The Power to Destroy the World (Short Chapter)

This world had already been destroyed several times.

The first destruction was the war of unification of the Pre-Epoch Civilization.

Many ancient races took pride in their own civilizations. Each believed their blood and wisdom far surpassed those of others, that they were the beloved children of the Heavenly Father, the fated masters of this land. And so they destroyed without mercy, slaughtered without mercy, until hundreds and thousands of suns blazed upon the earth.

Grief and weeping seemed infinitesimal in that excessively blazing war. The tears of countless billions upon billions of living beings were evaporated by the suns' fierce flames. In the end, as the climate shifted abruptly, there was not a single patch of pure land left in the entire world. Life, like autumn weeds, was harvested and crushed in swathes.

Countless deaths brought fear, and countless fears brought unity.

The Terra Federation had not been born from peace and love, nor because intelligent life had suddenly come to its senses, but because the world had already been destroyed.

So they had no choice but to unite, to survive.

The first thing the newborn Terra Federation did was gather the world's finest alchemists and ecologists to attempt to restore the world. During this process, biotechnology developed at breakneck speed, and even the prehistoric Ascension Path was rediscovered.

As the world was remade, the Ascension Path also advanced rapidly. Combined with genetic modification, cybernetic construct implants, consciousness-upload cultivation, and other methods, a kind of ascension method that now seemed quite primitive began to emerge. The differences between the major races were gradually erased by the Ascension Path as well.

Once the world regained its prosperity, Terra's peoples were completely merged—in the hands of extreme biotechnology, any kind of person could become any other kind of person. The mysteries of genes had been unraveled, the sanctity of bloodlines abolished. Other than "spirit," humans were no longer different in any way, and thus the world became one.

Of course, if that had been all, humanity would not have ended its wars. Even if their bodies were completely identical, humans would still wage war over regions, cultures, and other reasons.

Until the year 3432, when the Alliance's Lunar Fairy Exploration Team discovered the "Spark" on the moon.

They discovered an alien spacecraft.

It was a startling reversal, a miracle-like awakening. Having learned of the boundless vastness of the starry sky, all living beings who held blades, swords, guns, and cannons raised their heads to gaze upon the sea of stars above. At last, they realized how dull and meaningless all this mutual slaughter was.

Like dust in the wind, grains of sand in the sea.

And so they laid down their weapons and picked up the telescopes of their childhood.

They picked up curiosity.

From that point onward, even humanity's spirit was united beneath the vaster starry sky into "Terra Civilization."

After that, as the Terra Dragon hidden behind ancient civilizations emerged—meeting only with the leaders of nations—along with the appearances of the True Dragons and even Star Gods of the same kind as the "Heavenly Father," the people of Terra came to understand that the universe they inhabited was boundlessly vast, and that their existence, their safety, was closely tied to every civilization within this sea of stars.

It was the most prosperous century. Terra's technology developed at tremendous speed, and its civilization became incomparably complete. In the two hundred years after humanity's unification, it developed ten times faster than it had in the previous two or three thousand years.

But what came next was Skyfall.

Across the blazing yellow earth of the Blazing Flame Lands stood scattered city-states. Beneath them, a prosperous underground world connected every city-state. Countless roads were like the veins of rivers, surging forward and branching endlessly, giving rise to innumerable towns and villages. Apart from the Dwarves, who had already begun constructing deeply buried bases in the lower crust, only the people of the Blazing Flame Lands valued everything underground so highly.

And at the center of all those veins, in the deepest underground region of the Blazing Flame Lands near the Great Desert, a slender figure—one that could even be called gaunt—opened its eyes and looked toward the New Continent.

It was a man who could almost be described as skin stretched over bones. Or perhaps a woman? It possessed no distinguishing features: no hair, no eye color. Its body was like a pure-white silhouette, a crude stick figure.

Yet anyone could tell it was human. Other than that, it bore no human traits whatsoever.

So-called purity was loss. The loss of traits, the loss of distinctions, the loss of characteristics, the loss of everything beyond definition.

After being stripped until there was nothing left to strip away, what remained was purity.

And only purity could obtain everything.

The humanoid figure gazed at the New Continent. It sensed a vast force of life burgeoning forth. It was the "power of the Heavenly Ladder" accumulated at the center of the New Continent, a contingency prepared by the Pre-Epoch Civilization to remake the entire planet's ecology after the surface ecosystem had been destroyed by other civilizations—or by the earth itself—in preparation for yet another "all-faction war," "world war," or even "interstellar war."

This power had once drawn the attention of other Fifth Energy Levels, but after sensing the Heavenly Ladder's rejection of them, none were willing to leave their own territories for the power contained in some distant land. The risk was too great. Unless a "holder of authority" appeared, the Heavenly Ladder would never open itself to them, these "experimental subjects of later ages."

