Chapter 1171
Dida La, face dark and brooding, glared at Arno walking behind Morgan. He let the flames in his hand dissipate, snorted coldly, and strode off elsewhere.
On the human side, no one acknowledged anyone else's authority. Even though Dida La had broken through to Sky Rank, his prestige wasn't what it was when they first entered the Blazeforge Realm. Especially now, with two Sky Rank members from the Henry Family, even Dida La didn't dare provoke them lightly.
As for Arno's breakthrough to Sky Rank, there was nothing anyone could do about it. All those capable of completing the Final Transcendental Transformation had already ascended. Leon himself didn't need the Golden Transcendence Potion, and his subordinates—Hubert and Reina—had such powerful bloodlines that they could likely advance without any potion.
The legion mages of the Mage Corps were still far from reaching Sky Rank, so they didn't need the potion at all.
So Arno was the only one left who could attempt the Final Transcendental Transformation. This opportunity could only fall to the Henry Family.
Of course, this had absolutely nothing to do with Morgan dumping a small mountain of rare magical materials into Leon's hands after spending a fortune...
Other factions had gotten their share of benefits, more or less, so this slot could only go to Arno of the Henry Family...
Everyone either argued among themselves or started fighting with the orcs after a round of shouting...
But none of this really had much to do with Leon. Nearly every day, Leon holed up in his demi-plane, researching Divine Flame Embers.
All the magic crystals were used to craft Golden Transcendence Potion, and anything left over was devoured by the Divine Flame Embers, which hung in the sky like a miniature sun.
Gradually, the Divine Flame Embers grew larger, and the brilliance they cast over the demi-plane intensified. More and more changes began to appear in the demi-plane.
New plants began to sprout, with more species than before. Some simple life forms also started to emerge in the seas and lakes of the land.
These were true lifeforms nurtured within the demi-plane; even if they barely differed from plants, it was still a promising beginning.
As the Divine Flame Embers slowly grew stronger, changes began to take shape...
As time passed, the Blazeforge Battlefield reached its closing moment. This time, the end came peacefully.
At the center of the battlefield, in front of the temple, stood an ancient gate radiating a halo. The copper-red door was ringed with white light swirling into a vortex, and dense spatial pathways spread out all around.
One by one, people crossed into the gate of light, disappearing from the Blazeforge Battlefield.
Elsewhere, in the Blazeforge Realm, the influx of powerful warriors into the battlefield kept shifting the balance of power.
The orc army suffered defeat after defeat. Once the humans broke through into their heartland, they seized vast territories and resources along the way.
With vast new supplies and resources, the human army grew ever stronger. Many new champions emerged, while the Blazeforge Orcs were forced back toward the Sacred Mountain.
All the Blazeforge Orcs retreated into the Sacred Mountain, but then a colossal disaster struck...
Suddenly, the Sacred Mountain came alive. A terrifying presence awakened beneath it, and all kinds of calamities began to erupt.
At the edge of the Blazeforge Realm, vegetation vanished at breakneck speed, endless yellow sand overwhelmed everything, and rivers of flame turned wild. Floods raged, and countless resentful spirits from the River of Souls surged onto the land.
The once-blue sky was now veiled in smoky gray. The sun was lost from sight, and meteors crashed down, bringing endless disaster.
Huge spatial rifts appeared in the sky, like a colossal mouth torn open. Spatial storms, void storms, elemental storms...
All manner of apocalyptic disasters spewed from these rifts. Every element of the Blazeforge Realm was steeped in a sense of death and burning heat.
The ground split with massive fissures. Land plates cracked and collided, shattering and smashing again and again—huge rifts scarred the earth.
Some of these fissures stretched thousands of kilometers. Within their pitch-black depths, evil power churned, and searing, violent magma erupted onto the surface.
The entire Blazeforge Realm was plunged into an apocalyptic nightmare...
When Leon and the others emerged from the Blazeforge Battlefield, the first thing they saw was the sky shrouded in black mist, and those enormous space rifts stretching for kilometers.
The air was saturated with wild elemental power—no mage could meditate here. Once those elements entered the body, they rampaged like mad destroyers, tearing apart everything in their path.
Stepping out of the teleportation gate and taking in the scene, everyone was stunned.
Leon’s face was pale with shock. Images of the apocalypse flashed through his mind—it was exactly like the devastation before him in the Blazeforge Realm.
