Rise Of The Infinite Sovereign

Chapter 331: Past life Events

With the apocalypse near, Zydrax decided to do something to strengthen Orion, no matter how futile it seemed.

Having inhabited the world’s will for a long time before fusing with Ezra, he easily controlled it.

Tens of whirlpools formed in the stratosphere, absorbing mana from outside the planet and depositing it within, causing the mana density to surge.

By increasing the mana density, the average cultivation level would increase over time as advancing became easier.

In addition, more mana meant that the surroundings had more nourishment. Herbs and crops would grow faster and better, while beasts would grow stronger.

It was literally an all round enhancement.

From Ezra’s words, this event happened a few years later in his past life.

With the dark situation during the time, Scholars used it to reignite hope, saying the increase of mana was the beginning of another Golden Era.

As expected, it put all of Orion into a festive frenzy, wiping away the gloomy atmosphere that had engulfed Orion at the time by projecting a bright future to look for.

Only for the apocalypse to eleven years later, washing away all such thoughts.

"Hmm"

He’d thought about the mana surging before and, except for the world’s will acting on its own, he was the only one capable of causing such a thing.

’But why?’ Zydrax had wondered.

Doing such a thing would have alerted the outside world, and that was the one thing he’d been preventing since arriving in Orion.

At first, he was skeptical that he would do such a thing, but after breaking down the events, he could somewhat guess the thoughts that led to such a decision.

One had to organize the events of Ezra’s past life to gain better understanding.

The first big event was the First Great War, no, no, it was the beast tide.

Like in this timeline, a beast tide engineered by the demonic cult washed over every nation in Lexon.

The difference was, it happened early in Kevin’s timeline, at a time when he couldn’t have been older than twelve.

Moreover, with peak Masters and Grandmasters around, the issue was easily resolved, not causing too many problems.

After that came the First Great War.

Just like in this timeline, Niton fought against the combined forces of nearby kingdoms for the mana mountain - that by Ezra’s speculation - Avilla had already looted.

After five years of bitter struggle, Niton ended things on a pyrrhic victory.

Little of the mountain remained to be excavated at that point, most of it having been destroyed.

In the midst of celebrations, things took a turn for the worst when the northern and eastern parts of Niton announced their independence, becoming Roosevelt and Ribera respectively.

This incident split the Nitonian Grandmasters, as Jebas and Raven sided with the rebels.

Of course, they had also brought some Grandmasters from outside.

No, they wouldn’t have dared announce independence if they didn’t have Grandmasters on their side in the first place.

This put Niton on the back foot as fighters rushed back from the borders, not getting respite from the Great war before having to reclaim their land.

With fatigue having built up, the Emperor simply made a beeline for Kingsmere.

Getting there, the army was allowed to rest as the Emperor got an overview of the situation.

With little preparation, the Nitonian army was thrust into another war.

Moreover, this one had two fronts.

To stop both Ribera and Roosevelt from claiming anymore territory, the army was deployed to both sides, spreading it thin.

This was later found to be the biggest mistake made in the war.

Had they concentrated on taking a single one of them first, they would’ve made much more progress.

Furthermore, against only half of the Nitonian army - which was already low in numbers because of the Great War - the rebelling forces were able to hold their ground, turning it into a war of attrition that lasted more than a year.

A battle erupted in the middle of the second year, in which the Emperor killed Jebas, dealing a deadly blow to Ribera.

He would’ve dealt with more than just Jebas, but he’d been poisoned while battling in the Great War, and without a mana stone, his body deteriorated without stop, unaffected regardless of which elixir he drank.

As such, he was forced to preserve his strength to deal with other Grandmasters, else he would’ve just blown through Ribera’s headquarters and killed them.

Regardless, with Jebas dead, the other Grandmasters fled in the face of the Nitonian forces, allowing Niton a major breakthrough.

Getrahan took charge, destroying most of the enemy’s forces, broke into their headquarters, and reclaimed the land, thus quelling Ribera.

Then, the army bolstered their numbers and stationed many troops in Ribera to make sure the rebellion did not resume, before pointing their knives at Roosevelt.

At this crucial juncture, the demonic cult took action and kickstarted the Demon invasion.

For a third in the same decade, Niton went to war. No, it was better to say that they were dragged into this one.

Unlike in the current timeline, Ziltris opened the portal without a hitch, and many Grandmasters had joined them, with Quartez completely under their influence at the time.

This was also the time Zydrax drew mana into Orion’s atmosphere, giving the humans a better fighting chance.

With no one powerful enough to match him, Alvarach sent droves of lower level Demons to flood Orion rather than appear himself.

Actually, Zydrax had strongly repelled his existence, so Alvarach would have to pay a large price to cross through the barrier.

Unlike in this timeline where all his work was about to go down the drain, things were going according to plan in that one, so he saw no reason to pay such a large price.

Like a two pronged attack, the demonic humans came out of hiding as well, showcasing frightening numbers as they were primarily composed of people at or below the poverty line.

Which, with the way Niton was managed at the time, was the majority.

They slaughtered cities worth of people without remorse.

