Chapter 938
That terrifying display of effortless authority was a stark reminder of the gap between where he stood and the true apex of power. To Ikenga, the conclusion was inescapable, diving headfirst into the faction of the Hegemons without the strength to back it up was nothing short of a fool’s errand. The freedom they offered was real, waiting for anyone bold enough to reach out and take it, but the risk was absolute, leaving no room for error or weakness.
For all its stifling constraints, Order served a vital, inescapable purpose, especially for a world that needed nurturing and protection.
Order acted as a leash, ensuring that beings gifted with world-altering power like the paragons remained acutely aware of the consequences of their actions. Without those boundaries, existence would be a casualty of convenience. At their level of power, a casual glance, a stray thought, or a fleeting emotion could spell total extinction for mortal life.
This delicate balance was embodied by the Paragons, who border on that razor-thin line between the strict confines of Order and the wild expanse of the Hegemonies.
Unlike gods born into their stations or those who had ascended to their positions. They did not answer to the rigid dogma or cosmic mandates that chained deities.
They enjoyed a vastly superior level of freedom compared to divine entities. Despite wielding power capable of rivaling the gods, they still retained their roots, able to exist, walk, and live quietly among ordinary mortals without instantly burning away the world around them.
That inherent duality made the Paragons fundamentally untrustworthy, a volatile element that demanded constant vigilance. They existed on a knife-edge as it would take only a slight lean toward the Hegemonies to shed the last of their earthly tethers and leave the threat of consequences entirely behind.
This precarious balance was precisely why Ikenga held a deep, begrudging respect for the Goblin Empire. Despite their staggering status and terrifying strength, the Empire’s Paragons still maintained a profound respect for the cosmic laws that governed their existence.
All conflicts were strictly taken outside the world and into the cold expanse of the void, ensuring that the collateral damage of their titanic clashes never reached innocent lives below. Of course, this discipline wasn’t born purely of individual morality, it was enforced by the unified structure of the empire, with Emperor Kairos sitting firmly at the apex.
While Emperor Kairos provided the necessary ceiling to keep these world-shakers in line, the Goblin Empire struck a brilliant balance. They didn’t rule as tyrannical wardens suffocating their greatest assets. Instead, the empire maintained a remarkable degree of control regarding the Mage Towers granted to their Paragons, trusting them with immense power while relying on the overarching imperial structure to keep their ambitions anchored to it’s foundation.
The confrontation between the demoness and the gravity mage served as a glaring demonstration of this truth. When she attempted to seize the Tower mid-clash to bend it to her will, her ambition met with absolute futility. The empire simply folded space and teleported the structure away from her grasping fingers, rendering her power play worthless.
This same strategic defense was evident in the very mages Ikenga had fought. Their Towers had never graced the battlefield, they remained safely anchored far away, tethered to the combatants solely to channel the raw mana they required. Because of this deliberate distance, when those mages finally fell, their magnificent spires remained completely out of Ikenga’s reach, impossible to claim or plunder.
These safeguards reinforced Ikenga’s core conviction that Paragons could never truly be trusted. They had to be bound, managed, and kept under a watchful eye in one way or another to prevent the systematic unraveling of the world.
This harsh reality shaped the policy of Ikenga and his siblings since the very dawn of the Paragons in Nana. They had subjected these volatile entities to unyielding scrutiny, recognizing that the dangers they posed were too severe to ignore.
The actions displayed by the Paragons on the very day of their ascension had permanently sealed that verdict. The arrogance had been grating, the predictable, swollen pride of mortals who had barely tasted the precipice of power and immediately assumed they owned the peak. Standing before Keles and Ikenga, they had spoken with the such bravado, completely blind to the fragility of their new existence.
That illusion of supremacy had to be shattered. They needed to be forcibly reminded of their place, bound by tethers they could neither break nor ignore. They had to learn that their newfound freedom was not absolute, and that a new leash could be held and tightened at a moment’s notice.
As for Tyrion, he simply was a means to an end, Ikenga held great dissaftisfaction for the man but in the grander scheme of things, he served greater purpose of muddying the water, disturbing the board and a wild card that can be thrown out.
Every calculated move, every system of control, was designed to anchor the paragons firmly to the faction of Order. The goal was to make the cost of leaning toward the Hegemonies so devastatingly high that they would never dare to pay it.
The High Kingdom and Godlings, as Tide had astutely observed, among all the moving pieces in Nana, the High Kingdom and the Godlings were the most vital anchors that demanded strict restraint. They wielded the heaviest influence, held the greatest authority, and shaped the destiny of the world far more than standard mortals ever could.
Because of this, their loyalty was not something that could be left to chance. When the inevitable external threats descended upon Nana, these were the factions destined to serve as the world’s primary vanguard. Their allegiance had to be absolute, unshakeable, and entirely unquestioned precisely when the survival of the world hung in the balance.
While the High Kingdom and the Godlings commanded vast institutional weight and shared a collective duty as the vanguard, the Paragons rising from smaller, isolated kingdoms presented an entirely different breed of risk. They could not be granted the same leniency or levy.
Their entire claim to authority rested on a fragile, solitary foundation of personal strength. Unlike backed rulers whose power was anchored to the infrastructure, populace, and value of a thriving civilization, these minor Paragons answered to no one but themselves. They ruled in a vacuum of civic responsibility.
This vacuum made them fundamentally untrustworthy. Because they had no real kingdom or people generating collective value to tie them down, they had nothing to lose by tipping the scales toward chaos.
When faced with a crossroads, a Paragon whose power is solely personal will inevitably choose the path of maximum individual benefit. To such figures, the Hegemonies are an open invitation. The moment personal gain aligns with the wild expanse of true freedom, they are primed to abandon Order entirely.
Recognizing this fatal flaw, Ikenga and his siblings maintained a strict policy that these isolated, self-made Paragons had to be constantly tested, scrutinized, and ultimately weeded out before they could become a parasite eating away at the foundations of Order.
The current state of the world served as a grim, undeniable vindication of everything Ikenga and his siblings had suspected. Even though their own calculated interventions and deliberate plans had deliberately catalyzed the crisis, the true nature of the Paragons had revealed itself under the pressure.
True to their predictions, many lesser Paragons had cracked under the weight of ambition, abandoning Order to lay waste to Nana for personal gain. Yet, amidst that chaos, others stood firm. They chose the agonizing duty of protecting their kingdoms rather than taking the easy path offered by the Hegemonies.
In the eyes of Ikenga and his kin, those steadfast rulers were the only ones who truly deserved their Mage Towers. Their actions in the crucible of war proved their worth. This was precisely why the auction, despite being built on a foundation of piling dead bodies and scorched lands, was allowed to proceed without their direct interference. They simply watched, waiting for the rest of the hidden threats to expose themselves.
They could afford this cold, detached patience because of the World Spirits. While the surface of Nana burned, these foundational entities were forced into grueling, overtime labor to reverse the cataclysm. Thanks to their tireless work, the physical damage inflicted upon the realm was ultimately temporary.
Shattered mountains, cratered plains, and broken cities were continuously mended, woven back together until the geography resembled what it had been before the destruction.
The World Spirits could heal the earth, but they could not rewrite the ultimate law of mortality. The only things that remained permanently lost were the lives extinguished in the crossfire and the kingdoms erased from history.
As the world tore itself apart at the seams, Ikenga and his siblings took the opportunity to slip quietly across the threshold. Their descent into the mortal plane was measured, delicate, and shrouded in absolute secrecy. They moved with precision, dampening their divine signatures to a faint whisper, desperately wanting to avoid the catastrophic tremors that usually accompanied their kind.