Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

Eren and Roza stood in silence, watching as the waves of the sea gently kissed the shore before retreating once more.

The calmness lingered for a while until Eren decided to break it.

"Vepar, what can you tell me about the slumbering goddess?" Eren's sudden question caught Roza off guard. "You know who."

Roza was taken aback by Eren addressing her as Vepar.

She immediately understood that Eren sought to converse with the consciousness of the Ars Goetia Demons residing within her.

Without hesitation, she stirred Vepar's consciousness within her, allowing the demoness to respond to Eren's inquiry directly.

"My liege, are you referring to the Elder Goddess Mor–Mortessa?" Roza's voice took on a different tone, signaling Vepar's presence.

"Hm? Why the hesitation in speaking her name?" Eren inquired, intrigued.

"The names of the Immortals carry weight," Vepar replied swiftly.

"Especially those who have attained the status of True Immortals. Mentioning their name can sometimes attract their consciousness. This is the reason mortals are often advised not to invoke the name of the Immortal they worship lightly."

"I see," Eren nodded thoughtfully, finding the explanation plausible. The Immortals possessed the ability to establish communication channels with mortal worlds, allowing them to manifest various forms within the mortal realm.

If the Immortals wielded such power, then the True Immortals must be even more formidable. It was conceivable that they could project a fraction of their consciousness wherever their name was spoken, like an invocation.

Vepar, aware of goddess Mortessa's potential enmity towards Eren due to his inheritance of God Aleph's legacy, took a moment to gather her thoughts before speaking further.

"It is said that the Elder Goddess and God Aleph had a bit of a relationship," Vepar chose her words carefully, speaking in a serious tone.

"To become an elder goddess, she hatched a plan to rob God Aleph's powers.

It was said that her act was perfect. However, the goddess eventually realized that God Aleph's powers were too overbearing for any individual Immortal to wield on their own.

Therefore, she formed temporary alliances with the other Immortals of that time before she was finally able to cause God Aleph's Godfall.

God Aleph fell from grace because of that betrayal. The Godfall of an Elder God, who was very close to becoming a Primordial God, several other Immortals were able to solidify their status as Elemental Gods."

"Who were the ones who supported this elder goddess in her crafty plan?"

Eren asked in a neutral voice. He didn't care about the enmity between God Aleph and his enemies. The only reason he was asking these questions to Vepar was because they had started seeing him as a thorn in their eyes.

Vepar had already deployed a simple demonic barrier around her and Eren to isolate their voices and thoughts. Thus, she could speak more freely this time.

"It is said that Demon Prince of Wrath Samael and the Fire God Emperor Vulcan were part of Goddess Mortessa's team that managed to take God Aleph down. As for the rest of the Immortals involved in the incident, I don't know.

All of the 72 Ars Goetia Demons, including me, are relatively newly ascended Immortals. You know how demonic hierarchy works. We always face competition from our own kind.

By the time I managed to snatch the seat of the previous Immortal demon and became one of the 72 Ars Goetia Demons, these stories from the past had long become old," Vepar patiently explained her circumstances.

"Hmm. Do you know how they caused the Godfall of God Aleph?"

Eren asked his next question as he finished the Whiteraven ale in his glass. With a flick of his fingers, the glass in his hand disappeared and he assumed a pensive look while paying close attention to Vepar's incoming words.

"I don't know the exact details of how they caused the Godfall of such a mighty Elder God," Vepar said, pausing for a bit before continuing.

"However, all I know is that it was some sort of divine curse that goddess Mortessa had specially concocted. Part of the reason why the divine curse worked on God Aleph was because of his own unique condition at the time.

When the goddess Mortessa and her allies chose to strike, it was said that God Aleph had just finished regulating the infernal energies of the boundless cosmos by separating them into the seven demonic planes before bringing them under his divine jurisdiction.

The emperor of all demons was at his weakest when he had just finished conquering the "hell" as a whole. So we could say that his vulnerability was exploited by the goddess and her allies of that time," Vepar concluded.

The reason why Eren had finally decided to ask these questions to Vepar at this point was simple: he didn't want to be surprised by the number of enemies who might come to target him at the time of Hvergelmir Spring's arrival. He always liked knowing about his enemies so he could plan better.

Eren wouldn't have asked these questions to Alephee because they both knew he wasn't ready to delve into these matters. However, at this point, Eren had become a demi-god, and his essence of being had been tempered by the rules of the boundless cosmos, turning his soul Immortal.

As such, Eren had automatically become immune to the divine powers that the Immortals could use against mortals. Even if there were still many things that could injure his Immortal soul, it wasn't easy to make use of those means. Often, these came with horrible backlashes to their casters.

Plus, Eren also didn't make it easy for the immortals to target him by staying under the veil for the whole time and only appearing in front of the masses by using the far-reaching yet secure powers of the Mesh.

With changed circumstances and improved individual might, Eren naturally considered himself worthy of finally knowing more about the slumbering goddess.

"So that's why that harlot doesn't have her own temple network in Labh Salem," the butcher finally inferred after processing Vepar's words.

He had found it weird that the slumbering goddess had not established her temple in Labh Salem. There were no forces supported by her faith who were gunning for him even though it was well established at this point that God Aleph's successor was currently living in Labh Salem.

It was only now that he realized why the slumbering goddess Mortessa did not have her temple in Labh Salem. It was because she had already become an Elder Goddess. She didn't need faith energy to sustain the well-functioning of her Immortal Plane.

Eren started filling in the blanks left in Vepar's information with the memories of God Aleph he had obtained earlier. By combining both, there was a clearer image forming in his mind.

Eren also recalled her final encounter with Sienna Slughorn after she was possessed by goddess Mortessa's consciousness. He had to say that he had come closest to death at that time. If it wasn't for Anfang World Will's consciousness prompt taking actions to expel an Elder God's will as well as Alephee's protection, he might have suffered irreversible damage or worse…

"A goddess who is well versed in divine curses, huh," Eren pondered for a while before asking Vepar his next question. "What kind of divinity does this elder goddess have? And why does she always have her eyes closed?"

This time, it was easy for Vepar to answer Eren's question. She finished the Whiterave ale from her glass and felt the effects of the ale stimulating her vessel's potential before finally speaking up.

"My liege, Goddess Mortessa is known to have a divinity related to the decay and decomposition of all living things," Vepar spoke in an unhurried tone.

"Her divinity also touches upon the concepts of femininity and lifelessness. Or rather, she had derived the aspects of femininity and lifelessness from her original divinity related to the concept of decay.

Her divine domain encompasses death, decay, and the inevitable end of all existence. It is said that she touched upon the concepts of femininity when her original domain reached a certain height. After all, life germinates from the concepts of death, and as a bringer of life, femininity is associated with death and decay. There are some worlds in which the concepts of death and decay are known as Yin concepts.

Anyway, she specializes in necromancy, dark magic that manipulates the forces of death and decay to her will. And because the concepts of Yin are also associated with femininity, she is well versed in affecting the cause-and-effect fabric of any world using the concepts of femininity as the carrier of her will," Vepar replied.

"Death, decay, lifelessness, and the bringer of life that is femininity," Eren mumbled to himself as he processed Vepar's words.

"Looks like she has managed to merge two polar opposite concepts together. Is that what the Great Mother wanted to achieve by forming Abominated Divinity?"

Eren couldn't help drawing comparisons between the two goddesses as he thought of many things at once.