Chapter 520: Metamorphosis (8)

Eugene was familiar with this wasteland.

A long, long time ago, this was where Agaroth and his Divine Army had made their camp. This wasteland was where Agaroth had faced off against the Demon King of Destruction. Where Agaroth's Saint, the Twilight Witch, had shouted at him to run away. Even the Great Warrior had also shouted the same panicked cry. Everyone in the Divine Army had wanted to escape from here.

The same thing also applied to Agaroth. He had wanted to escape this place. He had thought to himself that that thing, the Demon King of Destruction, was something that definitely couldn't be fought.

But Agaroth hadn't run away. He couldn't run away. Agaroth had believed that if they ran away from here, everything would be over. He had felt that they were needed to hold back Destruction, even if it was just by the smallest of margins.

So they had marched into battle.

Everyone died. The Divine Army was annihilated. The Great Warrior had also perished. The Saint passed away in the arms of her god. Agaroth was the only one left, and he would soon be engulfed by the Demon King of Destruction. So Agaroth then threw himself into the cloud that surrounded the Demon King of Destruction.

This was what came next.

"Agaroth," the Sage whispered. "During that long and exhausting battle, where you fought against those monsters of a previously unknown origin, I was extremely busy with my own problems. Do you remember Agaroth? Once you were finished with your war against those monsters, we were planning to march against the Demon King of Incarceration together."

"That's right," Eugene affirmed, nodding in recollection.

It was a chaotic era in which both Demon Kings and Gods had coexisted. The God of War, the Sage, and the God of Giants were a trio of young gods who hadn't ascended to their thrones for that long. There were many other gods from the younger generation besides them, but these three, in particular, were strong.

"The elder gods weren't happy about the war that you were leading us into. However, we refused to spare an ear to listen to those elders' grumblings. We just laughed at them, saying that they were scared of the Greater Demon King, the Demon King of Incarceration," the Sage chuckled to herself as she tilted her head to one side, recalling the past. "I was devoting all my time to preparing for the upcoming war. So when you sent word asking me to come and reinforce you, I didn't rush my preparations to do so. I must admit that it was in part because I wanted to annoy you, but it was also because I was already very busy with my own war efforts."

The Sage stopped speaking for a few moments. Her sapphire blue eyes turned to look directly at Eugene. He felt a deep sadness weighing heavily in her eyes.

"If I hadn't done that, would things have been different?" the Sage asked plaintively. "If I had just left right at the moment that I received your call, then—"

"It wouldn't have changed anything," Eugene answered her question with a wry smile. "Even if you and the God of Giants had arrived any earlier, we still wouldn't have been able to stop that thing by working together."

"That's most likely true, but still...." The Sage let out a long sigh. "I would have at least been there by your side to witness your death personally."

The world around them, which had been frozen in a snapshot of that moment, began to move. A strange mix of colors appeared in the wasteland filled with the corpses of the Divine Army and the Nur.

Sienna let out a start at this sudden sight, then muttered to herself, "The Demon King of Destruction...."

Standing next to her, Kristina unconsciously wrapped one hand around her rosary while Anise had to hold back a gasp.

They weren't even getting a direct look at the Demon King. However, the memories associated with that mix of colors were enough to draw out the fear they had felt in the past.

"I cried in front of this scene," the Sage admitted. "I hated myself for being too late. Also, Agaroth, I truly loathed the Demon King of Destruction who had swallowed you whole. At that moment, I wasn't rational enough to decide what I should do next."

She was the Sage of the Ivory Tower — the pinnacle of wizardry in the Age of Myth. With the body of a human, she had become one with magic and had risen to the Divine Throne as the Goddess of Magic.

"I was able to use every single spell that had ever existed in the world. It was as if I was magic, and magic was me. However, even with all of that, I still couldn't think of a spell that I could use against the Demon King of Destruction or what I needed to do in order to save you," the Sage recalled with a wry smile.

She had been able to sense Agaroth's divine power coming from within the Demon King of Destruction's cloud. That meant that, fortunately, Agaroth was still alive.

