Volume 13: Turbulences in Port Leyton

Chapter 197: Energy Radiation

“Princess Elen, you promised me…”
Seeing that the Goddess of Agriculture had finished her matters and seemed ready to return to her true form, the magic sword Carlisle hurriedly spoke.
If not for the Goddess of Agriculture’s promise to resolve his problem with the cursed bloodline, Carlisle would not have ventured into this mess.
In this world, abominations were a mistake, an accident—a product of divine power that should not have existed and was unforeseen. Born from the pains of the gods who created them, abominations bore twisted, bizarre, and terrifying marks. As souls doomed to die prematurely, they continued to live, feeding on their near-divine powers and their pure hatred toward their ancestors and all natural order.
Abominations were cursed by both the heavens and the abyss, and from birth they were sealed away for countless ages.
But as time passed, sometimes an abomination was accidentally released or broke free from its prison. This was the origin of those abomination monster tribes in the outer voids. They included countless species, all of terrifying nature beyond mortal imagination.
The appearance of a powerful abomination could cause great panic in a nation, a world, or even a plane.
Fortunately, most abominations were tightly sealed by more powerful divine beings.
The God of Hatred was such an abomination that became a god by chance, and its divinity stemmed from the hatred in its bloodline.
Yet even after becoming a true god, it could not escape the curse of being an abomination from birth—its body produced twisted, chaotic, and cursed powers, and its soul was equally affected, manifesting as moments of sanity and moments of madness. Even the abyssal lords and demon gods of the evil and chaotic faction refused to deal with this God of Hatred.
As a descendant born from an accidental outburst of the God of Hatred, Carlisle’s birth was naturally a mistake.
Though he inherited the power from the God of Hatred’s bloodline, he also carried the innate curse of an abomination. This meant that whenever he became overly emotional, he would lose his reason and descend into frenzied killing.
It was this curse from the God of Hatred’s bloodline that Carlisle had tried to escape for over a hundred years, even at the cost of losing the power it brought.
He thought the Goddess of Agriculture’s promise could completely resolve this threat, but her words afterward left him disappointed.
“Don’t worry! I won’t forget what I promised you!”

“However, the curse of the bloodline of divine abominations is also a very difficult problem for true gods. If my true form were here, I could completely remove your cursed bloodline. But now, as I only have a clone here, lacking the power of my true form, I can only temporarily seal your cursed bloodline. This seal should last around ten years. The only remaining solution is to find an opportunity to bring you to the divine kingdom!”
Though somewhat disappointed, Carlisle quickly came to terms with it.
“Ten years is fine! Anyway, I’m already tired of living in this dark underground world. This time is perfect to go up to the surface and take a look!”
The Goddess of Agriculture nodded, raised her hand, and sent out a divine light that wrapped around the Golden Sword Saint like a hook.
After doing this, the Goddess of Agriculture seemed somewhat exhausted. After giving some instructions to her two followers and glancing at Donald once more, she withdrew from the female knight’s body and returned to her true form.
Yet as she left, her meaningful gaze made Donald feel uneasy.
Being noticed by a goddess wasn’t a good thing! Even though he knew she might not have malicious intentions, anyone would feel uncomfortable being watched by such a being, especially since Donald had many secrets to hide. Being constantly under the attention of a true god would be troublesome.
But thinking that he had already offended a goddess—one who hated him deeply—made him feel that having one or two more goddesses paying attention wasn’t such a big deal!
So Donald quickly sorted out his thoughts and focused on the remaining forces of the Dark Elf family in Scorpion Tail Flower City.
“It’s time to claim the spoils!”
Recalling the location of the First Family’s castle, Donald ordered the Bronze Dragon Nozdormu to start digging through the ruins, with a war puppet assisting him.
The others found it absurd that Donald was making a golden-grade dragon do such hard labor. Yet the golden dragon dug holes swiftly and efficiently, and soon the ruins of the Banry family’s castle were cleared.
Since almost all the creatures in Scorpion Tail Flower City had died, with only a dozen survivors from Carlisle’s Blood Battle Mercenaries left, no living residents were found. So Donald had to rely on his own guesses to locate the Banry family’s treasure vault.
After digging several large holes at the site of the Banry family’s main house, he finally found the entrance to the vault behind the castle’s garden.

