Night.
Thousand Kingdom, Sector 12.
The Throne of Heaven.
Outside the window, the moon of this New World hung in the sky.
The outer walls of the Thousand Kingdom’s fortress shimmered with a faint golden light.
That radiance did not fade, even in the depths of darkness.
Far below.
The plains of the Re-Estize Kingdom were submerged in shadow.
The lights of the villages were small and flickering.
The roads were faint traces.
The cities lay in silence.
Yet, high above the clouds, the Thousand Kingdom did not sleep.
Caesar sat upon his throne.
Beside him stood Michael and Gabriel.
Ea’s blue screen was currently dark.
Instead, the moonlight from the heavens spilled long across the floor of the throne room.
Caesar gazed at the moon and spoke.
“Those who could predict the cycles of the sun and the moon became the masters of power.”
His voice was low.
It sounded like a question, but it was more than that.
It was a statement that knocked upon the doors of ancient civilizations.
“Do you know why?”
Gabriel smiled.
She took a single step forward.
“Because the cycles of the sun and moon are the foundation of agriculture.”
Her answer came without hesitation.
“In an agrarian society, the solar and lunar cycles are absolute. When to sow, when to reap, when to prepare for floods, and when to offer sacrifices—humanity must know the order of the heavens.”
Gabriel’s eyes glinted coldly.
“Those who do not know the order of the heavens cannot protect life on the earth. Therefore, it is only natural for the authority of the one who distributes the calendar to rise.”
She bowed her head.
“He who reads the heavens rules the land; he who determines time rules the lives of men.”
Caesar did not reply.
Gabriel took his silence as permission to continue.
“However, my Lord Caesar, you are not merely one who reads the cycles of the sun and moon.”
Her voice dropped an octave.
It bordered on reverence.
“Are you not the sun and moon themselves... No, are you not something far greater?”
Michael quietly lowered her gaze.
Gabriel continued.
“You have become the very source of legitimacy.”
The response was immediate.
Gabriel had instantly pierced through to the essence of what Caesar was asking.
Power does not stem simply from strength.
Humans may kneel before strength.
But they do not pray to strength alone for long.
To make them pray, one needs meaning.
One must ensure that the person kneeling does not feel they have merely surrendered, but rather that they stand before a righteous order.
Gabriel knew this well.
“You shall become an enduring power that surpasses even the medieval Church.”
Michael and Gabriel bowed their heads simultaneously.
To them, Caesar was like the sun given to a farmer who could not survive without it.
Light.
Order.
The cycle of life.
Fear.
And salvation.
Caesar looked out at the moon.
Silence stretched for a long moment.
The moonlight was cold.
The moon of this world was different from the moon of Earth.
But in any world, humans look up at the sky.
And they seek order within that sky.
Caesar muttered softly.
“What if...”
His red eyes narrowed, glowing in the dark.
“...an entity appeared that could change the cycles of the sun and moon?”
The eyes of Michael and Gabriel shifted ever so slightly.
Caesar gave a faint smile.
“What would become of my authority then?”
Those words were not directed at the two angels.
They were aimed at some being that had yet to appear.
Or perhaps, it was a question he posed to himself.
Caesar looked back at the moon.
“I find myself curious.”
With those words, the dawn passed by.
---
A separate dimension of the New World.
Sylvania.
Blue starlight flowed over the ancient city of magic.
It was a place distinct from the mainland of the New World.
Constellations different from those of the mainland hung in the sky.
Ancient magic circles rotated slowly in mid-air.
Ancient runes were carved into every stone pillar, and transparent bridges spanned the void.
Rivers of mana flowed beneath the city.
The towers glowed blue, bathed in starlight.
Sylvania was a hidden city.
A city of ancient magic.
A place unreachable by the kingdoms and empires of the mainland.
The city of mages who called themselves the New Humanity.
That night.
The mages of Sylvania sensed that the hundred-year cycle had returned once more.
The cycle where entities from Yggdrasil flow into the New World.
The cycle where the laws of the world tremble.
The cycle where a great calamity appears in the outside world.
The flow of starlight twisted.
The river of mana let out a low cry.
The crystal balls in the ancient observation towers glowed simultaneously.
Iel noticed it too.
She tied back her wavy purple hair.
