Volume 8, Chapter 13 – Warped Calamity

Translator Note

wait… that… item is too op…. imagine… imagine… uh… glad its not H protagonist

Concerned about the purple vortex on the [Omniscient Map] labeled ‘Warped Calamity,’ Yisi took advantage of the time after the auction, while Cynthia was busy settling the payment for her items, to go with Laxy to the edge of the eastern city wall.

“It’s getting dark… Laxy, you can take off the mask now.”

“Of course, my lord.”

Perhaps because she was happy to finally be perceptible to others, Laxy seemed almost impatient as she took off the jack-o’-lantern headgear.

It might be better to seal this item away for good.

Tucking this thought away, Yisi began to walk through the narrow streets. This area was far from the city center and the central avenue. Only those with little money would choose to live here, making it a semi-slum. Of course, compared to the scene Yisi had first witnessed in the backstreets of Margaret’s tavern, the slums of the Royal Capital were much better. At least there were no dead bodies lying around.

“There’s a smell of decay.”

“Mm, it’s probably the smell of rotten rats. Has Laxy been to a place like this before?”

Her nose twitching from the unaccustomed smell, Yisi couldn’t help but cover her mouth with her hand. It was currently the hottest part of midsummer, and coupled with the continuous days of rain, the streets of the slums were filled with foul-smelling puddles. The stench of rotten rats and excrement mixed together, making one unsure of where to step next.

Laxy shook her head.

“No. At that time, the human kingdoms had close relations with the Land of the Gods and obtained their technology and angels. There were no food shortages. Such a bleak scene would never have appeared in the human kingdoms of that time.”

It sounds like a quasi-utopian society.

“The first Blood Queen was really quite vicious, to knock the human kingdoms straight back to the Middle Ages.”

Wait.

If that’s the case, the timeline doesn’t add up at all. Before the war between the Blood Clan and humans, humans should have experienced another war. It was that war that led to the disappearance of the Land of the Gods, which in turn meant that humans did not receive aid from the angels during their war with the Blood Clan. If the human kingdoms had the assistance of angels at that time, the Blood Clan would never have been able to defeat them.

So what exactly caused the disappearance, or rather, the destruction of the Land of the Gods?

Frowning slightly, Yisi said in a low voice.

“Laxy, does the Gospel have its own emotions?”

Reаԁ оո КatReаⅾіոgСafе

“My lord means…?”

“I mean, can the Gospel have emotions like sympathy and anger, just like you, Laxy?”

Laxy shook her head decisively.

“No. The Gospel is just a book created by Lady Trino with the help of the Goddess. It can only answer the questioner’s questions and has no self-awareness. Moreover, the Gospel’s instructions are very vague most of the time. For example, it instructed me to find you on the continent, but it didn’t tell me when, where, or how to find you.”

“I see…”

Yisi lowered her head in thought.

The task the Gospel gave Laxy was to ‘find the savior who can stop the war,’ not ‘find the savior who can destroy the demons.’ If the Gospel didn’t also feel sympathy for the demons, then there was only one possibility for such wording: the Gospel knew that the Land of the Gods at that time was incapable of destroying the demons, so it merely aimed to stop the war. As a result, the Land of the Gods is now gone, but the demons still exist in this world. Laxy’s mission has very likely already failed. The war at that time was not stopped; the demons won.

If I tell Laxy the answer, she’ll surely be very sad. Maybe Laxy herself has vaguely noticed this, but is just unwilling to admit the truth.

I’ll just bury this speculation in my heart and never speak of it. Listening to the steady sound of Laxy’s breathing behind her, Yisi sighed softly.

As for why the demons didn’t turn the world of humans and the Blood Clan into a living hell after ruling the world, the answer to that question could probably only be known when she finally gets to beat up Tartaros.

A few days ago, she had given up on searching for the source of Mana, and Tartaros had shown no reaction. When she asked Sandra where the Demon Lord lived, Sandra had said that as a fallen angel, she would be pulled back to the castle just by calling the Demon Lord’s name, so she didn’t know where the castle was either. Therefore, Yisi planned to do the opposite of what the Demon Lord would want as much as possible, such as imprisoning fallen angels or high-ranking demons, to force Tartaros to come out.

