Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 403: A Thousand Years in a Moment

Thirty minutes. To the fire monks on the third underground floor, every second seemed as long as countless days and nights.

However, for Arganti in the bishop's study on the top floor of the fortress, time was as quiet and peaceful as the gurgling of water. He closed his eyes and adjusted his breathing slowly and regularly, just to eliminate any possibility of his evolution being affected by the fluctuations of his own state.

Soon, all the controllable variables affected by himself returned to zero, and the rest could only be left to fate.

"Forbidden Prayer, First, Flame Helmet—"

As he silently chanted, the divine power in Aganti's body began to operate in an unusual way. The trajectory was not only different from any existing fire prayer, but also had extremely obvious differences from all divine prayer systems.

Whether it was the savage path of the divine power rampaging through the body, or the violent output rate that almost destroyed the meridians, there was not a trace of the sacred and solemn aura of traditional prayer. If there was anything contained in it, it would probably be only the word "destruction".

It was destruction at its purest, most ruthless, most efficient.

According to legend, the ancient furnace contains the power of life and death, creation and destruction. During the tens of thousands of years of fusion and division of the two forces, countless creatures were born with more or less simultaneous characteristics of the two.

There is no creation without cost, and no destruction without gain. The end of life is always death, and death always contains new life. Before all outsiders arrive at the border, this is the most authentic law of this world that does not need to be given by others.

The surging divine power poured into Arganti's skin. In the rising white mist, a layer of fluid armor filled with orange-red light, like underground magma, covered his body surface.

Except for sophisticated weapons made of rare materials favored by heaven and earth, such as cold iron or black steel, ordinary metal swords and knives will be melted into molten iron by the high temperature, let alone penetrate this layer of "armor".

But according to the information that Arganti deciphered from this prayer book, this level of power is only the threshold of the "next generation" giants.

"Forbidden Prayer, Part Two, Flame Arm—"

The divine power surged again, and a pair of fiery red arms that were several times stronger and wrapped in flames replaced Agonti's own arms. The power flowing between the flexion and extension of the five fingers was far greater than before.

"Third, the body of the God of Fire—"

"Fourth, the Ring of Julius—"

"The tenth one, devour."

Adhering to a strict, almost harsh method, Arganti completed the Giant Prayers from one to ten in sequence according to the records in the Giant Prayer Book.

As the last divine rune condensed, a terrifying fireball like the sun appeared in front of him. The high temperature emitted by the fireball even caused the floor and wall surfaces to begin to vaporize.

In the conventional sense, the tenth form is the final chapter of this prayer book - except for the last incomprehensible form called "Forbidden Gate".

To this day, Arganti still doesn't understand why there is no barrier between the giants' prayers and the fire monks' prayers.

To be honest, the only difficulty in the process of cultivation was that the prayers were recorded in the ancient secret text of the ancient giant king's court. But after he finished deciphering it, he found that although the prayers recorded in it were more difficult than ordinary fire prayers, it was only "difficult" to practice.

The divine power of fire in his body is like the same root as the divine power of the giants, and is naturally designed for the prayers of these giants. He only needs to follow the methods described in the prayer book to condense into divine runes without any hindrance, and does not need any media such as holy seals, holy scriptures, and divine staffs to assist him in order to perfectly display the effect of the giants' prayers.

You must know that the barrier between different systems of divine arts has never been about the difficulty of practice, but about faith.

Compared to magicians, once a clergyman's faith wavers and he becomes less pious, he will most likely lose his divine power immediately. High-level monks and paladins may be able to hold on for a while longer, but the final result will be the same.

In other words, if a clergyman is at risk of losing the authority to pray in his own field, how can he possibly ignore the differences in faith and practice the divine prayers of other gods?

Throughout the thousands of years of history, there have been freaks who have been able to accomplish this feat, but there have only been ten of them.

They just happen to be the ten demigods of the time. The flame prayers of the flame monks themselves are derived from the insights of the seven archbishops during the long years of guarding the Ashes of Extinction. It can be said that they have the same origin as the giants' prayers, but they are still two completely different paths.

