Chapter 532
Go!
They exchanged feelings with a thousand swords piercing their hearts. All around them were dense sword shadows. Morgas's eyes twitched slightly, and he could only withdraw his attention and put his palms together.
Shadow Mirror.
Dozens of dark mirrors were scattered and arranged to form a seemingly fragile defensive array. However, once the 'Hidden Dragon Flying Sword', which were powerful enough to pierce through the armor of warships, touched them, they passed right through and reappeared from a distance.
Each mirror represents a random spatial coordinate, preventing any physical or energy attack from touching the object. However, Morgas showed no joy, knowing that its opponent also possessed spatial abilities and was not simply a warrior.
Sure enough, as the Hidden Dragon Flying Sword flew erratically, moonlight pierced through the mirror array, and the warriors reassembled into human form.
Their eyes met, and before Morgas could move the mirror to block him, Yuki stomped down, leaving only a pale aura in the air.
Thump--
A dull thud shook the Furnace, flames formed wings, moonlight filled the space in front of them, and while the aura was still in the air, a hundred-meter-deep crater had already appeared in the sea of blood.
"You dodged pretty quickly."
Yuki crouched on the ground, turned his head to the side, and saw Morgas emerge from a mirror in the air, stepping, twisting his waist, and climbing.
Concept Enhancement. Extreme Speed.
Concept Enhancement. Neural reflex.
The Furnace. Blood Shadow Phantom.
The Furnace. The Foxfolk Feather Fan.
A long string of skills unfolded with the rapid dash, sending chills down Morgas's spine as he prepared to move calmly between the mirrored surfaces.
All he could see were countless impenetrable Yuki, some blood spirit clones, some illusions. How could he distinguish them at such a speed? And how could he allocate dozens of Shadow Mirror?
Brush--
In that fraction of a second of hesitation, when Morgas stepped out from the distant mirror, he saw a half-foot-deep wound slashed across his ribs, almost cleaving him in two.
Before I could even catch my breath, a violent sense of oppression locked onto me again.
You can hide quickly, but I can hide faster than you; your power is unpredictable, but I have more methods than you.
"This is the Truth," Morgas said, opening his hand to grasp a black cross sword and slashing at the enemy before him, whose true form was indistinguishable from the real one.
Shadow Kill!
Space seemed to transform into shattered glass. Wherever the sword marks passed, dense spiderwebs spread out, each thread a spatial rift. Touching them would pull the body into different spaces.
Like moths to a flame, hundreds of Yuki vanished in an instant, giving Morgas a chance to catch his breath. The black cross sword in his hand felt as heavy as a thousand pounds as he struggled to slash back.
Shadow Passing, Second Death!
The already dense spatial cracks became even larger and more numerous. The Furnace seemed to have been wiped out by a single sword strike, and even the moonlight was cut into small pieces. But at that moment, a bolt of lightning snaked its way in.
The authority of the gods. The Thunder Incarnation.
It was a silver snake, a silver snake that moved through the tiny spatial rifts. Morgas's eyes narrowed, and he instinctively turned his body to the side.
Phantom Illusion!
Thump!
The sea of blood seemed to explode like thunder. A Black Hole gun barrel emerged from the waves, and with a 'bang,' Morgas shattered like an ice sculpture.
"That's interesting."
Yuki lowered his spear and saw phantoms emerging from the scattered Shadow Mirror, somewhat resembling his own tactics. However, unlike illusions, these were fixed spatial coordinates, and their true forms kept bouncing back and forth between these coordinates.
That surpasses Tiberius; for a player, it's roughly equivalent to Epic Tier III.
"But your authority is too limited, and you lack the will to fight me to the death."
Yuki decisively took out the hourglass and pointed it at the phantom in the sky. Before activating it, he raised his eyebrows slightly.
In that instant, he saw Morgas's expression change drastically, as if he couldn't suppress his shock, and the hundreds of phantoms all changed color at the same time—even a blind person could notice.
"Do you recognize this thing? Or have you seen something similar before?"
Unexpectedly, there was an extra bonus. Of course, Yuki didn't expect an answer; his interest was simply piqued.
"This means we have no choice but to keep you here."
The Torch of the Gods. Spatial Solidification.
The rules spread along the spiraling light band, covering most of the relatively small battlefield of the Furnace. The cracks, resembling shards of glass, stabilized instantly. Under the absolute rules, tearing through space became much more difficult.
Using rules to deal with bizarre spatial abilities is a sure-fire way to defeat them. Yuki can do without Moonlit Ghost Step or Eternal Night Domain, but Morgas can't.
It sensed a surge in spatial intensity, realizing it would require several times the force to tear through it as before; hand-to-hand combat would be far more difficult.
