Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 406 Beacon
It was called a fortress, but what lay before Lucia and the heroes of the Northern Expedition was actually a huge pit that was a hundred meters deep.

The terrifying radial rift was like a piece of land dug out from the center of the earth. All the snow, ice, fortress structures, and even soil and bedrock in the pit were completely evaporated by the explosion, leaving only this bottomless black hole.

In terms of power alone, this explosion is comparable to Lucia's strongest attack using dragon language magic.

"Leave half of the people to guard the surface, and the others follow me down." Lucia gave brief instructions.

So fifteen of the thirty heroes who were accompanying them scattered around the giant pit to guard against possible threats, and the others were divided according to their classes, with the most agile assassin heroes leading the way, followed by warriors, and archers, magicians, and clergymen providing support at the back.

This "relic" may be quite dangerous for conventional troops, but it is as easy as walking on flat ground for the heroic team led by Lucia herself. After only two minutes, everyone reached the bottom of the pit safely with mutual cover.

But they soon discovered that there was no place to stay within the area of ​​several hundred meters in radius!

A thick layer of flesh and blood accumulated at the bottom of the pit, where there should have been no biological reaction. Various strange biological organs and limbs were not piled there randomly, but were interconnected, fused, and grown into a huge aggregate. It was impossible to tell what each part belonged to with the naked eye.

The only thing they have in common is that all of their tissues exude abundant fire power. The terrifying heat combined together creates a high temperature at the bottom of the pit that is unbearable for the heroes. Therefore, they can only blast out several platforms near the bottom of the pit and observe from a distance of more than ten meters.

Lucia stood on the platform and narrowed his eyes slightly. The power fluctuations coming from those biological tissues made him feel very familiar, but without careful observation, he did not dare to jump to conclusions.

"Stay where you are. I'll go down and take a look."

"Your Highness can't!"

"Your Highness, the origin of this group is unknown. The deaths of the original fortress garrison are very likely related to this. Let us go down in batches to investigate first!"

Lucia raised his hand to stop everyone. Time was pressing, and his 10,000 men were competing with the Giant King's Court for a fleeting chance of victory. As soon as it got dark, the army would have to continue marching south. At this juncture, if he wanted to find out what had happened to the Watcher Fortress, he had to take the risk himself.

Military orders are as heavy as mountains. This was the concept he had engraved in everyone's bones since the first day he led the army to the Northern Expedition. Even heroes with extraordinary status in ordinary troops could only be ordinary units that obeyed his orders under him.

Those who had objections to this had long been cleared out of the team, and those who could follow him here were already his most trustworthy confidants. Therefore, when Lucia made the decision, even if the heroes were unwilling, they could only wait quietly and be prepared to provide support at any time.

Lucia walked down in the air, a wisp of icy air floated up from the soles of his feet, condensing into crystal clear ice steps in the air, carrying him down gradually until he came to a position one step away from those biological tissues.

As if it sensed the approaching breath of a living creature, the mass of biological tissue that weighed who knows how many tons suddenly began to move active, and the flesh and blood on the surface kept surging and bulging, as if it wanted to touch Lucia and make him one of them.

Similarly, at this distance, Lucia's fully-unleashed spiritual perception was already able to accurately detect the most subtle power fluctuations of this organization.

He opened his palm, and the ice magic that escaped froze a tentacle that was reaching out to him. Looking at the gorgeous yet strange limb that was like a branch of an ice tree, Lucia was already completely certain that he had indeed seen something similar.

Less than ten days ago, the first-generation Titan Rodnias, who failed to be analyzed in the Memory Battlefield, might also be considered the first third-generation Titan Laias to die in front of him.
The characteristics of the rune energy flowing in the bodies of the "giants" under the command of the New King's Court of Giants are exactly the same as this power fluctuation!

If we extend the observation range further, in the "past life memory" in the deduction, Lucia has also seen creatures similar to this group of organizations more than once. What did he call them at that time?

Winged hybrids, terrestrial sea squirts, terrestrial octopuses, giant lobsters, giant crabs, living decaying bones. Similar life forms with biological characteristics but no stable form of existence, formed by the disorderly stacking of life energy, have long been commonplace in the original future of the border area.

What was missing from that era and the Golden Age was a golden tree that never withered, an Elden Ring that never broke, and a god who performed his duties normally.

In the Age of the Faders, normal life with intact limbs and normal sanity has become extremely rare. Instead, all kinds of mutated monsters and chaotic zombies that have lost consciousness have become the norm in the world. That's not just because a devastating war destroyed a generation of people, but because the border area at that time had become a breeding ground for monsters.

Not only the victims of the Shattering War, but also the newborns, animals and plants born in that world will most likely become various mutated life forms. The terrifying number is enough to prove one thing - in the middle and late stages of the Fading Era, the source of all life in the border area has been polluted.

To explain it the other way around, only when there is a problem with the source will such a huge amount of life energy chaotically and disorderly combine to form various variant life forms.

So, what is the source of life in the border area?
The golden tree?

No, never.
It should be the giant furnace tree that the golden tree parasitizes.

Based on this speculation, the situation dozens or even hundreds of years later on the original world line should be that Marika shattered the Elden Ring, and the Golden Tree withered, causing the function of the Furnace Tree to give birth to life to become alienated. Not only was the Golden Tree's original "return to the tree - baptism - reincarnation" system completely abnormal, even the tree's own normal function of differentiating life since ancient times was destroyed.

From then on, all the races in the world that were originally differentiated could no longer survive stably. The furnace tree absorbed the huge runes after the death of living beings, and arbitrarily kneaded them into all kinds of strange life. This gave birth to many incredible monsters in the Fading Age.

In the current golden age, this phenomenon should not exist, but Lucia has seen it several times.

Now that I think about it, the Rodel Underground Sewer, where the brothers Mungert and Mung led the Sons of Evil Omen to live in the early years, is a miniature version of the "Border of the Future".

The powerful and rich furnace force in the body of the unblessed Evil Omen diffused throughout the entire sewer, causing many creatures such as lobsters, lizards, frogs, etc. to mutate and become monsters of abnormal size.

As for the vast energy of the New Court of Giants before their eyes that supported the birth of hundreds of thousands of giants out of thin air, allowing goblins, humans, hybrids, and orcs to break through racial shackles and evolve into giants, perhaps its source has finally been found.

Lucia was already very confident that the Giant King's Court had mastered some method of stealing rune energy from the Furnace of Life.

And it's not just stealing, they also have certain means to prevent living organisms from being squeezed into unrecognizable monsters by life energy during the evolution process, but to accurately complete the evolutionary trajectory of giants.

It is like a mold that constrains the form of life, or in other words, a signpost that guides the direction of evolution.

The people in the Watcher Fortress, including the autocrat Arganti, had apparently grasped the evolutionary trajectory, but they lacked the most critical landmark. As a result, their energy went out of control and exploded. Not only did they all die, but their remains also turned into a mass of flesh and blood filled with rune energy. After death, they were still confusedly searching for the direction of life.

Lucia instructed everyone to return to the surface, her eyes fixed on the east of the fortress ruins, where the flaming cauldron was dimly visible in the snow.

The three thousand miles of Giant Cemetery, the Giant Mountain Peak that dominates the top of the continent, and a cauldron of fire that is as famous as the Sky City
Giant King, is this where you hide your secret?
(End of this chapter)