Chapter 1388 - Conflict

Above an empty continental ridge, the Deity of Gods.

Sky Lord took large strides into the tower and entered the reformed karst cave underground.

Before being chosen as the official city for the Deity of Gods, it used to be a famous city known throughout the Blackstone region, with a history of close to a millennium. It was not the Sky Lord’s first time visiting this place; the complex structure of the karst cave was no challenge for him, and the only thing that annoyed him was Mask—Nassaupelle.

“My lord, my master is undergoing an important test inside. Do you have anything you need to be passed on to my master?” At the entrance to the experimental venue, a Junior Demon obstructed Hackzord’s path. As Mask’s chamberlain, it obviously chose the same path as Mask, with two heads forcefully merged together with a magic stone; therefore, it looked extremely deformed and ugly.

“Scram!” Hackzord was not in the mood to waste his breath on him and raised his hand, sending the chamberlain fumbling across the ground.

If it were a battle-type Junior Demon, he might have taken more into consideration. However, Mask had gone down the Path of Reconcilliation quite thoroughly, and the magic stones he merged into his body was not suited for battle, so one could imagine the power a Junior Demon which followed in its footsteps had.

After realizing that the Sky Lord was suppressing his rage, the chamberlain tactfully kept quiet.

Hackzord pushed the heavy stone doors open and entered the experimental venue without looking back. For him to not have destroyed the doors and appear before Mask in one step before taking action was already the greatest respect he could give.

Behind the doors was an extremely spacious cave.

Innumerable magic stones were embedded into the walls of the cave, resembling stars of the night sky. Beneath his feet were a dense pack of Inferior Demons—many times more than magic stones with the majority being in worm form. They were like cattle being trapped within fences, accepting the repeated stimulation from the magic power core.

Hackzord could not help but frown.

Even though the Inferior Demons were the most useless of all demons since they could not do any manual work due to the lack of limbs and their extremely low intelligence prevented them from being tamed, it was by an accidental discovery that they had the highest success rate of merging with other lifeforms, making them the ideal parasites. It was surmised that it had something to do with their extremely simple meridian channels.

Of course, not every worm-based Inferior Demon was capable of surviving to the point of resonating with the Growth God’s Stones. The dead became feed for the next batch of Inferior Demons, and those successful became qualified weapons.

Naturally, Sky Lord did not sympathize with these lower lifeforms which were incapable of communication. Compared to their past usage of being useless, they were now at least capable of providing help to the race. What he was unhappy about was Mask’s twisted interests.

The transformation process could easily be conducted inside a sealed cave, yet Mask had intentionally set it at the most eye-catching location—on a thick and solid pillar connected by four large suspension bridges leading to four different locations, with thousands and thousands of Inferior Demons being trapped beneath. Every time someone was required to enter the heart of the experimental venue, they were forced to “admire” Mask’s work of art.

The twisting and curling Inferior Demons whined as they endured the pain, the pungent smell of their excrement as well as the rotting husks of the failed experiments assaulted Sky Lord’s olfactory senses. The entire cave was immersed in this foul atmosphere. No ordinary demon would ever like staying in such a gloomy cave with such negativity; yet, Mask had purposefully set up his experimental lab above the stone pillar. Hackzord suspected that the Mask’s head had been damaged through the numerous merges which resulted in him becoming impervious to reason.

After crossing the suspension bridge, he found Nassaupelle at the top floor of the transformation building.

Upon seeing Mask, the Sky Lord immediately felt his rage burn. Mask was measuring the remnants of the Iron Birds towed back by his subordinates with a few human nobles lying at the side, their conditions unknown. The only surviving human was in Mask’s hands, his face warped from extreme fear. There were even wet stains on his robes.

“Nassaupelle!” he roared in range, “Who gave you the permission to touch my Humans? Even if you wanted them for your experiments, you have to get my approval first!”

It was not surprising that he couldn’t restrain his anger. He had painstakingly migrated the nobles to the great rupture and to the Deity of Gods to prevent Graycastle from tapping greater potential for the war. At the same time, it could also replenish the city’s need for manual labor. It was truly killing two birds with one stone. Who would have thought that right after this batch of humans were brought to the Deity of Gods, a worried noble from Everwinter came to him, informing him that a few of his companions had been dragged away by guards and their whereabouts unknown.

