Chapter 529 Fligh (1/2)

”Whatever the case may be, we can't stay relaxed now that things had come to this.”

Sighing, Barnil could tell that the dire circumstances at hand were inevitable. He raised his hand to tidy the collar of his robes, after which the old mage who had always been well-groomed drew out a thick gilded black tome. It was an elegantly decorated grimoire that left Barnil's hand as soon as it was taken out, floating before his chest and flipping open as if alive and browsed through itself rapidly.

”An Abyssal Lord and a deity's clone. William, how many years has it been since we last met such a dangerous situation?”

Standing upon the dark skies of the Sixth Abyss, Barnil did not spare a glance at the grimoire that was flipping itself, staring instead at the black clouds filled with corrosive and toxic air. He put the question to his great friend out of habit, while blinding rays of rainbow colors appeared before his body from the pages of the grimoire. Soon, countless dazzling runes appeared around the Legendary mage as if stars, twinkling, and the outline of a colossal magical circle that shrouds almost ten miles could almost be seen, forming rapidly from the rainbow light that surged out of the grimoire pages.

”Forty years? Fifty years? Who the hell knows—apart from those youthful and exuberant years, we've always tread carefully and never allowed ourselves to fall into threatening situations.”

Beside Barnil, the wandering poet who still appeared young shrugged lightly instead. In the face of the powerful being that surpassed most Legendary and closed in incessantly, William had not a hint of worry and pulled out a crystal ball of utmost purity, its pale blue radiance swirling like a vortex in its center. The Legendary wandering poet held it close to his poet, and smiled leisurely. ”Of course, whatever happens, there is no danger to speak of in this world as long as you and I work together.”

”I like that line of yours.”

As the two laughed synchronously. In a very brief instant, a construct with complex geometrical dimensions composed of infinite runes appeared out of thin air above the entire Squirming Forest. Endless magical circuits formed from pale blue triangles, circles, and prisms devoured mana wildly from the surroundings as if a void, and within breaths every element within dozens of kilometers were emptied by the giant circles, distorting even space itself obviously.

Some distance away, the Abyssal Lord [Demon King of Gluttony] Goliath naturally found the drastic magical ripple in the distance. As a clone that the true body placed in the Abyss, the huge Burning Eye gradually decelerated.

It felt that something was not right, and picked up a rather familiar scent, a breath that made it recall some memories from the past.

Greed and evil were not flaws in the Abyss, while modesty and kindness were sins that must be extinguished. In this wasteland with no future, even worms would struggle against their own kin for the rights to nibble rotting meat—to survive, absolute self-centeredness and suspicion were compulsory qualities of all demons.

And Goliath was one of them. It was also the greediest demon in the Sixth Abyss, a truth that did not need to be doubted.

Hunger, greed. Since its birth, endless lust had occupied its body and soul, and to Goliath, every single soul it could devour would never satiate it—merely making it even more hungry. Neither could anything that could be possessed would never satisfy it, merely making it even more possessive. Because of that boundless greed, it started to steal food from its kin when it was still a worm, using its muscle, teeth, talons, innate spells and all powers at its disposal to take that which could be taken.

In the cruelest competition, the weak worm slowly grew into a powerful gargoyle, and as if a born demon king that the Abyss nurtured from its wastelands, it possessed cruelty and strength that astonished even demons. After a few easy challenges and torture to death, the archdemon that had yet to make a name for itself acquired its territory for the first time. However, its will to dominate was so substantial the demon became twisted, and for more land it declared war against the five demon lords around it.

It had to be said that it was no good idea. Even the future Abyssal Lord had no way to triumph against five demon lords that had ability comparable to itself, and if not for the five Lords having such irreconcilable grudges that they never combined to deal a lethal blow on Goliath, the future state of the Abyss would have been drastically different. Even so, the heavily injured archdemon could not stay in its own domain—to escape enemy pursuit, it a special 'summon' and arrived at an unfamiliar world.

It was a unique world. There, forests expanded like magical creatures in resonance to mana tides, while dangerous magical beasts and draconic species occupied every corner between heaven and earth. Against the endless assault of the beastly waves, the civilization of that world exhausted all ideas to resist them, building forts, cities and poured all efforts into developing spells and techniques for combat, as well as searching for weapons left behind in ancient ruins—with spells linked to the Abyss that summon demons for battle included amongst them.

