Ikki observed the Kane siblings, their parents, Bes, and Khonsu, as he pondered the events of the last hour. His divinity was now at forty-two percent, after absorbing almost all the Egyptian gods, except those before him and a few he considered irrelevant.
Unlike the Greek gods, he had no reason to spare them.
His thoughts were interrupted when Sadie asked:
"Ikki, what happened to you? How… how did you get so much older? And where have you been all this time? You disappeared for hours! We tried to find you, but it was like you'd evaporated!"
She seemed confused and worried, which was unusual.
Carter, on the other hand, frowned, clearly trying to put the pieces together.
"And Vladimir?" He asked, straight to the point. "Did you manage to get rid of him?"
Ikki gave a slight smile.
"This is my true appearance." He lied without hesitation. "And yes, Vladimir is no longer a problem."
The room fell silent for a moment, everyone processing his words. Before they could react, Khonsu intervened, his eyes gleaming with expectation.
"So you've come to be the third player?"
Ikki just shook his head, a discreet smile on his lips.
"No need." His voice was calm, but firm. "Actually, I arrived just in time. Carter, Sadie… you don't need to play this game."
Khonsu blinked, confused.
Before anyone could ask anything, Ikki raised his hand. In the same instant, a translucent sphere of light formed above his palm. The energy within it swirled gently, radiating an absolute antiquity and power. It seemed to contain the very essence of the sun.
And within it… something moved.
Carter and Sadie widened their eyes as they saw the small golden and bluish beetle at the center of the sphere.
Sadie swallowed hard.
"Is… is that…?"
Her voice failed, as if part of her already knew the answer, but refused to accept it.
Ikki looked at the creature calmly before answering:
"Khepri. The second aspect of Ra."
The silence grew even thicker.
The Kanes' mother, who until then had been in shock, murmured:
"Impossible…"
The doors to the Eighth House were supposed to be locked. How had he gotten so far?
Ikki rotated his hand slightly, making the sphere shine even brighter.
"This was the last beetle that remained. The only one where Apophis's body was sealed." His eyes turned to Khonsu. "And it's the key that makes this game… irrelevant."
The silence was broken by Bes, who shook his head in disbelief.
"Are you kidding me? How… how did you do this? Who the hell are you, kid?"
Julius, or rather, Osiris, leaned forward slightly, his eyes narrowing as if he were piecing together an ancient puzzle.
"He is a descendant…" he murmured, thoughtfully. "Of Ramses the Great."
Carter blinked.
"Wait, Ramses? What does that mean?"
Julius sighed and looked at Ikki as if he finally understood something that had previously escaped his perception.
"Ever since we met Ikki, I couldn't identify which pharaoh he descended from. His lineage was hidden from me, as if something impossible to trace. But now I see clearly." He paused, letting the weight of the revelation hang in the air. "He is a direct descendant of Ozymandias, Ramses II."
Sadie let out a low whistle.
"Oh, wonderful. The greatest pharaoh of Egypt. The guy who built half the world and had an ego the size of the pyramids."
She looked at Ikki with a renewed gaze.
Carter crossed his arms, pondering.
"So that means he has the blood of one of the greatest rulers in history…"
Ikki, in turn, shrugged, indifferent.
"Answering your question, Bes… Navigating the Duat is easier than it seems."
Sadie snorted.
"For you, maybe. For the rest of us mortals, it's not just a stroll like it's the mall."
Ikki just smiled sideways.
"Well, I've never been exactly… mortal."
Carter let out an exasperated sigh.
"Great. More secrets. As if we didn't have enough problems already."
Ikki just observed the beetle in his hand, his gaze laden with something indescribable.
Khonsu chuckled softly.
"I have to admit… you amuse me, boy."
The game had completely changed. And Ikki was the piece no one predicted.
Without giving time for more questions, Ikki made a smooth movement with his hand, and the translucent sphere of light began to levitate before shooting rapidly towards Ra, who hovered beside him. The sun god, still lost in his fragmented thoughts, opened his mouth instinctively, swallowing the shining beetle without resistance.
The very moment he did, the entire hall lit up with a blinding intensity. A wave of radiant energy ran through the walls, making the carved hieroglyphs pulsate with a golden light. The air trembled, charged with an ancient power, as if the very fabric of the Duat were reacting to the unfolding change.
