Somewhere in the Ihor Continent, deep within the territory of the United Nations of Prayn Terish.
High Priest Khardroth from the Calamity Church, after massacring one of the larger cities of the United Nations of Pray Terish, carried the same thing with a few other cities across their territory, mainly to gather at least 10 million souls from the ordinary humans.
Calamity Church was one of the more unscrupulous factions that didn't really care about their public image or anything, and they committed one atrocity after another. Just like in this case, which of course, immediately sent a message to other powerhouses who came from the outside that the Church was operating on the Midnight World.
Because these souls were very weak, people from they were, were just ordinary creatures without even a single Level as the consequence of lack of Mana, so if the priests from the Calamity Church wanted to summon some Legendary Level Fiends from the Abyss, they needed high number of the souls.
After committing a few more massacred and amassing enough souls, all priests started the summoning ritual to summon a few Legendary Level Fiends from the Abyss as all priests, including the High Priest Khardroth, started chanting the summoning spell.
This was a fundamentally standard procedure of the Calamity Church, as they would always travel in small groups, then use the local population as the sacrifice for the Evil Gods to summon Legendary Level Fiends from the Abyss to strengthen their numbers and help them carry the deed.
Abyss was one of the Higher Dimensional Worlds that were capable of holding countless Transcendental Level entities, and even bugs and ants in those worlds would be at least Silver-Tier, meaning it was an extremely powerful world. The Higher Dimensional Worlds were, even far more superior to the Principal Worlds or Top Floors of the Tower.
One could say if the first hundred Floors of the Tower were like a trunk of the Tree, then the Higher Dimensional Worlds were the crown. They were all connected to the trunk, especially to the 100th Floor, directly or indirectly, together creating one humongous entity.
And the Abyss was one of the stronger Higher Dimensional Worlds. It was called the Infinite Abyss formally, because nobody could actually know the size of the Abyss, as it was told that the Abyss had an infinite number of layers. Some of those Layers were more famous than others, some were full and vibrant of life, and some were just wastelands filled with nothing more than crumbling buildings and decaying life.
Contrary to other Higher Dimensional Worlds which were occupied by the Transcendental Factions or the Principal Worlds like Olympus, who once was the Higher Dimensional World before it fell, Abyss wasn't controlled by a single Transcendental Faction, but rather there was a whole bunch of them.
Nobody could tell exactly how many Transcendental Factions were living in the Abyss, not to mention independent or rogue Transcendental Begins who had their territories there. It was an immeasurable number, one could say. Certainly, the most notable being the 72 Daemon Pillars and their direct lineages, an immeasurable number of Evil Gods who were spread across the entire Abyss, and then there were some smaller yet very powerful factions like the Dark Seldarine Pantheon, which also had their headquarters in the Abyss.
Instantly all, more than ten million souls were sacrificed for the Evil God Set, who answered the call, and three figures existed in the teleportation circle that brought them here. When the sacrifice was successful, the Evil God sent three of his Legendary Level Fiends to the Material Plane as the contract stated.
Even though the souls were of poor quality, their number was significant, and it signified that the person carrying out the sacrifice was in a world that had a very high population that could be harvested. So even though the quality was not up to the standard, the potential of the quantity quickly patched it up.
The summoned things from the Abyss were the Pit Fiends.
They were both majestic and horrifying, with a hulking 3.7a���meter red-skinned humanoid. Their bodies were armored with scales and were quickly inflamed in response to their rage or excitement. A pair of massive, bat-like wings gave pit fiends a gargoylish appearance, and they often wrapped their wings around their fearsome, red figures. Their huge fangs dripped with hissing, green venom, and their prehensile tails could be cracked like whips.
Each of these Pit Fiends was Supreme Stage Legendatrties, close to the peak of the Supreme Stage, each above Level 85, meaning they were extremely powerful. In truth, contrary to the Devils and Devilkin of the Nine Hells of the Baator, Fiends and Demons of the Abyss were not the sharpest pencils in the bracket.
While the Devils and Devilkin were cunning and treacherous, inhabitants of the Abyss preferred to use their fists and power to solve the problems. Of course, due to their nature as muscle-heads, the Fiends could be easily tricked by someone more experienced than them and also lured towards certain situations like this one.
The sole reason why Khardroth was summoning these Fiends was to use them as another means to increase his strength in case the Zaldidraax attacked him, and if not, then they could be used to unleash more carnage on the Midnight World, creating more negative energy which they could harvest and that was win-win.
These three Supreme Stage, Legendary Level Fiends, were under the services of one of the Evil Gods, Evil God Set, so when they sensed the aura coming from the High Priest Khardroth, they slightly lowered their heads; Khardroth said something to them in the Abyssal Language, as they left to carry out the mission he had assigned them.
Meanwhile, Khardroth went to have some of his fun by torturing the natives of the Midnight World or perhaps committing some massacres once more before the rest of the bigshots from large factions arrived, and the entire world would be turned into a battlefield for the Legendaries.
***
Capital City Prayn Terish of the United Nations of the Prayn Terish, the Presidential Palace.
Certainly, it was to be expected that the news about the massacres that happened en masse in the north of their nations would very fast reach the ears of the leaders of these nations, though unfortunately for them, aside from creating mass panic, there was nothing they could do about it.
Especially when the news that their plan to destabilize the Dimensional Pathway, which was connecting the Tower and Midnight World with the Anti-Matter Bombs, failed spectacularly, there was practically nothing they could do.
