Chapter 438: Starting Point

Translator: imperfectluck  Editor: Pranav

As the dragons circled in the skies above us, the very land trembled and howling gales whirled about. All of Dragon World’s connections to the mortal plane had just been severed.

However, I didn’t pay too much attention to the dragons in the sky. That was because the dragons were nothing more than a small problem compared to the enemies and troubles we were going to face in the future.

“Small problem? Of course they’re only a small problem. If we antagonized the dragons yesterday, perhaps they’d be a mega problem, with all of us directly being killed or chased out by the dragons. But today the situation is different.”

Kamiltias, the leader of the nine Devil Lords, was one of the strongest existences of the Chaos Faction. He was on par with any Main God, and he had now descended in Dragon World with his true body, the body he hadn’t used in the past tens of thousands of years.

With a friendly smile, he acted like a polite middle-aged gentleman as he placed his right hand on his hat and greeted the dragons in the sky while waving with his left. However, not a single dragon dared to land on the ground.

Out of the nine Devil Lords, three of them had power levels equivalent to that of Main Gods. And two of the four Devil Lords on our side were Main God-level existences. Although the other one, the Lord of Despair, was currently elsewhere on another task, just the Lord of Lies alone was more than enough to stifle the dragons.

The Order Faction had a total of seven Main God-level existences, which included someone as unreliable as Ayer, a “neutral” faction God. Meanwhile, the Chaos Faction had a grand total of thirteen Main God level existences… well, if you added Karwenz, then that number was fourteen.

That’s right. What everyone saw was that the Devil King before them was an equal-level existence to Death God Ayer. This also meant that he was incomprehensibly strong, just like the God of Holy Light, the Demon Prince and Elf Main God Anslo. Since some dragons recognized the Devil Lord before them for who he really was, they naturally didn’t dare to come down.

Any Main God-level existence would be capable of changing dimensional rules and natural laws with their will alone. It would be impossible to calculate just how truly strong such an existence was. While it was probable that the dragons also had existences capable of rivaling Main Gods in their species, I doubted that they had any here in Dragon World. Otherwise, they would have long come out to deal with the Titans.

The Dimensional Door leading to Hell’s Abyss hadn’t yet been closed. Countless devils continuously walked out of the portal. Some were tall and stocky, while others appeared short and skinny. Each individual devil had obviously different physical characteristics, something incomprehensible as devils were a species with standardized power levels and species.

Devils would all evolve through fixed stages, from Tiny Devil to Warrior Inferno Devil and all the way to Devil Thane. Their power levels were just like the progression of job classes. This was their most obvious difference from the demons, which evolved in chaotic fashions.

But it was easy to understand why this was if you thought about their background.

“The People of Tall Mountain?”

In ancient history books, the People of Tall Mountain was the first ever human tribe in existence. Their average height was more than two meters, and they were all muscular and highly skilled at fighting. In that ancient ice aeon generation, they were capable of hunting down powerful immemorial magic beasts while wearing nothing but light beastskin furs.

Current barbarian tribes loved to claim that they were the descendants of the People of Tall Mountain. But to my knowledge that was nothing more than unsubstantiated boasting. Apart from the People of Tall Mountain who became fallen and transformed into devils, every other human from the first generation had gone extinct, killed off by the Gods’ retribution and judgment. The Order Faction would never be kind to traitors.

All these strange and unique-looking devils before me had to be more members of the very first generation of humans from the immemorial generation. That was the only possibility that could explain why these devils didn’t adhere to the devils’ typical physical, species and abilities. These devils had existed prior to the establishment of the devils’ system of evolution.

And everyone knew that anything with the tag of immemorial, great immemorial and so on would become ridiculous no matter what it was. This uncountable number of devils were all immemorial devils that had experienced innumerable Holy Wars. Just calculating it slightly felt truly fearsome. The fact that the Devil Lords were able to preserve so many immemorial devils throughout so many Holy Wars was some of the best evidence that Devil Lords never truly fought with their full strength, that they were selfish and wanted to preserve as much power as possible. No wonder the Chaos Abyss favored demons. The bloodthirsty and violent demons made for excellent cannon fodder that would easily attack any target; even the slightest spark would set them off.

Of course, taking such a great risk in summoning the devils to this plane was because of my promise to Ayer, and even more because we indeed needed more combat strength right now.

No schemes in the world could be kept secret forever. The True Gods and Main Gods were no idiots. They would soon notice that something was wrong with the situation and take action. I predicted that it was quite possible for the Gods to attack us before Dragon World managed to completely become severed off from the mortal plane. If the Gods attacked us, these immemorial devils would act in their first battle as the defenders of the new Hell.

Currently, these ancient devils didn’t show any signs of slacking off or excitement as they trod upon these wide plains which resembled the environment of ancient times. Most of the devils were fully equipped with weapons, but the ones that appeared unarmed were actually more dangerous. After they arrived, they looked all around them with tense expressions, appearing somewhat doubtful of their surroundings. They then glanced vigilantly at the dragons in the sky but didn’t attack.

“You understand how it is. One more person knowing means an increased chance of the plan leaking. The only orders that my devils have received is that we’re going to attack a unique plane, but not a single devil will be allowed to attack on their own until I give the command.”

I nodded when I heard this. I suddenly felt like the Lord of Lies was somewhat easier to approach now because we were indeed the same type of person.

