Chapter 537: The inferno troops are back

Translator: imperfectluck  Editor: Kurisu

By the way, it was said that for international situations, a long period of division would always result in unity, a long period of unity would always result in division, and a land that was peaceful for too long would eventually see the flames of war again…

Cough, cough, that was actually a phrase from my previous world, but it could definitely be applied here. There was no world out there that would be eternally peaceful. Intelligent creatures’ greed would be limitless. The balance between war and peace would always be an eternal cycle.

Right now was evidently a time of warfare. The mortal plane of Eich was currently in utter chaos with wars everywhere between all the countries. If you drew red dots on a map with all the battles taking place, the entire map would be covered in red. However, only those in the know knew that this was only the beginning.

Every war would always have an end. Someone would always emerge as the final victor. And, the most troublesome to deal with were still the demons from the Chaos Abyss.

Demons were no domain lords that simply wanted to conquer more territory. Ruling others or conquest weren’t ideas that interested demons whatsoever. Demons simply enjoyed the pure feeling of slaughter and then feasting on flesh and blood. With their typical personalities, if they won and had all the feasts they wanted, nothing would be left of the mortal plane apart from scorched earth.

If there absolutely had to be a final victor in this Holy War, it would be somewhat acceptable no matter which species won in the end as the end result would simply be a harder time for the other species. However, the demons winning in the end would be absolutely unacceptable, because that would mean the total annihilation of all other species.

And currently, all the Demon Lords were no longer under the control of the will of the Chaos Abyss, as Cynthia was now dead. It was possible that the Demon Lords wouldn’t even choose to return to the Chaos Abyss after the war was over. If the demons decided to stay and live in the mortal plane, that would be the equivalent of transforming the mortal plane into part of the Chaos Abyss itself. What would such a world end up being like?

The mortal plane would have nothing surviving apart from demons that constantly fought and slaughtered each other? Eich would become the largest demon gathering grounds among all the dimensions out there? The entire Cycle of Reincarnation would only serve to produce more demons in the future? The new world would be filled with an inferno army? This scene seemed so ‘beautiful’ and realistic that I didn’t even dare to think about it.

“Try to reason or negotiate with demons? That’s nothing more than a joke. The only solution is to negotiate with them through brute force.”

There was no need for me to describe anymore just how powerful and difficult to deal with those Demon Lords could be. The battle for Hell had been the equivalent of fighting in my home territory with my traps placed everywhere, and the Demon Lords even tried to sabotage each other as each had their own interests. But, in the end, I was only able to successfully slay a single Demon Lord, Ladvioka… And to be honest, it was still unknown if Ladvioka was truly dead or not. High-level Demon Lords were incredibly difficult to kill off for real.

Recently, I had heard that there were at least seven or eight Demon Lords using his name to raise forces in the lower planes. If I eliminated the demons trying to take advantage of Ladvioka’s fame to gain more influence for themselves, there would still definitely be a few Demon Lords with Ladvioka’s bloodline, and it would be quite normal for a Demon Lord to have some resurrection technique for reviving in a descendant’s body.

With the game’s history as a reference, there had been nearly two times the number of Main God level Demon Lords compared to the number of Order Main Gods. This was a tremendous difference in power level. Even though the situation was currently much better than in the game’s history, the reality was still that the enemy was far stronger than we were.

If I compared everything now to the game’s history, the Holy War’s progress had been sped up massively, yet everything that was destined to come had still come. Right now, we were still in the middle of the third act of the game, “The Undead Calamity.” Next up would obviously be the fourth act, “The Return of the Demons and Devils.”

“The demons will definitely come. That’s an absolute. Their innate bloodthirsty nature as denizens of the Chaos Abyss has determined that. And, the later they come, the greater of a threat they’ll be.”

Indeed. Even now, the demons hadn’t started a large-scale invasion as of yet. Apart from waiting for the Elemental Tide to increase even further, there were also other reasons.

Out of every battle currently taking place in the mortal plane, the “Eternal War” in San Antonio’s Amu Mountains was the one that caught my attention the most.

This wasn’t because it was the largest ongoing battle, but rather because the two sides at war were rather unique.

Seven years ago, the great demons in the Amu Mountains had made a large-scale sacrifice of the humans living there, successfully summoning a demon lord and demon army. The demons then sacrificed even more humans through slaughter and warfare, creating a Dimensional Door to the lower planes, making it so that the demons had endless reinforcements.

At the exact same time, a large number of low-level war angels had descended for the Holy Church. San Antonio then invited the angels to the frontline fortress holding back the demon invasion.

The Amu Mountains had now become one of the most famous meat grinders in the mortal plane. The demons and angels had warred there for a total of seven years already, and this battle also helped the Holy Church to recover some of its lost reputation.

But if I had to say, both sides seemed like they were only playing around.

Only the lowest level rank of Baron amongst the demon nobles could be seen on this battlefield. It was even said that the Demon Baron was the highest-level commander. The angels were nothing more than low-level cannon fodder. An eternal battle between angels and demons actually lacked the participation of higher-level strength on both sides? That was nothing more than a joke.

