Be'lakor's exaggerated words and actions made him look like a clown, putting on a grand performance in front of Al. Al couldn't tell which sentences from the ancient first Daemon Prince were true and which were false—or if they were all lies.
The ridiculous behavior and words sounded like deliberate self-humiliation. It might have worked on Slaanesh's jester, but Al stayed alert and took several steps sideways before accelerating past him.
[No! Don't go!]
[Fa—ther!]
Be'lakor howled miserably, crawling on the ground and reaching out with a huge hand toward Al.
For a split second Al felt as if the other party had genuinely started treating him as Daddy.
Medieval Warhammer: Where's Daddy Going?
Too weird.
Al sprinted all the way. Finally, a faint light appeared ahead, slowly growing brighter.
[Father!]
Be'lakor crawled rapidly across the ground, chasing Al.
Because of its massive limbs, its crawling speed was almost as fast as Al's full sprint. The pitiful, begging expression from earlier had completely vanished from its face, replaced by a twisted, hatred-filled grimace.
[Mortal! That glory belongs to Be'lakor! Stop!]
A light appeared at the end.
Suddenly, a strong blue glow erupted in front of Al, completely blocking his vision.
Soon the intense light faded. A triangular emblem with a vertical eye standing in the center floated in the air, radiating brilliant light.
The Eye of the Triangle—the mark of the All-Knowing One among the New Four Gods.
Be'lakor, who had been chasing relentlessly, froze as if he had seen something terrifying. He stared at the Eye of the All-Knowing with nervous vigilance.
[No… you…]
It suddenly clutched its head and let out a pained wail.
[No! I don't know anything!]
[I didn't see anything!]
With a miserable roar, it turned into a mass of shadow and fled, disappearing.
Al's pursuer was gone. Ahead was the mark of the All-Knowing One.
"It's watching me."
Al thought.
He felt something wondrous flowing from that eye into his body:
Command, construction, politics;
Combat skills, magic, knowledge;
Countless knowledge from the mortal world—things that billions of heroes and sages could never fully master in their lifetimes—lay right before him!
Yet all of it was illusory. Those things he could almost touch only paused briefly in front of him before coldly sliding away, leaving Al deeply frustrated.
"Wait! Give it to me!"
The sense of loss clawed at his heart. He desperately reached out, trying to hold onto it.
[Come closer]
A calm, wise, and convincing female voice called out.
From it Al felt the third kind of great one's love he had encountered so far.
Different from the hot-tempered Bloodmother and the decadent Reveler, this emotion represented profound knowledge. It was as vast as the universe itself.
It convinced mortals and earned the worship of millions.
[Look at me]
The wise are never trapped, the knowledgeable are never confused—only the All-Knowing is supreme!
"Submit!"
Al's eyes grew hazy. His lips trembled as he spoke the word. The Eye of the All-Knowing suddenly blazed with light. Countless illusory pupils appeared, illuminating the endless darkness.
"Only the wise judge!"
He knelt before the Eye of the All-Knowing, head lowered, perfectly aligned with the eight-pointed star mark on the altar. His mind suddenly cleared again, and a pair of female bare feet appeared before him.
Emotion surged up. This time he didn't even need the Bloodmother's influence. They had agreed she wouldn't control him directly like this, yet here he was, forced to his knees.
He raised his head. The woman formed of blue light had a tall, slender figure. From inside out she radiated a cold, wise aura—the perfect example of an ice-queen big sister with ascetic charm. Looking at her face, all of Al's resentment and anger vanished as if doused with a bucket of cold water from head to toe.
Especially those eyes—wearing blue-light black-framed glasses. Behind the lenses, a pair of kaleidoscope eyes constantly shifted shapes and patterns, making anyone who looked inevitably sink into them.
The woman raised a finger and touched Al's forehead. Before he could open his mouth, a huge amount of information flooded into his brain.
It was information about this altar.
The words of accusation and surface stance reached his lips and were swallowed back. Al looked at the woman, then lowered his head to glance at the eight-pointed star beneath his feet.
"Mom!"
This person was Mommy!
The big sister the Bloodmother gave him, the charm-related buffs the Reveler gave him—only the All-Knowing One had given Al a real, genuine golden finger!
The information the All-Knowing One gave him told him that the altar itself wasn't important. What mattered was the mark contained within it—one of the few stable links the New Four Gods possessed to the mortal world, and one that could be moved at will.
After Chaos receded, the gods' interference in the mortal world became far more difficult. Except for a few special deities who could walk the mortal plane, great Chaos powers like the Four Gods could no longer toy with reality as easily as before.
For example, in the past, warriors who worshipped Khorne would often grow steel-like armor covering their entire bodies. Now only a very few powerful warriors could receive such a blessing after battles that pleased Khorne.
But the inner rules of this mark were unique. It was a two-way beacon. Through it, the gods could exert influence on the mortal world, but some rules even the Four Gods could not tamper with. This mark's rule was exactly that:
Exchange!
