Chapter 639: Death of the Gods

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

The blood-red moonlight guided our way. The high density of the Chaos Abyss’s taint became immeasurable. Seeing the beasts on the ground run amok, even the most optimistic people would feel tense.

Today was the third day after the demon wave explosively arrived. According to our plans, we were supposed to arrive to help the elves tonight. However, plans were forever flexible. We had also met with several obstructions on the way here. It would be quite fortunate already if we could arrive by tomorrow morning.

It seemed that the flying demons and demon dragons that came to obstruct us weren’t targeting us specifically. These flying magical demonic beasts had likely just instinctively attacked us. But, since they were only attacking our airship squadron one at a time or in small numbers, this was nothing more than complete suicide on their part.

Our motherships didn’t even need to act. Just the smaller aircraft on the motherships were able to shoot all the flying enemies down.

Although the demon dragons seemed powerful, they were nothing more than Chaos Abyss variants of wyverns and other dragon subspecies. While the demon wave might have given these creatures stronger bodies, they still didn’t have any brains for aerial battling or avoiding danger.

These flying demonic creatures posed zero threat to us. However, they indeed slowed down our overall speed. We had to send out scouts and readjust our new engines multiple times. Our expected arrival time was now slowed by another four to five hours.

As for Afina’s message to me that “she would make more concessions if we arrived earlier”, I treated that as nothing more than empty words. Such verbal promises would hold very little weight to begin with, not to mention how we were already taking advantage of the situation. It would be far too likely for the elves to turn on us and not agree to what they originally promised. I had no intention of taking on more risk for the sake of unreliable benefits. That was why I informed our pilots to focus on safety foremost over speed.

As for the thought that I also wanted the elves to kill at least a few more demons, and us being more valuable as the elves would be in a dire crisis? If I said I never had such a thought, would you believe me?

Harloys was highly supportive of my safety-first approach. I figured that she probably wanted to see more of her enemies dead from the demon wave. Otherwise, if her enemies became her subordinates in the new Northlands Elven Empire, that would actually be more troublesome to deal with.

The earth beneath our airships was already pitch-black. The dense ranks of demonic creatures below us would probably give some people trypophobia. It seemed that the demon wave didn’t even care about the Moonwheel Capital obstacle in its way. The demon wave was simply expanding around it.

It was likely that the neighboring human kingdoms would find that their hopes had been for nothing. Even if the elves were completely annihilated, the elves would still be unable to do much to the demon wave before dying.

I was looking out at the sky while standing on the bridge of the airship. There was a scene I saw last night that I just couldn’t forget.

“You’re still thinking about the meteor shower from last night?”

“…I hope that we won’t have come here for nothing.”

Meteor shower? More accurately, that was a group of Gods who had died. I was having less and less expectations of the elves now. Last night, four gigantic white stars had fallen from the skies. Everyone who saw them instantly understood that several Gods had died.

New information was soon brought to me. Two weak Follower Low Gods and a Mid God had died in battle. Their Divine Concepts included Music, Sightseeing, Guiding Those Who Are Lost in a Forest, Muse to Artists, and so on… What, you’re asking me why I only listed three instead of four dead Gods? The fourth was a weak Follower God of the God of Art. This God hadn’t even participated in battle, but directly perished due to losing a large amount of belief.

It could be said that many of the Elven Gods related to the arts had directly died last night.

Among the Elven Gods, there were 13 who could be called True Gods. However, only two of the thirteen were powerful enough to be High Gods. Those two were War Goddess Sonya, Guardian Goddess of the Silver Elves, and Somulan, whom moon elf shamans worshipped. Sonya was considered strong even among the High Gods. Her Divine Concepts included War, Protector of Heroes, Guardian Goddess of Rangers, and so on.

Somulan had always kept a low profile. He had always been close to Anslo, and it was said that Somulan had previously been a Follower God of Main God Anslo. Somulan’s Divine Concepts were mostly religion-related. Some of his Divine Concepts included Overseer of Elven Religious Ceremonies, Protector of Nature, Helping Elves Find Their Homes, and so on. Many druids worshipped this High God who was quite close to the Nature Faction.

The Elven Gods were not united at all. All the wood elves’ Gods were in the neutral Nature Faction rather than counting as the Elven Gods Faction. As for the dark elves’ Gods… they had all died already. The silver elves’ Gods were more focused on Divine Concepts like War and Protection. All of the Elven Gods who had Concepts unrelated to War would naturally be Somulan’s subordinates.

The Elven Gods related to the Concepts of the arts were quite close to the moon elves. However, these Elven Gods were already lacking power of belief due to the moon elves’ low population, and now that the moon elves were facing a life-threatening crisis, these Elven Gods had also reached a dangerous brink of almost not having enough power of belief to maintain themselves. Although these Elven Gods of the arts weren’t skilled in battle, they had still been forced to fight. It was only natural that they were the first ones to die.

