Chapter 378
Chapter 378: Reinforcements
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
“As everyone knows, for a certain reason, the royal palace is still in chaos. However, a meeting must be arranged. The meeting with Emperor Orloss shall take place tomorrow evening at six o’clock. Please make proper preparations. Here’s the plan for the discussion—please confirm whether it’s suitable.”
“…This is a letter from the Dragon World’s leaders. The assistance they wish to receive along with the compensation they’re willing to pay is all written within. However, I feel that specific negotiations are still necessary. After all, they wish to obtain the assistance of powerful sealing magic expert archmages.”
“These are the records of the recent discussions with the Bardi higher-ups. As the main leader behind the envoy group, I believe it’s vital for you to understand the current situation. Please, pleasedon’t suddenly disappear again!”
“This is a letter from Cloud Tower. They demand an explanation for why you suddenly went missing and did nothing for an entire month.
I must add that several archmages wrote personal letters to you.”
“Reyne has returned to East Mist. There’s also a letter from Sleuweir. They wish for you to summon Mars and Omar to return to your side before the entire city of Antuen is destroyed by explosions.
They also wish for you to summon Queen Glina to your side, and they have cited the reason for this as ‘giving her more experience.'”
“Emergency report from Timlad—there’s a kink in the newest weapon’s design, and it requires your decision. The specifics are in the report. To sum it up, the new weapon’s area of effect is a little too powerful. It’s accidentally become a weapon perfect for committing suicide.”
“The surface beastmen have sent over a new treaty and their tributes. They apparently wish to sign a peace treaty for the next thirty years…”
The moment I appeared, the official tasks that had piled up like mountains were instantly tossed at me. I could only sigh—it was getting harder and harder for me to slack off. I also made up my mind to create a useful internal policies department. Otherwise, I would die sooner or later from overwork.
“Die from overwork? When you work less than three days out of a month? Every department has already taken care of their affairs. The rest is specifically related to you. If you acted even the least bit responsibly, none of us would have to work so hard.”
Fortunately, I had taken Lilith Milan along with me this time. Although her tongue was as sharp as ever, she still helped me greatly—after complaining, of course.
She was indeed telling the truth. This work had to do with my role as an envoy of the Mage Country, my status as royalty of East Mist, my personal weapon research, and so on. Even if I recruited ten secretaries, these tasks would still require my personal attention and decisions.
As for why there were so many documents piled up, that was because I was involved in far too many affairs. In a way, this was a good thing. The new Mist Alliance, the Church of Law, the Underground, and other such factions were imperceptibly becoming an ironclad alliance.
However, growing too swiftly would bring about the negative side effect of an unstable foundation. At the very least, there were far too many personal factors involved in tying these factions together. Although personal factors would indeed improve the alliance’s stability, if something happened to some critical individual—for instance, if I was suddenly killed off—there would be huge trouble.
But finding someone to make decisions in my place was proving difficult. The best candidate would have been Elisa, but she was forced to return to the Chaos Abyss. The other youngsters could at most only act as local leaders—it would be impossible for them to command the overall situation.
“It would seem that it’s time to reorganize our factions. Let’s create some new jobs and delegate part of my responsibilities so that everything can carry on as normal even if I suddenly die. Right, we should also reorganize our militaries. It’s far too archaic to use a system where one person commands the entire army.”
I was seriously thinking about how to delegate my responsibilities. However, a certain someone was unable to watch this anymore.
“You’re saying so much, but all I see is that you’re trying to slack off.”
“…As I recall, silly cat, you’re called the ‘All-Knowing.’ Why don’t you try coming up with an idea to help me?”
“Don’t joke around. If you let me do as I please, then I’d revive the elven empire from back in the day. And, of course, while doing so, I’d kill off the elven kingdoms and elven churches and disembowel every last one of those disgusting Elven Gods and Royal Elf royalty.”
Harloys’ voice sounded lazy as it echoed in my mind, but I knew she was quite serious. And she was already at the doorstep of the SemiGod Undead Emperor level. It was just that her power level was forcefully held back by my own lack of power. If I truly let her free to act as ridiculously as she pleased, it would be almost impossible to clean up after her.
But now that I suddenly thought about how she was at the doorstep of becoming a SemiGod Undead Emperor, I got rather curious. My main research question was the quality of one’s soul. Zero’s research question had been the temperature of life. These could be considered major breakthroughs in the areas of souls and life. How did the silly cat intend to cross this threshold?
“…My research? Sure, I can give it to you. But even if I give my research to you, you won’t be able to understand it.”
I got even more curious upon hearing this. Although my research regarding elemental magic was indeed quite average, I was confident in my undead magic. How could I possibly not understand? And so I asked her what her research was.
“Memories, and turning the fake into reality.”
Alright then. The moment Harloys told me this, I knew it wouldn’t be necessary for me to ask anything else. Although this area of research was also related to the soul, I hadn’t researched anything about it at all.
“Oh? That can cure amnesia, can’t it?”
“That’s completely unrelated. The goal of my research is to create reality using memories. While I can’t cure memory loss, it’s quite easy for me to give you some memories that are entirely my creation. Are you sure you want such memories?”
The silly cat was currently rolling around lazily on the roof. Ever since she had progressed in power yet again, she had gotten even lazier.
“Memories created by you? Will I still be myself then?”
