Mordred popped up from the frozen soil, on the edge of the crater four kilometers away from the core of the explosion.
“The explosion’s a bit smaller than I’d expected. The dimensional laws of lightning and fire are too shallow, compared to ice.” Mordred muttered to himself. Before Lupusrazor exploded, he had already ejected from the pilot seat and gotten away underground.
His gaze soon laid on the center of the crater. Molten magma is mixed with plasma matter, melting the ice that soon formed a bloody lake around the magma. The searing heat can be felt even from this far.
“As expected. A rank 2 Lord is too powerful… That biochemical suit is also bullshit…” On the edge of his vision, there stood a vampire lord with shredded wings and a multitude of wounds. Although he is heavily wounded, the visible damage on his body is rapidly healing by itself. Even through this, he bore on Mordred with eyes of crimson fury, as though he was trying to kill him with his mind. Erebus’ black sclera had the hidden effect in the form of a charm that would enslave lesser minds, but with Mordred’s soul foundation, he is immune to this effect.
The biochemical suit, however, couldn’t endure Lupusrazor’s kamikaze attack. Although Mordred had designed Lupusrazor as a contingency to kill Larissa if she tried anything funny, its firepower was enough to at least obliterate the biological power armor that Erebus wore.
Since a power armor allows someone to fight someone one rank higher than themselves, then It was only natural that the biochemical suit is powerful enough to endure a rank 3 attack once. Of course, Lord Erebus’ imperfect alterations made the biochemical suit weaker than it should have, but it still endured Mordred all-out attacks from the terraforming-class killer move and others, even forcing him to use Lupusrazor as an explosive.
Mordred traced his dimensional storage ring and took out some artifacts before swallowing it. “I’ve almost used up all of my resources. If I can’t kill Erebus even after this… then the only method left is… personality corruption… but it’ll take too much time and a high chance of failure.”
The weapons in his hands are merely a katana and a magnum pistol. Other than these two, he almost ran out of other assets. The leftover puppets and flying drones in his arsenal wouldn’t do much when the battle had progressed up to this point. Even if they are used, their computational power wouldn’t keep up with Lord Erebus' movement since Lupusrazor has self-destructed.
As soon as he pulled out his sword, a momentary reluctance appeared on Mordred’s face; suppressed memories of Holy Terra reappearing. Only for a moment, however. Considering his attainment in sword-path is extremely high, it would be a waste to not use swords due to mentally blocking himself.
Boom! A distant sonic boom became the gong for the second round as Lord Erebus used [Monumental Blood Path] once more. Unlike its augmented version, he is a bit slower, barely breaking the sound barrier as he wasn’t a martial artist or specialized in movement-type killer moves in the first place.
On that note, Mordred is roughly in the same situation as the vampire lord. His mortal shell might be a durable and flexible body compared to a martial artist of the same rank, but it has yet to gain the basic specification to move as fast as sound. Without the overclocking modules and boost of performance from Lupusrazor, he is a rather weak opponent compared to the rank 2 lord.
Which means he had to use tricks and various methods to compensate for his weakness.
“Rank 2 sword-path killer move, [Sword Stance of Doubt and Hesitation]!” Mordred’s movement instantly changed into a drunk-like state. The left hand that held the katana relaxed its grip, taking on the muscle memory of a rookie, with his openings wide open. No semblance of expertise can be felt from him, as though he suddenly lost his skills.
Mordred’s stance instantly made Erebus stop his Monumental Blood Path twenty meters away from the undead machinery, incredibly wary of Mordred.
The vampire lord squinted his eyes, scrutinizing Mordred’s battle stance in depth. “This move contains the profundity of wisdom-path and sword-path… this is a trick, isn’t it?”
Mordred merely smiled, not rebuking Lord Erebus’ words as it was true. The Sword Stance of Doubt and Hesitation is filled with dirty schemes and mental warfare, rather than true sword art. It was the best method of dynamic defense by making the attackers hesitate to attack and doubt every little decision that they took.
Even with rank advantage, Lord Erebus wouldn’t be able to kill Mordred like this. The katana in his hand may look simple, but it is a magic machinery artifact that can vibrate in a high frequency, allowing it to sever even the toughest muscle fiber. Lord Erebus’ body might be powerful, but they are not powerful enough to defend against an attack that could slice steel and split reinforced boulders.
At the same time, Mordred was also unable to attack Lord Erebus as he can simply use Monumental Blood Path to dart around. He had been forced to become passive, no longer being able to do as he liked.
Therefore, this battle actually entered a stalemate, with both not wanting to take the initiative to attack.
Lord Erebus stops flying and drops into the cold, frozen ground as he sits down. “With each passing moment, you think that my Gorod Krovi wouldn’t be able to send reinforcements?”
“Please do.” Mordred replied, while his body still maintained the funny stance. “I am literally an undead. Most of my techniques involve the utilization of corpses and souls. As a matter of fact, it is you who’s on borrowed time. Sooner or later, my reinforcement from the main world would arrive, I am merely the vanguard of this operation.” Mordred lied naturally as he breathed.
Lord Erebus shook his head, seeing through Mordred lies as if it were nothing. “A Vanguard of an extraplanar invasion wouldn’t accelerate this plane’s relative time rate to the main world… especially since the Mage Tower has two rank 2 lords and a rank 3 Grand Mage defending it.”
Mordred shrugged, his face is thick enough to not feel shame from his lies being seen through.
Seeing Mordred’s indifferent reaction, Lord Erebus thought that it was the best time for him to heal himself. Just because the biochemical suit had taken the brunt of the explosion, doesn't mean he is spared from all the damage. The accumulated backlash of using the biochemical suit has been temporarily suppressed, it's best if he solves it as soon as possible. Otherwise, it would accumulate and become problematic later.
Just as Lord Erebus began healing himself, he sensed that Mordred’s soul undulation was becoming stronger.
‘It can’t be… this bastard's actually cultivating?’ The vampire lord raised his head to take a look, but the undead machine was still doing that funny movement.
'Wait, this is also the effect of his stance. I am beginning to doubt if healing myself is the best decision.' Erebus stopped healing himself and began the activation sequence of an offensive enslavement-path killer move.
Blood red and purple specks of lights began circulating around him, these are telepathic thoughts churning so intense that they are physically visible in the material world. Lord Erebus' primary and secondary brain pumped up more and more telepathic thoughts that he has minimal computational power left to care about Mordred's action.
As for Mordred, he perked up his ear, smiling. 'This activation sequence… seems familiar. It seems like he has fallen victim to one of the Devil King’s Inheritance… Is this all my bad luck paying off?' He didn’t do any disruptive action towards Erebus because the vampire lord is jumping towards a trap that Mordred had set up centuries ago willingly. If Erebus activated the killer move that Mordred thought of, then victory would be a given. The question is only a matter of time.
Because the vampire lord wouldn’t want to delay, he accelerated the activation sequence, “Rank 2 enslavement-path killer move, [Hypothetical Bloodshed]!”
…
Mordred couldn’t help but to chuckle when he realized what happened. He's a bit familiar with this killer move, it was deduced from one of his countless necro-path minor inheritances. ‘Similar to [Death by Misplaced Trust], this killer move dragged our Sea of Consciousness together into a dream-like state where we contest for supremacy…’1
He scanned around the world within his consciousness. Because he woke up in the center of this world on a metallic mountain, he was able to quickly investigate where he was. It is a blessed world filled with life, almost equivalent in its richness of natural resources to the main world as flora and fauna heavily populated the world.
Since this is an imaginary world, his spiritual force foundation has a great influence in it.
Naturally, since Mordred had a soul-path extreme spirit known as Phantasmal Brilliance Extreme Spirit, then his imaginary world is vastly different compared to Lord Erebus.
