Chapter 222: Ace
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
Although it seemed like I was just messing around, this was actually the cruelest plan to kill Emordilorcan. He was already stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The waves from the forbidden spell in front of him kept increasing in magnitude, while the yellow giant strange monster was digging into his old nest. It seemed that going forward or backward would be nothing but death for him.
And as for his allies… they were unreliable.
Not even the strongest of contracts could stand up to the test of time.
Die for the sake of an ancestor’s contract? n.o.body was so foolish; the Giant Sand Worms ran off after just a few minutes of fighting, while the Sand Dragons and Stone Giants also noticed that their opponents were difficult to deal with, and they began simply watching the battlefield. Very few of them were giving it their all.
Emordilorcan had left for far too long, and thousands of years had pa.s.sed. His most trusted followers were long gone. If he had enough time—three hundred years, no, even thirty years, he had full confidence that he would be able to create a faction that was truly his own again here to act as his subordinates. Unfortunately…
“How could I possibly give you time? Am I foolish enough to raise a tiger that will eat me?”
Of course, I knew what Emordilorcan was thinking about. In a way, we were the same type—those who weren’t exactly magnanimous, who absolutely had to repay a grudge or else we wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night unless we got rid of our enemies completely.
[Why don’t you just say that you’re a small-hearted person who’ll bear a grudge until the end of the world? By the way, is it really alright for the main character to be someone as unrighteous as you? You’re even an epic hero; were the historians blind? You should be the antagonist.]
Shut up!
I forced myself to suppress my anger. My System was definitely being too overactive recently, especially right after it rebooted. It kept finding opportunities to tick me off. If I kept commenting, that would make me fall right into my System’s trap.
From a certain standpoint, my System wasn’t wrong. I was indeed the small-hearted type who would bear a grudge forever. I still remembered the fresh blood on the snowy white battlefield along with all the dying words of the Mist warriors as if it were yesterday. How could I possibly relax until Emordilorcan was dead for real?
“Checkmate! I’m attacking your weakness, the Elemental Throne, from two sides. Let me see just which side you choose to defend. Do you think you’re Sun Wukong, with the ability to split yourself?” [1] 1
And when I witnessed what happened next, I spat out a mouthful of blood. I had actually jinxed myself.
The huge stone giant twisted himself and actually sent out three smaller stone giants that started running in two different directions. And, as they ran, those stone giants absorbed the earth element in order to strengthen themselves, enlarge, and split again… after just a short ten seconds, thirty-something more Emordilorcans had appeared!
“Impossible! How are we supposed to deal with so many Earth Elemental G.o.ds?”
Someone was panicking now.
“It’s definitely not impossible. If each clone had power equaling Emordilorcan’s, he would have used this technique long ago. No, even if each clone had only half his power, we would have lost long ago. It’s nothing more than a wild fantasy to think that he could win.”
This person was slightly calmer, but his continually trembling legs betrayed his inner fear.
“Humans are born from humans, beasts are born from beasts, and even elemental creatures have elemental creature parents, but I just want to ask, Emordilorcan, what’s your mother’s name?”
I was viciously insulting him now. Although I seemed to be prattling on about nothing, my question was actually the most painful insult to elemental creatures of all. I asked this due to my understanding of what had happened in front of me, and it was also my way of showing my condescension towards Emordilorcan.
Apart from the top-level elemental creatures that could transform into humanoid forms, normal elemental creatures didn’t have genders at all. It was natural that they also didn’t have reproduction methods similar to species with genders.
Their reproduction was just like lower-level lifeforms, with copying and division as their main methods. That was why it was quite common for earth elemental creatures to split off part of their bodies to create clones of themselves—it was a common ability.
However, these simple clones wouldn’t have wills of their own and would be nothing more than manipulated puppets. In order to create a new life and new will, which would be true reproduction, the earth elemental creature would need to split its soul and also give up approximately half of its power.
Of course, places with high elemental density could produce low-level elemental creatures naturally as well. More than 90% of the elemental lifeforms in the Elemental Planes were just low-level elemental creatures that followed their instincts. They lacked knowledge and wisdom. They would naturally split off once in a while and replenish their strength again by absorbing the earth element. Meanwhile, things would be a little more difficult for high-level elemental creatures.
Every time it was time to naturally split off, that would be when the elemental lifeform was at its weakest. High-level elemental creatures also had their own instincts to split off and reproduce, which were quite difficult to control. If the timing to split themselves was a bad one, and an enemy just happened to come looking…
This was why the older Elemental Lords would always suppress their basic instincts to split and reproduce as much as they possibly could. If they failed to suppress their instincts and ended up producing a younger clone, they were highly likely to be attacked by their enemies and die right then and there.
In order to prevent their enemies from finding out about their weak periods, some Elemental Lords with no moral limitations whatsoever would unhesitatingly devour their younger clones that just split off from them. This would result in not only replenis.h.i.+ng their power loss that just occurred, but it would even greatly increase their overall strength.
