Chapter 437: Grand Scheme

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

Everything started from a conversation on the River Styx. At the time, Ayer was rowing a boat while having a seemingly casual conversation with Roland. What they were speaking about, however, was a massive scheme that involved the entire world (Chapter 66).

“By the way, Roland, didn’t you mention Hell and the netherworld? And how demons resided within these places in your world? Do you know that there’s also a Hell in our world? It’s just that devils live there, instead. I talked about your plan with Little Tias. If you’re truly capable of creating your vision of Hell and the netherworld, he’s willing to give all of Hell over to you and even make the devils learn how to become Hell’s prison guards.”

“Okay, that’s fine. However, the ruler of Hell and the highest judge must be the absolutely fair and just Wumianzhe. And just what exactly do the devils plan to obtain from participating in this scheme? Just tell me directly. Else I can’t be reassured about trusting them.”

“Freedom. Not freedom like what they appear to have now, but true freedom. You know that any existence that becomes a high-level devil will return to Hell even if they die in any other plane, the only consequence that they lose some power. And if they die in a lower plane, then that will be a true death.”

“So they wish to break free from the Cycle of Reincarnation?”

“Yes. At first, my people joined the Chaos Goddess’s side in order to not participate in that so-called Holy War. But now the result is that in every so-called Holy War the devils are nothing more than cannon fodder. And the oldest Devil Lords have long since gotten tired of the devils’ wicked lives of endless deceit and warring. They wish to be truly free, but not at the cost of death. Yet the River Styx’s Cycle of Reincarnation is open to all species except high-level devils and demons. That’s because they’re the main fighters of the Holy War.”

“How many agree to this? This isn’t something that the devils would all agree to as an entire species. How many of the nine Devil Lords agree to this plan?”

“Including Little Tias, four. They’re the four Devil Lords that transformed from fallen humans of the first generation. Of course, it’s not that the other five Devil Lords don’t agree. I didn’t even tell them about our plan, nor do I intend to tell them.

And now the promise from back in the day had transformed into reality. For the sake of obtaining true freedom for the devils, the Lord of Lies, Lord of Despair, Lord of Rebellion and Lord of Temptations decided to betray the entire Chaos Faction. Countless devils under their command walked out of the Hell’s Abyss and into Dragon World.

Since we were breaking the Cycle of Reincarnation, the Ayer Faction would be making an irreversible break from the Order Faction. We could only count on ourselves from now on. None of us would be able to turn back …

“Turn back? Do you want to happily wait for Armageddon to befall you? At least now there’s a slight sliver of hope.”

From a certain standpoint, our strange alliance seemed far more like the antagonists when compared to the high and mighty God of Holy Light and the Order True Gods. We had the famous tyrant Emperor Orloss, the evil Devil Lords, an undead army led by an Undead Emperor who almost destroyed the world and the ancient Death God that gave the other Gods headaches. There wasn’t a single ordinary antagonist among us. We would be at the level of a demon king in stories.

But perhaps only true villains were able to understand each other. It could be said that little hoodlums were those who couldn’t resist temptations or had naturally evil personalities, but it would be incredibly out of the ordinary for people like us to not have some legendary story or amazing grudge. To use a rather chuunibyou phrase: “It’s all the world’s fault.” And it mostly probably was.

“Little Roland, as according to the will of ‘that existence,’ from now on we shall listen to your commands. Please rest assured in using us as your tools. As long as you can grant our species’ wish, we shall venerate you as—”

The moment the Lord of Lies appeared I pretty much knew what he was going to say, but I had interrupted him as I didn’t want Sam to learn anything unnecessary. Kamiltias was reconfirming the contract that Ayer and I had with him. As long as my version of Hell was successfully constructed, they would become the devil prison guards of Hell. This would help them escape from the Cycle of Reincarnation and the Holy War in exchange for their service to the new Hell.

Wars had broken out all over the mortal plane. Once the Source of Order and the Source of Chaos truly began the Holy War, it would be impossible for anyone to prevent the large number of deaths and souls entering the Cycle of Reincarnation. However, it would be possible to have these souls enter a different Cycle of Reincarnation.