If Lord Erebus’ imaginary world is based on the vampire lord’s ideal world, which has been tempered and altered for this particular endeavor, then Mordred’s natural imaginary world is heavily dependent on his truesoul. Or rather, his attainment has a large significance on it.
His attainment in wood-path increases the amount of flora, metal-path signifies the amount of mineral nodes, water-path would dictate the volume of body of waters, light-path governs the amount of light this world have, time-path control the day-and-night cycle, space-path is all about the imaginary world’s spatial density and volume, et cetera.
As for conceptual paths like soul-path, it would make ghosts immune to sunlight or natural dissipation and allow them to manifest far more easily. Sword-path would produce sword-path resources like the sword grass field, et cetera. Sound-path too, produces a resource point like the Music Hill that would produce musical sound, flute flowers, or others.
His world is truly a beautiful, rich and dense world.
Mordred’s gaze soon traversed into the edge of his imaginary world. Like two islands floating in the dark void of the Boundless Astral Realm, a portion of his land overlaps with another land.
He recognizes the foreign red, toxic world of Erebus even from a glance. The difference between Lord Erebus’ micro plane and his imaginary world is not only from the color palette, but also the sheer size.
As stated previously, since this is an imaginary battlefield, their spiritual foundation also greatly affected the size of their world. With Mordred’s rank 1 spiritual force foundation, it was natural that he was at a great disadvantage compared to the vampire lord’s rank 2 foundation. Lord Erebus’ imaginary world is eight to ten times larger than himself. Considering Mordred has an extreme spirit which connected his imaginary world into his attainment and quite a deep attainment in space-path, Lord Erebus is truly an old monster with an extremely strong spiritual foundation.
It was no wonder that the vampire lord is confident in this gamble.
According to Mordred’s shallow analysis, compared to [Death by Misplaced Trust] which was a possession-type killer move, then this would be a subjugating killer move with the deletion of the foe’s ego as the main goal. The subjugation of one’s imaginary world meant the subjugation of one’s sea of consciousness, their ego would either be dominated or erased completely, allowing a new mind to inhabit the body.
From the depth of Lord Erebus’ imaginary world, countless vampires began to rise from the bloody red, toxic soil. All sorts of vampiric beasts are being woken up and used as cannon fodders, starting from vampiric wolves, dogs, bats, bears, even vampiric wyverns with their bodies having 10-meter body length. Not only that, there are also several vampire brides that act as commanders of this army, and some superelite guards which were piloting biochemical suits with various forms and sizes.
Behind this army, there was also a Gorod Krovi almost ten times the size of what Mordred saw in Lord Erebus’ pocket dimension.
In the center of that Gorod Krovi, there stood a large, vampiric dragon with someone standing on top of the oversized lizard, presumably Lord Erebus himself.
This signifies that this was the vampire lord’s ideal army if he had near-infinite resources. It was a fearsome army that not only had quality, but also quantity.
‘A rank 3 version of the Vampiric Blood Dragon, the Sovereign of Blood in Morgen World?’ Mordred shook his head ‘Your method would be extremely effective if used towards other cultivators but unfortunately, you’ve met me…’ he sneered as he simply refined his telepathic thought into the most fearsome commander that he had ever met in his several lifetimes.
Dark clouds of telepathic thoughts began accumulating, taking the form of Mordred's real appearance before he was killed under the hand of the 4th Generation Braves. The only difference between this new Mordred with the real Mordred is the fact that his hair is crimson blood red, with his eyes having the same color on top of black sclera. The man is dressed in military-commander apparel, draped under a scientist's robe.
“Big brother… ‘Myriad Overlord’ Crimspur, Supreme Commander of Human Imperium’s Astrales Militär, I am in need of your assistance.” Mordred smiled, asking his look-alike politely with a casual tone.
“You reconstruct me through your memories of me at last…” Crimspur reveals a gentle smile, rubbing Mordred’s hair softly. “How many Sovereigns are we up against?”
“Not yet, that’s reserved for the end war when your True Body physically descends into Morgen World. This is a mere rank 2 expert with a strong foundation in enslavement.” Mordred replied honestly. “It’s an uphill battle because my spiritual foundation is merely at early-stage rank 1, it’ll take me a lot of time and effort which would make this victory pyrrhic. His learning rate is quite high, if we are of the same rank, it'll be easy for me to dispatch him, but I can't outlast his mental endurance due to my weak foundation. If it's you, then I believe there wouldn't be any problem. After all, one of your Sovereign paths is enslavement.”
“I see.” Crimspur nodded, he spread his attention towards the incoming vampiric army that had begun marching towards the edge of Mordred’s imaginary world. “Hmm… vampires, are they of Nosferatu bloodline? Even in the Boundless Astral Realm, the Nosferatu are like a plague. Well, no matter. Would you be okay if I ask you to refine imaginary Intelligent Metal? Her von Neumann self replicating machines are extremely effective against vampires… or any life, if that matters.”
“Intelligent Metal consists of too much information, reconstructing her takes significantly more telepathic thoughts than you. She’s always a pain in my ass, be it her imaginary version, or her real one. I cannot.”
“Ahah. Understandable.” Crimspur touched his chin, pondering. “What can you give me, then?”
"You are free to choose from one of your Overlords, though I can only make a rank 3 version of that.” Mordred answered.
“Fair.” Crimspur paused for a brief moment before adding, “I want you to refine… The Formic Overlord.”
“Ants? You’re using your most basic overlord?”
“It’s only vampires, they’re not even Nosferatu. My ants are sufficient. Unless you want to give me a Plantae Overlord?”
Mordred shook his head as he wouldn’t be able to afford it, just like he can’t afford to construct Intelligent Metal. “I was thinking along the lines of Chimerae Overlord, but the Formic Overlord will suffice.” His spiritual force churned, they soon formed into a large-class lifeform of an ant queen. Over half of its dark carapace-covered, 25 meter long body is a white, soft-to-the-touch breeding organ.
The Formic Overlord is a majestic lifeform, having a thick and extremely dense exoskeleton yet lighter than what it seemed to be. The rank 3 variant of the overlord naturally has extremely low personal combat power, but it has the ability to breed a lot of ants.
The moment the rank 3 Formic Overlord appeared, Crimspur’s body is quickly eaten by the gigantic ant. The sound of the giant ant’s mouth-pincers munching on flesh and crushing bones is highly disturbing, but it didn't bother Mordred in the slightest.
“How long would it take you to take him down?” Mordred asked as he saw the Formic Overlord start laying white eggs that instantly hatched humanoid ants similar to the Slayer Ants of Morgen world.
“Depends. Are you in a rush?” Crimspur, having merged with the ant queen, asked.
“Not really, but I need to conserve my ego. At most, I can only give you one more support with the level of the Formic Overlord.” Mordred explained. “If I sacrifice more of my spirit foundation, I might be able to give you another one, but it’ll make me fall into rank 0.”
“This is the typical dream within dreams similar to our routine training with the Sovereign Magus of Dreams and Nightmares, right?” Crimspur asked once more.
“Correct. I’ve laid countless inheritance traps with Her Majesty’s [Country of Delusions] as the foundation. After all, it's better to deal with something we’re familiar with, rather than the unknown. I’ll refine my Country of Delusions to defend against these types of attacks in the future. For now, you’re all I got.” Mordred explained, “In any case, this imaginary dream world’s time rate should be roughly 1000 to 1200 times compared to the material world that we’re currently at. Three years here would be roughly a day there.”
“That time rate is a bit high for a rank 1 like you, there's no need for you to sacrifice anything. You can use this time to rest and conserve your spiritual force. I’ll slowly dismantle this vampire lord’s army, even if it took me a dozen years of warfare to do it, but would your body be able to handle the burden?” Crimspur asked worriedly as his ant army had begun amassing into the hundreds, with more incoming.
