Chapter 101
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 101
Chapter Title: A New Era (1)
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"No way. Those monsters are ignoring the survivors and heading straight for us...?"
"What do you mean 'no way,' you idiot! It's all true. Those stupid humans have joined hands with an Outer God!"
Astragon exploded in rage at Shuber's reaction upon hearing that the ants were bypassing the central Empire and marching north.
Those who finally realized Carlian had struck some deal with the ants were stunned, but it was already far too late.
Asmora orders total enemy annihilation.
The ants prepared for their final sweep.
It was an assault aimed at wiping out every last one of Astragon's subordinates clustered in the northern Empire, without the hassle of sorting through the intermixed humans.
All they could do against the ants swarming from every direction was fight desperately until the bitter end and perish.
We have to help! Are you idiots planning to hand over this entire vast Empire to those bastards?!
Shut up and get lost. It's not like we haven't tried.
To be precise, you've been acting like you've won just because you devoured one major power early on, when it was barely the beginning...
In the midst of this, Astragon desperately pleaded with the other deities for aid.
He threatened them, asking if they could handle it if he fell and the entire Empire fell to the ants.
But the deities' responses were ice-cold. Astragon had drawn too much attention in the Divine Community before, and physically aiding him now was impossible anyway.
The orc kingdom and dwarf alliance were both blocked by Bellona's nomadic swarm and had only just entered the plains.
The elves, advancing rapidly northward, were focused on purifying tainted lands, capturing refugees, and turning them into slaves to bolster their own forces.
"Ah, no..."
Astragon despaired as he watched his barriers crumble one by one.
His dream of surging to the forefront in one leap, leveraging an advanced system and a major power's vast resources, was shattering.
"We'll fight to the end. We must have no regrets under the heavens."
By the time Deity Astragon had effectively abandoned them, his subordinates had no choice but to face the ants each in their own way.
Most, including Barrier Commander-in-Chief Duke Alserion, saw no path of retreat and chose to fight to the death.
Subordinates are reaping significant gains.
As supplies cut off and reinforcements halted, the barriers crumbled quickly, and those who stayed to the end shared their fate. Their resolve and spirit made for a grand, solemn scene.
But realistically, it benefited the ants that they chose to fight.
The more they killed, the more food they gained.
Of course, they had already developed techniques to extract nutrients from the magic stones Jin-hyuk supplied, but food was always in short supply for the ants—and more was always better.
The ants busily transported, melted down, and converted the mountains of enemy corpses into nutrient solution, fighting relentlessly to eradicate Astragon's remaining forces.
"What went wrong...?"
Alone in the fortress's temporary command center, Shuber muttered blankly in the now-empty conference room, abandoned by all who had fled.
From the moment he received Astragon's revelation, his hope of building a great magitech empire to rule the world had never wavered.
He believed that combining the superior civilization bestowed by a great deity with the Empire's manpower and resources could achieve the impossible.
But everything began to unravel with the arrival of the ants from the northeast.
Contrary to initial reports of mere beast swarms, the ants multiplied at astonishing speed, toppling surrounding forces one by one, growing until they invaded the Empire—the hegemon of the region for centuries.
'Why? Why us?'
Shuber felt maddeningly wronged. No matter how he thought about it, he had done nothing wrong.
The problem was singular: they had encountered the ants earlier than other forces.
Civilizations far from the ants were still rapidly developing their own powers at this very moment.
"What are your masters thinking? Do they truly intend to cover this land in horrific vermin?"
Screams and clamor gradually approached the conference room. When all fell silent, a massive predator ant burst through the door, its eyes gleaming from within its head armor as it clacked its thick mandibles at him.
Seeing the countless thorns embedded in its sturdy forelegs and the red blood dripping from them, Shuber gritted his teeth.
There was no reasoning or emotion to appeal to.
Without hesitation, the giant ant lunged, shattering Shuber's head in a single bite.
'We won.'
In that moment, Jin-hyuk realized the ants had eliminated another deity from the competition.
For a deity awakened just a year ago to reach mid-tier and successively knock out higher-ranking competitors was nothing short of miraculous.
It was no wonder the other deities mistook him for an Outer God.
"Your Majesty... countless stragglers are flowing in from the north."
"Accept the ordinary soldiers among them. But the mages loyal to that wicked deity... even if we take them in, it would be meaningless. Bar them."
Hearing of the north's devastation by the ants, Carlian bowed his head with a pained expression.
Tens of thousands would be slaughtered, affecting hundreds of thousands of families and comrades.
It was all a result of his actions.
Even if he had done nothing, the ants likely would have won—but reality and possibility were worlds apart.
