The Marquess’s aura fluctuated wildly as her face went through a gamut of emotions. Luckily, her aura couldn’t affect either of them. Shade flopped his head

  back. “Now, why do you have to go and do that?”

  Shade left his head flopped back, but he lolled it to the side to look at Biron. The older man chuckled good-naturedly. “Because she needs to understand the

  level you are operating on if she is to assist you in your ends. I’ll help you as much as I can, but that is limited by the rest of the pantheon. Almost everything

  involving Spark and the system must be voted upon. And I have no voting power. I honestly suspect that I would have been done away with by now if they

  could. But I have the most advanced domain. But Borialis thinks I don't know he has been training up his crafters for centuries now.”

  The marquess stepped over and sat in a plushly padded single couch. She just sat semi-despondently and listened.

  Shade nodded. “Ok, I'm starting to see the picture. You were both useful and would cost too much to kill. But now they think they can build up crafters and

  push you out. But they can’t.”

  Biron nodded. “Yes, they don't interfere directly with me, but I'm not exactly invited to the barbecue. They don't move against me directly because that would

  affect the church’s concept. It would force a faction split. And that would probably lead to another purge...”

  “Purge?”

  Biron sighed and seemed to deflate and age right before Shade and the Marquess’ eyes. “Yes, after you were sealed away, Darion was sent to hold me in

  position. They used their usurped system access to close down the gate to Earth while your partner was out of the realm. Then they sped up time dilation so

  no one could communicate outside. And then the council and participating clans formed a raid party. I was already in the council party, but Darion was raid

  leader, so that I couldn’t drop, and he had me silenced in the party so that I couldn't reach out to anyone else in my faction. You were also in the raid party.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  You still are. But they changed the system respawn settings that maintained a person's memories after, and respawned them all as children. And then they

  turned on everyone and slaughtered every single person. They also installed a list of forbidden words or phrases, like your name, in the beginning, even

  mentioning earth or video games was on the trigger list that alerted the church to track people who had survived. Once they had everyone accounted for, they

  created the concept of religion. And raised all those children under the church’s doctrine. But the combined clans became the upper reaches of the church,

  and the leaders under the man who is now the Hierophant became the holy knights. They still are. Almost everyone above Bishop is from before. There have

  been a few ascensions. But that's another layer. They were all there and knew. They could each recognize your original face. And your unique soul weapon.

  But that wasn’t the first purge, there were five. That's how we arrived at today, with the church controlling access to the system and filtering for banned classes

  and talents. And Spark was fully locked down. Because the truth was, we still can’t change a setting you put in place when you created all this.”

  Shade sat in silent contemplation for a moment, just absorbing everything that had just been said. “Uggghhhh…. You you mean my tendency to leave shit

  alone and not tweak settings…” he cut his own words off with a groan.” Ok, so what did I set up?”

  Biron nodded and responded. “For a long time, we were all stuck at what would now be considered high tier, because you had set into place a Rule that the

  council would always be a tier lower than you and your partner. and that he was to be the stand-in Caretaker. And only in the absence of both of you from the

  system would that power pass to the council to be governed as a council. With the provision that a new member could be added in case you both were

  destroyed. But Darion the Emperor figured out that if he kept you in the raid party, he could send groups into the tower to level you while you were trapped in a

  disconnected space-time. And thus we also were able to level beyond either condensing. If only I hadn’t taken Darion as my apprentice. He never would have

  been there when you ascended to Either gathering. And thus I wasn’t the only living person with that knowledge. He showed all of them how.”

  “And that is why the church and holy knights are more powerful than even the highest nobles?”

  The Marquess suddenly spoke up.

  Biron glanced at the woman. “Yes. The High Kings are all tier 9.”

  “So are you the reason that I’m here, and that light orb recording told me to show you my weapon?”

  Biron shook his head. “No. That was the original you, he enacted a protocol that if Spark ever deemed that this demi plane would be a threat to eartjh and you

  werent around to do something about it, it was to try and mitigate the disaster, and if not it was to collaps the demi plane and start over from scratch. And since

  Neo Ares passed a vote to realign space time and invade Earth with their higher levels. Spark created you and gave you the mission of making it to the obelisk

  and placing your hand there to confirm your genetic identity and resume control of the Caretaker role. That is going to be difficult because the emperor's base

  is on the moon. And he had the obelisk made into his throne and moved there. The problem is that, on the moon, everyone there is from before. The

  hierophant, the Emperor, and several of the gods have their homes there. “I’m the only one that lives here on the starting world anymore.”

  Shade considered everything that had just been said.