“These Dark Elf families really lack creativity—every single one builds their treasure hoards in gardens!” Donald grumbled to himself before ordering the Bronze Dragon and the War Puppets to dig open the entrance. The moment the entrance to the Banri family’s treasure hoard, buried under soil and stones, was dug open, Donald suddenly heard a message from the Book of Truth: “High-energy anomaly detected from another dimension; can be absorbed, but may cause severe damage to living beings!” Donald immediately shouted, “Nordom, come back! Everyone, step back—there’s a problem here!” The others hesitantly followed Donald and his apprentices back a distance. Only the mercenaries from the Blood Battle knew that Dark Elves usually set dangerous traps and mechanisms in critical locations for protection, so they gladly helped their weak leader, Carlisle, retreat far away. However, things turned out differently than they expected. Confident that they were safe at this distance, Donald ordered the lifeless War Puppets, unafraid of energy erosion, to continue digging. Soon, strange energy fluctuations spread outward. Although those outside weren’t harmed, they all felt mild dizziness and nausea. “What’s this?” Everyone present was puzzled; they had never encountered such a situation before. Donald asked the Book of Truth mentally and learned that a shield created by a sacred artifact could filter out and absorb the erosion from this strange energy. He then said, “Everyone, wait here. I’ll go inside first to check things out. I’ll call you over once it’s safe!” Without caring about the old mage’s worried gaze, he entered the treasure hoard’s door, equipped with a magic shield and an invisible divine shield that others couldn’t see. The Banri family truly lived up to being the foremost family of Scorpion Flower City, the most powerful Dark Elf force in the entire northern region of the Dark Lands. Their treasure hoards were far grander than those of the other three families. As soon as he entered the treasure hoard’s passage, he saw a hall, with the actual treasure hidden in a secret chamber behind it. To Donald’s surprise, there were several survivors in the hall—three fully armed Dark Elf warriors, a Dark Elf mage, and two gray dwarf slave warriors. It seemed they had fled to the family’s treasure hoard to hide at the start of the war, though it wasn’t ruled out that they also intended to plunder. After all, if the war destroyed Scorpion Flower City, even if the foremost family remained intact, its strength would be greatly diminished. If they took some treasure and disappeared, no one would pursue them.

By now, the door to the secret chamber had been opened, and an even stronger strange energy was leaking out from inside. The dark elves and gray dwarves who survived the disaster showed symptoms such as red, ulcerated skin, hair that fell out easily, and somewhat blurred consciousness. However, it didn’t seem like poisoning from contact; clearly, they were being eroded by this strange energy. This reminded Donald of a phenomenon he had seen in movies in his past life—radiation symptoms. The condition of these affected underground elves and gray dwarves was almost identical to that of those contaminated by radiation. “Could there be a radiation source similar to nuclear material in this world?” It wasn’t entirely impossible; even in an environment with stable elements like Earth, some substances were inherently unstable, and under external influence, they could experience energy erosion similar to radiation. After all, the energy in this world was far greater than that of Earth in his past life, so it wasn’t strange that many strange entities existed unknown to most. With that thought, Donald ignored the incapacitated dark elves and gray dwarves and headed toward the secret chamber with his divine energy shield. In just a few steps, the magical shield around Donald was already riddled with holes. Even though he kept pouring magic power into it to restore it, it couldn’t keep up with the speed of the strange radiation eroding it. So he simply removed the magical shield and relied solely on the divine energy shield formed by the Book of Truth for protection. This indeed made things much easier. The power level of the divine energy shield seemed higher than that of the strange energy; whenever energy radiated toward the shield, it wasn’t eroded but instead slowly absorbed by the shield and converted into power to resist external erosion. Donald was very envious of this divine energy shield, but unfortunately, one had to reach the level of a demi-god and master the use of divine power before they could release such a shield using their own divine power. “It seems I can only rely on the Book of Truth to cast spells for now. It’s a pity that this shield consumes a huge amount of divine power—just one drop of divine power, equivalent to the energy contained in ten thousand elementary element crystals, can only sustain the shield for no more than fifteen minutes!” After summoning the bronze dragon Nozdormu earlier, Donald now had less than three drops of divine power left, which could barely sustain him for just over half an hour.