This had undoubtedly destroyed the stable order that he had built up with great difficulty.

The worst thing was instead of grabbing ordinary citizens, the culprit had intentionally grabbed the nobles—the latter were crucial in controlling the masses. Without the nobles to control, the time and effort required for Hackzord to control the tens of thousands of people would increase severalfold.

“Master Hackzord… quickly save me!” The conscious noble immediately yelled out amid a sobbing tone, as though he had seen his savior.

“Ah… so it’s Sky Lord,” Mask turned and said indifferently. “I have to say, this is clearly a misunderstanding. Indeed, I enjoy merging the best attributes, but that does not include lowlifes—I have already merged with their most outstanding counterparts six hundred years ago.”

He removed a mask from his head, revealing a distinct female face—one that most probably belonged to a Witch, but was now part of him.

There were more than ten of such masks all over his head. One could only imagine the horror of Mask’s appearance if he ever took them all off. According to Nassaupelle, the brain was where intellect formed and was the most important compared to the other body parts. With more brains, one would obtain even higher thought efficiency. Therefore, he believed a powerful race should have two heads, to satisfy the alternation between thinking and resting and to maximize the use of time.

But in Hackzord’s eyes, only the hideous demonic beasts and the Sky-sea Realm monsters would look like that.

An almost indiscernible purple light flashed past and instantly sliced the mask in Mask’s hand into two. Blue blood trickled down as a line of blood gradually blossomed on the female human’s face.

Nassaupelle probably did not expect Hackzord to attack and the stance he had was immediately pegged lower. He dropped the noble in his hand and held onto his wounded face as he retreated a few steps back. “Sky Lord, h-have you gone mad? You dare make a move on a Senior Lord for a lowlife? Do not forget, I am the creator of the Deity of Gods, I am the one to give our race hope to win the Battle of Divine Will, could it be that—you want to betray the King?”

Glee filled Hackzord’s heart when he saw the other party’s panicked expression.

After gaining the position of the Western Front Commander, Hackzord had never encountered anything that pleased him. The Nightmare Lord was lost for no good reason, the army failed to breakthrough the humans’ defenses, and now, he was painstakingly fighting for the race’s victory, but had to be hindered by Mask. It was preposterous!

It was impossible for Nassaupelle to be unaware that the humans were brought to the Deity of Gods by him. To snatch the humans behind his back was clearly a brazen act of defiance. After the succession of failures, Hackzord had been looked down by others.

But they were not in the King’s Presiding Holy See, and the Mask was no Magic Slayer. If Hackzord did not put him in place, the most probably consequence would have Mask stepping over him.

So what if having more brains was an advantage?

In the face of true power, no matter how huge the brain was, it was all useless. Hackzord wanted Mask to know who was the true Commander of the Western Front.

“If you are truly loyal to the King, you should know what you can do and what you ought not to do.” Hackzord withdrew the Distortion Door that was as sharp as a blade and said coldly, “After all, these humans are extremely useful for me and the race. I want you to remember that.”

After the stare-down, Mask was the first to stand down. “It was an oversight on my part… I will remember to seek your opinion the next time.”

“That’s good.” Hackzord nodded his head. He did not have plans to force the other party. After all, ascendants proficient with magic power cores were required to control the Deity of Gods, and they were all basically under Nassaupelle. At the same time, the war required Symbiotic Demon weapons that required the Mask to create. It was impossible for Hackzord to do anything to the Mask; otherwise, he would be the first to be killed by the King.

“My, My lord… Sob, it is great to see you…” The noble immediately crawled to the Sky Lord’s side and hugged his thighs.

“We will speak about this later.” Hackzord glanced at him before turning back to the Mask. “Since you’re not trying to merge with them, why did you bring the humans here for?”

Mask took the remains of an Iron Bird and smiled. “I merely wanted to question them on how to utilize the core of this thing.”

Hackzord traced Mask’s gaze, and his eyes landed on an intricate weapon set up at the head of the Iron Bird.