Surviving The Fourth Calamity

Chapter 860: Chapter 656: The Turmoil of the Ferun Great Land

Understanding Hill’s thoughts, Lynn first brought up Valkin: This Goddess of Wealth indeed managed to maintain her divine status, but now possesses faint Divine Power, just a step away from dropping to demigod level.

When Coron returned, he was exceedingly furious, constantly muttering over being just a step away. But it seems his retaliation can only stop here—apparently, this Father of Elves is still restricted.

Due to her audacity, aside from some places preserved by the Natural Divine System and the Elf Deity System, the rest of the Supreme Forest was mostly shredded by spatial storms.

The Father of Oak made an appearance, enabling the timely relocation of most unpolluted animals and Treants to the Treants’ Ancestral Garden.

At that time, Coron also had to step in to reinforce the defensive magic arrays in these places; otherwise, even the Great Oak couldn’t protect so many lives.

Even Tyr came, knowing that Coron and the Father of Oak wouldn’t care for humans, so he directly appeared and used his avatar to embrace Hell Gate Fortress, securing everyone there. The price is that Tyr probably won’t be able to dispatch an avatar to Toril again for a short time.

The chaotic result led to Coron killing Valkin’s avatar in retaliation, even smashing all the Temples of Wealth on the Toril Continent—a trivial matter with no deity stepping forward to stop him.

AO couldn’t intervene either since he had to figure out how to calm the Lord of Nature’s rage!

It’s known that if the Supreme Forest wants a complete restoration soon, closing Hell’s Gate is just the first step; all the demonized trees must be purified. However, putting it into practice is challenging, requiring hundreds or even thousands of years from all Druids and Nature Mages across the continent.

The simplest method would be to cut down and burn all the polluted trees to ashes, but with the Lord of Nature standing there, no one dares to suggest such an idea.

Moreover, the Elves actually also are unwilling.

They cannot bring themselves to destroy a forest that might still recover, and precisely because of this, the Elves in the Supreme Forest assigned the defense rights of Hell Gate Fortress to humans.

As long as it’s not under their control, they don’t need to consider the forest’s survival. Although the Elves’ reasoning is hard for humans to comprehend, opposing demons is a good thing for most temples, so the human Gods’ churches gladly accepted the transaction.

To understand how beneficial opposing demons could be to human deities, just look at Valkin.

Valkin not only lost her strongest avatar... but also suffered dreadful consequences from harming the Supreme Forest, cursed by nature. This is not a curse from a single Nature Deity, which could lead to her demise. However, by sending away billions of demons and closing a Hell’s Gate that existed for thousands of years in the Toril World, she merely dropped to faint!

However, Valkin probably has no temples or churches left on Ferun Continent now, and she didn’t hesitate to send the Righteous Knight Corps to their death.

Speaking of which, she managed to be rescued from the Abyss, albeit guided by a group of adventurers accidentally falling into it, led by that Goddess of Joy. If it weren’t for the Righteous Knight Corps responding near Hell’s Gate, Valkin couldn’t have returned at all.

Though Tyr was timely enough to save his subordinates in the end, Valkin never gave him any warnings.

Thus, it’s clear why Tyr behaved so angrily this time; he never felt there was any issue with Righteous Knights dying in battles against demons, even welcoming these respected knights to his Divine Kingdom.

Yet he certainly won’t accept such futile sacrifices.

Tyr’s iron fist always opposes evil, but during such times it may also swing at these troublemakers.

Initially postponing any action regarding Valkin’s misdeeds out of sympathy for her plight, the Temple of Justice has now started expelling the followers of Wealth within its influence.

It’s said that Lyril has finally sealed off her Divine Kingdom completely, issuing an oracle stating she won’t appear for at least five hundred years, while the Goddess of Joy probably finds it hard to laugh these days. Her followers bear a certain disdain for the Goddess of Wealth, seeking out wealth believers for confrontation all around.

Hill couldn’t help but snort coldly, incredulous that Valkin managed to retain her Divine Position.

Even if the current Goddess of Wealth is weaker than Bianbori, she might hibernate for hundreds or thousands of years and return on the path to ascension.

As long as transactions exist in this world, the Goddess of Wealth cannot perish.

Hill had always hoped she would truly die once, like the previous two Goddesses of Magic preferably— even if returning with the same soul, internally she’d definitely not be the same person.

Lynn shrugged helplessly. He understood Hill’s dissatisfaction, but Valkin’s apparent rebound after a string of terrible luck implies she’ll have this kind of fortune for a while.

For Hill, hailing from another world, perhaps understanding such turns of fate is challenging, but the Toril people grasp well that bad luck inevitably follows by fortune, a vow made by the Goddess of Luck, which has effects even on deities.

