Date: 1372 A.D.
Location: The Ent Plains, Planet Teleflat, Rusus-Afel Star System
"Where is your God now?" Dagon's voice boomed across the sprawling landscape, rebounding from the treeless hills that peeked over the horizon. "Didn't you claim, Griffin, that technology is your God?"
A drag trail on the ground extended from Dagon to a quarter-mile away, where Griffin lay spread-eagled on the moist soil. He was dying from battle injuries.
Dagon's last slash against Griffin had been so powerful that the impact had dented his unbreakable armor. The man was flung away, landing on his back, and skidding into the distance.
If not for the AI-run advanced device he wore, Griffin would already be a bloody stain on the ground by now. AEGIS.
Aegis was a god-class, highly sentient, super AI. It could do anything and everything as long as the user was smart enough to feed the right formula and ingredients. Be it generating matter or destroying it, Aegis was all-capable. Griffin called his invention THE MIND OF GOD.
Presently, Aegis was in battle mode. A form-fitting armor of sunlight-gold covered Griffin from head to toe. It was made of pure adamantine, a self-replicating metal not found in the mines of any planet in the star system.
The recesses of the gold armor were etched with equation lines glowing electric green. It was said adamantine could withstand the impact of a falling meteor. The metal was unbreakable, and it nullified most physical attacks.
All Griffin did was give Aegis the remote location of the mines, and lo-and-behold, the armor was ready. It was like divine magic.
"Are you still alive?" Dagon made a gargantuan leap and scaled the distance between them in a couple of seconds. He landed with a crash a dozen yards from Griffin, and the ground shattered and rippled. Gravel and sand fired at Griffin like shrapnel.
The villain rose from his crouch and approached his target. On his part, he wore Gehennian armor. Gehenna was the first planet in the Rusus-Afel Star System, known for its naturally powerful warriors.
"I can feel it," Dagon said, tilting his head back. "Your mana is low, and your heart is about to burst. Give up resistance and hand me over the key!"
He was right about Griffin's heart about to collapse. It was palpitating like a trapped animal. Aegis was convenient, but also challenging to withstand. Operating multiple god formula equations on the AI took a biting toll on the user's body.
Griffin rushed to his feet and looked at the top right corner of his HUD.
[Level 200: Human]
[MP: 3511/99999]
[HP: 10609/99999]
The augmented reality interface provided a realistic representation of Griffin's health and power. A normal human would have 1000 HP and MP, but Griffin had come up with formulas that defied physics and the rules of nature. Aegis had transformed his ideas into reality.
However, Dagon had burst his bubble. The Gehennian warrior humbled all the superhuman capabilities the advanced AI bestowed upon him. At the moment, things looked bad for Griffin.
Being supersmart, he had a plan. However, for it to actually work, he needed to distract Dagon and bide time. There were three powerful equations that Griffin hadn't introduced to Aegis yet. They would make him all-powerful.
[Loading Equations: 1/3…..26%]
"Don't just stand there, dying, Griffin! Give me the key to Aegis! Surrender God Formula to me!"
The scientist shrugged nonchalantly. "The key? There is no key, Dagon! Aegis is just my garage project. Go back to your wretched boiling planet and play with salamanders or something!"
Dagon buried his sword in the ground and narrowed his reptilian eyes. Everything about the Gehennian warrior was reptilian, from his skin tone and voice to his regeneration abilities and superhuman strength and agility. He was seven feet tall and clad in black dragon-scale armor.
'He's looking down on me,' Griffin surmised. 'What a proud prick! But as long as he's not trying to kill me, it is a relief. I can process the god formula equations by then.'
"Is that so, mortal?" Dagon asked, grinding his crocodilian teeth. "It was a garage project? In the middle of nowhere in Teleflat? Is this the time for jokes?"
The two were sparring on the equator of Teleflat, the last planet of the Rusus-Afel star system. The dry earth on which they stood was intermittently cracked and broken. It had seen seventeen long years of summer.
Teleflat was a desolate planet. It had anomalous weather. Now, it was dry. When monsoon showers arrive, they turn into torrential rains. It would pour incessantly for years. Giving rise to an apocalyptic flood.
The torrid oceans would rise, and the seas would fill to the brim. The planet would become a perfect sphere of blue.
Then, after many years, light would break through the clouds one day, and a sun-kissed sky would greet the flooded land. Rusus and Afel would shine bright, bringing insolation for seventeen years. This cycle of flood and desert never ended.
Dagon was livid at Griffin's smugness and arrogance. He was a Prince, and the mortal before him was not being cooperative. Did he think an AI could really make him God? That a mere human could transcend divinity?
***
"There is a key, and I know of it, Griffin. The key to what you call the God Formula! The unholy equations you used to build machines and play with the rules of nature!"
Griffin was originally from the planet Galateaa. Once word got out that he had invented Aegis, a technology that could make ordinary humans superstrong and give them access to magical arts and mana, it was a media circus.
