Chapter 283
Chapter 283: Ambush
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
“They’re all gone? How is that possible? We just sent an army of ten thousand undead at them. Although they were mostly low-level undead, they couldn’t have been eradicated so quickly, could they?”
Liches’ expressions were typically hard to read, but Feyman’s flickering soulfire and the way he loudly popped his fingerbones indicated his incredible shock and disbelief.
Immediately after receiving authority he had unhesitatingly organized an undead ambush. Even though it consisted of mostly newly-born skeletons and low-level zombies that could be barely passable as undead soldiers, the fact that they reached ten thousand in number meant that they were still a threat. A teeming, endless mass of pitch-black undead would be quite the frightening sight by itself. However, some high-level undead were mixed in to help control the situation, with two liches serving as the army’s commanders—this wasn’t a case of purely sending cannon fodder at the enemy.
Unlike any other species, the strategies that the undead could use in using cannon fodder to scout their enemies were simply that arrogant. Their advantage of numbers alone could suppress any medium-sized city, and even if they stood still and allowed the enemy to hack at them, it would still take at least several hours to defeat ten thousand undead. So how could they have been eradicated so quickly?
“…Holy Light?”
Although none of the high-level undead present verbalized their astonishment, they all had expressions that said “Are you joking with me?” and “Do you think I’m an idiot who will fall for that?”
“Our enemies are a bunch of plants—not exactly Holy Knights. How could they possibly have the Holy Light? Could it be that you saw only normal light and then fled in fear, thinking it was the Holy Light? Where did this third-rate observer (photographer) come from? I’m going to reduce your experimental funding (chicken legs) to zero, damn it!”
The lich being angrily roared at didn’t try to defend himself. Instead, he only lifted up his arm. His bone was already shattered, and there was some silvery dust left in the fracture.
“It really was the Holy Light!”
“There’s no mistaking it. It’s even relatively pure Holy Light. Could it be that the enemy has high-level Holy Knights?”
As the mortal enemies of the Holy Light, the undead could recognize their natural enemy in a heartbeat. Any place or thing that was attacked by Holy Light would automatically be cleansed of anything unnatural (which included the undead). So, of course, the places where this unlucky lich had been struck by the Holy Light were now considered useless.
The Holy Light wouldn’t let go of anything unnatural. An undead would need to sacrifice a part of himself by deleting it and connect an entirely new portion that was completely unrelated to the original part. Yet as for how things would go after that… whether the new body part could be gotten used to, or be as useful as the original, the God of Holy Light wouldn’t care about such things at all. He was only in charge of purifying the unnatural.
Cough, I definitely wasn’t complaining against the God of Holy Light, nor did I have any complaints against this world that was believing more and more strongly in the Holy Light…
Now, after this unlucky lich showed his own injuries to everyone, it was obvious to everyone that his injuries were, indeed, caused by the Holy Light. Everyone present was astonished.
“Could the Holy Church have arrived and interfered?”
“How is that possible? The Bardi Empire has exiled all the Holy Light job class members!”
“No, perhaps they crossed from the sea! They might be scouts from the Mage Country?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The mages have a terrible relationship with the Holy Knights. For a mage to request assistance from a Holy Knight? That’s impossible!”
“Don’t rush. First, let’s find out if it was an individual or a full squadron of Holy Knights.”
All these mid-level cannon fodder from the Undead Planes were mostly considered major personages where they came from, and they only paid their respects to their commanders for just a few minutes upon the introductions. Now, everything was chaotic to the point of having gone out of control, but Feyman and Gricasio didn’t have any intentions of caring too much about this. They simply exchanged glances and felt that everything was truly just like Roland’s style.
“Don’t rush. What exactly happened? Tell us in detail. And, did you see a very unique lich there?”
The injured lich Adrei hurriedly nodded when he saw that the undead army’s overall commander had spoken, and he began to tell his tale.
Not long ago, he was one of the two liches assigned to take the force of ten thousand low-level undead over to attack the magical forest. He had been chosen because he had experience fighting against those plants.
Yet the situation he encountered was far worse than the last time he fought against them. Things went wrong since the moment they arrived at the forest’s border.
“The trees are taller than before by at least ten times? Are you joking?”
