The moment the words were spoken, not only the Archduke before Marcus, but also the rulers prostrating respectfully on either side beneath the throne, and even those strange gazes cast from behind layer upon layer of curtains...
Even the lightning flashing above the Sky Dome seemed to freeze for an instant.
All was silent.
Only the diplomat in his wheelchair faced his enemy.
The remnants of the Old World, fragments of Gaia.
They were what remained of Destruction Factor: Old Gaia.
Strictly speaking, calling it Gaia was perhaps inappropriate, while calling it a world might have been an exaggeration.
It was merely a designation.
It referred to a world that wished to destroy humanity.
In this era that belonged to humanity, it was the first-generation world utterly destroyed by the Astronomical Society.
It had indeed been a desperate measure. Before then, no one could have imagined that a world might possess something like "will."
But after the walls formed by all the gods had been lost, under the Abyss's radiation, the Present Realm had gradually begun to distort... gradually nurturing malice and hostility toward its own children.
Floods and towering waves, storms and droughts, lava and blazing fire, falling meteors and barren earth, strange fog that devoured everything, and darkness rapidly breeding beneath the ground...
That was the origin of the foundations of all borderlands: the Endless Sea, the Land of Mist, the Iron Rain Wasteland, the domain of earthly fire, and so on.
Before Gaia was destroyed, it had been the source of calamities capable of shaking the entire world, annihilating every civilization, and killing all humanity.
Like a mother slaughtering her own children.
When the butcher's blade was raised, what could the children do besides weep?
Only by relying on each other could the two survive above the