Chapter 170: Past

“So the magic wasn’t developed by the Empire?”

“No. I was surprised by their magic because they started with nothing and soon came to develop it.”

“I thought you taught them?”

Lagaope shook his head.

“I was an expert on biological engineering. I had no knowledge about magic back then. I knew how to use it, but that’s different from knowing how to make it. There was an expert on that. People liked using artifacts to use magic than actually learn magic. I just told what I heard to Conrad and Takion and they made it from that. It was much weaker though.”

“Oh. Was it that strong?”

“Yes. We even had an idea to create a flying island. But we gave up on that.”

“Why is that?”

“Its dragging power increases. We did manage to find a resolution for that, but there were some terrible things living up in the clouds.”

“…”

“They can’t come down, but we had to give up. They attacked by throwing lightning at us as soon as we went up. Broxian thought about wiping them out, but they ran further up so he couldn’t do it.”

“Oh…”

Stories of one living in the clouds and one going after them didn’t seem like a normal story.

“Anyway, so those artifacts you had were items that we distributed to our soldiers. Those who didn’t break the wall needed something to fight with to dampen the damage. I had some in store at the laboratory so I took them out with me. I was only a Baron so I needed one.”

“…”

“It was called Divine Military Arms – AP-4, but that name was too dull so I made one up. How do you like my naming sense?”

“…”

“Don’t look at me like that. So… what do you think we did after conquering the west?”

“Uh… take a break?”

“You should look at it from a regular person’s perspective, not with yours. Say, you have enormous power and you are protected by a Guardian who kills anything that’s really troublesome. What would you do?”

“Go to the east,” Stiel answered instead.

“You are correct, Stiel.”

“Yeah, I know how it feels. I almost did it when I ruled. I wanted to train instead so I gave up on it.”

“…”

“So we went to the east… Oh, and the east means this place. The west is gone now.”

“…”

“Don’t look so sad. It’s really long past in history.”

“Go on.”

“Yes. So we looked to the east… and found it wasn’t worth it.”

“Huh?”

“We didn’t find any races that were worth ruling over. Besides, there was a ruler here.”

“And those are…”

“The Gerna. They had invaded the continent already.”

“Oh.”

“But it didn’t matter. The Gerna could not take over the ones with the Divine Blood.”

“So they tried to wipe them out.”

“Yes, but we didn’t do that.”

“Because it wasn’t worth it?”

“Yes… and the children of God didn’t want it. They didn’t want to live in the countryside.”

“…”

“The trend was to live closer to Broxian. Everyone wanted to live together in the Broshan Nation where Broxian used to live. Nobody wanted to go far out into the countryside away from Broxian.”

“Oh. So what happened?”

“What can you do? We didn’t do it.”

Yet they still needed to know about the race as they needed as much information as possible about Betas to proceed with their project.

“So we built two structures. One was the laboratory you saw, Aksarum. It means a place that studies the truth. We researched various projects there. I was there too.”

The reason for its placement in the east was to study about races in the east. Sian then realized why there were so many Betas inside. They were captured for the testing and had not been released since then.

“What about the other one?”

“You know about the place well, Mister Sian.”

“Huh? You don’t say…”

“Yes. It’s <Apental>.”

“…Why the hell did you make that place?”

Lagaope laughed bitterly and spoke.

“When you experiment, you get a lot of trash and failures.”

“…”

“You never know when you might need it so that’s why we created <Apental>. It looks crude but it’s a large scale dimensional prison that we made with the best technology at the time. All of those failed races were thrown in there.”

“There were… millions of monsters there,” Sian bitterly commented.

“We didn’t put all of them in. It’s a dimensional place so it captures some spiritual beings and they probably reproduced inside. But we did put in a lot.”

Sian now knew why those monsters inside had such hostility and evil energy. If they were locked up for countless years, they would surely develop such hostility.

“Well, you freed those races in those two places. I wanted to free them from their curse but they were too strong.”

It was definitely a curse to be locked up in such places for eternity. Lagaope wanted to do something about it, but it was good that it was solved in the end.

Stiel then asked, “So, what did you find out about the east?”

Lagaope sighed.

“We did find something.”

They discovered something weird when they studied the Gerna. The Gerna and other races didn’t think about going to the south. They tried to ask, but the unintelligent beings weren’t smart enough to answer and these Gerna were so proud that they decided to self-explode than cooperate when captured.

People then created an expedition to search the south and walked until they were met with a great mountain.

It was enormous but it had no life. The surrounding beneath the mountain was full of forests, but the mountain itself didn’t even have any grass. They became curious and started climbing the mountain. There, they realized why nothing was living on this mountain.

<Ugh…!>

<Fall back! This place is dangerous!>

The expedition group wasn’t formed with just anybody. However, as soon as they stepped on the mountain, they fell as their all their body organs started twisting and swirling. The stronger ones managed to walk further, in but even they fell with the same feeling.

<Inner rating is reversing!>

<What is this place…!>

The place later called the <Mountain of Extreme> had crumbled the human’s inside chaotically. Everything inside turned to poison, then turned to medicine. Every passage within was paralyzed and then returned back. Muscles flexed and relaxed on their own. This change became worse as they walked closer to the top.

Then they concluded it was impossible to climb the mountain so they divided themselves into three groups to go around it.

One went to the west while one went to the east. Another team decided to take the sea route.

These three groups were annihilated.

The group to the west was attacked by a reptile-like fourth stage Beta that lived at <Sky Mountain> or beyond the Mountain of Extreme, which was later called <Dragona>.

The group to the east went inside the <Great Forest> and was attacked by a mammal-like fourth stage Beta later called <Chrona>.

The group that went toward the <Great Western Sea> was attacked by an amphibian-like fourth stage Beta that was later called <Liona>.

The lands beyond Mountain of Extreme were then labeled as the land of the beasts, a forbidden place for humans to go near. It would be simple if God had pulled up his sleeves, but he wasn’t interested in Betas. Moreover, the fourth stage Betas were too much for even the nation to handle so they decided to leave them be.

Yet, they needed to go to the Mountain of Extreme and check on what beings lived there.

There was life living within.