Petrahns did, using less to do more.

  They tended to use it as an energy source, almost always for fire and heat. They hunted with their cultivated Source energy and maintained protective barriers that predators couldn’t breach through. Cultivating the ambient Source took an individual a few decades, and those who did were held in high regard.

  The village leader seemed to have realized the disadvantages of having low manpower. They were hundreds now, but on track to be thousands fast.

  Naturally, the best Source cultivators mated more, spreading their genetics to gifted offspring with desirable bloodline traits.

  They were a strong fit for Balor’s purposes, but he was still apprehensive about directly infusing serpent genes into the mix. It was too unpredictable where this could go. He needed to narrow the space of probabilities.

  I should let them create bloodlines like the Petrahns.

  With that in mind, Balor sought an assimilation target, one that could bring this to fruition. It was a village, and he didn’t need to think too hard about how to influence it.

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  Balor remained assimilated in the serpent forest village for three decades as an old woman. He hijacked their sun worship, making bloodline breeding part of their belief system with a series of miracles that affirmed their beliefs in a tangible sun God.

  It took more effort than Farrador because they were more primitive, but his plan was on track to work the same way by the time his assimilated form perished from an illness. He came out of the forest village, hopeful about the future centuries where this experiment would yield results.

  Balor left the forest realm to attend to other matters in Petrah. He didn’t expect anything big to have happened in the years that he was gone.

  He was wrong.

  He entered a different world the moment he stepped out.

  Not Veilthorn. Much smaller. A white void.

  “The stories were true. You are real.” A voice spoke from the white fog. Balor shed his invisibility and peered through this construct.

  It was sophisticated, an empty artificial realm made by someone who knew what they were doing. The voice sounded young and confident.

  Interesting. Someone put a lot of effort into capturing me.

  Balor wasn’t captured, of course. The realm was made of his soul matter. Trying to capture him with magics he invented was a futile effort, but Balor was beyond curious who this was. This hominid had shattered his expectations very early. He wanted to be careful to preserve it.

  His first instinct was to reverse the realm to trap the one who made it, but he held off any show of power. He wanted feed into the idea that this hominid had captured a God. It was too interesting not to.

  “Who am I speaking to?” Balor asked, emulating the same language that he heard.

  “Resil Petranova, and from today, I’ll be known as the man who met God.”

  Balor could shift the white fog with a snap of his finger, but he waited for this child to make his grand appearance. He walked through it in a confident stride, dressed in the white gold of the Petrahn royalty. He looked disheveled, his clothes dirt-stained and his hair a mess.

  He was about as tall as a full-grown man, but with no facial hair whatsoever. This was one of Varsil’s sons, and he had to be less than seventeen years of age. It made this accomplishment all the more impressive.

  “Resil,” Balor said, making sure to express his amusement with his voice.

  The boy stared up at him with his golden eyes, his pupils glowing a bright yellow. He was trying to use his bloodline gift, the one to bend the wills. Despite his confident entrance, he seemed intimidated by Balor’s serpent bipedal form, which loomed twice as tall as he was.

  “You are most impressive, Resil,” Balor said, considering what to do.

  “I want you to come with me, God of Veilthorn,” the boy said calmly, his eyes set unblinkingly on Balor.

  He seems to think he can bend my will.

  A brief expression of hesitation appeared on the boy’s face, not seeing the effect that he expected. Petrahn King could bend wills by just existing, and Balor knew this juvenile possessed the same trait. He was just less confident in it.

  “Who are you, Resil Petranova?” Balora asked, ignoring his will-bending attempts.

  “I am my father’s son, and his father before him, but,” Resil said, his eyes flaring with Source energy. “I consider you my real father. I am what you created when you appeared before Prophet Farrador. I’ve finally come to see you with my own eyes.”

  He knows about that? how. Did Farrador leave something behind?

  “How did you accomplish this great task?”

  “I studied Farrador’s records since I could read. He mentioned you no less than ninety times,” Resil said, keeping his gaze on Balor. “My father mentioned experiencing the same thing as him. He spoke about God of Veilthorn watching over Petrah.”

  “Impressive,” Balor said sincerely.

  The boy had figured all of this out with two pieces of information. It was impossible without significant effort by Farrador, who had plotted against her since he was forced to become Petrah’s prophet.

  Some components of this boy’s plan would’ve involved what Farrador left for him in his records. Balor had missed a lot because he stayed away from the royal family.

  “I want you to come with me, God of Veilthorn,” the boy repeated, his eyes glowing even brighter this time.

  He was indeed attempting to bend the will of God, something that was outrageously ambitious. This was exactly the kind of specimen that Balor needed to accelerate his Veilthorn experiment. He almost foresaw what lay ahead in the future.

  “Where are we going?” Balor asked curiously.

  “To claim Petrah. It was taken from us, Petranovans, thirteen years ago when my brother was assassinated, now a Petravolta sits on the golden throne,” Resil’s gaze faltered a bit. “The killer.”

  Petrah had indeed imploded the way Balor knew it would. Varsil and Arimon left behind several children who each had their own play to claim the throne. Resil seemed to be driven by emotion, and he seemed to operate in refusal of an injustice. Perhaps his brother was the rightful heir in the line of succession.

  No other Petravolta or Petranova had managed what Resil had. Trapping God of Veilthorn made him the most deserving of the title of not just the king, but the emperor.

  Balor knew what he had to do.

  He was going to reward the boy with the greatest gift of his life.

  I’ll pretend my will was bent. I’ll see what heights this child will ascend.

  “I want you to come with me, God of Veilthorn,” the boy repeated, his voice a little bit strained this time. He was pouring all the Source that he had into his eyes in this desperate gamble.

  Balor bowed his head, unfurling his fingers in a gesture of submission in Petrahn culture.

  Resil smiled.

  The bright light in his pupils slowly faded while his golden irises gleamed like gold. “We’ll do great things together,” he said.

  “Indeed, we will, Resil,” Balor said, following him into the fog.

  The white world collapsed, turning into silver chains made of Source energy. They wrapped around Balor as he walked. He let the chains affect him, and his body reacted accurately to being restrained. The chains wrapped around him from head to toe, a Source mechanism trap that Resil had built into the realm.

  “My apologies,” Resil said reverently. “I will set you free one day.”

  Balor didn’t mind, of course. ‘One day’ for him could easily be tomorrow. Though, depending on how impressive Resil was, Balor didn’t want to skip time at all.

  I’d gladly stay like this for a millennium.

  Resil held one of the chains and warped the Source energy to solidify Balor inside an interesting construct. A sword the size of a tree that only Resil had control of. The realm collapsed as the Source inside the spatial bubble went into the peculiar metal that entombed him.

  Balor hovered above Resil this way, a huge sword with one chain that only the future emperor of Veilthorn could hold.