[Vol. 8] Chapter 237: The Three Sides
Maybe just now, she had unknowingly triggered some kind of important mechanism, like opening Pandora’s box. But even so, what happened might have been something that was bound to happen sooner or later, the only difference was when.
The proof was this. Even though the intense shaking of space had stopped, Violet could still faintly feel that something in the air had changed.
“Let’s leave this place and return to Saint Laos City first.”
“?”
Even someone as calm as the Sword Saint couldn’t help but be surprised by this. He had thought that Violet, being one of the top holy spellcasters in the world and even someone who held power in the realm of gods, combined with her naturally curious personality, would choose to stay, heal Aldrich, and investigate what had just happened.
But instead, she chose to retreat without hesitation.
“We’re leaving now? Shouldn’t we at least...”
Before Bevis could finish expressing his hesitation, his brows suddenly furrowed and he quickly turned his head, as if he had sensed something.
Violet noticed it too. Without hesitation, she raised her hand and waved lightly.
“Hmph, those people reacted faster than I thought. We shouldn’t stay in a dangerous place for long. Let’s go!”
“Whoosh, whoosh!”
A mysterious wave of temporal energy spread out, and the four of them vanished like mist from the ruined hall. Only a moment later, strong presences from all directions rushed in, each with their own powerful auras!
Divine senses clashed. These powerful beings who came tracking the strange energy all sensed each other’s presence. But no one tried to communicate. Silently, they all started searching, scanning the area with overlapping beams of light and strong divine energy, which made the very air inside the hall glow with colorful waves.
However, they had arrived too late. None of them found their target. One after another, they disappeared again, leaving behind only the quiet and ancient tomb hall. Just like it had been for thousands of years.
Until—
A flash of silver light broke the silence once again.
“You damn monster, dieeeeee!!! … Huh?”
The shouting and the silver light faded away, revealing more than a dozen people with weapons, many of them injured and looking confused. One of them was even mid-charge, almost slicing the head off the person next to him by accident.
“What the hell? Why did the place suddenly change? Did we step into another trap?”
“Wait, no—doesn’t this place look familiar to you, bro?”
From their clothes and gear, they looked like adventurers or mercenaries who had been exploring the ruins. Judging by their confused expressions, they clearly had no idea what had just happened to them.
And they weren’t the only ones.
Before they could figure things out, beams of light kept flashing across the hall, teleporting in more and more people who had been exploring inside the ruins. The crowd grew rapidly, almost filling the entire chamber.
“What’s going on!?”
Finally, someone with sharp eyes noticed something important and shouted,
“Hey, look! The stairs behind the statue… they’re gone!”
…………………………………………
Outside the world, in a place completely different from the Origin Realm.
On the ground, countless black, alien-like shadows moved around busily like worker ants, carrying materials and adding bricks. It looked like they were preparing for some huge project.
At the center of it all, several towering structures reached toward the sky. Though they were only 70–80% complete, their general shape could already be seen.
They were Gates. Huge ones, so massive that even a starship from a sci-fi story could probably pass through them. The Teleportation Gates used by the Azure Sky Kingdom to travel between floating islands were already considered gigantic. But next to these towering structures, they looked like toys.
With gates like these, transporting all the creatures of an entire world wouldn’t be impossible.
The triangle-shaped gates were wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Floating above each gate was a massive, semi-transparent light-blue jellyfish-like creature, each over a thousand meters long. They looked like strange hats worn by some enormous being, and their tentacles were connected neatly to the gates, as if they were injecting some kind of power into them, performing a mysterious transformation whose purpose was still unknown.
Above the land covered with countless alien creatures, there was a body so huge and grand that it nearly blocked out the sky. It floated silently above all living things, like a glowing nebula in the sky.
It was a massive jellyfish, thousands of meters long, shining with a star-like light all over its body, the ruler of this world.
Then, at one moment, three streaks of light came flying down from the sky and changed into three different majestic beings, each just as awe-inspiring as the giant jellyfish. A powerful pressure spread out from them, shaking the heavens and earth. The alien creatures below were overwhelmed, falling to the ground and trembling uncontrollably. The entire scene turned chaotic.
Only a few jellyfish that were thousands of meters long reacted a bit better to the pressure, but even they became nervous. Their tentacles squirmed more anxiously, clearly showing they were affected too.
[Hmph.]
A cold snort echoed. Ripples of energy spread out from the giant jellyfish in the sky, quickly reaching every corner of this world. The alien creatures that were frozen in fear finally returned to normal, acting as if the three huge beings in the sky didn’t exist, and went back to their work.
Then, a deep voice came out along with the ripples. It was hard to guess the speaker’s true feelings.
[You three again, causing trouble as soon as you arrive. It’s been over a thousand years since we last met, and now you want to fight each other before the real plan even begins? There’s still time before the agreed date. What are you here for now?]
After hearing this voice, one of the three giant figures answered. It looked the ugliest, like a huge ball of flesh, with eight unevenly placed eyes on the front. It replied in a muffled, grumbling voice.
[Void Spirit, are you pretending not to know? Among us, you have the highest mental power. That strange energy just now was too obvious. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice it at all. Why didn’t you react?]
At the same time, another giant figure spoke up. It looked like a giant bound by heavy chains. Just looking at it made people feel like time had stopped. Its voice was deep and emotionless, as steady as a machine.
[Void Spirit, it seems the Origin is waking up. Its presence is spreading in that old world, and the barrier is weakening. But something doesn’t match our plan, the timing is off. This is strange. You are the main one in charge of the plan, so we came to ask what you think.]
The giant jellyfish didn’t speak right away. Light representing mental power flowed around its body like a current.