In that case, since he was still alive, the Sage told herself that she definitely had to save him. But how? With what spell? The Sage didn't have the means to achieve her goals. With all of the Sage's reasoning ability put to the task, she kept coming to the same cold conclusion. Having been swallowed by the Demon King of Destruction, Agaroth was now impossible to be saved.

However, the Sage rejected what her reason was telling her. That was just how much she wanted to save Agaroth, no matter what, regardless of the cost of doing so. It seemed impossible to interfere with that cloud of colors from outside, so what if she went inside? If she could enter into the heart of Destruction, where Agaroth was, then....

"It was a stupid idea." The Sage laughed bitterly. "If I had gone in there, I wouldn't have been able to hold on for even a second, and I would have immediately collapsed. If... if the God of Giants had been even a bit slower to arrive, then I would have surely died in vain without even being able to reach your side."

The God of Giant's hand suddenly appeared and blocked the Sage's path forward. Then, as if he thought blocking her like this wasn't enough, the God of Giants wrapped his fingers around the Sage and lifted her into the air.

The Sage gave a fond smile as she said, "As I was cursing at him to let me go, the God of Giants just roared back at me."

He told her not to make Agaroth's death meaningless.

"I also shouted back at him. I told him that Agaroth was still alive. Since that was the case, then of course, we had to save him. However, the God of Giants still firmly pulled me backward. The God of Giants didn't have anything more to say to me. There was no need for him to say anything. Because I already knew the truth in my heart. I just didn't want to admit it." The Sage raised her head for a few moments to look up at the sky. She spent those brief moments of silence processing her old emotions before continuing, "I couldn't save you. Neither could the God of Giants. We couldn't enter that cloud like you could. We would be dead the moment we entered the cloud surrounding Destruction."

Even for Eugene, the memories from that moment were faint. After the Divine Army was annihilated and the Twilight Witch had died, Agaroth felt great hatred and rage towards the Demon King of Destruction. Holding his Divine Sword in hand, Agaroth had walked towards the Demon King of Destruction. He alone blocked the Demon King of Destruction, whose advance would spell the destruction of the entire world.

In return, the Demon King swallowed Agaroth.

Agaroth didn't die immediately. He couldn't die. He refused to die. He wanted to kill this damned, shitty Destruction no matter what. So he wandered through an abyss that seemed almost endless and continued to slice apart the overflowing dark power contained within the cloud of colors.

The Sage was right. That place wasn't a place where anyone was meant to survive. In the face of Destruction, both humans and gods were rendered equally insignificant.

"Agaroth," the Sage whispered as she slowly lowered her head. She stared at Eugene with her tear-filled sapphire eyes. "During the time that you remained alive, the Demon King of Destruction was frozen in its tracks."

So, the Sage was forced to accept the truth. It was impossible to save Agaroth. In that case, was it possible to attack and kill the Demon King of Destruction while it was frozen in place? That was also impossible. Even after all the gods had gathered together, they all gave the same verdict. That thing wasn't something that they could kill.

"Your sacrifice granted us a momentary reprieve in the face of Destruction," the Sage tearfully recounted.

But what if that thing suddenly appeared elsewhere? What if it resumed moving while continuing to pour out that endless stream of monsters in front of it, and they weren't able to stop it before it ended all life in this world?

"Agaroth, at that time, there was no way for us to know just how long you would be able to keep holding it back. However, the reprieve you gave us allowed us to prepare for the Destruction to come," the Sage revealed gratefully.

The first to make a move were the Elder Gods, whom the trio had always looked down on because of their age. They stormed out of their temples and their sacred sites and demanded to negotiate with the Demon King of Incarceration.

The Sage sniffed as she continued, "The halt of Destruction's advance must have come as a surprise even to the Demon King of Incarceration. That Ancient Demon, who had never responded to any of the calls for negotiation before then, actually replied to the invitation sent by the Elder Gods."

Both the Sage and the God of Giants had been present for the negotiations. As countless gods gathered together at the Temple of Oaths, the Demon King of Incarceration had appeared all by himself. No, he didn't just appear; he descended upon the scene like some higher being deigning to meet with his inferiors.

All the gods who had been gathered there got the same feeling from the Demon King of Incarceration. That this one was different from all of the other Demon Kings. This being in front of them was truly worthy of the name Greater Demon King. He was a Demon King of Demon Kings — a Demon King with the authority to command the other Demon Kings and receive their worship.

The Sage shook her head and said, "However, the negotiations didn't start all that smoothly. Most of the gods were preoccupied with asking the Demon King of Incarceration, just what exactly was the Demon King of Destruction?"

"Did he give you a proper answer?" Eugene asked.

"Ahaha. Do you really believe that despicable Ancient Demon would do something like that? He refused to give us an answer to what exactly the Demon King of Destruction was. Instead, he... he said that it was just like what we had already seen and felt from it. Ultimately, he meant to say, what else could it be but Destruction itself," the Sage chuckled as she shook her head. "Then, in that case, we asked him if there was any way to resist the Destruction. Was there any way to delay or reverse the Destruction? Ahaha, in the end, we all just gave up on trying to kill Destruction. We didn't think that it was humiliating to do so. We knew that there was nothing we could do to stop it."

"What did the Demon King of Incarceration say in response?" Eugene eventually asked.

"The next time," the Sage said, her cheeks twitching into a twisted and ugly smile as she turned to look at Eugene. "...He told us... to prepare for the next time. Since that thing had appeared, everything would soon be over, so we could only prepare for the next era to come. That was what the Ancient Demon said before disappearing."

The gods all understood what the Demon King of Incarceration meant by the words that he had left them with. They didn't want to acknowledge it but were forced to accept it. Before too long, their current world would end. Once Agaroth died, the Demon King of Destruction would begin to move once more.

But couldn't one of the other gods take up Agaroth's role in stopping Destruction? There was no guarantee that anyone would even be able to achieve the same results as Agaroth. They all agreed that rather than risking their lives in a meaningless sacrifice and dying a dog's death, it would be better to find different methods to prepare for the next time.

"I holed up by myself for a while," the Sage confessed to Eugene.

The Sage had to think about what she should do next. How were her preparations for the next era even meant to survive the end of this era?

"Then I gathered all the wizards and my believers to the Ivory Tower. We sat down together as one and talked about everything that had happened," the Sage said with a sigh.

It had been hard for her to tell them that they were all going to die soon.

The Sage shook her head as if shaking off unpleasant stuff and said, "All the knowledge and magic that we had researched, everything that we had accumulated in our pursuit of the truth, in the end, it would all prove useless as we would be unable to achieve our final goal. We would perish along with the rest of the world."

In that case, wouldn't the meaning of their existence be completely erased along with the world?

"No." the Sage shook her head firmly. "The meaning of our existence, the heights of magic that we had reached, and everything that we had achieved during our pursuit of the truth wouldn't just end there. We refused to let it end. We would not disappear into nothingness."

The Sage raised a finger as she continued speaking, "I transcended my own existence. I transformed myself into a huge, empty vessel. I then pulled the souls of all the wizards who had served me and all of my believers whose faith had driven my transformation into godhood into my embrace."

Eugene looked up in the direction that the Sage was pointing at. At some point, the scenery around them had changed once more.

The wasteland full of corpses was gone. All that was left to see... were endless stretches of sea. Far, far into the distance, Eugene spotted a wave that was coming directly towards them. Fog followed behind the wave like a looming cloud of darkness. And in front of that wave....

The Demon King of Destruction was steadily advancing towards them.

"After five days had passed, the Demon King of Destruction began to move once more," the Sage said in a whisper. "The beasts of Destruction also reappeared all across the world. They killed all living beings. They killed the humans, they killed the Demonfolk, they killed the animals, then they killed everything else as well."

When the wave finally arrived, it washed over a world where only corpses remained. The boundary between land and sea was completely erased. This wave that had come out of nowhere covered the world in its entirety.

"I watched all of this happen," the Sage revealed.

Unable to say anything, Eugene just kept looking in the direction the Sage was pointing in.

In front of the endless sea, the massive wave, and the endless fog... there stood an immense tree.

The tree standing upright in the middle of the ocean was so tall that it looked almost as if it was holding up the sky, connecting the sky, the sea, and the land beneath together.

"Would our souls perish along with the Destruction of the world?" the Sage questioned. "No, there was no way that would happen. Even if the world ended and our physical bodies died, our souls would still remain. As long as there was a next era waiting for the world to arrive, the souls of the dead would also be carried along to that next era."

The faith of the World Tree was centered around this belief in reincarnation.

"Yet even so, I still insisted on holding their souls safely within my embrace. I transformed myself into an entity that could carry the souls from the current era, which was about to end, and continue to shelter these souls in the new era as well." The Sage broke into laughter. "Ahaha. But no matter how impressive a being I might have become, the capacity of my vessel wasn't infinite, so I could never embrace all of the souls that died with the end of the last era. However, it's not like there was a real need for me to carry all that many souls with me."

An almost infinite number of spirits and an endless supply of mana could be found within the World Tree and the Rainforest surrounding it. After learning of how the Sage had transformed herself into the World Tree, Eugene now understood why this was the case.

"So you were planning on becoming a god once again, even after you were dead?" Eugene muttered with an amused snort.

The Sage smiled and replied, "I didn't do it to become a god. I did it so that all of us could become gods. Looking at the results now, hahaha, things turned out quite well. The creatures of the forest place their faith in the World Tree from the moment they are born to the moment they die. Even those who live outside the forest still respect the legends surrounding the World Tree."

The power held by the World Tree was somewhat different from divine power. However, it was still able to perform miracles, as Eugene had personally experienced several times over. The protective blessing that Ivatar and the other warriors of the forest were born with was also another form of the miracles that the World Tree could perform.

"As time passes, the power of the World Tree continues to grow. One day, when the Demon King of Destruction tries to end the world once more, then I... no, the World Tree was meant to serve as a dam for the waves to come," the Sage said with a huff of laughter. "In the end, the future still turned out differently from everything we had thought and planned for. We never could have imagined that you, Agaroth, would actually be reincarnated as a human... and that you would attempt to take on the Demon Kings once more."

"What happened to the God of Giants?" Eugene asked in a quiet voice.

"I don't know," the Sage said with a shrug. "Like me, he should have also made some preparations for the next era, but... I don't know what exactly he did. After all, I had to give up my life in order to transform into the World Tree."

Eugene frowned silently.

The Sage smiled wryly, "By that expression, it seems that you find it difficult to accept my choice, Agaroth. However, what else could I do? The fact is, I needed to die. Even if it's me, it would have been impossible to accept such an enormous amount of souls while also maintaining the integrity of my soul and my sense of self. So I was left with no other option but to die."

"An echo...," Eugene muttered as he recalled what the Sage had said before.

"Then just who am I supposed to be?" Sienna suddenly burst out. "Until now, I always thought... that I was the reincarnation of the Sage. However, if that isn't the case, what on earth am I?"

"Perhaps it would be best to describe you as the product of a miracle," the Sage replied to her questions.

The scenery around them changed once more. The sea disappeared, and the setting returned to the same grassy field that had been present at the start.

With her back to the World Tree, the Sage looked straight into Sienna's eyes and smiled.

"Junior, the very origin of your existence lies in your innate trait of being loved by mana," the Sage said as she lifted a finger and pointed at Sienna. "You are not the reincarnation of myself, Vishur Laviola. I had no part to play in the creation of your existence. However, something did bring you to the forest where I was laid to rest. You were seemingly abandoned in the forest, but.... hahaha, was that really the case? What kind of foolish human parents would come all the way to this forest just to abandon their child? If they really wanted to throw you away, they could have just left you anywhere."

Sienna silently processed this.

"Junior, I don't know why or how you were abandoned here. However, it can't be just a coincidence that you arrived in this forest, were taken in by the elves, and were taught their magic. It is probably because of the guidance granted to you by mana itself that you have become who you are today," the Sage said to Sienna.

During the course of her life, Sienna had never felt any longing for her biological parents. Why would she miss such neglectful parents, who had abandoned her in the forest and disappeared when she was just a newborn?

However, after hearing the Sage's words, Sienna was left with many questions about the nature of her true parents, a pair of individuals to whom Sienna had never given much thought before.

"Now then, come here," the Sage whispered invitingly to Sienna. "Let us discuss your ascension to the Divine Throne of Magic together."