Challenging Donatis in the middle of the demon wave? That would be the same as challenging a Main God right in the middle of their personal Divine Kingdom. Any existences lower level than High God wouldn’t even be able to retreat with their lives intact.

Besides, if Donatis decided to become serious, then what could the elves possibly do to stop him? I could only wonder if my preparations for Donatis would be effective or not.

All that I could hope for was that Donatis would be completely uninterested in the mortal elves… But even if he didn’t do anything, it seemed like the demon wave was more than capable of annihilating the elves.

From a certain standpoint, when the Chaos Abyss’s first demon wave chose the elves’ territory as the first target of the invasion, everything here had already been set in stone. It was an absolutely hopeless battle.

The Chaos Abyss vs. the elves… There was far too great a difference between the two sides.

The elves couldn’t even compare in any area. No matter how hard the elves worked, they would only be able to obtain some temporary small victories. When looking at the overall situation, the best the elves could do would be to reduce their overall losses. The elves would be ineffective here at best. Although this sounded cruel, this was how war was.

*Boom!*

Suddenly, I heard a loud sound in the distance. A blinding golden pillar of light then appeared in the sky. This pillar was made of pure magic power. The shock waves and powerful gusts from this spell messed up our airship squadron’s formation.

The light was so blinding that looking at it hurt my eyes. Meanwhile, everyone else around me was covering their eyes and had collapsed. This pure magical light was far too much for others to directly look at.

“A forbidden spell?”

“Impossible. Donatis wouldn’t possibly give the elves enough time to cast a forbidden spell. If the elves started casting a forbidden spell, Donatis would unhesitatingly attack. That would cause the elves to die even faster.”

“Then what was that?”

The magic power in that light had surpassed all measurements already. With such a powerful magical shock wave, it was likely that this pillar was definitely equal in power to any forbidden spell.

An instant-casting forbidden spell? Without even talking about whether that would be even possible, if the elves had truly been capable of doing so, they wouldn’t have been in such a crisis to begin with. In that case, the most likely answer was…

“Divine power crystal shards? I never expected that they would succeed…”

As always, the person who understood you best would forever be your enemy. Harloys actually knew what that light had been?

“The elves are different from humans in their worship of the Gods, and are more like mages in their understanding of Gods. We elves have long since secretly started treading upon the Gods’ taboos…”

In the old Elven Empire, the moon elves had been in charge of religion. They knew more secrets about the Gods than any other Superior Elf species. Divine power crystals were an experiment to use physical objects to contain divine power, an experiment to allow ordinary people to utilize divine power.

If divine power could be stored just like mana in mana batteries, then belief would become another type of currency. From a certain standpoint, the elves had been truly daring.

Normally, whenever a divine job class member wanted to use a Divine Art, that would require the “blessing” of a True God. The frequency with which someone could use Divine Arts would definitely be limited. That was because the True God would definitely want to use more power of belief on strengthening themselves. This was just like how any smart government would make sure that tax income exceeded expenditures. The amount of Divine Arts and divine power that the True God granted to their believers would depend on the God’s personality and how much they spoiled their believers. But regardless, the overall number and quality of Divine Arts and divine power would be limited.

But if a storage container could be invented to store divine power, like an equivalent of Olivia’s Magic Box for mana, then perhaps everyone would be able to use Divine Arts even without the Gods. The power of those Divine Arts would also theoretically increase greatly.

And if this actually succeeded, priests would become capable of using almost limitless amounts of Divine Arts… However, this would obviously infuriate all the Gods. Foundationally speaking, this would be no different from the Desecration Priestess job class, which robbed divine power from the Gods.

No, if divine power could be stored and traded just like another type of currency, the mystery of the Gods would be greatly decreased. The Gods’ venerated statuses and positions would be severely challenged. It was likely that the divine power crystal would be treated even more seriously by the Gods than the Desecration Priestess job class.

“The elves are truly going so overboard. The Elven Gods would allow them to behave so ridiculously?”

“The divine power crystal is a research project from the Gold Elves’ time. It was just that the moon elves continued it…”

Harloys’ words were filled with lamentation. The Gold Elves had to have displayed back then just what it meant that doing whatever you pleased would be foolishly suicidal.

I didn’t even need to ask how Harloys knew about the divine power crystal. She had countless students and spies in the Mage Country, so how could she possibly lack spies amongst the elves? Considering how she had thousands of years to prepare already, it seemed likely that she even had spies working for her among the moon elf higher-ups.