Its attention then turned to the third being, the one who had remained silent. This being had four legs and two arms, two horns on its head, a large mouth like a beast on its lower body, and a human-like upper body. But unlike the others, this half-human, half-lizard creature looked somewhat transparent, like it wasn’t real. It looked more like… a soul.
[Destruction, why have you come in this form? Where is your real body?]
The giant creature was silent for a while, then answered with a voice like thunder.
[It’s gone, either destroyed or stuck somewhere.]
Hearing this, the Void Spirit, the huge ball of flesh, and the chain-bound giant all froze for a moment.
[You are the Lord of Destruction. Your strength can crush worlds, your body is nearly unbreakable. If you’re stuck, maybe that’s believable, but what could possibly destroy your body?]
The creature didn’t reply, only shook its head. After a long pause, it said,
[A change is happening. The seventh sequence has already collapsed. I can’t help with this operation anymore. If not for a small trace of the Origin’s power helping me, I wouldn’t even have been able to send this little part of my will here.]
Sensing that the Lord of Destruction wasn’t joking, the other three beings fell silent, each deep in thought.
After a long pause, the giant flesh ball spoke again in its grumbling tone.
[Now that you mention it, the world Void Spirit gave you back then really was tricky. There were only two guardians, but both had high-level laws and were strong enemies. Their strength wasn’t much weaker than ours. Void Spirit, could it be you made a mistake in the plan?]
Hearing this, the giant jellyfish snorted coldly and immediately replied with a stern voice.
[Corruption, stop using your tiny brain, if you can still find it inside all that meat, to doubt my work. I gave each Lord a world that best matched their power, where they could grow followers. There’s no mistake in my arrangements.]
[Although both of those two administrators were at the level of a main god, one of them had already died due to the unexpected awakening of that thing. The other one, although possessing powers that seemed to counter destruction, was still at a disadvantage. At such a high level, power can break through finesse. The chance of winning the battle was more than 70%, and even if they lost, the opponent couldn’t destroy the physical body of Destruction. So this event must have had an unexpected twist.]
At this point, the three Lords all turned their "gaze" toward the somewhat blurry consciousness of the Lord of Destruction, as if waiting for its response.
But it just fell silent again for a moment and then shook its head.
[It’s Her, and yet it’s not Her. This existence is too chaotic and too complex, I don’t fully understand either. I only know Her name is Violet... You all must be very careful. It seems a new force has joined this war between us and that thing.]
[Let’s not talk about that for now. Void Lord, about the sudden and early appearance of the Origin Aura in that world, you still haven’t given us a clear answer. Have you noticed anything strange?]
The Lord of the Void quietly absorbed the information from his companions. After a while, he finally spoke again.
[Yes. Recently, my mental power has been watching over that world continuously. Although there was interference from a barrier, I locked onto the Origin Aura the moment it appeared.]
[Something about this is strange. That aura seems to have appeared suddenly due to some unknown cause. It wasn’t hidden at all. Not only did you all sense it, but even that administrator organization that’s always gone against us for thousands of years noticed it. Some powerful gods who appeared recently in the Origin Realm also sensed it.]
[I could feel at least four or five auras at that time that were as strong as Lords. That’s very abnormal, so it must have been an accident.]
The enormous, bizarre-looking World Sustainers, whose bodies blocked out the sky, looked at each other. They all seemed a little worried.
[Even so, how could the Origin be triggered outside the plan? Will this affect the real—]
The Lord of the Void moved his countless tentacles, releasing a powerful wave of mental energy that cut off the concerns of the blood-and-flesh sphere.
[Don’t ask why, or whether it’s possible. Fixing the world is no easy task. What we need to do is understand the reason behind this and clear away all possible obstacles. That’s the reason the World Sustainers exist, isn’t it?]
[Corruption, you’ll go first this time. The plan stays the same.]
[Heh, in that case, I won’t hold back!]
………………………………………
In the vast void, a divine throne quietly floated above the holy temple. A girl leaned against it, resting her chin in her hand, silently staring into the distance.
“……”
Her shining silver hair floated behind her despite the lack of wind, casting a vast glow like a galaxy. Rings of beautiful divine halos rippled behind her. Her silver eyes, filled with divine power, were completely emotionless, as if she fully embodied the meaning of “god.”
“It has finally begun.”
She murmured, but the words she spoke were not in the noble divine language known as Gunir, the language of the gods.
As if disturbed by the ripples in her voice, a crack suddenly opened in the empty space around her, and a figure slowly walked out. This figure naturally continued her sentence:
“Isn’t this the moment we’ve been waiting for all along? After so many hardships, we’ve finally made it to this point. Though there have been a lot of unexpected changes and it’s still too early to say we’ve succeeded, at least now we have hope. So why do you, the one who started all this, look so troubled?”
The newcomer was also a girl. Her long hair was dark red like blood, and her slender body was wrapped in a large and extremely complex cloak. Only half of her beautiful face and a pair of deep blood-red vertical pupils could be seen. But in this moment, not even a single trace of life energy could be felt from her, as if she wasn’t alive at all, but just an extremely realistic illusion.
The silver-haired girl didn’t seem surprised at her appearance. Her face, calm like a still lake and without any sign of “troubled” emotion, remained cold as she softly corrected her:
“Constance, I’m not the one who started it.”
“...?”
The True Ancestor of the Vampire Race was slightly stunned, then shook her head as if she suddenly understood something.
“But you’re the one actually carrying it out, the core of us, the most important key piece. That’s not wrong, right?”
“To be honest, the longer I’m with you, the more I admire that fox who made you devote yourself so completely, planning and working for thousands of years. For someone like you, so rational that even the gods would fear you, to risk everything for one person... It’s unbelievable.”