Chapter 418: 417 - The Hunger Remains — Beyond the Village

One good thing about the former Beast World being so destroyed was that the effectiveness of their methods could be completely proven.

After all, if a world in that state could be stabilized, then what about the Human World, which still had its laws functioning?

Rygar did not intend to let the world be destroyed only to then try to save it. The anchors that would keep the world stable needed to be ready and functioning before Hitogami's death. Otherwise, even if the Human God were killed, the damage caused could be too catastrophic to reverse.

The severe climatic consequences that had come from the Battle of Begaritt were already more than enough. Rygar had no intention whatsoever of causing indiscriminate destruction.

Observing that devastated world strengthened that idea even further. It was difficult to look at the corpse of the Beast World and not think of the world where his family lived.

Rygar could not imagine the Human World reaching that state.

What he and Aisha needed to do now was simple in concept, but extremely laborious in practice. They had spent the last few years preparing for every kind of inconvenience, calculating margins of error, thinking of likely failures, and preparing methods to deal with each expected problem. Now they needed to use all of that in a real environment.

And, inevitably, there were errors.

That was because they did not completely know the structure of that world. They had theorized the most likely patterns and the most important points, but theory was still theory.

In a dead world, where space was deformed and time did not behave in an ordinary way, even a correct hypothesis could fail because of a variable no one had imagined.

Rygar was currently trying to measure the level of spatial instability.

In simple terms, he needed to discover how random the sudden effects of that world were. If an anomalous calamity happened there, would it have the scale of a Teleportation Incident, dragging away entire regions and masses of people, or would it be something smaller, like a few individuals suddenly disappearing without a trace?

To find out, he used a magic called Space Inspection directly on the spatial rifts he found throughout the place.

The problem was that not every rift represented a future calamity. Some were simply scars frozen in a state of permanent distortion. Others still reacted when touched by mana.

This took time.

While Rygar examined space, Aisha searched for an ideal location to assemble the main apparatus. Since both of them had come with Dimensional Storage, all the necessary equipment was with them. The problem was choosing where to install everything.

The center needed to be in a region with little instability.

After analyzing several possibilities, Aisha chose a large landmass, a region equivalent to about one fifth of the Great Forest.

The place was inhospitable like the rest of that world, but compared to other areas, it was only that: inhospitable. There were no major spatial distortions, no signs of large-scale anomalous erosion, and no deformations in the flow of mana.

It was a region affected mainly by the inaction of the world itself, not by later disasters or by the gradual deterioration of its laws.

There, she began assembling several white pillars.

Each one was installed manually, aligned, and fixed at previously calculated points. After that, Aisha applied the necessary protection circles, which were basically inferior versions of Magical Isolation.

They did not need to withstand crossing between worlds, but they needed to create small stable zones, capable of resisting long enough for the experiment to continue.

In appearance, the white towers resembled the Magic Towers of the old Holy City of Milishion.

And, in fact, the magical technology of Milishion had greatly influenced the creation of these versions.

In summary, none of it was excessively complicated.

Of course, that was true for those two.

For Rygar and Aisha, who had researched this subject for years and knew every process like the backs of their hands, the work consisted of calculating, identifying the best method, and applying it.

They knew which circles needed to be reinforced, which could be simplified, and which materials would react better to contact with that environment.

Obviously, almost no one else would fully understand what they were doing at that moment.

That equipment existed on a different scale compared to the rest of known magic. Even so, it was not absurd in the truest sense of the word.

Rygar often said that what the people of that world lacked was perspective.

Perugius Dola mastered Spatial Magic and Gravity Magic to a certain extent. Rygar was certain that, if Perugius had truly dedicated himself to it, he would have been capable of replicating Spatial Crossing. Obviously, it would have taken decades, or perhaps more, without proper support. Even so, the possibility existed.

The problem was that he lacked perspective.

And Perugius was not the only one.

There was no shortage of geniuses in that world. They existed in droves. But the cultural perspective of that world narrowed their view of the possibilities of magic.

Aisha was the best example of the opposite.

Having been taught by Rygar from the beginning, her perspective was broad. The example she saw most was Rygar.

And Aisha, being as brilliant as she was, even more brilliant than Rygar in several areas, ended up becoming the main person responsible for the rapid advance of that magical technology.

That was how the days passed for the couple.

In a certain way, they were very monotonous and somewhat oppressive days.

Being surrounded by a completely destroyed world was very strange and a little lonely.

Fortunately, they had each other.