In fact, it was even said that the greatest sacrifices weren’t from the demons and angels, but rather from the great demons and the defending human army.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be a direct confrontation between the two major forces? Why is the scale so small?”

This seemed rather inconceivable, but if you thought about it, this result was only natural.

Seven years ago, both sides had indeed sent out their vanguard armies to the Amu Mountains, making it seem like the battle was about to escalate. But right as that happened, the battle of Hell changed the entire situation in the mortal plane. The end result of the battle of Hell was that the God of Holy Light gained a powerful competitor, and the Chaos Abyss lost their highest-level existence, Cynthia, the will of the Chaos Abyss. Both the Order and Chaos factions would have to redetermine their leadership.

As a result, the main reason why the demon armies hadn’t arrived in the mortal plane yet was thirty percent because of waiting for an excellent opportunity, and seventy percent because… the demons of the Chaos Abyss were fully at war with each other! They didn’t have the time or troops to spare to interfere with the mortal plane.

Elisa was still staying behind in the Chaos Abyss and giving me daily reports on the situation there. However, her updates were always about some Demon Baron killing some Demon Lord and successfully ranking up to Earl, or some Demon Lord vanquishing all other competition around him and establishing some demon empire consisting of some number of dimensions and declaring himself to be emperor, etc., etc.

Yep, the demon noble system that had been used for countless years already was now nothing more than a joke. Without Cynthia around to recognize and restrain the demons, the demons were now calling themselves king or emperor on a daily basis. The demons’ evolution was also becoming ever more chaotic, and their internal warfare no longer had any limits whatsoever.

Back when the will of the Chaos Abyss was the demons’ leader, the Demon Lords’ internal warfare during the Holy War would be forbidden from harming the demons’ foundational strength. And, any Demon Lord that Cynthia commanded to go to the mortal plane would absolutely have to obey. Only the Demon Main Gods would dare to obey on the surface but secretly do what they pleased. And now that the highest-ranking Goddess of Chaos was no longer around, all the Demon Lords now saw an opportunity for themselves and desired to take that ultimate step. They were all too busy devouring each other, so of course their internal bloodshed had no end.

This was a good thing as the death of each demon noble would require several hundred years to create another one. This was also a bad thing as a demon who devoured more than ten other demon lords would easily rank up into a new Demon Lord. And if several of the Demon Main Gods ended up dying in their internal war… demons were a species that would become stronger the more they fought, and grew stronger with each powerful creature they devoured. I didn’t even dare to imagine how strong the ultimate victor amongst the demons would be.

It was likely that fewer demons would end up invading Eich compared to the game’s history, but those demons would absolutely be far stronger than the ones from the game’s history. And, previous Holy Wars were comparatively limited in scale due to the Goddess of Chaos keeping the Chaos Main Gods somewhat in check. Typically, the Chaos Faction would only send out half of its total forces. But now, Chaos no longer had any limitations or restrictions. In this final Holy War of all, apart from the incredibly few who were truly neutral, it was likely that all the remaining living Chaos Main Gods would be invading the mortal plane.

Right now was just like the calm before a massive storm. Although things appeared calm on the surface, the upcoming future still didn’t seem optimistic.

As Barton’s adventuring team fought through the endless surrounding robots with the four spirit images’ assistance, almost about to reach the control room, Sky Tower Spirit S1 was in no way simply waiting for his death despite the unexpected loss of some of his fighting forces.

Within a summoning room that existed in between countless dimensional cracks, S1’s projection was currently communicating with a powerful existence from another dimension.

What Roland didn’t know or expect was that the Sky Tower Spirit had not only contacted the Undead Emperors from the Death Planes, for S1 had actually contacted the demons from the lower planes even before communicating with the undead. That was because the Haletdam generation had long since possessed plenty of research material regarding the demons. S1 had chosen the undead to cooperate with in the end because the demons had far too terrible of a reputation. It was quite common for demons to devour whomever summoned them after devouring the summoner’s enemy, so who would dare to summon demons?

But now, S1 was facing his impending doom, so the dangers of demon summoning were no longer an issue to him. He had no more reason to hesitate.

“Majestic existence from the Chaos Abyss, I agree to every single one of your conditions! I shall give you every single soul in the Sky Tower. Please, give me strength, give me support, and give me reinforcements! I don’t want to die! I still haven’t enjoyed a long enough life of having my own will and freedom! All I want is to live!”

S1, who seemed like the final boss not long ago, was now pleading like a total loser. And on the other end of the summoning portal, an arrogant existence was laughing wildly. He had been waiting for this moment for far too long.

This demon could sense that on the other end of the summoning portal, the soul wavelength of the individual he hated most was not far away. His chance at revenge had come far sooner than he expected.

“Roland! ROLAND!!! Hahaha, it seems that we’re truly fated to meet each other again! This time, I’ll definitely take a full thirty-six days and nights to slowly devour your soul!”

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