If they forced their way in, the Heavenly Ladder would spare no cost to perish together with them.

Even if it failed to perish with them, they would gain nothing and be grievously wounded in the process. The risks outweighed the rewards. Even the Sertal Empire at its peak would not waste its strength traveling so far. What they needed to do was conquer the Terra Continent. Only after conquering everything upon this land would they have the spare strength to look into the distance.

That was how the strong thought.

But those stripped until nothing more could be stripped away would take the risk and try to obtain this power, because they already possessed almost nothing, and thus had nothing to fear from losing more.

Just like Farshore Island.

Just like the Blazing Flame Lands.

Though the Blazing Flame Lands seemed a major power in the eyes of the world, as though they already possessed much, in truth, they had long since reached their limit.

Half the Blazing Flame Lands' territory was mountains and hills, the other half scorching desert. Beyond the Blazing Flame Lands, the land had once been swept by sea magic worms; only the people of Farshore Island thought those barren grasslands worth having.

Within their borders, they had neither Farshore Island's abundant, easily mined minerals nor Canaanmore's rich ecological resources. They could not even begin to compare with the vast territories of the Imperial Frontier and the Azure Heaven Royal Court, where everything could be found. Even the areas suitable for raising Magic Beasts were pitifully few.

The Blazing Flame Lands had reached the ceiling—they could only sustain so many ascendants with their internal resources. No matter how many ordinary people were born, no matter how prosperous they appeared on the surface, their number of ascendants was fixed by resource output.

So they had no choice but to wage war, allowing ascendants to be replaced generation after generation.

So even as "kings," they produced as many descendants as possible, breeding great numbers of ascendants born with ascension structures, then raising them as materials in a poison pit to cultivate elites as heirs.

That was why, even in their desperate situation beneath the Empire's suppression, they still attempted to send troops to claim a share of the New Continent.

But they still failed.

It knew very well that when Xike no longer responded to its words, and when the Heavenly Ladder Tree rose beyond control, it meant that every scheme of the Blazing Flame Lands had failed.

It had long grown accustomed to failure. It was neither angry nor hateful. So long as it remained, even if the Blazing Flame Lands had no future, they could at least maintain the "present."

But for a nation, how tragic was the very fact of having no future?

So he had to do something.

Resist this "stripping away."

Let me see who it is that can take our future from us.

The pure-white humanoid figure slowly rose to its feet, and behind it, a mountain-like shadow revealed its true form.

The Pure Grand Duke, Savaga Nemassas, slowly opened its thousand eyes. Behind its seemingly gaunt and empty human body, an enormous shadow spread and seeped outward like ink.

Countless threads and mucus intertwined and coiled together. Soon, its body rose from the earth like a mountain, and hundreds upon thousands of inhuman eyes bloomed with light upon it, gazing in every direction.

The Boundless Primordial Worm was a Fifth Energy Level Magic Beast without any special abilities. Only by being stripped away could it feel pain, and thus evolve to face this perilous, terrifying universe.

And now, as its incomparably prosperous future was taken from it, an ultimate anguish brewed within that shadowy cocoon. It was desolation and ruin, negative energy opposed to vitality, one of the most dangerous powers in this universe. If a great rain formed from negative energy fell, that land would not grow even a single blade of grass for a hundred years.

And now, the insect cocoon erupted like a volcano. A surging column of black-gray shadow shot into the sky. This straight pillar of smoke avoided every vein of the underground cities in the Blazing Flame Lands and charged into the heavens—then, as though possessed by consciousness, it bent and flew directly toward the Heavenly Ladder Tree at the center of the New Continent on the other side of the planet.

Wherever this smoke column passed, gales ceased, rain clouds scattered, and even the sun's light turned cold and bleak, as though all heat and vitality within it had been taken away. It was the breath of pure death, desolation, and destruction.

It was a tide of negative energy utterly opposed to the power that remade the world, powerful enough to destroy everything. Among the interstellar civilizations known to the Pre-Epoch Civilization, it had another name: the Desolation Plague, a power capable of completely severing a planet's vitality and wiping out all life upon it without damaging the planet's geological structure itself.

Of course, this was not its complete form. But the reason Savaga Nemassas had used a portion of its strength was to prove one thing to every force on Terra.

Even in failure, they were still one of Terra's major powers.

Like the roar of a wounded beast.

If we cannot have it, then no one else will either.

That will spanned time and space.

The New Continent.

Ian looked solemnly toward the heavens.

At this moment, it was deep night on the New Continent. There was no starlight in the pitch-black sky. Even the new moon and phantom moon hung low at either side of the night sky, and the entire firmament was dark. In theory, there should not have been any light at all.

