The world once again found peace after the demise of the Astral Beasts and the ascension of the First Hero. However, in the year 4,005 A.H (Age of Heroes), the second otherworldly invader arrived, as foretold by the First Hero's prophecy. This newcomer bore a striking resemblance to the first, an astral beast, albeit of a different type. Nevertheless, it wielded power far beyond the standard of Morgen World.
It is worth mentioning that the second otherworldly invader was far stronger than the first. Despite being somewhat prepared for its eventual arrival, the devastation that it causes is more or less equal to what the first otherworldly invader left in its wake. The death rate and environmental damage were staggering. The second otherworldly invader forced the World’s Will to produce forty-eight supporting Braves, the most amongst all generations.
Every single piece of information about the Second Hero is strictly confidential, but empirical records suggest that he formulated strength-path and refinement-path; and by extension, he was also the progenitor of body runes and bloodline power in the far west. It was also in his time that enslavement-path, sword-path, and a few other minor martial paths were formed by his Braves.
The world eventually recovered, but the third otherworldly invader came three thousand years after the second, which was in the year 7,468 A.H.
Perhaps due to empirical evidence, the inhabitants of the world had started to trust the First Hero’s prophecy. Unlike the first and the second time, Morgen World’s five regions were united under the banner of the Eternal Dragon Church. While some countries do not directly send combatants, they would support the Eternal Dragon Church with resources and whatnot, allowing them to amass the influence and strength necessary to fight the otherworldly invader.
However, no amount of preparation was enough when the otherworldly invader resurrected what they had killed as the undead version of their former selves.
Given the absence of a more fitting term to encapsulate the nature of the 3rd otherworldly invader, inhabitants of the Morgen World universally agreed to crown it the 'Undead Calamity,' under the spectral leadership of the Undead Sovereign known as the 'Grim Reaper’.
That’s right, unlike the Otherworldly Invader Astral Beasts who can be considered as rank 7 beasts, the 3rd otherworldly invader is merely a rank 6 Sovereign.
While Astral Beasts are powerful in their might, the Grim Reaper is more troublesome compared to the two otherworldly invaders combined. First of all, the Grim Reaper is extremely intelligent, they can scheme far ahead and not solely rely on brute strength.
To best the Grim Reaper in their game, the Third Hero established the ‘Twelve Main Divine’ system, allowing twelve powerful gods to establish pantheons and re-establish their presence back in the mortal realm. Through this system, it wasn’t only the Eternal Dragon Church whose power rose rapidly, but its eleven allied churches as well.
As the war for the survival of Morgen World progresses, the Grim Reaper escalates their schemes by converting the natives into their camp, which forces the Eternal Dragon Church and its allies to do the same: thus the Sacred Alliance was born.
Under the lead of the Eternal Dragon Church, the central continent housed eleven other church-states (theocracies), spearheading their war against the influence of the Grim Reaper.
In the Third Hero’s era, religious divine blessings (faith-path methods) were developed at the speed of light thanks to the eleven popes being Braves at the same time (the Third Hero was the pope of the Eternal Dragon Church, thus all of them are popes).
And since nine out of the Twelve Main Divines carried the divine concepts of the nine elements, this era was also a time in which the nine elemental paths (earth, water, fire, wind, metal, lightning, wood, light, and dark) were developed at breakneck speed.
However, where there is light, there will always be darkness. The Grim Reaper was highly intelligent. To convert the natives to its cause, the Grim Reaper spread necro-path inheritances on a large scale, and by extension, blood-path and bone-path as well.
After all, the resources to cultivate those paths could be fulfilled by gathering them from everywhere, thanks to the warfare occurring all over the world at that time.
Nevertheless, the Grim Reaper eventually met its demise at the hands of the Sacred Alliance. In the central continent where the influence of the Sacred Alliance is at its peak, the practice of cultivating blood-path, bone-path, and necro-path is met with extreme scrutiny and strong disapproval. It has reached a point where in some church-states of the Sacred Alliance, merely making contact with these paths is considered a capital crime.
