Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 482 A War Without a Winner
"How much do you know about the details of that battle?"

"If your majesty is only asking about what happened during the war, I know everything," Polerius replied, "but it may be different from what you have heard."

"Go ahead and talk while you sit down."

"Yes"

Just as he was about to stand up, Borealis sat down again, sorted out his thoughts and said, "Since the Age of Resurgence, later generations have regarded that war as a taboo. Even if they have heard some rumors, most people would imagine it to be a protracted war. But in fact, the process of the forbidden war was far simpler than people imagined. From the outbreak to the end of the war, it only lasted ten days."

"Ten days." Even though Lucia was fully prepared, she couldn't hold her temper. "Sky City and Eternal City have been preparing for an alliance for two hundred years, but they were defeated in ten days?"

"That depends on how your majesty understands victory and defeat."

"We did lose. We lost the civilization that we were willing to sacrifice our lives to protect. But He, or they..." Borelius looked up at the sky, with a hint of fierceness in his eyes, "What did they win?"

"The plot to completely seize the power of the furnace failed. The two origin fruits of the furnace tree - Life Rune and Death Rune are still under the control of the borderland. Even they themselves were almost knocked down from the throne. From now on, they will either become maggots that survive by gnawing on corpses, or become half-dead puppets parasitic in the minds of believers. The one who seemed to have won the most lost the most. He tore himself into two halves alive, and each half wanted to kill the other half. Hahaha!"

"What do you mean that the Supreme Will splits itself due to self-doubt? What a joke! If the complete "He" is really as perfect as described in the Golden Doctrine, how could he fall into madness just because of a failed plunder?"

"It was our God who defeated him. It was His Majesty Heraris who shot him through the essence of his divinity! He used all his wisdom in his life but couldn't make up for the collapse of his self. In the end, he had no choice but to split himself into two along the wound, hoping that one day they would devour each other and return to their original self."

"Those foreign gods from the stars always regard themselves as the real 'gods' and regard the local gods born in this world as weak mortals. But have they ever truly defeated our gods and kings?"

"Later generations interpreted the reason why they started the war as anger after being 'usurped'. In my opinion, that is a big mistake—"

"What really makes them unbearable is fear, Your Majesty. It is the fear that the authority that they thought would never be understood by mortal beings will begin to be explored and recognized. It is the fear that the power that they thought could suppress every world forever will begin to become fragile."

“It’s the ‘Supreme’ that is no longer ‘Supreme’, it’s the fear that even gods can bleed and even fall!”

"Out of this fear, the Supreme Will ordered Esti to launch a war against our world. For ten whole days and nights, the blood of the Outer Gods' followers and the creatures of the borderland dyed the entire continent red. The Eternal City was buried deep underground, and most of the Sky City collapsed. At the cost of more than 90% of our people dying in the battle and billions of lives, we cut off the Outer Gods' tentacles reaching out to the origin of the world, and also won a new millennium for this world."

"Most descendants who knew about that past trembled and felt regret when talking about it, but I still maintained the pride and honor that a dragon should have. The only thing I regret is that I didn't die in that war."

"It's ironic that I can reminisce about the past so eloquently to Your Majesty today, not because I am so outstanding, but because Your Majesties, the Star and Moon Gods, and those dead heroes burned everything they had to dispel the shadow cast by the evil god. I also fought with all my might, but found that the power I have always been proud of is worthless in a war of that level."

"I failed to live up to the expectations of your two majesties, the high priest and my mother for the Emperor's plan, nor could I defeat the invading enemy in the war. In the end, I couldn't even die with my brothers and sisters. But I am the most useless one. I have lived to this day, a thousand years later, and have become the lonely ghost who answered your majesty's questions." Lucia looked at Borelius's back, which was suddenly no longer upright and straight, but became hunched over with a cough. It was as if she saw the glorious Starry and Moon Age just a moment ago turned into scorched earth overnight.

If he had not appeared, perhaps Polyreus would never have traced these memories that he had buried long ago to another person until his death.

Time would only form layer after layer of thick ice on his body surface, extinguish the last flame in his chest, and push this increasingly aged ancient dragon step by step into the dim snowy night, until he died on a certain ordinary morning, becoming a sacrifice on the road to becoming a king for some faded one.

"What about Beile?" Lucia asked.

He understood that what Boileus needed was not comfort. If comfort were useful, thousands of years would have healed all the scars. Perhaps asking about the rebellious dragon's past would help cheer him up a little.

It just so happened that he also had a lot of questions that needed to be answered by the other party - what kind of person was Beile, why did he rebel, and after his father used the power of time and space to erase his existence from the history of the dragon clan, even Gustav knew nothing about this name, why did Borelius still remember him.

"Bele." As expected, when this name was mentioned again, Polyleus' dark eyes finally moved.

However, at this moment, the emotion revealed in him was not simple hatred or anger, but an extremely heavy disappointment and deep sadness mixed in with the disappointment.

"He was a fool as stupid as me. He was as young as I was once, and just as conceited and arrogant as I was."

"But his biggest mistake was not stupidity, but the fact that he possessed too much power. That power would not only cause a fool to lose control, but would also attract the covetousness of more ambitious people."

"He is like a child who once holds a sharp knife in his hand. Others, either out of fear or greed, will always gather around him and flatter him to the utmost, hoping that the knife can be used for them or the existence behind them."

"I think the two majesties had foreseen this, but unfortunately Sky City was facing more urgent problems at that time, or even they underestimated the infiltration of the Outer Gods into us and the damage that beast could cause. As a result, when Beile suddenly raised the banner of rebellion at the end of the forbidden war and launched an attack on Majesty Platon Sanx, no one could react at all."

"At that time, His Majesty Heraris had already disappeared into the black hole created by Esti, and His Majesty Platon Sanx had also been seriously injured, but it was far from the point where he needed to sleep forever in the time and space storm later."

"That beast was already on the front line of the battle against the Outer Gods. When he approached Your Majesty, all the tribesmen thought he just wanted to protect Your Majesty and heal his wounds as quickly as possible. But he used a beam of flames that had been condensed for many years to penetrate Your Majesty's Dragon King body from behind, and then desperately bit Your Majesty's wounds, trying to devour the king's blood. The violent flames and thunder tore Your Majesty's heart, and His Majesty's claws of destruction swung backhanded to rip his wings apart. He hung on to his last breath and took advantage of the chaos to escape."

"No one knows where he fled to. Some say it was the starry sky, some say it was beyond the sea of ​​fog, some say it was the shadowy land that has been buried on the back of the world, and some say he was hidden by a certain outer god, licking his wounds in the dark, waiting to launch a counterattack against our dynasty one day."

"Anyway, after that, His Majesty used only a breath of time to kill all the rebels abandoned by Beile in Sky City, and used the supreme power of time and space to erase everything about the Emperor's plan and Beile from the knowledge of all dragons, to prevent him from being used by people with ulterior motives during his years of slumber. There were only three exceptions among them, namely High Priest Gulan Sanx, my mother, and me."

(End of this chapter)