“This is the only method left. There’s no other Cycle of Reincarnation? Fine, we’ll create one ourselves.”

When we were stuck thinking for solutions, that was the answer we had forcefully come up with.

There was no more need to hide my “grand scheme.” The “grand scheme” was to use the collapsing Dragon World plane as raw material to create a Hell for mortals while it was completely cut off from the mortal plane. This would break the River Styx and Heaven’s Pillar’s monopoly over the Cycle of Reincarnation!

Only after creating a new Cycle of Reincarnation would it be possible to stop the Cycle of Reincarnation, River Styx and Heaven’s Pillar that all led to Armageddon! Only then would all the sacrifices no longer be meaningless; only then would the damned Holy War be stoppable.

“We’ve finally reached this step. It’s taken so long. I never expected to be able to achieve the necessary conditions.”

Every single objective in my thick notebook was now checked off. But if I wrote down everything that me and my companions had done, not even ten more notebooks would be enough.

This scheme had taken a scarily long amount of time to come to fruition. I had started thinking of it back when I was Emperor Yongye. In fact, this scheme was how I had convinced Ayer not to kill me. And only once Wumianzhe ascended to Godhood and I resurrected did this plan finally become achievable. The scheme that Ayer and I agreed upon in that rowboat on the River Styx had started for real.

As long as we managed to foundationally eliminate this greatest hidden threat leading to the upcoming inevitable Armageddon, all we would have to face was the Holy War itself. Perhaps that would still be difficult, but at least whether everyone survived or not would depend on the mortals’ own efforts and abilities rather than a predestined Armageddon with universal doom.

“I can’t promise that this solution is workable. But at the very least it’s no longer a one hundred percent chance of everyone dying in the end.”

This was already plenty for us, as we had no more time left and no other paths to take.

Estrada had sacrificed himself in order to save the lives of two million innocent Bardi citizens. However, the moment the demons of the Chaos Faction arrived they sacrificed almost 170,000 humans to their blood sacrifice, and this was only the beginning.

It could be easily predicted that the entire mortal plane would face various challenges from all directions, and similar incidents would occur endlessly. To be quite honest, it would be impossible for me to deal with them all. No, let me correct myself—even if all of us worked only on this, it would be impossible to fill in every hole in this sinking ship.

“Who knows which random domain lord will be the next to fall under the control of some Chaos Evil God and open the castle gates, perform a blood sacrifice and summon a demon army? Who knows when some Dimensional Door will suddenly appear in some country’s capital? Defending against unexpected and random attacks is far more difficult for us than being on the attacking side. A single misstep might cause an avalanche. No matter how we calculate things, we’re still the losers in the end. The situation is even worse than in the game’s history.”

Indeed. While there were many improvements in the overall situation compared to the game’s history, there was one missing part that was impossible for me to match—the game’s players.

That’s right. Don’t underestimate the players. Although they all started off as the weakest beginners, there was the fact that they wouldn’t permanently die and had cheat-like leveling rates with zero problems as they progressed in power level. They had ridiculous growth rates and natural talent abilities that could make any game player into the main character of any legend. That was why the players would be able to continue facing ever stronger opponents as the Elemental Tide increased. Yet even the endless amount of “undying main characters” were unable to change the pitiful ending created by the game developers.

The reason? There was an unsolvable conundrum from the very start. Once the fires of hatred stoked the bloodthirsty chains of revenge, the entire world would be wreathed in flames, as slaughter could only lead to more slaughter… Fine, I’ll stop being abstruse. It was basically that the more enemies the game players killed, the more souls the Cycle of Reincarnation would receive. Then, the Goddesses of Chaos and Order would awaken, and the game would end there.

“It’s impossible to stop the Cycle of Reincarnation. No matter what we do or who we kill, the Cycle of Reincarnation will still gorge itself on the killed souls and revive the Goddesses of Chaos and Orders, bringing about the inevitable Armageddon. Nothing will be changed, unless we can create a new place for dead souls to go to.”

