Chapter 270
Chapter 270: Undead Planes
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
“Zero from the Ice Plane? Aso came as well? Oh my, such a grand gathering. An allied army from all the Undead Planes, and the Undead Emperors are personally leading?”
Corpse, Ice, Desecration, Blood, and Darkness were five of the six major Undead Planes already known to have designs on the mortal plane. Rex’s superior—or I should say his superior’s superior’s superior—was the Ice Plane’s Undead Emperor, Zero.
The Undead Emperor Zero’s true name had long been forgotten by the sands of time. He was a SemiGod-level lich who gained fame approximately one thousand and five hundred years ago. Nothing was known about him before this, and it didn’t seem like he was actually from the Ice Plane. He possessed a vast amount of combat experience and counted as a “newcomer” among all the Undead Emperors.
No wonder this little lich Rex was a user of ice magic in addition to death magic. It was said that the average temperature in the Ice Plane was -20 degrees Celsius; no normal lifeforms would be able to survive in such a place. Naturally, the main type of magic there would be ice magic.
While the common points of all the Undead Planes were that there would be plenty of undead, the ways that undead were created in each plane were numerous and wondrous. Each plane also had its own natural laws. Some were more natural dimensions but happened to be particularly suitable for undead to live in, such as the Ice and Darkness Planes. Nothing would be able to survive in the Ice Plane apart from the undead, while the Darkness Plane possessed the power to twist life and death, allowing the undead to reproduce just as if they were living.
And since there were natural Undead Planes, there would also be unnatural ones. For example, the master of the Desecration Plane, Undead Emperor Aso, had expanded his own Divine Kingdom into an entire Undead Plane.
Yes, a Divine Kingdom. Although Aso wasn’t a True God, he was an ancient and powerful entity that even a True God may not be able to defeat. After all, this generation’s True Gods still had to be respectful to their elders. Perhaps Aso wasn’t a True God, but he was definitely far more powerful than most True Gods.
Those that surpassed the Three Heavy Doors of the Myth rank but didn’t become a God would become SemiGods. However, there were plenty of ancient powerful individuals in the past that reached the standard for becoming a God but had no intentions of doing so. While Divine Obligations and Godhood represented glory and strength, they also represented responsibilities and constraints. At the same time as being able to obtain Concepts powerful enough to affect the world, an individual’s personality and soul would be partially taken over by the Concept and be transformed into part of the Concept. The best example would probably be the unlucky God of Holy Light.
Every SemiGod’s accomplishments could be described only in epics and legends. For those powerful enough to reach this rank, how could they possibly be swayed so easily by the promise of unreliable power? Some SemiGods even believed that ascending to Godhood was only a type of trickery, a compromise with the world. They believed that the power that they could obtain with their own hands wouldn’t be any lesser than that gained from ascending to become a True God.
The capacity of any plane had to do with the Elemental Tide. Even a True God’s incarnation in the mortal plane would only be able to maintain a SemiGod’s power level at best. Challenging the limits of a plane’s capacity to bear one’s power level meant that the entire plane’s will would attack you. For the mortal plane, that would be the Goddess of Order and the Goddess of Chaos’s wills. Even if they didn’t personally attack, the huge tide of the mortal plane’s will wouldn’t let any challengers go. It would be as if the entire world loathed your very being.
For example, there would be endless catastrophes, like accidentally stepping on banana peels all the time, having the worst luck in everything, and countless calamities, both natural and man-made, such as an endless number of enemies arriving at your doorstep. Who knew what the final result would be? Most likely the challenger would have to find a new home just to get some peace and quiet.
And due to Ayer’s existence, the position of the Death God had long been filled. Unless a new Concept was born, it would be difficult to even ascend to Godhood these days. However, becoming a Follower God was quite easy. All one had to do was do one’s best to suck up to a True God. But how could the Undead Emperors that had experienced so much hardship be willing to serve someone else? Most of them were SemiGods who didn’t end up dying but were unable to stay any longer in the mortal plane for various reasons, so they ended up hiding out in different dimensions to avoid trouble.
As for the residents of the Undead Planes, how they came to be was even stranger. While some of them were directly created by the Undead Emperors, and others were undead mages that “voluntarily” chose to go to different planes due to being unable to stay in the mortal plane, the most numerous of all were, of course, the native residents of the Undead Planes.
The natural laws of the Undead Planes were, of course, tilted in favor towards the undead, similar to the natural laws of the Elemental Planes, which favored the elemental creatures. The Undead Planes were able to naturally produce new undead, but the source of souls for these undead had always been a mystery. One rumor I had heard was that the Undead Emperors were secretly stealing souls from the River Styx, but I was unsure as to the veracity of this rumor.
Of course, if this was true, Ayer would be held responsible as he was the one who oversaw the River Styx. At the very least, he would be charged with negligence.
With the increase in the Elemental Tide, the Undead Emperors would soon have sufficient power to return to their original home, the mortal plane. Yet it must be said that these long-lived existences had since expected the arrival of another Holy War and had been preparing for centuries. At the very least, the things involving a certain Orloss had been prepared by them even before he ascended to the throne as the Bardi Emperor.
