"If our ancestors hadn't fallen in battle, an invader like you..." Okov stared at Adam with intense hatred. He deeply regretted ignoring Morris's advice. If he had just let go of his foolishness and greed, he wouldn't be in this terrible situation.
Adam didn't let him finish. "Even if your savage ancestors were still alive, someone stronger than me would have come eventually. So, the end result would be the same. You should feel lucky. This is my first mission. If it weren't, you would have been gone long ago."
Adam was speaking the truth. For a first mission, the Tower would never assign something too hard, as that would be like sending someone to their death. Running into two planes on the edge of war was just a chance event.
Okov misunderstood, thinking Adam was making fun of him. "You arrogant---"
Suddenly, the sky shook and rumbled.
The blue sky of the plane, which looked like fake glass, broke after a huge shake. The strange colors Adam saw at the edge of the world poured out from the broken barrier, spreading across the plane. The ground underneath them cracked right away, the energy in the air lessened again, replaced by air that smelled of rot.
At that moment, Adam felt his dragon body was getting weaker.
It was as if he could hear cries of pain and defiance from the world's origin.
The odd scene only lasted a few seconds. Then, the blue sky came back, covering the weird lights, but every creature could see that the sky looked more fragile and less real than before.
"Cthulhu," Adam whispered.
Okov fought hard, yelling, "Damn it, let me go! Our world is ending. Why now? Why wouldn't you just hand over your legacy?"
Adam looked down at him and then set off the ice spears. Okov never got to say his last curse as he turned into a dead dragon.
The recent events showed Cthulhu had found the exact location of the Dragon Plane, and the first clash had already happened. More of these events were bound to occur. Whether Okov told Adam anything about it or not didn't matter anymore, as Adam was about to learn what he wanted to know by himself.
"Master, what was that?" the devil asked inside his head.
"The origin got weaker again. Cthulhu has found a way to connect and invade. The war between the two worlds is about to start."
The energy that came out of Okov's body in the explosion wasn't much. Before, it would have only made a small crater on the ground at most. But now, from where the explosion happened, several long cracks spread, showing that the Dragon Plane was close to dying, barely able to keep itself together.
"Master, I think I might be able to make myself show in the real world now," the devil said, sounding unsure.
Adam had been hiding his true form in a special space made by a rebirth spell since he got to the Dragon Plane. Hearing the devil's words, he moved a little for the first time. The kind of dangerous power he once felt was still there, and even a small movement from him could cause the origin to find and kill him.
Adam felt that the origin might be more unstable right now. It was dying and becoming unpredictable.
"Let's wait a bit longer. Maybe after the next clash, I can get out of this dragon body," Adam decided to play it safe. If he made a mistake now, he could lose years of hard work.
"Okay, master. But doesn't this mean your mission is done? Since the clash has happened, Cthulhu and the Dragon Plane won't split again."
The devil didn't want to get out too soon, because, even if he could get out and show himself, Adam would use him as a magic wand at best, which wasn't as easy as staying where he was now.
"There are still things we don't know. From now on, I need to find a way to slow down how fast the war-seekers are damaging the origin," Adam said.
"Huh? Why?" The devil was a bit confused.
"The origin is scared. I'm worried it might destroy itself. The Dragon Plane, being the landing point of mages into this world later, needs to be kept safe."
Two days later...
"Master, the war-seekers have started to make the battlefield smaller. They've killed some beings practicing Refinement Art and races that didn't follow orders to stop the war," the devil told Adam. "Lina and the forest elves have been told to stay in the city and not go out."
The war-seekers made the war area smaller by themselves, and that had nothing to do with Adam. They wanted to let Cthulhu eat up the origin of the Dragon Plane, adding a lifeline to Cthulhu's already dead world. However, they also knew that for Cthulhu to live longer, the Dragon Plane's origin could be weakened, but it mustn't be destroyed.
This move by the war-seekers gave Adam some time to take a rest. His dragon body was getting weaker, and this was showing up in his body size, making it bigger.
He had killed Okov, and if he got caught, all the dragons would come at him for revenge. Also, because the war-seekers were shrinking, the peace-seekers had more resources and it was easier for them to fight back against Adam. If Adam continued to stir the waters, the backfire would bring him great troubles.
"Tell Lina to stay out of sight for now. She doesn't need to do anything during this time. Don't lose too many forest elves," Adam told the devil.
After passing on Adam's orders, the devil asked, "What about us, master?"
Adam looked up at the sky and the ground, feeling the energy in the space getting weaker. "We wait. After the second clash, I'll go and figure out where the world boundaries are. When the first rift in the dimensions opens, I'll send all the information we've gathered to the Mage Network."
...
The second collision did not keep Adam waiting for long. Half a month later, the sky of the Dragon Plane trembled once again, and the energy level of the plane dropped to a critical level.
Adam's dragon body shrunk to a height of fifteen meters. The energy reserves within the plane were no longer sufficient to support the previous level of concentration. After constructing an elemental missile, the energy Adam used took five times longer to replenish than before.
The Dragon Plane entered a bizarre period of calm. The war had essentially ended, but a greater panic weighed on everyone's hearts. Cthulhu was no longer a secret, and everyone knew that the terrifying enemy from ancient times would descend upon their world once again.
Adam returned to the ice plains. The previously marked boundaries of the world had moved inward by two hundred kilometers.
Near the boundaries, void storms pierced through the crystal barrier, turning everything to ash. Radiating energy from Cthulhu also seeped through the boundaries into the Dragon Plane.
If this continued, it wouldn't be long before the environment suitable for ordinary species to survive would completely vanish.
Adam swiftly circled the Dragon Plane along its boundaries, experiencing both the third and fourth collisions during this journey. Finally, three months after killing Okov, the sky cracked open."
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