Of course, Yisi had low expectations for this method. Compared to that, Yisi was secretly planning to jump into the dark arm the next time it appeared to find the Demon Lord. Although she would be teleported to a very distant place, as long as she could beat the Demon Lord to the point where he was begging for mercy while clutching her ankle, she could appear in any corner of the continent with his power—this was information revealed by Sandra.

“I can feel gazes from those ruins. They are sizing us up. My lord, shall I drive them away?”

“No need. Those gazes are more fearful than malicious.”

They’re not afraid of me, but of Laxy. The pure white wings symbolizing an angel are enough to deter most ill-intentioned people. Just looking at those gently flapping wings would make an ordinary person feel a sense of inviolability.

The terrifyingly quiet walk in the rain continued.

Soon, the two of them arrived at the edge of the vortex marked ‘Warped Calamity’ on the map. To the naked eye, this area was no different from an ordinary slum, with scattered rubble, dilapidated cloth tents, and thin wooden branches lying about everywhere. If there was anything to say, it was that it was too quiet here, to the point of being frightening.

“There’s a thick aura of death.”

“Be careful, Laxy.”

Rеad oո ΚαtRеаⅾіոɡCаfе

Taking a deep breath, Yisi stepped into the Warped Calamity.

As if stepping into a barrier, the moment the two of them crossed a certain line, their vision suddenly dimmed, as if they had entered a tunnel. Laxy instinctively drew her weapon.

“My lord, something is wrong.”

“Mm.”

Since my vision is also affected, this isn’t an illusion, but the surroundings have really turned dark. I can hear something rustling in the dark. Yisi activated her ‘Eye of God,’ and a sci-fi-like data stream appeared in her blue left eye.

Ghosts? Wraiths? Or Reapers?

In the corners of the buildings, invisible to the naked eye, some shadow-like things were writhing on human corpses. There were no longer any living people in this slum covered by the ‘Warped Calamity.’

“I thought the vortex was just obscuring my vision, so that’s why this area on the map didn’t show any light dots. So these people are already dead…”

“These shadows are the undead.”

“Mm, prepare for battle,” Yisi took out the Sword of Ruin, which was blooming with brilliant flames, from her storage and clicked her tongue in displeasure. Although it wasn’t that she couldn’t stand the sight of corpses, witnessing a death scene was definitely not a pleasant experience, not to mention that those black shadows were actually the souls of humans who had been turned into the undead. “Laxy, you stand guard here. I’ll go in and take a look.”

“But…”

“Didn’t I defeat even those slime giants? There’s nothing to worry about. More importantly, we need to prevent more innocent people from being affected. This mist is slowly spreading. Laxy, can you evacuate the nearby residents for me?”

Laxy gritted her teeth.

“…Alright. I will notify the guards and then come find you immediately.”

“Thanks.”

Giving Laxy a thumbs-up, Yisi stepped deeper into the barrier.

Although she didn’t understand barriers, she knew the basics—that they were composed of a magic circuit and a magic source. As long as one of them was destroyed, the barrier would cease to function. Of course, this was usually impossible, just as a human couldn’t tear a steel ingot apart with their bare hands. A formed barrier was quite stable. Even a third-tier magic barrier would require at least a fifth or even sixth-tier magic to be forcibly destroyed by brute force. The usual method of breaking a barrier was to find someone who was also proficient in them and use their knowledge to neutralize the magic formation with skill.

“Well, I don’t need to go to such trouble.”

Waving the flaming Sword of Ruin, Yisi observed her surroundings. The deeper she went into the barrier, the darker her vision became. Although a vampire’s night vision was excellent, this wasn’t simply darkness, but a feeling of being obscured by smoke.

Rеaԁ οn KαtRеаⅾiոɡCаfе

Infusing magic power into the Sword of Ruin, Yisi casually swung it to her right.

Swish.

A Reaper that had been attempting a sneak attack vanished into smoke.

Reapers were a type of undead creature, two levels higher than the most basic undead like skeletons and zombies. A fully-formed Reaper took the form of the Grim Reaper, holding a scythe and wearing a tattered sackcloth. Both its strength and speed far surpassed that of an ordinary person. Coupled with the fact that its scythe directly damages the soul, in the human world, only an experienced team of Mithril-rank adventurers could fend off a Reaper.

“Their strength isn’t particularly troublesome. The problem is why are there undead here…”

As she pondered, Yisi swung an arc of fire forward. Since their sneak attack had failed, the Reapers hiding in the black mist no longer concealed themselves and charged at Yisi all at once. In the outside world, this would definitely be a force that could be called a disaster. But against the fire blade of the Sword of Ruin, they merely screamed and disappeared upon contact.

