Chapter 237: Avatar of the Gods

"I'm not actually going to die, am I?"

Sinuoli looked at the highly corrosive liquid flowing by, its concentration so high it was volatilizing and emitting faint wisps of smoke, and he couldn't help but gasp. His Valaya Ritual had just been used to grant the entire army immunity to poison and was still on cooldown.

Just at this desperate juncture, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that he had gained an extra skill point; the successive battles and the slaying of the giant beast had finally leveled him up to level six.

"May the Ancestor Gods protect us!"

The young Dwarf muttered, this time with rare sincerity. He added the point to his ultimate skill—Avatar of the Gods—and then released it immediately.

Sinuoli had simulated the precautions for releasing it countless times in his mind; he did not forget to shake off the gloves and rings on his hands, so as not to crush them or damage these two precious, exquisite treasures.

A wondrous energy covered every corner of his body. Sinuoli's consciousness returned to reality, and he slowly raised his hands, stretching and clenching them. The palms that had been covered in calluses from forging and fighting had now turned to stone.

Sinuoli then clenched his fists tight; he felt his Strength Rune had increased significantly. But now was not the time for testing; he needed to get out as quickly as possible.

"Hammer, come!"

With a flick of his hand, he retrieved his one-handed Warhammer. Having a point of reference, Sinuoli clearly felt that his body had also grown much larger; the weapon, which had been custom-made and perfectly sized, was now two sizes too small. He almost gripped the entire handle, and it felt rather awkward to wield.

"Pfft!"

"Snap!"

Sinuoli was wreaking havoc inside the Empress Spider's mouth, much like Sun Wukong inside the monster's belly. His stone body granted him higher resistance, and the deadly venom only gave him a slight tingling sensation.

"Crack! Crack!"

Finally, with the help of the frantic attacks from his kin outside, Sinuoli saw a beam of light.

"Open for me!"

Sinuoli gripped the hole with both hands and pulled hard to the sides.

"Whoosh!"

He subconsciously wanted to take a breath of fresh air, but then realized that the stone body brought about by his Avatar of the Gods did not require air.

"This..."

"The Ancestor Gods are above!"

"Mother Goddess, is this the grace of the Mother Goddess?"

"Has Master Sinuoli turned into a statue?"

"Legend has it that over on the side of the black-skinned, pointy-eared ones, there is a monster called a Blood-Skull Medusa; staring into their eyes turns people to stone. Could it be, could it be..."

"Impossible! Master Sinuoli is protected by the Ancestor Gods themselves! Besides, there was no such thing on that Black Ark at the time!"

"What if, I mean what if, it was the Mother Goddess's gift that delayed the curse until now..."

Sinuoli lowered his head, admiring the effects brought by his ultimate skill. His kin around him erupted into unprecedented discussion as they looked at his appearance. Except for the giant spider, which was the primary target, the other spiders and Greenskins took the opportunity to flee without a trace.

"What a pity there's no mirror!"

Sinuoli heard the various noises in his ears, shook his head, and muttered a sentence, then voluntarily deactivated the Avatar of the Gods state, returning to his flesh-and-blood body.

"You, what was that?"

Henlide was worthy of being a warrior capable of slaying a Dragon; he was the boldest. The other kin and Humans were dumbfounded as they watched a tall stone statue suddenly turn back into a living Dwarf, but he was the first to approach.

"Oh, it's nothing, just the care of the Ancestor Gods!" Sinuoli smiled slightly. He decided to remain mysterious for now, leaving some room for his kin to imagine and fill in the blanks.

This skill was originally called Avatar, originating from Sanskrit, meaning "incarnation or manifestation." In Sanskrit, the word for incarnation carries the meaning of "descending" or "reincarnating" from a higher realm through careful deliberation and for a special purpose, hence it is also translated as Avatar of the Gods.

Sinuoli hadn't decided what to call it, but there was no rush. As the only Chosen One, he held the final right of interpretation; as long as the White Dwarf didn't pop out to contradict him, no one could question him even if he called a Chaos Mutation a blessing from the Ancestors.

"Fellows, we have won! Clean up the battlefield, and then we shall go take a look inside the fortress!"

Sinuoli called out loudly. His subordinates seemed to wake from a dream and began to clean the battlefield, tend to the wounded, and burn the enemies' corpses.

Sinuoli walked back to the most important trophy of this battle—the corpse of the Arachnarok Empress Spider. This giant spider was covered in wounds—scratches left by sharp weapons, indentations from blunt force, and craters of various sizes.

But the fatal wounds were mainly in two places: one was a charred, large hole on the edge of the abdomen that went from the inside out, and the other was the large hole in the cephalothorax, which was where Sinuoli had crawled out.

He slowly climbed onto the corpse and arrived before that Shenkan. From afar on the giant spider's back, this thing didn't look big, but in reality, its size was not much different from a Dwarf.

"The style of this spider, I'm afraid it carved it out slowly over these years itself!" Stroking the Shenkan, Sinuoli knew that the material of this thing was quite extraordinary; otherwise, it couldn't have been used to carry divine power.

The Demigod spider's body was too massive, and its Strength was sufficient, but in contrast, its divine power was not abundant. If it were stored inside the body like a humanoid creature to amplify itself, it would undoubtedly be a drop in the bucket; it was better to store it outside to reduce the loss during release.

However, with the death of the Empress Spider, the divine power had dissipated along with it, and now this Shenkan was just a piece of high-quality material imbued with Divinity. Sinuoli sighed and prepared to climb down when he suddenly keenly sensed another trace of Divinity.

"That's not right!" He muttered, closing his eyes and slowly tracing that faint sensation. Sinuoli followed the feeling to the lower abdomen of the Empress Spider.

"Smash it open! Never mind, I'll do it myself!"

After giving the order, Sinuoli thought about it and decided to do it himself. He took Henlide's ancestral Battle Axe and hacked away for a long time before chiseling into a pre-existing gap in the spider armor.

"What is this?" He dug for a long time and pulled out a crystal-clear, stone-like object; this was the source of that trace of Divinity.

"This power, it seems, it seems to be maternity? No, that's not right, it's reproduction!" Sinuoli gripped the crystal, slowly savoring it. He vaguely felt that this had a slight connection to the Mother Goddess Valaya's Authority he had seen when he first transmigrated.

"Good heavens, this spider was truly formidable!" After he figured it out, he couldn't help but blurt it out. It wasn't enough that the spider beneath his feet had condensed a Spider God Godhood on its own; upon realizing that this path had no future—a god whose main believers weren't even considered intelligent beings was destined to be a laughingstock—

It decided to take a broader path. Combining it with its own innate talent, it wanted to become the God of Reproduction! Reproduction is a process that almost all living things must undergo; one could say its vision was truly grand.