She donned a black robe.
She took the Genesis Staff in her hand.
At her waist, she buckled a Hero’s Gladius.
Her gaze was calm.
But within that calm, a decision had already been made.
The elders and mages of Sylvania stood in her way.
“Do not go, Iel.”
“The humanity outside is different from us.”
“They are primitive.”
“They do not even understand magic properly.”
“They kill one another, are devoured by demi-humans, and live bound by kings and nobles.”
“We are the New Humanity, wielders of ancient magic.”
“We are fundamentally different from them.”
These were old words.
Words repeated countless times within Sylvania.
The outside world is savage.
The outside world is foolish.
The outside world cannot save itself.
Therefore, we do not interfere.
It was arrogance.
It was fear.
And it was a safe indifference.
Iel looked at them quietly.
Her eyes did not waver.
“Life is precious to everyone.”
The elders fell silent.
Iel’s voice was not loud.
But her words lingered in the city air more clearly than any magic circle.
“Not knowing magic does not make a life any less precious.”
She gripped the Genesis Staff firmly.
“Being weak does not mean one should be abandoned.”
The gazes of the ancient mages pierced her.
“If the people outside are suffering, I must go.”
“They will not understand you,” one elder said.
“They will try to use you. They will fear you. They will try to worship you. Or they will betray you.”
Iel closed her eyes for a moment.
Then she opened them again.
“That is no reason to turn away.”
No one could easily answer those words.
The gates of Sylvania opened.
An ancient dimensional gate awoke with a glow.
Blue light enveloped Iel’s body.
The city of mages shone quietly behind her.
She looked back at her home one last time.
The city that had raised her for so long.
A city where knowledge, magic, and arrogance were piled high together.
Iel bowed her head silently.
Then she stepped forward.
Space folded.
Starlight scattered.
Iel left Sylvania.
In the next moment.
She appeared near the border of the Re-Estize Kingdom.
A cold wind ruffled her robe.
In the distance, she could see the walls of the fortress city, E-Rantel.
Iel adjusted her grip on her staff.
She began to walk toward E-Rantel.
---
Beneath E-Rantel.
The hideout of Zurrernorn.
The stench of rot and cold magical energy settled there.
Necromantic magic circles were carved into the walls.
Collected corpses and bones were organized on the floor.
Organs and eyeballs floated inside glass jars.
On an old table, a list containing the names of the dead was spread out.
However, the prepared altar could not be completed.
There were not enough corpses.
There were not enough souls.
The flow of mana had been severed.
This was because the trade network with the Eight Fingers had been cut.
The corpse transport routes had collapsed.
Several organizational contacts had vanished during the chaos in the Royal Capital.
Parts of their ledgers were missing.
The money had stopped.
The manpower had stopped.
The High Priest ground his teeth.
“The plan has gone awry.”
Beside him sat the Leader, who had become undead while retaining his reason.
Within his eyeless sockets, the blue flames of a wraith flickered.
The plan to turn E-Rantel into a city of death.
The plan to use the entire city as a sacrifice for an undeadization ritual.
The plan to transcend death through death.
That plan had been delayed.
The High Priest spoke in a low voice.
“In that case, we must borrow another power.”
Silence descended upon the hideout.
Within that silence, a single name surfaced.
The Black Goat.
The Ancient God.
Shub-Niggurath.
That name echoed quietly in the darkness of the hideout.
A few days later.
Zurrernorn made contact with the followers of Shub-Niggurath.
They were draped in black robes.
Their faces were hidden.
Around them flowed an ominous energy of sorcery, distinct from Tier Magic.
It was not just the energy of death.
It was an energy that defiled life.
Life that gives birth to death.
Death that gives birth to life.
An energy that seemed clearly alive yet was rotting, seemed rotting yet was pulsating.
The High Priest proposed a deal.
E-Rantel.
Corpses.
Souls.
The ritual of death.
An altar to offer the entire city.
The followers of Shub-Niggurath did not refuse.
They merely held out a single contract.
Black parchment.
Blood-red letters.
Sentences whose meanings were branded into the mind the moment they were read.
The offering of souls.
The Leader and the High Priest understood this as a subordination contract for the organization.
A ritual to swear loyalty to a powerful entity in exchange for power.