“It’s okay, I have some contingencies up and running. My OS would optimize energy expenditure and prioritize the activation of the crystal processor. I am perfectly capable of maintaining this imaginary world for over a hundred years before the crystal processor in the real world melts from overclocking… My ego wouldn’t break down from that, but losing the physical body would mean I’ll be latching onto Lord Erebus like a soul parasite, I’d rather not..”
“Oh, you’ve abandoned your flesh-and-blood body, I see. You’ll have to give word to my True Body later, he must be worried sick.”
Mordred paused his action. “You’re right. Okay, I’ll think of something when I’ve finished the final preparations for the End War.”
Crimspur nodded as the Formic Overlord had produced so many ants that it almost numbered in the thousand. “Personally, I don’t need assistance as the cost of constructing me from your memories must be comparable to a few thousands of other rank 3s in your memories, but I can’t do anything if the vampire wanted to bruteforce the war, using the legendary vampiric blood dragon as a spearhead to assassinate you. I suggest you construct another Magus of Holy Terra as a guardian while your mind rests.” Crimspur faked a cough, “Chaos Nemesis.”
“I can’t afford him, but I have someone else in mind.” Mordred immediately acted as his big brother suggested. His telepathic thoughts churned as memories of the strongest warrior from his past lives are being brought into reality in this imaginary world.
A human soon formed from Mordred’s last shred of disposable spiritual force.
This human is a tall male, having a height of almost two meter tall. He has waist-long pale blue hair tied into a ponytail that sometimes crackles with sparks of lightning. The man wore a traditional samurai-kimono outfit, complete with three types of swords on his waist from a katana, wakizashi, and tanto.
“To have someone who dedicated his whole life trying to kill you in Holy Terra to protect you in your dream world is rather ironic, don’t you think?” Crimspur commented once he saw the figure.
“Azure Lightning Shogun from Holy Terra’s Japan province, the ‘Lightning Sword Seigneur’ of the Human Imperium as well as the Magus Sovereign of Martial Sword. Your Majesty Shogun Takemikazuchi, please protect me from harm.” Mordred bowed to the samurai, speaking in literal Japanese.
The samurai ignored Crimspur’s insult as he repocirate Mordred’s bow with his own. “Grimsong Specter-sama, your words are excessive. I shall protect you even if it costs me my life.” Takemikazuchi naturally replied in Japanese, after which he glanced at the Formic Overlord. “Myriad Overlord-sama, it seems like we’re on the same side now. I still recall our battle which ended up with the death of your True Body… or should I say 9 of your true bodies.” The Shogun used a tone which signified his superiority over Crimspur.
“An enslavement-path cultivator’s weakness are people like you who cultivate sword-path and lightning-path in tandem. The fact that you failed to kill all of my true bodies, died under the hand of my little brother, your soul completely devoured and your body refined into a mere tool signifies your lack of depth.” Crimspur insulted the Shogun back, while his ant army had begun slaughtering the local wildlife and boring through the metallic mountain to make an ant’s hive.
Although this is an imaginary world, they are not mere projections of telepathic thoughts, but the physical manifestation of Mordred’s understanding upon their real version. If Lord Erebus is constructing his ideal version of a vampire army, then Mordred simply ‘recalls’ two Sovereign Magi of Holy Terra with opposing qualities from sheer memories to help him. At the very least, their existence in this imaginary world is very real, to the point of having a body of flesh-and-blood and near-perfectly replicating their conflicting personalities.
Naturally, the Myriad Overlord and Lightning Sword Seigneur that Mordred summoned can’t even reach 0.1% of their true might as they are literally transcendents in their own field, just like how Mordred was a transcendent of Soul and Sound.
Crimspur is a Magus Sovereign with a near-limitless number of armies and matchless intelect excelling in grand strategy warfare, whereas Takemikazuchi is a Magus Sovereign with the highest personal combat strength amongst Magi of Holy Terra.
At the very least, both of them are enough to handle a mere Lord Inquisitor's ideal world, despite being in their rank 3 imaginary selves.
That being said, the Formic Overlord couldn’t just constantly produce an army from nothing because that would break the law of conservation of energy. Roughly 20% of the ants that it breeds are worker ants, they are tasked to feed the ant queen with literally anything that can be used as energy reserve and raw materials for its army, from biological matter like wood, leaves, raw meat, to minerals such as iron, copper, or other.
In other words, this ‘simple’ dream battlefield is a grand theater of war with each of their ‘minds’ being a representation of their respective civilization. 2
"Takemikazuchi, what does your wisdom say about our opponent?" Crimspur asks as his gigantic Formic Overlord body is being carried by countless horse-sized ant workers to the depth of the ant hive under the mountain. Mordred, who had fallen asleep shortly after summoning Takemikazuchi, is also brought by the workers. Crimspur spoke to the Shogun through the ants.
"Considering the vampire's real body is a rank 2 with deep foundation in spiritual force, then I'd say we have to kill him in this imaginary world around… 21,566,919 times before his ego collapses, giving Grimsong Specter-sama a chance of subjugating him." The Shogun answered swiftly.
"My calculations aren't too far off, it was 21,545,568 times. Well, since my little brother has used up all the disposable spiritual force on you, he has simply traded his 1,210,008 ‘life’ for a single you. You shouldn't let him die even once." Crimspur warned him. "You just need to guard him for… 12 years. I'll finish this in that time span."
"Wakarimashita. Do you reckon the vampire would suddenly chant ‘blood for the blood god, skull for the skull throne’?" The shogun asked for Crimspur's opinion.
The ants produce an expression equivalent to a human's frown. “No… I hope not. He shouldn’t.” Crimspur denied. “From Mordred’s memories, I can tell that this world has no Blood God, only a rank 6 Sovereign of Blood. Even so, that cursed Blood God shouldn’t have any influence in Morgen World’s Astral Supercluster.”
Just as Crimspur finished his words, the two Magi saw the eye-catching vampiric dragon make a move.
With a flap of its wing, it broke the sound barrier as it reached mach 8 almost in an instant. This speed allows the vampiric blood dragon to reach Mordred’s territory in mere seconds.
“As expected, the vampire lord doesn’t want to drag this battle, even though he held the advantage. It seems like his enslavement-path intuition sensed something was wrong when Mordred summoned my Formic Overlord.” The ants beside Takemikazuchi spoke in fluent Japanese once more. “Shogun, my swarm has yet to gain the ability to fight a dragon, can you handle it?”
“Understood.” The shogun merely nodded as he took a stance with his fingers tracing the katana’s handle.
Boom! The vampiric blood dragon has breached Mordred’s territory, its mere radiation is killing the land as it also brought the bloodmist of Lord Erebus’ world into Mordred’s. This bloodmist would amplify the powers of vampires and suppress non-vampires, it also contains an intense amount of Lord Erebus enslaving will. If exposed for too long, lesser minds would not only be subjugated, but also suffer from cancerous vampirification disease.
“Please handle it quickly. This mountain wouldn’t be able to endure an attack from a rank 3 being. I haven’t reinforced it with formic compound.”
“Be patient.” The shogun replied, his heart tranquil, his tone flat. All this while, his eyes have never lost track of the dragon who’s encroaching on their position rapidly.
“Oh.” The ant mused at Takemikazuchi, realizing the shogun was actually preparing for an attack. “It wasn’t wrong for my little brother to construct you.”
The vampiric blood dragon would reach their location in mere seconds, but Takemikazuchi simply gripped his katana. “Rank 3 sword-path killer move, [Instant Sword]!”