“I definitely didn’t make any mistakes with my memory. Before, the trees were only at a normal forest’s height. But this time, when we entered, it was as if we entered a giants’ country… When I lifted my head, I couldn’t see the treetops, and even the flowers by the roadside were taller than we were. And then…”
“And then?”
“And then my entire squad was instantly vaporized. If it weren’t for the fact that I had prepared a teleportation spell that would be triggered and bring me back to the forest’s entrance if I was in danger, I would have died as well.”
Alright then. The end result was instant vaporization. But, at the very least, the lich Adrei survived, so it wasn’t too pitiful of a loss.
After Feyman gathered information from a variety of sources, he finally discovered the origin of the Holy Light, but it was one that made everyone feel rather helpless.
“Damn it, they’re too tall. What are we supposed to do!”
What fired beams of Holy Light at the undead were specially cultivated magical plants known as “Golden Flashy Spotlights” (named by Roland). These unique magical sunflowers were hanging down those supremely tall trees that reached the clouds and would periodically shoot down strong beams of Holy Light. And that incredible height advantage made it certain that no normal method would be able to reach them. If the undead sent out aerial troops…
“It wasn’t that I didn’t do anything, but all the bone dragons and gargoyles I summoned were tangled up by a strange net of vines. Those vines were actually capable of growing using bones and transformed the bone dragons into its own nourishment! My lords, this time I lost so much!”
Medusa’s Hair (named by Roland again) was the name of this unique parasitic vine. They fed on bones and could absorb nutrition from bones to propagate more Snake Vines (the wood spirits’ name for these vines).
There were many other similar plants. For example, the Conqueror’s Self-Destructing Pumpkin Carriage / Fire God’s Carriage (as named by Roland / the wood spirits), the Strength God Hydra Fire-Breathing Grass / Fire-Breathing Grass, the Secret Male Demon Pea Sharpshooter / Peashooter, and so on. The wood spirits previously had access to so much combat potential but didn’t know how to fully utilize it. Now, they had begun their evolution towards an insanely powerful warring species under the guidance of a certain person.
Every combat plant was controlled by a wood spirit inside. They were grateful to Roland’s assistance towards them and also viewed him as their entire species’ father. However, they were forever unable to understand one of his certain hobbies, so they were deeply afraid that he would suddenly appear at any time.
“Hurry up and run! Father’s coming from that direction. Last night, two more of us fell victim to him. You didn’t see it, that scene was too demonic… the victims just collapsed there and kept crying! He—he—he’ll give you some incredibly strange names! And then all of us sisters will be laughing at you.”
Yes, the strange habit they were referring to was to utilize that naming sense of his. During these past few days, Roland had gotten quite excited over seeing so many cute little girls with no names and kept giving them names of his own volition. But not even mentioning how his naming sense was terrible to begin with, since there was a significant number of wood spirits, his lack of creativity was soon drained, and he could only come up with all sorts of random names in the end.
“Teehee, Nest Nesthead, I truly sympathize with you. I’ve noticed that Father really likes to use hairstyles as names.”
“Do you have any right to laugh at my name, Bun Card? At the very least, I’m named after my hairstyle. Even though you clearly have a pink ponytail, isn’t your name stranger?”
“…Actually, both of us got off quite lightly. It seems that Father has run out of vocabulary words to use, since Little Red #157 and Blue Smurf #228 actually appeared yesterday. How frightening.”
“That’s nothing, I even met Red Saber, White Saber, and Black Saber… what’s Saber supposed to mean? Why does Father love this name so much? I heard that the Saber name series has reached #1024 already. Just think about it, having the same name as more than one thousand others, just someone shouting for you will cause the entire street to come out and take a look if it’s them. It’s so pitiful that I can’t even imagine it.”
“Cough.”
I was finally unable to withstand listening to this conversation anymore as I walked out from under the shade of a tree. At the very least, I only used three colors of the Saber name and didn’t create a Saber combat squad. I still had my limits!
“Father…”
“Please punish us, but please, please, don’t give us some even stranger names! I’m quite pleased with the name Nest Nesthead.”
“…Are you really that afraid?”