"Mr. President, the escape plan is ready; we can launch the spaceship within the next three days."
And while some people of the Midnight World decided to fight to the death, such as the Emperor of the Nofrena Empire, due to their militaristic nature and upholding their traditions, some of them decided to escape as fast as possible to the wider Cosmos.
Midnight World was technologically pretty advanced, not that advanced to be considered a fully and powerful interdimensional civilization or just a spacefaring one; they constructed a few spaceships capable of traversing the Cosmos. They still believed that they wouldn't have a problem escaping towards the start with their advanced technology.
Fortunately or unfortunately for them, they are greatly unaware of the dangers of the Void.
That was the reason why only a few such civilizations or factions existed, and those who did rather focused on creating direct connections between the worlds, like Dimensional Pathways, Portals, or Gates, and rarely traversed the cold and deep Void.
Why?
Because of the inhabitants of the Void and those who dwelled deep within that wretched place.
Void Lifeforms such as Void Behemoths, who were mighty Legendary Level entities, traversed the Void between the worlds like it belonged to them; Mind Flyer Fleets under the leadership of Transcendental Level Psionics were hopping from one world to another. Their mighty fleet roamed through the Void since immemorial, unhindered and unrivaled, only by a few exceptions that proved to be danger even to the Mind Flyer Fleets.
And that was just a tip of the iceberg.
Short, long story, traversing the Void without overwhelming power was a pipe dream, and one would need a tremendous amount of luck to reach one world from another without being attacked by something, at least on the Initial Stage Legendary Level. Or they would need a special type of cloaking technology or magic that would completely hide their ships even from the sight of Holies or some Transcendental Artifact that could do the same and even more.
And the civilization of the Midnight World didn't really belong there. The only thing that they could do was to hope that near the Midnight World was another World that was not far, and that during their journey there, they are not attacked by anything that lives in the Void and that they didn't become food for some hungry Void Behemoth.
"Then start the evacuation of the VIP towards the spaceships; we need to get out of here as fast as possible."
Ordered the president of the United Nations of the Prayn Terish, after seeing the carnage brought by the abominations that appeared in the north of their nation, he abandoned any thoughts ad diplomacy, negotiation, or fight and decided to launch the last plan for survival.
Entire cities were decimated, with people literarily melted down into a puddle of weird fleshy substance, nothing remained from them, and the causalities were above ten million just within the one hour after the abominations from the outside appeared in the north.
***
Somewhere near the Ihor Continent, the territory of the Bukhar Kingdom.
Zaldidraax flew only for several hours to reach the Ihor Continent from the Sarid Continent. Compared to the two continents of Nofrena and Sarid, which were entirely controlled by their respective nations who were sole existences at them, other continents had various nations.
He flapped his pair of dragon wings as he continued flying towards his target, which was the north of the Ihor Continent, where he felt the presence of the High Priest Khardroth. While Zaldidraax was nearing the limit of the Legendary and becoming Holy, and Khardroth was "only" a Level 95 Legendary, he was still a pain in the ass to deal with.
Khardroth has plenty of tricks in his sleeves and several troublesome abilities in his repertoire, not to mention that while he was a trickster, he was a very skilled combatant and wasn't some paper tiger.
Especially his escaping abilities were top-notch because he could almost always escape from every situation or fight, no matter whom he was fighting. Though this time, it would be different as the playground was to Zaldidraax's advantage because all of Khardroth's escaping methods heavily depended on the Mana-rich environment of Tower or powerful Worlds.
And there was none of it in the Mana-less World.
Perfect.
'And by killing one of the High Priests of the Calamity Church would at least slower their ascension to becoming one of the 13 Gates, even if by a few years, but the most important thing is that Khardroth has potential to become Holy after a few millennia, which would not be good for us. Calamity Church is still one of our main direct competitors for souls, so having them destroyed would be optimal if those bastards weren't that slippery.'
Zaldidraax thought as he flew high in the air, occasionally flipping and doing some air stunts. Calamity Church was a faction that kept very low key, and they were experts at hiding; if not for their abilities of theirs to hide, they would be long ago destroyed by either the Hall of Kadath or the coalition of several Devil or Daemon Cults who had a grudge with them.
During one of his flips in the air, he noticed several tens of fighter jets nearing him with tremendous speed. Immediately they saw him, or better said, he was in their range; they fired tens if not hundreds of missiles at him.
Zaldidraax didn't do anything and just took those missiles with his body because he was very well aware that those weapons won't be able to injure even his scales. And as he predicted, those missiles were weak, in his opinion, and aside from some tickling on his scales, he didn't feel anything.
"But that dust is annoying!"
He cursed in draconic language while opening his huge jaws as he breathed a huge wave of scarlet dragon breath, which engulfed the majority of the fighter jets, melting them down in a matter of seconds, as the steel started falling from the sky in the form of steel drops in liquid form like water.
After Zaldidraax disposed of the pests that were attacking him with toothpicks, he continued his flight towards the north of the United Nations of the Prayn Terish, though, during his way there, he destroyed a few military bases of the Bukhar Kingdom from whose the fighter jets originated.
In the end, dragons were petty creatures of nature and were especially vengeful. That was where the saying originated, never tickle a sleeping dragon because the dragon's rage was something that only a few could take on.
"Let me hurry before that bastard once again manages to escape."
Zaldidraax muttered under his breath as he started flying faster than before, the battle between the two of them was near and only one would remain.
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