He had reclaimed the throne as intended and saved many imperial citizens, but it wasn't purely his own power.
"Are you suffering?"
With most palace mages having fled or followed Shuber, the defensive spells were down.
Seira, who had infiltrated effortlessly, slipped behind Carlian—standing alone on the terrace—and spoke.
"I kept my promise, and you kept yours. So what now for the demon legion? Will you enslave and rule us?"
But Carlian wasn't surprised.
The ant thorn implanted in his body was already signaling.
"It won't be long."
"How can you be so certain? You're just a part of this vast will yourself."
Carlian let out a hollow chuckle at her head-shaking words.
Not linked to the hive mind, but he could instinctively sense it. The immense consciousness felt through the ant thorn was incomparable to Seira's.
"My god wouldn't want that."
To Carlian, who distrusted her, Seira mentioned Jin-hyuk.
The sole being who had commanded the ants even before she joined—the one who controlled these disaster-like swarms.
Carlian's eyes widened at the mention of Jin-hyuk, known to Edellion's people as an Outer God.
"The fight is far from over. Elves are ascending from the south, having subjugated southern continent forces. From the west, orcs chased by our allies and mountain range dwarves approach. Now we fight them."
"Elves, orcs, dwarves... All human forces worthy of the name Empire are annihilated...?"
"That's why you must never let your guard down."
Aside from the other continent beyond the great mountains, no great human empire remained on this land.
Seira spoke firmly to the intimidated Carlian.
"Think about it. When all forces fall and are exterminated at Bellzad's feet. The fate of those left behind."
Seira evoked the ants' future after driving out all deities' forces and departing this world, opening Carlian's eyes.
"Survival means opportunity and competition never end. As long as survivors remain, a new era will dawn—and you, along with that era's rulers, will shape it."
The ants, sweeping all indiscriminately, would usher in a new era on this land.
It sounded arrogant at first, but Carlian, having witnessed their power, couldn't deny it.
"Then..."
After a brief silence. As Seira turned to leave.
Carlian spoke first.
"Then I must aid you now. For our Empire to survive and lead in the new era."
His green eyes gleamed with ambition, his heart pounding.
'The imperial bloodline truly is different.'
Seira quietly admired it.
When the ants achieved their goals and left, the still-young Carlian would be a promising emperor.
The powerless puppet emperor was gradually becoming a true one.
'If the ants can freely use imperial territory, their domain effectively doubles in an instant.'
Seira's conversation with Carlian wasn't mere chit-chat. With a touch of exaggeration, it was akin to a diplomatic negotiation between their forces.
The ants, led by Seira, spared the remaining imperial citizens in exchange for vast spoils, land,
and the right to treat the Empire like a colony at will.
"South and north for now—that's plenty."
I muttered softly and checked the map.
The Empire's south, already razed by the ants.
The north, unusable anyway due to Astragon's subordinates and remnants.
These regions would be hard for Lukadia Empire folk to reclaim anytime soon.
Making just those lands the ants' seemed sufficient. They didn't urgently need territory right now anyway.
Asmora harbors some dissatisfaction with the humans but deems it a rational decision.
Even Asmora didn't rebel against the decision.
She looked displeased, but I figured it was just her dislike of humans.
'Why does she hate them?'
Asmora had shown hostility toward humans for a while, but it intensified with her ongoing growth and evolution.
Her relationship with Seira was fine, so it was hard to pinpoint why.
Trait Extraction Available
Anyway, with the ants' victory report, I'd achieved my goal.
The massive achievements had amassed enough interference power to use system functions.
I planned to use this to copy and extract one of Asmora's abilities.
It would be halved in potency, but that was enough.
'Which one?'
Asmora's abilities included the hive mind common to all ants, Bloodline Adjustment to absorb and analyze genes via predation, and universal cells to create chimeras at will.
Truthfully, the choice was already set.
Bloodline Adjustment and universal cells maximized only with the hive mind and ants' unique ecology.
But not the hive mind.
The ants' most powerful weapon as my subordinates.
What if transplanted into a human?
"Whew, sorry to keep you waiting. Traffic was suddenly backed up..."
Then the door opened, and Baek Jin-seong appeared.
Chuckling and making a fuss, he hurried in and brought someone waiting outside to me.
"Uh...?"
Since transferring under me that day, Ji Ye-eun—whom I was seeing face-to-face for the first time—bowed in greeting but froze, her round eyes widening upon seeing me.
"Long time no see."
I offered my hand first with a wry smile.
A promising, kind, diligent person unknowingly manipulated by deities, now my experimental subject.
It would be a lie to say my heart wasn't heavy.
But this wasn't my first or second time, and I didn't hesitate now either.