NOVPUBAh, the age-old moral dilemma.
Born into this world full of pain, suffering, and difficulty, the human race had to deal with all sorts of hardships and struggles on a daily basis. However, like any sapient species, the human race was full of limitless arrogance and decided that despite all these problems, they would add one more on top.
That problem was the moral dilemma.
An illusionary and imaginary scenario with a single choice or set of choices that one must make, with outcomes that come at the cost of something else.
Even within the field of moral dilemma, there were different grades of them. At the first and lowest grade was the general moral dilemma, which involved general morality or choices that would indirectly affect you, like the famous train dilemma.
That one had the weakest consequences because they were just a bunch of strangers, and you were basically choosing whether to kill one or kill five. It was troubling, but not enough to haunt your sleep.
Then the second grade was personal morality dilemmas like the famous drowning dilemma. Your mother, your wife, and your daughter are drowning but you can only save one. Who do you choose?
This one had direct personal consequences and involved people you cared about at all levels of your life, so it was usually not so easy to give an answer.
Above that were the pinnacle of moral dilemmas: the unacceptable dilemmas. These were situations where the dilemma was the choices themselves, not the scenario. Usually in moral dilemmas, you wanted to make one or more choices rather than abstain, but these ones had choices where you'd rather shoot yourself.
The most famous of them was the modern penetration dilemma. You are stuck between your mother to the front and your father to the back, and due to some psychotic position, your father is one inch inside you and you are one inch inside your mother.
Do you go forward and enter your mother to escape your father, or do you go backward and let your father enter you to escape your mother?
Clearly, a very wretched scenario no one wanted to even consider.
Right now, Krios was thrust into the third level of dilemma straight up as Draco's blade slashed down towards him!
Either he removed his time stop and quickly fled backward to avoid the blow, but if he did so, the beams of Destruction Energy Draco fired would catch his family off guard due to the fact that it was fired in stopped time, piercing their bodies and likely killing them in the same manner that Themis died.
Or, he stayed in stopped time and let Draco slash his head off, likely dying in the process, but he would have to gamble that his mother could save everyone else if he used his last-ditch effort to warn her about the attack and hold Draco down as he was killed.
This was a terrible choice for Krios to make, and his face changed endlessly in a short span of time!
From hesitation to fear, to shame, then regret, then hatred, anger, and then despair.
He seemed to become a spectrum of the emotional range a sapient creature was allowed to feel, the richness in development of a being with a mind. For creatures that fed on emotions like Draco, Krios was like a 5-star Michelin restaurant gourmet meal at this time, especially given his own power.
However, every second the primordial hesitated, it was another second that Draco's destruction beam sped up as it ate more of the stopped time, while the blade Draco swung was coming down upon him.
In the end, Krios made his choice.
With gritted teeth, his eyes released a beam of light that encapsulated the bodies of his 3 remaining siblings, condensed from the totality of his power and his energy. This choice caused stopped time to come to an end as everything resumed.
ZWHISH!
The group of primordials who surrounded Draco with menacing expressions were dumbfounded when they saw piercing beams of Destruction Energy targeting their vitals, aiming to break through their defenses in one hit and disable them for good.
Feeling the threat of death yet having to watch the Destruction Beams reach so close, there was no way for them to react in time. Their very souls trembled as they felt that this would be the end for them, but in that moment, a shield made up of very familiar essence and energy appeared before each of them.
The destruction beams clashed with these shields and made them spark, but the condensed energy was actually able to hold off the pure beam of destruction for a few seconds before breaking through, consuming about 50% of its strength.
This naturally gave the three primordials time to muster up defenses and resist the rest of the beam, dispersing its power with some difficulty, but surviving unscathed in the end!
"Hahaha! Good job, Brother Krios! That cretin invader must have used some trick to ambush us, but your timely assist saved the day!" Iapetus laughed jovially, feeling as if he had been reborn from death.
However, when he did not hear his brother respond, he glanced over to see that, to his shock and horror, Draco was standing beside the beheaded corpse of Krios with an expression of amusement.
Krios had an expression of peaceful acceptance, knowing that he had made the right choice and even bought time for his beloved family members.
However, seeing his corpse, the other primordials were filled with grief and horror, not understanding what was happening—but given the powers they knew their brother had, they could make educated guesses.
That realization seemed to fill them with even more anguish and pain.
"No! Krios!! How dare you, vile beast!!" Iapetus roared with pain, his eyes bloodshot to the roots.
Meanwhile, Draco was smiling, picking up Krios' severed head which was more than twice his size and lifting it up with ease.
"Tsk, tsk, self-sacrifice? For one's family no less? Forgive me, Krios, I did not know your game. You are a real man, there's no doubt about that."
