Solar Calendar, Year 1921.
The decisive war began.
BONG—
The towering, heavy bell tower pierced the clouds. Its massive clock face shifted slowly, sending a resonant chime vibrating through the air, echoing across the entire city.
Streets teemed with carriages and pedestrians, while automobiles crawled through the throng. Billows of steam hissed into the air, and the mournful wail of steam whistles drifted from the nearby train station.
To the outside world, everything seemed perfectly normal.
But beneath the surface, the Mystic Faction was churning with treacherous currents.
Having mobilized nearly the entire strength of the faction, the major powers now focused their efforts on the mysterious power they had discovered, preparing for the summoning ritual.
In the Lost Lands, amidst an ancient ruin, Luo Changkong felt a tremor of nerves as he finalized the preparations for the ritual. As a member of the Raitei Legion, he had been chosen to represent them in the coming trial.
Whoosh.
He steadied his breathing.
Luo Changkong withdrew the relic entrusted to him by the Commander-in-Chief, the severed arm of the Mother God statue. He placed the relic upon the prepared altar and squeezed his eyes shut.
He began to reach out, attempting to establish a link with the mystical power far beyond the veil.
Moments later.
HUM!
The altar emitted a faint glow. As time ticked by, the radiance intensified, and a heavy, ancient aura, impossible to describe, began to saturate the air.
Ripples tore through the sky. This mystical energy transcended the bounds of space and time, bridging the past, present, and future. An unseen force whipped up a gale, tugging at Luo Changkong's hair.
As the wind roared, he began to chant the incantation.
"In the rift where light and dark entwine, within the torrent of twisted time, where the ancient and eternal stand divided, and the mundane and mystical overlap... I am the binder of this contract, calling forth the one who answers the plea..."
The words fell.
The altar erupted with blinding brilliance.
From the distant past, someone answered Luo Changkong's summons. As the light on the altar faded, a figure with a haughty, wild smile materialized before him.
A proud King gazed down at the summoner.
His gaze was one of supreme disdain.
"To receive my answer is an honor beyond measure for one such as you."
The moment the summons was answered, the contract was forged. All pertinent information was instantly seared into the mind of the entity who had responded to the call.
There were three clauses to the contract.
First: Secure victory in this war.
Second: Do not harm the summoner.
Third: The battlefield is confined within the borders of the Lost Lands.
The third clause was non-negotiable; without it, these legendary figures, each capable of world-ending destruction, would have vaporized the entire planet within minutes.
"..."
Luo Changkong was dumbfounded.
Was the relic not the severed arm of the Mother God? How did they end up summoning a complete stranger? And come to think of it, who even was this guy?
Where was the Mother God?
Where was the Saintess?
...
Simultaneously.
The Transcender representing the Decussate Star also succeeded in their summons. As the entity responded to the contract, a knight who had long slumbered within the annals of history and legend opened their eyes once more.
That gaze was sharp as a blade.
The heavy, battered armor bore the crushing weight of epic legends, and the reforged broken sword seemed capable of shearing stars from the sky. The undefeated knight questioned the person standing before him.
"Do you crave victory?"
The Transcender couldn't help but laugh aloud.
"HAHAHAHA! Of course I do!"
The summoning ritual had been flawless; everything matched the legends to the letter. The one who had answered his call was none other than the wielder of the broken blade.
The Undefeated Knight of the Firenze Empire.
Julius!
This war was already in the bag!
...
By all logic, the summoning should not have gone awry. The problem was that the world was full of strange coincidences, where the power transcending space-time resonated with the wrong fragment of the past.
A Transcender from a different Legion force had been performing his own summoning ritual, only for someone wandering the currents of the River of Time to intercept the call.
On the altar, the light faded.
Under the star-dusted canopy, Starry's consciousness instinctively followed the source of the summons. In a flash of bewilderment, he found himself the "summoned," a contract binding him to the Transcender standing before him.
"Conceptual power?"
The moment the contract was forged, Starry pierced through its essence.
It was a contract of pure conceptual nature. Having mastered the concepts of space-time and eternity, he knew he couldn't be mistaken.
In a blink, the world seemed to grind to a halt.