“Of course I understand. I’m the same…”

That’s right. Out of all my subordinates and allies, the only one who knew the entirety of my plan was Harloys, who, as my magical pet, had a soul connection with me—it was impossible to hide anything from her. I only told Estrada and Orloss a tiny portion in the letters I sent to them, and even if they died they wouldn’t leak anything important. In fact, I was even worried that Elisa would leak something to the Chaos Abyss, which was why I told her absolutely nothing. If it wasn’t for her demanding to have something to do, I would have just left her in the Chaos Abyss—oh, I think I understand why she was so angry with me.

Cough, getting back on topic, I made so many preparations while I was in the Northlands so that Reyne and Glina would be capable of acting independently without me. I also gave both of them plenty of powerful backup support and improved the situation in the Northlands for them the best I could while also forming the Mist Alliance. This was all so that they would be able to deal with the ever more severe situation even without my presence.

Although I was now in a remote dimension, it was impossible to know what would happen in the future. If news about what I planned here leaked somehow, it was highly likely that existences would take revenge upon the Northlands.

If my grand scheme succeeded, it would take at least several years before I would be able to return to the mortal plane. By then, the Holy War would be at its peak. The two Northlands Queens absolutely had to be capable of handling things by themselves. And if my grand scheme failed, Reyne and Glina would bear an even heavier burden.

This was why I had made so many preparations regarding the Northlands. That was our base. Even if my grand scheme succeeded, I couldn’t allow anything to happen to the Northlands.

“Reyne and Glina will probably be angry if they learn about what I planned.”

“Glina will be alright. The way you tried to stuff her with as much information as possible near the end of the time you spent with her was almost as if you were preparing for your own death. She definitely has her guesses at what might be happening. As for Reyne? She’ll be angry. From start to finish, she probably didn’t have a clue what her ‘Brother Roland’ was scheming.”

That’s right. I didn’t mention a single word of my scheme to the Northlands Queens. I at least hinted somewhat to Glina, telling her “Everything will be up to the two of you. Reyne is too rash, so please watch over her.” As for Reyne, I was afraid to tell her even a single word, afraid that Karwenz would be able to guess something from my words. My younger brother’s wild instincts were quite headache-inducing for me sometimes, after all.

“I suppose I am indeed being terrible to Reyne with this.”

Thinking back on things now, I had always considered the fact that Karwenz was watching through Reyne. I intentionally kept her away from any secret or important matters and even occasionally lied to her on purpose to mislead Karwenz. Luckily, I was dealing with the oblivious Reyne. If she was someone as perceptive as Elisa, I would probably end up with an endless amount of trouble.

“…I feel like her glare on my back has become even icier. I forgot that she also has incredible instincts, especially regarding whenever I’m talking bad about her.”

“Be a little more serious here—a fight is about to start.”

“Ha! I already said that the dragons are only a small problem. There won’t be a fight… at least for the time being.”

The dragons were no fools. The devil army on the ground had astonishing combat potential, and the devils’ leader was a Main God-level existence. Not only that, their magical contract with me regarding my permission to summon reinforcements here was glowing. While they discovered that I had scammed them, they still held some hope that perhaps I had only scammed them about who I intended to summon and that these reinforcements were still useable.

And so at least until they confirmed that there were unnegotiable clashes of personal benefits, they wouldn’t be starting a fight.

“Finally… the winds have changed.”

I felt like exclaiming at the situation. When I first arrived in Dragon World, the dragons had treated me as an unnecessary existence. And frankly, for quite a long period of time, the dragons had always treated us as unimportant outsiders.

Originally, only the dragons and Titans were “fighting” over this world. The dragons treated us as some minor outside assistance that wasn’t really necessary. Looking at Dragon City’s standpoint, there was really nothing wrong with that as this was a world where power meant everything. But for our final goal this was something that couldn’t be because, from the very start, our goal had been this world.

It would be difficult for me to explain the entirety of my plan. But in a way, when I had first thought of my grand scheme, I only had a simple outline. After I brought in my first goal, I had to take everything step by step with all the industrial requirements and design plans necessary to achieve it. However, one thing was absolutely necessary—foundational materials.

“Creating everything from scratch and modifying something that exists already are completely different. The first is far more difficult than the second. Dragon World is a place we absolutely must obtain. Since its very structure is unstable, Dragon World will become the best source of dimensional shards, creating the foundational materials necessary to create our version of Hell.”

This currently collapsing world would make for the best foundational material and blueprint out of which we could create our Hell. And our next goal was to use this world as the foundational material to slowly realize each step of our plan to create a brand-new world.

Here, I probably need to explain from the beginning and discuss the foundational method to create a world.

Back in my original world, eastern Buddhist philosophers believed that the four major elements of earth, water, fire and wind were the four basic elements all living creatures and nonliving things were constructed out of. The astonishing part was that in western civilization’s ancient Greece, another of humanity’s earliest civilizations, which had no connections to the east at the time, also believed in the four elements of earth, water, fire and wind.

There were indeed reasons for this astonishing similarity. These civilizations used the ancient philosophy of idealism [1] to observe the world and arrive at such a result. The ancients of my previous world attempted to categorize existence and find each creature or thing’s foundational nature and infer its basic element as a way of understanding the nature of the world.

Although observing by the philosophy of idealism had now been proved to be low-effectiveness and wrong in my original world, the philosophy of idealism just happened to work here in Eich. In this world, magic, which wasn’t scientific even in the slightest, existed. Willpower and souls were both forms of concrete strength. Stubborn ways of thinking were even capable of creating Soul Worlds, another utterly unscientific concept.

The day I became a Legend, my System had given me “free knowledge,” and it was the nutrition I needed most. It was more precious than any treasure. I couldn’t even comprehend just where my System had obtained this knowledge.

“Experience regarding the foundational workings of how to create a world? The very first version of the Seal of the First Elements? Everything returning to… the starting point?”

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