Have the teleportation arrays not appeared yet?

The pressure of a Highgod was still far too powerful for these tribal chiefs, who had never encountered one before...

Roger did not respond immediately. Instead, he studied the man named Starr for a while.

Under Roger's gaze, Starr felt as though he stood exposed before a savage beast that might devour him at any moment.

Just as Starr was about to break down, Roger withdrew his gaze, along with the soul intimidation he had been secretly releasing.

This was a technique Roger had naturally grasped over the years after completing the fusion of the soul attack branch with the other five major branches.

Its principle was simple: he relied on the sheer strength of his soul, comparable to that of someone with a two-element soul mutation, combined with the unique properties produced by fusing the soul attack branch and the soul space branch.

"Starr, was it? Give me a brief introduction to your situation."

Roger spoke calmly.

"Yes, City Lord." Starr bowed deeply and respectfully. "Our fourteen tribes have joined together. In total, we have twenty-one Midgods, a hundred and twenty-five Lowgods, and over a hundred thousand Sanctuary experts."

"If you are willing to accept us, City Lord, we will all pledge our loyalty to you unto death!"

Starr spoke with absolute conviction.

Having just experienced Roger's strength, Starr had no doubt that even if all twenty-one of their Midgods attacked together, they would be killed in an instant...

This was Starr's intuition. As someone who cultivated the Edict of Fate, he had always trusted his instincts.

And those instincts had saved him more than once.

"Your strength is decent. Since you sincerely wish to join us, I'll give you a chance. However, you must undergo a thousand-year trial. Only after passing it can you formally join. Do you accept this condition?"

"We accept! Honored City Lord, we accept!"

Starr agreed almost without hesitation.

It was only a thousand years. As long as they made it safely through that period, they would gain the protection of a powerful expert. For them, this was an excellent bargain.

"All right. Report to Deputy City Lord Allen later. He'll make the specific arrangements for your duties."

Roger said.

Next, Roger offered several suggestions for planning the city and refined the system for accepting newcomers with Allen, Hagson, and the others. Then he returned to his secluded chamber to resume training.

He had only recently become a Highgod, and there was still much he needed to consolidate.

Even setting everything else aside, accumulating sufficient highgod power would take some time.

The soul ocean.

At that moment, Roger's original body was drawing in highgod power more than ten times purer than a Midgod's divine power.

Within the ocean of divine power.

The deeper one went, the purer the divine power became.

After nourishment from a great many Soul Gold Beads, along with the Jade Disc's modifications.

Roger could now sense Sovereign's Might flowing several dozen meters farther down in the ocean of divine power, radiating a terrifying aura.

Could I draw in Sovereign's Might if my soul became several dozen times stronger?

The thought suddenly occurred to Roger, but he immediately dismissed it.

After all, in the original story, Linley's four-element soul mutation had made his soul thousands of times stronger than an ordinary Highgod's, yet he still could not draw Sovereign's Might directly from the elemental ocean.

I still need to refine a Sovereign Spark.

Roger sighed inwardly.

Then he focused his mind, having his original body draw in highgod power at full strength while his other clones cultivated separately.

Time flew by.

In the blink of an eye, another two hundred-odd years had passed.

During that period, several dozen more nearby tribes requested to join, one after another.

Roger gave them only a brief screening. As long as they were not notoriously evil people, he accepted them all.

After all, population was the most important factor in building a great city.

A larger population would not only speed up construction but also make the city more prosperous, attracting more people to join or settle nearby and form additional tribes.

During this time.

Roger's cultivation progressed steadily. After spending the first hundred years fully fusing the elemental wind, fast, slow, and dimension profound mysteries of the Laws of Wind, he devoted himself to comprehending new profound mysteries.

Once he gained an initial understanding of one, he prioritized working out its points of compatibility with the others. As soon as he established that compatibility, he continued fusing the profound mysteries while devoting part of his attention to comprehending another new one.

He strove to bring his wind clone to the Highgod level as soon as possible as well.

He followed the same approach with the Water Law.

Thus, after all these years.

Roger's strength had not improved greatly, but he had gained an initial understanding of all nine profound mysteries of the Laws of Wind and all six of the Water Law, and was working to establish compatibility between them.

Once every pair was compatible, Roger planned to begin his breakthrough to Highgod.

There was no denying that, after the Jade Disc's modifications, Roger's comprehension had become extraordinarily strong.

Even his progress in cultivating wind and water was remarkably fast.

As for the Death Edict, which had always been his greatest strength.

His progress was naturally good there as well.

By now, Roger had successfully reached the level of a Six-Star Fiend, with the soul attack branch as his core.

In other words, he had reached the stage of fusing the three branches of soul attack, soul control, and soul space.

With strength like this, it was time to put his earlier plan of exploring the Netherworld on the agenda.

After all, Mia had also successfully become a Highgod a few years earlier!

Together, the two of them were more than capable of roaming the Netherworld as it currently stood.

There was one problem, however.

Roger did not know how long this journey would take.

Naturally, he could not simply abandon the newly built Netherlo City. So he planned to let Mia become more familiar with her new level while waiting for either his Wind Divine Clone or his water divine clone to become a Highgod.

He would leave a divine clone behind to oversee the city. It would not be too late to take Mia out exploring then.

Time continued to pass.

Once Netherlo City began to take shape, it indeed attracted many nearby tribes.

Roger had been asking Allen to keep gathering information, and over the years, whenever he occasionally emerged from seclusion, he would read through it.

Inside the city lord's manor.

Roger looked at the many books laid out on his desk.

Allen had compiled all of them from the city residents' casual conversations and his discussions with them.

They covered the general situation within several hundred million kilometers of Netherlo City.

After reviewing these records over the years.

Roger finally confirmed one thing.

The Netherworld currently had no Sanctuary experts or Deities who had come from material planes!

Nor were there any records of a Deity from the Netherworld leaving through a teleportation array!

Could the current timeline be so early that teleportation arrays haven't even appeared yet?

The thought suddenly arose in Roger's mind.

Recalling the few accounts in the original story concerning the beginning of the world.

Roger worked through the possibilities in his mind.

What's certain is that the material planes were born at the very beginning. The four Higher Planes came later, and the Seven Divine Planes were the last to emerge. Moreover, Orloff and Wette had already become Paragons and seized Sovereign Sparks by the time the world was a trillion years old.

And that period spanned roughly a trillion years.

Then, clearly.

During this earliest period, teleportation portals might truly not have appeared yet!