The mage that had summoned the archdemon had been initiated, although both him and his instructor did not understand the fundamentals regarding demon-kind dude to a lack in legacy. They actually believed that it was just a unique otherworld beast, and so simply made an ordinary partner pact with no additional restraints.

Without precaution, they granted the archdemon freedom to fight the swarm, which the injured demon certainly would not spurn especially with the droves of delicacies before its eyes that could help it recover. After displaying a little of its ability, it completely wiped out the invading waves of beast, and for that, the young mage even excitedly named the archdemon Goliath—the name of giants with endless power, and allowed it to return to its own world after the demon had quelled the beast tide for several years.

Everything started from there.

Since that day onwards, the demon had received a name. It remembered that name, and also the name of that world.

Mycroft.

That was how the citizens of that world addressed the land beneath their feet, a name that it could not forget after centuries. It kept recalling every brief moment in that distant past even on this day—the clear air, crystalline streams, the sweet flesh and the defenseless, foolish but kind diverse races.

I would definitely conquer it all.

From that day forth, an ordinary demon died, with an indescribable demon taking its place in revival. After returning to the Abyss, Goliath's flames of lust expanded steadily as he now possessed a newfound purpose. It thirsted for everything, thirsted for that world which had been completely different from the Abyss—cheerful and beautiful.

When a life had experienced the vastness of the stars, how would it endure the shackles of gravity anymore? When the vision of borderless greed was opened, who knows how much it would bloat?

Unlike other demon Lords that were mired in trivial disputes or contented with having some cave or summit as their lair, when Goliath resurfaced in the Sixth Abyss it began to compel imps to build fortresses emulating the ones constructed in that world to resist beast tides. It even learned the martial arts training of that world and trained its demon lackeys, and was willing to pay huge price to forge armors and weapons. All of it had been sneered at as foolishness when the other demon Lords noticed it, mocking the behavior as meaningless—all of them, shaking their heads, believed that Goliath had lost the greed and selfishness that was most important to demons due to its monumental failure.

But they were wrong.

It was not abandoning greed, but because Goliath's ambition was far beyond that. A territory, a plain, a little piece of the Abyss—or even the entire Abyss was not worthy in its eyes. What was there to strive for in some frivolous riches? Laughable. This corrupted world had no way of inciting even an iota of its lust, what more was some meaningless metal!

Its target was at the other end of the Void, that beautiful and endlessly lively otherworld—that infinite Multiverse!

Perhaps out of an instinctive thirst for fire, perhaps out of an objective that stood out from the masses or even perhaps out of a massive greed that stood above all lust, it appeared that the Will of the Sixth Abyss began to pay attention to Goliath from that moment on. In centuries of slaughter and conquest, the archdemon became a rare Monarch in the Abyss and achieved final victory in seeking the highest seat within the Abyss. Having waited some time for that moment, the Abyssal Will coronated its Demon King as it became the Greatest Lord of the Sixth Abyss. The Lord did not fall short of the Abyssal Will's expectations either, and began to investigate or simply invade all neighboring worlds with no hesitation.

Now, Goliath smelled a scent that it could never forget that appeared to be from that world. Just as how the two old mages noticed it, the Abyssal Lord also noticed the two Legendary spellcasters in the center of that massive magical formation.

There were actually three Monarchs combining, Goliath thought. If it itself had not returned by sending a clone, there would have been severe losses even if the other few Sixth Abyss Monarchs came back at once. It seemed that just as it had spied upon the Mycroft Continent for centuries, the Mycroft Continent was spying upon the Sixth Abyss all along as well.

It might be a trap.

The moment that thought appeared, the Burning Eye's gigantic vertical pupil smoothed slightly, and a soundless sneer resounded from the depths of many a demon soul. Ferocious and fearsome Abyssal Blaze began to incinerated the void around its body just as the Abyssal Lord unleashed monstrous malevolent energies. A deathly power of corruption from the Abyss itself, it eroded the world, creating fissures over the skies that resembled shattered glass. Thus, dimensional turbulence that belonged to the void started to spill from those fissures, and, guided by Goliath, it cascaded towards the warrior, the black dragon and the two Legendary mages!

”Then they shall be crushed.”