Chapter 395: Guardian of the World (4)

Tesranach fell into deep contemplation. He had to understand what he had overlooked. With no clear answer, he continued heading into the Void, confronting Astra Shunaph again and again in search of an explanation.

And at last, he discovered it, the reason for his failure. Indeed, Astra Shunaph within the Void existed beyond the flow of time. But the direction in which its power gazed was fixed.

That death belongs to the past.

Karnak had traveled to the past before relinquishing his authority. He hadn't cast away his power and then gone back. He abandoned it after he had already reached the past. So of course, the Monarch of Death of the future, Tesranach, had no right to claim it.

I must make even the destined evils that Karnak wrought in the past mine.

But the history in which Tesranach reigned as Monarch of Death was only a manipulated timeline. It did not truly exist.

To resolve this, Tesranach had to become the only Monarch of Death who connected the past, present, and future. It was a contradiction. Tesranach the Monarch of Death had to exist in a time when he did not exist. How could that be possible?

"Yes, I must project the existence of Tesranach at a point in the past."

Could a Monarch of Death, bearing such power, truly traverse to the past? Yes. It was possible if he infused his soul directly with the power of death and undertook temporal regression.

There was precedent. Karnak had pulled Astra Shunaph itself into a past era and returned as the god of death. He had only avoided such situations to preserve his living body, not for lack of method.

Tesranach, on the other hand, had no attachment to his living flesh. He was willing to sacrifice himself as many times as needed. Once he anchored himself in the past as Monarch of Death and secured the qualifications, Astra Shunaph would follow his will. With that resolve, he imbued his soul with darkness and attempted regression once more.

"This time... I will save the world for certain!"

He failed again. But Karnak was not the cause this time. His failure was due to his past self, Grateria.

"O future me, what foolish tyranny is this?"

Unlike before, as soon as Tesranach attempted to regress, Grateria immediately noticed and blocked the descent. It was the natural course of action for the dragon emperor.

The one who had transformed into Tesranach was, without doubt, a Monarch of Death who sought to drown the world in death. He was an enemy of the world.

The overwhelming power of the world's guardian banished Tesranach to the far side of time. Yet he did not despair. He had already endured far too many failures and disappointments. All he did now was calmly assess the situation.

"I got caught before I could even insert the key."

So he had been cast out before he even opened the door. Still, once the key was in, even if the door was barred from the inside, he could force it open.

If he could just anchor himself in his past self, he could then forcibly seize control of body and soul.

The problem was how to deceive the dragon emperor's all-seeing gaze, his Dragon Eye of Insight, long enough to insert the key.

"First, I'll need to lay the groundwork."

A crooked smile curled across Tesranach's lips. Before he realized it, he was already thinking like the Monarch of Death.

***

Grateria of the past no longer saw Tesranach as his future self. The moment he appeared, he was identified as an enemy and rejected. Therefore, Tesranach could no longer act directly. So what should he do?

A tree is best hidden in the forest.

He needed the past world to be so steeped in death and darkness that even the Monarch of Death's passage would go unnoticed.

First, I must extinguish the faith of the seven goddesses.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. To kill faith, the most effective weapon was faith itself. With that in mind, he decided to send his subordinates into the past first.

Unlike Tesranach, who had to descend with the destiny of the Monarch of Death intact, his underlings could move as mere souls. That much would go unnoticed by even the Dragon Eye of Insight.

If they could establish a rival faith to oppose the Church of the Seven Goddesses, the world could be engulfed in darkness.

However, if I regress them instead of myself, who knows what might happen?

Sending half-measured souls was unlikely to yield reliable results. To be certain, he had to conduct his test using someone at least at the level of a martial king or an archmage.

In that sense, the shattered Martial King of Cyphras, Lapicel Crotium, was an ideal test subject. He forcibly stitched her torn soul back together, mending it into one again amidst unspeakable agony.

Grateria of the past would never have committed such cruelty. But Tesranach felt nothing wrong. He had abandoned far too much in pursuit of a single goal. The dragon emperor of old had already changed beyond recognition. "Go, soul of strength."

Amidst endless torment, Lapicel's soul was safely sent to the past. Tesranach, too, confirmed that his plan was feasible. Satisfied, he summoned his subordinates.

The upper echelons of the Necropia Empire, the Three Martial Kings, Three Archmages, and Seven Fallen Popes, gathered.

If they could return to the past and spread the Black God's Church to fool the dragon emperor's eyes, then Tesranach too could cross space and time safely. But even this wasn't enough.

For a newly-risen cult to surpass the long-standing Church of the Seven Goddesses in a short time, it needed overwhelming power. So he drew upon the wisdom of the dragon emperor and devised a new form of sorcery.

He formed a method that allowed aura and mana, divine power and necromantic force, normally incompatible, to coexist.

Then he assigned roles accordingly: Archmage Elezar for mana, Martial King Dreltein for aura, and the Sun Pope Jedex for divine power.

If those three obtained necromantic power in the past, they could surely steep the world in darkness. Once all preparations were complete, he sent them into the past. "Go forth, my servants."

A crucial realization struck him just after. "Damn it."

He hadn't noticed it when sending Lapicel, but once he sent the other three, the fluctuations in time and space became too severe. That was the limit.

