Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Before Future Skullius went to the Severed Union…

The Tremur Forest was lusher, its colors terribly vibrant. The rich mana throbbing in every tree, every shrub, and every blade of grass was so dense that it could ignite the mana core of an Advancement Stager and make them feel as though they were breaking into the Master Stage without completing the Tasks and Trial required to earn such power.

Even the clouds were heavy with mana, and space seemed dense.

Aigas was designed to weather battles between some truly powerful experts and beasts, but it was in this time that it had begun to decline, the potential of all living things within it – except for Cluster beasts, perhaps – plummeting.

It wasn't just the quality that fell apart of course. The numbers of all living things dwindled as well. It hadn't been the will of the Deities of Aigas, but it had been so regardless.

As chaos ensued in the Tremur Forest, two figures were seated peacefully by a tree, watching the empty space beyond them where the greenery turned sparse until the ground was bald. The soil changed colour the further you went – a sign of a Dormant Territory.

Behind the two men, several hundred goblins shrieked while fighting the enemies.

The bastards were unstoppable.

They had no flesh for the goblins to slash and skewer.

Their stamina was endless.

They didn't rely on mana for their attacks.

Some of them even had pressures that were so suffocating, they simply drained the life of the enemies before any meaningful clash.

Deep within the greenery, under the canopies of great trees, every living creature in the Tremur Forest battled the army of Undead minions. They took arms with orcs by their side and created formations that combined their strengths while covering for individual weaknesses.

Goblin Shamans made openings for the Orc Berserkers. Wolves leaped over the enemies to ground them, and pulled at their ankles to stagger them; the plant-type creatures would drag them into the ground or at least halt their movements enough for stronger creatures to finish them off.

It was a rare feat for such low-level creatures to band together and work so seamlessly.

…But it was all for naught.

Once a Death Knight arrived, the allied force was obliterated with one swing of the creature's sword. It didn't care if it caught its fellow Undead men in the attack. As long as the enemy was felled…

That was all that mattered.

But then a Guardian beast appeared to counter the creature and the hordes it led.

It was a certain Great Mane Mountain Ape by the name Azuma, reddish in fur and with cold eyes laced with dense mana.

The battle that followed was fierce, but it ultimately ended in the Guardian's favour.

The two men seated just a little more than a kilometer away didn't need to turn their heads to infer everything that was happening. Their senses were broad; they were Divine. They had even been able to tell the outcome of the battle before it even began. All the skills and abilities of the opponents had become known to them at once.

"I never cared for what happened to the beasts, you know? It occurs to me now. I never really considered where they fit in the grand plan I had. I never cared for what ambitions they held. Powerful ones like that ape used to travel to great cities of man and give counsel. Ah, the First Horn from my time didn't tolerate such nonsense. He skinned one Guardian that visited his hall and sent it back where it had come from, bleeding. It wasn't allowed to heal before it met its fellow beasts. None of those creatures ever set foot in any of Maqi's settlements again."

It felt strange to Fulgardt, reminiscing about the past… when he was in the past.

He had taken Rias into one of the drapes of Aigas' past – the time right before Jiggorrhax cleansed the world of the invaders.

The Tremur had been truly deserving of the name Sacred Forest back then than it was now. Fulgardt would know, of course. He had set his Labyrinth in the Tremur after meeting a particularly daring beast named Dellan, the Grinning Jester Fox. Then again, there were a lot of daring beasts in the forest. He might have chosen any of them to guard his labyrinth if they were interested.

In any case, Fulgardt would never have left his legacy in his home nation – Maqi.

His people had rejected him and so he rejected them in turn.

No. No, it wasn't that. He didn't quite hate his people as much as one would expect. That was not the reason he didn't leave his legacy for someone in the most powerful nation on Aigas to find.

It was because his closest and most cherished friend, a fellow Maqian, had betrayed him to his enemies. Quilforg – one of his Chosen during the Second Grand War – had betrayed him to the Deities and their vessels. He had rendered all of Fulgardt's effort moot. Well, most of them.