Time stilled, then flooded back into Starry's mind like a dam breaking, a torrent of information revealing everything about this era. Even the power that had facilitated the ritual did not remain hidden; it was, as Starry had surmised, a Root, one embodying the concept of Contract.
A Root that had yet to be claimed by any Demon God.
He kept the charge given by Pedro and Cassis etched into his soul: if he were to escape his fated demise, he had to gather every Demon God Root and master every concept.
To become the First Demon God!
Only then could he seize the future.
He had no time to waste on these people playing war.
The Transcender who had summoned Starry was visibly perplexed. He had read the histories of the Grand Travelers, but who the hell was this guy?
"You waste of space."
The only response the Transcender received was a slash so sharp it tore the very fabric of space-time. Starry used the concept of Eternity to solidify his own existence, arrogantly and forcefully severing the connection of the contract.
The contract shattered.
And in that same breath, the Transcender was reduced to nothingness.
The spatial rift Starry had carved closed in an instant. Ignoring the notification of the Transcender's elimination and the resulting influx of Points, Starry's gaze remained fixed.
He stepped forward, vanishing into a rift in the void.
This "game of war" was meaningless to him.
His only goal was to claim the Root that contained all concepts.
Even if it meant crossing infinite parallel worlds.
Some Root fragments might not have manifested yet, or were currently held by other Demon Gods. If he found them, he would simply absorb them.
Conversely, if some Demon God was foolish enough to resist, Starry would just have to dispose of them and take the Root by force.
These Tier 3 Grand Travelers lacked the perspective to truly grasp the nature of Roots and conceptual power. They were blind to the greatness before them, unable to master it.
Starry didn't care for their trivialities; he set off at once to reclaim the Root of Contract.
The "decisive war" had begun, and immediately, it had gone off the rails.
Before even a single engagement between combatants had occurred, one participant from the Transcendent Space faction had been brutally eliminated.
Seven participants.
Now, only six remained.
Because Starry was the last one to be summoned, the other participants had already succeeded in their rituals before he began reclaiming the Root of Contract.
At this very moment.
A causal chain, stretching back over two thousand years, reached toward the future.
Bound by the same power of Contract, a familiar call, one not heard in an age, rippled through the void. A mark flared on the back of Mei's hand: a Demon God sigil.
Mei looked at it, and a faint smile touched her lips.
...
Chloe.
To her, Mei was the singular faith of her life, the embodiment of everything that mattered. She and Stella were two entirely different souls; if Stella's faith was pure and untainted, Chloe's devotion to Mei was a fanatical, self-destructive fire. No matter how many worlds lay between them, she would always follow in Mei's footsteps.
During the Zombie World era, she had regarded Mei as a god. Driven by that devotion, she chased her into the Self-Awareness world, forged a contract with Mei at that time, and became the priestess who served her.
The Demon God sigil was the mark left from that very moment.
Chloe was a solitary wanderer, a defector from Hyperdimensional Space who held no trust from the Transcendent Space Legions. She had always been a lone wolf.
Yet, her power was beyond dispute.
Her strength had surged exponentially within the Self-Awareness world. After passing through several more worlds, her cultivation had leaped forward once more, firmly solidifying her at Tier 4.
With such strength, she could be considered a faction unto herself within the Mystic Faction, but Chloe had never cared for dominating the Tier 3 battlefield.
Every ounce of her attention was fixed on tracking Mei's path. If she truly wished to, she could have ended this war single-handedly and completed the mission.
And because of that, the other Grand Travelers remained completely ignorant of the true extent of her power.
Had she been able to bring the Celestial Decree out of the Self-Awareness world, Chloe might even have possessed the strength to slay a Tier 5 powerhouse by now. But there was no "if."
The reason she joined the war was simple: participants could utilize the power of the Contract Root to transcend space-time. Chloe intended to use that connection to pinpoint Mei's presence.
As for the outcome of the war? She didn't care in the slightest.
The ritual concluded.
An unknown deity appeared before Chloe. It seemed to be an entity from the Era of Gods and Kings, neither a Void Wanderer nor a Grand Traveler.
It appeared to be someone who had inherited the power of a fallen Grand Traveler, ascending to godhood. The black, viscous blood seeping from its pores was a telltale sign of its corrupted nature.