There was a gap in spacetime, as if a few frames in a video had been deleted. Takemikazuchi's katana hasn't seemed to be unseath at all, but when the world returns to its natural flow of things, the vampiric dragon has been dismembered into multiple pieces. Its dragon heart, brain, and nervous system has been mutilated, not allowing any chance of mitigating death through secondary or tertiary sets of backup organs.
That’s right, a dragon, which was considered as the most powerful race in Morgen World’s Astral Supercluster, has been easily murdered.
“Instant Sword, a sword attack which was typically used to kill a high-dimensional being in the Boundless Astral Realm!” Crimspur praised. “The moment the attack was made, the moment it landed. Even those who can dart back and forth in the axis of time aren't immune to this. I’ll never get tired of seeing your sword arts. If only your soul wasn’t devoured by my little brother, it would be me who’d have absorbed your sword-path attainment.”
Although Crimspur seems to sing praises of Takemikazuchi, the shogun knew it was filled with sarcasm and malicious intent.
In any case, the dragon corpse fell, landing on the feet of the mountain, splattering its toxic blood and irradiated dragon flesh to the surroundings. The dragon radiation is so harmful that it instant-killed rank 1 lifeforms, while rank 2 lifeforms would suffer from myriad types of cancer. Even rank 3 existence like Takemikazuchi is affected, but the Martial Magus immediately expels the radiation from his body through some lightning-path martial arts, gaining immunity to it.
Crimspur’s ant army instantly rushed towards the vampiric blood dragon’s corpse, but they were literally swarming to die. Dozens, hundreds, even thousands of dog-sized and horse-sized ants have been killed by the radiation of the corpse, but Crimspur had never stopped sending his army to die.
As the ant corpse piled up on the feet of the mountain, some of the ants began gathering them and feeding them into other ants. The ants cannibalized the corpse of their brethren who had fallen from the radiation. After the cannibal ants ate, they were immediately sent towards the vampiric blood dragon corpse once more, but it's not like it suddenly gained immunity like Takemikazuchi. It also dies, without contributing much in the grand scheme of things.
However, what makes it different is that this cannibal ant was able to get a meter closer to the corpse before dying.
Naturally, the corpses of the cannibal ants are brought back with the sacrifice of other ants, allowing other ants to cannibalize the cannibal ant’s corpses. When it is eaten, the cannibal ant’s genetic sequence is passed down to the next cannibal ant, thus allowing them to form antibodies and resistance towards the blood dragon’s radiation. This cycle continues slowly while Crimspur’s ants are also expanding the ant’s hive while feeding the Formic Overlord endlessly with metal and biological matter.
“As expected, that’s one.” A humanoid ant, which looks very human-like with the exception of its black exoskeleton instead of human skins and several other minor ant characteristics, suddenly spoke next to Takemikazuchi.
The shogun glanced at the human-ant hybrid that the Formic Overlord breeds. ‘Has he deciphered human genetic sequences already?’ With that thought in mind, he reacted to Crimspur’s words. Raising his head, his gaze fell onto the Gorod Krovi on Lord Erebus’ territory. The vampire lord constructed another vampiric blood dragon from his spiritual force once more but he had learned not to immediately send it towards the two Magi.
“No, that’s probably counted as a few hundred thousands of his ‘life’. If he’s stupid enough to keep sending in Legendary vampiric blood dragons, this farce wouldn’t last tweleve years.” Takemikazuchi muttered.
“True. Anyhow, if he tried to do anything funny like that, I trust you’ll be able to handle it.” the ant handed down the burden of handling problematic foe onto Takemikazuchi. “In the meantime, I’ll try to absorb the blood dragon’s genetic materials. I’m curious what kind of ant-dragon variant species I can produce based on its genes. We have no Dragons back in Holy Terra, after all.”
Takemikazuchi nodded as he took a rest. Instant Sword took a heavy toll on the Shogun, it's not a killer move that can be spammed freely.
At the same time, countless ants of various sizes, mostly humanoid ants, are continuously pouring out of the labyrinthian cavern system of the ant’s hive.
‘Myriad Overlord-sama’s adaptability is as excellent as I remembered. Our victory is absolute, the only question is time. It wouldn’t be long before the Formic Overlord breeds bloodless ant swarms which are immune to blood-path methods or even his own version of vampiric dragon-ants.’ Takemikazuchi muttered in his heart.
According to his personal experience, fighting against Crimspur is a painfully slow death, where one’s methods would be systematically dismantled and methodically countered one by one. Unless the vampire lord can quickly kill the Sovereign Magus of Evolution during his learning-phase or expansion-phase, the result of their battle would already be set in stone. It’ll be already too late to form countermeasures when Crimspur begins the extermination-phase.
The Shogun gave some pity to the vampire lord, but obviously, pity from a dead man is as useless as empty words. And so, he remained silent.
…..
Bang! The chest of a demonic puppet exploded. Normally, without the torso, the puppet can still fight as it literally has no weakness like that of biologicals, but it already has no head, has lost one arm and a leg, and all other core components that allowed it to move have been completely obliterated. With an uneventful thud, the puppet fell down.
It has become another scrap in the hill made out of scraps.
Psssht! The shrimp-bloodline police woman’s bone armor was covered in a myriad of cracks, so much so that as they opened it up, the superheated steam released exfiltrated through these as well.
“Thank you for your assistance!” Hunter-priestess of the Shallow Waters, Larissa, thanked Ishihara. Her Mage Armor began melting as the blessing was being dispelled.
“No, thank you. Without your blessings, we would’ve lost so much more.” Ishihara sat down after retracting his bone plates back. Her body mass took a noticeable decrease as he had used a significant amount of energy in that battle, forcing her to autophagy. “Let’s eat, I’m so fucking hungry that I can eat… planktons.”
Larissa glanced at Ishihara, raising her eyebrow. This was momentary, however, as she had the mind to at least offer some Mordred-made food towards the woman.
“Y- you know, cuz whales eat plankton and… nevermind, I forgot you’re a shark, not a whale. Ignore what I said.” Ishihara quickly took the meaty food that Larissa presented. From the smell alone, it was able to raise her appetite, especially since she was starving in the first place. When she sank her teeth into the juicy meat, it felt like the meat was the best cuisine she had tasted in her whole life.
"Where did you get this?" Ishihara asked as the meat juice dripped from her mouth. She had forgo table manners due to how good the food was.
‘The Devil King made this for me…’ Obviously, Larissa couldn’t say that. “I have some connections. These should be my emergency rations, stored in a time-frozen dimensional ring so I can eat them fresh whenever I want. If you want more, I can give you some.”
Although Larissa felt pain in having shared her cultivation resource that Mordred made for her so that her infantile body can mature faster, it wouldn’t hurt to share a bit of her food with the police woman. Getting close to the police woman would return a lot more than withholding food.
At this point, a womanly figure draped in a hooded robe donning a mechanical skull mask approached them, as she led a group of mages. The woman was obviously Inquisitor Irae. “Larissa Agatha and Sergeant Ishihara, perfect. Wait…” the inquisitor paused. “Where’s your other friend?”
Ishihara’s appetite seems to have vanished, as genuine sadness washed over her heart. “She… fell victim to the first round of ambush.”
“Unfortunate.” Irae tried to express condolence, but her identity does not allow her. “We’ve eliminated the mastermind behind all of this, it was a member of Requiescat In Pace trying to steal information which can only be accessed by a rank 2 Lord. They are attacking Lord Inquisitor Erebus’ micro-plane, but we’re handling it right now. I’ll need you two to give me a report from your perspective as soon as possible.”
Ishihara sighed, but still tried her best to answer in a professional fashion. “Roger that!”
Naturally, Larissa can only mimic Ishihara. “Understood.”
