“Because you humans are short-lived and forgetful…” Valkries seemed to had found her sense of superiority once more. She subconsciously raised her cup of coffee again. “After another ten or twenty years, history will be replaced by lies. However, something like this is unimaginable for my long-lived race. You people seem to have completely forgotten that no matter how much comforting lies are, they are ultimately still lies.”
“That makes the two of us,” Roland said unyieldingly. “Didn’t you guys also intentionally ignore Heathtalese’s warning? Apart from the witnesses at the time, I’m afraid that none of the demons of the new generation know of this event, right?”
Valkries opened her mouth but couldn’t find a suitable reply. In the end she could only take another sip of coffee, which was almost the same as agreeing.
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to make a guess.” He pulled the conversation back to the traitorous Oracle. “Perhaps the blurry silhouette that ‘Transformer’ saw a thousand years ago is the same person as Lan from the Dream World. Unfortunately your mentor couldn’t receive a definite hint as she was unable to form a stable territory in the Realm of Mind.”
“You believe the Oracle’s words?”
“I believe what I see with my own eyes—the world is being eroded by enemies who call themselves the servants of god, and the relics of past civilizations have certainly been discovered in reality. I don’t know where all the victorious civilizations went, but the truth is, they have never returned, don’t you find that very strange?”
“Perhaps there is a utopia that is more suitable for an advanced race to live in—”
“Like the Fountain of Magic, for example?” Roland said mockingly. “Upgrading is one path to become god; yet, once you have become god, there is no way of returning back to your hometown. What type of god is that? Also when you are close to the Fountain of Magic—which is the Erosion rupture, does it really make you feel wonderful and content? If that were the case, you would have jumped in ages ago.”
This bastard… ordered the witches to follow me on that journey after all , Valkries thought indignantly but couldn’t refute his words. At the time when she stood before the scarlet red rupture, the only thing she felt was an extreme sense of danger.
“Even if you’re right, what can you change?” The Nightmare Lord spoke in a low voice after a long period of silence. “It’s all too late. If you were a member of the Cloud School and you made this guess a thousand years earlier, you may have had the chance to turn the tables. But when our race received the legacy of the third civilization, war could no longer be avoided.”
The third civilization… this was probably the underground civilization. Roland subconsciously spoke slower, “These so-called legacies… what on earth do you mean?”
Valkries looked stunned momentarily, then she laughed softly. “What? It turns out you guys have never received a legacy shard before after all.”
“Answer His Majesty’s question!” Phyllis ordered in a low voice.
“We don’t need some shard, His Majesty’s knowledge alone is enough!”
“Only uncultivated monsters like you would start a war over a small stone!”
Just when Roland thought that the Nightmare Lord would refuse to answer the question, she spoke, “I will tell you—and then you will understand, why trying to turn the tables now is no longer possible. As soon as you taste the sweetness of a legacy, civilization will never forget the delightful sensation, they will only crave more.” She paused and looked at the witches next to Roland. “You are the best examples right now—if humans were to give up all the changes that the Graycastle king had brought about, would you?”
“You mean…”
“Correct, the legacy shard is merely a way to inherit.” Valkries’ words confirmed all the hypotheses that Roland had made until now. “You acquire knowledge from here and pass it down to the humans, that is the same as the humans receiving the legacy of Dream World. But the effect of a shard is more thorough and complete—it isn’t just specific to one individual, it applies to the entire civilization.”
Next, Valkries revealed what happened one hundred years after the end of the first Battle of Divine Will in the “Path of Reconciliation.” That was a war that the Union never knew of, the ‘Final War.’
“You probably know this, but once upon a time the third civilization left their mark on over half of the continent—if it was said that my clan occupied the Blackstone domain, while humans occupied the Land of Dawn and the second civilization occupied the Sky-sea Realm, then the third civilization would be the owner of the underground world. They were like earthworms, their bodies were extremely weak but they had a unique knack for magic power.
“Unfortunately, these guys had bad luck and touched something they shouldn’t have touched. When they were burrowing tunnels all over the mountains, they encountered a fissure in the stratum which penetrated directly from the Blackstone region to the Sky-sea Realm. It’s fine if you don’t understand, you only need to know that they inadvertently broke through the barrier that separated their den from the Sky-sea Realm. The latter took advantage of this and invaded the Blackstone region, slaughtering numerous and making them suffer one defeat after another.
“If we could have lended a hand, they might have had hope of survival. However to our race, it was also the perfect time to verify the legacy rumor. So the King, who at the time had not upgraded yet, lead a party and did a pincer attack from behind on the second civilization who were escaping among the chaos. At the same time, the King blocked the Ghost Ravine.
“The Ghost Ravine was located between two mountain peaks, it was about half the size of the Fertile Plains, and on the two sides ran a thousand-mile underground river and staggered ground. The bottom of the ravine was so varied that one moment it was an underground cavern and the next it was an open hill. As much as the earthworms were good at burrowing, they couldn’t hide their tracks completely.
“This war lasted almost ten years, the number of Primal Demons demons of our clan that perished in this war was more than in the first Battle of Divine Will under the hands of humans. The outcome in the end was that both the King and the Sky-sea Realm received a part of the legacy shard.”
Roland couldn’t help but hold his breath, even though he didn’t want to show how much he really wanted to know as it would please Valkries, this information made him momentarily forget to control his expression.
“And then?”
“There’s no more.”
“What—?”
“I meant the coffee.” Valkries licked her lips. “You were the one who said to talk while we ate, right?”
Roland was immediately speechless. They were already at this point and she was still trying to take hold of the conversation. Should he describe her as too competitive, or too proud? But he let his unspoken criticism remain unspoken and immediately called the waiter and ordered three cups of Peninsula coffee. “You can continue now.”
“Reconciliation wasn’t actually very complicated. the King placed the shard he acquired together with the legacy shard of our race, and the two combined into one—in that moment, we took over everything they once had: language, wisdom, magical skill… even life,” the Nightmare Lord said slowly. “The surviving ‘earthworms’ wilted away and died, whilst the power of our clansmen made a qualitative leap. It was as if a veil was lifted on magic; multifarious pieces of knowledge emerged in our minds. It didn’t matter if we wanted to accept it or not, but we couldn’t deny one point—our race was far more powerful than it was during the first Battle of Divine Will.
“From that moment, nobody doubted the gift from god. Just as I said, once this feeling is experienced once, it will never be forgotten.” She raised a new cup of coffee and said, “Now you realize what I mean by being too late, right? It doesn’t matter what you received from the Dream World; as soon as they acquire the human legacy shard, this will all end up in the victor’s hands. You want to use the traitorous Oracle’s warning to stop this war? That will just be a waste of effort.”
Something that even her mentor, Heathtalese, couldn’t accomplish couldn’t be done by a human male.
“Indeed…” Roland sighed. “But I have never planned on using the warning to stop the war.”
“…What are you trying to say?” Valkries furrowed her brows.
“The only thing that can stop war is war itself.” He said with his eyes locked onto hers.