He proceeded with the second subject: the Undead Tribe... This time, they met a very miserable demise, not able to exhibit their prowess before being sent back to Agleya City.

Aside from the vanguard who somewhat encountered strangeness, the rest had their Mana Bars unspent and were sent back, not even getting a chance to savor the bag of potions they carried.

Thus, despite Coron’s quite decent compensation, they were filled with dissatisfaction, constantly protesting to the Father of Elves, expressing their desire to continue fighting—if demons are elusive, targeting the Church of Wealth is acceptable too.

Coron spent a great deal of effort to divert their attention towards the pirates. All the pirate portraits that had bounties on them in the Northern Continent were found, and for whatever bounty it held, Coron promised to match it himself, and furthermore, the military exploits would be doubled.

When Lynn mentioned this, he specifically noted that for some reason, many in the Undead Tribe were particularly interested in a pirate named Sheng Zhaolong, as if they especially despised his traitorous actions.

However, some others were interested in the Green Emerald Tree that Shulong Empire put a bounty on and kept arguing about who would get it first.

Hill chuckled, ”I also really like emeralds, they are truly beautiful.”

He rummaged through the warehouse and took out an exquisite Emerald Weeping Willow to show Lynn, ”Isn’t it particularly translucent green? And it also has the effect of slightly replenishing mana, quite a nice strange object.”

Lynn nodded in agreement.

Then he was dumbfounded as he watched Hill push the tree towards him, ”A little gift from my travels.”

Lynn’s words of refusal were cut off as he was stopped by the dazzling array of crystal-clear jade mountains on Hill’s long desk.

”These emerald trees are rare in Ferun, but they are actually just mid-range goods over in Shulong. The jade’s quality is decent, but their engraving skills are far inferior. I originally bought them to give as gifts.” Hill explained a bit to Lynn about Shulong’s rationale for this.

Knowing Hill well, Lynn accepted it speechlessly and mentioned, ”Andrea... actually did a good thing.”

His gaze turned towards those top-quality emeralds, speaking in a bit of a deep tone, ”Keep those to yourself! Don’t show too many outsiders.

If Shulong truly sold so many top-grade jades to the Ferun Great Land back then, they’d better pray that their country stays mighty forever!

The deities... also have enemies of the same level.”

Hill didn’t comment on Lynn’s words, such matters are the same in any world.

Lynn didn’t continue on this topic either and just talked about the Hell’s Gate instead. The spatial instability near that area was something even Coron couldn’t smooth out. Lynn had heard Coron inquire more than once if the Temporal Artifact and the God of Time and Space from Teraxil could come to Toril.

But he was mercilessly refused each time.

Hill curled his lips, the God of Time and Space would never leave Teraxil before becoming a strong divine power; otherwise, he’d be the next Goddess of Fate.

He doesn’t need faith, so why would he come to Toril to die?

Lynn continued, ”At Coron’s current progress, it’s estimated that the area where Hell’s Gate is will only be restored by next summer, and at that time, he’ll surely reinforce it thoroughly. The demons would need to find tens of thousands of willing demon followers to sacrifice first if they want to open this gate to the Abyss again.

We all think it’s unlikely. With that kind of ability, the demons might as well open a gate in places with more necessity, especially with the blood war about to erupt again soon. The Abyss isn’t short of cannon fodder.”

Hill tilted his head lightly, feeling that this trip to Dolphin Bay was not meant just to let him witness the domestic drama of the Lord of the Deep Sea, but rather for something more significant.

But for the time being, he couldn’t figure it out.

Yet the fact that the devilfish were mobilizing their entire tribe made him uneasy, it seemed he should ask Coron.

”Santir Fortress is gone,” Lynn mentioned another big event, ”Not only the upper echelon of the Santalin Meeting but even Bane’s priest was dead, but meanwhile, Shade Soul City also lost two princes.”

Hill chuckled, ”The Prince of Shade Soul City is not afraid of such death... after a few decades, he’ll still be a hero in the Shadow Realm.”

”But without Shade Soul City, it won’t be that easy for them to leave the Shadow Realm,” Lynn responded, ”For them, it’s actually quite painful too; their hearts still belong to Toril, their homeland has almost become an obsession to them.

Liches, those beings, being overly obsessed can cause them significant harm.”

”Better than living next door to Felin Magic Mallow,” Hill shrugged, ”Bane’s people are like him, daring in both thought and action.”

So, they get beaten all around the world.

”That priest was also elevated by Bane into a demigod,” Lynn replied, ”because of loyalty.”

Because of being despicable, right?

Lynn couldn’t help but laugh as he looked at Hill’s odd expression. They both knew that this archbishop of Bane might have everything, but loyalty was certainly not one of them.