413 Settling Down [6]
The process of forming a contract was relatively simple. It was similar to how Damien and Zara had formed their contract back in the dungeon.
And since Ruyue and the Lily/Mei duo were both more than willing to form said contract, it was even easier. Only a few minutes after Damien proposed the idea to them, they had successfully completed the process.
Lily and Mei’s body became incorporeal and shot into the space between Ruyue’s eyebrows.
“Wow, to think there was such a thing!” Ruyue exclaimed. She could clearly feel the girls’ presence in her mindspace.
“Mm, even I didn’t know things would turn out like that. It must be something specific to spirit contracts.” Damien commented. As he thought about it, his mind drifted towards Zara.
That girl had been slumbering in his shadow ever since she ate the Death Seed over a year ago. He was already worried about her, but he couldn’t act on that worry since all signs pointed to her being fine.
It was just a matter of when she would wake up, and that wasn’t something he could interfere with regardless of how worried he was.
‘Haa…let’s stop thinking about it. It should be about time to go and see for ourselves the state of the 3000 Beast Mountain Range.’
After giving his goodbyes to Ruyue and the girls, Damien flashed away, appearing in front of the four clan leaders, who had been in the middle of a discussion.
“Are you all ready?” He asked. He didn’t have any interest in what they were talking about. If it concerned him, he trusted they would tell him about it.
The clan leaders’ eyes hardened when they heard his question. They nodded their heads in unison and stood up.
“It is time to verify the absurd things you’ve told us thus far.” The Elf Queen replied.
Damien nodded. He didn’t mind her aloof attitude. In fact, it made him feel better that he had to earn her trust and loyalty rather than just having it from the start.
Without any more words, he opened a portal back to the Real Plane.
“Woah!”
Winds whipped around Damien the second he walked through the portal. Unexpectedly, he was falling through the air.
His mana swirled around him and stabilized him, vector control adjusting his gravity so he could float. As he did so, the four clan leaders also appeared and used their various means to hold themselves in the air.
“Where are we? Didn’t you say we were going to see the mountain range?” The Fire Phoenix Matriarch questioned.
Even Damien had the same question. For a second, he doubted whether his understanding of the Sanctuary was completely wrong. But it didn’t take long for him to shake off that thought.
But the realization that came along with it was so jarring that he couldn’t speak for a while. Only a full minute later was he able to push the words out of his mouth.
“No…this is the 3000 Beast Mountain Range…or at least, what’s left of it.”
A chasm. A massive chasm with no bottom, better to be termed an abyss. Over half the area around them was engulfed in this chasm, and they were at its far end.
“When I entered the Sanctuary, I was standing directly next to the World Tree, so that’s where we should be right now…” Damien muttered.
But there was no World Tree in sight. As a matter of fact, there was no mountain range at all.
All 50 mountains that made up the 3000 Beast Mountain Range had vanished. Not even rubble that signifies they once existed remained. The endless abyss they were floating above stretched for thousands of kilometers in front of them.
As for the area behind them, it was wrought with even more havoc. The fact that signs of battle could be seen from it actually made it look worse than the abyss.
Millions of gashes littered the ground, each having a depth similar to the abyss in front of them. Millions upon millions of corpses were strewn about, and those were only the ones who had managed to escape the destruction of the mountains that used to house them.
All the vitality of that land had been sucked dry, leaving it as a barren wasteland where even mana couldn’t intrude. It was a harrowing sight.
“This…”
The four clan leaders looked at the scene in horror. Only now did it sink in for them the level of calamity they had been able to avoid thanks to Damien.
“What happened here…?” The Elf Queen muttered under her breath. It was hard to even breathe in such a suffocatingly bleak atmosphere.
Damien sighed. “Didn’t I already tell you? A battle between Demigods. When taking their power into account, even this much atrocity is nothing. If the Senior didn’t contain the destruction to the 3000 Beast Mountain Range, the entire Central Continent would’ve most likely been destroyed.”
The Elf Queen stared into Damien’s eyes. The expression in her eyes wasn’t something he had ever expected to see from her when facing him.
It was fear. Fear and wariness.
“You…how can you remain so indifferent after seeing this kind of terrible thing?!” Her voice shook as she questioned him.
But Damien stared back at her without breaking away. He also knew it was a horrible thing to not show any sympathy or mercy during a time like this, but he couldn’t help it.
“I’ve seen worse.”
It was all he could say, and it was all he needed to say. The 10 years he had lived in Alaric’s body during the war before his death, they weren’t cut together like the 100,000 years that followed.
He experienced them in full.
And how many people had died during those 10 years?
Even numbers in the tens of billions were putting it nicely. The alliance that had been made during that war was created by the forces of the entire universe together.
The number of combatants they had dispatched for a single battle would trump the number of corpses that could be seen here.
Yet, not to mention a single battle, Damien had lived through hundreds. He had personally felt the hopelessness and helplessness of that war.
So even if he did feel it was a pity that this many people had been sacrificed, he couldn’t help but feel that it was necessary.
Because if the battle hadn’t been contained as it had, the number of casualties wouldn’t have ended at a mere millions or hundreds of millions.
But unlike the inevitability that he felt, the four clan leaders who had lived their lives without experiencing such a tragic war were different.
Mainly the two Phoenix Matriarchs, who had never left the 3000 Beast Mountain Range in their lives. The shock they received from this scene was too great for their minds to bear.
The Elf Queen and White Dragon King were different. They had come from the outside world and had participated in wars of their own. The White Dragon King especially was someone who fully believed in the law of the jungle.
The shock he experienced came from the scale of battle itself, rather than the people who had died.
As for the Elf Queen, after her initial shock, she realized something. Her thoughts churned and she began understanding the reason for the calamity of the 3000 Beast Mountain Range.
All her feelings vanished. The only thing left was an unbridled fury.