From a certain standpoint, every single high-level elemental creature that was born with intelligence was highly likely to face their own “parent” as its first enemy.
Back when there were only elemental creatures, all of them viewed this type of action as a normal course of survival. But after coming into contact with the outside world and obtaining an understanding of the morality of the outside world, high-level elemental creatures started treating “devouring their own children” as a taboo. Asking who an elemental creature’s parent was was no different from asking how he managed to kill his parent and survive.
We investigated a tremendous amount of information in the library. Every one of us was certain that Emordilorcan would have the basic elemental ability to send out clones of himself. This was a basic instinct of all elemental creatures, and moreover, there were even records of Emordilorcan appearing in different places at the same time.
“The most I’ve ever seen was three Emordilorcans at the same time. Every one of them had incredible strength. And the strange part was, even destroying one of them didn’t seem to have any effect on his main body at all—it was as if there was no connection between them.”
Those were Camdian’s words. Based on this, we made many inferences. We speculated whether Emordilorcan was actually a triplet, if he had several sons that worked together with him as a father and son team, or if his natural talent was in creating clones. There were several hundred such inferences.
However, all of them were shattered by the truth before us. Every “Emordilorcan” had very similar but different wavelengths from the original and had their own sources of magic power. It was obvious that they weren’t his clones. It was as if…
“…As if they are his own children. Those wavelengths are basically just like a clone’s; there’s only one possible explanation of this. He devoured his own split-off children, transformed them into his own clones, and has been carrying them on him all along, intending to use them as consumable items at a critical moment. What difference is this from the foolish ogres? No, not even the ogres eat their own species, especially their own children!”
The Water Elemental G.o.ddess Aylos had a face filled with fatigue after finis.h.i.+ng her magical traps. Now, however, her face was filled with condescension for Emordilorcan. Not every elemental creature lacked morality, and as Sidunwar’s wife, Aylos had many children of her own. Although most of her children had already pa.s.sed on, she also experienced emotions and a life similar to most living creatures. She was filled with distaste for Emordilorcan’s actions.
Even if we all looked down on and were filled with distaste for Emordilorcan, there was a cruel fact in front of us. Our opponent was even stronger than we antic.i.p.ated.
Due to the difference in age, there were gigantic differences in the power levels of these thirty-something younger Emordilorcans. The strongest one was only about one-third of Emordilorcan’s power level, while the weakest was probably only at the level of a slightly strong Elemental Lord. However, when Emordilorcan’s power level was being used as the basis of comparison, this was already a significant number, especially since they were all clones of a Master Monk martial expert. They all had nigh indestructible bodies, akin to unstoppable freight trains.
Although they possessed their own bodies, they were all under the control of Emordilorcan’s will. They split into two groups consisting of approximately seventeen or eighteen each as they broke free from the surrounding armies. They displayed their well-practiced combat cooperation techniques, with some of them performing flying kicks, punches, and body slams; each had their own role and complemented each other, which instantly helped them break free from the heavy numbers around them.
“The Eighteen Monks Formation? Does he intend to shoot a kung-fu movie? Just how old is this strategy supposed to be?”
Some tried to stop these Emordilorcans that were breaking free, but they would always mysteriously die off. We, however, were at a height to watch over the entire battlefield, and it was only us who could see the shadow of an instant flash behind those people.
“How shameless! Forget about hiding among his own clones, he’s even ambus.h.i.+ng those much weaker than he is.”
Should I say that being shameless was the way to true strength? That “Eighteen Monks Formation” seemed strong already, but the worst part of it was that Emordilorcan himself was now hiding his true strength and acting as if he had strength equal to that of his clones. Anyone who fought with him would instantly get pulverized before he would somehow manage to hide among his clones again.
“It’s indeed quite strong, but it’s still meaningless to us.”
*Clap!*
With my indication, the pre-prepared trap was activated. Numerous catapults were brought out, but they were tossing out green barrels rather than stones.
*Crack!* *Crack!*
All these barrels exploded, causing pitch-black oil to be spread everywhere before being lit up.
This was alchemic oil that I had gotten from the gnomes. The roaring flames transformed into a furious mountain of fire and swallowed up the surroundings. Thanks to the oil, the endless seas of fire devoured everything.
Soon, with some angry shouting, the flames were put out. What appeared amongst the flames were numerous pitch-black figures, and when I counted them, there wasn’t even a single less Emordilorcan than before.
A fire like this would definitely be fatal to any mortal, and it would even be slightly bothersome to an Elemental Lord, but for Emordilorcan and his clones, this type of low-strength non-magical fire could be directly ignored. The only result that came of it was that their body’s surface temperatures increased slightly and their faces were blackened by the smoke.
However, I laughed at this, because them ignoring it was the best result for me.
*Clap!* I gave another indication for the next step of the plan.
