The Demonic Immortal's Strategy
As expected, several years before the disaster period ended and the collision occurred, the ascetics of the Mihun tribe, the Mitomok tribe, and others who had set out for training in the Dessert Desert finally returned to their original world.
Unlike Tuto, who had exploded upward by a full five levels to reach level 12, the Mitomok tribe’s levels remained unchanged (to be precise, they had risen only to fall again), their only gain being an increase in rank. Those who trained under Chaltteoggua had started at such high levels that even their strongest member reached only level 11, and not a single legendary entity appeared among them. Roughly twenty of their number had even perished.
Still, it was undeniable that all eighty returnees had come back with either elevated rank or level.
They had honed their combined combat techniques through group clashes against the powerful entities known as the Dessert Legion commanders. They had also achieved significant results by developing their existing cultivation methods in various directions or by reaffirming that their original paths had been correct all along.
Objectively speaking, however, they had suffered less than the Kogogi and therefore grown less strong. At the most fundamental level, the ascetics’ greatest achievement was not individual martial growth.
When they returned to the human territories after several hundred years of world time, the human leaders and ascetics greeted the otherworld expedition members with genuine warmth.
“You have finally returned from your dispatch to the Dessert Desert. What manner of place was it?”
They had once spoken casually, but the other party’s clearly higher realm naturally prompted polite speech. The returnees, in turn, accepted the deference as natural.
“It was a realm of incomparably resilient life forms, astonishing mysteries, wondrous nature, and supreme beings of overwhelming might who reigned at the apex. Continued exchange with that place would bring immeasurable benefit to every ascetic.”
That much was obvious at a glance. Yet the dispatched group had not returned with nothing but personal power.
“Here… These are the precious spiritual herbs, spiritual beasts, spiritual insects, and minerals obtained from the Dessert Desert.”
“Hmm?! These are…”
“If we blend these mystery-laden creatures skillfully with the elixirs of our own world, we should be able to create extraordinarily potent pills. Refining the minerals may not reach the level of Divine Armaments, but they will certainly yield excellent magical weapons and artifacts.”
“Ohhh…! Simply looking at the spiritual potency dwelling within them tells me everything! If we can research these further…!”
The life forms of the Dessert Desert had evolved with ferocious strength while being thrust into endless survival competition. As a result, their bodies had become saturated with every conceivable chemical compound and bizarre, naturally harmonized mystery.
Mihun’s world of the Demonic Immortal of the Wild Dragon was not without its own spiritual herbs, beasts, or minerals… but the quality of resources harvested from the Dessert Desert was in no way inferior.
It was not a matter of one side being superior. The evolutionary directions of the mysteries they embodied were simply different, making both sides immensely useful. While Sesaisa’s Kogogi had focused on the biological resources themselves—spices, seasonings, and the like—the ascetics concentrated on the spiritual energy those very things contained.
“But they’ve all died? To enable breeding and continuous research we needed living specimens.”
“Indeed. It could not be helped.”
“Are they creatures too delicate to survive outside their native environment?”
“No… It is the opposite. Had we brought them back alive, our world would have been reduced to nothing more than prey for the Dessert Desert.”
“?!”
The ascetics spoke with utter sincerity. Had they carried back a living Loud Gumtoad, Mihun would have become the Demonic Immortal of the Gumtoad instead of the Wild Dragon by day’s end.
“The vicious species of that place must absolutely not be brought back alive. This applies to every single living thing. We sealed the dimensional passage with divine power to block any stragglers, but we must ensure that no one approaches that realm even by accident.”
“Hmm. Then research will be difficult, and we will hardly be able to produce many elixirs.”
“The rulers of the Dessert Desert understand trade. Yet they are beings of boundless greed. If there are things we can offer them…”
The discussion continued. In truth, these two were not speaking according to their own free will.
Or more precisely, they believed they were expressing their complete and unfiltered will.
In reality, the will of Mihun—the god of this world—had subtly infiltrated their conversation, gently steering their thoughts in a specific direction. The underlying suggestion was: The resources of the Dessert Desert are absolutely necessary to us; therefore we must prepare an appropriate price from our side. It was an application of revelation, the direct bestowal of divine voice upon creations.
This was the Demonic Immortal’s method of rule. The ascetics of Mihun’s world barely knew he existed. They only vaguely guessed that since every other world possessed a god, theirs must as well.
Only Yeondan-u could speak directly with Mihun, whom he called the Supreme Being. The Mitomok tribe had encountered him through Jumito’s legacy and clearly recognized his existence, yet they could not summon him at will.
Instead, Mihun had fragmented his will—his very divinity—into thousands upon thousands of split consciousnesses. He slowed the perceived flow of time and ensured that events in the world unfolded “appropriately” according to his intent.
This art of distributing a portion of one’s power across an entire world was something only Mihun could achieve. It was not that the organizers had granted him special authority; he had simply been handling the power of transcendents—called divinity—from the very beginning.
In other words, it was not raw strength or the number of authorities that mattered, but the sheer mastery with which he wielded them. Other players would need literally hundreds of thousands of years of training to reach his level.
Mihun’s will, divided into tens of thousands of fragments, intervened in every corner of the world. When a man and woman felt attraction and sought to conceive, if the child would harm the world, then “for some reason” the environment and people around them would steer events in an unfavorable direction. Conversely, if the child would benefit the world, then “for some reason” everything would align as though heaven itself were smiling upon them.