Mordred popped up from the frozen soil, on the edge of the crater four kilometers away from the core of the explosion.
“The explosion’s a bit smaller than I’d expected. The dimensional laws of lightning and fire are too shallow, compared to ice.” Mordred muttered to himself. Before Lupusrazor exploded, he had already ejected from the pilot seat and gotten away underground.
His gaze soon laid on the center of the crater. Molten magma is mixed with plasma matter, melting the ice that soon formed a bloody lake around the magma. The searing heat can be felt even from this far.
“As expected. A rank 2 Lord is too powerful… That biochemical suit is also bullshit…” On the edge of his vision, there stood a vampire lord with shredded wings and a multitude of wounds. Although he is heavily wounded, the visible damage on his body is rapidly healing by itself. Even through this, he bore on Mordred with eyes of crimson fury, as though he was trying to kill him with his mind. Erebus’ black sclera had the hidden effect in the form of a charm that would enslave lesser minds, but with Mordred’s soul foundation, he is immune to this effect.
The biochemical suit, however, couldn’t endure Lupusrazor’s kamikaze attack. Although Mordred had designed Lupusrazor as a contingency to kill Larissa if she tried anything funny, its firepower was enough to at least obliterate the biological power armor that Erebus wore.
Since a power armor allows someone to fight someone one rank higher than themselves, then It was only natural that the biochemical suit is powerful enough to endure a rank 3 attack once. Of course, Lord Erebus’ imperfect alterations made the biochemical suit weaker than it should have, but it still endured Mordred all-out attacks from the terraforming-class killer move and others, even forcing him to use Lupusrazor as an explosive.
Mordred traced his dimensional storage ring and took out some artifacts before swallowing it. “I’ve almost used up all of my resources. If I can’t kill Erebus even after this… then the only method left is… personality corruption… but it’ll take too much time and a high chance of failure.”
The weapons in his hands are merely a katana and a magnum pistol. Other than these two, he almost ran out of other assets. The leftover puppets and flying drones in his arsenal wouldn’t do much when the battle had progressed up to this point. Even if they are used, their computational power wouldn’t keep up with Lord Erebus' movement since Lupusrazor has self-destructed.
As soon as he pulled out his sword, a momentary reluctance appeared on Mordred’s face; suppressed memories of Holy Terra reappearing. Only for a moment, however. Considering his attainment in sword-path is extremely high, it would be a waste to not use swords due to mentally blocking himself.
Boom! A distant sonic boom became the gong for the second round as Lord Erebus used [Monumental Blood Path] once more. Unlike its augmented version, he is a bit slower, barely breaking the sound barrier as he wasn’t a martial artist or specialized in movement-type killer moves in the first place.
On that note, Mordred is roughly in the same situation as the vampire lord. His mortal shell might be a durable and flexible body compared to a martial artist of the same rank, but it has yet to gain the basic specification to move as fast as sound. Without the overclocking modules and boost of performance from Lupusrazor, he is a rather weak opponent compared to the rank 2 lord.
Which means he had to use tricks and various methods to compensate for his weakness.
“Rank 2 sword-path killer move, [Sword Stance of Doubt and Hesitation]!” Mordred’s movement instantly changed into a drunk-like state. The left hand that held the katana relaxed its grip, taking on the muscle memory of a rookie, with his openings wide open. No semblance of expertise can be felt from him, as though he suddenly lost his skills.
Mordred’s stance instantly made Erebus stop his Monumental Blood Path twenty meters away from the undead machinery, incredibly wary of Mordred.
The vampire lord squinted his eyes, scrutinizing Mordred’s battle stance in depth. “This move contains the profundity of wisdom-path and sword-path… this is a trick, isn’t it?”
Mordred merely smiled, not rebuking Lord Erebus’ words as it was true. The Sword Stance of Doubt and Hesitation is filled with dirty schemes and mental warfare, rather than true sword art. It was the best method of dynamic defense by making the attackers hesitate to attack and doubt every little decision that they took.
Even with rank advantage, Lord Erebus wouldn’t be able to kill Mordred like this. The katana in his hand may look simple, but it is a magic machinery artifact that can vibrate in a high frequency, allowing it to sever even the toughest muscle fiber. Lord Erebus’ body might be powerful, but they are not powerful enough to defend against an attack that could slice steel and split reinforced boulders.
At the same time, Mordred was also unable to attack Lord Erebus as he can simply use Monumental Blood Path to dart around. He had been forced to become passive, no longer being able to do as he liked.
Therefore, this battle actually entered a stalemate, with both not wanting to take the initiative to attack.
Lord Erebus stops flying and drops into the cold, frozen ground as he sits down. “With each passing moment, you think that my Gorod Krovi wouldn’t be able to send reinforcements?”
“Please do.” Mordred replied, while his body still maintained the funny stance. “I am literally an undead. Most of my techniques involve the utilization of corpses and souls. As a matter of fact, it is you who’s on borrowed time. Sooner or later, my reinforcement from the main world would arrive, I am merely the vanguard of this operation.” Mordred lied naturally as he breathed.
Lord Erebus shook his head, seeing through Mordred lies as if it were nothing. “A Vanguard of an extraplanar invasion wouldn’t accelerate this plane’s relative time rate to the main world… especially since the Mage Tower has two rank 2 lords and a rank 3 Grand Mage defending it.”
Mordred shrugged, his face is thick enough to not feel shame from his lies being seen through.
Seeing Mordred’s indifferent reaction, Lord Erebus thought that it was the best time for him to heal himself. Just because the biochemical suit had taken the brunt of the explosion, doesn't mean he is spared from all the damage. The accumulated backlash of using the biochemical suit has been temporarily suppressed, it's best if he solves it as soon as possible. Otherwise, it would accumulate and become problematic later.
Just as Lord Erebus began healing himself, he sensed that Mordred’s soul undulation was becoming stronger.
‘It can’t be… this bastard's actually cultivating?’ The vampire lord raised his head to take a look, but the undead machine was still doing that funny movement.
'Wait, this is also the effect of his stance. I am beginning to doubt if healing myself is the best decision.' Erebus stopped healing himself and began the activation sequence of an offensive enslavement-path killer move.
Blood red and purple specks of lights began circulating around him, these are telepathic thoughts churning so intense that they are physically visible in the material world. Lord Erebus' primary and secondary brain pumped up more and more telepathic thoughts that he has minimal computational power left to care about Mordred's action.
As for Mordred, he perked up his ear, smiling. 'This activation sequence… seems familiar. It seems like he has fallen victim to one of the Devil King’s Inheritance… Is this all my bad luck paying off?' He didn’t do any disruptive action towards Erebus because the vampire lord is jumping towards a trap that Mordred had set up centuries ago willingly. If Erebus activated the killer move that Mordred thought of, then victory would be a given. The question is only a matter of time.
Because the vampire lord wouldn’t want to delay, he accelerated the activation sequence, “Rank 2 enslavement-path killer move, [Hypothetical Bloodshed]!”
…
Mordred couldn’t help but to chuckle when he realized what happened. He's a bit familiar with this killer move, it was deduced from one of his countless necro-path minor inheritances. ‘Similar to [Death by Misplaced Trust], this killer move dragged our Sea of Consciousness together into a dream-like state where we contest for supremacy…’1
He scanned around the world within his consciousness. Because he woke up in the center of this world on a metallic mountain, he was able to quickly investigate where he was. It is a blessed world filled with life, almost equivalent in its richness of natural resources to the main world as flora and fauna heavily populated the world.
Since this is an imaginary world, his spiritual force foundation has a great influence in it.
Naturally, since Mordred had a soul-path extreme spirit known as Phantasmal Brilliance Extreme Spirit, then his imaginary world is vastly different compared to Lord Erebus.