The black-blooded god towered over her, just beginning to speak.
"You..."
CLANG!
The sharp hum of a blade shattered the silence. The speed was so blinding that the black-blooded deity could not even react. By the time it realized what happened, a longsword had already pierced its chest.
The contract only forbade the summoned from harming the summoner; it placed no restrictions on the summoner herself. It was an invisible loophole in the binding.
Chloe herself possessed combat prowess of a Tier 4 mid-level standard. Combined with the sword in her hand, a replica of the Celestial Decree, this so-called god was utterly pathetic.
Stunned and bewildered, the black-blooded god could only watch as its body dissolved into a pool of black ichor, perishing once again. With icy indifference, Chloe sheathed her blade.
"You lack the qualifications to hold a contract with me."
Her voice was cold, tinged with a flicker of disappointment. This entity was not the one she had prayed for, yet it was the expected result; the probability of success was, after all, infinitesimally small.
She turned to leave.
Suddenly, a figure came into view.
Chloe stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes, which usually held the stillness of a stagnant pool, suddenly ignited with color.
The Demon God sigil on her forehead flared with brilliance.
It pulsed in perfect resonance with the mark on the other's hand.
If searching for a single soul across the infinite voids was deemed impossible, then witnessing such a miracle twice in a lifetime was nothing short of divine intervention.
"Since you are a participant in this war, you might as well play along with them for a while."
With those words, Mei stepped into the shadows.
"Yes!"
Chloe quickened her pace, falling in line directly behind Mei.
...
"Hahahaha... Hahahaha!"
Grotesque, mangled corpses twisted into shapes beyond description. Within the swirling black blood, horrific faces flickered in and out of existence, as if embodying every evil the world had ever known.
Atop the mass of rotting bodies, a withered, pale husk held its arms high, supporting a grimoire bound in ink-black leather, wreathed in suffocating dark mist.
Mirage, the participant from the Nova Legion, a bespectacled young man who had once crossed paths with Mei in the Willpower world, stared at the abomination.
He was a Tier 3 Void Wanderer, but his face was currently as dark as the black blood before him. He frowned, unable to comprehend how things had gone so catastrophically wrong.
The Nova Legion had secured the most precious relic of all: the Lucerne Text. Yet, to their immense regret, the Empress of Firenze had not answered the call, and not a single one of the Twelve Knights had deigned to respond.
The contract was not a forced summoning.
If no one answered, there was truly nothing they could do.
Mirage had been forced to settle for this bizarre, eldritch entity. Thankfully, the thing seemed powerful. At the very least, it felt like it hovered above the Tier 3 threshold.
Otherwise, he might as well surrender right now.
Sosion.
No.
It should be called Alaya.
Unlike Starry, Sosion, who had been a Grand Traveler, had vanished two thousand years ago. What Mirage had summoned was an Alaya who had long since shed both his Grand Traveler identity and the memories of Transcendent Space.
An Alaya corrupted by black blood.
Because he had lost his Transcender status and memories, Alaya would naturally not trigger the Hyperdimensional Space's Elimination Mission. If not for that, he would have been an infinite exploit, a walking bug in the system.
Mirage's luck wasn't entirely catastrophic; he had summoned a version of Alaya that had never existed in this timeline: the Corrupted Black-Blood Form.
But that wasn't all.
The grimoire in Alaya's grip was the Tome of Darkness, the byproduct left behind after Mei sealed the Filthy Darkness.
Yet, after eons of existence, the Filthy Darkness had long since been annihilated by endless suffering. The Tome of Darkness was now nothing more than a common grimoire; its status as a sealing artifact had vanished.
Once the Tome of Darkness became an item of the mission world, it, like Alaya, diverged along a different world-line.
At the end of the Era of Gods and Kings, as black blood devoured the earth, Alaya had acquired the Tome and, by mastering the forbidden arts within, ascended to the Tier 4 level.
The black blood had corrupted every god and king. Alaya had absorbed it all, gathering the world's accumulated malice into himself, and utilized the arts of the Tome to step into a realm beyond.
The Root of Contract had summoned this specific manifestation of Alaya.
