Chapter 464 - Mountain Inferno
Chapter 464: Mountain Inferno
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu
I was incredibly astonished to hear that Omar had been defeated. He was definitely among the stronger of the Seven Original Sins. The undead knights I sent to assist him were courageous and skilled fighters. The Mountain Inferno, which was Pride’s Circle of Hell, shouldn’t have feared any large-scale group battle. It was inconceivable that Pride was the first to have been defeated.
Pride stemmed from “levels”. At first, all humans were perhaps indeed equal. But as society developed, human habits developed to classify people into different social levels. Concepts like upper, middle, and low class appeared. Those who stood high above got accustomed to looking down at those below them, along with viewing the lower classes as not even human or toys.
I never viewed the Seven Original Sins as true evil. All of the Seven Original Sins had their positives and negatives. An appropriate amount of Pride would be self-confidence, an absolutely required form of self-recognition for bravely striving to reach the peak. However, an overwhelming amount of pride would only result in birthing a person who obtained satisfaction from looking down on others, or deriving pleasure from kicking those below them—that would obviously be going way overboard.
“Since the prideful enjoy fighting for the sake of higher positions, climbing ever higher to look down on others, I shall let you all climb as much as you like.”
Sword mountains, fire mountains, magma mountains, snow mountains, and countless other cruel mountains existed in the Mountain Inferno. However, unlike normal snow mountains, the snow mountains here got colder the closer one got to the base of the mountain. The fire mountains’ bases were nothing more than boiling liquid metal. The other mountains were the same as well. The closer to the base, the harsher the environment. The farther up you went, the more comfortable you would be.
The criminals that committed the sin of having too much Pride would be dropped naked into the mountains. If they wanted to be more comfortable, they would be forced to climb for their lives with only their bare hands and feet. But on these mountain paths, there was only enough space for one person to ascend. It would be impossible for them to avoid fighting and slaughtering each other. And even if some managed to ascend to a certain height, devils were waiting to knock them back down to the bottom and start over again.
I won’t get into this particular inferno’s philosophy and religious meaning here. Just the very rules of this inferno made it the most appropriate location for dealing with large-scale group battles.
Omar was the ruler of the Mountain Inferno. He would forever stand at the very peak of all the mountains. He could give his undead subordinates the ability to fly as they wished through the mountains, yet ordinary dead souls or any invaders would only be able to move up one step at a time. Not only that, all “movement”-related magic abilities were automatically deactivated for the dead souls or any invaders. This would make them into nothing more than easy targets.
Did this sound shameless? Dimensional laws were indeed so shameless. Not to mention, this was no ordinary dimension. Someone that entered Bastian’s Circle of Hell which represented Wrath would also become a bloodthirsty maniac.
I had originally thought that such a battlefield combined with Omar’s abilities would make it so that it was impossible for him to lose. It should have been simple enough to stall for time at the very minimum.
But, unfortunately… Omar met a Demon Main God, Ladvioka, the Lord of Putrefaction, who was going all out!
Yes, the critical part was that Ladvioka was going all out. Main God level existences would rarely bring out their full powers.
Demon Lords were incredibly difficult to deal with. This was something already expected. However, they were difficult to deal with for more than just their personal power levels.
The long eons gave each Demon Lord a unique path to their peak of power. These Demon Lords also all had completely different personalities and styles. Still, even Demon Main God could be described as the slyest among the sly.
Sophocles the Deceiver easily agreed to negotiate because he discovered that it was truly possible for him to actually perish here. Hell was now an isolated dimension, cutting off his path of retreat. Although there was less than a one-in-three chance for him to die here, and despite the fact that he still had plenty of hidden aces, the always cautious Sophocles still chose the path of absolute safety that would bring him the most benefits.
Did he really have no other path to take? Was that the limit of his power? The answer was an obvious no. The countless eons gave him plenty of foundational strength. It was impossible to calculate how many hidden aces such an existence would possess. Still, for the Chaos Main Gods that always warred amongst themselves, any top-level ace that would be able to affect the combat situation at a Main God level would be a priceless treasure difficult to obtain in any plane. No Main God would bring out such an ace if the benefits were less than the price of using such an ace. Not to mention, other Main Gods were here in Hell right now, meaning that a Main God might expose their most important secrets by using an ace.
There was a saying that the Gods were just like countries. Their relationships only involved benefits, not emotions. They would often test the waters and taunt each other, but all-out warfare would be incredibly rare. Although I felt that this saying was somewhat extreme, it was still accurate.
The Gods rarely warred amongst each other, but as long as they did, it would usually be an all-out war that would only end with one God’s death. That was because only by stealing the enemy God’s dimension and divine power, believers, and Divine Concept would the victorious God be able to make up for their losses in the war.
This was also why most of the Gods’ clashes were only in their churches’ teachings and just talk. It was even rarer for Main Gods to go all out against each other.
“At any rate, the Sources of Order and Chaos are unable to surveil their actions in Hell, nor are there any deep grudges between us. As long as we display a sufficient amount of power, making them think that they’ll definitely lose more than they gain, of course they won’t bring out their full power.”
I already saw through all of this, which was why I chose the strategy of forcefully dividing the Main Gods up and sending them to different Circles of Hell.
“Isolating them so that they can’t meet up with their allies is no different from directly exiling or sealing them. Even if it’s a Main God level existence, when they discover that they’ll probably lose far more than they’ll gain, or that they’ll even meet with real danger, they’ll still instinctively choose to protect themselves first. Since self-protection is their priority, of course they’ll leave power in reserve, which will increase the chance that they’ll enter a battle of attrition. And what we need right now more than anything is time.”