If Lord Erebus’ imaginary world is based on the vampire lord’s ideal world, which has been tempered and altered for this particular endeavor, then Mordred’s natural imaginary world is heavily dependent on his truesoul. Or rather, his attainment has a large significance on it.
His attainment in wood-path increases the amount of flora, metal-path signifies the amount of mineral nodes, water-path would dictate the volume of body of waters, light-path governs the amount of light this world have, time-path control the day-and-night cycle, space-path is all about the imaginary world’s spatial density and volume, et cetera.
As for conceptual paths like soul-path, it would make ghosts immune to sunlight or natural dissipation and allow them to manifest far more easily. Sword-path would produce sword-path resources like the sword grass field, et cetera. Sound-path too, produces a resource point like the Music Hill that would produce musical sound, flute flowers, or others.
His world is truly a beautiful, rich and dense world.
Mordred’s gaze soon traversed into the edge of his imaginary world. Like two islands floating in the dark void of the Boundless Astral Realm, a portion of his land overlaps with another land.
He recognizes the foreign red, toxic world of Erebus even from a glance. The difference between Lord Erebus’ micro plane and his imaginary world is not only from the color palette, but also the sheer size.
As stated previously, since this is an imaginary battlefield, their spiritual foundation also greatly affected the size of their world. With Mordred’s rank 1 spiritual force foundation, it was natural that he was at a great disadvantage compared to the vampire lord’s rank 2 foundation. Lord Erebus’ imaginary world is eight to ten times larger than himself. Considering Mordred has an extreme spirit which connected his imaginary world into his attainment and quite a deep attainment in space-path, Lord Erebus is truly an old monster with an extremely strong spiritual foundation.
It was no wonder that the vampire lord is confident in this gamble.
According to Mordred’s shallow analysis, compared to [Death by Misplaced Trust] which was a possession-type killer move, then this would be a subjugating killer move with the deletion of the foe’s ego as the main goal. The subjugation of one’s imaginary world meant the subjugation of one’s sea of consciousness, their ego would either be dominated or erased completely, allowing a new mind to inhabit the body.
From the depth of Lord Erebus’ imaginary world, countless vampires began to rise from the bloody red, toxic soil. All sorts of vampiric beasts are being woken up and used as cannon fodders, starting from vampiric wolves, dogs, bats, bears, even vampiric wyverns with their bodies having 10-meter body length. Not only that, there are also several vampire brides that act as commanders of this army, and some superelite guards which were piloting biochemical suits with various forms and sizes.
Behind this army, there was also a Gorod Krovi almost ten times the size of what Mordred saw in Lord Erebus’ pocket dimension.
In the center of that Gorod Krovi, there stood a large, vampiric dragon with someone standing on top of the oversized lizard, presumably Lord Erebus himself.
This signifies that this was the vampire lord’s ideal army if he had near-infinite resources. It was a fearsome army that not only had quality, but also quantity.
‘A rank 3 version of the Vampiric Blood Dragon, the Sovereign of Blood in Morgen World?’ Mordred shook his head ‘Your method would be extremely effective if used towards other cultivators but unfortunately, you’ve met me…’ he sneered as he simply refined his telepathic thought into the most fearsome commander that he had ever met in his several lifetimes.
Dark clouds of telepathic thoughts began accumulating, taking the form of Mordred's real appearance before he was killed under the hand of the 4th Generation Braves. The only difference between this new Mordred with the real Mordred is the fact that his hair is crimson blood red, with his eyes having the same color on top of black sclera. The man is dressed in military-commander apparel, draped under a scientist's robe.
“Big brother… ‘Myriad Overlord’ Crimspur, Supreme Commander of Human Imperium’s Astrales Militär, I am in need of your assistance.” Mordred smiled, asking his look-alike politely with a casual tone.
“You reconstruct me through your memories of me at last…” Crimspur reveals a gentle smile, rubbing Mordred’s hair softly. “How many Sovereigns are we up against?”
“Not yet, that’s reserved for the end war when your True Body physically descends into Morgen World. This is a mere rank 2 expert with a strong foundation in enslavement.” Mordred replied honestly. “It’s an uphill battle because my spiritual foundation is merely at early-stage rank 1, it’ll take me a lot of time and effort which would make this victory pyrrhic. His learning rate is quite high, if we are of the same rank, it'll be easy for me to dispatch him, but I can't outlast his mental endurance due to my weak foundation. If it's you, then I believe there wouldn't be any problem. After all, one of your Sovereign paths is enslavement.”
“I see.” Crimspur nodded, he spread his attention towards the incoming vampiric army that had begun marching towards the edge of Mordred’s imaginary world. “Hmm… vampires, are they of Nosferatu bloodline? Even in the Boundless Astral Realm, the Nosferatu are like a plague. Well, no matter. Would you be okay if I ask you to refine imaginary Intelligent Metal? Her von Neumann self replicating machines are extremely effective against vampires… or any life, if that matters.”
“Intelligent Metal consists of too much information, reconstructing her takes significantly more telepathic thoughts than you. She’s always a pain in my ass, be it her imaginary version, or her real one. I cannot.”
“Ahah. Understandable.” Crimspur touched his chin, pondering. “What can you give me, then?”
"You are free to choose from one of your Overlords, though I can only make a rank 3 version of that.” Mordred answered.
“Fair.” Crimspur paused for a brief moment before adding, “I want you to refine… The Formic Overlord.”
“Ants? You’re using your most basic overlord?”
“It’s only vampires, they’re not even Nosferatu. My ants are sufficient. Unless you want to give me a Plantae Overlord?”
Mordred shook his head as he wouldn’t be able to afford it, just like he can’t afford to construct Intelligent Metal. “I was thinking along the lines of Chimerae Overlord, but the Formic Overlord will suffice.” His spiritual force churned, they soon formed into a large-class lifeform of an ant queen. Over half of its dark carapace-covered, 25 meter long body is a white, soft-to-the-touch breeding organ.
The Formic Overlord is a majestic lifeform, having a thick and extremely dense exoskeleton yet lighter than what it seemed to be. The rank 3 variant of the overlord naturally has extremely low personal combat power, but it has the ability to breed a lot of ants.
The moment the rank 3 Formic Overlord appeared, Crimspur’s body is quickly eaten by the gigantic ant. The sound of the giant ant’s mouth-pincers munching on flesh and crushing bones is highly disturbing, but it didn't bother Mordred in the slightest.
“How long would it take you to take him down?” Mordred asked as he saw the Formic Overlord start laying white eggs that instantly hatched humanoid ants similar to the Slayer Ants of Morgen world.
“Depends. Are you in a rush?” Crimspur, having merged with the ant queen, asked.
“Not really, but I need to conserve my ego. At most, I can only give you one more support with the level of the Formic Overlord.” Mordred explained. “If I sacrifice more of my spirit foundation, I might be able to give you another one, but it’ll make me fall into rank 0.”
“This is the typical dream within dreams similar to our routine training with the Sovereign Magus of Dreams and Nightmares, right?” Crimspur asked once more.
“Correct. I’ve laid countless inheritance traps with Her Majesty’s [Country of Delusions] as the foundation. After all, it's better to deal with something we’re familiar with, rather than the unknown. I’ll refine my Country of Delusions to defend against these types of attacks in the future. For now, you’re all I got.” Mordred explained, “In any case, this imaginary dream world’s time rate should be roughly 1000 to 1200 times compared to the material world that we’re currently at. Three years here would be roughly a day there.”
“That time rate is a bit high for a rank 1 like you, there's no need for you to sacrifice anything. You can use this time to rest and conserve your spiritual force. I’ll slowly dismantle this vampire lord’s army, even if it took me a dozen years of warfare to do it, but would your body be able to handle the burden?” Crimspur asked worriedly as his ant army had begun amassing into the hundreds, with more incoming.