The Undead Emperors had the advantages of time and location, especially with their proactiveness. They also had quite a decent amount of unity within their own ranks.
There were a countless number of Undead Planes already known to exist. After all, from the day that undead came into existence, they kept accumulating endlessly as they were difficult to destroy. Nor was the mortal plane the only plane that was capable of producing Undead Emperors. And Undead Emperors could be produced from more than just undead mages. Perhaps some mighty Myth-ranked hero or dragon had given themselves over to serve death, becoming part of the undead.
This was despite the fact that the undead had a pitiful growth to reach top-level power ranks. After all, the Three Heavy Doors of Myth involved one’s physical body and soul, limiting the power level of countless ancient undead. Some even considered it an insurmountable obstacle for the undead.
However, the existences capable of becoming Undead Emperors were far beyond what common sense could measure. Even if normal undead wouldn’t be able to grow past Myth rank, that didn’t mean that the Undead Emperors were unable to improve their power levels. They had thousands, or even tens of thousands of years to form their strongest foundational accumulation of all. Nobody knew just what they specialized in, and it would be impossible to know it without fighting them.
Even when I was at my strongest, I wouldn’t have had any guarantee of being able to defeat any Undead Emperor in single combat. Of course, except for a very few exceptions, there was also no guarantee that I would lose.
Luckily for me, not every Undead Emperor was interested in this Holy War, which would happen once every two or three thousand years. After all, it would take a lot of effort to connect their plane to the mortal plane. Based on the current situation, the only Undead Emperors that had interest in the mortal plane were the “newcomers” to the ranks of Undead Emperors.
There were a total of six Undead Planes and eight Undead Emperors at the SemiGod level that had taken action, proving their interest in the mortal plane. This was the information that my “dog” obtained for me as my spy.
Another lucky thing was that none of the eight Undead Emperors with designs on the mortal plane were existences with power levels that would cause me to despair. At the very least, I knew that in a certain Undead Plane, there was an ancient existence on par with Ayer. In front of the most ancient bone dragon of all named Gregory, everything would meet its end.
In each Undead Plane, an Undead Emperor would basically be an unstoppable existence. They wouldn’t be called emperors, otherwise, and as the only recent “newcomer” in the past few centuries as well as the winner of the “Best Newcomer Award” due to beating up the Holy Church in a direct confrontation, Yongye’s name had already spread far and wide in the Undead Planes.
Due to my fame, I only had to mention that I was Roland, the undying one; I didn’t even have to torture Rex’s soul or anything. This lich, who was so adamant in saying he would never surrender and even kept threatening me, caved in immediately. Not only did he obediently tell me everything I asked him, he even gave me all the information that he had secretly gathered over the years as well as his own inferences.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I looked at this skeletal lich head whose teeth kept clattering in fear. Was the “undying Roland” that scary to him? Just hearing my name would cause undead to tremble in fear?
I really am a good person. That’s why this little lich who was so scared of me definitely wasn’t frightened because of my bad reputation. Yep, it must have been that the other Undead Emperors were too cruel, which gave me a bad reputation by association.
“Tsk, so soft. Looks like this Guldan’s head won’t be able to become a God Equipment. Oh, whoops, I should say Rex’s head, right? What? Wrong again? Fine, fine, how about Daniel Wu’s head? Yep, like I said, my memory is excellent. I’d never remember wrongly.” [1]
And this “Daniel Wu” lich wasn’t quite old. Rex was only just a bit over a century, old and had become a lich only due to his accumulated achievements, which had allowed him to receive his superior’s assistance in helping him transform into a lich. His power level was a bit weaker than real liches, and he wasn’t very popular with his peers. (The rumors I heard told me that he was actually recognized as the most handsome lich in the Ice Plane, which made him super popular with female undead but made all his peers incredibly jealous.) This was also why he had been sent here on such a job which was clearly a “waste of time.”
Since he hadn’t expected to be sent on this task at all, he didn’t prepare beforehand, and he didn’t know much about the mortal plane. He had only arrived for a short time.
But just the amount of information that he knew and told me was astonishing enough already.
The Desecration Plane’s Undead Emperor Aso had personally arrived on the mortal plane. He had obviously sealed himself and paid a heavy price in order to remain in the mortal plane; he wouldn’t be able to fight at his real Undead Emperor level of strength, but Aso was still the highest authority here. That meant that the high-level undead would be organized and act with well-planned goals in mind. Nor would any internal struggles between them be possible. Since we were their enemies, this was doubtlessly a piece of bad news for us.
This was all the more so because we were still roaming around in the gigantic Bardi Empire. If we were exposed, and Aso wanted to come have a chat with me as his junior, that would be truly troublesome.
“…We absolutely can’t face him directly or act ridiculously right now? It looks like my choice was the right one.”
Note:
[1] ED/N: For those of you who don’t know, quoting from Wikipedia, “Daniel Wu Yin-cho is an American actor, director and producer, and as of 2015, starring as Sunny in the AMC martial arts drama series Into the Badlands.” He’s also considered super handsome. Meanwhile, Rex is mentioned as a “handsome” and “popular” lich.