The Era of Gods

Chapter 324: The Ace Up Bernie’s Sleeve, Child of Nightmare

Bernie said coldly,

“If we don’t use it, we will die now, and if we are defeated, this artifact will fall into the hands of the enemy. I believe the Leader of Gainer would agree with the decision I have made.”

The other two Children of Nightmare remained silent, or rather, one of them, Gould, had not responded at all.

Seeing that his companions did not object, Bernie took a deep breath and said,

“In that case, we should temporarily retreat. I’ll go activate the artifact!”

Isaiah responded,

“I will also withdraw troops.”

After waiting a while and still not getting a response from Gould, the two Children of Nightmare tried to communicate with him, only to find that his presence was extremely unstable, flickering as if it were on the verge of collapse.

At the same time, on the battlefield, the Nightmare Legion belonging to Gould was beginning to show signs of restlessness.

The two Children of Nightmare exchanged glances, just about to say something, when suddenly and without warning, the Nightmare Legion belonging to Gould began to retreat from the battlefield.

This turn of events greatly surprised the two Children of Nightmare, and even Lin Xiao was extremely taken aback by this unexpected development.

Only after Bernie asked repeatedly, with an increasingly stern tone, did Gould reluctantly reply,

“A Legendary Giant Beast that my Field previously subdued has gone out of control. I need to return with the main force to repress it.”

Bernie sounded somewhat incredulous,

“Your True Body can’t suppress it?”

“Cannot suppress it.”

After a long silence, Bernie waved his hand and said,

“Go ahead.”

The other Child of Nightmare, Isaiah, asked,

“Lord Bernie, shall we go have a look?”

Bernie shook his head,

“No need to bother, under the current circumstances, with or without him the result would be the same. Since we have decided to trigger the artifact, his absence won’t matter. However, since he has not contributed, we will later strip him of his right to share in the spoils of war.”

Then, the remaining two Children of Nightmare each left behind a portion of their subordinates to cover the rear and withdrew their main forces.

The Lord of Nagas and the Lesser Naga Union Army, after wiping out the retreating Nightmare Legion, joined forces with the Goblins Mage Group of Wisdom that had just left the city 20 kilometers away and advanced towards the Domain junction.

Since it was clear that the enemy could not defeat them, it was time for a counterattack!

Lin Xiao left some of his Clan to guard the Divine Realm, including two Legendary Naga Lords, while the remaining five Legendary Satellites joined the army on the offensive, targeting Bernie’s Nightmare Divine Realm.

To capture the thieves, capture the king first; take out the Leader first.

However, when the troops arrived at the junction of the Fields, they found that the connection had been sealed by an incredibly powerful force. Although not to the extent that it could not be broken through, it was certain that it would take no short amount of time to open.

He looked perplexedly at the two other Nightmare Fields, the left one similarly being sealed temporarily, while the right one, which belonged to the first to retreat, Gould, was not sealed.

After assessing the seals that the enemy had put all their effort into laying on their Domains, even if he used up all his stored Divine Power, he couldn’t break through in a short time.

This short time was measured in hours.

“Then, let’s go take a look over there!”

The main force shifted direction, rapidly approaching the Field junction where Gould was.

This Child of Nightmare named Gould seemed to have retreated in a hurry. After retreating, he didn’t assign any subordinates to guard the connection points, and Lin Xiao sensed that there were no Nightmare Creatures near the gaps between the two worlds.

“What kind of trick is this? Is it the Empty Fort Strategy or a trap to lure the enemy deeper?”

This behavior, which was completely illogical, indeed made Lin Xiao hesitate to act rashly. After consideration, he sent a Wise Goblin Mage with a squad of Lesser Naga Scouts to go in together.

Soon, he shared the vision of the Clan squad and saw that the other side of the rift was empty, without anything even connected to it, and even the Nightmare Power nearby seemed thin, as if the place had been abandoned.

What surprised him the most was that he could barely feel any natural suppression coming from the Nightmare Field.

That is to say, the Child of Nightmare’s gaze was not focused here.

While it wasn’t like the innate rule suppression found in Demigods, if the Child of Nightmare’s gaze were here, the power of the Field would naturally converge and suppress the enemy. But now, there was no such feeling at all.

Furthermore, through the perspective of the Clan squad, he faintly sensed a terrifying will in the depths of the Nightmare Field that made his heart palpitate.

Fear, madness-inducing fear.

Merely perceiving it caused the Wise Goblin Mage, who served as his medium of perception, to vaguely feel discomfort.

“Boom!”

A heavy sense of spatial tremor swept over the Clan exploration team like a faint spatial ripple. Without seeing or hearing anything, the moment the ripple passed, everyone’s minds conjured up an image of a colossal species, akin to a planet, smashing heavily into the Earth, resulting in ripples that twisted space itself due to an unimaginable mass and force impacting the Divine Realm.

“What kind of terrifying existence is this?”

