Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 404 Dead End
Any sane person who saw this strange and magnificent scene would probably be involuntarily taken away by it. Even the will of the chief observer, who had been tempered for thousands of years, was no different from that of an ordinary mortal at this moment.

Agonti stretched out his arms in confusion and trembling, wanting to touch this indescribable world. However, when his "legs" moved a few inches forward from the door, an indescribable terror immediately seeped into every pore!
Aging - this body, which no longer had a human form, immediately lost its superior observer posture after it began to move forward, and began to age at an unimaginable speed!
The arm he stretched out in front of him quickly became shriveled and thin, and the scales on the surface began to become mottled and aged, like a fruit shell that had been dried in the wind, crackling and falling to the ground.

Next came his flesh and blood. The blood and muscles that were once filled with a powerful force like a raging fire shrank by more than half within a few breaths, just like dehydrated fruit flesh. The power contained in them also disappeared, and was replaced by a feeling of weakness like drowning.

The sudden change caused Agonti's body to trigger a fear reaction before his mind did. His lungs heaved violently, trying to grab more air, just like a poor drowning man trying to grab a life-saving straw. He felt it, feeling that the misty fog in this world contained an extremely vast energy. It was not water mist at all, but an energy aggregate between natural magic and natural divine power, which was incredibly pure!

But this energy could not save him. It only caused him to undergo more changes that were beyond the scope of human beings, just like the large patches of colorful fungi growing near the roots of trees after the rain. These energies were only concerned with "creating" life, but did not care about the form of life's existence and the trajectory of its evolution.

The aging process in him is more than halfway complete. Perhaps in fifteen minutes - or even just ten minutes, he will become like those old and dead creatures before him, turning into dry bones and rotten wood in the soil, and then returning to the energy form and returning to nature.

Just then, he suddenly saw the "road".

It was not a single road, but a tree-like network of countless roads that initially intersected and entangled, and then continued to diverge and move away until they extended to the endless distance.

If he regarded his position as the starting point, on the treetops as the end point, he finally saw one familiar creature after another.

There are all kinds of flowers, birds, insects, fish, birds and beasts, as well as humans, sub-humans, beastmen as the protagonists of heaven and earth, and several relatively fixed hybrids that are common in the border areas of reality.
The two thickest branches grew to the extreme, and Arganti recognized them at a glance as the two creatures at the pinnacle of life.

Ancient dragons, and giants.

He could even clearly recognize the specific images of the two. The former was a five-headed black dragon as majestic as a mountain. It was the lord of the Ancient Dragon Dynasty and the sky city Fam Azra, the ancient dragon king Platon Sanx.

The latter is a majestic and domineering giant bathed in flames. Unlike other giants, he has three heads and eight arms, and there is a wide-open evil eye on his abdomen. The flaming pupil is surrounded by eight pitch-black magatama, exuding a destructive aura that is as condensed as substance.

According to the remaining historical records in the Giant Cemetery, that should be the legendary lord of the ancient giant king's court, the human incarnation of the one-eyed evil god, and the first giant king - Saint Hiteneris.

There is a legend that it was killed by Platonsanks in the great war at the beginning of the world. There is also a saying that it has never been defeated by any opponent, but in order to create a path of faith for future giants, it gouged out its own evil god's eye and turned it into a giant totem, and burned its body to become the first spark of the fire of ash, thus laying the foundation for the Giant Dynasty to stand proudly among all races.

However, no matter what, what lies before Aganti are the two most powerful beings among all the creatures born in nature in the history of this world.

At this moment, the path to them seemed to be laid out before him.

Agondi pushed his decayed body forward another half step.

The will of a heroic strong man allowed him to retain his last bit of rationality. By crossing this tree-branch-like network road, could he evolve into a being like the Dragon King and the Giant King?

He didn't believe it, and he didn't dare to believe it. Sure enough, the moment his feet stepped on the mesh road, almost all the branches made a crisp sound like shattering glass.

Countless cracks radiated out, and the roads leading to most of the evolutionary directions collapsed and severed. In the blink of an eye, only three were left.

At the end of the human road, one can vaguely see a burly figure holding a broken battle axe, and a strong animal like a lion is crawling on his shoulder, the two are inseparable.

"The end of mankind is not His Majesty Radagon, but His Majesty the late King Gefulei?"

This ironic scene came into view, and even though Agonti was about to lose his mind, his mind was in turmoil.

Even though he had nominally lost his identity as a member of the Golden Family and the name "Gefulei", the warrior who had fought his way out of the wilderness and conquered almost the entire borderland with an ordinary battle axe in his hand was still recognized as the pinnacle of humanity by this mysterious evolutionary lineage.

Isn't this the greatest irony for the current King of Elden, who has been striving to perfect himself over the years?

But the situation on the human road seemed to be different from all other roads. At first, Agonti could not see the end of the road at all. He could only catch the figures of people who were working hard and rushing forward along the way.

After actually stepping onto the grid road, although Ge Fulei's figure appeared, it was still shrouded in a thick layer of fog, and the second half of the road became a blurry shadow that could not be stepped on at all.

On the other hand, the Ancient Dragon Road will be cut off more completely.

From Platon Shanks down, the entire branch within sight seemed to have been cut off at the root by some astonishing force.

The ancient dragon at the top, the upper-level flying dragons and middle-level flying dragons derived from below, and even the lower-level flying dragons that could not transform - all paths to becoming "dragons" were completely cut off from the beginning. Only a few lowly variants such as earth dragons and ground dragons that had nothing to do with the dragon clan in the strict sense remained, like a few withered branches drooping on the side.

The only thing left was the Giant's Causeway.

Instead of being damaged, the road appeared particularly glorious and grand in this withered and dilapidated evolutionary lineage, with every inch of its branches glowing with rich vitality.

From the mountain trolls who are only good for show, to the low-level giants, the fourth generation, the third generation, the second generation, the first generation, and even the ancestor. Every class and every promotion track is clear to the point where it cannot be clearer. Following it to the end, it seems that even the realm of Saint Hertenis is within reach!
Is this the reason why everyone who steps into the forbidden door, regardless of their strength or the depth of their faith, will eventually become a giant?
It’s not that they made the wrong choice, but that they had no choice from the moment they stepped through this door.

Agonti turned back tremblingly, the entrance had disappeared. He looked around at his body that was so rotten that it could be blown away by a gust of wind, and thought of his subordinates in the fortress who were eager for him to complete his evolution and save them.
He closed his eyes and took the last half step.

(End of this chapter)