Chapter 29: The Stone Tablet
[Four more nights passed before the legendary experts arrived. Each night brought the same scene: light flashing, dark mist spreading, mana surging like a tide, and the earth splitting open to form passages. On the fourth night, after slaughtering all the monsters that poured forth, the members of the exploration force could no longer suppress their curiosity about the unknown. They decided to select several powerful individuals to enter the passages within the earth and uncover the truth hidden within.
Four experts were chosen. Together, they stepped into the fissure in the ground. Contrary to everyone's expectations, it was not what they had imagined. This was not a passage leading to an underground monster lair, but a naturally formed, stable space-time passage. Whenever mana fluctuated abnormally, surging with powerful waves, this passage connecting to another world would naturally open.
Through the space-time passage, the four arrived at a desolate plain where countless monsters thrived and multiplied. Sensing the intrusion of outsiders, they surged forward in waves, attacking the visitors from another world. Since the four experts had been selected, they were naturally formidable. The tide of monsters crashed against them like waves against the hardest reef, shattering into nothing.
After spending several hours clearing the surrounding area, the four experts discovered traces of a bygone civilization while processing the remaining spoils of war.
It was a massive, hard black stone tablet, inscribed with strange characters that no one could understand. Yet, simply by gazing upon it, one could automatically grasp its meaning.
The stone tablet recounted a story—a tale of a civilization's decline and fall:
The civilization that once lived in this world was one proficient in alchemy and magical artifacts. Their power and technology were so advanced that they could cross world barriers to travel and trade with various other realms. Their vast void fleet sailed through multiple worlds, spreading the fame of their civilization throughout the multiverse. However, during one voyage across the void to explore an unknown world, an indescribable monster attacked their fleet in the void.
Although the fleet, after immense hardship, finally managed to drive off the monster, no one noticed that a seed of evil had already been planted.
On the day of their return, as the fleet brought back specialty goods traded from other worlds, a monster suddenly emerged from within the body of a crew member. It was ferocious, attacking the crew of the void vessel it was on. Magical damage from mana artifacts seemed to have little effect on it. Since this civilization had never produced individual Transcendent Beings of great personal power, relying instead on magical-technological artifacts usable by all, only five people survived on that void vessel by the time the monster was killed.
The matter should have ended there. The danger of the void monster indeed filled everyone with lingering fear. But things were far from over.
No one expected that it wasn't just the people on that one ship who had been parasitized. In fact, nearly every vessel in the fleet had someone infected. When the ships landed and the crew returned to their homes, all the parasitic monsters burst from their hosts' bodies, attacking others amidst screams of terror.
Despair spread like a plague. In the homeland of this civilization, evil descended, and chaotic monsters swept through everything.
Within half a year, relying on their terrifying parasitic and combat abilities, these monsters destroyed the entire civilization. The social structure was annihilated. Countless monsters besieged the few remaining fortresses, trying to drag out the life within, tearing them apart and devouring them.
The surviving remnants of the civilization, filled with fear and awe, anger and disgust, named these monsters 'Wild Gods.'
Resistance did not cease. After long battles and familiarizing themselves with the source of the enemy's power, the survivors began to plan a counterattack. The remaining alchemists used materials left behind by the slain monsters and their alchemy, capable of freely navigating the void, to create a weapon. This weapon used spell seals to form an energy core, then inscribed runes on a part of the user's body to create a construct link. Through complex arrays, it gathered power from the monster materials and transmitted it to the user, granting the wielder strength and stamina comparable to a Wild God. Thus, even an ordinary mortal, wielding this weapon, could kill a Wild God.
Those who obtained this power could use these weapons, which could easily tear apart a Wild God's body, to slay monsters, gather more materials, and forge more weapons—this was the prototype of the Divine Mechanism.
They were almost successful. The people in the remaining fortresses all wielded these weapons. They continuously counterattacked the Wild Gods, hoping to restore their civilization's glory and rebuild society.
But reality could not be so smooth.
On a day as dark as night, black clouds covered the sky. An inexplicable cold wave descended from the void beyond the heavens. As the survivors watched in despair, the howling cold wind from the void froze the skies and the oceans. Gray mist and icy rain covered the entire world. An incalculable number of Wild Gods poured in through countless space-time passages, and the outer wall of the world was slowly being torn apart by some force...
An indescribable monster, a certain Void Evil God, had descended.
The power of the weapons originated from the corpses of the Wild Gods, from that indescribable existence. The weapons, lacking self-will, could not resist that inexplicable call. In that moment, all the survivors lost their power, becoming ordinary mortals once again.
Finally, like a tsunami, the Wild Gods swallowed everything. All that remained were these stone tablets, created by sages who feared the loss of knowledge and history, recording the history of this civilization and the method for creating these weapons.]
"..."
Seeing this, Joshua furrowed his brow. He walked to the window of the study, opened it, and let the icy wind blow into the room to cool his thoughts.
This plot felt somewhat familiar.
In the fourth version of the Continent of Strife, the Abyss opened, demons invaded, external evil descended, and chaos spread. Without a doubt, it was nearly identical to what this world had encountered. Fortunately, although the civilization level of the Continent of Strife was not as high as this world capable of void navigation, its individual strength far surpassed it. Moreover, it was protected by many deities. Although they often fought among themselves, they would certainly unite against an invading Void Evil God.
That civilization was also very unlucky, encountering monsters that completely countered them. Without a doubt, the technology of the destroyed world far surpassed that of the Mycroft Continent. If war broke out, Joshua's world would surely lose. Yet, the Wild Gods that could destroy them were easily repelled and annihilated by the Imperial exploration force—this was the difference caused by different directions of civilizational advancement.
As for Evil Gods, that was beyond Joshua's familiar scope. In the game, some weak deities, especially tribal gods, were only at the Legendary rank. But among void deities, whether Evil Gods or other beings, they generally possessed strength at the [God] level and above.
Or even higher...
Shaking his head, Joshua continued reading the confidential letter.
[Those four experts were the ancestors of the Radcliffe Family, the Vlad Family, the Scarlett Family, and the Dwarf Ironbody Clan. They decided to temporarily halt the exploration and transport the stone tablet back to their original world. Upon learning of this news, the Empire directly opened a permanent teleportation portal and sent an entire legion of mages.
Under the leadership of Legendary Mage Kabala Kaos, the great seal that had once sealed the Abyss rift was used to seal the space-time passage. However, unsettlingly, the power behind this space-time passage was even stronger than the Abyss. Even the seal could not completely block it. Whenever mana surged like a tide, the tide of Wild Gods would inevitably rise. Although most of them would be blocked by the seal in the space-time corridor, some powerful Wild Gods would still escape.
To prevent this situation and better eliminate the Wild Gods, with the help of Legendary Mage Kabala, the four experts recreated the weapons recorded on the stone tablet.