Seeing how Nest Nesthead and Bun Card were so afraid of me, I slightly self-reflected for one second, wondering if I had gone overboard recently. However, I immediately erupted in anger.
“Stop calling me Father! Have you ever seen a father that’s unmarried and still an old virgin? I still intend on becoming a winner in life, but if I suddenly have a few ten thousand extra daughters that are this big already, who would dare to get married to me!? Are you all intending on being obstacles to my search for happiness in life!??”
Alright then, let’s stop talking about how angry I was at being poked where I hurt the most. At the very least, my specialized anti-undead strategies had been effective against the undead armies’ first invasion since the wood spirits’ evolution. All the magical plants’ properties worked as planned, and their continuous evolution would surely give the undead commanders an even greater surprise.
What the undead didn’t know was that this Forest of Dreams before them was far more skilled at wars of attrition than the undead were. Those low-level undead’s bodies would become nutrition for the forest, and it wasn’t only that: even though the low-level undead’s souls were already in tatters, their soul shards would be absorbed by the forest’s cycle, undergo a new Cycle of Reincarnation to be cleansed and combined with each other, and finally become newly-born wood spirits, furthering increasing the overall power level of this new species.
All that the undead currently knew was that their opponent was rather difficult to deal with and that their cannon fodder scouting army was viciously defeated, reaching almost 100% eradication.
After receiving all the pitiful reports on how they lost their armies, the high-level undead in the temporary command center discovered that nobody had even witnessed the former plants that were their previous opponents. They interpreted this as meaning that the plants were still keeping them in reserve and that the plants hadn’t even needed to use their full might to eradicate the entire undead scouting army of ten thousand.
Without having even discovered the enemy’s ace cards, the cannon fodder didn’t even have the expected value of cannon fodder before they were all destroyed. This type of sacrifice was obviously meaningless, so sending out a similar scout army would bring nothing more but the same.
Without a strategic objective, only using the force of numbers would be a waste of their combat strength. Rather than sending waves and waves of troops out for the enemy to eliminate for free, it would be much wiser to conserve troops strength and attack in one overwhelming attempt. And that was how the undead continued requesting assistance from the Undead Emperors while sending out only small scattered forces of cannon fodder as scouts, with various high-level undead mixed among the cannon fodder in order to attempt at scouting out some useful information.
As for the current me, I had just received a response from Wumianzhe that caused me to sink into contemplation.
“Ayer has personally come to the mortal plane? It would seem that everyone really views my Plan W with such great importance. How about I try using those undead for a little experiment?”
“Why does every Holy War in history cause such a huge chain reaction of events? Do all the countries and species’ leaders not even think about how their own country or species might be extinguished because of battle? Has nobody ever tried to mediate for peace and conciliation?”
I didn’t believe that anyone who had the ability to become such a leader would be so foolish. However, it only took a little bit of thinking for the answers to such question to become obvious.
“It’s all because of so many potential benefits to be gained. What a great headache.”
Was the Holy War a bad thing? Obviously, it was bad for the victims and losers, but it was another story entirely for those who benefited from it.
War has no benefits for either side? Heh, impossible. Those who want war more than anyone else weren’t the insane ones. Instead, they would be the most practical of all. Arms and munitions merchants would profit greatly, those in the military would receive chances at gaining achievements in battle, nobles would have the opportunity to expand their territory, and not a single king would think that his own crown was too regal. Even a normal blacksmith would be happy that he was receiving more orders than before, and a regular farmer would be secretly pleased that his crops were selling at a better price.
The Holy War wasn’t supposed to be like this? It was supposed to be a clash between Order and Chaos? Well, the Holy War was just like any other war in the end. Those who truly fought for the purpose of some cause or concept were in the significant minority, while most people instead fought for the sake of tangible benefits.
For the True Gods, the Holy War was the only shortcut to greatly increase one’s own divine power and Divine Obligation’s influence. For a species such as humanity, the more they were forced to the brink, the more they would pray for the Gods to save them. In addition to this, with countless Gods fighting over Divine Obligations and believers, as long as they managed to survive a Holy War, it would save any God at least thousands of years of cultivation.
After all, in order to break a stalemate in the current balance of power, it would be impossible to do so without a battle.