How could it be possible for the Water Elemental G.o.ddess to be so fatigued from just a single trap? Another flood fell upon the battlefield again, and a mudflow caught all the Emordilorcans within it. This was indeed a trap that had nothing new about it whatsoever, but you know, it was fine as long as it was useful. This specially-made trap I designed for Emordilorcan who had ridiculous physical strength was indeed highly effective against him.
“Ice!”
I added my ice magic to the trap again and directly froze them in the ice.
*Roar!*
The angrily roaring Emordilorcan instantly broke free from the ice. This type of attack had basically zero attack power against him, and he felt like all it did was help him cool off. However, it angered him quite greatly. In his mind, these attacks were no different from pranks and were basically an insult to him.
*Clap!*
I responded by having several hundred green barrels of oil sent over to Emordilorcan and his clones once more, and soon a roaring fire covered them again.
Once again, there was no difference in the oil I used this time and last time. The result was also similar to last time, as soon, a bunch of stone giants with angry faces emerged from the flames. However, after this, there was something slightly different.
*Crack!*
The sound of rocks shattering on this battlefield didn’t mean much, but for me, who had long been waiting for this moment, it was a heaven-sent sound.
*Clap!*
I had Aylos send yet another flood.
“Ice!”
I froze them yet again.
*Clap!*
Yet another sea of fire engulfed them.
*Crack!* *Crack!*
This time, the sounds of stones cracking were obvious for all to hear. Many of the stone giants were already cracked all over.
One of the youngest Emordilorcans collapsed at this point. He immediately shattered and turned into white broken rocks, ending his long life as a puppet.
“Impossible!! This type of attack couldn’t possibly pierce through our magical defense!”
Seeing my old opponent angrily roar in such astonishment greatly uplifted my mood.
“Hmph! Does this have anything to do with magical defense? This is just the expansion of objects that are heated and the contraction of objects that are frozen during sudden temperature differences. Stones will easily become fragile and shatter under repeated temperature changes between extreme heat and cold, which is one of the basic laws of physics. If you have the ability, then why don’t you try changing this natural law as well?”
*Clap!*
Well, although Emordilorcan was asking, I wasn’t as stupid as to explain it to my enemy on the battlefield. Since this was an effective method, I just thought the above to myself, continued to profit at his expense and decided to continue with this strategy.
After another round of ice and fire, five more Emordilorcans collapsed.
*Clap!*
After several repet.i.tions of this process, there were only less than half of the Emordilorcans remaining, and Emordilorcan himself had long since abandoned trying to conceal himself among his clones and was trying to break free at all costs. Yet Thunder Eagles, formed from thunder, blocked him as the furious Camdian tossed thunderbolts at Emordilorcan from behind, suppressing him. The meat s.h.i.+eld known as Adam was also deployed at this critical junction to control the situation.
*Clap!*
With this round, about ten more Emordilorcans perished.
*Clap…*
After three more rounds, only Emordilorcan himself was still standing. All the clones he had been saving up for the past several tens of thousands of years had been destroyed in an instant, and his white jade-like body was now cracked all over. The powerful Emordilorcan seemed like he was forced to the brink, but his eyes glared viciously at us and showed that he was still far from giving up.
“…Although pulling all the grunts together for an AOE attack was quite nice, the AOE still lacked effective power against the boss. It seems that he won’t be so easily dealt with after all.”
*Boom!*
Still, the continuously digging Ultimate Yellow Duck meant that time was on our side, as it would force Emordilorcan to use everything against us, no matter what aces they were.
“Come, come, I shall allow you to witness just what is a mage’s deceit and shamelessness… cough—cough—I made a mistake! I meant to say a mage’s knowledge and wisdom!” Seeing Margaret and Amelia suddenly glare angrily in my direction, I managed to change my words in time.
[Well, you finally managed to use modern knowledge from your world to your advantage against one of this world’s residents. You’re doing something that a transmigrator should…]
“Is there a reward? A t.i.tle or Fate Points? Wonderful, you’re finally doing something that a system should. I believe that in just a short amount of time, I’ll level up, be fully outfitted with G.o.d Equipment, become the biggest boss of all, marry someone beautiful and rich, and reach the peak of my life. It’s exciting to just think about it!”
[…Let me sing this song for you. Actually, I’ve prepared this song many years ago already. Time for the transmigrator trumpets to sound! We transmigrators have our strength, this strength is iron, this strength is steel…]
Fine then, it was too silly of me to have any expectations of the system.
“Shut up! Your singing is even worse than Gria’s!”
[…For insulting the system, 100 Fate Points have been deducted.]
“This is the first time you’ve deducted points from me! You actually had such an ability!? Are you that p.i.s.sed off at hearing me say your singing sucks?”
Note:
1. According to Wikipedia, Sun Wukong, also known as the Monkey King, is a mythological figure who features in a body of legends, which can be traced back to the period of the Song dynasty. He appears as the main character in the 16th-century Chinese cla.s.sical novel Journey to the West (西游记).