Those space rifts, like wounds in the sky, pierced straight into the void. The void storms raging in the Blazeforge Realm—he knew them too well...
When he first stepped out, feeling the scorching air and the aura of death, Leon almost thought he'd returned to the apocalypse.
On closer inspection, it was indeed the Blazeforge Realm—only now it was rapidly plunging into its doomsday phase.
The frequency of upheaval on the earth was far greater than in the Northend World, and those massive space rifts in the sky were even more violent than they had been during Northend's apocalypse.
The Northend World had a Sanctuary Tower that slowed the coming of the apocalypse, but the Blazeforge Realm had no such protection. The entire realm seemed to be collapsing at breakneck speed.
Gorsposi stared at the scene, face frozen in terror.
"Impossible! How could this happen? Damn it, could the legends of the ancient god-demon be true? We're finished—it's over. The ancient god-demon sleeping beneath the Sacred Mountain is about to awaken..."
[Irrelevant navigation instructions skipped.]
As the royal clan of the Blazeforge Orcs, the Golden Orc Tribe is not only the strongest, but also holds many of the Blazeforge Realm's secrets.
For every expedition into the Blazeforge Battlefield, the Golden Orcs know the most, because almost every Golden Orc who enters manages to survive.
Their experiences are the most precious wealth. As for other orc tribes, many times their strongest warriors never return from the Blazeforge Battlefield.
War and catastrophe have left the other tribes with only scraps of knowledge about the Blazeforge Battlefield—none know as much as the Golden Orcs.
Gorsposi was the first to react to the apocalyptic scene before them, as if he knew something others did not.
The seven other Sky Rank orcs, eyes red with anxiety, crowded around Gorsposi.
"Gorsposi, we need the truth. What the hell is happening to this world? Why is this happening? Hasn't the demon overlord still not broken free of the temporal seal? Wasn't there supposed to be a hundred years left?
So why is this happening now? What's wrong with the Sacred Mountain, with the Blazeforge Realm? Why has it all come to this?"
A look of despair and pain flickered in Gorsposi's eyes.
"The ancient god-demon—it must be that ancient god-demon. It's waking up!
I always thought those legends were just stories, born from the terror of that dreadful demon overlord. I never imagined they were true.
When war expands and the realm's source is activated, the ancient god-demon sleeping beneath the Sacred Mountain begins to awaken. It will devour the Blazeforge Realm's mana to resurrect itself.
The life, magic, and even the very source of the Blazeforge Realm will be consumed by the awakening god-demon—that's when it will be reborn.
I once saw a few scattered records in ancient tomes. Back then, I thought our ancestors' fear of the demon overlord had led them to call him an ancient god-demon.
That passage—I never took it seriously. I never thought it would come to this..."
The Blazeforge Realm had entered apocalypse mode. Everyone feared for those left behind and rushed back to their own territories.
Leon hurried back to the Four Seasons Plain, reviewing everything that had happened over the past few months. A sudden chill gripped his heart.
Ancient god-demon...
Memories buried deep in Leon's mind suddenly surfaced, and a look of shock flashed across his face.
During the destruction of the Northend World, no one ever found the truth about this. The records treated it as a widespread legend—no one expected it to be real.
According to the records, a primordial god-demon slept beneath the Blazeforge Realm, and the wars of conquest awakened the realm's source.
That awakening roused the ancient god-demon beneath the Blazeforge Realm. It devoured the realm's mana, slowly killing the world.
When the Blazeforge Realm finally became a dead world, the ancient god-demon would be reborn—the only one to survive after the age of gods and demons.
Ultimately, the records say the Blazeforge Realm would become a dead world, all life and magic gone, leaving only a desolate, lifeless shell.
The biggest uncertainty in these accounts was that the god-demon who revived was not one of the Seventy-Two God-Demons.
It wasn't even one of the god-demons with any recorded mention. Every god-demon had its own name and title, but this ancient god-demon seemed to appear out of nowhere.
But there was no mistaking a god-demon—their power was utterly distinct from all other beings. Only a true god-demon could wield such force.
This ancient god-demon, not among the Seventy-Two, was later called the Seventy-Third God-Demon by the most powerful mages of the future.
Among those who studied the Seventy-Third God-Demon, many were mages who had surpassed Sky Rank, some as powerful as the god-demons themselves.
Yet after countless studies, no clues were ever found. In the end, whether the Seventy-Third God-Demon truly existed remained a great mystery.