At the very least, the God of Holy Light had obtained all his power and faithful believers in the same way. Based on a report from the fairies, compared to the start of the previous Holy War, the God of Holy Light was able to increase the number of his believers more than tenfold by the Holy War’s finish, which helped him to directly become the Main God of all the Main Gods of Order after the conclusion of the Holy War.
Meanwhile, just like how human rulers had the right to start battles, in the Holy War, the God of Holy Light was just like the ruler of all the Gods of Order. If strengthening himself was one of his goals, it was only natural that he would start yet another Holy War. As long as he ‘cleansed’ undead and demons, his believers would devotedly pray to him for protection and salvation. With enough faith in him, he could obtain even more Divine Obligations, causing his status and power to further increase.
This didn’t only involve the God of Holy Light’s personal benefits, however, as there was one other reason that caused him to become destined to be mortal enemies with Chaos.
His personal “Concept” and divine teachings were all about “Cleansing.” His definition of “Cleansing” was to “erase” (destroy) all that was distorted by Chaos. As a Concept born in the Holy War and strengthened by it, he was limited by the Holy War as well. In his instinctive judgement, he viewed the undead that twisted life and death and the demons that were the embodiment of Chaos itself as mortal enemies that absolutely required cleansing. This was the very basic fundamental Concept of Holy Light at its core. To deny this would be making a light, whose purpose was to dispel darkness, useless. If the Holy Light lost its meaning of existence to correct (destroy) the distortions of Chaos, then the Holy Light wouldn’t have any more meaning to continue existing.
The God of Holy Light didn’t immediately eradicate the undead of East Mist because his logical processing told him that turning on us right now wouldn’t have any benefits from him. A clash with the God of Law, who was also an Order God, would be utterly pointless for the time being. However, when the Holy War ended, it would definitely be time for a reckoning.
“I can’t let him be the only one with speaking authority. At the very least, I have to have a third voice appear other than the voices of Order and Chaos.”
This was the agreement I came to with Ayer from the very start. Since continuous warfare would help the God of Holy Light to become even stronger, the God of Holy Light wouldn’t possibly stop the Holy Wars no matter if it was because of his own Concept or a simple judgement based on personal benefits.
“If he makes a proclamation to kill all living creatures other than humanity, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. If he declared every single one of his opponents as worshipers of evil and heretics, that would be plenty of ‘fun’ for everybody.”
While the Holy Church often went overboard enough already as it was, if the God of Holy Light himself declared someone to be evil, then all of human society would truly view that person as evil. And, according to his automated logical processing, perhaps everything on the side of Chaos and even all his allies that obstructed him could be viewed as evil. In that case, the Holy War would never end, and that would truly give us a lot of trouble.
In “history,” the God of Holy Light indeed acted as the main pillar of support for the side of Order. The Holy Church acted loyally as the vanguards of the Holy War. First, they fought against the Elemental Lords, various heretical countries, the beastmen and other species, and then they fought against the Underground World. Without even finishing these battles, they continued to forcefully fight against the Undead Emperors, followed by the demon armies.
Although it sounded cool for them to face off against so many enemies, if one thought over it more carefully, it was mainly because of the God of Holy Light’s pure enmity towards other Concepts and species that many factions that could have joined us became our enemies. Potential allies instantly became enemies, and the number of enemies only kept increasing while friends became fewer and fewer.
The stark contrast was in how my efforts had already achieved some results. At the very least, the Underground World’s forces had been successfully combined and pacified under me, which helped not only to avoid dozens of years of unnecessary warfare but also strengthened our own forces to resist against the upcoming fights.
“At the very least, I can’t allow the God of Holy Light’s teachings about how ‘undead, demons, and all non-human creatures are evil, so we should kill them all’ to keep spreading. If that happens, the war will truly never end.”
In summary, as I saw it, the God of Holy Light’s teachings were far too extreme. His teachings needed to be replaced by a more moderate God’s teachings. Originally, this should have been a terribly slow and difficult process, one I wouldn’t even have the chance to see during my life. But, due to certain reasons, it would seem that I could begin this process prematurely.
“Directly stealing elites straight out from under him? Ayer, if I’m the one who dares to think and say anything I want, then you’re the one who dares to do anything you want.”