This put a hold on the Nitonian armies’ aim to reclaim Roosevelt as they fought back against the swarm of Demons that besieged them.

In such a mess, lords did not hesitate to conscript.

Ezra, or Kevin at the time, was forced to confront a group of Demons with a hundred man group at the prime age of twenty two.

They were slaughtered.

Except for him and one other person, everyone else was killed.

In fact, he would’ve bleed to death if not for a healing potion he had ransacked from another corpse.

With the Demons gone, he came across the other person, who he found out was named Marcus, and they befriended him.

Escaping with haste, he was lucky enough to find a Gold-rank technique and two swords hidden in one of their hideouts, which he promptly snatched up.

In the same cave, Marcus found another sword - a greatsword - and took it for himself.

With nothing to look forward to in Niton - as they did not want to go back to the army - and no relatives, they had no attachments to their place of birth.

No, it didn’t prick their consciousness one bit to ditch Niton and sail to Vonnamor with the fastest boat they could find, as did many, many others.

A mass exodus came into play as fear spread beyond reasonable heights, further accelerating Niton’s downfall.

Meanwhile, things got only worse in Lexon as droves of Demons would appear from within cities.

The men fought, culling many, but bodies piled as they did.

Unknownst to them, many cities had been infiltrated long ago, and many of the inhabitants had become Demonic humans since before the invasion, organized by the demonic cult.

As planned, they activated a portal put in place by the demonic cult in various cities, allowing Demons access.

One of those was, unsurprisingly, Kingsmere.

Without warning, a rampant attack began as many were killed, with many more turned to demonic humans.

The stationed guards put up a brave defense, but with most of the Masters having followed the Emperor to war, they were overwhelmed with numbers and slaughtered.

The Empresses faced the same fate as the whole city was dyed in blood.

After that, they then plundered for all it’s worth, desecrating the palace like nobody’s business, before heading to Traxford as reinforcements and perpetuating the same line of events.

Only after did the Emperor arrive.

Unfortunately for him, he had guests waiting.

Ziltris and other Grandmasters pulled up the moment his appearance was confirmed.

A battle occurred and the Emperor lost his life.

News of Kingsmere’s fall reached the ears of others.

Things took a turn for the worst as the Grandmasters appeared in city after city, embellishing the Emperor’s body to deal a devastating blow to the enemy’s morale.

With it, many outright surrendered, destroying the resistance from within.

Within a short year, Niton was conquered, but the Demons weren’t stopping there.

Utilizing long distance portals prepared ahead of time, Demons flooded cities like ants, killing tens and hundreds of thousands as they marched on.

But humans weren’t just going to watch them.

Reinforcements poured from the other two continents to stop their advancement.

One reason was because Demons were enemies of every human.

Another, the most important one, was that they knew that, if Demons were allowed to conquer Lexon, they would point their blades towards them next, so they supported the resisting kingdoms and brought their advancements to halt.

With Alvarach out of the picture, Grandmasters were the top rank.

Eleven years passed and the appearance of Demons had become a normal occurrence.

In this time, more Demons had entered Orion as many boats were sent to start assaulting the other two continents.

Among other things, the demonic cult tried to usurp kingdoms in Puton as they did in Lexon, but met bitter resistance and were rooted out.

In that time, Kevin had reached Expert-rank.

Along the way, he caught the eye of an assassin who then decided to train him.

The assassin more or less kidnapped and imprisoned him without consent and then forcefully imparted assassin skills into Kevin regardless of how much he spoke of becoming a knight.

By the time he would be released, Marcus had joined the Vonnamorian army.

With Demons on a rampage, it was one of the easiest jobs to sign up for.

Marcus called him to join, but Kevin went into seclusion instead, reforming himself using the mana technique and combining the fighting styles of both knights and assassins.

He did this, gaining significant progress for a year, before hitting a wall.

Deducing the wall to have formed from a lack of experience, only then did Kevin join the army.

In a few battles, he stood out with his peculiar fighting styles and the ’dirty tactics’ he used to take down enemies.

By the end of that year, he broke through to Expert-rank, shocking many.

From then on, he distinguished himself on multiple battlefields, earning him the moniker of Dark Knight.

In the midst of that, Alexis Lancaster, Vonnamor’s fourth prince at the time, invited him to his side, and Kevin accepted.

Without noticing, he and Marcus grew apart.

Moreover, his growth had also begun to stagnate. The way to Master-rank wasn’t nearly as easy to cross as those before it.

One day, he was abruptly summoned by the higher ups out of the blue, and to his surprise, Marcus was there as well.

Rather than a promotion, they requested that he relinquish his swords and mana technique for the ’betterment of the Empire’, offering nobility, land and a section of other riches.

After stating all the rewards, Kevin didn’t hesitate to decline, expressing his thankfulness at the offer and firm refusal.

It surprised the higher ups, but since their deal had fallen through, they could only acknowledge it, before asking him to leave.

Kevin thought it was just another event, not knowing how much his action would ripple into the future.

Then, like lightning out of the blue, the apocalypse descended.