“This reaction is a bit too good.” Normally, those Reapers should have burned for a while before disappearing. But they had just come into contact with the fire blade, and their bodies had turned to dust with a ‘poof’. In contrast, the flames on the Sword of Ruin grew even stronger. “Could it be that the Sword of Ruin can absorb the power of the undead? Although it’s a good ability, it’s not very useful.”

They die in one hit anyway.

“There’s no mention of a ‘Warped Calamity’ in ‘Ragnarøk.’ Is this a barrier unique to this other world? It feels very troublesome—hm, I think I’ve found the magic source.”

It was right under her feet.

During the time she had been advancing, the visibility around her had dropped to less than a meter. But according to the [Omniscient Map], she was very close to the city wall. Normally, the soldiers on the city wall should have noticed the anomaly below, but there was no reaction at all. If the city guards weren’t slacking off, then the person who had set up this barrier was quite skilled at concealment.

“Although there are still the questions of who set it up and why, I’ll leave those headaches to the city guard.”

She had roughly figured out the function of the barrier. It was a barrier that continuously stripped the life force of the living and converted it into the undead. Because it made no sound and the process was painless, people inside the barrier would at most only feel their vision darken. By the time they discovered they had lost the ability to move and speak, they would already be at the end of their lives. The black mist came from the converted life force of the living, which could probably be called negative life, the power of death, or something similar.

Under the effect of such a dense power of death, a large number of undead would naturally be generated. The closer the undead were to the source of the barrier, the purer the power they would receive, thus producing undead of the Reaper level. Of course, this barrier was not without its drawbacks. The undead would spontaneously approach the power of death, which meant that they were unwilling to leave the barrier’s range. So as long as it was discovered in time, there wouldn’t be too many casualties.

“This is causing me a lot of trouble… If I destroy the magic source just like this, the undead will run everywhere. I’ll have to clear out the undead here first.”

If she were to use a wide-area annihilation magic, it would affect the other buildings in the slums and the nearby city wall. And the ‘Song of the End’ of a bard was only effective against the living. Yisi was left with the option of clearing them out one by one.

Pop.

A sudden sound, like a cork being pulled from a bottle.

An invisible wave of magic power passed over Yisi.

Rеаԁ οո КatRеαԁіnɡСafе

The air began to heat up, and the ground let out a series of strange gurgling sounds. But Yisi was certain that it wasn’t some monster moving in the ground, but something about to explode.

Right under her feet.

It was the heart of the barrier that converted the power of death.

“Hiss hiss hiss!!”

Also sensing this ominous feeling, as if some maddening switch had been flipped, the undead hiding in the black mist screamed and desperately tried to flee away from Yisi. But no matter how hard they tried, they could only move at the speed of an ant. And the black mist that they had used as nourishment now turned into a giant wave that prevented them from escaping. Not only that, after the magic wave ended, the entire black mist began to rotate around the central magic source, as if a black storm had been whipped up. The black mist swept up all the undead, corpses, and even rubble into the center. The powerful suction even pulled at the dark clouds in the sky.

Appearing on the roof at the edge of the vortex using ‘Blink,’ Yisi frowned.

“After creating so many undead, it’s going to detonate them in the end.”

Simply a madman.

With this much power, the entire slum would be blown away. Many refugees would surely be created, which would in turn make the entire capital uneasy.

It would be bad if my study trip in the capital were to be ruined. Yisi stretched out her arms to both sides.

“I don’t know who you are, but since you’ve affected me, I won’t let you succeed.”

『 Sacred Bulwark 』

Starting from Yisi’s outstretched arms, two golden curtains, a hundred meters high, like an aurora in the night, isolated the exploding barrier within.

Clang.

The explosion was as expected, but it only dug up the ground within the barrier’s range. Apart from that, not a single speck of dust was shaken from the buildings that were isolated by the golden curtain.

This should be fine.

Ignoring the people in the city who were prostrating themselves in worship after seeing the golden curtain, Yisi quietly waited for the storm to subside. Soon, the result appeared before her eyes.

The slum area protected by the golden curtain was completely intact, but on the unprotected eastern end of the city wall, a hole that was neither too big nor too small had appeared.