Yet now, flickering points of light continuously lit up overhead, crisscrossing through the sky. Their radiance was like condensed snow, like ice crystals, like fragments of rainbows and gemstones falling down. They intertwined and tangled, forming frost-cloud mist across the heavens, from which a waterfall of light descended.

It fell from the highest reaches of the sky all the way to the ground.

This was not real rainwater, but an attack from Farshore Island's Fifth Energy Level, Cangxing Gelide, on the other side of the planet. These ice crystals filling the sky were not material entities at all, but Subspace psionic fragments condensed to the utmost limit. Once they erupted, they would trigger a void-collapse explosion, creating a small area of Subspace collapse that would exile all matter within its range into Subspace.

Clearly, Cangxing was angry. This Void Exile was one of her true abilities. And these ice crystals would not fall at random—they would lock onto every unmarked intelligent life-form. In other words, every Magic Beast and every human on the entire continent who was not from Farshore Island.

In the distance, the Lord of the Great Abyss and other Fourth Energy Level Magic Beasts had begun howling as they unleashed their full strength, sheltering their offspring and kin against this "continental-scale" attack whose target was the entire continent.

And Ian, who had long regarded himself as the king of the New Continent, naturally could not allow an attack that slaughtered his people and future voters.

"A little harder to deal with than I expected."

Without the slightest hesitation, the Glazed Dragon carried Fairy Ian into the flower bud at the top of the Heavenly Ladder Tree, merging with the entire tree in the most direct manner possible.

As a technological extension of the same kind as the Heavenly Ladder's ecological restoration system, the Crystal Dragon could naturally take over a series of the Heavenly Ladder System's functions at the fastest speed. And through his Star God's Gift authority, he also obtained access to the Subspace Network that ran through the entirety of the New Continent.

All living beings, move toward your corresponding shelters!

For a time, a voice rang within the hearts of every Magic Beast and human on the New Continent who had been trembling while looking up at the falling "Crystal Snow." Along with that voice came one "Subspace Gate" after another, appearing at nodes of the earth veins.

These gates were transport entrances leading into the interior of the network. Over the years, the energy leaking from these transport entrances had created all manner of anomalies and resource sites across the New Continent, even ecological parks. They happened to be regions where many intelligent life-forms gathered.

After doing all this, Ian could not expect everyone to be saved. There would always be people who refused to listen and wanted to test just how powerful this Crystal Snow was. But this was all he could do.

At this moment, Fairy Ian controlled the Heavenly Ladder Tree's core system. He connected with Terra's Heart and used his immense computational power to interface with the Heavenly Ladder one function at a time. Soon, understanding dawned on his face. "As expected, the Heavenly Ladder has an automatic defense system. That is also why Fifth Energy Levels are unwilling to seize control of it by force!"

"But I can control it and use it to resist the attacks of Fifth Energy Levels!"

If it were anyone else, it would be absolutely impossible to master the defense system in the time between activating the Heavenly Ladder System and receiving a Fifth Energy Level attack... but he was Ian! The inheritor of the Forerunners, the holder of Star God's Gift, the possessor of highest authority!

It was the Heavenly Ladder System that needed to adapt to his operational habits, not the other way around!

Soon, the light in the sky grew ever more dazzling, while on the other side, the Desolation Plague from the Blazing Flame Lands was about to descend—the dark-gray firmament suddenly caved downward, as if some colossal force had pressed upon it, forming a curved surface that seemed ready to fall. That concave sphere of sky contained endless breaths of destruction and desolation: the most terrifying negative-energy corrosion!

Compared to the silent Void Exile, this overwhelming Desolation Plague truly sent all the still-hesitating Magic Beasts of the New Continent screaming as they raced toward the Subspace shelters Ian had opened. These creatures without Fifth Energy Levels finally understood why, on Terra, only those who possessed the Fifth Energy Level could be called "major powers."

Only those who possessed the power to destroy the world could endure in this world.

And at that moment.

At the center of the Heavenly Ladder Tree, the body of a Glazed Dragon continuously expanded and grew larger. Countless vines and shoots wound around it, causing it to burn with vitality as vigorous as the sun.

The next instant, accompanied by a dragon's roar, azure light erupted. Endless currents of aether light swirled around it, and an aether crystal dragon like gathered stardust shot from the top of the Heavenly Ladder Tree, crashing head-on into the ever-sinking Desolation Plague and the waterfall-like rain of Void Exile.

"Fifth Energy Levels?"

Burning the endless power contained within the aether crystal dragon and the Heavenly Ladder Tree, Ian's form shone ever brighter, like light, like a sword, until it stretched across the sky like a rift in heaven.

With his body as a sword, he cleaved across the sky!

"Let me experience your power!"

I'll finish this part tomorrow. It's a little hard to write—I'm stuck! I'll keep at it!