Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2456 Beings

"Haaah..." An undead moved slowly through the middle of the street, dragging himself forward at an unhurried pace with his back noticeably hunched, yet despite his miserable physical state, he continued glancing around at everything surrounding him with an unmistakable air of pride and superiority...

He was proud, genuinely proud, that his decaying body still retained a respectable amount of flesh rather than having already been reduced to bare bones, and even more importantly, that one of his eyes was still sitting inside its socket. True, that eye had long since turned completely white, without a trace of its original color remaining, and several worms could clearly be seen wriggling around inside it, but regardless of such insignificant details, the eye was still there, and that alone seemed more than enough for him to show off.

Bam But while he was moving forward with that ridiculous sense of pride, he suddenly collided with something solid enough to abruptly stop him in his tracks, and immediately afterward, he heard an irritated voice snap, "Get lost!"

Poof The undead was sent tumbling heavily toward the side of the road, and from the force of the fall, his precious remaining eye popped straight out of its socket and flew some distance away. "Ooooh!!" He hurriedly stretched out his hand and began feeling around the ground in alarm until his fingers finally found the missing eye, after which he immediately picked it up and shoved it back into its proper place before turning furiously toward whoever had dared collide with him. "Gaaaah!!" He looked completely prepared to fight to the dea— well, perhaps that wasn't the most appropriate expression here; he was prepared to fight until one of them could no longer tolerate the losses and finally decided to leave.

However, all of the undead's enthusiasm for the approaching confrontation suddenly vanished without a trace, and the expression drawn across his simple leathery face rapidly changed from fury into unmistakable terror as he finally took a proper look at the figure standing before him.

He had seen a human... not a corpse retaining a vaguely human shape, nor someone halfway through some strange transformation, but a complete human with an apparently complete body and a soul that also seemed completely intact, an actual living human!

Someone like this should have been eaten almost immediately after the moment he arrived on this planet, without even having enough time to wander very far, yet this human was moving around right in front of him without the slightest concern, strolling through the surroundings as casually and naturally as though he were simply taking a walk through his own backyard.

And also... what was going on with that aura?

Why was the aura of death surrounding this clearly living human so incredibly dense and overwhelming, so similar to the aura belonging to that undead General he'd happened to see 7,621 years ago that the ancient memory suddenly resurfaced in his sluggish mind?

"....." The undead's already limited mind completely stopped functioning for a while, leaving him standing stiffly in the exact same place without moving until the human finally disappeared completely from his sight, and only then did he gradually begin walking again with that same proud, swaggering manner from before, except that this time he was confidently heading in the exact opposite direction.

"Tsk~" Caesar continued walking through the dead city with obvious annoyance written across his face, deliberately releasing his aura of death to a carefully controlled degree as he moved, enough to make the road around him clear itself naturally and ensure that any pointless conversations or troublesome encounters were prevented before they even had the chance to begin.

Then, while he continued forward through the strange streets, a familiar voice suddenly sounded directly inside his head: <You're currently on an adventure inside a city of the dead in the Mid Belt of the Necrofortress Galaxy, yet instead of feeling terrified by everything around you, and instead of being consumed by greed over what you might find here, you're simply walking around looking annoyed? Even I'm starting to get annoyed by your attitude.>

"Mortex, I really am annoyed, but my annoyance has nothing to do with the adventure itself. I'm annoyed because of you." Caesar replied while continuing forward without slowing down, both hands casually tucked inside his pockets as though the surrounding city of death had nothing whatsoever to do with him. "Why did you specifically ask me to land on this particular planet? We barely moved away from another planet in a nearby solar system just a few weeks ago. Wouldn't it have been better for us to go considerably deeper before stopping again?"

Then, Bam, Caesar casually kicked a skeleton directly in the backside when it happened to wander into his path. "Get out of my way!" Without giving the unfortunate skeleton another glance, he continued, "At this rate, I won't even finish exploring the galaxy before the deadline!!"

<The previous planet was the last truly important stop for your development within the outer half of the galaxy, so why are you complaining about stopping there? Don't you feel that you've changed and progressed more during this relatively short period than you managed to develop by yourself over the last few centuries?>

"...I won't deny that." Caesar shrugged lightly, unable to argue against that particular point despite his irritation.

Mortex had been the one who pushed him to land on the previous planet in the first place and then gave him a very specific mission after his arrival; he'd instructed Caesar to fight a leader who had forced an entire herd of undead to follow him, defeat that leader and take his place as the new leader of the herd, then simply wander around with those undead for a period of no less than half a year.

By the end of that extremely strange mission, after crushing the original leader and then spending an entire half year moving around alongside those things wherever they wandered, constantly observing them and even sleeping among them... Caesar had distinctly felt the Death portion within his Integrated Law rise until it reached an astonishing 36%.

At the end of that period, after those six months of strange coexistence finally came to an end, Caesar was told to use a technique containing that exact proportion of the Major Law of Death directly upon the herd that had been following him all this time.

Caesar did exactly as he'd been instructed, fully expecting their strength to rise after being exposed to his power, expecting the undead to become agitated or undergo some obvious change, and perhaps even expecting them to finally regard the person who'd led them for half a year as their true king.

