"Then... do you have anything you can control remotely, something like an 'avatar'? A device that lets you observe things from thousands of miles away, or even act within a limited area, without appearing in person?"
King Ghidorah leaned his three gilded dragon heads closer, curiosity gleaming in his golden slit pupils. Having just taken possession of an entire collection of ancient relics from past eras, he was already considering a discreet way to explore this magical steampunk world...
The blue light on Apekus's tentacles flickered faintly...
The three-headed golden dragon abruptly stretched out his body, unfurling a pair of golden wings that blotted out the sky with a thunderous boom. The bioelectric light coiling around his wing bones suddenly erupted, and the sky, which had already cleared, darkened once again. The dispersed clouds frantically converged on the spot as though pulled by an invisible hand. Fierce winds swept out from beneath his wings, and the storm that had just subsided descended again with even greater fury.
"I'm going to take a look around the continent. Don't bother me while I'm away."
As the titan's deep rumble faded, King Ghidorah beat his wings and shot into the air.
A streak of golden light pierced the clouds, with hurricanes and lightning close behind. Black clouds spread frantically from the coast once more. Though they fell short of the terrifying scale of the previous storm that had covered half the continent, they were still enough to throw the air currents along their path into complete chaos. Torrential rain and gusting winds spread toward the continental interior. King Ghidorah soon dwindled to a speck on the horizon and vanished into the roiling curtain of clouds, leaving only raging atmospheric anomalies to announce the outsider's departure.
On the coast, Apekus could no longer hold on. His enormous cephalopod body crashed into the scorched mud.
The wounds blasted open by Gravity Beams, the flesh charred by golden lightning, and the disordered power of his tidal origin all flared up at once. Agonizing pain swept through his entire body, sea-blue blood slowly seeped along the scorch marks, and his thick tentacles twitched uncontrollably. He gasped for air laden with the breath of the tides, his spiritual power rendered extremely weak by the repeated grievous injuries and his connection to the world's consciousness.
"Hiss... these wounds are severe. I'll have to sleep in the abyssal den for at least a hundred years to recover completely..."
Dragging his heavy body, he was just about to sink into the deep sea to recuperate when a cold, vast, and utterly chaotic torrent of information suddenly surged into his consciousness-it came from the Yilisai World's consciousness, which had issued warnings of an enormous number of future variables the instant King Ghidorah left and the storm rose again.
Apekus's enormous body suddenly froze.
"How... did there suddenly become so many variables?!"
In the past, the world's consciousness had only issued a handful of clear, explicit warnings when civilizations approached destruction or seals neared their breaking point.
But now, countless fragmented branches of information surged forth: popular resentment triggered by food shortages in the Karelia Empire, the collapse of Victoria's coastal industrial system, hasty adjustments to military preparations along the Kingdom of Shengjunxi's borders, factions of tower mages attacking one another over the storm's cause, the Silence Society roaming the disaster zones to gather clues, and imperceptible loosening in the seals of ancient demon gods...
Yet after carefully sorting through them, the vast majority of these variables centered on internal conflicts and power struggles among the human nations. Very few were truly destructive crises that threatened the foundations of the world.
"Most of it is just human scheming and petty squabbles..." A trace of impatience appeared in Apekus's scarlet eyes. "My deep-sea apostles and believers on land can handle this nonsense. I'm too badly injured to move easily. Where would I find the energy to bother with it?"
Without further hesitation, he dragged his battered body slowly toward the depths of the Endless Ocean. The cold seawater enveloped him, easing his pain slightly, but whenever he thought of King Ghidorah, helplessness and apprehension filled him.
That titan from beyond the heavens had long since exceeded Yilisai's upper limit of power. Apekus had no ability to restrain him, nor did he dare. As long as the other party did not take a sudden fancy to dismantling the planet, unseal all the demon gods ahead of time, or release every last abyssal aberration, he would already count his blessings.
"As long as he doesn't destroy the world... I can't control him at all, and I wouldn't dare try."
"What rotten luck... provoking a walking calamity like this for no reason..."
The deep-blue figure gradually sank into the depths. The waves closed over him, completely concealing the devastation along the coast, leaving only the lingering winds King Ghidorah had stirred up to blow slowly toward the continent.
The scene shifted to Dawn City, a border city-state of the Karelia Empire.