When they grew tired of the monotonous and arid feeling of that destroyed world, they simply rested. After all, who would stop them?

It was somewhat sinister and wonderful at the same time. Being the only breathing beings in an entire world.

As the days passed, and then as the weeks passed, their presence became increasingly obvious in the destroyed world.

And, in the depths of an enormous landmass of that destroyed world, something noticed.

A truly lonely being, after tens of thousands of years of isolation, finally opened its eyes.

Its sensory organs were anomalous, different from anything known in the Human World. They did not see like ordinary eyes, did not hear like ordinary ears, and did not sense mana the way mages or monsters would. Even so, they detected something new.

A life-form.

The creature had hibernated and wandered for all those years, trapped in an existence with no company, no reference, and no clear purpose.

Now it was curious. It did not know what that being was, nor did it possess the perspective to classify it. It had no experience, not enough memory of other living creatures, and no language to organize that stimulus.

The only thing it remembered was that, one day, it had been hungry.

That had been its most primal and innate instinct.

And, despite never having eaten anything, that feeling had never left it.

----

Within the Kingdom of Biheiril, there was a village that had become very famous recently.

The Superd Village.

Several years ago, that village suffered a calamity that nearly led to extinction. The Superd were victims of a plague that was killing them rapidly, and their fate seemed carved toward disaster. In the Forest of No Return, where the Invisible Wolves lived, no one could save them.

And even if someone could, probably no one would try.

After all, they were the cursed and hated Superd Race, the tribe of blood-crazed demons.

But this time, one small thing changed.

Ruijerd Superdia, one of the oldest of his race and one of the most powerful fighters in its history, possessed an item capable of changing the fate of the Superd.

The Magic Word.

The communication device created and popularized by the Iron Legion.

The reason he had obtained such an item was pure chance. During a visit to Rudeus in Sharia City, during a period when Rudeus was already a subordinate of the Dragon God, the device had been acquired and replicated due to its efficiency.

By chance, Ruijerd received one as a gift, in case he ever found himself in trouble or Rudeus needed help.

After that, many things happened.

Ruijerd eventually found the Superd remnants and settled there. In Hitogami's plans, that would ensure the Superd were completely wiped out.

But that was not what happened this time, because Ruijerd used the communication device and asked Rudeus for help to save his tribe.

Although Rudeus was not the one who cured them, he was the one responsible for introducing Cliff Grimoire.

And it was that genius who finally managed to find a cure for the plague that, in so many of Orsted's loops, had been responsible for the extinction of the Superd Race.

After that, with Rudeus's help, the Superd were eventually recognized as a true village of the Kingdom of Biheiril, due to their contributions and protection over the years.

In the present day, the Superd Tribe had not changed that much.

It was still an isolated and discreet community. But there were young people far more curious about the world than before. Among them, the one with the greatest desire to know the outside was Ronard Superdia.

A young Superd eighty years of age.

Yes, that was youth.

The Superd only matured physically around the age of forty, and only reached adulthood at sixty. Ronard, who had not been alive for more than a hundred years, was considered a young dreamer among his people.

He had not experienced the Laplace War, nor the human persecution at its cruelest period. He was born and raised in that small isolated village. For many years, that had not really been a problem for him. According to the elders, in order to protect the family, that was how things needed to be.

But everything changed with his first interactions with other races.

Not only had the salvation of his people come through them, but those people had also introduced them to so many new things.

Ronard was one of those already on the verge of death when he was saved by Cliff. Over the last few years, which to him did not feel like that much time, he began thinking about visiting the current Kingdom of Gaia, the kingdom said to be a union of all races in a single country.

One year might seem like a lot to a human.

For a long-lived race, it was not that much.

Ronard spent years contemplating that possibility and talking with his relatives and friends about the matter.

The change in his mentality was gradual. The hunger for adventure that perhaps should have appeared in childhood arrived late, awakened only when he finally saw the possibility of exploring the world as it truly was.

And that desire grew until it became uncontrollable.

Finally, Ronard decided to leave and travel the world.

Even though the elders tried strongly to dissuade him, advising him that humans were unstable and dangerous, and that even if they accepted the Superd now, they might not do so a hundred years from now, Ronard remained unshaken.

The stories he heard about the Kingdom of Gaia disproved those claims.

Thus, taking with him two more friends, Mirelia, a young warrior, and Purellia, his best friend, he left the Superd Village, heading toward a destiny that had often been denied to him.

That moment would mark many future generations.

And Ronard could not even imagine that, from that decision, his relationship with the Beast God's family would become so close.

----

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