However,
As a coalesced entity of the corruption and evil of countless fallen gods and kings, Alaya was dangerously unstable. Mirage couldn't communicate with him at all; he could only catch fragments of Alaya's mutterings.
Those nonsensical, chaotic syllables tangled together until Mirage's head felt like it was about to split.
"Hlevi... Pawn %&￥ Antut! Hlevi, Visad... Visad?"
Upon reaching a certain name, Alaya suddenly froze. As the fragmented memories flickered to the surface, the mass of twisted corpses began to thrash in a frenzy.
"Visad!!!"
Alaya seemed to have sensed a familiar aura. The pale, rotting corpse holding the Tome of Darkness snapped its head toward a distant horizon, letting out a chilling, soul-piercing roar.
It made Mirage's mind reel in agony.
Then,
BLACK BLOOD ERUPTED.
To Mirage's sheer shock, Alaya abandoned him entirely. He dove into the earth and vanished, hurtling recklessly toward the source of that locked-in aura.
"Damn it."
Mirage was torn on whether to follow. An uncontrollable combat asset was more of a hindrance than a help. As if the lack of response from Firenze wasn't bad enough, he'd ended up with this monstrosity.
Everything was going to hell.
...
Once the war began, the vast majority of Tier 3 entities in the Mystic Faction, aside from the participants themselves, fled the Lost Lands with all possible haste.
Only a reckless few remained, hoping to get a front-row seat to the spectacle.
The stakes of this conflict were astronomically high. While the true identities of the summoned entities weren't fully verified, one thing was certain: a mere Tier 3 could barely stand as a footnote in a clash of such magnitude.
The Lost Lands would, in all likelihood, be leveled to the bedrock.
The Grand Travelers who had survived the chaotic slaughter of two thousand years ago were remarkably cautious. It was the Tier 1s and 2s who were clamoring to join the fray.
Firstly, they were natives of this mission world who had never lived through the cataclysm of two millennia ago; they had no concept of what it meant when gods went to war.
Secondly, the Mystic Faction's thirst for power bordered on the fanatical. With myths and legends manifesting before their eyes, they would go to any lengths, even risking their lives, to witness it.
For some, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to cross blades with legendary heroes or deities, a gamble they were willing to stake their existence on.
They were a crowd of madmen, driven to the point of insanity by their obsession with power.
...
Raitei Legion Headquarters.
A subordinate delivered his report.
"Commander-in-Chief, Luo Changkong's summoning ritual proceeded smoothly. However, it cannot be called a success. The entity that answered the call does not appear to be the Mother God we envisioned."
The Commander had long since steeled himself for such an outcome.
"Man proposes, God disposes."
The Mother God was the best-case scenario, but it was always just a possibility. Unexpected results were to be expected; they had no choice but to accept them.
"We can only wish Luo Changkong luck."
This wasn't just a war of the summoned; it was a war of the Grand Travelers themselves. Against a pantheon of gods, a Tier 3 Grand Traveler would be reduced to ash in mere moments.
At this very second, the entire gaze of the Mystic Faction was fixed solely on the Lost Lands. Even Starry's raid on the seal to reclaim the Root of Contract went completely unnoticed.
After all, that relic had already served its purpose. No one could bring it back into their respective Spaces anyway. Once the war ended, everyone would simply dust off their hands and vanish.
Regardless of the outcome, the combatants were members of their own Legions. Each major Legion would do everything in its power to provide intelligence to their respective fighters.
As soon as the identities of the summoned entities were verified, the information would be relayed immediately. However, for the moment, that segment of intelligence remained a complete blank.
Many combatants didn't even know who they had summoned themselves, let alone who their opponents had managed to bring forth.
...
On the outskirts of a certain city.
A group of Tier 1 or Tier 2 members of the Mystic Faction were in hot pursuit. They tracked the residual energy lingering in the air, following the trail this far.
Their allegiance was unknown.
Their goal was unclear.
"The mystical signature is incredibly high. It must be some deity or hero from the myths. The summoning site should be somewhere nearby, no doubt about it."
"A deity..."
A few of them whispered, their voices trembling with fanatical longing.
"Huh?"
One of them suddenly changed expression.
"Watch out!"
The words had barely left his lips.
