Chapter 27
Chapter 27
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 27
Chapter Title: Intermission 2. Visitor from the Stars
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He didn’t know how many cycles had swept through this world.
Time held no meaning for the despairing Demon King. The Demon King, who had been implanted with cells from the Primordial Being, had a lifespan close to immortality, just like the Primordial Being itself. That endless time was utterly meaningless to Grimudo.
In the end, the beginning was always created by the Primordial Being, just as the end was always taken by it. The process held no significance.
In a world where the start and finish were predetermined, what meaning could the middle possibly have?
All living creatures originated from the Primordial Being, and their behavioral patterns were astonishingly uniform. Intelligent races hunted non-intelligent ones or turned them into livestock, banding together to confront other intelligent beings.
There were times when they couldn’t rely on their own abilities and leaned on something else. That faith and belief invariably created beings called gods.
—Grimudo.
Even though born from belief, he delusionally fancied himself the rightful master of this world. Those pitiful ones, who couldn’t save even a single follower from the apocalypse, called Grimudo the Demon King.
—You are the evil of this world.
So be it.
Or not.
A world created by a mass of flesh.
A world that would return to a mass of flesh.
A cycle that repeated without once changing.
Where in this world could good and evil possibly exist?
Survival. Nothing but desperate struggles for survival. The Primordial Being sought its own growth and survival, and countless intelligent beings flailed for the same.
Grimudo didn’t deny that he himself was the Demon King. Though born as an intelligent being, he was the ugliest traitor who had sided with the Primordial Being.
—Grimudo, our idol who defied the gods!
Thus, he didn’t consider himself worthy of worship either.
—Our Lakshmir faction will follow you.
Those abandoned by the gods. Those cast out for defying divine will.
Even when those branded as “evil” and weakened by holy power began to revere him,
he ignored all that worship almost perfectly. Though called the pioneer of the demon race, no fear or adoration touched Grimudo.
Those who called him enemy wouldn’t survive the cycles, nor would those who worshipped him as the Primordial Demon King.
But while he kept his eyes shut and ears blocked like that, several changes descended upon the world all at once.
Humans. Shorter-lived than elves, weaker than orcs, less enduring than beastkin, and far inferior in inaction to Valkyries.
They encompassed all their shortcomings, yet could also encompass all their strengths—
a newly born intelligent race suddenly came up with one idea.
One day, someone looked at the beastkin and fell into thought.
Beastkin couldn’t use magic well. But they could harness mana to strengthen their bodies.
An unnamed nobody who witnessed this mana manipulation, commonly called beast transformation, wondered.
Could humans perhaps wield mana in the same way?
On another day, someone else gazed at the elves and pondered deeply.
Seeing them spiritize surrounding elements with mana, a sudden realization dawned. That realization accumulated through human history until one day it emerged under the name of martial arts. People who could explode and compress their mana to create Mana Aura appeared.
Unlike the old intelligent beings who could only rely on gods and their innate abilities,
they could now break free of their birth’s shackles through training and effort.
Some stopped at merely producing Mana Aura, but others infused it with their intent to forge their own unique Mana Aura.
When these, called Masters, stepped to the forefront of history, Grimudo remained silent.
Sword Master, Spear Master, or Polearm Master—
compared to the Primordial Being, they were still mere insects, no, specks of dust.
He saw it as just one ephemeral flower blooming amid countless cycles.
No matter how brilliantly a flower bloomed, it was only natural for it to wither in time.
“Ancient Gods?!”
It was the elves who first shattered Grimudo’s common sense. They achieved their first victory of sorts in the war between the Primordial Being and intelligent life. Though they inflicted no damage on the Primordial Being, surviving alone was a victory more precious than any other.
“I can’t believe it. Such beings actually exist?!”
An unknown Ancient God responded to the elves’ prayers during one cycle.
The seed it bestowed grew into a tree vast enough to envelop an entire city, shielding all elves from the cycle. It was the moment the Ancient Gods’ existence was proven, and Grimudo’s common sense shattered.
Even as the civilization now called super-ancient crumbled and was buried in the cycles,
the path of martial arts invented by humans endured.
The elves, a saved race, went without saying, and even beastkin survived to some extent. They neither knew nor recorded what destroyed the super-ancient civilization, but over thousands of years, they rose from ruin. They built civilizations once more and began to prosper.