But instead of any of those expectations coming true, they died.

They truly and completely died, every one of them collapsing exactly where they stood and turning into nothing more than piles of weathered old bones, without the slightest remaining trace of movement or even the faintest whisper coming from among them. Their strange existence had finally reached its end, and after wandering around in defiance of their proper state for who knew how long, they returned to what they were supposed to have been all along, nothing more than a part of the earth beneath them.

Caesar had stood there that day for quite some time, silently staring at the remains scattered around him while repeatedly reviewing and examining in his mind the strange power he had just unleashed.

It was merely an attack unleashed by a Martial Emperor, an attack that didn't contain any particularly overwhelming amount of energy or display the kind of destructive force that would immediately draw attention... but Caesar had witnessed countless battles throughout his life and personally commanded more wars than he could possibly count, so his judgment regarding destructive power was anything but inexperienced, and he knew with absolute certainty that this seemingly ordinary attack was enough to directly end the life of a World Cataclysm.

It wouldn't merely injure that World Cataclysm or leave it struggling with severe wounds, nor would it simply threaten its life and force it to retreat... it would end that life directly, granting its target nothing more than a quiet and astonishingly swift death.

After that day, once Caesar had personally experienced his newfound power and clearly understood just how much the Death portion of his Integrated Law had changed, he finally left that strange planet behind and continued toward the inner half of the galaxy, feeling both optimistic about what awaited him ahead and genuinely pleased with everything he'd managed to achieve during his time there.

In his imagination, the next stage of the journey was already fairly obvious: he would continue cutting through space aboard his small vessel, crossing one region after another until he reached somewhere near the final quarter of the galaxy, and only then would Mortex finally tell him to descend onto another planet, just as he'd done before. After all, Mortex hadn't made Caesar bother with landing on the first planet he'd encountered upon entering the galaxy, nor had he asked him to waste time descending onto random worlds throughout the galaxy's outer rings like nearly all ordinary visitors did.

But reality turned out completely different from what Caesar had imagined, because Mortex had actually told him to stop at the very first planet they encountered after entering the inner half!

Yes, this planet was undeniably large, and yes, its aura of death was so dense and obvious that it radiated outward from the planet itself and could be sensed even from space... but even with those facts in mind, was the difference between this planet and the previous one really so enormous that it justified stopping their journey and making him descend here immediately?

<You're thinking far too much about something that doesn't require this much thought, even though I already told you to simply leave your head to me and let me use it in whatever way I see fit.> Mortex's voice returned inside Caesar's mind, carrying the same confidence as before. <I'm personally giving you instructions and guiding you through this place step by step, so tell me, who else could possibly be more useful to you inside the Necrofortress Galaxy than me?>

"Sorry, but I still don't know anything about you except your name, Voice." Caesar replied while casually kicking two more figures that happened to wander into his path, sending them aside without even slowing his steps. "Besides, I'm a Marshal. I'm the one who gives orders; I don't take them."

Then Caesar abruptly stopped in the middle of the street and squatted down in front of someone who was still undergoing the transformation, a person whose condition had already progressed so far that his heart only managed a single beat every few minutes. Caesar looked directly at him and asked without ceremony, "Hey, rag, where's the market?"

"....." The Crosser slowly raised his head toward Caesar. His right eye was completely missing, while a clear bite mark remained visible on his neck, and he focused his remaining gray eye on Caesar's face for several long seconds without showing any intention of speaking. Eventually, he simply raised his left hand with equally slow movements and pointed toward a certain direction, never uttering a single word from beginning to end.

"Thanks. Get back to doing nothing." Caesar immediately sprang back to his feet and resumed walking in the indicated direction, every one of his steps filled with the unmistakable strength, energy, and vitality of youth, something so conspicuously alive that it had been absent from this place for hundreds of thousands of years.

"....!!" The Crosser quickly closed his remaining eye as Caesar moved away and swallowed hard, then instinctively placed one hand over his own barely beating heart, as though checking it and reassuring himself that it was still there.

He had arrived in the Necrofortress Galaxy 780,000 years ago and had remained here throughout all that unimaginable length of time, yet this was the first time he'd ever experienced the terrifying sensation of true death itself staring directly into his eye in such a manner.

<When did I ever give you orders?> Mortex spoke again after a short while, clearly unwilling to accept Caesar's accusation. <All I've done is give you instructions regarding suitable landing locations and methods that can help increase your affinity. Just think of me as a guide accompanying you throughout this journey until you safely reach its end.>

"Whatever." Caesar continued along the road until he'd followed it all the way to its end, then turned as directed, and the moment he saw the new scene waiting ahead, a smile finally appeared on his face. "Take your time thinking about the next mission while I look around for something good here, but make sure you keep it reasonable and quick. I have to return before the promotion."

<I don't know whether you'll actually manage to return in time for that, but...> Mortex's voice gradually became deeper as he continued, <your mission on this particular planet won't take very long. Its purpose is merely to introduce you to certain beings that you'll be seeing quite frequently once you continue traveling throughout the inner half of the galaxy.>

"Oh?" Caesar's steps immediately quickened as he headed toward the market, and the smile already on his face widened further as he began seeing what was inside it. "What kind of beings are they?"

<...The jinn.>