Translator: Marctempest
Editor: Rynfinity
Chapter 210
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"The end is near. Tremble in fear, all of you!"
A deep voice echoed as a Talos confidently appeared.
A creature over 8 meters tall, resembling a muscular ogre.
It had red skin with black spikes protruding from various parts of its body and large horns near its ears that reminded one of a buffalo.
At the tip of its lizard-like tail, four spikes jutted out—a unique Talos among its kind.
This creature was special even among the Talos.
A monster powerful enough to possess a second name in the chaotic and death-filled underground world.
It was a warlord commanding thousands of high-ranking Talos and tens of thousands of mid-level Talos.
Seeing the approaching human forces from the front, it burst into mad laughter.
"Kuhahahah! Delicious souls are rolling in!"
Even if a Master-class opponent appeared, the terrifying Talos would have been a daunting adversary.
It arrogantly called itself a "Lord," ruling over the outskirts of the underground world, despite the existence of the Underlord at the pinnacle of the underground.
That's why it shouted.
"Fine! Before you die, I shall tell you the name of the one who will claim your lives! I am the great demon and the Lord of Terror, Dia...!"
However,
Before it could finish speaking,
"Hiyah!"
Elise, with a cute shout, struck it with the giant fiery hand.
*Boom!*
*Fwoosh!*
"Graaaaaaah!"
The creature screamed and burned away within the holy flame of destruction.
Thus, the self-proclaimed "Great Demon" and "Lord of Terror" met its end in vain.
"Don't stop! Keep advancing! Follow Lady Elise, the Saintess of the Sacred Fire!"
"Long live the Saintess of the Sacred Fire!"
"Waaaaaaah!"
*Rumble rumble rumble!*
The horses carrying the death squad charged fiercely.
The prowess Elise displayed to the advancing death squad could only be described in these words:
Overwhelming, transcendent, mythical!
*Swoosh!*
When the giant arm of sacred fire that Elise created swung once,
*Fwoosh!*
"Graaah!"
"Spare me!"
The golden flames swept through, incinerating the Talos.
"Take this! Hyah! Hiyah!"
Every time Elise, riding on Choco's back, playfully waved her hand in the air,
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
The giant arm slapped the Talos horde, swept the ground, and smashed it with its fist.
The high-ranking Talos, who had survived in a world full of chaos and death and rarely felt fear, were now terrified.
"That... that's not human!"
"We must flee!"
Too late, they attempted to escape.
But no matter how fast they ran or flew, they were all within Elise's grasp.
*Rumble rumble rumble rumble.*
The fiery hand crushed them.
"Graaah!"
The fleeing high-ranking Talos screamed as they burned.
"Oh! Sacred Fire's Priestess!"
"The incarnation of the Sacred Fire Lord has descended upon this land!"
"Praise the Sacred Fire Lord's incarnation!"
The monks and priests of the Sacred Fire Order wept with tears of gratitude, overwhelmed by the divine power Elise displayed, and praised the Sacred Fire Lord they believed in.
Even the knights and mages who had no specific deity to worship were awestruck.
If the Western Continent Alliance emerged victorious, this day would mark the beginning of a massive conversion to the Sacred Fire Order, ushering in its golden age, but that would only be the story if they won the war.
The object of their praise, the Sacred Fire Lord, had a lukewarm reaction.
- The Sacred Fire Lord scoffs, saying that the giant hand of fire is no more than a child's palm compared to the Flame Sutra of old.
Aden almost cursed out loud at that message.
...Crazy, that’s considered weak?
Then what in the world did the Sacred Fire Lord do a thousand years ago?
He could find the answer in the tales of Fenrir, the Sacred Fire Lord's servant.
- When my previous master clashed with the Fallen Lords, the surrounding rivers and lakes dried up, and everything up to the horizon turned into a sea of fire, burning for at least three days and nights. Not a single corrupted being could survive.
‘...Why does that person seem more evil than the Talos?’
He started to understand why the "Will of the World" restricted gods from interfering in the mortal realm.
The power that gods held was overwhelming and dangerous.
Even with the help of ancient heroes possessing similar strength as the Sacred Fire Lord, it was a struggle to defeat the Demon God.
Aden narrowed his eyes.
‘I must do whatever it takes to prevent Kalsis from becoming a full-fledged Demon God.’