“It’s okay, I have some contingencies up and running. My OS would optimize energy expenditure and prioritize the activation of the crystal processor. I am perfectly capable of maintaining this imaginary world for over a hundred years before the crystal processor in the real world melts from overclocking… My ego wouldn’t break down from that, but losing the physical body would mean I’ll be latching onto Lord Erebus like a soul parasite, I’d rather not..”
“Oh, you’ve abandoned your flesh-and-blood body, I see. You’ll have to give word to my True Body later, he must be worried sick.”
Mordred paused his action. “You’re right. Okay, I’ll think of something when I’ve finished the final preparations for the End War.”
Crimspur nodded as the Formic Overlord had produced so many ants that it almost numbered in the thousand. “Personally, I don’t need assistance as the cost of constructing me from your memories must be comparable to a few thousands of other rank 3s in your memories, but I can’t do anything if the vampire wanted to bruteforce the war, using the legendary vampiric blood dragon as a spearhead to assassinate you. I suggest you construct another Magus of Holy Terra as a guardian while your mind rests.” Crimspur faked a cough, “Chaos Nemesis.”
“I can’t afford him, but I have someone else in mind.” Mordred immediately acted as his big brother suggested. His telepathic thoughts churned as memories of the strongest warrior from his past lives are being brought into reality in this imaginary world.
A human soon formed from Mordred’s last shred of disposable spiritual force.
This human is a tall male, having a height of almost two meter tall. He has waist-long pale blue hair tied into a ponytail that sometimes crackles with sparks of lightning. The man wore a traditional samurai-kimono outfit, complete with three types of swords on his waist from a katana, wakizashi, and tanto.
“To have someone who dedicated his whole life trying to kill you in Holy Terra to protect you in your dream world is rather ironic, don’t you think?” Crimspur commented once he saw the figure.
“Azure Lightning Shogun from Holy Terra’s Japan province, the ‘Lightning Sword Seigneur’ of the Human Imperium as well as the Magus Sovereign of Martial Sword. Your Majesty Shogun Takemikazuchi, please protect me from harm.” Mordred bowed to the samurai, speaking in literal Japanese.
The samurai ignored Crimspur’s insult as he repocirate Mordred’s bow with his own. “Grimsong Specter-sama, your words are excessive. I shall protect you even if it costs me my life.” Takemikazuchi naturally replied in Japanese, after which he glanced at the Formic Overlord. “Myriad Overlord-sama, it seems like we’re on the same side now. I still recall our battle which ended up with the death of your True Body… or should I say 9 of your true bodies.” The Shogun used a tone which signified his superiority over Crimspur.
“An enslavement-path cultivator’s weakness are people like you who cultivate sword-path and lightning-path in tandem. The fact that you failed to kill all of my true bodies, died under the hand of my little brother, your soul completely devoured and your body refined into a mere tool signifies your lack of depth.” Crimspur insulted the Shogun back, while his ant army had begun slaughtering the local wildlife and boring through the metallic mountain to make an ant’s hive.
Although this is an imaginary world, they are not mere projections of telepathic thoughts, but the physical manifestation of Mordred’s understanding upon their real version. If Lord Erebus is constructing his ideal version of a vampire army, then Mordred simply ‘recalls’ two Sovereign Magi of Holy Terra with opposing qualities from sheer memories to help him. At the very least, their existence in this imaginary world is very real, to the point of having a body of flesh-and-blood and near-perfectly replicating their conflicting personalities.
Naturally, the Myriad Overlord and Lightning Sword Seigneur that Mordred summoned can’t even reach 0.1% of their true might as they are literally transcendents in their own field, just like how Mordred was a transcendent of Soul and Sound.
Crimspur is a Magus Sovereign with a near-limitless number of armies and matchless intelect excelling in grand strategy warfare, whereas Takemikazuchi is a Magus Sovereign with the highest personal combat strength amongst Magi of Holy Terra.
At the very least, both of them are enough to handle a mere Lord Inquisitor's ideal world, despite being in their rank 3 imaginary selves.
That being said, the Formic Overlord couldn’t just constantly produce an army from nothing because that would break the law of conservation of energy. Roughly 20% of the ants that it breeds are worker ants, they are tasked to feed the ant queen with literally anything that can be used as energy reserve and raw materials for its army, from biological matter like wood, leaves, raw meat, to minerals such as iron, copper, or other.
In other words, this ‘simple’ dream battlefield is a grand theater of war with each of their ‘minds’ being a representation of their respective civilization. 2
"Takemikazuchi, what does your wisdom say about our opponent?" Crimspur asks as his gigantic Formic Overlord body is being carried by countless horse-sized ant workers to the depth of the ant hive under the mountain. Mordred, who had fallen asleep shortly after summoning Takemikazuchi, is also brought by the workers. Crimspur spoke to the Shogun through the ants.
"Considering the vampire's real body is a rank 2 with deep foundation in spiritual force, then I'd say we have to kill him in this imaginary world around… 21,566,919 times before his ego collapses, giving Grimsong Specter-sama a chance of subjugating him." The Shogun answered swiftly.
"My calculations aren't too far off, it was 21,545,568 times. Well, since my little brother has used up all the disposable spiritual force on you, he has simply traded his 1,210,008 ‘life’ for a single you. You shouldn't let him die even once." Crimspur warned him. "You just need to guard him for… 12 years. I'll finish this in that time span."
"Wakarimashita. Do you reckon the vampire would suddenly chant ‘blood for the blood god, skull for the skull throne’?" The shogun asked for Crimspur's opinion.
The ants produce an expression equivalent to a human's frown. “No… I hope not. He shouldn’t.” Crimspur denied. “From Mordred’s memories, I can tell that this world has no Blood God, only a rank 6 Sovereign of Blood. Even so, that cursed Blood God shouldn’t have any influence in Morgen World’s Astral Supercluster.”
Just as Crimspur finished his words, the two Magi saw the eye-catching vampiric dragon make a move.
With a flap of its wing, it broke the sound barrier as it reached mach 8 almost in an instant. This speed allows the vampiric blood dragon to reach Mordred’s territory in mere seconds.
“As expected, the vampire lord doesn’t want to drag this battle, even though he held the advantage. It seems like his enslavement-path intuition sensed something was wrong when Mordred summoned my Formic Overlord.” The ants beside Takemikazuchi spoke in fluent Japanese once more. “Shogun, my swarm has yet to gain the ability to fight a dragon, can you handle it?”
“Understood.” The shogun merely nodded as he took a stance with his fingers tracing the katana’s handle.
Boom! The vampiric blood dragon has breached Mordred’s territory, its mere radiation is killing the land as it also brought the bloodmist of Lord Erebus’ world into Mordred’s. This bloodmist would amplify the powers of vampires and suppress non-vampires, it also contains an intense amount of Lord Erebus enslaving will. If exposed for too long, lesser minds would not only be subjugated, but also suffer from cancerous vampirification disease.
“Please handle it quickly. This mountain wouldn’t be able to endure an attack from a rank 3 being. I haven’t reinforced it with formic compound.”
“Be patient.” The shogun replied, his heart tranquil, his tone flat. All this while, his eyes have never lost track of the dragon who’s encroaching on their position rapidly.
“Oh.” The ant mused at Takemikazuchi, realizing the shogun was actually preparing for an attack. “It wasn’t wrong for my little brother to construct you.”
The vampiric blood dragon would reach their location in mere seconds, but Takemikazuchi simply gripped his katana. “Rank 3 sword-path killer move, [Instant Sword]!”
