You are now Mark. You prepare to enter the eighth gate and battle your denizen. As you enter you find yourself at the entrance to a great cavern. The entrance marked by great stalagmites and stalactites, making the cave look like the mouth of a great beast.
As as you walk forward you notice the sound, or rather the complete lack of sound. The only thing to greet you in the darkness is the echoing sound of your own footsteps. You reach a great door with the likeness of a serpent etched into it. The wooden body of the door being clung to by the great metallic animal. You push the great door open and it swings with a creak that resonates through the blackness.
The room behind the door is dimly lit by flames along the wall, not torches, literal fucking flames just coming out of the walls. In the center of the room sits the great serpent, Echidna. The Greek mother of monsters, this is your new master, and she is going to make you learn the meaning of pain.
"Why have you come to me child?" She hisses out from her silver, scaled lips as her forked toung extends and retracts at regular intervals.
"I want you to release the genesis frog."
"I can't do that, little one. You and your friends aren't ready."
"But I need the genesis frog!"
"You and your friends can't be trusted with it. It will die before it can mature."
"We can handle it. I'm not leaving without the frog!"
"Why do you want the frog so much?"
"Because we need to get out of here. If we don't leave fast then I don't think we might leave at all."
"Why don't you ask one of your psychics about it? The can see the future."
"I still can't take the chance that they don't see it coming. I need the frog, I won't leave without it!"
"I'll make you a deal. If you defeat me, then you can take the frog."
"Can't I make another deal here?"
"No, now battle, or leave."
"Then I guess I'll battle."
The second you said the word battle she lunged at you with a hiss. You recoil back and prepare for your death, suddenly a great golden flash appears before you and you hear someone yell "SHIELD!" Standing before you is Alex holding his Monado in front of him as he is surrounded by a golden light.
"Alex?" You ask as you look up at your friend.
"Hey! I got your back!" He replies simply.
"Get the hell up!" A familiar voice says. It's Brandon.
"Don't have to tell me twice." You reply.
"Here's the plan." Nate begins as he marches forward, "Giant snake lady needs to die. We kill her. Mark learns some shit about himself, and we get closer to leaving this place. Let's go."
"Why are we even helping past the point of not of saving his life?" Brandon asks, "He's a fucking Page of Space. He should have enough power to destroy Echidna easily."
"I don't really have that much ch power." You admit, "I god-tiered, but I'm still pretty weak. I didn't even notice a change."
"Bullshit! You're a page, and you're facing the fault of every page, self-doubt. A page faces the self and goes 'Wow, I suck.' Then fights some stuff, builds a fucking ego, then goes 'Dude, I fucking rock!' Now we're gonna go ahead and hope you can skip the sucking part and move on to killing shit. We may make fun of you and seem to put you down, but that just means you need to come back twice as strong! If the world takes a bite out of you then you bite back! You take a chunk out of the world so big it won't ever think of fucking with you again! Now go kill that fucking snake!"
He's right, he could have phrased it in a better way, but he's right. This snake monster thinks you're weak, so you're damn well gonna show it that if anything it's weak, your power is great and you're gonna show it off.
You raise your arms and imagine something, you imagine the walls sprouting great spikes that impale Echidna, and it comes true.
"Dude, you gotta think bigger than that!" Nate adds, "You control space, as in all matter. You control solids, liquids, even plasmas, use them.
Plasmas? You think. Plasmas are things like fire and electricity right? How do fires start again? Yeah the shit in the environment starts to mix with oxygen, fire starts, shit burns. You gather all the hydrogen in the room around Echidna, separate the molecules, then combine them with oxygen.
Echidna ignites and and screams in pain as she burns. Sadly, the snake monster lives and begins to scream at you, "How dare you burn me, I will end you! I will never let you have the frog!"
Well fire worked, but how does lightening work again? Opposites charges attract. What if you just charged her with positive energy and charged the air around her with negative charges? You try it, and suddenly the snake flashes brightly and you hear a great crack as the charges connect.
You look up at the aftermath to see a charred snake. What have you done? It was just supposed to be a fight to see who would surrender, but you killed her. You look at what you've done with horror, what your power can do.
"Don't get to caught up on it." Brandon says, "The two things people can't escape are death and taxes. You did what you had to."
"I don't think I had to kill her!" You respond quietly.
"If you didn't I would have, and you know it. Besides, you need the courage to kill if you want to make it as a god. Gods create and destroy all the time, we'll be no different."
"But that's cruel, to just create something that can think and feel, then end it all because you messed one part up."
"Yep, humans are cruel, gods are cruel. Everything that has free will will become cruel at some point. That's just the way things are."
"That's a terrible mentality."
"If it makes you feel better, I'm the one who has to do the ending, so you can just create to your hearts content, and I handle the inevitable."
"I'm not sure if that helps."
"Whatever, let's get the frog and leave."
You head deeper in the cave and find the frog in a kind of stasis. You also find a fist-kind strife card. You equip it and the weapon you found with it, The Universal Game Glove. It pretty much looks exactly like a Nintendo Power Glove, but it actually works for the purpose it was designed, it helps you tune your control of matter.
END OF CHAPTER 37