He renewed his resolve.
Meanwhile, the Alliance, with Elise at the forefront, surged forward like a storm.
*Shssss.*
At some point, the sacred fire forming the giant hand dispersed.
"Phew! I'm exhausted!"
"Woof!"
Elise, utterly drained, collapsed onto Choco's back.
No matter how vast her holy power was, there was always a limit.
She had consumed so much holy power that she could no longer maintain the Flame Sutra.
But Elise had already done more than enough.
She had defeated the horde of high-ranking Talos.
"The royal castle is in sight!"
Finally, the death squad broke through the latter half of Immortalitum and reached the front of the royal castle.
The ruined capital and the royal castle shrouded in dark clouds.
However, the castle they saw was not what they originally knew.
*Sssss.*
Black thorny vines slithered like snakes.
Thousands upon thousands of jet-black thorny vines intertwined, wrapping around the castle to the point where its original form was unrecognizable.
It was a fortress.
A fortress made of black thorny vines.
"The Black Thorn Fortress..."
In his previous life, it was the symbol of the calamity known as the Great Talos War, the castle of the Underlord.
That castle had now appeared before the present Aden and the death squad.
‘Everything has gone as expected so far.’
The lower Talos were dealt with by the combined assault of the mage corps and the knight regiment, the mid-level ones by the Muscleless fellows and the power of the Three Great Orders, and the high-ranking ones by Elise.
Having defeated the Talos horde, the remaining obstacles were obvious.
*Fwoosh!*
A wall of fire, tens of meters high, suddenly appeared before the advancing Alliance forces, blocking their path.
"Everyone, stop!"
"Damn it, what is that!"
Fenrir and Choco halted their sprint.
The death squad hastily reined in their horses and stopped advancing.
The fiercely burning crimson-black wall of fire was different from the Sacred Fire Elise produced.
It was an artificial hellfire woven from magic.
"Fire Wall! And such a gigantic one at that!"
"That color of mana... could it be!"
The mage corps was astonished.
Aden sneered as he stared at the wall of fire.
"Of course, I knew you would show up."
*Fwoosh!* Beyond the burning wall, someone stepped out.
"So you've crawled all the way here."
A woman with red hair and red eyes, dressed in a white mage's robe.
"But I cannot allow you to come any closer. A very important ritual is being conducted right now."
The Archmage Shaura had appeared.
But she wasn’t alone.
*Fwoosh!* As the wall of fire died down, a group clad in white robes also emerged.
"Those robes...!"
"The mages of the Central Magic Tower!"
The traitors of humanity, who had conspired with Chaos to bring about this calamity, had shamelessly revealed themselves before the Alliance forces.
Shaura spotted the mage corps within the Alliance.
"There are many familiar faces here. Ah, Mage Hendrickson, too? It's nice to see you."
"Mage Shaura!"
Mage Hendrickson fumed.
"How could you! What reason do you have to commit such heinous acts? How can you so easily abandon the pride of a mage!"
The mages of the mage corps gritted their teeth in particular fury at the sight of the Central Magic Tower mages.
The actions of the Central Magic Tower had caused the Tower Nation of Anguis to fall into disgrace.
Yet despite their outcry, Shaura and the other Central Magic Tower mages remained unmoved.
In fact, Shaura shook her head as if she felt sorry for the scolding Hendrickson.
"It’s because I am a mage that I made this choice. That you still don’t understand that shows how foolish you are. That’s why you couldn’t join us."
"...What nonsense are you spouting?"
"Mage Hendrickson, despite being a high-ranking mage who reached the 7th rank, you were forcibly assigned to one of the four auxiliary towers that only deals with 6th rank magic."
The reason was simple.
Hendrickson’s integrity was too uncompromising.
He clashed with the Central Magic Tower’s leadership every time they tried to conduct human experiments involving slaves.
He also opposed the arrogant conduct of other mages when it went too far, earning their enmity.
"A mage is someone with the noble purpose of pursuing the truth of mana. To grasp the truth, one should not be concerned with methods or means."
They believed that they were the chosen, superior race, meant to pursue the truth.
But ordinary people were different.
"Yet you expect us to be mindful of the whims of insignificant surplus humans, who have no mana in their bodies and live like beasts without even questioning why they were born or why they live? Haha! There’s nothing more ridiculous than that!"