There was a gap in spacetime, as if a few frames in a video had been deleted. Takemikazuchi's katana hasn't seemed to be unseath at all, but when the world returns to its natural flow of things, the vampiric dragon has been dismembered into multiple pieces. Its dragon heart, brain, and nervous system has been mutilated, not allowing any chance of mitigating death through secondary or tertiary sets of backup organs.
That’s right, a dragon, which was considered as the most powerful race in Morgen World’s Astral Supercluster, has been easily murdered.
“Instant Sword, a sword attack which was typically used to kill a high-dimensional being in the Boundless Astral Realm!” Crimspur praised. “The moment the attack was made, the moment it landed. Even those who can dart back and forth in the axis of time aren't immune to this. I’ll never get tired of seeing your sword arts. If only your soul wasn’t devoured by my little brother, it would be me who’d have absorbed your sword-path attainment.”
Although Crimspur seems to sing praises of Takemikazuchi, the shogun knew it was filled with sarcasm and malicious intent.
In any case, the dragon corpse fell, landing on the feet of the mountain, splattering its toxic blood and irradiated dragon flesh to the surroundings. The dragon radiation is so harmful that it instant-killed rank 1 lifeforms, while rank 2 lifeforms would suffer from myriad types of cancer. Even rank 3 existence like Takemikazuchi is affected, but the Martial Magus immediately expels the radiation from his body through some lightning-path martial arts, gaining immunity to it.
Crimspur’s ant army instantly rushed towards the vampiric blood dragon’s corpse, but they were literally swarming to die. Dozens, hundreds, even thousands of dog-sized and horse-sized ants have been killed by the radiation of the corpse, but Crimspur had never stopped sending his army to die.
As the ant corpse piled up on the feet of the mountain, some of the ants began gathering them and feeding them into other ants. The ants cannibalized the corpse of their brethren who had fallen from the radiation. After the cannibal ants ate, they were immediately sent towards the vampiric blood dragon corpse once more, but it's not like it suddenly gained immunity like Takemikazuchi. It also dies, without contributing much in the grand scheme of things.
However, what makes it different is that this cannibal ant was able to get a meter closer to the corpse before dying.
Naturally, the corpses of the cannibal ants are brought back with the sacrifice of other ants, allowing other ants to cannibalize the cannibal ant’s corpses. When it is eaten, the cannibal ant’s genetic sequence is passed down to the next cannibal ant, thus allowing them to form antibodies and resistance towards the blood dragon’s radiation. This cycle continues slowly while Crimspur’s ants are also expanding the ant’s hive while feeding the Formic Overlord endlessly with metal and biological matter.
“As expected, that’s one.” A humanoid ant, which looks very human-like with the exception of its black exoskeleton instead of human skins and several other minor ant characteristics, suddenly spoke next to Takemikazuchi.
The shogun glanced at the human-ant hybrid that the Formic Overlord breeds. ‘Has he deciphered human genetic sequences already?’ With that thought in mind, he reacted to Crimspur’s words. Raising his head, his gaze fell onto the Gorod Krovi on Lord Erebus’ territory. The vampire lord constructed another vampiric blood dragon from his spiritual force once more but he had learned not to immediately send it towards the two Magi.
“No, that’s probably counted as a few hundred thousands of his ‘life’. If he’s stupid enough to keep sending in Legendary vampiric blood dragons, this farce wouldn’t last tweleve years.” Takemikazuchi muttered.
“True. Anyhow, if he tried to do anything funny like that, I trust you’ll be able to handle it.” the ant handed down the burden of handling problematic foe onto Takemikazuchi. “In the meantime, I’ll try to absorb the blood dragon’s genetic materials. I’m curious what kind of ant-dragon variant species I can produce based on its genes. We have no Dragons back in Holy Terra, after all.”
Takemikazuchi nodded as he took a rest. Instant Sword took a heavy toll on the Shogun, it's not a killer move that can be spammed freely.
At the same time, countless ants of various sizes, mostly humanoid ants, are continuously pouring out of the labyrinthian cavern system of the ant’s hive.
‘Myriad Overlord-sama’s adaptability is as excellent as I remembered. Our victory is absolute, the only question is time. It wouldn’t be long before the Formic Overlord breeds bloodless ant swarms which are immune to blood-path methods or even his own version of vampiric dragon-ants.’ Takemikazuchi muttered in his heart.
According to his personal experience, fighting against Crimspur is a painfully slow death, where one’s methods would be systematically dismantled and methodically countered one by one. Unless the vampire lord can quickly kill the Sovereign Magus of Evolution during his learning-phase or expansion-phase, the result of their battle would already be set in stone. It’ll be already too late to form countermeasures when Crimspur begins the extermination-phase.
The Shogun gave some pity to the vampire lord, but obviously, pity from a dead man is as useless as empty words. And so, he remained silent.
…..
Bang! The chest of a demonic puppet exploded. Normally, without the torso, the puppet can still fight as it literally has no weakness like that of biologicals, but it already has no head, has lost one arm and a leg, and all other core components that allowed it to move have been completely obliterated. With an uneventful thud, the puppet fell down.
It has become another scrap in the hill made out of scraps.
Psssht! The shrimp-bloodline police woman’s bone armor was covered in a myriad of cracks, so much so that as they opened it up, the superheated steam released exfiltrated through these as well.
“Thank you for your assistance!” Hunter-priestess of the Shallow Waters, Larissa, thanked Ishihara. Her Mage Armor began melting as the blessing was being dispelled.
“No, thank you. Without your blessings, we would’ve lost so much more.” Ishihara sat down after retracting his bone plates back. Her body mass took a noticeable decrease as he had used a significant amount of energy in that battle, forcing her to autophagy. “Let’s eat, I’m so fucking hungry that I can eat… planktons.”
Larissa glanced at Ishihara, raising her eyebrow. This was momentary, however, as she had the mind to at least offer some Mordred-made food towards the woman.
“Y- you know, cuz whales eat plankton and… nevermind, I forgot you’re a shark, not a whale. Ignore what I said.” Ishihara quickly took the meaty food that Larissa presented. From the smell alone, it was able to raise her appetite, especially since she was starving in the first place. When she sank her teeth into the juicy meat, it felt like the meat was the best cuisine she had tasted in her whole life.
"Where did you get this?" Ishihara asked as the meat juice dripped from her mouth. She had forgo table manners due to how good the food was.
‘The Devil King made this for me…’ Obviously, Larissa couldn’t say that. “I have some connections. These should be my emergency rations, stored in a time-frozen dimensional ring so I can eat them fresh whenever I want. If you want more, I can give you some.”
Although Larissa felt pain in having shared her cultivation resource that Mordred made for her so that her infantile body can mature faster, it wouldn’t hurt to share a bit of her food with the police woman. Getting close to the police woman would return a lot more than withholding food.
At this point, a womanly figure draped in a hooded robe donning a mechanical skull mask approached them, as she led a group of mages. The woman was obviously Inquisitor Irae. “Larissa Agatha and Sergeant Ishihara, perfect. Wait…” the inquisitor paused. “Where’s your other friend?”
Ishihara’s appetite seems to have vanished, as genuine sadness washed over her heart. “She… fell victim to the first round of ambush.”
“Unfortunate.” Irae tried to express condolence, but her identity does not allow her. “We’ve eliminated the mastermind behind all of this, it was a member of Requiescat In Pace trying to steal information which can only be accessed by a rank 2 Lord. They are attacking Lord Inquisitor Erebus’ micro-plane, but we’re handling it right now. I’ll need you two to give me a report from your perspective as soon as possible.”
Ishihara sighed, but still tried her best to answer in a professional fashion. “Roger that!”
Naturally, Larissa can only mimic Ishihara. “Understood.”
