Surviving The Fourth Calamity

Then Hill quickly picked out a few people whose situation seemed slightly better.

But so-called ”better” only meant their clothes still fit them; they were still terrifyingly thin... the kind of skin-and-bones figure those crazy dieting girls in his previous era dreamed of.

The younger children, on the other hand, still looked okay.

Above eight years old, it seemed only a small fraction still looked healthy, and their clothing and grooming started to stand out from the others.

The reason Hill could be sure about the age of eight was naturally because by that age, children whose Mage Aptitude still hadn’t manifested could basically bid farewell to the path of the Mage.

Of course, there were occasional late awakenings, but ordinary people wouldn’t think that far.

Among the adults, only those wearing Mage Robes—even if it was just a scratchy apprentice robe like burlap—looked halfway presentable.

Apparently, while Mage Apprentices who couldn’t enter the Magic Tower were unable to bring their families into this town, they themselves could stay here.

If they happened to have a bit of conscience... and there were always a few like that, Hill figured the fringe territories around the Mage Tower would be full of villages formed by such apprentices’ families.

That actually fit reality pretty well.

The more he watched, the more ”normal” everything looked.

If Asmodeus hadn’t insisted on using his wife’s name, Hill probably wouldn’t even be able to confirm who had screwed this world over so badly.

And the mortals of this world didn’t pray.

Hill crouched below the town observing for a long time; those without Mage Aptitude didn’t even have the qualification to kneel to the Goddess, and could only watch from afar as those apprentices walked into the assembly hall every dawn to offer their loyalty.

At first Hill didn’t really get it, but once he confirmed this world didn’t even have Knights, he understood.

From Asmodeus’s perspective, all he needed was to hand Bisozeya a world sufficient to ignite Divine Fire... and the will and Souls of so many Mages who had placed all their hopes on Bisozeya would definitely be enough.

As for what came afterward, wasn’t there a more ”pure” Teraxil right next door!

Not to mention, Teraxil even had an Elven God King with absolutely pure blood!

Others might fear Coron and the World Tree, but Asmodeus didn’t, especially since if he wanted to make a move, it would naturally be when he was already prepared.

Hill suddenly blinked... if Asmodeus really had devoured Azuth back then, the outcome would be far worse than now.

He might not even have had enough time to investigate this world.

What was condensed in Azuth was a very complete set of Laws and Divinity... and as one of the mightiest Mages in history, the Deity of Mages’ comprehension of various Laws was almost perfect. Asmodeus wouldn’t even need to sort anything himself and could grow at a terrifying pace.

But most of Gaia had fallen into Rose’s hands; the Laws on Cronos, who had just awakened, were completely incomplete... without Uranus above his head holding up a sky for him, Cronos was more like a powerful Titan Giant.

After devouring them, Asmodeus would inevitably fill in a lot of Laws he hadn’t obtained before, especially gaining a deeper understanding of Primordial Power... but the three of them together still couldn’t compare to Azuth, who had once been inseparable from Mystra and had shared everything with her.

Back in Aesces, he still had the leisure to wonder how long Asmodeus would need to finish devouring Cronos; now Hill could only give a bitter smile: the causal rules of a Fantasy World were enough to make one break out in a cold sweat.

The moment he chose to let that little girl quietly exist within his own territory, going with the flow, he had made the most beneficial decision for his Teraxil.

Otherwise, if Toril really had followed the original history, Midnight would inevitably have suffered a second calamity... and that one person who had done nothing but desperately patch and suppress the Weave, Azuth, would definitely have been shaken off by the Weave’s sudden collapse.

For now Hill wasn’t all that anxious; he still had plenty of time.

After all, Asmodeus’s most important task was still to go assault Heavenly Mountain.

Before that was completed, this so-called Goddess Bisozeya was nothing more than an empty Puppet.

Hill flexed his fingers, lightly thumped his chest that was pounding from dredging up those old memories, and quietly continued observing the situation on the ground.

After watching these people for a long time and combining it with the aura of those Mages from earlier, he finally slowly summed up a subtle conclusion: in this world, people all shared a unified scent, regardless of status or rank.

As unbelievable as it sounded, even that Ninth Ring Mage had it.

