CHAPTER 178: CHAPTER 125: DAMN THE DIVINE SPIRITS!

No matter how many layers of clothing they wrapped themselves in, no matter how many blankets they piled on, it did nothing.

What was even more cruel was that this coldness, like a curse, kept spreading—not from person to person, but throughout every night touched by moonlight.

In those planes, the mages discovered countless victims who had locked themselves away in pitch-black rooms.

Every single one wrapped themselves up tightly, yet still died.

Even their faces were twisted in unbearable agony.

It was obvious what kind of torment they suffered before death.

"That bitch!" Wizard Shen Yu couldn’t help but curse furiously as he read the report.

This kind of Divine Spirit, yet still boasts of her kindness in so many myths.

"None of this is your fault." Aivlette sat beside Wizard Shen Yu helping him with paperwork. Though she too was weighed down by grief, she gently smoothed Shen Yu’s furrowed brow and spoke softly, "The gods look down on mortals as ants they can trample at will. But thanks to you, the fire of mortal wrath might yet burn through the very sky. You’ve done enough—don’t place too much pressure on yourself."

"I wasn’t feeling much pressure before," Wizard Shen Yu shook his head.

Yes, he truly hadn’t felt much pressure before.

He’d long been prepared to fail.

He’d even made plans long ago, that if he failed, he would take Aivlette, Wei’Er, and those powerful mages and flee this world.

But over this time, he’d seen far too much tragedy.

Far, far too much.

Far more than he could have imagined.

In the beginning, they were just simple numbers: a billion people, two billion, ten billion, twenty billion—so many dead, just like that.

But when Wizard Shen Yu finally saw with his own eyes how those people had died, when he saw the numb survivors, or those who had already gone completely mad, those simple digits grew heavier and heavier, sinking into an unbearable weight.

Far too many.

This world has a total of one hundred and thirty-six planes.

All split off from the Origin Plane.

Some large, some small.

But even the smallest plane housed hundreds of millions.

And those one hundred and thirty-six planes, on average, had 1.6 billion people each.

They might have been farmers, merchants, workers, maybe even nobles, singers, warriors, mages...

Some of the things brought back from the wreckage clearly showed the wisdom of their creators.

Yet now, all of it was gone.

Over a hundred billion people, all dead within less than a month after the Gods gave their casual Divine Oracle to end the world!

What was even more tragic was that the gods had no idea, had no understanding of the wealth that existed in the civilizations they so easily destroyed and dismissed as ants!

"Damn these gods!" Wizard Shen Yu looked at a rough draft of a demon pattern off to his side, feeling something unbearably oppressive boiling in his chest. "They don’t even realize how insignificant they are. All the Divine Spirits together might not even be more valuable than this thing!"

What was this?

The prototype of a Magic Furnace!

Yes, the mage who discovered this took only a glance to immediately grasp the enormous significance!

Treating it as the highest treasure, among the corpses of fallen mages, every document was gathered and hurriedly sent here.

Up until now, all Magic Guides were just devices using materials that could store magic power, letting mages save their magic.

Technically they’re called Magic Guides, but to many Shen Yu, they seemed more like magic scrolls from some fantasy adventure.

The difference was, they could be infused with magic and reused.

But they could never be separated from the mage.

But this Magic Furnace, with an exquisitely ingenious design, completely changed the situation.

It could extract magic power from any object containing it!

Maybe it’s the blood of some magic beast, maybe it’s some material, maybe even the ambient magic in the air itself...

Every mage understood the meaning of this thing.

It broke an entire era!

An era where magic belonged only to mages!

This result might truly make the convenience of magic available to all people, finally putting Magic Guides in the hands of those other than mages!

And for all the many Shen Yu, it held even more extraordinary meaning.

Know this: right now, whether in Shen Yu’s original world, or in the interstellar world Shen Yu, or the Martial Arts World, to use a magic array or Magic Guide, Shen Yu himself had to infuse magic power, then use the Gray Mist to turn a small number into mages, let them activate Magic Guides, and serve as ’Magic Batteries’ when Shen Yu couldn’t handle it, slowly, painfully slowly, charging them up.

Cumbersome, inefficient, impossible to popularize.

Wizard Shen Yu once spent Gray Mist to consult how much would be needed to solve this problem.

The answer was 3.6 billion!

Even more than the Demon Pattern Meditation Method!

But now.

Looking at the sketch before him, these documents—how much Gray Mist would be needed?

1.3 billion.

An explosive burst of inspiration, plus countless mages’ tireless efforts over countless years, had together created a miracle that used to require 2.3 billion Gray Mist to create.

The mages who authored this sketch weren’t far from seeing this great work finished, this era-changing feat for all mages and more.

But now, their life’s work had simply been ravaged and destroyed.

Wizard Shen Yu’s mood was like having seen a treasure capable of reshaping the world, only to watch as a malicious child smashed it into worthless scraps.

Those gods didn’t even know what they’d destroyed, and even if they did, would only shrug and say, "So what?"

How many similar miracles, then, perished among these hundreds of billions?

"Damn these gods!" Wizard Shen Yu closed his eyes, repeating himself once more.

This wasn’t just the despair of a hundred billion people, not just the destruction of beautiful families and precious things. This was a blow to all of civilization, a wound that would never heal.

At this moment, Aivlette completely understood her fiancé’s feelings. She hugged Wizard Shen Yu tightly from behind, struggling to offer even the littlest comfort she could.

But just at that moment—

The urgent comms system sounded once more.

It was King Senya’s anguished voice.

"Your Majesty, a Divine Spirit has descended again, and brought the divine body of the Forest Goddess!"

"..." Wizard Shen Yu’s eyes snapped open, staring at the projection screen.

This particular plane had, by now, more mages than any other.

After all, on most planes, mages were the last humans left standing after the Divine Punishment.

If the planes were still intact, mages would have stayed behind on their own planes.

But for those already destroyed or nearly so, the surviving mages would gather what people they could and come to the Magic Emperor’s plane.

Therefore, their arrival had helped spread magic techniques everywhere.

Magic communication and projection systems filled every city—this was one example.

Now, the city where the God of Disease had descended was, of all places, the royal capital of the Senya Race!

Understand this: once they’d made contact with the Magic Empire, and learned that a God-like of the Forest Goddess was here, every Senya person from every plane chose to move to this place and stand with the last God-like of their Goddess.

Now this whole forest had gathered over a hundred million Senya people!

More were still coming, using the Teleportation Magic Array.

Together, they sought solace and comfort in each other’s presence.

And now, every Senya felt a power at once deeply familiar and yet utterly alien.

When they looked up, what they saw split their eyes and hearts open in agony.

A Divine Spirit, using chains to bind another Divine Spirit’s divine body, had appeared above the royal capital of Senya Country!