Chapter 258
Chapter 258: Visitors from the Earth Elemental Plane
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
[Child.]
[On the day you were born, the entire dragon valley reverberated with the whispers of the name that the Beast Gods bestowed upon you—Beifeng Herault.]
[My child, I proudly watched you grow up into the messenger of love. You should always remember that our family has used only justice and love to rule this country. You, too, should carefully use your powerful ability, your divine power that stems from true love.]
[But, you must remember that true victory never comes from power…]
[My child, personal strength is limited. What you need to do is encourage your citizens and increase their morale; they should always stand by your side. I’m telling you all this because when my life ends…]
[You shall be king!]
The dawn was accompanied by a tall, heroic figure, while, in the background, my shameless System refreshed my knowledge of its lack of limits. It was giving that silhouette its own background music and fake introduction scene.
This man, who had his own background music and introduction announcement, had his back to the sun; he seemed to be glowing valiantly. His crown-shaped horns blinded me even further and gave him the appearance of a pay-to-win player.
“I have returned!”
[System Notification: As the current King of All Gentlemen, how can you allow yourself to be surpassed by a junior? Isn’t it just some background music and an introduction? Come, from now on, every time Princess Peach arrives, I’ll give her a Swan Lake ballet dance introduction! From today onwards, I shall address you as the man who has his own accompanying dancers and ballet shoes!]
“That’s enough out of you! System, get the hell out in front of me! I promise I won’t kill you on the first blow!”
If the System was capable of materializing a physical form, I definitely wouldn’t kill her on the first blow. No, definitely not. How could I possibly vent if I really did kill her with my first blow? I had suffered all this time; I would definitely abuse her for at least one month!
“Your Highness, I have returned.”
Didn’t he notice that I was talking to my System? Have a clue! I glared at him, filled with dissatisfaction.
“Yeah, got it. What, is something the matter?”
The honest and dull-seeming dracon’s face was covered with dust and dirt, resembling an old farmer who had just finished planting trees in the desert. He seemed fatigued and hesitant as he looked towards me.
“Oh, right, where were you? Why did you skip out on work for no reason for so long? Hah, forget it! I’m in a good mood today so I don’t care.”
When I saw my subordinates work so hard, as a good and magnanimous boss I had to of course be considerate and console them. However, my causal question caused Beifeng’s expression to change, and he now looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He sweated profusely as his large, draconic eyes opened to the maximum. He stared at me.
“Your Highness, didn’t you request me to stay in the Earth Elemental Plane and be the vanguard for our development? You said that at the slowest, someone would come to take my place in three days. Yet I waited for so long and still didn’t see anyone arrive to take my place as you said. It couldn’t be that you forgot all about me!?”
Alright, it was now my turn to begin sweating profusely. I recalled that I really did promise him such a thing. Originally, I had intended to send a team over to talk to Beifeng about taking over his job, and I was even going to have Karo City assist them.
However, I had so many things keeping me busy here, and since I was having such a fun time on my birthday, I really did forget about him. No, my memory was always excellent—perhaps I should say that I unconsciously ignored him; I did not want him to make trouble for me when I was having so much fun.
“No wonder; when Yawen had made her report to me yesterday, she said the pressures of work were much less than expected by more than a half. The Town Security even began handing out many vacations… Could it be that this bastard can create more than half of all the chaos in the city by himself? I had unintentionally done such a great deed for everyone’s sakes.”
I thought about how those Town Security girls would take days off and even have fun shopping; they were no different to human girls when they toured the night markets and would truly take pleasure in shopping. I suddenly felt like forgetting about Beifeng’s downsides.
To be honest, Beifeng by himself wasn’t ridiculous to the extent where he would be the cause of half of all chaos within the city. However, he was the vice-commander of the Absolute Gentlemen Alliance and was missing in action. The fact that the Beyar Brothers, Pier, and other higher-ups had been forced into helping out with the Mizar and other physical labor led the Gentle Alliance to halt the organization of any activities. And it wasn’t limited to that; the dark elves now had many new, novice Town Security members, which had disrupted the balance between them and had given the Town Security the most relaxing time of their lives.
Alright, I also recalled that it was I who had drummed up their morale. Some things were better left unsaid. After all, I did feel slightly guilty about it.
“Yep, thanks for your hard work. Because of some special reasons, we temporarily placed our emphasis on preparing for the military parade and weapons auction, so we slowed down the work on developing a base in the Earth Elemental Plane. You’ve worked hard, and you’ve completed your task quite well. I’ll remember this. As for now, go back and take a good rest, take a shower, and go to sleep. You must be tired. When you’re feeling refreshed tomorrow, I’ll discuss more serious matters with you.”
