Chapter 250: The Ancestors

Vaelor slowly regained consciousness and began inspecting his surroundings with curiosity.

He was no longer in the City of Light or in his original world, but in an entirely different and desolate world.

Beneath him lay a complete and dark void, whose destination and end he did not know, and preferred not to know.

Vaelor was floating in that void, and he felt as though he stood on a soft yet solid floor, but at the same time he saw nothing but darkness beneath him.

While below there were no limits and no way of knowing where this bottomless abyss led, above there was a thick, blood-red cloud, through which hardly any ray of light seeped, and the place was barely lit by a faint, gloomy red light.

And in the middle of this vast place stood five towering statues, made of ancient gray stone. Each one of them seemed alive and aware of what was happening around it. They stood unmoving in their places, unshaken. The abyss feared swallowing them, and the light seeping through the bloody clouds feared coming near them!

Vaelor knew them well, every one of those five statues.

Their names had been engraved deeply and forcefully within his bloodline. And their names were among the first things Vaelor had learned from the bloodline’s memories.

On the right side stood a statue of a giant, majestic and awe-inspiring, with a calm and deep gaze, looking at everything around him as though it were meaningless... as though everything were bare and exposed before him, as though everything were stripped of all excess and additions, as though nothing was worthy of his attention.

Vaelor stood looking at that statue with complicated eyes. He knew it well, better than the rest of the statues.

This was the First Tree of Abyss, the ancestor of all the Abyss Trees... the Great Valckar!

And beside Ancestor Valckar on the right side stood another statue, but not of a monster or a tree, but of a human!

A muscular human with six arms, two thick horns above his head, sharp fangs in his mouth, and deadly claws on his six arms.

In his general appearance he resembled that boy who had faced Ricky the Phoenix, the Abyss Demon Solar Zarith.

And this was expected, for this was the ancestor of the Abyss Demon race... Zarith the Tyrant!

Moving to the far left, there was a statue in the form of an extremely handsome human, with ten large wings. Each wing was longer than the statue itself.

This was the ancestor of the Abyss Wings race... Cyrus the Dominator!

And beside Ancestor Cyrus stood a statue of a man with extremely prominent muscles, every muscle on his body appearing as though it had been carved with precision and care.

It seemed that this statue was not realistic, but that its maker had exaggerated the carving of the muscles, as if he had made this statue to be an embodiment of the meaning of strength and brutality. But even this majestic statue did not do the real figure justice.

This was the form of the race known as the largest and strongest human race in terms of physical strength... the Abyss Giants — the Thanus.

And this was the ancestor of that race... Rigar the Savage!

Four races and four ancestors...

The Great Valckar, ancestor of the Abyss Trees.

Zarith the Tyrant, ancestor of the Abyss Demons.

Cyrus the Dominator, ancestor of the Abyss Wings.

Rigar the Savage, ancestor of the Abyss Giants.

Four great entities who stood at the peak of the First Era two hundred and fifty million years ago, but now no one knows where they went... and most likely they turned to dust!

Life and death, creation and annihilation, existence and nonexistence. No one escapes this cycle.

Vaelor stood looking at those creatures who had once dominated the universe, pondering where his own end would lead, and where his destiny was heading. For these were entities that had once imposed their existence on the entire universe, but today they were most likely beneath the dust, surrendering against their will to the river of time that sweeps everyone away without mercy or pity for anyone.

Vaelor did not dwell on these needless thoughts at the present time, and he looked toward the fifth and final statue, which stood in the middle of those four statues.

It was merely a statue of an ordinary human with long hair, showing no racial mutation, just a pure human with no features appearing on his face, as though whoever carved this statue had forgotten to carve its features.

But despite the simplicity of this statue, there was a strange feeling that everyone who looked at it felt. A feeling that made whoever looked at the statues’ area think that the four Ancestors were mere amateurs or children standing beside an ancient and immense entity.

Vaelor knew him as he knew the rest of the Ancestors, and he feared him more than the other four Ancestors. More than anything else, in fact!

He did not know much about him, except that this entity was the one who led the First Era, and the one who established the first of the five Courts, the Abyssal Court.

This person was the first and only ruler of the Abyss... the Ancestor of the Abyss!

"System," Vaelor tried to summon the System, but unexpectedly, no one answered him!

....

"System? Status screen? Display data?" Vaelor tried again several times in several different ways, but no one answered him!

"Hehehehehe, it seems your authority doesn’t extend to this place in the end." Vaelor laughed with real happiness, knowing that the System was not omnipotent, and that there were things even the System could not interfere in.

This place was the third place where the System could not interfere.

The first place was the Veil World, and the third place was the world where Vaelor’s consciousness had been imprisoned while Rios controlled the body, and the third place was this place... the World of the Ancestors!

Some might think that the System’s inability to interfere in these worlds is a bad thing, on the grounds that it might help them if they fell into a predicament, and Vaelor had believed this too.

But the news that the System could not interfere in a few things was great news for someone like Vaelor, who did not want anyone to control his destiny or treat him like a puppet.

He had been exploiting the System to the greatest extent possible to gain the greatest benefit, but if there was a chance to be free of it, he would not mind... on the contrary, he would be extremely happy!