[Thought-Madness] tipped back a mouthful of liquor and laughed heartily.
"This is the first time I've been called a country bumpkin, and the first time I've seen a Calamity awarded an honor by living beings.
But can things really keep developing the way you hope? I think you should all consider the subject [War] just raised.
You've now achieved a state of coexistence with Calamities, but the actual contradiction remains unresolved.
For living beings to gain power, they have to kill Calamities for materials. For Calamities to gain power, the fastest method is to sacrifice living beings. That's a contradiction you can't ignore at present.
Besides, the possibility [War] mentioned isn't nonexistent."
Looking at the others frowning in thought, [Self-Imprisonment] patted his walking stick and revealed a secret.
A secret that not even [Stagnation] and [Cycle] had known.
"Floating City, during the Peak Epoch. There were more living beings then than there are here, and even the Calamities had been scattered, forced to live beneath the radiance of living beings.
To put it bluntly, Calamities back then were like rats in the sewers. Their numbers probably weren't much different from those of ordinary criminals or pirates in the Sea of Stars.
Guess why the situation was completely overturned overnight, and why it failed to recover for so long, causing the Peak Epoch to sink completely like a ship that had struck an iceberg."
A sense of unease immediately rose in everyone's hearts.
Kou Ying frowned. "Don't tell me someone was deliberately creating Calamities."
"More than that." [War] stared at the tabletop and gently closed his eyes.
"They weren't just creating them. They were farming them. Someone was raising Calamities in captivity, feeding their own kind to them, then slaughtering those captive Calamities to take materials from their bodies.
They reaped