“…If your physical body is the original one and your soul—and your memories—are complete, then is there even any meaning in asking whether you’re the original or not?”
“I feel like there’s still some difference.”
“Can you tell the difference, then?”
Both of us fell silent. This was a question impossible to answer. It was no simple theoretical discussion. Without any prompting, both of us thought about Evelyn—was that three-headed dragon still the original Evelyn? And if not, what exactly was she?
“Sigh, how confusing. Roland, you should try to create less troubles that are your fault in the future.”
“Is this really my fault? Back in the day, I didn’t understand what the River Styx or the Cycle of Reincarnation were. I thought that I would simply have to combine the physical body and soul back together to resurrect someone. This result is obviously just a coincidental accident.”
“How do you intend to deal with Evelyn, then? Your ‘second lover?'”
“…I have no idea. I’m just going to pretend not to know anything. Right now, I regret more than anything that I left one of your Slime bodies behind to eavesdrop.”
How could I possibly just believe what other people told me? I had lost all memories of that time—even if Evelyn claimed to be my mother, there would be no evidence to prove or disprove her. Wasn’t it common, in some television shows, to add lots of fake “settings” to a person’s life when they had amnesia? I would need to investigate the truth for myself.
So I naturally had Harloys do what she did best and leave a Slime behind for eavesdropping. Yet the result was that I heard something that made me feel even more conflicted: Evelyn’s feelings towards me and her dying message.
“Forget it. I’m not going to think about it. Let’s focus on what’s before us first. Let’s think about how to seal the Titan Giants.”
Wasting an entire month hadn’t been entirely ineffective. Since the dragons wanted to make a trade with us, it meant we had what the dragons wanted. The dragons wanted the Titan Giants to remain as stone statues—or at least they wanted the Titan Giants’ revival to be slowed down. In that case, there were only two methods to resolve this problem.
The first would be to improve the seals’ strength, such as adding another seal on top of the current seal. This would be no different from directly fighting against the Titan Giants. Just thinking about it would make one understand how difficult this would be. My strongest sealing technique, the Seal of the Four Elements, also originated from the immemorial generation. In fact, the very seal that sealed away the Titan Giants was also created from the Seal of the Four Elements. However, I felt that the long-lived dragons would also know all this as dragons were excellent magic users. If they couldn’t do it, then it would be highly unlikely for us to do so as well.
The other method would be to slow down the rate at which the Titan Giants broke out of their seals, which would require having all four Elemental Gods be in balance—either all four alive or all four dead. At the very least, the Fire Elemental Throne was still intact. That meant the most difficult part of this task was establishing a new Earth Elemental God. Naturally, I would have to focus on choosing an Earth Elemental Lord to obtain that position.
I had considered this a difficult task because I would need to gather materials to reconstruct the Earth Elemental Throne. But thanks to Camdian the Wind Elemental God’s “generosity,” we now had a much better shortcut: the God Equipment of Earth.
As for why we didn’t immediately set out to the Wind Elemental Plane to retrieve the God Equipment of Earth? I felt that the moment I set out, my System would definitely issue me a Myth-ranked Quest. Who knew how long that would take me to complete?
“Besides, the dragons are in more of a hurry than we are. They just need a method to deal with their problem. We just need to give them the method, and they’ll naturally work on it themselves.”
But just telling the dragons a method without any evidence would be insufficient. I would have to research various topics such as “Is it possible to create a new Earth Elemental Throne using the God Equipment of Earth?”, “Who should become the new Elemental Gods of Earth and Fire?”, “Will the new Elemental Gods really be able to achieve a balance in the elements, which will slow down the decaying of the Titan Giants’ seal?”…Fine, all of this was out of the scope of the authority the Truth Symposium had vested in me. And so I simply sent them a report on all this, deciding to have them slowly investigate.
In the past month, the Truth Symposium’s earth element archmages were probably fatigued to the extreme. But judging from the information and expert advice I received from the Cloud Tower on this topic, this plan had at least received the Truth Symposium’s approval… Whether it was possible or not was one factor, but now I had permission. This meant that whether this could solve the problem wasn’t the focus anymore—if there was a problem, everyone would take the blame together, rather than me alone. Naturally, I would be able to relax and continue my research on this matter.
Another thing was that if I looked at the battles that were likely to soon occur in the Elemental Planes and Dragon World, the forces I had on hand were rather insufficient. That was also why I wrote a letter a month ago. My reinforcements should have almost been here.
“Sleuweir actually told their Queen to go out and have some fun? It would seem that Mars and Glina have been getting along excellently. With them together, I bet there’s been many explosions recently…”
*Boom!*
Yep, judging from the familiar gray mushroom cloud outside the city, they’d just arrived.
“Pervert!”
Alright then, the familiar sound of screaming women reached my ears. Yet I had far too many subordinates who could accomplish such a thing with their arrival, so I was uncertain of who exactly had come… wait a moment. Something seemed wrong here. Could it be that I naturally attracted such individuals? I was clearly someone normal!
“A naked tauren!!”
My doubts were now cleared.
“A naked centaur!”
Casio, what’s the matter!? What went wrong with you? You shouldn’t have been like this?! Two years ago, when your grandfather handed you to me, you were clearly normal!
“I’ll go out and greet them!”
Eaglestorm got up to greet them. However, I angrily shouted at him:
“Put on some pants before you go!”