This feeling…

Lin Xiao was certain it was real, not an illusion.

His gaze lingered ominously toward the depths of the terrifying Nightmare Realm. He issued a new order, sending out five exploration teams, each composed of two Wise Goblin official Mages and a dozen Lesser Nagas. They entered the Nightmare Realm in different directions, guided by his will.

Silence, nothing but silence.

The field was eerily still, as if it had lost the presence of the Children of Nightmare, similar to the Nightmare Realm Lin Xiao had devoured after killing one such child. Although the feeling wasn’t quite there yet, Lin Xiao sensed a tendency toward it.

He could now be fairly sure that something major must have happened within the Nightmare Realm. The deathly stillness before him was likely not a pretense designed to lure him.

As the five exploration teams ventured deeper into the Nightmare Realm, they discovered nothing, no Nightmare Creatures, just the ever-oppressive and gloomy aura of Nightmare within the Void. However, the sensation of approaching a terrifying Giant Beast grew stronger and stronger.

Unaware, the fastest exploration team traveled about twenty or thirty kilometers into the realm and arrived near a cliff formation, both cautious and puzzled.

The team stood on the cliff’s edge, looking forward through the not-so-thick fog, seeing terrain resembling a sinkhole canyon—where a flat surface abruptly dips to form a canyon. The distant opposite side of the canyon was faintly visible.

The edge of the canyon wasn’t steep; was it… a slope?

An oddly shaped slope caught Lin Xiao’s attention. Its surface curvature seemed all too familiar, appearing like…

An incredulous thought suddenly surfaced in his mind.

This sinkhole canyon…

He ordered the Mages to fly up and survey the canyon from above, growing more astonished by the moment.

“Crap, what is this?”

From above, the canyon resembled an imprint created by the rolling of some super-colossal spherical body crushing the Earth.

Unbelievable, but it indeed looked strikingly similar.

The five exploration teams split into three groups; two headed left along the canyon, two right, and one crossed the sinkhole to continue forward.

Half an hour later, a team from the right reported something unusual. Lin Xiao’s will descended immediately to see the sinkhole canyon suddenly become chaotic, revealing a vast area of sunken and pockmarked terrain stretching into the distant unknown, marked with countless terrifying signs of battle.

Although no material remnants remained on the battlefield, the aura of a recent and desperate struggle could still be felt.

From the residual marks of battle and the disordered terrain, Lin Xiao confirmed that an indescribably massive creature had indeed fought with a Child of Nightmare of this realm.

Yes, synthesizing the information at hand, it was clear that, for some unknown reason, an enormous creature had appeared within this Child of Nightmare’s realm, one that even the Child of Nightmare could not handle, resulting in this horrific scene.

Just then, bizarre noises suddenly resonated from the far chaos of the land, followed by an invisible force that began to siphon the Nightmare aura from the Void, converging in the distance. The concentration of Nightmare essence in the world plummeted.

Then, accompanied by a deafening boom, the distant land swelled outward and then quickly retracted to its original state, as an infinite black Nightmare aura spread out like a tide in all directions.

At that moment, Lin Xiao could feel the extreme instability in the space of the Nightmare Realm. The vast domain seemed on the verge of collapse.

The surging Nightmare aura swept past, revealing a clearer sky and earth behind it, where an inconceivably huge silhouette in the center of the Nightmare Realm was extending arms measured in kilometers, pounding on the black Gigantic Tower that represented the domain’s core.

When he saw this scene, Lin Xiao’s pupils shrank in shock. He recognized it.

This nearly two-kilometer-wide, pressure emitting meatball, inconceivable to ordinary people, was the same meatball that had been collected into the Divine Realm along with him by the Child of Nightmare.

When it was first collected, it was barely over ten meters in diameter; how had it grown so immense in such a short period? Lin Xiao felt as if he were dreaming.

In his shock, perhaps his emotions were too intense, the monster that was wildly hammering the core of the Nightmare Realm abruptly paused, a massive head on its surface lifting to look over. A despair-inducing willpower loomed over him, and Lin Xiao briefly lost his connection to that fragment of his will that had inhabited a member of the Clan.

But it wasn’t annihilated; rather, it was merely interrupted. Seconds later, the connection with that piece of will was restored, and he was taken aback to find an additional… something on it. As the link restored communication with his True Body, that additional… thing, like a mark, extended through the will, spanning two realms and leaving its imprint on his True Body.

“Too terrifying!”

Lin Xiao quickly ordered the other exploration teams to retreat, simultaneously commanding the troops at the juncture of the two realms to pull back. Legendary Mage Alemente swiftly summoned the Mage team to prepare magical seals for the barrier.

There’s no way to fight, absolutely no way.

A diameter of two kilometers is what kind of concept?

Like a city-sized meatball rolling toward you, even Legendary Defense Spells would be easily breached by the transformed power. The current Divine Realm had no means to withstand it.