The rain-soaked stone streets gleamed with a damp, cold sheen. Steam pipes along both sides still dripped condensation, and mist mingled with the scent of earth in the air. As a frontier hub on the empire's western border, Dawn City had not faced the heart of the storm directly, but the tension left by the disaster permeated every corner.
Nuoyaji walked along a street with few pedestrians, his brow furrowed throughout, the youthfulness of his features shrouded in an unrelenting gravity.
He wore a frayed gray-blue mage apprentice's robe, with faded magic-patterned patches sewn onto the cuffs-damage he had only managed to mend by scrimping and saving. A leather spell pouch, worn shiny, hung at his waist, holding his few remaining basic flame runes and perception scrolls.
The youth stood straight but was somewhat thin. His light brown hair was tousled by the wind, fine beads of sweat clung to his temples, and his dark brown eyes held a world-weariness and anxiety beyond his years-the gaze of someone who had lived a second life and witnessed civilization's destruction. He was like a helmsman sailing through fog, holding an old sea chart only to discover that the entire sea had changed course.
The effects of this sudden superstorm were far more terrifying than he had imagined.
Just earlier, in the square at the city-state's center, he had personally seen Dawn City's hereditary nobles appear in person and open their private stores to donate gold coins and stockpiled food. Even the city's notoriously miserly merchant association had been forced to contribute its hoarded grain and cloth to support the disaster-stricken regions in the empire's heartland.
Karelia's nobles had always valued their wealth and territory as dearly as their lives. That they would surrender their assets so readily was proof enough that the losses at the storm's center had reached a horrifying level that threatened the empire's foundations.
And the disaster had affected far more than Karelia alone.
Nuoyaji knew very well that Victoria's coastal ports, Saint Junxi's southern granaries, the Liushan Alliance's maritime trade routes, and Vostok's frozen-earth mines had all been engulfed by the storm.
In his memories of his previous life, the border war between Karelia and Saint Junxi had already been on the verge of erupting. Both sides had deployed a million troops, with magical armaments and supersoldier legions ready for battle. But a disaster this severe would inevitably force both nations to shelve their war plans completely.
That was a good thing.
At the very least, it could spare hundreds of thousands of soldiers from dying on the battlefield and save ordinary people from some of the slaughter of war, buying him precious time to prevent the demon gods' awakening and unite the nations.
But bad news followed one thing after another, even throwing all the plans he had made since his rebirth into complete disarray.
An ancient mana vein he had risked his life to commit to memory in his previous life happened to lie in the heart of Victoria's disaster zone, and was now most likely buried by floods or destroyed altogether. The peripheral Silence Society informant he had planned to contact had gone missing in the storm, cutting off his only lead for investigating the world's deeper secrets. Even the imperial tower mage apprentice selection he had intended to enter was highly likely to be postponed or canceled because of the disaster, costing him the opportunity to enter the empire's upper ranks and gain access to the secrets of the demon gods' seals.
The course of his previous life was veering wildly in ways he could not control. Good and bad intertwined, hope and danger coexisted, and for the first time, he, a regressor who held the "future" in his hands, felt profoundly powerless.
Nuoyaji clenched his fists, his knuckles whitening as mana rippled faintly at his fingertips.
No matter how the worldline changed, he had to keep going-stopping the demon gods from awakening and preventing humanity from destroying itself through infighting was the sole meaning of his rebirth.
He took a deep breath, suppressed the turmoil in his heart, and headed toward the city-state's relay station, hoping to learn more about the disasters in the various nations.
The scene shifted to Iron Anchor Port on the West Sea, in the United Kingdom of Victoria.
Iron Anchor Port was the most vital maritime hub in southern Victoria. Having risen through steam industry and ocean trade, its harbor housed royal ironclads and magically powered transport ships, while enormous steam cranes and Archon mech workshops lined the coast. It was a symbol of Victoria's industrial supremacy. Now, however, this once-bustling port had become a hell on earth.
Most of the harbor district lay within the storm's core coverage. The coastal terrain magnified the destructive power of the tsunami and gales without limit. Seawater surged inland and submerged half the streets. Brick and stone houses collapsed in swaths, wooden beams and sheet-metal roofs littered the ground, and the once-orderly docks had collapsed completely, leaving only twisted steel reinforcement and broken pipes swaying faintly in the murky seawater.
"Damn this accursed weather! This isn't some natural weather disaster. It's the work of evil entities!"