A torrent of chaotic, incomprehensible babble washed over them. It was maddening, impossible to endure. In an instant, their minds were utterly shattered.
POP! POP! POP!
With dull, wet thuds, these Mystic Faction members exploded one after another into sprays of blood and gore. The few who miraculously survived felt their sanity teetering on the brink of total collapse.
"Pfft!"
Spitting out a mouthful of blood, one of the survivors wore a mask of pure terror.
"What... what just happened?!"
Alaya had passed through this place. The unconscious psychic pollution alone was far beyond what they could withstand; the gap in their level of existence was simply too vast.
Two thousand kilometers was a distance a Tier 4 combatant could cover in a heartbeat. Beneath the earth, the black blood surged frantically, erupting violently as it reached the source of the aura it had been tracking.
BOOM!
The desolate wasteland stood empty.
Filthy, malevolent blood threatened to swallow the earth whole as twisted, decaying corpses rose from beneath, their dark aura blotting out the sky.
"Visad!!!"
Alaya's hoarse roar was saturated with boundless hatred.
Standing atop the earth was a male swordsman dressed in the robes of a high priest. He gazed calmly at the surging black tide before him, his eyes ultimately settling on the mangled heap of corpses.
"Alaya."
It was Visad.
The High Priest of Antut, the man who had personally unraveled the end of the Age of Gods and Kings, and the very executioner who had slaughtered Alaya, forcing him into this abhorrent, black-blooded existence.
Such a blood feud was etched into Alaya's very soul; he would never forget it. The moment he sensed Visad's aura, his resentment had surged past the point of restraint.
Already teetering on the edge of a total breakdown, he now cared for nothing but to tear Visad limb from limb, to grind his bones into dust and settle the agonizing rage burning within him.
Alaya, in his black-blood form, was Tier 4.
Visad was Tier 3.
Yet, Visad showed no fear. His calm, detached tone served only to ignite Alaya's boundless fury: "Truly pathetic. In the past, you at least possessed a shred of reason. Now, it seems you've all but lost yourself."
Hearing this, Alaya let out a screech composed of incoherent, garbled syllables, yet the intent behind the malice was crystal clear: everything he had become was a gift from Visad.
Within the black blood, the pale, decaying corpse of a certain God-King raised a hand, and an invisible ripple swept across the world.
BOOM!
The earth convulsed.
Dust clouds billowed toward the heavens.
In the distance.
Mirage, who had barely managed to catch up, watched the scene unfold from the shadows. Since Alaya was the one he had summoned, he decided to gauge the creature's combat prowess before making a move.
If the entity proved useless, he would abandon it without hesitation.
"This power... it is indeed beyond Tier 3."
Mirage approved of Alaya's raw power. From their brief exchange, he had deduced their identities: two formidable figures from the Era of Gods and Kings.
His eyes narrowed.
He scanned his surroundings with meticulous care.
If Visad was here, then the combatant who had summoned him must be lurking nearby. If he could locate that person and take them out, the entire war would become infinitely simpler.
A Void Wanderer?
Or a Transcender?
Once a combatant perishes, their contract becomes void. With the binding severed, the summoned entity would be forced to return to the realm of myth and legend.
That was the safest, most efficient path to victory.
It was easy to imagine.
Unless absolutely necessary, every participant would do their utmost to remain hidden while trying to land a killing blow on their rivals.
"They say the Antut of legend symbolizes impossible miracles, but he's just a Tier 3 priest. He shouldn't be a match for the black-blooded Alaya..."
Mirage thought to himself.
Just as he concluded this, the situation took a turn no one could have anticipated. A terrifying, overwhelming surge of energy rippled through the air, visible to the naked eye.
HUMMM—
A blinding, holy radiance bloomed, sweeping away the billowing dust in an instant. Within that light, the collective faith and willpower of countless souls manifested, projecting the phantom of an entire kingdom into reality.
A pillar of pure, sacred power erupted, instantly purifying the black blood that tainted the earth.
Visad stood tall, sword in hand, completely unscathed.
"Alaya, return to the river of history and the silence of the past. That is your destiny."
Seeing this, Mirage's eyes widened in horror.
What the hell?!
Did this bastard just drag the entirety of Antut into the present?!!!