Morgas looked at the demon engulfed in flames. He knew how terrifying the combined Immortal Crystal Armor and Insect Demon Armor was; even a fourth-level god probably couldn't withstand a single blow from that spear.
"You're wrong. I may not be able to fight you to the death, but it won't be that easy for you to keep me here."
Yuki didn't bother with empty words. With another snap of his fingers, thousands of corpses crawled out of the sea of blood. He could have shattered these phantoms in the simplest and most brutal way, but after taking a few steps, he raised his eyebrows slightly.
The scattered phantoms throughout the Furnace began to distort, accompanied by Morgas's most resolute will:
We must leave and revise our plans.
"Shadow Passing".
Splash--
Before Yuki, all the phantoms exploded. As an expert in this area, it knew how to leave the Furnace after a few rounds.
Escaping the boundary while being chased by this monster is impossible, so the only option is to attack the Furnace itself; every time space was torn apart just now, it was on the Night Furnace.
Yuki's expression changed slightly. This was the first time he had encountered a tactic that allowed someone to escape by blowing up the Furnace, and it was too late to stop it.
The crack widened, the Corpse Mountain, Blood Sea completely collapsed, and the outside world appeared before their eyes. Morgas was now only his original form. When he saw Yuki transform into lightning and rush towards him, he no longer cared about uttering any harsh words.
"Activate fixed coordinates, location: City of Gods, Shadow Temple."
Once he returns to reality, he can instantly return to the City of Gods. This was a contingency plan he had prepared long ago. No one would have thought that a traitor would dare to go to the Divine Race' lair, and there was no chance to intercept him along the way.
But he was stunned; the authority hadn't been activated, and the reason was simple:
He's still not on the same level as reality.
Where is this?
Only then did he realize something was wrong. The visual feedback he received was not of a dark, deep sea, but of a wilderness ravaged by war. Led by a masked man with his arms crossed, dozens of great demons of various races were coldly watching him.
Peach Blossom Spring...
A sharp pain shot through his chest as a spear pierced through his back. A hideous demon was right in front of him, speaking words that sounded somewhat familiar.
"I told you long ago, you're going to play dirty tricks on me—"
You're still too green!
Chapter Twenty-Two: Here's the evidence.
It's just a simple nesting doll.
Morgas stripped away the core containing the Dragon King, intending to quietly replace him with a new king.
Yuki ruined the plan, taking him away with the Furnace; this was the second separation.
It is known that the Night Furnace is anchored to reality, so the next step is simple: Kalpas guards the place where the two disappeared, waits for the Furnace to collapse, and then puts a new sack over it.
This Peach Blossom Spring is also a place that's hard to leave.
"Damn it, you broke my props."
Yuki, stepping on the lingering flames, had left Morgas no way out from the very beginning. However, the latter struggled fiercely, even damaging the Night Furnace.
This is the first time the Furnace has been destroyed since it was upgraded to a level 6 item, but there's not much to say. The Shadow God is indeed a master of space; if it weren't for the double nesting mechanism, it really wouldn't have been able to contain it.
It's alright, I've killed so many people, I've accumulated a lot of reward points.
The Reincarnation Game is very convenient. If you have enough reward points, you don't have to worry about items breaking. Yuki didn't even blink and immediately invested 6 specialization points to repair the Furnace, and then focused his attention on the harvest.
The authority of the gods. The Shadow God.
Like the previous gods, this is Morgas's regular reward, but this reward also has another effect.
[Higher-level spatial movement capabilities; Moonlit Ghost Step can be upgraded]
"Upgrade."
Yuki immediately invested his enhancement points to upgrade Moonlit Ghost Step to 'Legendary'. He had a vague feeling that he had already stepped on the boundary line of Epic IV, and was just one step away from kicking open this door with all his might.
The increase in power was important, but Yuki didn't have time to savor it now and immediately turned to look at Kalpas.
"Just as Froya found out, Morgas had already been corrupted by the Chaos Furnace Flame. No wonder I couldn't corrupt his soul."
This is part of the Fox Demon's intelligence, concerning a secret from ten thousand years ago—why Morgas defected.
"The information left behind by the Shadow Demon Tribe is incomplete. It only says that it betrayed the Demon King and told the six main gods about the existence of the Chaos Furnace Flame, forcing them to fight prematurely. Originally, we thought it was saving the world, but now it seems to be the opposite."
By comparing the Yuki, Yuuki immediately understood: when he used Soul Corruption to control Morgas, the guy exploded, releasing flames even stranger than the Frenzied Flame.
The latter is madness, while this thing...
Yuki glanced at the pale flames burning incessantly in the deep pit. They couldn't be extinguished, as if everything was being used as firewood. It was only by using the Divine Torch that he was able to suppress them.