But that wasn’t what caught Grimudo’s eye.
Long ago, when the Primordial Being had visited the planet Pyros like an uninvited guest,
another guest arrived from beyond the skies, navigating the distant sea of stars.
They came to this land, drawn by the rare gem of intelligence that bloomed seldom in the universe.
—Natives of this place. We come without malice toward you.
Dragons. Neither gods nor Ancient Gods by any means, but the greatest transcendent race that couldn’t possibly be called mortal.
The one creature race not derived from the Primordial Being—likely unique in the world. They sought out Grimudo from beyond the Milky Way.
—Our mission is the emergence of intelligence and the flourishing of civilizations. We travel the cosmos for that purpose.
—You are truly a powerful being. May we regard you as this planet’s representative?
Grimudo shook his head. He represented only himself, no one else.
Even to him, these alien beings called dragons were astonishing. The Ancient Demon King, a scholar before anything else, felt curiosity stir toward dragons.
So he proposed sharing knowledge.
Grimudo’s polymorph method passed to the dragons. They refined it, allowing them to conceal their massive bodies and transform into humans or other races.
Beyond that, he told them everything about this planet’s history and the Primordial Being’s existence. In return, the dragons taught Grimudo the power of magic. Analyzing the situation, they realized this planet wasn’t as hospitable to life as they’d thought.
—Unbelievable. This entire north pole is the ancestor of all life on this planet?
—What do you think? Can we annihilate or seal it?
—Impossible. Annihilation goes without saying. Taking down a lifeform this size is absurd to begin with, and even if we had the power, do you think it’d just let itself be subjugated?
The Primordial Being was far too vast and enormous. Even if the dragons pooled their might to bombard it, it wouldn’t die so easily. A single kick from the Primordial Being would unleash unspeakable catastrophe across the entire planet.
They needed to defeat it to halt the cycles and aid the creatures, but if terrestrial life went extinct in the battle, what would be the point?
No, the very idea of slaying such a thing was a thorny proposition. Even the mighty dragons couldn’t touch it lightly.
—Sealing’s the same. If we can’t seal this monstrosity all at once, it’ll surely thrash in resistance. In the worst case, the planet itself could become uninhabitable.
—Such a shame. We had high hopes for this planet.
—Still, you never know. Someday they might stand as our equals.
—Let’s teach them magic before we go. Then we’ll have done our part.
Originally of different races, ideologies, and thoughts, but followers who abandoned their old kin to follow Grimudo.
To those the world called demons and shunned, the dragons approached and passed on magic’s power.
They taught magic to all races, but the dragons favored the demon race. Some dragons, enamored with polymorph, even had children with demons. In time, certain dragons remained until the cycles’ appointed hour, witnessing the Primordial Being’s rise.
—Regrettably, this planet’s creatures crave unity over independence.
The final cycle. The day now called the fall of the ancient kingdom in current histories—
several long-lived dragons, though not comparable to the Primordial Being, witnessed the scene firsthand. They intended to save at least some of the terrestrial races.
—If that’s their choice.
—We can only respect it.
—Dragons can’t force our values on other lifeforms.
Yet the regression instinct was too potent a compulsion to suppress with reason alone.
They could resist with intellect, but their bodies yearned desperately toward the Primordial Being.
Like a drug user unable to quit after the first taste, overcoming the regression instinct through willpower alone was nearly impossible unless one’s mental fortitude was extraordinary.
The number who let go, wore ecstatic expressions, and charged toward the harvester was enough to call a absolute majority. More than half the population smiled and let themselves be devoured without swinging a sword. The dragons watched it all, then departed the planet.
Humans, demons, beastkin, and other intelligent beings—all joined hands and were harvested.
Even the undead were no exception. The already dead couldn’t escape their flesh’s bondage.
In a sense, that meant they had chosen the Primordial Being. At least, that’s how the dragons interpreted it.
The dragons could have defeated the harvester, a mere part of the Primordial Being.
But as dragons, not terrestrial folk, they refrained from interfering in people’s choices. This great race deemed themselves unnecessary to the planet and left Pyros.
Witnessing it all, Grimudo felt neither disappointment nor despair.
Sunken to the deepest depths, he had nowhere left to sink further.
For this man, despairing since the Primordial age, there was no retreat.
No place to fall further, sink deeper, or plunge into greater abyss remained.
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