The light was so strong that everyone fell unconscious — except Ikki, Osiris, and Khonsu.
Ikki, using his ability to manipulate everyone's perception, made the light an illusion. Ra, in fact, remained the same, old and ignorant, as if nothing had changed. Meanwhile, he masked his authority with poison, creating a substance that caused everyone around him to fall into a deep sleep. Osiris and Khonsu were the last to succumb.
The two gods staggered, stunned, trying to understand what had just happened. But before they could react, shadows emerged from Ikki's left side, distorted and with hungry mouths. They advanced on the two gods.
Osiris and Khonsu tried to resist, but the shadows were swift and relentless, enveloping them completely. Their essences were absorbed, swallowed by the shadowy vortex that soon returned to Ikki. He remained motionless, his eyes glowing intensely as his form became the embodiment of the Moon, Time, Youth, Judgment, Vegetation, the Dead, and King of the Afterlife.
Julius, who had been thrown back after devouring Osiris, watched the scene with perplexity.
His Divinity Formation had now reached forty-eight percent.
Without hesitation, Ikki then turned to old Ra, still senile and ignorant. He approached and placed his hand gently on the sun god's forehead. The shadows responded immediately. Like a hungry wave, they emerged around Ra, enveloping his body. The god had no time to react, and his essence was swallowed by the shadows, disappearing without a trace.
Ikki had now become the embodiment of the Sun, Order, Life, Light, Warmth, Day, Creation. A spiral of powerful concepts filled his essence, increasing his divine progress bar.
He felt his soul pulsate, a deep and resonant beat that echoed in every fiber of his being. The sensation was overwhelming, as if the universe itself were shaping his existence. His Divinity in Formation surpassed the fifty-five percent limit, and the very moment that happened, everything within him changed.
First was his body.
His blood, once red like any mortal's, glowed a resplendent gold, coursing through his veins like rivers of liquid light. His body pulsed, each cell vibrating at a new rhythm, as if being reshaped for something beyond human comprehension.
His golden blood flowed through his veins like a river of liquid light, carrying with it the essence of his forming divinity. Each cell pulsed with an intense glow, restructuring itself, rising to a new level of existence.
Then, his bones began to change.
Their density increased, but instead of becoming heavier, they became crystalline, translucent like divine gems cut by creation itself. The light within him reflected through them, creating a mesmerizing inner glow, as if his skeleton were made of pure celestial diamond.
His marrow, the core of his physical essence, shone in absolute gold, radiating energy that spread throughout his body. Each beat of his heart was like the pulse of a star, each breath, a flow of cosmic power circulating through his being.
It was more than evolution.
It was rebirth of the body.
When it was finished, he reached a state that could only be described as true apotheosis. Every imperfection was eradicated, every impurity eliminated. His flesh, once limited by the shackles of the mortal world, was refined to a transcendental level.
His crystalline bones shone like sacred jewels, carrying in their structure the essence of eternity. They were not just resistant—they were indestructible, filled with a power that could defy time itself. His golden marrow pulsed with divine energy, an inexhaustible core that fueled his existence on a level never before reached.
His muscles, once formed through countless battles and his special body, had now been refined to absolute perfection. They carried the strength of a rising star, an inexhaustible source of power contained within a form that defied logic and nature.
If a mortal touched any part of his body, it would be like touching a celestial treasure, a living relic that existed beyond the limits of this world.
Then came his mind.
The pain came soon after, not as a physical wound, but as an internal combustion, an overwhelming force that tore his consciousness into a thousand pieces only to reconstruct it in a higher way. His mind was shattered and reassembled, fragment by fragment, each part reallocated under the new structure of his existence.
His brain became translucent, acquiring a bluish glow, like a celestial jewel pulsating with incomprehensible knowledge. He felt the vastness of the world's structure and everything pouring into him, filling every empty space, rewriting his perception of the world. Ideas that once seemed unfathomable now revealed themselves with crystalline clarity. Hidden truths were unveiled. The very concept of "self" expanded beyond the limits of a body, a name, an identity.
When his mind finished being reshaped, a new universe of thoughts emerged within him.