This was what Ayer and I truly believed. And we couldn’t act too slowly on this. It would be far too late if the Holy War entered its middle or late stages. The best time to take action would be right after the Holy War began. Too many conflicts would make it difficult for others, either mortal or Gods, to focus their attention on us. The God of Fate who was part of our faction would also intentionally cause all prophecy magic to no longer work. This would be the best time to secretly carry out our plan.

That’s right. Everything about everything was all in order to create an opportune time to begin our scheme, which was right now, less than half a year after the Holy War had formally begun.

Obviously, doing something like creating Hell and our own Cycle of Reincarnation right in front of the Chaos and Order Factions would be tantamount to suicide. It would be absolutely impossible for us to resist if the Order and Chaos Main Gods directly descended to eliminate us.

My original secret plan with Ayer was to create our Hell out of the Hell’s Abyss that the devils resided in. But now I had found the collapsing Dragon World in the Bardi Empire. As long as we cut off all the connections Dragon World had to the mortal plane, which were few to begin with, it would turn into just one of the many distant dimensions. Before Dragon World completely collapsed, we would at least have a period of time in which nobody would be able to trace us or interfere with our actions. In that case, we could use this period of time to create a new Cycle of Reincarnation!

It would be utterly impossible for me to carry out a scheme of this scale with only my personal abilities. I had already gathered everything I had written down in my notebook that was necessary to create a new Cycle of Reincarnation. And now it was time to activate the grand scheme.

The twin emerald ring on my finger had lost its luster. Its shattered remnants were blown away as dust in the wind.

To make it so that nobody found out about our scheme—at least so that no existences interfered before the connections to Dragon Plane were completely severed—we needed an excuse to explain why Dragon Plane suddenly had all its Dimensional Doors destroyed.

This reason needed to be passable to both the Chaos and Order Factions. They needed to at least not immediately see through it, otherwise they would immediately start an insane slaughter against us. This excuse needed to stall them long enough so that they didn’t care if all the Dimensional Doors to Dragon World were destroyed and that this plane was cut off from the mortal plane. Someone needed to play the role of the clown to attract attention.

“Orloss…”

That’s right, the tyrant Orloss, the sly fox Orloss, the foolish emperor Orloss, and… the scapegoat Orloss.

Orloss foolishly decided to betray the dragons and angrily curse the Gods in front of everyone in order to eliminate the threat of the Titans and show off how humans didn’t need other species’ assistance in order to win the Holy War. Despite his subordinates’ pleading, he would destroy all the Dimensional Doors to Dragon World, cutting it off from the mortal plane… This was the scheme that he had come up with, along with the excuse we would give the world.

After that, either the Gods’ retribution or the furious dragons’ breath would immediately come to kill him… No, according to our original plan, Orloss would use the immortality bestowed upon him by the Crown of Thorns to stall for even more time while continuing to make wild declarations. This was so that even more anger would be vented upon him, without affecting anyone else.

His previous reputation of being wise would certainly turn into that of the most foolish ruler in Bardi’s history. His own people would view him as Bardi’s greatest shame. Although he sacrificed everything to protect his country, his citizens would curse him, insult him and revile him. However, Orloss had long seen through everything and still resolutely chose this path because this was the path with the highest probability of success.

“…We humans—no—all of us intelligent species aren’t crops that the Gods can raise and harvest! We work so hard living our own lives! Our memories and lives belong to us! Our existences aren’t for the sake of providing the Gods with nutrition! Don’t allow these hypocritical Gods to control our fates for any longer! Don’t let our children be unable to see any hope in the future! Promise me that, Roland! Promise me!”

The memory of Orloss’s raspy voice echoed in my mind. But I knew that it would be impossible to ever meet him again. Since he had used the Crown of Thorns, his very soul was destined to be destroyed.

“I promise you, coconspirator. From today onwards, the mortal plane shall truly belong to the mortals. Perhaps we’ll still end up meeting death in the Armageddon, but nobody will ever be allowed to toy with our lives.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep