Chapter 242
Translator: Pai_
What Turan encountered upon reaching the boundary of the world was a fleet composed of dozens of massive metal warships.
Judging by their design, they appeared to belong to the same faction as the robots that had self-destructed during the previous invasion.
Perhaps afraid of being attacked by Turan, they remained stationed near the entrance of the dimensional corridor, and only one of them came forward to attempt communication.
"It seems you were looking for me. State your business."
Though they couldn't understand Turan's language, in this space, his words were processed into the form of information and penetrated directly into the opponent’s brain.
Soon, the voice of a young woman, the same one he had heard just moments before, was transmitted to him across an immense distance.
[You are the master of the White Barrier, aren't you?]
"Yes. Who are you?"
[I am Akasha. The last to be created, the creator of those without souls, and I wish to speak with you.]
During the conversation, Turan sensed a strange feeling of alienation from the other party.
A type of discomfort he had never felt from the different races of the Cradle World, or even from the humans of Earth who could be considered beings from another dimension.
"What species are you? No, are you even a living being?"
Thanks to the knowledge he had acquired over the past few years while interacting with Earth, Turan was able to quickly deduce the other’s true nature.
It was what they commonly referred to as artificial intelligence or something of the sort.
The response was as expected.
[I am a non-human intelligent entity created through electronic engineering. If by your term you mean ‘carbon-based lifeform’, then I do not meet that definition. If that is a problem, I can send a preserved representative of such a being in my place for negotiations.]
"Never mind. As long as you can represent your faction, I don't care whether you're human or not."
[Understood. I am the Unified Super-Intelligence and represent the will of our world. Then may I ask a question in return? What should I call you?]
"Turan."
[Understood, Turan. It's a pleasure.]
Perhaps sensing that he was uncomfortable with her voice, her tone now carried more clearly defined emotions than before.
However, Turan knew even that was a fabrication she had created.
"First, tell me your business."
[I seek a non-interference treaty between our worlds.]
"A non-interference treaty between worlds?"
[Yes. I have no intention of invading this world. If your world feels the same way and we agree not to interfere in each other’s affairs, then I believe we would all be pleased.]
"And who guarantees that?"
From what Monarch had once picked up by brushing past information on the world barriers, there was no such thing as a giant organization ruling over multiple worlds.
Stronger worlds simply devoured weaker ones and drew strength from closed-off worlds.
It was, in essence, the pure wilderness of eat or be eaten.
In such a situation, even if a non-interference treaty were signed, who would punish the violators?
To this obvious question, Akasha politely responded.
[Guarantees are unnecessary. If you agree to the treaty, we will share the technology to shut down the dimensional corridor and help apply it together.]
According to her explanation, Akasha’s world was relatively close, reachable by moving through about three worlds from one of the twelve branches of the Cradle World.
What she, though it was hard to call her a woman, desired was to seal off all three of those branches.
Of course, one could still bypass through other branches, but doing so would require passing through at least twenty other worlds, making an invasion practically impossible.
"And if I don’t allow that, will you just give up?"
[We could easily shut down the corridor on our end, but the corridor near this place is difficult to seal. If we were attacked during the process, we wouldn’t be able to deploy a strong enough force to protect it.]
For all that, the warships that had come here seemed quite powerful.
Of course, they were things Turan could erase with just a few gestures, but once they descended to the surface, they were more than capable of inflicting significant damage on his empire.
Perhaps their home base had something even more powerful than these, but it was likely too difficult to bring over.
Just then, as Turan was contemplating, Meisa and Solif suddenly appeared from behind.
“What, you haven’t started fighting yet?”
“We’re still in the middle of a conversation.”
Turan explained to the puzzled Solif and Meisa what he had just heard.
Of course, all information transmission was blocked so Akasha’s side couldn't listen in.
The two of them wore thoughtful expressions as they listened.
“A non-interference pact, huh...”
“Doesn’t sound bad at all.”
Given that they were already struggling with more than a dozen open corridors, it was certainly a tempting offer.
Meisa brushed her red hair back and spoke.
“Then why not just shut down all the corridors that don’t lead to Earth? That way, there’d be no room left for invasion, right?”
“That would be a shame. Don’t you want to travel to places other than Earth? We don’t know what kind of unique cultures and histories might be waiting for us.”
Solif objected in a tone that suggested he found the idea ridiculous.
Back on Earth, he had once been treated like a god of healing, and he had become deeply captivated by the idea of traveling to other worlds.
He had always been the type to be passionate about travel and ruins from the start.
“Well, sure, but that’s not more important than safety, is it?”
“If all we care about is safety...”
“There’s no need to debate that topic. We can’t shut them all down anyway.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know the exact principles, but apparently, due to things like interdimensional pressure or whatever, we can’t just seal everything off like that.”
“Then...”
“Starting with their world, we should just shut down the few corridors where strong enemies frequently invade, and leave the rest.”
“So it’s not a perfect solution.”
“If it were, they would have already closed everything off and lived in isolation. In the end, it all comes down to power.”
Thus, the idea of a complete lockdown was set aside.
The next opinion that came up was that their proposal seemed too favorable for Turan’s side.
And when it feels like only you're benefiting from something, it's one hundred out of one hundred a scam.
To that suspicion, Turan offered a deduction he had made during the earlier conversation.
“They're afraid of us too.”
“Huh?”
“Invasion... sure, right now they can't afford to leave their world because they need to defend it. But if our world keeps growing stronger and richer, there may come a time when invading others isn't such an impossible thing. If several people with powers like mine were to invade, wouldn’t a mid-tier world be completely devastated?”
“Ah-ha.”
The worlds currently invading them, like the Phantom Beast Realm and Demon Blood Realm, were among the strongest even by interdimensional standards, but there were also weaker open worlds that still maintained their sovereignty.
If the three of them invaded one of those, even considering the invasion penalty, it would take heavy losses to repel them, if they could be stopped at all.
Turan suspected that Akasha’s world was one of those.
They had probably sent the robots initially to test their strength, but after realizing how powerful they were, they got scared and made the offer instead.
“The fact that they’re offering only the dimensional sealing technology and nothing else means they want us to cut the connection to them as soon as possible. Judging by how things look, they seem to know nothing about this kind of tech, so re-establishing the link would probably take them a long time...”
“I see.”
“In that case, it’s worth considering.”
After more discussion, they told Akasha that they would make a decision after internal deliberation.
***
Even after returning to the surface and consulting with Ashiz, Melo, and other executives, the result remained the same.
Everyone agreed that sealing even a few corridors would significantly reduce the number of enemies they had to defend against.
Later, Turan returned to the boundary with Solif and Meisa, stood before the lone warship, and delivered their acceptance to Akasha.
It was the first official interdimensional agreement, not even yet made with Earth.
[You’ve made a wise decision!]
Akasha responded in a bright tone to the positive answer.
To ordinary people, it might have simply sounded cheerful, but to Turan, the artificially manufactured emotion of joy only provoked discomfort and a sense of dissonance.
“Don’t bother. It’s just more irritating. Speak normally.”
[Understood.]
The voice immediately settled into a calmer tone.
While the tools and technology for sealing the dimensional corridor naturally, without any detailed manufacturing methods, were being transferred, Turan continued his conversation with Akasha.
As a second condition for agreeing to the non-interference pact, what he wanted was knowledge about the world beyond.
It was something they obviously knew, but something Turan’s side, still a newcomer to being an open world, did not. That knowledge was immensely helpful.
For instance, the phenomenon of civilizational assimilation, in which each world unconsciously comes to use similar languages and develop similar cultures, or the way in which transcendent beings like them lend power to mortals of closed worlds through inter-world contracts in exchange for their spirituality.
During the conversation, Turan also came to understand, to some extent, what kind of world Akasha ruled.
[My world is called the Iron Life Realm. It was originally governed by humans, but now it is ruled by non-human intelligent entities like myself.]
“Ah, I get it now. So it’s basically a place where the AI rebellion succeeded.”
Perhaps thanks to her habit of avidly reading novels brought from Earth, Meisa nodded as if she had realized something.
Solif, standing beside her, simply asked what that meant.
Next, the conversation moved on to the enemies currently invading the Cradle.
[The Demon Blood Realm originates from a being who, in the distant past, first acquired the power to manipulate life. He created countless creatures from blood and flesh, and even now, many worlds borrow his power and use it.]
Roughly speaking, he must be a distant ancestor of the Biologist.
Judging from the earlier example of civilizational assimilation, it could be said that this being served as the motif for all abilities similar to his.
“So, what’s their weakness?”
[The Galat's Serpent, mainly used for reconnaissance, is...]
Since Akasha’s world had been interacting with the outside for far longer than the Cradle had, she provided much more detailed information than what Monarch or Turan had managed to scrape together by scanning the world barrier.
According to her, the blood techniques Monarch had identified were nothing more than basic-level skills.
Those who had truly mastered the art could do endlessly varied things by utilizing the spirituality contained in human blood and flesh.
Of course, that guy wouldn't be getting the chance to learn such things anymore.
After that, the conversation moved to other recently invading worlds, such as the Light Stream Realm and the True Dragon Realm, and finally to the current greatest threat: the Phantom Beast Realm.
[The Phantom Beast Realm is the world where all animal-shaped lifeforms were first born. It is ruled by the Queen of Beasts, her four self-born children, illegitimate offspring born between her and other divine beings, and their descendants.]
“How powerful are they?”
Turan’s question was answered by Akasha in a flat, emotionless voice that sounded almost mocking.
[Unless it’s one of the Queen’s illegitimate children, it would probably be difficult just to repel even one of her four children.]
“That strong, huh.”
[Yes. And according to our analysis, one of them is headed toward your world. The bird that devours the moon.]
Each of the Queen’s four children held a different role.
The Wolf who Protects, the Snake who Rules, the Horse who Delivers, and the Bird who Scouts.
The Bird who Swallows the Moon was their scout. It scattered its avatars, called Uruka, across countless worlds, and when it found an open and vulnerable one, it would descend directly to harvest it.
[For that reason, it is called in many worlds the End Bird, or the Beast of World’s Demise.]
“You don’t happen to know when it will arrive, do you?”
[No. It must pass through several worlds with different time flows, and the greater a being’s spiritual rank, the harder it is to cross between worlds. But if you close the nearest corridor, it should buy you quite a bit of time.]
The Phantom Beast Realm was one of the stronger worlds relatively close to the Cradle, but even then, it would need to pass through at least twelve corridors, making it quite distant.
And just as Akasha had proposed, if several of the corridors were blocked, it would force the invaders to pass through almost twenty or more worlds to reach them.
“But why are they targeting a place so far away? Are there not enough tempting worlds closer by?”
[The material composing this barrier world is of an extremely unique type not found in any other world. And beyond it lies a world inhabited by 8 billion undeveloped intelligent lifeforms. Practically no resistance capability to speak of.]
Akasha’s voice, answering Solif’s question, carried no emotion, yet Turan could sense desire behind it.
If Turan had been weak, he had no doubt that these beings would have been among the invaders trampling the Cradle and Earth.
“So... the reason you’re telling me all this, the reason you want that creature repelled... is because you want it stopped?”
[Correct.]
The reason they were so one-sided in providing knowledge and pushing to shut down the corridor connected to them.
It was because they hoped that the bird that devours the moon would either be destroyed in this world, or fail in its invasion.
Most likely, if the Phantom Beast Realm became too powerful, it would endanger the smaller adjacent worlds, and that was what they feared.
In other words, they were trying to indirectly use the Cradle for their own purposes.
But as long as it was mutually beneficial, that didn’t matter.
[To offer some consolation, if you succeed in repelling the bird that devours the moon, there will be almost no external powers trying to touch this world afterward.]
“Because anything beyond that wouldn’t be worth the cost?”
[Yes.]
Just as the heads of wizard houses in Turan’s world couldn’t carelessly leave their bases, the most powerful transcendents in each world couldn’t easily leave their own due to the threat of invasion.
And any world that even these top-tier beings couldn't or wouldn’t bother invading was automatically regarded as too powerful to be worth the attempt.
In short, the bird that devours the moon’s invasion was a kind of proving ground.
A test to determine whether the Cradle World could maintain its sovereignty among the countless worlds dangling from the dimensional corridors.
***
Turan used the tools obtained from his negotiations with Akasha to seal off several dimensional corridors.
No one could say exactly when the bird that devours the moon would arrive.
Considering it had taken about seven years to cross over previously, it was assumed that this time it would take several times longer.
If they were lucky, it might be centuries later. If unlucky, not much different from the last invasion.
Either way, their task remained the same.
They had to gain enough power to defend themselves before the enemy arrived.
And to do that, humanity had to be cultivated and revived with even greater urgency.
Not by taking occasional breaks and relaxing, but with everything they had.
“Wait, there’s a path... in the mountains?”
“It is His Majesty the Emperor’s blessing. Your job from today is to lay the railway here.”
The workers clicked their tongues at the sight of the mountains north of Kalamaf split open.
It was hard to believe that this passage stretched for dozens of kilometers all the way to the Carmine hills.
They had known that powerful wizards could perform godlike miracles, but carving a path tens of kilometers long through a mountain range in a single night was beyond imagination.
“It all feels kind of pointless.”
“Why?”
“If His Majesty the Emperor has that kind of power, wouldn’t the entire railway be laid with just a wave of his hand?”
“His Majesty only has one body. You think he can waste time on every minor task? It’s guys like us who need to work hard.”
“True enough.”
The grumbling worker gave a sheepish look in response to his companions.
After all, it was thanks to the empire providing them jobs like this, with salaries, that they could earn a living.
Almost everyone agreed that life had improved since the empire’s restoration.
Wizards, once limited by their natural-born limits, could now grow through hard work, and commoners no longer had to live in fear of wizard disputes or magical beast invasions.
Bandits and thieves, once rampant across the mountains, fields, and seas, no longer had the upper hand these days.
“There! Those bastards!”
“Get them!”
“Uwaaaaagh!”
Wizards swiftly subduing a gang of bandits armed with illegal firearms.
Originally, aside from a few groups of wandering wizards who had lost their base or those on pilgrimage to acquire magic power, most wizards remained confined within their own family estates. But that changed after the founding of the Empire.
Just like the magical beast hunting parties, several groups of wizards emerged who specialized in hunting down criminals to earn achievements.
And they didn’t go so far as to falsely accuse innocent commoners of being bandits and kill them just to boost their records.
If they did, they wouldn’t be able to answer honestly during the Ascension Ritual at the Ascension Altar.
Though it wasn’t officially announced, it was widely known that those who could give righteous answers to the questions posed by the Ascension Altar’s judge were assigned easier tasks.
In other words, a high-ranking wizard had to be a highly moral individual.
A world where the highborn worked hard and watched over the lowborn.
It could be described as nothing less than a paradise on Earth.
Naturally, all of this was thanks to the efforts of Turan and the upper echelons.
Their efforts over the past few years were almost too great to describe, working tirelessly, as if the fire were already lit under their feet, to shape and cultivate the world.
They wielded immense power to govern the world, rule its people, and spread new knowledge and culture from Earth.
At some point, a powerful enemy would surely come, and knowing that, there was no room for complacency.
Except for a few hours of sleep to relieve mental fatigue, they worked and worked again, without even a moment’s rest.
And in the course of such efforts, so intense that even ten bodies wouldn’t be enough, there were naturally areas that received less attention.
“Your Majesty.”
“What is it? If it’s about the matter I mentioned before, report it to Ashiz-”
“His Highness the Crown Prince has gone missing.”
“What?”
“When we checked his residence, there were signs he packed his belongings. It doesn’t appear to be a kidnapping, he seems to have left on his own.”
Turan, dozing on the throne with a tired face, looked utterly dumbfounded at the official’s report.
In the fifteenth year of the Imperial Calendar, he received his first report of his adolescent son running away from home.
*****
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