The wind carried orange leaves and the searing breeze as white clouds made way for the sun to blaze through. The streams of water running throughout the lands cooled the hot soil, giving it moisture for plants to grow.

Amidst the hot summer, an empire was blazing within.

Standing atop a tower made of stones, Eve crossed his arms as he gazed upon the thousands of clay soldiers beneath him.

“Forty thousand, it should barely be enough,” Eve mumbled to himself. Untying the stone, sharp short sword from his hip, he raised and pointed the tip at the sun!

“FIGHT!”

He yelled, and the army of 40 thousand turned on each other, raising their wooden spears and stabbing each other's limbs, torso, neck, and head—In a moment, half were swiftly killed and more were being cut down.

Seeing his own men massacre each other, Eve turned around and sat of a wooden chair and breathef out. It's been five years, and his efforts were about to pay off.

‘The world of Evangeline is small,’ Eve thought. After conquering the world and “kindly” uniting the clay men, he felt inclined to name the world he owned.

‘It took barely a month to conquer the world, but exploring every nook and cranny took two years,’ Eve hummed, tapping his fingers on the armrest.

The world of Evangeline was a pangea, consisting of only one landmass. Despite that, Evangeline was a tiny world, fitting for clay men. The land had three forests, two of which took three-fifths of the land area. The third forest, Eve had cut down to build his empire.

Since he only needed a vast clearing for training, as well as an area to build houses, he didn't expand after building his empire.

‘It would've been perfect if clay men could procreate.’

Eve sighed. He tried creating clay soldiers from natural clay, but it didn't work. After a few months of experiments, he gave up the idea of creating more clay soldiers from scratch.

‘Thankfully, clay soldiers, can grow stronger.’

He didn't have his clay men kill each other for no reason—he needed them to gain battle experience.

After five years of trial and error, he perfected a training system for his clay soldiers. As much as he could perfect it, anyway.

‘Training clay soldiers makes them stronger, I didn't expect that,’ Eve smiled, watching as one particular clay soldier killed three other clay soldiers in one swift motion. ‘Look at him go,’ he chuckled, moving his gaze away.

‘The only problem is that their growth is ridiculously slow. Even after five years, their strength only doubled.’

Though shaking his head, he didn't complain further. He was already scrapping the bottom of the jar, after all.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

‘What makes it worse is that they didn't gave infinite stamina. Why can clay men feel pain and fatigue?’ Eve sighed, leaning back on the chair.

Like him, his clay men needed rest, specifically a total of five hours of rest split into ten. In other words, half of the ten-hour-day was spent sleeping.

He tried improving their living conditions by upgrading their houses over and over again, but nothing seemed to work. ‘Such a waste of time,’ he shook his head.

‘Thankfully, raw strength wasn't the only ting that improved, their intelligence slightly improved too.’

After five years of “evolution,” the clay soldiers developed their own little quirks, no longer feeling like puppets that needed puppeteers.

‘Maybe repeated death and resurrection helped in their “evoltion,’” Eve hummed. For now, he set aside the idea. Although clay soldiers retain their battle instincts after resurrection, they don't retain their memories.

Not only that, he found that piling the clay bodies into one humongous pile before resurrection made the “evolution” a bit faster.

‘The only problem is my energy,’ closing his eyes, he tried sensing any energy within him. There was none.

‘I can resurrect all forty thousand clay soldiers, but doing it again in a week weakens me, so much so that I can varely move.’

Nevertheless, he was happy with his progress, now, after five years of hardwork, his strength more than quadrupled.

‘I’m stronger than when I was in that game with Felix,’ clenching his fist, he felt his body overflowing with raw strength. ‘If I faced myself again, who merged with two clay soldiers and had an army of sentient clay soldiers, I can pummel him to the ground.’

He smirked, he peeled his eyes opened and stood up. Looking at the battlefield, he saw a single clay man standing atop a small hill of clay.

To make it easier for himself, he made a rule that all dead clay men must be carried to a pile by their killer, and though it made the tournament more chaotic, it served as a challenge as well. In essence, they had to carry a dead soldier while avoiding getting killed.

Maybe because of their increasing sentience, the clay soldiers often avoided clay soldiers who were carrying a dead clay soldier.

“Good work,” Eve yelled, jumping down the tall stone tower. As he landed, the soil beneath him caved in, but he was unscathed. “Now, fight me.”

Without waiting, the winner of the tournament charged at him, engaging in a deadly close combat. The clay soldiers used its wooden spear, while Eve left his word back at the tower. Still, the clay soldier couldn't hit him once.

Ten minutes later, Eve was holding the woden spear, while the clay soldier was panting on the ground, laying flat on its back.

“You did well,” Eve pointed the spear on the clay soldier's head, about to kill it when he squinted his eyes. ‘Oh, he's that clay soldier from earlier.’

He held the spear still, before sighing and throwing the spear away. ‘It’s just one clay soldier, it wouldn't hurt to experiment,’ he said to himself while walking toward the pile of clay.

Pressing his palm on the clay, he channeled his thoughts into it.

“Wake up, we have a war to fight.”

Eve watched as the clay he was holding slowly bulged, morphing into a humanoid head. Then, a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth formed on its face, and feeling the clay soldier's eyes, nose, and mouth with his palm, he took off his hand and shook it.

Turning around, he left the battlefield as the clay pile behind him churned, pulsating every second and spawning clay soldiers upon clay soldiers.

+

Reaching his palace made of wood and stone, he walked to the center of the grand hall amd lifted the trapdoor on the floor. Beneath revealed a pitch-black staircase, and he didn't waste seconds by hesitating.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he was met with a small cave. In the middle was a small, round golden table with a red silk fabric adorning its surface, and atop the middle of it was rectangular tablet made from marble, runic symbols and lines carved all over it's surface.

He found the marble tablet four years ago, and although he couldn't understand most of the runes, he couldn't be more familiar with its function.

‘Thankfully, no one activated this World Beacon until now,’ he sighed in relief.

The World Beacon was a way to connect worlds together, and it was how worlds invaded other worlds. The runes were the technology of gods, which was how they mantained their supreme rule over the universe.

‘I nearly missed using you, but don't worry,’ Eve chuckled, running his fingers across the surface of the rectangular marble tablet. ‘From now on, I'll give you my attention and I'll even find your brothers and sisters.’

He laughed at the idea. After all, if he wanted to find more World Beacons, he first needed to other conquer worlds.

Looking at the runes, all the symbols and lines were surrounding three bigger symbols made from lines and curves.

Counting the strokes in the symbols, ‘Three, four, and seven,’ Eve pressed his thumb on the symbol made with three strokes.

The tablet suddenly glowed in gray light, prompting Eve to step back. Slowly, the tablet cracked, levitating off of the golden table. As the tablet split into two, the golden table suddenly morphed, turning into two strips of gold which wrapped around the two halves of the tablet. Then, the red silk exploded into strands of thread, which flew around the gold, transforming into butterflies in the next moment.

The red butterflies swarmed the tablet wrapped in gold, and—SHAAA!

Space distorted, and instead of stone, Eve saw a vast plain in the middle of the cave. Walking around, the vast plain didn't move, remaining stationary no matter from which angle he looked at.

‘I’m quite lucky,’ Eve smiled, walking toward the distorted space.

‘It’s a world in the middle realm. With how simple the symbol was, it should be a low-grade world,’ Eve thought and as he stepped into the plain, he vanished from the cave.

Before silence could reign inside the cave, clay soldiers began filling up the cave, and one after another, they too vanished into the vast plain, wearing their wooden armors and spears.