A heavy silence settled over Sunny's God space in the aftermath of the battle. The encounter with Edgar, the terrifying, immortal demon god, had changed everything.

The universe, which had once felt like a playground, now felt like a dark ocean of death.

'The multiverse isn't safe anymore,' Sunny thought, his mind replaying the agonizing loop of his own, repeated deaths.

He had won, yes. He had captured Edgar. But the victory felt… hollow. It had been a war of attrition that he had only survived through a combination of overpowered talents and a loophole in his own immortality.

What if the next demon god didn't have a finite energy source like Edgar? What if it was a demon lord like Deimos or Maledictus?

He needed a true safety net. He needed something that could confuse, trap, or even defy the Demon Lords themselves.

His gaze, and his consciousness, shifted. He looked into the Realm of Advancement, his newly acquired territory.

It was an untamed wilderness which was currently being tamed, it was also a treasure chest.

It was the place where the old Gods dumped around millions of their powerful artifacts.

The Iron of Sealing Dao, the very metal that now held Edgar in a cat-sized, powerless form, was just one of those treasures.

And there were, as Nexus's initial scans had confirmed, hundreds of millions more, scattered across the realm of advancement.

'Maybe,' Sunny thought, a greedy, and hopeful light entering his cosmic eyes, 'I'll be lucky enough to find a real trump card in there.'

He looked around his own God space. It was vast, but empty.

There was his throne. There was the subspace containing the newly time accelerated God-Maker realm, where his twelve clones were already beginning their centuries of accelerated training.

There was a subspace that kept his talent farm, The earth.

And there was the subspace that held the universe he created.

His God space did looked mysterious and cool, but it was a lonely one.

This was all about to change.

Just as he was contemplating his next move, a tear opened in the end of his God space.

From it, Nova emerged, her colossal, black dragon form a breathtaking sight of pure, draconic majesty.

But it was what she was carrying that made Sunny's heart skip a beat.

Her massive, scaled back was laden with countless boxes, containers, and magically-sealed chests.

Sunny's God's Eye instantly scanned and counted them. A million of them. Some were as small as a matchbox, radiating an intense, dangerous aura.

Others were the size of mountains, humming with a deep, dormant power.

These were the spoils of war. These were the SSS-Grade treasures. The relics of the old Gods.

The very things the Demon Lords had used to bait their traps. And Nexus, the heart of the realm, had, at his command, begun to harvest them all.

Sunny's two remaining clones, the ones tasked with managing his empire, immediately got to work.

Their task: to open, analyze, and meticulously catalog every single one of these million artifacts.

To find the weapons, the shields, the forgotten technologies, and the tools that would arm his new empire for the coming war.

A new structure, a divine treasury, will be created to store these artifacts. The architect would be a God from the Pantheon, a being known simply as "Builder."

His talent, allowed him to manifest any building from his thoughts. And now, thanks to Sunny's Divine Growth blessing, that talent was rapidly evolving, his creations becoming more grand, more intricate, their very walls humming with laws.

Sunny's original plan; to create a separate, isolated world for his Gods to socialize in, was now dead.

He had seen, in the battle with Edgar, the power of unity. The Gods would not be separated. They would be combined.

And he knew if he visitef this world created for the Gods, he would consume faith because of his higher hierarchy.

But his new plan was far grander. He would have Builder, Strategist, and the other great minds of the Pantheon design a new, singular, combined God space.

A celestial city. A place where all six billion Gods could build their own palaces, their own libraries, their own forges, all interconnected, all existing within the same, vast, shared reality, all under the ultimate protection of his God's Domain.

The Gods, when he proposed the idea, were ecstatic. They were tired of their lonely, isolated realms.

They craved community, connection. They immediately began to propose new features for this "Divine City."

Strategist: "Your majesty, we should implement a Contribution System, similar to the one for demigods. If a God's lifeforms discover a new law, or invent a new, world-changing technology, that God should be rewarded with merits, faith, or even new worlds. It would incentivize progress and innovation."

Zir: "Yes! And we need a voting system! A real one! A God can file a petition: like, say, a petition to have a duel with another God with wagering; and if 70% of us agree, it goes to the Emperor for final judgment! It would be the ultimate form of governance!"

Sunny watched the flood of ideas, a slow, proud smile on his face.

This was it. This was the true beginning. His Gods were no longer just subjects; they were citizens.

They were actively building their new civilization. They were not afraid of him. They were inspired by him.

They had seen him face Edgar. They had seen him, their Emperor, choose to die.

He could have forced them, the 6 billion Gods to take the blows. He could have sacrificed them, one by one, to protect himself.

It would have been the "logical" move, a simple expenditure of assets.

But he hadn't.

He had shielded them. He had put his own body, his own soul, between them and the enemy, thousands of times.

He had shown them, in a way no speech or decree ever could, that he was not their master. He was their protector.

This selfless and agonizing act had forged a bond of loyalty so absolute, that it dwarfed any contract.

They, the Gods of the Pantheon, and even the new, 500 million subordinate Gods, finally understood.

Their Emperor was not a tyrant. He was a shield. And they would, every single one of them, die for him.

Adam, watching this new, vibrant, hopeful civilization begin to take shape, a civilization of Gods united in purpose, felt a joy so profound it ached in his newly-restored chest.

He looked at the billions of eager, ambitious, growing souls, and he smiled.

He raised his hand, and a silent, invisible wave of energy, the very essence of the Law of Growth, washed over the entire Pantheon.

It was a subtle, secret gift from the firstborn, a blessing on this new era. The dream he had held onto for a million, lonely years was finally, finally, coming true.

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