Indeed.
That was the elitist mindset held by Shaura and many high-ranking mages.
They did not see non-mages as people, only differentiating between those who were useful and those who were not.
"Even so, if the world is destroyed, what’s the point?"
"No, the world won’t be destroyed. Just many things will ‘change.’"
When the fragment of the Demon God fully awakened as the Demon God and merged with the underground world to engulf the surface, it would become the absolute "god" of this world.
Not some false gods like the Three Great Gods, but a truly omnipotent god who could even manipulate death.
And everything in this world, except for those chosen few who had already allied with it, would become its puppets and part of it.
They would become the servants who enjoyed eternal life under that god.
"A human’s lifespan is far too short to pursue the truth. Wouldn’t you need an immortal life at the very least to reach the truth?"
A chill ran down the spines of the Alliance forces at Shaura's nonchalant words.
And everyone thought the same thing.
They absolutely had to stop them.
Hendrickson's beard quivered with anger.
"You’re mad... All of you are insane!"
"I don’t expect you to understand, Mage Hendrickson."
Her red eyes curved into a mocking half-moon.
"Because all of you will die here anyway."
She unleashed the power she had tightly sealed.
*Rumble!*
Simultaneously, an overwhelming wave of mana surged from her.
The mana was so dense that the very space seemed to distort.
"Graaaah!"
The Alliance forces groaned under the pressure.
"What in the world...!"
Even the Border Count Tiried, a Sword Master, was crushed by the sheer pressure.
It was a level of power difference that even a Master struggled to withstand.
Aden realized what she had done.
"...So you’ve reached the 9th rank."
The pinnacle that a human could reach.
The transcendent realm.
Shaura had reached that demigod level known as the 9th-rank mage, a Grandmaster in terms of mana martial arts.
The realm that all mages dreamed of.
"Did you use the Philosopher’s Stone again? Well, you did sacrifice the entire capital as an offering, so the stone must have rotted away."
"That’s right, Aden Remes. After the humiliation you put me through, I realized I needed greater power."
She shrugged her shoulders as she spoke.
"Why do you think no mages have reached the transcendent realm in the past thousand years since ancient times? It’s because of the limitations inherent in magic."
Magic was a power taught to humans by dragons, degraded to suit them.
Because of this, it could not break through the limitations of lower-level techniques and could not handle the divine domains of time, space, and creation.
But the Philosopher’s Stone allowed them to break those limitations.
"Thanks to that, now I can do this."
She raised the staff in her hand.
Then she uttered an incantation.
- Fall, the remnant of the primordial that wanders the void.
That was all.
The mages behind Shaura quickly took action.
*Zing!*
They gathered their mana and formed a barrier of dozens of layers to shield themselves.
- ...Master.
Fenrir called out to Aden in a stiff voice.
- Look at the sky.
At those words, Aden looked up.
Then he saw it.
*Riiiiip.*
A black hole opened up in the sky right above the death squad...
*Rumble rumble rumble rumble!*
A meteor was plummeting toward them at breakneck speed.
Shaura smiled slightly.
"So, how do you plan to survive this time, Aden Remes?"
---
Shaura could never forget how Aden had outwitted her.
So, she had gone to great lengths, even at some risk, to cast the 9th-rank spell, Meteor, intending to utterly crush him with overwhelming power.
‘I was a little surprised by that unexpected variable, the Sacred Fire Saintess summoning a giant hand of flame...’
Fortunately, the Saintess had exhausted herself by overexerting her power.
They now had no means to stop the falling meteor.
‘Now, what expression will you make?’
Shaura watched Aden with anticipation.
Then, she was taken aback.
The expression on his face was not at all what she had expected.
‘Is he... laughing?’
The corners of Aden’s mouth were curled up.
The meaning behind that smile was easy to read.
It was a blatant sneer.
Seeing Shaura's agitation, Aden's smile deepened.
He spoke.
"I’m not going to do anything."
Then, as if to add,
"Because I have a 'guest' for you."
The words Shaura had once said to Aden in the Great Forest.
Aden returned them to her, just as they were.
In that moment,
*Click.*
The sound of a door opening came from somewhere.
"Kuhahahahaha!"
Along with the mad laughter of a lunatic.