Fulgardt was surprised he was still bitter about this even now.

But then again, if it weren't for Quilforg, he might not have touched upon Divinity. The desperation he had felt when fighting the vessels of the Deities alone, had led him to finally fulfill the last condition that remained for him to reach Divinity back then - as Sause had taught him.

Fulgardt sighed.

Rias turned to him, a disinterested look in his eyes.

"I will commend the beast you left to watch your legacy. He isn't fazed by the armies of Undead falling on Aigas," he said before drawing back and leaning against the tree just a meter behind them. "But why are we still here? You confirmed it already. Even this version of your labyrinth will not open for you."

But Fulgardt kept looking beyond as though expecting those great stone double doors branded with immaculate carvings of him to suddenly appear.

He didn't deign to answer Rias, or perhaps, he answered deep within himself.

Why was he still here?

His purpose for traveling to this past version of Aigas created by a fusion of his WILLS and that Null Life brat, had indeed been to see if he could access the labyrinth - a past version of it.

He had hoped that during the hour he had afforded himself, where he didn't have to worry about that Null Life brat meddling with what he'd seen to be hidden in the deeper portions of the labyrinth, he (Fulgardt) could work some miracle.

But that wasn't possible.

Fundamental Barter was one of the powers at play where the mechanics of the labyrinth were concerned.

Fulgardt had designed it in such a way that as long as someone managed to acquire his legacy, ownership of the entire labyrinth would be granted to them as long as they had the Voiding Key.

But of course, as long as said someone received his legacy, Fulgardt would eventually take control of that person and begin anew.

He had been confident back then, confident that no one would be able to break free from his control after they had acquired the Insurgent Magnus Class.

As long as they breathed.

As long as they cultivated strength through Classes, mana, and Stages, they would be his to control without a doubt.

But… why did Fulgardt need to start anew?

What had happened to him after he made the labyrinth?

If he was Divine then, what had caused his fall?

Ah, but one could guess.

Quite like that little Null Life brat, Fulgardt loathed AKHASHA and the rest of the Primeval Deities.

They were greater hypocrites, falser gods than the Deities of Aigas.

Why had they made it so that becoming Divine no longer meant acquiring automatic immortality?

Why was the number of Consterns one could live stunted?

Why did the Primeval Deities hunt for Parlous Natures from every unique Divine being, offering Contracts and getting angry when a Divine being politely declined the offer?

Fulgardt had asked these questions, and attempted to rebel.

AKHASHA's Contract for earning strength through AKH Units?

Fuck that.

Initially, he accepted it, and even used it across several worlds, earning the strength he had now, but then…

He cursed the Primeval Deity. Why did he have to fight much more powerful opponents, taking ridiculous risks just to improve his strength by a mere considerable margin?

It was ludicrous.

It was far more demanding than Aigas' cumulative mana experience system – grueling even.

And thus, Fulgardt had attempted to rescind AKHASHA's Contract… by signing another blasphemous Contract with a powerful Primeval Deity.

This was a terrible risk… and it didn't pay off.

Fulgardt paid dearly for his rebellion.

The Primeval Deities were different from the Deities of Aigas. They had more authority and were much scarier to deal with. They didn't use weak vessels. They acted on their own if one offended them.

Fulgardt had been… or rather, was still an ant the Primeval Deities could squash as they pleased.

One of them had nearly erased Fulgardt that day he so fondly remembered, but he had been shrewd.

Even when his body and soul were violently brutalised… he remained.

He was thin as a will, but he was Fulgardt nonetheless.

The Immoral gave a sigh.

Maybe that was why his and that little brat's Directions seemed so close-knit.

Maybe that was why he had found it so funny when the brat paid the price for underestimating the Primeval Deities earlier. Ah, yes. It had been funny indeed.

But also, maybe that was why Fulgardt felt that the Null Life brat was…