Lower gods were unnecessary. While lesser deities struggled to manage even a few hundred beings, Mihun dispersed his consciousness down to the smallest insect, guiding every creation toward the desired outcome and pruning anything unnecessary.
The advantage was literal control over everything in the world.
The disadvantage was that because everything could be controlled, nothing outside Mihun’s will could easily arise.
In other words, Technology barely developed. Cultivation methods raised the score to some degree, but the creations lacked creativity and simply advanced according to the Demonic Immortal’s intent.
In contrast, Culture rose without limit. Culture was fundamentally the power to refine the soul itself and elevate its rank. The creations sometimes resisted, sometimes followed the heavenly mandate that protected and led them, yet in either case they moved in the direction of raising their own rank.
Those who failed to elevate their rank—those unworthy—were discarded from the moment of birth. No matter how they struggled, fate ensured they could never step onto the path of ascetic cultivation.
Through this ruthless selection, Mihun had forged the strongest legion of high-ranking entities across all worlds.
“However, this is still not enough.”
External variables were therefore necessary. Mihun knew that repeating his past methods would lead to failure in ascension. To break through his current realm, he needed new stimuli.
The three members of the Meteor Cartel were precisely what allowed him to overcome that deficiency.
Biin brought pure benefit to Mihun’s world in terms of biological quality and quantity, even if intellectual gain was uncertain.
Mihun had ensured the current speakers shared the proposition that “we must exchange with the Dessert Desert,” yet he had not dictated the exact method. Interaction with Biin would dramatically raise both the quality of the ascetics themselves and the magical tools they would wield.
Sesaisa enabled the artificial amplification of Faith itself. It might have been surprising, but despite his own immense power, Mihun had never before witnessed Sesaisa’s technique of fixing flows to artificially construct a spiritual realm.
Mihun had only known how to train himself into such an existence; he had not realized one could create a spiritual realm or spiritual land from the outside.
With Sesaisa’s help, Mihun installed an artificial spiritual realm that allowed him to condense Faith efficiently from nature itself as well as from his creations. The Divinity generated from it let him spread even more clones across the world.
Wahando, meanwhile, transplanted efficient political systems, powerful industry, and advanced technology to the ordinary people who had been discarded for failing to learn cultivation methods. This allowed far more efficient resource extraction and, furthermore, helped the ascetics grow by means of the civilization those ordinary people developed.
Thanks to Wahando, Mihun’s world—which previously had only ascetics and might have been strong in offense but hopeless in defense—could now at least maintain basic defensive lines.
Moreover, they had finally learned how to conduct proper “trade” within civilized society.
“What if we capture ordinary people and offer them as sacrifices to the rulers of the Dessert Desert? They enjoy eating, so would that not suffice?”
The human leader spoke in complete seriousness. For reference, this man was the head of a righteous ascetic sect, the representative protector of the human race, and widely regarded as the kindest person in the world, bearing the duty to safeguard both humans and ordinary people alike.
“No. The rulers of the Dessert Desert are not hungry enough to accept such worthless sacrifices. On the contrary, they greatly enjoy capturing strong individuals and devouring both their spiritual and physical essence.”
“Then what if we offer ascetics who lack talent?”
“Hmm… Rather than that, during the next collision, instead of killing the strong ones from the opposing world, if we capture them and offer them as sacrifices, we should obtain far more elixir ingredients…”
This was the average mindset across Mihun’s world. The Demonic Immortal simply drooled and laughed while watching their ideas unfold.
Having received that answer, Mihun once again subtly adjusted their wills. The ascetics somehow became convinced that simply offering a variety of life forms to the Dessert Desert would increase their supply of elixirs.
After granting them this simple inspiration, Mihun looked over his world once more. He observed the noble transcendent Yeondan-u—the strongest entity, who by Mihun’s standards was still far behind at level 15—preparing for his next ascension.
“I am not lonely.”
Yeondan-u, seated in meditation, twitched the corner of his eye.
“You say there will appear one who can rival me?”
When Yeondan-u spoke those words, Mihun’s smile split his face from ear to ear.
“If I may witness such beings, there could be no greater joy.”
Legendary ascendants already existed in small numbers. It was simply that none had yet reached Yeondan-u’s level.
Before long, two individuals would appear: either sacrifices to help Yeondan-u ascend, or a second being who would reach the peak of level 15, slay Yeondan-u, and ascend in his place.
Whether three or two survived to create a two-strong or three-strong balance in a world that previously held only one absolute being, or whether only one survived to advance alone to level 16—or, in the most extreme case, all of them perished—Mihun did not care.
Even if they all died, they would become nutrients, fertile soil from which new ascetics would grow.
In this world, even the flow of civilization had been abandoned. Only individual strength existed. They advanced believing solely in that power.
Mihun controlled everything, or rather neglected everything, funneling over ninety-nine percent of the world’s naturally neglected resources toward a tiny minority.
After all, he was not Wahando. Compared to Sesaisa and Mihun, Wahando was nurturing his civilization in an extremely standard, textbook manner.
His own method was insane in a different way from Sesaisa and Mihun, and it was an art of an entirely different kind.