The constant war against the influence of the Grim Reaper still persists to this day.
Unfortunately, the fourth otherworldly invader arrived roughly two centuries ago in the year 10,098 A.H. It was the infamous ‘Demon King of Corruption’ Maximilian, who hailed from a distant Demon World and breached the dimensional wall in the Extreme South. Post-arrival, even if he did nothing other than merely radiating his presence for a thousand years, the entire southern continent would be corrupted by chaos, weakening the dimensional laws and allowing otherworldly invaders to easily come to Morgen World.
Killing him as soon as possible is the best course of action.
To fight against Maximilian, the World’s Will gave birth to the Fourth Hero, ‘Seven Spear’ Lamost the Martial Sovereign. He pioneered spear-path, as opposed to the relatively more popular pure-offense sword-path. He was supported by a cohort of eight braves: ‘Bright Saint’ Anais, ‘Undying Juggernaut’ Yurnero, ‘Darkblade Shadow’ Drogan, ‘Beast Sniper’ Eleanora, ‘Celestial Siren’ Vladimirovich Yulsaria, ‘Great Archmage’ Mordred, ‘Violetstorm Empress’ Murasaki Shizuku and ‘Multicast’.
To end the threat as soon as possible, Lamost mounted a full assault into the extreme south after sufficient preparations. Unfortunately, the full-blown war resulted in a humiliating defeat as the Sacred Alliance’s main army was obliterated, with two braves killed in action: ‘Violetstorm Empress’ Murasaki Shizuku and ‘Celestial Siren’ Vladimirovich Yulsaria.
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Both were ‘Great Archmage’ Mordred’s dearest wives and mentee.
Motivated by his loss, the Great Archmage took 4 years constructing the flying fortress Alistair, using up all of his resources while the others barely kept the frontline from crumbling. When he returned, he spearheaded the war against the Demon King of Corruption’s army for 7 years before Maximillian was eventually killed and the remnant of his demon army was pushed back into the dimensional breach.
Unfortunately, the power of chaos has contaminated the land severely, terraforming the extreme south into an environment similar to a Demon World. The swampy, radioactive earth had been terraformed into a hellish landscape where active volcanoes were everywhere, the land was littered with demonic man-eating plants and other demonic entities that were stench of sulfur.
To stop this demonic corruption, the Great Archmage froze the entire Extreme South with [Profound Dao Ice], his action also stabilized the dimensional laws, preventing it from crumbling. Now, the extreme south had become a land of permafrost with the occasional demons traversing into Morgen World.
Killing all the leftover demons turned into a daunting task that could never be finished due to the semi-permanent dimensional connection left behind by the Demon King of Corruption, so he formed a bastion amidst the artificial land of eternal ice and snow, ‘Galatreon’, to solve this issue.
As his semi-permanent dwelling after killing Demon King Maximilian, Galatreon soon developed from an isolated fortress into the proverbial holy land of the refinement-path, which was his primary cultivation path in less than 200 years. And for that reason, it was chosen as the capital of the permanently neutral, world-spanning organization: The Hunter Association.
‘In Lamost’s era, he and his Braves invented wisdom-path, information-path and brought refinement-path into a new height… His era brought modern cultivation categorization, separating cultivation into various ‘paths’ that optimize cultivation resources generation and all aspects of cultivation indirectly.’ Mordred mentally chuckled as he received a new stream of information within the VR headgear.
The victor was always the one who wrote the history but Lamost was brazen and shameless enough to distort the credit for inventing wisdom-path and information-path.
It was he, Mordred, who brought those foreign paths from Holy Terra.
Despite experiencing the 4th Calamity directly, Mordred wasn’t too bothered by the distortion of history. He continues receiving the information that the VR headgear offers.