A middle-aged official in a dark blue formal suit and tall velvet hat stood on unflooded high ground, unable to stop himself from cursing aloud. His name was Hermann, and the gold badge of Grand Duke Cavendish was pinned to his chest. He was the grand duke's eyes and ears, sent to inspect the disaster. His pampered face was filled with anger and panic, and his fine suit was covered in mud, leaving none of his usual elegance.
"Please calm yourself, my lord. The Academy of Sciences' magical meteorologists are already on their way by airship. I'm sure they'll discover the source of the storm soon..." The adjutant beside him cautiously tried to placate him, though his voice trembled uncontrollably.
Standing between them was Reinhardt, marshal of the Victoria Third Army.
He wore heavy black-steel steam armor, its pauldrons engraved with silver griffin emblems. His visor was raised above his head, revealing a face as resolute as a stone carving, weathered temples, and sharp, cold, hawklike eyes. As the marshal guarding the empire's western frontier, he had immediately led his troops to Iron Anchor Port after receiving an urgent imperial decree relayed by the court mages-to assess the losses, rescue survivors, prevent Nordheim pirates from exploiting the chaos to plunder, and closely monitor movements along Saint Junxi's border.
Reinhardt felt nothing but contempt for Hermann beside him, a man who knew only how to curry favor with the powerful.
A disaster of such staggering proportions could not possibly be concealed. Grand Duke Cavendish had sent this fool merely to claim credit for the relief efforts and seize interests in the port. But with countless lives at stake, Reinhardt could only endure him for now and devote all his energy to the devastation before him.
Though he had already learned through magical communications how severe the disaster was, Reinhardt's expression still darkened to the utmost when he saw Iron Anchor Port's ruins with his own eyes, and his heart sank heavily.
The coastal residential districts were completely submerged. Two-story stone houses had been smashed to pieces by enormous waves, and countless residents lay buried beneath the rubble. All five royal ironclads in the harbor had capsized; some had been hurled onto reefs and broken in two, slowly sinking into the depths. The enormous steam cranes had been snapped in half by the gale, crushing an entire stretch of magical workshops. What pained him most was that three Archon-Type Steam Mechs-the pinnacle of Victoria's military industry, war machines weighing dozens of tons and fitted with high-tier defensive magic patterns-had been blown dozens of meters away by sheer wind force. Their armor was twisted and split, their mana cores exposed, reducing them to heaps of scrap.
Hermann's curses cut off abruptly. His eyes widened as he stared at the apocalyptic sight before him, his lips trembling, unable to utter another word. Shock, fear, and disbelief completely overwhelmed the pampered noble civil official.
"All troops, heed my orders!" Reinhardt's cold, steady voice broke the deathly silence. "First squad, search for survivors. Prioritize the elderly, the weak, women, and children. Second squad, inspect the steam pipes and mana lines to prevent explosions and leaks. Third squad, seal off the harbor district. Looting and rioting are strictly forbidden! Move out immediately!"
"Yes, Marshal!"
The soldiers answered in unison and rushed into the ruins in standard-issue armor, tools in hand. Shouts, digging, and the groans of the wounded mingled together.
Hermann also followed the inspection with his attendants, kicking aside metal wreckage as he clicked his tongue in astonishment. "Tsk, even the Archon mechs were blown into this state. What kind of monster was that storm...?"
"Anyone there? We have survivors here!"
A soldier spotted survivors in a gap in the rubble and hurried forward to move the roof beam pinning them down. They were a fishing family: an old man, a woman, and two children, all soaked and shivering, their faces covered in dust and tear tracks, their eyes empty and frightened.
"It's all right now. We're the imperial army. We'll take you somewhere safe." The soldier crouched and reassured them gently. "Sir, how badly are you hurt?"
The old fisherman did not answer about his injuries. His wrinkled face merely contorted, his eyes filled with utter terror. Trembling, he raised his callused right hand and, with all his strength, pointed toward the sky behind the port, his voice weak and hoarse:
"The... the sky..."
The soldier and Hermann both froze, then looked up in the direction he was pointing.
A moment later, both their faces turned deathly pale.
An intensely dense expanse of black was slowly emerging on the horizon, which had already been shrouded in storm clouds.
It was a deathly ink-blackness like the lowest depths of the abyss, swallowing every trace of light as it spread in utter silence, carrying a spine-chilling sense of oppression.
At that moment, the gale abruptly ceased.
The whole of Iron Anchor Port fell into an utterly eerie, deathly silence.
A crisis far more terrifying than the storm was quietly descending over the West Sea.