In that case, what we just witnessed was quite easy to understand. The moon elves had to have used their secret trump card since they were forced to the brink, detonating their stored divine power. This pure positive energy would have tremendous attack power against demons. However, using this would be a double-edged sword. Even if the elves survived the current crisis, the humans’ Order Gods wouldn’t be letting the elves go…

“Latest news report from the fairies! Somulan, Guardian God of Elven Shamans, descended in his true body, yet was seriously injured by Donatis. Somulan was forced to self-destruct in his true body. Somulan has now died!”

Alright then, it would seem that Harloys’ idea on what just happened had been completely wrong. That was no divine power crystal at all. That was clearly the final light from a True God’s death. By the way, it seemed that even I had never seen the divine power self-destruction during a High God’s death before. So that was what it looked like!

“Ha, Harloys…”

After the pillar of light finished with its light explosion, a gigantic white meteor streaked through the sky. That was a Divine Kingdom shard which had now lost all meaning.

I interestedly glanced at Harloys, wanting to see her current expression. She had been so confident in her earlier analysis, yet she had been instantly proven wrong.

“Somulan is dead? Haha, we really need to celebrate! Yeah, we’re going to have the biggest feast possible tonight! What, you’re saying that we’re not allowed to drink alcohol on the battlefield? No, we’re doing it to improve our courage!”

Harloys had an absolutely delighted expression, and was behaving like she didn’t know north from south. The other Superior Elf tribe leaders still with us all had awkward expressions, but they also couldn’t stop her ridiculous behavior.

I almost forgot—I would have if Harloys didn’t bring it up. Harloys had plenty of enemies amongst the Elven Gods. Since that Somulan or whatever was so close to Anslo, it was likely that Somulan was also one of Harloys’ greatest enemies.

As for Harloys’ misanalysis just earlier? She didn’t care at all, since she received the wonderful news of one of her enemies dying.

When I saw how Harloys was going crazy to the point of really trying have a party with the Superior Elves, I could only shake my head helplessly.

“It seems like she truly trusts you,” Didina told me as she suddenly appeared; it was somewhat discomforting. This was because she had still been a ruler in the Chaos Abyss. I had constantly kept someone to keep an eye on her. Still, Didina had been quite obedient all this time.

“At such a critical moment, she still feels comfortable enough to behave so ridiculously. Naturally, this means that she trusts in your being able to deal with the current situation. I just wonder how you’ll deal with Donatis…”

“Heehee, you’ll see in a bit.”

I had no intention of explaining anything more to Didina. Even though her identity was rather unique, trust would still need time to accumulate. It was quite generous of me already to have brought Didina along. However, telling her about our upcoming combat plans would be unthinkable.

This wasn’t because I was expecting Didina to betray us or anything like that. It was simply that an abundance of caution would forever be necessary. For some things, it would always be better if fewer people knew about them.

I could understand why Didina would be worried for the elves. Still, I wouldn’t be giving her any explanation.

“Then, could you please tell me how you intend to rescue the elves from the demon wave? Just these airships probably won’t be enough.”

Of course these airships wouldn’t be enough. Even if all of the airships were completely empty, that still wouldn’t be enough to contain the full population of the Moonwheel Capital “Elven Empire”. In fact, there wouldn’t even be enough space for only the elven children and elderly. Not to mention, the elves wouldn’t possibly be able to leave by themselves, nor could I possibly let myself leave here empty-handed.

Still, the scene of trying to guide such a large elven population through the demon wave seemed too wondrous to even think about.

“Have you heard of the Herit Mountains?”

“…Do you intend on going over those cliffs? However, the repeated trips will still require several days to complete, if you make multiple trips…”

Crossing through the neighboring human kingdoms would take time, effort, and be incredibly dangerous. The nearby Herit Mountains were considered impossible to scale. The demon wave probably wouldn’t be idiotic enough to try and climb these snowy mountains. In that case, going over these mountains would naturally be the safest path. Also, my goal was only to help the elves survive this calamity, nothing more. I would simply leave the elves to their own devices afterwards, although I would bring the young elves with potential back to the Northlands.

As for how I was going to bring the elves through the demon wave and over those unscalable mountains… that was for me to know, and for Didina to find out.

I simply smiled and nodded without saying anything else to assuage Didina’s worries. I then directly got up and left while saying goodbye.

Next, I calculated the time. It was indeed almost time. I still had approximately 24 hours to prepare before we reached our destination.

“Sorry, I have some private matters to take care of.”

After I said goodbye to Didina, I directly went to the Borealis’s mage tower, where modifications had been taking place since we set out. Now, the preparations here should be complete.

“Now then, let us prepare a gift for Donatis. Ha, I wonder what the elves will think of my gift? This should be really interesting.”

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