"It concealed 95% of this crucial information. Fortunately, the demons were out of control at the time. The Six Gods dealt with the Demon King first and then incorporated the remaining demon gods into the new order, preventing the flames from being completely ignited." Froya returned hastily, and the intelligence she brought included the secret of the Fox Demon.
The great fox demon of that time did not participate in the final battle. As one of the demon gods, he was recruited and later perished. His authority was then reclaimed by the new Divine Race.
Now it's time to find the answer. The information Froya found was somewhat disorganized, false, and vague, but by going from the result to the cause, and with the Dragon King's legacy, some useful things could be extracted.
"In the final battle ten thousand years ago, the Chaos Furnace Flame had already been ignited. The Dragon King, the Demon God, the heroes, the gods, almost all the participants perished, but the Demon King failed to fully activate the Chaos Furnace Flame, and the six main gods killed it."
"Did the Dragon King tell you that?" Yuki asked.
"Yes, the Dragon King's legacy allows Him to see everything from the previous generation; the erasure by the God of Civilization was not complete."
The authority of the God of Civilization is somewhat like the characteristics of the senior student; He cannot completely eliminate all clues. The more information He knows, the more scenes He recalls. Froya has already checked the answers with the Dragon King, supplementing them with the descriptions from the demons, which made the old dragon remember even more things.
"He told me that the myth is true, but with one more thing." Froya shut her mouth and said in a weathered tone, "Chaos Grade will inevitably come, and if you don't welcome it, it will descend upon you."
"That makes sense then. Burning is a form of erosion. No matter how you try to erase it, it will always find a way to get out." Yuki had just come into contact with the ghastly white flames, and the feeling was... well, a bit intoxicating.
More firewood, more energy, burning everything into Chaos Grade.
If Frenzied Flame drives people mad, this thing drives them to greed, and endless greed will turn them to ashes.
Yuki waved to Kalpas, who took out two rhombus-shaped crystals. When they came into contact with the pale flames, a flame was drawn into the crystals, and the flickering flames instantly froze, making it look like a work of art.
Chaos Item: Time-Stop Crystal.
This is a container that Mebius uses specifically for experiments. As a level 6 item, it can use time stop to store all materials, and ownership belongs to Mebius, who can reclaim it with a single thought.
As Yuki carefully put away the two crystals, he asked Froya, "Morgas is the guardian, so he should be the first to be corrupted, but what did the Demon King say?"
"His Majesty Minatilis told me that He saw the first Demon King in the Dragon King's legacy, which should be the beginning of the Demon Era." Froya tried her best to describe the scene she saw when the first dragon was born.
With the scene deliberately erased, any attempt to replicate it was futile. Froya could only describe it in words. Yuki's expression was focused, more serious than ever before.
Why seek out the Dragon Clan? Aside from disrupting the Sky God's plans, the Dragon King's legacy is the only way to directly understand history. If Kalpas hadn't been assigned to the Fox Demon, it would have been the only solution.
Ancient dragons and Giant, their pale flames scorching the world, relentlessly burning everything back into Chaos Grade. The embers were drawn into the cracks, and new life was born, the first of which was the Demon King.
"In other words, during the Demon Era, the Demon King was initially born from fire, and was already sufficiently corrupted. But as the world prospered and the era came to an end, it naturally thought of rekindling the furnace fire!"
Yuki paced back and forth. In a fantasy world, this was a common approach, better than the helplessness of Dark Souls.
However, the six main gods found another way: instead of restarting the world, they integrated the previous era into the new order, continuously extending its lifespan.
"In other words, the six main gods are good? The God of Civilization erased the existence of the Chaos Furnace Flame because he didn't want to repeat the same mistakes?" Kalpas was a little confused and spread his hands. "Then why would the God of the Sky do it? Didn't you say He was the mastermind?"
Froya glanced at him and provided the final piece of evidence. "Because His Majesty Minatilis also said that it was very difficult for the six main gods to destroy the Demon King. They were ignited by the Chaos Grade Fire, and the one that was burned the most severely was the Sky God."
So that's how it is? Is that really the case?
Yuki's pupils contracted slightly. Hundreds of messages were finally pieced together. There was no distinction between Justice and evil; this was the inevitability of Destiny, the characteristic of this instance.
This world is meant to keep restarting, destroying, being reborn, and then destroying again. Some things are destined. Even if you don't go along with them, Chaos Grade will still find a way to descend. The only difference is in what way and manner it arrives.
His breathing was slightly heavy. The six main gods, while not exactly redeemed, had at least gained some favor. In the grand epic, they were trying to find a way to avoid this cycle.
That's why all existence of the Chaos Furnace Flame was erased, and that's why the losers who should have been exterminated were left behind.
In other words, it is still a continuation of the Demon Era, because the rules and ruling structure have not changed; only the demons have been replaced by gods.