If he pushed further, the dragon emperor would undoubtedly notice. There was no point hoping he wouldn't. No one understood better than Tesranach how his past self would react.

"This won't do."

He put a halt to any further regressions of his subordinates. To those who questioned it, he offered vague explanations, blaming the interference of the goddesses.

Ever since he became Tesranach, no one remembered the dragon emperor anymore. When he claimed Varos's body, everyone's memories rewrote themselves to believe Varos, not Karnak, had become the Monarch of Death.

He tried to search for an alternative method, but another problem arose. There wasn't enough time. Before, he had always attempted regression immediately, but now he needed to find a solution before returning.

This was an era on the verge of destruction. There was no room for leisurely research. So Tesranach resolved to buy time and hurled himself into the Infinite Void.

***

Drifting through the Void, he searched for a way. In the flow of endless time, answers slowly began to surface. First, I must stain the world of the past with the darkness of the Monarch of Death.

Tesranach approached Astra Shunaph, the power of death within the Void. So long as he didn't behave like a master, so long as he merely drew near, Astra Shunaph offered no resistance.

Like a dozing ox, it rampaged only when one tried to tug its reins, but didn't care if its fur was brushed. He neared the great tree-shaped embodiment of death and siphoned off a portion of its darkness.

He then claimed it as his own and scattered it into the far side of space and time. This step was essential, since if he had simply thrown it in, it would've found its way back to Karnak on its own.

The past world was now faintly imbued with the Monarch of Death's darkness. It wasn't nearly enough to fool the dragon emperor's gaze, but it was sufficient to establish a faith that would revere Tesranach.

The three he had previously regressed now set the plan in motion. They founded the Black God's Church and spread darkness across the continent.

Along the way, they eliminated any possible interference from Karnak. They ensured he discovered a copper mine in his domain, and orchestrated a battle with a neighboring territory that killed off his entire family.

This was one of the rare timelines where Karnak peacefully grew old and died. They attempted to recreate it to keep him from becoming involved in the world.

But it still wasn't enough. Just how long would it take to grow the Black God's Cult, in secret, into the greatest faith on the continent, surpassing the Church of the Seven Goddesses?

Even with the most optimistic estimate, it would take at least a hundred years. That wouldn't do. Karnak would die of old age before then.

And worse, who knew what might happen to Karnak during that time? Who knew what he might resort to when faced with the threat of death again? Tesranach had already seen many times the kinds of decisions that man made when he stood at death's door.

Tesranach had to pour everything he had into growing the cult of the Black God as swiftly as possible. It was the only way to stop the nightmare from repeating again.

Tesranach devoted himself to finding a way to send the rest of his subordinates back into the past. How can I deceive my past self's eyes?

Then, suddenly, he realized something, the greatest mistake his past self had made. Back when he was still Grateria, he hadn't even stirred when Karnak brought chaos to the world as the Monarch of Death.

He hadn't judged it to be a true threat to the world. In other words, the dragon emperor does not consider a Monarch of Death of this era to be a threat.

The only reason he was so sharply wary of Tesranach was because Tesranach was the corrupted version of his future self.

If I extract and replicate the fate of the Monarch of Death from that man, I can deceive the dragon emperor.

He also figured out how to extract it. If his subordinates gained draconic mana and were then slain by Karnak, he could collect that draconic mana and replicate it, thus extracting the fate of the Monarch of Death.

Of course, his subordinates weren't dragons, so he couldn't extract it directly from them. Instead, if the ones representing aura, mana, and divine power each received a deathly baptism from Karnak and then their powers were fused, it would result in the same phenomenon.

Naturally, even if he replicated the Monarch of Death's fate, Tesranach himself couldn't descend. His presence was too overwhelming.

But if it was a part of him, a mere avatar imbued with that fate, then it could deceive the dragon emperor and allow his subordinates to regress in time.

Tesranach was elated. At last, a viable path was before him. Now all I have to do is create an avatar.

He, who held knowledge from countless ancient ages, already knew how to create one. It required splitting a portion of his soul, granting it sentience, and implanting suitable memories and intelligence.

The problem was that Tesranach, who resided in the Void, had to create the avatar within a past timeline he could not touch directly.

Even if he tore a piece of his soul and replicated the fate of the Monarch of Death, sending that fragment into the past would risk detection by the dragon emperor.

What should I do?

He barely managed to find a solution. He would first create a separate authority that belonged to the past, then have that authority receive the soul fragment from the Void.

If I gather faith through the Black God's cult and convert it into divine grace, then bestow that grace upon a powerful enough human, the avatar could be born.

In that case, since the grace itself belonged to the past, the avatar awakened through it would also belong to the past.

After running the calculations, he was satisfied with the result. At this rate, he could anchor himself in the past without exposing his soul from the future to the dragon emperor.

Good. Now all that's left is to gather enough grace...

Tesranach froze.

"Huh?"

There was a critical problem with executing the plan. The condition for gathering that grace was that the Black God's Cult would need to grow so widely that it became one of the most prominent religions on the continent.

There was a paradox. In order to send his subordinates into the past, he needed grace. But to gather enough grace, those subordinates needed to already be in the past.

The guardian of the world let out a frustrated groan. "Why do these problems just never end?"