His scent was indeed the faintest, the most wispy and illusory, but it was still there.

Even with the connection to the Elemental Realm cut off, the wind wouldn’t lie to him... it would only carry truth to him, not to mention a scent that was clearly coming from plants.

Hill didn’t even have to think before shifting his gaze to the Black Taro.

Sure, the truly powerful probably wouldn’t eat this dirt-cheap stuff, but it wasn’t like they were born strong.

And even someone like Cayo, who had grown up in the Magic Tower, had a pretty obvious trace of that scent on him... which meant Black Taro was the staple food for most people in this world.

At most, he could eat a wider variety of foods than others, not completely avoid that stuff.

But while Cayo’s scent was similar, it was also a bit different.

How to put it... it was missing a sort of fishy tang.

The people in the attached little town had a strong fishiness to their smell, while Jerry and his two companions fell somewhere in the middle.

The auras of those Mages who later trickled into the Magic Tower basically fell between Jerry and Cayo.

The Black Taro grown by the Magic Tower probably went by some different name, but the ingredient was the same.

Well, given that this world could only replenish soil nutrients by using Summon Meteor, no matter how rich they were, it’d be impossible to provide proper food for everyone in the Magic Tower.

Hill couldn’t help but purse his lips.

He’d never imagined in this lifetime that he’d have to smear fish mint all over himself.

Eh~

Despite all the complaints, Hill still patiently observed for several more days... especially those people who were obviously former Nobles, who had moved into the Mage Town after their families entered the Tower of Despair, and he even got lucky enough to see a few Junior Mages come back to visit family.

Probably because the Meteor Summoning from the Tower of Despair had gone extremely well this time, a lot of people had gotten some vacation.

That made Hill’s observations even more relaxed.

He could even distinguish subtle differences in scent based on the differing heraldic designs of these Mages’ noble families.

He didn’t know whether the so-called Sia Tower really used scent to distinguish insiders from outsiders, but Hill absolutely didn’t want to be discovered when even he had noticed it, just because of carelessness.

He also made a point of memorizing their accents and their nostalgic chatter about their old homelands.

From the sound of it, these Nobles who had once had fairly deep coffers had only begun collapsing in the last century or two, forced to sell their territories to those Mage Towers.

Given noble habits, a few hundred years wasn’t nearly enough to forget their former glory, so they could really go on and on.

In his Mental Sea, Hill slowly sketched along with their mutterings... and discovered something else: their only enemies were themselves.

This world did have beasts, but only the kind that could barely survive by eating Earth.

Because almost all land capable of growing Black Taro had been seized by Mages.

And the carnivores, apparently driven to extreme aggression toward Humans by the disappearance of herbivores, had ultimately been ”jointly sanctioned” by Sia Tower leading all the Magic Towers. That had been tens of thousands of years ago; when they brought it up now, it was only with a few sighs over that legendary edible meat.

The Magical Beasts that survived on eating Earth had mostly mutated into terrifying forms with no edible flesh, and since they all lived far from Humans, almost no one cared.

Listening up to this point, Hill could only sneer... animals were the easiest to mutate under crisis.

But they also understood better than anyone who their real enemy was.

Instead of ”eating people,” what really drove those animals to extinction was probably their resentment toward that so-called Goddess Bisozeya, right?

The Mages had been brainwashed thoroughly, but not to the point of idiocy; give them enough time and they’d start to grow suspicious.

So they simply created a Sia Tower, right?

Even knowing this world wasn’t his, Hill still felt a flicker of disgust from the bottom of his heart.

He clenched his hand again, reminding himself not to let his natural instincts show these inappropriate emotions.

Hill now had to slowly temper himself into someone of this world.

He turned his head to look at the Tower of Despair ten thousand meters away, then decisively turned and walked in the opposite direction.

The Earth ahead of him was slowly heaving in shallow breaths; even knowing Hill could move freely through the soil, the Earth still wanted to make his path more comfortable.

Hill stretched out his hand and gently stroked it: ”I’ll help you. Helping you is helping myself, don’t worry!”

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On the twelfth time that Sun, which looked perfectly normal yet had no effect at all, sank below the horizon, Hill finally found the Tower of Dark Enigma.