They judged it to be no more than that.
It was arrogance.
The arrogance of understanding a contract with an Ancient God through the logic of human organizations.
They signed.
The contract burned black.
In an instant.
Every necromantic magic circle in the hideout twisted.
The runes carved on the walls flipped.
The bones on the floor began to tremble of their own accord.
The shadows of Zurrernorn’s members began to move independently.
The light in the undeads’ eyes turned black.
The souls within the Leader’s body screamed.
Only then did the High Priest realize something had gone wrong.
What they had offered was not just loyalty.
The future of the organization.
The initiative of the ritual.
Themselves, even after death.
It was everything.
In the deepest part of the hideout, the crest of the Black Goat surfaced.
The crest writhed as if it were alive.
Zurrernorn was no longer purely Zurrernorn’s organization.
They believed they wielded death.
But now, death had begun to wield them.
---
Thousand Kingdom.
Sector 12.
The Throne of Heaven.
A map of E-Rantel appeared on Ea’s screen.
The underground of the fortress city.
Graveyards.
Sewers.
Abandoned chapels.
Old cemeteries.
Black dots were spreading across the map.
Those dots were different from necromantic mana.
Deeper.
Stickier.
An alien sorcery that defiled the boundary between life and death.
Ea reported.
[Confirmed Shub-Niggurath-type erosion reaction within E-Rantel.]
[Central Entity: Nivs.]
[Connected Organization: Zurrernorn.]
[Estimated Objective: Transformation of the entirety of E-Rantel into a city of death.]
Caesar gazed at the screen.
“Shub-Niggurath.”
The name echoed low in the air of the throne room.
The Black Goat.
The Ancient God.
An entity that twists the boundary of life and death to turn an entire city into an altar.
Caesar pointed his finger at the center of E-Rantel.
“That being is attempting to use his follower, Nivs, to turn E-Rantel into a city of death.”
He was silent for a moment.
E-Rantel.
The border city of the Kingdom.
A strategic hub of transportation.
A fortress city where adventurers, merchants, soldiers, and information converged.
The first bridgehead for the Thousand Kingdom to extend its influence into the Re-Estize Kingdom.
That city must not become an altar of death.
The collapse of a city was not the issue.
A city can be rebuilt.
However, in the process of establishing the Thousand Kingdom’s legitimacy, it was a different matter entirely if a major city of the Kingdom they had intervened in became an altar for an Ancient God.
It would serve as proof of incompetence.
Incompetence erodes divinity.
Caesar would not allow it.
He issued his command.
“Michael.”
The black-winged angel stepped forward.
“Yes, my Lord.”
Caesar spoke.
“Arm yourself and monitor Nivs.”
Michael raised her head.
Caesar’s red eyes were unwavering.
“If necessary...”
The air of the throne room turned freezing cold.
“...kill him.”
Michael understood the weight of those words.
E-Rantel was no longer just a city.
It was the first testing ground for the Thousand Kingdom’s legitimacy.
The door leading into the heart of the Re-Estize Kingdom.
The stage upon which the power and order of the Thousand Kingdom would be etched into the minds of the Kingdom’s subjects.
The moment that city became Shub-Niggurath’s altar, a crack would appear in the Thousand Kingdom’s narrative.
Michael knelt on one knee.
“By your will.”
Behind her, her armaments manifested.
Armor of white light.
The Angel’s Sword.
The Divine Shield.
The wings that had been folded behind her back slowly unfurled.
Black wings spread wide, cutting through the light of the throne room.
Michael vanished from the skies of the Thousand Kingdom.
Her destination was E-Rantel.
And in that moment.
New text appeared on Ea’s screen.
[Entering E-Rantel Incident Monitoring Phase.]
[Michael: Deployed.]
[Authorization Granted: Eliminate Nivs.]
[Maintaining Thousand Kingdom Legitimacy Construction Path.]
Caesar looked out the window once more.
The moon of the New World was still there.
It shone coldly, as if it knew nothing.
But beneath the world, numerous forces were already in motion.
The Thousand Kingdom.
Sylvania.
Zurrernorn.
Shub-Niggurath.
Iel.
Michael.
And E-Rantel.
Multiple destinies were converging upon a single city.
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