Hundreds of thousands of mental processes ran in parallel, each under his control, reacting, analyzing, interpreting, and understanding different aspects of reality. His perception was no longer limited by mortal senses—he saw without needing to look, heard without needing to listen, felt without needing to touch.
It was as if the whole world had become an extension of his mind. Every wave of the Duat river, every breeze cutting through the locations, every heartbeat in any corner of the underworld—all of it flowed through him. His mind encompassed the totality of existence on a scale that covered the entire Egyptian afterlife, absorbing information from everywhere at the same time.
Upon completing this, the infinite staircase appeared before him.
A structure without beginning or end, extending beyond the horizon of his mind, familiar and imposing. Ikki knew it, having trod its steps countless times on his journey. But now, as he ascended, the pressure around him was different, more intense, more absolute. Each step elevated him to a new state, closer to what resided at the apex, further from everything he once was.
Within the infinite vastness of his mind, something shone at the center of everything.
The [Nameless Manual], an enigma within itself, flickered like a cosmic scroll, its untitled pages unfolding into patterns that only Ikki could comprehend. For an instant, time seemed to slow down, and then, a new word formed.
The moment this word settled in the [Nameless Manual], a wave of energy coursed through his body like a sun exploding within him. His 'Source,' the core of his existence, expanded in a stellar glow, burning with unmatched intensity, his energy reserves increasing to an insane degree. As the energy enveloped him like an ocean unleashed in fury, his right eye began to release a pink-red liquid, a color so dreamy that it resembled the glow of a rose in full bloom, bathed in the soft light of dawn.
The color slowly spread across his eye, as if a river of light flowed from within it, and the transformation began to unfold calmly but profoundly. His [Akashic Eyes] ability seemed to gently disintegrate, mingling with the essence of his own gaze, like two rivers meeting effortlessly to become one.
The result was his right eye acquiring a dreamy color, shining with the depth of a blood moon, where nuances of pink intertwine with whispers of red, creating a visual spectacle of hypnotic intensity. The delicate veins, like silk filaments, seem to dance in a sea of color, so beautiful it seemed unreal. It's a color that fascinates, that invites touch and contemplation, making the viewer lose their soul when looking at his eye.
With the completion of his mind being reshaped and the 'source' being expanded, his core was remodeled, and Ikki was seized by an indescribable pain.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
His scream echoed like a deep lament, reflecting the suffering that unfolded within him. It was as if every fiber of his existence was being rewritten, as if the very core of his soul was being molded by the divinity that was emerging within him. He fell to his knees beside where Ra had been before being devoured by him.
The pain was visceral, as if his core was being reshaped to give form to something new, something beyond his comprehension. He felt the impact of this transformation in the core of his being, a searing heat that burned as a new strength took shape. His soul, once solid and defined, now fragmented and reconnected, creating a kind of nebulous inner world within himself, before forming a fragmented particle within that world—his Divinity in Formation—which seemed opaque and lifeless...
As the pain of the transformation slowly dissipated, Ikki blinked, feeling the tension in his body dissolve. His right eye, previously shining with the mesmerizing pink-red hue, gradually returned to its usual sapphire-agate blue...
Releasing a deep sigh, Ikki let the new extent of his existence settle. He cracked his neck and stood up.
"That was intense..." He murmured, a slight smile dancing on his lips, satisfied to be halfway to forming his Divinity and bringing his mother back to life.
The little guilt that still weighed on his shoulders for absorbing the concepts of several Egyptian gods was quickly dissolved. He entered a strange state where he felt nothing, overwhelmed by his evolution.
He looked at his fallen friends, their bodies inert, but still pulsing with life. His eyes then landed on Julius and Ruby, mere souls.
Then, finally, he stared at Bes, unconscious due to his poison.
He brought his hand to his chin, reflecting on the next step.
A smile widened on his face.
An idea arose. A dangerous idea, even more so than the one he had previously; which was to transform the Gods into illusions so that no one would know what happened to the real ones he devoured…
The world around him seemed distant, unreal. Muffled sounds, faded colors. Just a silent void expanding within him.
What were once doubts were now unshakeable certainties. What were once limits were now irrelevant illusions.
He felt no fear, no hesitation. His emotions seemed numbed by his own evolution.
Perhaps it was this state of transcendence, this false Nirvana, that led him astray.