The strange thing was that even after saying all this, Beifeng still didn’t leave. He actually had quite a good temper and would almost never get angry. However, he was currently looking at me with an awkward expression on his face.
“Hmm? Do you need something else?
“Um, actually, some of my companions came back here together with me. They’ve decided to join the large family of our Gentlemen Alliance. But, it seems that in order to become a member of our mercenary group, as stated in the mercenary guild’s rules, they must first obtain humanality[NG1] .”
There was indeed such a rule about nationality, but who was I? I was the ancestor of the leaders of this country. Giving them nationalities would be too easy. All I had to do was tell Kelly and the others.
“That’s simple. It’s such a small matter; isn’t it just nationality? You just have to take them later to our new Department of Civil Affairs, and I’ll—wait a moment, did you say humanality, not nationality?”
A sudden ominous premonition led me to discover that something was wrong.
“Awesome! You agreed?”
The sly Beifeng caught my verbal misstep and celebrated by shouting out loudly.
“Number Four, Number Five, Number Six, Number Seven—everyone, come in!”
Alright then. A sandstorm arose outside the castle gate, as if an entire army was passing by. But when the visitors approached and I could make them out through the sandstorm, I discovered that they were, in fact, several huge individuals.
“A desert magical scorpion king?”
It was a massive magical scorpion, whose weight definitely exceeded a hundred tons. Despite the fact that it was only of the height of about three humans, its tremendous weight would cause the ground to crack wherever it passed by. As it gradually approached me, the cracks continuously appeared in the ground but were mended by magic again.
“Number Four, be careful. Don’t break the castle door! We can’t afford to pay for it.”
How could such a mega magical beast, which would be hailed as a respected veteran in the Earth Elemental Plane, be fooled by Beifeng into coming here?!
And there were two figures seated atop the scorpion’s back. The taller one was a tan-skinned high elf, and a strange, charming light could be seen in the elf’s eyes. Crystals and stones were embedded into its skin.
“A high-level sand dragon that can transform into a humanoid?”
In this current generation, high elves could be said to be basically extinct, and only the ancient dragons would still use their forms.
“Number Five, I’ve said it so many times already. Before you’re able to perfectly transform into a human, you should cover yourself with a cape.”
The ruler of the current generation was humanity, and it was only natural for these massive dragons to transform into humans for their humanoid forms. Only those ancient artifacts from the even older generations would prefer to use a form like a high elf, which would, indeed, stand out too much today. Yet it was still understandable, as the high elves were the rulers of ancient times.
The other individual had already donned a cape and was at least three or four meters tall. Rocks protruded from all over its body, making it rather obvious that that individual was a top-level existence from the Earth Elemental Plane.
“Your Highness, this is Number Six. He doesn’t really know how to talk.”
Suddenly, a large piece of the earth jutted out and the ground began trembling slightly. It appeared that something was underground.
“Number Seven doesn’t really know how to talk either…”
Alright, it would seem that beneath me was a sandworm. There was a sandworm that was able to leave the Earth Elemental Plane? And it even possessed the ability to communicate? This was definitely no ordinary sandworm. Was this an Earth Elemental Lord tour group coming to visit me?
“Beifeng, just what exactly do you intend to do? And how were they able to leave the Earth Elemental Plane?”
If I had to fight with this group in any other place, it would be rather troublesome. Yet this was the Crimeless City, Diffindor, the heart of Wumianzhe’s Divine Domain; I wouldn’t be afraid.
Beifeng smiled slightly. “In my ‘True Love Domain,’ all lives have the right to enjoy the right to live. No matter if they are ordinary creatures or elemental creatures, they can all live in an environment that feels as wonderful as heaven to them.”
“Domain? That sounds like a Soul World. Could it be… wait a moment, did you!? No! This is impossible!”
Beifeng put his palms together, closed his eyes, and nodded slightly. The devout expression on his face made him seem like an old monk no longer interested in the mundane. The rising sun illuminated his old leather jacket, radiating a golden glow that seemed to bestow upon him a divine feeling, the feeling of having surpassed life and death.
“Battles helped me grow. After experiencing combat where I had almost lost my life (he meant doing nothing), and after tempering my will and body (he meant fooling around), I finally made progress. My Soul World may not be strong, but it has the ability to allow intelligent creatures to live within it.”
When I heard this, the barbequed meat I was holding in my hand dropped to the ground. Beifeng hadn’t even been in the Legend rank for one year yet he had mysteriously managed to enter the realm of Saints just like that!
What was with that ability of his which I had never even heard of before? Wasn’t it just a natural version of the legendary ability to obtain harems? This was obviously cheating.