The developments so far proved that my inferences had been correct for the time being. Sophocles chose to remain neutral; the God of Wisdom Kalumandas was also willing to negotiate. The other Main Gods also only started by testing the waters rather than going all out.
If I showed any signs of weakness, the Main Gods would naturally swarm in and devour me. But if I made them feel that I was a prickly hedgehog filled with toxic quills, making them lose more than they gained if they ate me, this would naturally help to keep the balance of power and bring this battle into one of attrition, which was what I wanted the most.
My arrangements for each Main God’s opponent were all specifically targeted. Harloys was with the God of Wisdom Kalumandas. Even if their negotiations broke down and Kalumandas attacked, Harloys was also an archmage who would be able to defend herself against Kalumandas’ primarily magic-based attacks. Gaar, the “Murky Nightmare”, was capable of evolving as he fought and healing his own wounds, disgusting abilities to deal with. He faced Ah Dang, who also had extremely high individual combat strength and was also capable of evolving through devouring. The current combat situation also seemed to prove that my choices had been correct.
However, there was one existence that surpassed my calculations—Ladvioka, the Lord of Putrefaction!
Since the Lord of Putrefaction’s combat strength mostly stemmed from his armies, of course I arranged “Pride” Omar as his opponent since Omar also relied on subordinates to do most of the fighting. And, I even sent my undead knights to Omar to strengthen him even further. Omar was also supported by the dimensional laws of his Mountain Inferno. This should have been a fight that was over ninety percent in our favor.
“That damned Ladvioka! He’s literally insane!”
Unlike how the other Main Gods remained cautious, Ladvioka was immensely tempted by the benefits to be had in devouring this entire dimension. He unhesitatingly brought out his true power and used countless priceless treasures that he had stored for eons.
My Wumianzhe incarnation there already gave me the information on what happened. In order to deal with the Mountain Inferno’s dimensional laws and buffs for Omar, Ladvioka unhesitatingly used the strategy of a forceful Dimensional Descent.
Difficult to understand, you say? Ladvioka basically performed a forceful summon of one of his personal dimensions, forcefully overlaying the dimensions and causing a collision. To use an analogy, it was as if a bastard used the planet Mars to smash it into Earth!
In some of his worlds, Ladvioka was treated as an existence akin to the Creator Goddess. But evidently, he wasn’t a good father at all. At the very least, he felt absolutely nothing for his own children.
He used a dimension with actual lives in it as nothing more than a consumable item to be thrown like a brick. This forcefully broke through Hell’s dimensional walls, but no matter what the result was, by using his own dimension as a hammer, the dimension would shatter and all lives within it would be ended. It would be almost impossible for any existences within that dimension to survive.
The broken dimensional shards from Ladvioka’s dimension crashed into the dimensional walls of Hell. This clash brought about a distortion of the dimensional laws, creating cracks in the very fabric of Space. Even my powerful undead knights were incapable of surviving in such an environment.
This also allowed a large amount of the Ladvioka’s dimensions’ survivors to enter the Mountain Inferno. Any survivor would be one of the strongest existences in that dimension, and they continued fighting for Ladvioka’s cause. These dense “worker ants” of his immediately began spreading Ladvioka’s faith and dimensional laws there. Ladvioka sacrificed at least more than twenty of his personal dimensions here all in order to distort the dimensional laws of the Mountain Inferno, which meant that he used up so much accumulated power which would take several tens of thousands of years to gather.
Basically, in order to steal the dimension of Hell and its laws, Ladvioka started right away by unhesitatingly destroying more than twenty of his personal dimensions, and most of the lives within them!
A Demon Lord Main God who possessed a number of dimensions in the two digits suddenly sacrificed more than half of all he possessed. What did he have to show for it? By now, Ladvioka no longer had any path of retreat. He could only possibly fight us to the bitter end. The first mortal enemy for us appeared in the battle for Hell.
I received much information from all my incarnations. The Mountain Inferno had been broken through and Hell’s Four Halls were in danger. The next moment, I decided on a course of action.
“I’m going to first go to beat up that damned fatty. Follow me if you dare.”
I directly vanished together with Marsolit. I casually opened up a teleportation portal to the Mountain Inferno but didn’t close it. My aura emanated from the other side of the portal right after I disappeared. And so, Karwenz unhesitatingly stepped into the teleportation portal.
This incredibly simple dare would be highly effective against someone like Karwenz who wouldn’t back down against any challenge. He would especially never back down from a challenge from me… but this didn’t mean that I wouldn’t scam him. The teleportation portal I left for him was within the innermost core of a volcano in the Mountain Inferno. He could go enjoy a magma bath to calm down first.
“Roland, you bastard, fooling me yet again…!”
Cough, let’s ignore this loser dog’s angry roars coming from deep underground. Currently, the Mountain Inferno that I saw seemed just like Armageddon itself had arrived.
Countless broken continental and even world shards were falling down onto the Mountain Inferno like streaking meteors. Yet this was a calamity which far surpassed the damage that a meteor shower would cause. It looked more like countless moons were directly falling down and causing havoc.
Numerous tears appeared in the sky as snow mountains were dissolved by magma, while spewing volcanos were flattened by stone continental shards. Even worse, the distorted dimensional laws were difficult for the Mountain Inferno to digest. With so many unfixed dimensional tears, the dead that should have revived immediately instead temporarily lost their undying nature.
And in all this chaos, all these dimensional shards and distorted dimensional laws were more than enough to let the demons create their own abyssal fortress. Large amounts of mystical creatures were walking around, and in the middle of the battlefield, Ladvioka was trampling on and tearing my undead knights’ corpses, stalling and preventing their eventual revivals.
I unhesitatingly roared out in anger as I saw all this from the bow of Envy, the Borealis.
“Marsolit! Big Dipper squadron! It’s time to transform and move out!”