Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 533 A word is settled
Lucia slightly turned her gaze away and said, "Of course."

Perhaps unable to withstand the intense pressure in the Queen's eyes, he took two steps forward to the edge of the cliff, observing the terrain while quietly calming himself down.

At first glance, what appears to be a huge cavity like a mountain cave is actually quite far from the surface. What you see is not a cave at all, but a colossal corridor formed by the ancient furnace vein that once traversed the earth.

The tunnel, hundreds of meters high, meanders like a dragon or snake, with rivers of lava flowing everywhere. Wisps of golden light can be faintly seen within the orange-red lava, likely caused by the infiltration of ley lines.

In this position, Lucia felt the divine and magical power within him become more active than ever before. It seemed that every cell was beginning to jubilantly and greedily observe everything around it, trying to devour more energy to strengthen itself.

There were only two places that had given him a similar feeling before—the Egg of the Gods' Sleep where Estée was sealed, and the Stone Stage of the Golden Tree Heart.

However, although the former contains the runes of a deity, its energy fluctuations are far less than those of the other two. This shows that the Furnace Vein, like the Golden Tree, contains the most powerful and vast energy reserves of the Furnace of Life, and its upper limit is far more than just creating a god. No wonder countless powerful people throughout history have fought for it endlessly.

"Does it feel ridiculous?" Katpera silently walked to Lucia's side and stood beside him, looking down at the scenery below the mountain.

"For thousands of years, countless powerful, insignificant, noble, and lowly beings have fought endlessly, devouring each other's broken bodies and bones, even burning their last bit of intelligence to tear each other apart as ghosts and spirits. All for this tiny bit of golden river water."

Lucia was silent for a moment, then slowly but firmly shook her head.

“I once had a long dream,” he said. “In the dream, I was not the only son of the Dragon King and the Dragon God, but a descendant of an ordinary soldier of the Eastern Expeditionary Army who had lost his blessing. The world in the dream was no longer the prosperous and flourishing world we live in today, but a ruin that was broken beyond repair after a chaotic war.”

“There, I was just like those ‘ridiculous’ creatures, fighting, killing, and struggling desperately. If I didn’t do that, I couldn’t survive in that chaotic world where people ate each other. Only by doing that could I see a glimmer of hope that I could keep climbing upwards until I reached the top and ended the chaos.”

Katepera's stunningly beautiful face froze for a moment, then she turned to look at his face and asked, "In the end, did you succeed in that dream?"

“No.” Lucia’s voice sounded weary, as if he had just traveled from the other side of endless time and space.

“I ascended the throne of the entire borderlands, but could only rule a scorched earth where almost no one lived anymore. The withered leaves of the golden trees were swept by the wind and covered the terraces and stone steps of the Eternal Palace, like a footnote left for me by later generations—they called it the ‘Age of Decline’.”

"Later, I tried many possibilities in my dreams, such as adhering to fundamentalism and perfecting the Golden Law, or abandoning everything, stripping away the law's interference with mortals, and taking all beings that do not belong to the mortal world to the heavens, or taking a risky path, choosing to embrace the power of evil gods, and simply destroying and regenerating the world. But in my view, every seemingly different choice was an identical failure."

"The myriad races nurtured by the Forge of Life have ultimately perished, and the civilizations they created withstood the erosion of time, but could not withstand the destruction of war. When a world loses the billions of living beings that sustain it, even if an unprecedented god is born from countless corpses, can that world still be called alive?"

“I thought it was impossible. Such a world is not a noble and glorious divine kingdom, but just a cold and ridiculous tomb.”

Katpera's gaze grew increasingly deep, as if piercing through his expression and reaching his very soul.

"Is what you're saying really just a dream?" Lucia smiled bitterly and said, "Perhaps that's why I was born into this era. As long as we do the right things today, it's just a dream."

“But I’m not saying this to complain,” his smile instantly brightened, as if the bitterness just moments before was merely a fleeting illusion. “I just want to say that the fault doesn’t lie with those masses who desperately devour each other to struggle upwards. What’s truly laughable is this world that devours even more people.”

"The current legal and power system is like a funnel, with all mortal beings standing on its incredibly smooth inner wall. The sky above them seems vast and high, but it never belongs to them. Instead, it is the seemingly solid and reliable earth beneath their feet that will drag them swiftly into the abyss as soon as they stop climbing upwards."

"Return to the tree, corruption, feast. No matter how lofty the names that those in power and those who covet power give to this cycle of life and death, they cannot change their rotten and foul hearts."

"They have almost completely controlled everything in the lives of mortals, yet they still covet the runes after death, going to great lengths to bring them under their control to satisfy their insatiable appetite. I've had enough of this world."

“So I killed many of them,” Katpela said with a mocking smile. “No, how could those high beings who call themselves gods use such a lowly term as ‘human’?”

"Unfortunately, we haven't killed enough. Killing alone can't solve all the problems. Before I could even take the time to completely stabilize the situation, well, never mind, I won't say anymore."

She suddenly shook her head listlessly and walked down the mountain ahead of everyone else.

This time, it was Lucia who caught up with her, taking two steps to walk alongside her, and said, "The most important step in your plan this time was finding this place, right?"

"What, planning to break up?"

Lucia was already used to Katpera's habit of always being sarcastic when the topic came up, so she simply ignored it and said, "When are you going to tell me the specifics of the next step? If you don't tell me clearly, I don't know how to help you."

"Help me?" Katarina muttered something under her breath, but it was impossible to hear because of the divine power's deliberate concealment. "I'm afraid that you'll be lucky if you don't come after me and yell at me to kill me, let alone help me."

Lucia frowned and said, "I think I've already made my bottom line clear to you. As long as you don't cross it, I'll help you no matter what you do this time."

"Okay, it's a deal, no take-backs allowed."

Katpera suddenly stopped and stared intently into Lucia's eyes, saying, "Once we find Olivia and complete the deal with Yuno, I will tell you everything I know."

Lucia paused for a moment, looking back at those bright eyes that were no longer covered by the black silk and were so clear they were almost blinding. After a moment of silence, she took a deep breath and said, "It's a deal."

(End of this chapter)