Humans were smart and contributed to the advancement of civilization. However, brute strength and mystical magic were realms that belonged to the other races—cyborgs and mages, respectively. Griffin's invention leveled the playing field and, in fact, changed the game itself.
Augmented reality, virtual reality, robotics, cyborg technology, and magical arts were already in use. Aegis could defeat them all without breaking a sweat. The governments of all six habitable planets—Gehenna, Galateaa, Golbad, Tellurian, Tagat, and Teleflat reached out to him to join them.
Aegis not only enabled magic but also boosted existing abilities exponentially. That is, cyborgs and mages could also exponentially increase their power. This would shift the interplanetary locus of authority depending on who monopolized it.
The offers of lavish gifts, political power, and top government positions poured in for Griffin. He rejected them all. These governments were greedy and malicious. Every planet wanted to subjugate the others. He built Aegis to establish universal peace.
Then came the threats. The ruling Covenant government of Galatea attempted to intimidate and threaten him into submission. Hounded by officials, the mafia, and terrorists, Griffin fled from his home planet.
The thirty-year-old scientist went into exile in space. After a year of travel, he reached Teleflat and prepared to build an artificial submarine settlement. He could hide from bounty hunters and raiders under the adverse weather conditions of the planet.
Back to the present, it was only a few days before the monsoons began and brought in the planetary flood. Griffin could have lived in his submarine home throughout the seventeen years undetected. Unfortunately, his pursuers arrived before Teleflat's maelstroms could cloak him from detection.
"Answer me, Griffin!" Dagon roared, snapping him back into reality. "Answer me or I'll behead you where you stand!"
The scientist sighed. "I have destroyed all my research, Dagon! There is nothing to give! Besides, the ability to see God Formula is genetic. Not everyone can understand or write the equations."
Griffin was not entirely lying. He had indeed disposed of most of his chronicles and literature. All he intended to leave behind was some rudimentary knowledge. However, the scientist was being untruthful about the key.
Aegis was the progenitor of all God Formula powers. It was technology that rivaled God himself. However, the AI needed a vessel—the chosen one.
The chosen one. A human with 100% genetic affinity to God Formula. He could literally see the equations that the creator of the universe had weaved and replicate them.
Unfortunately, Griffin himself wasn't the chosen one. In fact, his God Formula Affinity was weak. That's why he wasn't able to tap Aegis and unlock its true potential. That's why a Gehennian warrior like Dagon could easily defeat him.
Prince Dagon was beyond furious. He had not traveled over three hundred million miles in space to be dismissed with childish excuses. "Do you take me for a fool? If there is nothing to give, then how did your unholy AI build adamantine armor and let you perform magical attacks? You're just a human!"
The Gehennian warrior pointed at his weapon, half-buried in the soil. "My Zweihander is known as a god-killer. It should have cleaved your body into two with the very first strike! You have survived a dozen attacks! How do you explain that?"
Griffin went silent, not because he lacked answers. He was the only one who knew how to write and execute the God Formula. He was prepared to die with that knowledge.
A chilly breeze blew from the north. Clouds approached from the same direction, heralding an oncoming storm. "Imbecile!" Dagon roared. "You choose silence? You shame your miserable race of dirt-eating humans! A weakling like you shouldn't wield powers like Aegis!"
"Even with your unholy gadgets, you are still pathetic—a worm wriggling in the mud. Since you won't give up Aegis to me, I will have to take it by force from your corpse. We can resume our fight. You can show me how powerful your God is!"
If it were any other adversary, Griffin would have breezed through the battles—cyborgs, mages, tellurian monsters, and so on. Aegis technology was far more advanced. Moreover, the adamantine armor was unbreakable.
Dagon, however, posed an unsolvable problem. He was a rakshasa—a race born and bred on Gehenna, the innermost planet of the Rusus-Afel star system.
Gehenna had the harshest environment among all habitable planets, with temperatures averaging over the boiling point of water. On the other hand, the atmosphere had twice the regular oxygen levels.
The Gehenna inhabitants had mutated and evolved over millennia under those hellish conditions, adapting to the hostile weather and habitat. The end result was the mighty rakshasa race.
Dagon was one of the crown princes of Gehenna. He was a black rakshasa, a fully evolved pure-blood of their race, and thus rarest of the rare. His powers, vitality, and long life made him and his kin appear like immortals.
Once fully evolved, black rakshasas lived for over a thousand years. Disease and aging were rendered ineffective as long as they had a supply of dark mana erupting from the mantle of Gehenna.
If any species were to be called gods, they were the black rakshasas.
However, Dagon was a youngling, only 320 years old, equivalent to the teenage years among humans.
Dagon gestured condescendingly at Griffin. "Answer this question and depending on what you say, I will decide whether to give you a slow or quick death…"