"Ma'am, we found signs of life," Kadija said.
"Show me," Fatima said, closing the book <<Divinity and Soul>> and putting it away. A holographic screen appeared in front of her, showing a creature that looked like Black Panther, except that it had scales, protruding spikes on its back, and a pair of red-gold eyes. This Beast seemed to have just hunted another prey and was enjoying its feast.
"What's its energy level?" Fatima asked.
"Tier 6."
"Did the scan reveal any other information?"
"This creature has the innate ability to hide information about itself, so our sensors did not detect any new information other than the energy level," explains Kadija.
"In this case, send five Golem with the same energy level to capture it alive and bring it to the laboratory," Fatima ordered. She did not bring Knight Legion with her this time because she did not want any instability during the voyage. Although government incentives to encourage the use of the Knight Legion are tempting, Fatima is determined to only use Golem because they are easier to control.
"Yes," Kadija replied. Fatima then watched as this Beast used the power of shadow to fight the five Golem. This Beast showed extremely superb fighting ability and easily tore the five Golem into pieces.
"It's really scary Beast," Fatima observed. For this expedition, she did not hesitate to spend a lot of money to buy the best equipment. Most importantly, she also used her professional knowledge to create the soul cores of these Golem, so she knew very well how strong they were.
"Send a Golem that is Tier 6, but use 'Shadow Bane'." Weasley Company is known for two things: children's mischief toys and the state-of-the-art Golem. "Shadow Bane" does exactly what its name suggests - it's very good at dealing with shadow-based creatures.
Before the voyage, Fatima purchased various types of Golem to prepare for any possible situation, which cost her a fortune. This is one of the reasons why she was basically bankrupt before she received government compensation and wrote those papers.
At her command, "Shadow Bane" was dispatched. As expected, the battle was one-sided. Golem blocked the creature's shadow teleportation and was able to counter all other abilities such as shadow golems and shadow tentacles. Golem then locked the creature in an energy-sealing cage and brought it back to Mage Tower.
Fatima stood in the laboratory, waiting for the preliminary results. It took Kadija more than an hour to complete the full scan, and Fatima waited patiently. "Madam, this is the report."
Fatima looked at the screen and read all the content. Then, she narrowed her eyes and asked, "Divine Power?" She immediately checked again, and the answer was still the same. These organisms contain a small amount of Divine Power, and current theories speculate that its mutation is caused by Divine Power.
"Put it into the extractor immediately and extract Divine Power," Fatima ordered. "No, let me confirm it first." She entered the Soul Dimension of this creature without hesitation to explore its soul. As expected, Fatima found that its soul had undergone slight mutations due to Divine Power.
After confirming, she immediately extracted energy from the creature. 'It is extremely diluted and needs to be purified, but no matter what, this is indeed Divine Power,' she murmured to herself with Blink eyes. Now that she had found what she had been looking for, there was only one thing in her mind: how to find more.
However, there are still many unanswered questions: Where did this Beast get Divine Power? Is it the only one? Do gods exist in this world? If so, why did the latter not come forward to confront her after her invasion?
Fatima thought about the next move, and then ordered, "Kadija, enter combat mode. Then, send all Wizard's Eye to draw the map of the entire plane." Without the restrictions of Planar Will, she can use the full power of Mage Tower in battle. Therefore, the best strategy for her current situation is to find the source of Divinity - most likely a god - and kill it, then take away all its Divine Power to save Lana.
"Ma'am, I've discovered something."
"Show me the visual," Fatima ordered, as a horrifying scene appeared on the screen. A large Black Panther-shaped creature was sleeping on the top of a mountain, surrounded by a sea of smaller Black Panther-shaped creatures (just like the one she captured). "What's the energy level?" Fatima asked.
"No. Tier 7, but more importantly, we detected signs of Dark Divinity." Now that Kadija had obtained more information from the previous Shadow Panther, their scans were modified accordingly.
"Are you serious?" Fatima said, standing up from the chair suddenly.
"The data has been verified."
"That means there is a god's corpse in this plane," she muttered with her eyes shining. With this information, many things started to make sense. Empire had conducted extensive research on gods and Divinity, and after entering Exploration Era and coming into contact with other planes in the Astral Realm, they learned more information.
Fatima's main research field is the soul, followed by Divinity, which means that she has access to the latest research results of the Empire. One of the studies is about what happens when a god dies without believers to assist him Resurrection.
One of the answers is the birth of Dark Divinity. In some cases, the resentment of the gods will affect their dead bodies, resulting in the production of Dark Divinity, which is what happens when their Divine Power is eroded and mutated by negative energy.
Dark Divinity has two characteristics: spread and corrosion. Once it is formed, it will spread to all substances - whether organic or inorganic, whether sentient or non-sentient creatures, and corrode them into dark creatures that only know killing and destruction.
"Now, we can deduce what exactly happened in this plane," Fatima muttered to himself. There may be a god who came to this plane and died here, causing the creation of Dark Divinity.
Then, the corruption spread throughout the world, turning living things into savage monsters that killed each other. Dark Divinity probably also corrupted Planar Will, forcing it to accelerate the destruction of the world.
Fatima was excited at the thought of getting that god's corpse. Most of the Divinity should still be retained in it. After she cleaned up the infected creatures, she would get a complete god's corpse containing enough Divine Power. But then, when she remembered a study she had read, her face became ugly.
A Arcanist from China Region once put forward a view: the corpse of the god spreads Divinity not just for destruction. Its ultimate purpose is to swallow enough souls and energy to create a new soul for the corpse, thereby realizing an alternative Resurrection. The new god will be a completely different being, as it will represent death and destruction, but it will still retain some residual memories of its predecessor's soul.
'If this is true, then this corpse should have given birth to a new soul by now, or at least, it is already in the late stage of Resurrection,' Fatima thought to herself. The research was not conclusive yet, so she didn't know if this was true. But the theoretical basis behind this speculation is tenable.
"I can't take this risk," Fatima decided. 'There are still creatures that have not been swallowed by the god's corpse, which means I still have a chance.'
Fatima carefully planned her next move. She first sent a team to extract Golem to capture more shadow Beast for study. Then, while Kadija was drawing a map of the world, Fatima concentrated on studying the souls of these creatures and developing a Potions that could make them all fall asleep instantly.
The process was both simple and challenging. Simple is the idea. Fatima came up with the idea of using Anti-Divine Power energy to create brief chaos in their souls, thus knocking them out. The challenging part, however, was formulating this idea into Potions.
It took her more than six months. The thing about Luck is that her Mage Tower is the highest level, which means that it is equipped with Time Acceleration enchantment. After everything was ready, she took the initiative.