“Damn it! Who’s the main character supposed to be—you or me? On my way to the Gold rank, I had almost perished many, many times, but you, by simply doing nothing, quickly entered the Saint rank. Author, there’s something wrong with the scenario; what is with this obvious difference in treatment? This game is incredibly unbalanced! Is this one of those legendary stories that always abuses the main character? No! Impossible! If you give the cheat powers to someone else, the story will lose popularity!”
Yep, the Beifeng Herault before me was unmistakably at the Saint rank. Only someone at this power level would be considered an equal by an Earth Elemental Lord.
“Your Highness, us seven brothers really get along well with each other, so we swore to become brothers. And now that my brothers are having difficulties, of course I wouldn’t be able to just watch as they suffered. I’ve always heard how Your Highness views brotherhood as important, with friends everywhere, so I decided on my own to take them here to follow you…”
After a longer, more detailed explanation, I understood what happened. Us leaving the Earth Elemental Plane didn’t cause things to calm down—no, it was the opposite. Emordilorcan had been the origin of suppression for these Elemental Lords, but after he perished, the powerful and ancient Earth Elemental Lords began warring with each other.
Caught in the maelstrom of a war they didn’t even want, those Lords who did not want to fight over the now-open Earth Elemental God position were put in a difficult spot. They didn’t want to join the battle, but they would be forced to join it.
“Are you saying that you don’t want to become the Earth Elemental God? Ha! Don’t even mention whether or not we believe this reason of yours, but how can you make us believe that you won’t come in to reap the benefits while we’re all busy fighting?”
Yes, that was a valid question. Even those Earth Elemental Lords themselves couldn’t guarantee that they would resist the temptation themselves if they saw a potential victory right before them.
Doubtlessly, the best way to deal with this dilemma was to get as far away from the site of the battle as possible since they weren’t interested in battling; they should leave the Earth Elemental Plane entirely. However, Earth Elemental Lords were unable to leave the Earth Elemental Plane as they pleased unless they were interested in gradually weakening to death.
That was when they accidentally managed to discover that Beast Tamer Beifieg was able to use his Soul World to create a True Love Domain, a place in which any living creature could live. The rest was history.
“…And, so, us seven brothers have agreed to come serve Your Highness.”
“Why me?”
“Because only you won’t have any biases against us. And, more importantly, since you personally defeated Emordilorcan, it’d be an honor to serve you.”
As the children of Chaos, elemental creatures were absolute followers of the law of the jungle. Perhaps they didn’t respect mortals, who had much shorter lives than they did, but the elemental creatures that followed the path of ‘the weak evolving to the strong’ would always have an innate respect for the strong.
In these Earth Elemental Lords’ minds, I had defeated Emordilorcan in single combat, and hence I would have the best new Earth Elemental God had only I been an elemental creature. Serving such a strong individual and asking for protection from him seemed to be an excellent idea to them.
I realized all this after hearing Beifeng’s explanation. I only considered for a few seconds before agreeing to this beneficial thing that had fallen into my lap.
“Alright, I’m really lacking in personnel here so I’ve decided to agree. Beifeng, well done this time. I’ll reward you later. Right, if there are seven of you, where are the other two? They didn’t come? Haha! Seven of you, aren’t you just like the Seven Brothers of the Gourd? Oh, sorry, you probably don’t understand my little joke, although I think it’s quite fitting. Pfft! Beifeng, I bet you’re Number Three again.”
Hearing that I agreed, Beifeng was instantly delighted.
“Yep, I’m Number Three again. Although I don’t know what the Seven Brothers of the Gourd are, us seven brothers came up with a name for ourselves as well. Since we’re all at the Saint rank or above, we’ve decided to call ourselves the ‘Seven Great Saints.’”
“Huh? Seven Great Saints? Hahaha.”
Alright, Beifeng ignored the fact that I was clutching my stomach with laughter and excitedly shouted to outside the city.
“Big Sister, Number 2, His Highness Roland has agreed!”
“Where are they?”
The tall mountain in the distance suddenly moved and waved its hand, which was in the clouds. That mountain had actually been an incredibly tall tower giant!
“…Oh my, that’s really quite the Saint.”
“Moving about in cities is a bit inconvenient for Number 2, so he’ll just wait outside. As for Big Sister, you should know her already.”
“Hello, Your Highness Roland. I hope you still haven’t forgotten about an old lady like me.”
I looked to see who it was. Her raspy voice was familiar, one that I had heard just recently in the Earth Elemental Plane.
But when I saw who she was, I inhaled a large amount of cold air.
“The Mother of Ten Thousand Stones? The Great Stone Sculptor Ainslo! Why are you here?”
Upon hearing my question, that incredibly ugly mother of some innumerable elemental creatures had her face redden. She even snuck a look at Beifeng, but that action made me stumble upon a realization.
“I—I—I understand now! Don’t—don’t tell me anything at all!”