Chapter 116: Another Eye - XI

Chapter 116: Another Eye - XI

[The Gaea System has received a Divine Branch from Hunter Aventine Tidea. (6/42)]

[You have gained an increase in <Growth>. Each level-up will grant you an additional +1 to all your attributes.]

[Happy Hunting!]

Looking at the gleaming screen, I inwardly nodded. Kuvie and Reazue were looking at me, wondering why I grabbed a stick and promptly ’stored’ it in my ring.

I could hear their thoughts.

"What?" I asked, "I like collecting cool sticks."

In response to my words, Reazue seemed to understand it in some way, but Kuvie was clearly baffled.

"Collecting... sticks?" She echoed my words, pondering for a moment as a bit of amusement tinged her voice. "Is there a criterion for the sticks you like? I can help you collect some interesting ones!"

Huh.

Was this a characteristic of Nature Mages? She was very much amused by the excuse I cooked up at random—something about an individual without Nature Affinity collecting something as mundane as sticks...

For some reason, she saw it as a great rarity that she had to treasure.

Thus...

I couldn’t help but wonder if Kuvie could sense the difference between a normal stick and a Divine Branch. This was something I hadn’t thought of.

Could the citizens of Fleim identify the Divine Branches that the Gaea System wanted? Or were these mysterious sticks indistinguishable from any other twig on the side of the road?

If [Absolute Awareness] always consumed my mana entirely whenever I encountered these Divine Branches, would others be able to sense something that I could not?

I doubted it... But there was still a chance that they could.

"Hm, well," I made it seem like I was deeply pondering the question when, in fact, I was tapping into the mana reserves of the <Wyrm With No Name>.

[Absolute Awareness] had spread out, penetrating the conceptual layers of the world, understanding what others understood and reading into the spaces between lines upon lines of subconscious thought.

Through the void of an uncountable number of minds, I parsed through the capabilities that an average Nature Mage had. What were their limits? Their uniquenesses?

Did they have special Magic Spells that could differentiate between regular sticks and the Divine Branches I desired? Or were they as helpless as me when it came to identifying its origin?

I soon stumbled upon an answer in the endless sea of information.

It was a very simple [Yes]. A yes that did not make sense at first, yet existed nonetheless as a result of a vague technicality.

The reason aside from the aforementioned currently eluded me, but I swiftly moved my senses even deeper into the waters of pure concept.

Mana continued to cause the <Wyrm With No Name’s> mana to drop, chunk, after chunk, after chunk.

In the meantime, I spoke to Kuvie, having confirmed that she could indeed help me with this task.

"The sticks I want are not necessarily due to their outward, tangible form. How do I say this...? There’s a certain indecipherability in the sticks I collect."

I touched the ruby ring on my finger.

"Like the one earlier—none of my appraisals could discern the truth of its existence and uniqueness. So, I want to bring it back to research."

I paused, belatedly remembering that the Gaea System had already retrieved the Divine Branch.

There was no way for me to retrieve it after the assimilation. It would be like trying to pry off every grain of salt from a large pot of stew.

Luckily...

"...Hm?"

Something invaded the region my senses covered, piercing into the Living City’s airspace and descending like a comet.

Judging by the weight of its existence, it had crossed the barrier barring A-Rankers from climbing higher. It was weaker than the <Wyrm With No Name>, but not by much. It seemed to be on par with <Bliekon the Manipulator>...

But its strength was rapidly declining.

Reazue had already noticed the oddity in my behavior, standing up and priming his nerves. Kuvie had swallowed her next words.

"Is there something wrong?" Reazue frowned. I could hear his blood flowing rapidly through his veins.

"Gron!"

I yelled out, summoning the winds to cover my immediate surroundings.

Kuvie bolted straight to my side, while Reazue grabbed Gron from his stall and dragged him out by force. A flurry of tools and stationery scattered through the air.

"Huh? What—? What’s happening?"

With a flap of his wings, Reazue rode the gust I summoned and appeared at my side in the blink of an eye.

Before Gron could ask any other questions, a dreadful aura descended upon us.

"Hiss—!"

Kuvie drew in a sharp breath. Reazue shuddered, his blood running cold.

