Free Web NovelChapter 20: Chapter20-The World Beyond the Mountains, the Old Empire
John closed the panel and glanced at the time. It was currently six o’clock in the afternoon.
The sun was just beginning to sink toward the horizon.
"At this hour, I should still have enough time to finish the final quest, Edge of the World."
John did not hesitate any longer. In a flash, his figure vanished from the spot.
Following the coordinates on the map, he sprinted all the way toward the Frontier Mountains.
Along the way, he occasionally ran into various high-level monsters blocking his path.
But without exception, every single one of them was instantly killed by John with a single Inferno Ray and a nuclear blast. freeweɓnøvel.com
There was simply no creature that could slow him down.
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About an hour later,
John finally arrived at the so-called Frontier Mountains.
He raised his head and stared at the mountain range before him, which towered like an enormous wall.
Though it was called a mountain range, it looked more like a city wall.
Between the wall and the nearest forest lay a distance of more than ten kilometers, and the entire stretch of land in between was utterly barren, without a single blade of grass.
John gradually approached it. The closer he got, the more he realized that this mountain range seemed to have been cast directly from molten lava. There was no slope to it at all.
Once he got close enough, John discovered that the pitch-black surface of the mountain was covered in mysterious patterns.
Taking a closer look, he was shocked to realize that he could actually understand those patterns.
"This is... the language of the gods?"
In his previous life, when he had ascended to godhood, he had read some of the divine language.
Naturally, he was able to recognize the meaning of these markings now.
Roughly speaking, they meant that He had taken this object as a covenant and this place as a boundary, never to be crossed for all eternity.
The moment John finished reading it, a sudden sense of unease gripped his heart.
He looked around, then searched toward the yellow marker shown on the map.
In the end, he found nothing at all.
John suppressed the discomfort in his heart and frowned.
"Looks like there’s only one method left."
The next moment, violent fire elements gathered from within his chest.
In just a few breaths, a terrifying surge of heat suddenly erupted, transforming into a dazzling white light that slammed into the surface of the mountain wall.
Boom!
The ground around him trembled violently.
When the dust scattered, however, only the outer layer of the wall had collapsed.
Beneath the peeled-away surface, an eerie bronze door was revealed.
John’s gaze sharpened and landed on the bronze door.
The bronze door had no keyhole and no handle. Its surface was completely smooth, without even a single rune carved into it.
He reached out and pressed his hand against the door, but no magic was triggered.
This was nothing more than an extremely pure bronze door placed here, as though it had never been meant to be opened in the first place.
An ordinary person might have been completely helpless before this door, but John was different. His Strength attribute had already reached an astonishing level after being modified.
He clenched his hand into a fist and directly smashed a heavy punch into the bronze door.
Boom!
The solid bronze door was instantly warped by the blow, revealing a pitch-black passage beyond it.
A foul, rotten stench rushed out toward him. John frowned slightly, then lifted his foot, preparing to step inside.
Just then, a system notification suddenly rang out.
[Congratulations, player! You have successfully triggered the world event: Old Empire!
Would you like to make the teleportation point public?]
[Note: Making it public will grant Reputation +10,000. If you choose not to make it public, there will be no reward.]
John thought for a moment, then said in a low voice, "Make it public."
After all, for other players, this place was not somewhere they could reach at all.
Even if they came, they would only be there to fill the numbers. They would have no way of affecting John’s plans.
In an instant, a grand announcement rang out.
[World Announcement: Player "Outlander" from Starter Village No. 616 has triggered the Old Empire event. Teleportation point: (1827, 9299).]
[Congratulations, player! You have received Reputation +10,000!]
When they heard the announcement, the players who were still trying to wait for the dungeon to refresh were instantly stunned.
What the hell?
Had Outlander gone and quietly caused another major event again?
The Old Empire event sounded extremely impressive just from its name alone!
If they could participate in it, they would probably be able to obtain quite a lot of rewards.
For a time, after hearing the announcement, all the players swarmed toward the teleportation point.
...
At the same time,
After choosing to make it public, John stepped straight through the door.
After passing through a narrow passage, another vast scene appeared before his eyes.
Behind the door was an endless expanse of yellow sand, while the sky above was a crimson red, as though stained with blood.
This place seemed to be an independent small world.
John raised his head and looked at the sky. The clouds here were extremely low, as though he could touch them simply by reaching out.
Looking far into the distance, he could also make out the outline of a city. Many of its buildings towered high into the clouds.
"That city..."
John’s pupils contracted slightly.
He had once seen a painting of this city inside the lord’s room. If he remembered correctly, it seemed to be the capital city of their empire from the old days!
John let out a sigh.
"As expected, it’s exactly as I guessed."
His figure flashed, and he began rushing toward the City of Nine Suns.
However, he had not gone far before the yellow sand beneath his feet suddenly began to shake when he was still one kilometer away from the capital city, Spirit.
The sand trembled like chaff being sifted, and the entire ground continued to quake.
Beneath the surface of the sand, it seemed as though something was constantly pushing upward.
Rustle, rustle, rustle!
As the grains of sand began to sink and flow downward, one banner after another gradually emerged.
Only then did John finally see what lay beneath the sand.
They were Old Empire Soldiers, one after another, their bodies already reduced to dried corpses.
These soldiers were still wearing the armor they had worn in life, and they formed countless military formations.
The number of soldiers in this army was astonishing beyond measure. At a single glance, they stretched densely into the distance, with no end in sight.
John could not help but curse under his breath.
"Damn it. What the hell is this?"
Immediately afterward, he cast Detect at the nearest soldier.
[Old Empire Soldier]
[Skills]: Imperial Formation, Imperial Charge, Morale Aura...
[Description]: An imperial soldier buried in the old days. Time cannot erode the glory that belongs only to the Empire...
...
Fortunately, these soldiers were not very high in level.
John stared at them for a long while, but this group of soldiers, who had already become dried corpses, did not launch an attack on him.
It seemed they had no desire to attack on their own.
These Old Empire Soldiers merely stood between John and the capital city like statues.
John waited for a moment, but in the end, he still decided to continue forward.
When he was only a hundred meters away from the first group of soldiers, those spearmen suddenly moved.
Whoosh!
They abruptly lowered their spears, the spearheads pointing straight at John!
A fierce and murderous aura spread out, enough to intimidate any petty villain.
John merely tilted his head.
"Hm? So you won’t let me pass. Looks like there’s nothing to talk about, then."
With that, he raised his hand and aimed it at the soldiers.
"System, devour."
These soldiers appeared to have no vitality left at all. Theoretically speaking, they should also count as corpses, which meant they should be capable of being devoured by the system.
However, John waited for a long time, yet no notification rang out in his mind.
The system actually had no reaction to these soldiers!
