THE GENERAL'S DISGRACED HEIR

Something snapped within David—a dam breaking, emotions flooding through barriers of control he'd maintained since childhood. He whirled to face the approaching divinity, rage and determination replacing fear.

"NEVER AGAIN!" he roared, the words tearing from his throat with such force that the nearest corpses disintegrated into ash. "I will never let those I care about fall because I was too weak or too afraid to stand!"

The resolution crystallized within him, hardening into unbreakable resolve. He would not be the man who abandoned others. He would not calculate odds when lives—lives that mattered to him—hung in the balance. He would not run, not ever again, not even from divinity itself.

Behind him, his darker self smiled—not with mockery now, but with grim satisfaction. "There you are," he whispered, already fading back into David's consciousness. "There's the real you."

The divine tsunami crashed over David in that moment, engulfing him completely. The force of it drove him to his knees, threatening to scour away his very identity beneath tides of golden-white power. Divine essence filled every corner of his being—saturating his thoughts, his memories, his sense of self until he could no longer distinguish where he ended and the divinity began.

The sensation was one of drowning, yet drowning in power rather than water—beautiful, terrible, transformative power that reshaped his essence with each passing moment. Colours beyond description flashed behind his eyes, sounds no human ear could perceive resonated through his consciousness. The totality of creation seemed to pour into him, too vast for any mortal vessel to contain without breaking.

Fragments of his past flickered through his awareness—moments of powerlessness and failure that had shaped him. Standing over his mother's empty closet, a child's small fists clenched in helpless rage. Watching an early mentor bleed out on dirty concrete because he'd hesitated to take the shot. Kneeling in the dungeons, feeling [Bookmark] collapse as his enemies closed in.

Each failure, each moment of inadequacy threatened to break him beneath the divine onslaught. David felt his sense of self beginning to dissolve—identity washing away grain by grain, like a sand castle before rising tide.

Then, through the overwhelming surge of divinity, a voice reached him—feminine, seductive, yet tinged with genuine concern.

"Master!" Vespera called, her presence manifesting within the golden-white maelstrom. "Take my hand!"

David couldn't see her, couldn't orient himself in the blinding radiance, but suddenly he felt cool fingers intertwine with his own. The sensation anchored him, providing a fixed point within the chaos.

"This isn't enough," came another voice—male, arrogant, yet carrying grudging affection. "Pull yourself together, weakling!"

Kaelith materialized partially within the divine flow, his spectral hand pressing against David's back, urging him forward rather than allowing him to remain passive before the onslaught.

"You fought a god once, battle maniac," Kaelith growled, his presence growing stronger as he forced more of himself into this realm. "Act like it!"

The connection to his Aetenus and Servant stabilized something within David—a reminder that he was not merely himself anymore but the center of a growing network of bonds and obligations. Vespera, Luna, Kaelith, his shadow maidens, Elara, even Yue and the others—all connected to him, all depending on him in ways that transcended simple loyalty or affection.

This second chance at life—this opportunity to be more than the isolated killer he'd been on Earth—suddenly seemed precious beyond measure.

David felt a grin spreading across his face despite the overwhelming pressure. The expression began as a grimace of pain but transformed into something feral, almost predatory—the smile of someone who had found unexpected strength in what should have broken them.

His eyes transformed, physical changes manifesting even in this metaphysical realm. Darkness gathered at the edges of his irises, a void-like blackness that framed swirls of azure and white light forming at their centers. The combination created an otherworldly effect—eyes neither human nor divine but something existing in the threshold between both states.

With newfound clarity, David reached for his abilities. For the first time since his creation, he activated [Eternal Gluttony] and [Celestial Wheel] simultaneously—two fundamental aspects of his power that he had always kept separate until now.

[Celestial Wheel] spun into existence within his perception, its intricate mechanisms analyzing the patterns hidden within the divine mysteries that surrounded him. The ability deconstructed the seemingly chaotic flow of divinity, revealing the underlying logic and structure—fractal patterns that repeated at every scale, from quantum to cosmic.

Understanding bloomed within David's mind, comprehension of divine architecture flowing through him like quicksilver. With this knowledge came control—not mastery, not yet, but enough to direct what came next.

[Eternal Gluttony] responded to his command, surging beyond its established parameters. The ability had always been restricted, limited to a fraction of its true potential to prevent David from losing himself to its hunger. Now he deliberately pushed past those safeguards, commanding it to operate at ten percent capacity—a tenfold increase beyond anything he had previously attempted.

The results manifested immediately. A massive eldritch form took shape around David—a phantasmal construct of shadow and light, its proportions defying conventional geometry. Where the entity's "head" would be, an enormous maw opened, revealing an interior that appeared to contain a universe in miniature, stars and galaxies swirling within its depths.

This manifestation of [Eternal Gluttony] turned toward the tsunami of divinity, its impossible jaws stretching wider with each passing moment. Then, with a movement that seemed to bend the very fabric of the mindscape, it began to feed.

Divine energy flowed into the monstrous maw—not merely passing through it but being consumed, processed, transformed. What had been raw, unfiltered divinity became structured, ordered power that David could direct and control.

David's system interface flickered into existence before his mind's eye, warning notifications flashing with increasing urgency:

[WARNING: SYSTEM OVERLOAD IMMINENT]

[POWER INTAKE EXCEEDING SAFE PARAMETERS]

[ABILITY FUSION UNSTABLE]

[PARTIAL COLLAPSE OF DIMENSIONAL ANCHORS DETECTED]

David ignored the warnings, pushing harder, demanding more from abilities that had never been tested to these limits. The eldritch manifestation of [Eternal Gluttony] grew larger, its feeding accelerating until the tsunami of divinity began to visibly diminish, power transferring from the raw state into David's reconfigured system.

Laughter bubbled up from deep within him—wild, triumphant, slightly unhinged. The sound echoed across his mindscape, causing the fractured sky to tremble in response. This feeling—this raw exhilaration of power answering to his will—transcended anything he had experienced in either of his lives.

"More!" he commanded, voice resonating with newfound authority. "Give me more!"

The eldritch maw opened impossibly wider, now devouring the divine tsunami at a pace that caused reality itself to buckle around the point of consumption. Warnings continued to flash across David's inner vision, but they seemed distant, irrelevant compared to the euphoria of transcendence flowing through him.

As the last of the divine tsunami disappeared into the maw of [Eternal Gluttony], David's laughter reached a crescendo that shook his entire mindscape. The corpse-littered battlefield began to transform around him, the barren ground sprouting vegetation, the fractured sky healing into seamless azure.

He was changing his inner reality through sheer will—reshaping the landscape of his soul with the power he had claimed.

The warnings from his system interface intensified, culminating in a final message that flashed red across his vision:

[COMPLETE SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATING]

[DIMENSIONAL REALIGNMENT IN PROGRESS]

[CORE IDENTITY PRESERVATION PROTOCOLS ACTIVATED]

David had just enough time to feel a moment of concern before everything—his mindscape, his consciousness, his very sense of self—collapsed into absolute darkness.

The tide had turned, but at what cost remained to be seen.