‘6 years ago in the year 10,300 Age of Heroes calendar, the Great Archmage returned from one of his dimensional expeditions, but he was no longer the same. His recent travel records include Deathmist Plane, Frozen Desecration Plane, and Corpse Blossom Plane which was originally known as Orchid Blossom Plane before he massacred its 2 billion sophonts and all the non-intelligent creatures in it, turning the plane brimming with life into an undead world.’
‘From his travel records and his latest research topics, it was inferred that he was planning to create artificial Heroes, desecrate the gods, destroy the Sacred Alliance, invite more otherworldly invaders, and enslave the inhabitants of Morgen World…’
Mordred was almost unable to hold back his laugh. Morgen World’s historians are so imaginative that they might be telling the truth. Perhaps, there’s no need for him to recover his memories in the Land of Eternal Springs to know what his real missions are.
‘The ‘Great Archmage’ was identical to the profile of the 5th Otherworldly Invader prophesied by the First Hero. After secret investigations by his former allies, they confirmed that the Great Archmage had become a puppet. His physical body was taken over by an Ancient Devil King from Tartarus Penal World…’
Mordred could only offer a silent mental nod, acknowledging that historians possessed a remarkable eloquence and imagination, capable of weaving lies so absurd that they successfully deceived the world.
‘The Sovereigns and the Gods of Morgen World weren’t idiots, they knew that the Sacred Alliance and some members of the Twelve Main Divines were both scared and greedy for my refinement-path methods.’ The modernity brought by Mordred has threatened the mortal’s overreliance on the Divines and their blessing, which might cut off their source of faith. Thus they took action as quickly as possible to decrease his ‘modern’ influence.
‘The prophecy was bullshit, the First Hero was the strongest god of the Twelve Main Divines, and the information regarding ‘otherworldly invader profiles’ were never shared to the public, so she could make that shit up after some surface-depth divination! The Sovereigns of Morgen World said nothing regarding the whole 5th Otherworldly invader farce… In fact, a few of them fanned the flames so that the Sacred Alliance acted faster before gathering all intel in fear that their plan leaked to me, which made them unable to plan a proper countermeasure against my death mitigation method…’ Mordred deduced.
Nevertheless, they had still taken the lives of his closest kin in their ruthless attempt to plunder his True Inheritances. Mordred was certain that had his Archmage Tower been situated within Galatreon rather than within the domain of the Sacred Alliance, they would not have hesitated to launch a direct assault, even if it meant risking the destruction of the sole fortress-city state capable of staunching the unending tide of demons and the corrupting chaos.
Mordred took off the VR headgear and pinched the spot between his eyes.
“Any other apprentice would’ve passed out…” Murasaki Ayame, the girl with pale purple hair, praised, “Since you’re able to endure six hours of intense virtual class, then you truly are a grade-S spirit talent…”
As of now, the two of them are within Mordred’s allocated room. Since the VR headgear is a high-tech piece of artifact, Ayame has been taking care of Mordred. To turn an unsophisticated country bumpkin into a man worthy of enrolling in the Ninetail Royal Academy, Ayame must use the VR headgear to cram years' worth of knowledge into his head.
As an information-path artifact, it can extend the perception of time, allowing the user to learn a tremendous amount of information and knowledge within a short period. However, that does not mean the process eliminates the burden that his sea of consciousness endures. The artifact simply compressed the process and the burden. What needs to be learned in years of basic education can be crammed into mere days, but if not careful, this artifact can kill Mordred through information overload.
“We are still on schedule.” Ayame expressed her worry. “You can take a break if you want, we still have some time.”
“No need.” Mordred politely declined. “I just finished universal history, there’s still physics, biology, math, geography, culture, the basics of cultivation, and other topics that I still need to learn. I have to continue.”
Witnessing Mordred’s eyes beaming with resolve, Ayame did not try to deny his effort. “Alright, I’ll be here watching some anime. If you want to join, just tell me.” She sat back, her eyes quickly glimmering in prismatic light even without the headgear.
Seeing Ayame’s consciousness has departed for the digital world, Mordred put on his VR headgear once more. There’s much to learn and so little time.