Whatever blessing the New Four Gods wanted to bestow on Al's side, Al's side had to first offer an equal sacrifice before the mark would open and allow the New Four Gods' power to enter the mortal world.
It sounded very familiar…
Yes! The basic principle of alchemy was equivalent exchange!
In short, this was like a gacha machine with fixed probability and fixed rewards. Al gathered the offerings, put them in, and the New Four Gods on the support side would grant blessings to the mortal side.
Simple and easy to understand. The only flaw was that it required charging beyond the offerings.
In the Realm of Chaos, the ever-present Winds of Chaos would accelerate the process, but in the mortal world, the only spellcaster Al had encountered so far was old Thar.
According to the All-Knowing One's knowledge, the mark currently had enough energy for five activations. After that, even with divine might, they could not control the chaotic Realm of Chaos and mortal rules.
But there was something even more important.
The system!
The kind that used mechanical or loli-girl voices to issue all kinds of weird missions like kicking widows' doors, digging up graves, stealing kids' lollipops, flipping up beautiful girls' skirts, and so on!
Changing rules, creating matter from nothing, forced implantation!
No need for the "scattering beans" step to create soldiers—just move a finger, add some deep-blue points, and bang, bang, spawn squads or whole companies of fully armed main-force troops in all kinds of barren, birdless wastelands. (Daily Martian soldiers)
There wasn't any.
Al knew most of the things in his head had probably already been copied and shared by the New Four Gods, so it wasn't surprising that the All-Knowing One's blessing was to create something resembling an external cheat from his old world.
No character templates, no quests, no shop, not even an inventory.
When Al closed his eyes, he could see a flat panel scattered with small dots, one of them especially bright.
He focused his mind on it. It enlarged, and the view changed.
Al saw a ferocious giant beast suddenly pounce toward him. Then a shadow crashed in from the right. His head hurt, and the connection broke.
"Was that just now… Alina?"
Al was a little uncertain. The most important function of the All-Knowing One's blessing right now was the small map he had just seen.
It could show the positions of all members within "Al's faction" range. For powerful individuals with close connections, he could share their vision—just like how the Bloodmother observed the mortal world through Al's eyes.
It was like a combination of campaign and strategy maps in a game, but with a much wider range, covering every character belonging to Al's faction.
There were also other blessing abilities, but they had little impact on Al's current situation.
He had a map!
He could micro-manage!
Archers move twenty meters left!
He could even skip the step of issuing verbal orders. As long as the commander's individual strength was strong enough and they had a close connection with Al in some sense, he could share their vision and transmit commands.
Take my Pingrong Wanquan Map into battle!
As Al thought about it, the excitement in his heart gradually cooled.
Troops… army… faction…
He seemed to have none.
Except for the rage-tainted beasts who could barely fight as warriors, the Chaos beastmen and chaos-tainted beasts were so disgusting that Al didn't even want to recruit them into his faction.
If Alina counted as a hero and the rage-tainted beasts as one unit each, the remaining beastmen couldn't even form two full companies.
They were a tribe that couldn't even be called a proper faction.
The kind that could be wiped out by any minor conflict in the world.
Facing cold reality, the excitement from the All-Knowing One's blessing calmed down. Al had to wake up from his self-delusion. He and Alina, one boy and one mare, hadn't even secured a basic stable and sustainable base yet.
Following the knowledge granted by the All-Knowing One, Al raised his hand to his mouth, gritted his teeth, and bit open several wounds. He pressed his palm onto the slowly rotating eight-pointed star.
"The wise are never trapped, the knowledgeable are never confused—only the All-Knowing is supreme!"
A complex incantation made of dozens of syllables that could produce hundreds of variations with slight rearrangements flowed smoothly from Al's mouth. The eight-pointed star mark suddenly stopped, then turned into something like a slime creature and wrapped around Al's left hand.
A powerful sucking sensation came from the wounds. Al felt dizzy and had to sit on the edge of the altar.
Soon the mud-like material detached from his hand. Al's palm was wrapped in a mass of blue light that kept seeping into his body until it finally disappeared into his palm.
A compass-like object appeared in the void world behind Al's closed eyes, right next to the map.
"Done."
Al clapped his hands, turned around. The pitch-black passage he had come through was still dark, but it no longer devoured all light and sound like before.
Maybe that had been Be'lakor's doing all along?
The appearance of the crazy first ascended being, the First Daemon Prince, put Al on guard. He feared that before he could grow strong enough, the Four Gods would notice him and simply crush him with one big move.
The information the All-Knowing One gave him only briefly mentioned that this Eternal No-Champion Daemon Prince had something wrong with his head, probably related to the Daughter of the All-Knowing.
Combined with how the other party had gone mad with fear and fled the moment he saw the Eye of the All-Knowing mark, Al felt that might indeed be the truth.