As for Gron... he directly passed out. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

"Damned Dragon!"

I cursed, drawing upon the combined might of every <Trait> I could make use of.

[Power of the Sky] commanded a cocoon of winds to enshroud us.

[Power of the Sea] dyed the winds with the colors of a great typhoon.

Calamity and control formed at my slightest beckon, but something told me that it wasn’t enough.

[Perfect Estimate] gave me the values of the incoming impact, and I ran the numbers against my own strength.

"Brace yourselves, Reazue, Kuvie! Your strongest defenses!"

The direness in my tone forced them out of their stupor.

I added one more layer of protection.

The [Power of Death] permeated our surroundings, drowning us in deep darkness.

Those still-conscious beings of the myriad races beyond the cocoon were all responding to the sudden threat in their own ways.

Some put up defenses like us.

Others dissolved into the surroundings, hoping for the best.

Most ran.

But <Perfect Estimate> gave me an answer for their fates in the near future.

"None of them will survive."

As for us? With three A-Rank <Traits> raging to protect our frail bodies...

"Even my defenses are not enough."

At least, that was with my estimate of the impending impact’s destruction. If, during the impact itself, the forces were directed to our advantage... then we had a chance.

I looked at Kuvie and Reazue; blood seeped out of their eyes and noses. Feeling the similar streams of warmth on my face, I knew that I was facing the same problem.

"Hope for the best, you two. Today, a Dragon falls."

** *

The Prince of the Underworld felt a rare tremor shake his lair.

Magnetized by the deflating grandeur aboveground, the prince’s gaze pierced through layers upon layers of stone and basalt. The souls of his Underworld served as his eyes and ears.

Spying upon a calamity.

From their melting spirit bodies, he bore witness to the death of a Mortal God.

A Dragon’s pride had been shattered. His wings, torn and burned by a superior flame. Something greater had trampled upon its existence.

Thus, its grave became the Living City of Hispe. Millions upon millions of mortal lives were snuffed out in an instant, flooding down towards the Underworld, and arriving like half-melted candles.

From the scars on these souls, the Prince of the Underworld understood this Dragon’s misfortune.

Something—or more accurately, someone—had siphoned the Dragon’s status. Some souls had died merely from the shock of its aura, therefore giving the Prince an account of its quickly fading existence.

The Dragon had fallen in Rank as it fell from the sky. From the endless pursuit at SSS-Rank to the once-again limited depths of S-Rank at the moment of impact.

It was a direct result of its status and authority being usurped. A humiliation of its pride, most likely caused by a crushing defeat—

But who?

The Prince of the Underworld could amass a force that could wear down even those beings who never stopped pursuing power. He was certain that such a direct mode of violence was incredibly difficult.

"Was it a god?"

As the Prince tapped his pen onto the ivory desk, his gaze deepened with suspicion.

The question earlier returned to him:

"Which god could it be?"

Walvaskaz was an Empire that shunned the existence of Gods. Owned by the Primordial Dragon Empress, the wanton proliferation of any orthodox belief went against the Empire’s identity.

However, they were still permitted in small amounts—which meant that those deities could not settle within the Empire itself.

The Dragons would drive them away personally.

The Prince of the Underworld frowned.

’Could it have been a scuffle between fellow Dragons then?’

The Dragon’s soul had been annihilated, leaving nothing for the Prince to exploit and understand.

Of course, even if its soul still existed, he wouldn’t dare trample upon a Dragon’s pride in that manner.

Not yet.

And not in the near future.

For as long as a God of the Underworld existed, the Prince could not rise above his station and ascend.

Thus.

The blazing bonfire of his ambitions had been fanned. Looking at the corpse of something as powerful as those Gods, he felt a greater pressure on his shoulders.

The Prince’s gaze fell upon the skull on his desk. Its empty eye sockets were an abyss that stared back at him.

A wave of mana surged out from his body, pouring like a river that suddenly rushed out of his study.

"It seems like my plans cannot keep up with this change."

And to think that he even worried about his preparations just a little earlier...

"Rise, my ocean of all ye scorned souls."

Billions of Undead were thus awakened from their slumber.