The last time they accidentally obtained this prayer book from the Giant Cemetery, the first thoughts of the Watcher Fortress and the Holy Temple were just to decipher the relatively superficial contents of the first few chapters to see if they could extract some elements for their own use. Even if they couldn't use the rest, it would at least give them more experience in dealing with the remnants of the Giants.

But even such intentions were ultimately rejected by Pirac on the grounds of maintaining the purity of faith.

Putting aside the fact that the old man said one thing in front of others and another behind their backs, and that he secretly practiced forbidden prayers and killed himself, Agonti still trusted Pelak's vision. No matter how he looked at it, the giant's prayer and the fire monk's prayer should not and could not be the same thing.

So the question is - how on earth can he and the thousands of monks in the Watcher Fortress practice this thing?

If they ignored the mutations that occurred in their bodies due to the erosion of forbidden power, they actually ignored the barriers of faith and touched the power that should have belonged to the Giant God with the hands of the Fire Monks.

What exactly happened behind all this?
Agonti's consciousness gradually sank into the depths of his soul. Somewhere in the dark, he seemed to see with his own eyes the forbidden door hidden in the heavy fog.

It looked like an old and somewhat decayed wooden door, with a bright golden color on the left and a deep red color on the right.

Life and death, creation and destruction, blooming and withering, two distinct yet inseparable forces have achieved a mysterious balance in it. It seems that no matter how time passes or how the world changes, it will maintain this balance until eternity.

As Argonte walked forward, he felt his legs were a little heavy and the touch on his feet was a little strange.

I glanced inadvertently and saw that thick webbed feet had grown between the five toes of my left foot, and my right foot began to merge and transform, gradually turning into a tentacle covered with suction cups, twisting and supporting my waist as it arched forward.

Waist. It seemed that it was no longer a waist, unless the entire body of the snake was called a waist. The scaly strips of muscle extended all the way to his shoulder blades, where a pair of wings grew. Each feather reflected a red-gold glow, just like the colors blending on the left and right of the door.

He pushed the door with his hands transformed into claws. The bounce back felt so light that it seemed unreal. He felt like he didn't use any strength at all. The door trembled and opened with a groaning sound due to age and disrepair.

The next moment, he was stunned.

What he saw before him was not a glorious palace or a dark and mysterious temple, but an entire world that was difficult to describe with all his language and cognition.

The boundaries between heaven and earth, mountains and sea are no longer clear. Above the sky hangs a luminous object that looks like the sun, but that "sun" is much smaller than in reality, and the light and heat it emits are incomparable.

Clouds so thick that they were almost liquid enveloped everything in sight. Sunlight poured down on the surface of the fog, refracting colorful light, like a gorgeous dream.

Standing at Aganti's position, he could vaguely see the outline of the coastline of the border area as far as his sight could see, but in this world, he could neither see the three moons hanging high in the sky nor the giant golden tree dominating the center of the world.

Where the golden tree should have been, a broken golden-red tree stump stood in the middle of the earth.

Countless strange-shaped seeds grow in the huge canyon-like crack. Golden-red leaves grow on the tattered surface of the stump, and then fall off one after another, drifting in the wind and sending seeds in all directions like dandelions.

"Gah-"

He heard a strange cry in his ear, and a strange bird that had never been heard of in reality swooped past him.

The strange bird stretched out its three sharp claws, grabbed another equally incongruous-looking strange creature from the ground, threw it into the air, opened its beak, and a big hand suddenly stretched out from its throat, pinched the prey and retracted it into its stomach.

Then he looked down and saw similar bizarre scenes being played out countless times in different places at the same time. The progress of everything seemed to have been accelerated. In just a few breaths, he even watched the life of a tree species from its transformation into a living thing to its growth, expansion, aging, and death.

Millions of years seem to pass in just a blink of an eye.

(End of this chapter)