Despite saying this, Draco squeezed his hand and crushed Krios' head into fragments that spread out, none staining the young man himself.
"Yeah, that's great and all, but who asked you to be my enemy? Now, after killing you, I feel kinda bad and I hate feeling bad."
Draco took a step and disappeared from his spot, alarming the remaining primordials into casting their maximum defenses while alertly looking around for where the attack would come from.
TCHK!
Despite being on guard, Coeus could only scream out as he felt endless pain in his core, looking at his chest which had been pierced from the back by a sword coated with Destruction Energy.
"So as punishment for making me feel bad, Krios, I am going to continue killing the family you tried so hard to protect." Draco continued insidiously as he pulled out his sword and kicked Coeus down to the ground lazily, causing the primordial to crash into the ground like a meteor.
Coeus coughed weakly and rose to his knees, glancing down at his chest which still had the hole from the stab, with copious amounts of black miasma—which was Destruction Energy—lingering within and trying to destroy his life force, which he had to channel every ounce of his allotted Origin Energy to resist.
Seeing this, Iapetus was shocked and charged over to assist, but was blocked by Draco.
"Tsk, tsk, no interruptions, my guy. Your turn will come soon after I tease your mother for a bit in gloating."
Being stopped by Draco, Iapetus naturally did not dare go forward and resist this killing god who had broken the status quo that had lasted thousands of years in mere minutes. Rather, he could only clench his large fist tightly, the force within causing space itself to crack slightly due to his great strength.
"You won't get away with this, invader!" Iapetus roared in sorrow and indignation, not willing to believe the amount of losses they had taken so far due to just one man!
Draco waved his hand with disinterest.
"I can and I will. Now Gaia dear, how does it feel to see your own children die before you one by one like this, unable to even let out a fart since you were disabled by me?"
Draco wagged his eyebrows at Gaia provocatively as he teased her about her dead children, to which the Earth Goddess could only stare with abject hatred beyond reason. However, even more than that, there was endless fear in her heart toward Draco.
Because even now, mere minutes since the first attack he did on her, she still could not regenerate her arm! It was as if the Origin Energy and Origin Law she controlled had been permanently severed from that point, as if she had always been like this!
Part of the reason why her children couldn't even defend themselves properly was because she couldn't split her attention to provide them more Origin Energy or delegate some of her Origin Law to help them!
Without it, they weren't even Semi-Origin Gods, being Pseudo-Origin Gods at best. Of course Draco, who even back then in his shameless form could fight 30 Origin Gods head-on and survive, could easily kill them one by one because the power gap was there—not to mention that this was the true him who relied on skillfulness!
From the beginning, when he disabled Gaia, these primordial children never stood a chance against him!
"What, cat got your tongue? Or are you amazed by my prowess? Sorry, but it's too late to change your mind and take me up on my offer because I have no intention of getting anywhere near your rotten genitals." Draco joked rudely as he pinched his nose.
Before Gaia could erupt in a rage, Draco's face changed as he smacked his fist into his palm, like he had a 'eureka' moment.
"Hey, I have a great idea! You just lost a bunch of kids and need new ones, right? So why not make more?"
Draco pointed a finger at Gaia. "Bend over and let Iapetus and this freak here have a round each. That way, you can replenish your numbers real fast and create more retards for me to kill to pass the time. What a win-win solution!"
These words seemed to be the last straw as Iapetus blew up, his roar causing the world to shake greatly.
"How dare you, how dare you?! Wretched human scum, die for me!!"
Knowing the power of his foe, Iapetus held nothing back as he unleashed a barrage of punches that contained all of his condensed energy and willpower. Were these blows to land on the planet, it was likely that chunks of the earth could be punched into outer space and reduced to space dust that floated through the universe for eons.
Even Shuangtian, who was wrestling with Eva, paused to look over, surprised that there was a being that could muster this much force. As the one who was foremost an expert in the field of physical strength, she could tell that this blow had broken through a certain plateau and reached a new height, probably because of the pressure Draco put on Iapetus.
Draco was not a strength build, but more of an agility build mixed with wisdom. Against a blow like this, if Shuangtian were not here to receive it for him, it was likely that he would either have to avoid it or find some way to disperse it.
Yet to the surprise of all, Draco simply poked a finger over at Iapetus' fists, blocking each of his myriad blows with that one digit like it was nothing, a simple smile on his face the entire time that was filled with mocking.
Forget Iapetus—even Eva and Shuangtian couldn't understand how Draco was achieving this.
Even if this edgelord fellow was stronger than any other form of Draco, he couldn't be this outrageous, right?!
