The Era of Gods

This was a humanoid bat monster that appeared to be magnified by a factor of ten million. Its body was covered with a layer of hardened keratin that resembled black iron metal, which remained unscathed despite the sparks flying when it collided with the fragmented space as it crawled out.

The creature’s size was enormous. Merely its body seemed to be close to a hundred meters long. When it laboriously emerged and spread its wings, they blotted out the sky, making it look even more colossal than the terrifying dragon from the Dragon Clan, Luo Shuang.

Lin Xiao made no move to stop this monstrosity from entering. It was pointless. If he waited until later when the connection between the two dimensions was tighter and the breach wider, it would enter with ease. It was better to let it in now while the gap was still small and inconvenient for legendary creatures to pass through, and deal with it in a “trap and kill” maneuver.

The opponent had dispatched a thick-skinned and meaty behemoth to guard the gate, and he could simply eliminate the enemy’s gatekeeper.

As soon as the gigantic bat monster came through, Lin Xiao looked towards his Clan-members Slarda and Alemente, two legendary heroes.

Feeling his gaze, Slarda slowly walked out from Naga City. The Wise Goblins leader, Alemente, took out a huge crystal ball and tossed it; the crystal hung in midair, emitting a faint glow.

As he chanted incantations, the light from the crystal ball grew brighter and soon turned into a dazzling sphere of light.

Across a city’s distance, Slarda could still clearly sense the increasingly powerful mana fluctuations. When the time came to a certain moment, he took out the Great Guan Dao, struck it down on the ground, causing a loud boom, seemingly giving a signal. Alemente halted his chant at a certain verse, turned around, and pointed towards Slarda, who was across another city. Intense spatial fluctuations arrived shortly after, and ripples spread out from beneath Slarda’s feet as his figure sank down.

Alemente, expressionless, turned back, seriously chanting the final part of the spell, pointing at the sphere of light in front of him.

In the instant he pointed, the glowing sphere disappeared from sight and then reappeared near the dimensional passageway. An extremely intense light burst forth, and space rapidly froze in the wake of the exploding light.

Simultaneously, Slarda, who had sunk into the spatial ripples, walked out of the frozen space, an aura of explosive force around him causing the nearby space to expand and warp. In a flash, he vanished from sight.

In the blink of an eye, the Children of Nightmare’s Bernie, positioned at the opposite end of the spatial breach, pointed down with a thick index finger as fast as lightning and bellowed:

“Don’t even think about it!”

Outside the space passageway, surging Nightmare Power converged in front of the frozen humanoid bat monster into a colossal shield made of condensed Nightmare Power.

“Bang!”

The shield hadn’t fully formed before it was shattered by a massive figure that carried a terrifying force, twisting the space outward and leaving behind a lingering trajectory. Along with the figure, both the humanoid bat monster and the surrounding space were obliterated.

Salted Fish Charge!

Legendary Salted Fish Sprint!

Slarda hadn’t used this move in a long time; he hadn’t even employed it during the previous slaughter of the legendary Nightmare Beast.

Slarda’s strength had become so formidable that even Lin Xiao couldn’t accurately assess it. With the template of a legendary hero, the bloodline of an evolved species, super talents, and the indescribable changes that followed the path to Saint, all these combined made this believer someone Lin Xiao, his deity, wouldn’t dare claim to be capable of defeating in a frontal fight.

If any other Divine Territory Player had such a powerful believer, they would probably worry about the believer becoming uncontrollable.

Faith, essentially, is a shelter sought by the weak in the hearts of the strong. If the Clan’s strength becomes too close to or surpasses that of the deity they worship, it becomes very difficult to sustain that faith.

This is also one of the main reasons why more powerful intelligent creatures often have less devout faith.

As with dragons, they rarely have deep faith, even in the Dragon God, they find it difficult to maintain devout worship.

Lin Xiao had no such concerns. Whether it was the Supreme Naga or Lesser Naga, he created them. He was the founding ancestor of both races, akin to the Nine-faced Dragon God to the Dragon Clan; as the original creator, his relationship with these two races wasn’t merely one of faith.

Put another way, even if these two species were to worship other deities in the future, like creating and following a Divine System and other True Gods, he would still harvest a portion of their faith because he is the Creator God and Racial God of the Nagas. Whether they continue to worship him or not, as long as they live, he can collect a share of the Power of Faith.

This is also a major reason why Racial Gods tend to have high Divinity Levels. The Racial God of more advanced species is often Powerful Divine Power, and that’s the reason.

On that note, Slarda, leveraging his immense strength, forcefully bypassed the interference of the Nightmare’s Child opposite him and managed to slay the Rank 8 Legendary Nightmare Beast. He even had enough power left to swing a dazzling blade of light into the dimensional passageway, invoking an angry roar from within.

Compared to the caution during the first confrontation with the Nightmare’s Child and the first full-scale battle with other Nightmare Realms, Lin Xiao was now much more at ease.

With more experience, he instantly took a head-on approach, cutting off the head of a Legendary Nightmare Beast before the main forces of the enemy could arrive.

Berny, the Child of Nightmare, was filled with fury but could do nothing for the moment.

Countless humanoid bat monsters surged out of the passageway between the two realms like ants, flying in all directions as they penetrated the depths of the Divine Realm. This was both exploration and an extension of the influence of the Nightmare Realm into the Divine Realm, infiltrating it.

It was well known that the Clans within the Divine Realm were actually extensions of the Divine Realm’s power and the will of the Divine Realm Master. Wherever these humanoid bat monsters appeared, the will of the Children of Nightmare would manifest.

If a significant number of Nightmare Creatures appeared within the Divine Realm, Berny’s powers would extend through these Nightmare Creatures, and could even descend directly using them as coordinates.

The arrival of the powers of a Child of Nightmare within the Divine Realm was akin to an internal crisis, a considerable trouble.

Especially since the power from the Nightmare World was full of aggression, much more so than that of the Human Divine Realm.

However, Lin Xiao was helpless in this situation because his Divine Realm lacked aerial forces. The only flying unit he had was the Black Dragon Nejelanmu, but even a single Black Dragon, though it could possibly defeat these myriad low-strength flying creatures, wouldn’t be able to eradicate them entirely.

At this moment, he slightly regretted not developing an air force. Perhaps if he managed to return safely this time, he would have to establish an aerial unit, otherwise, he would be at a disadvantage if he encountered such a situation again.

Although a legendary Nightmare Creature guarding the enemy’s gate had been killed, it appeared that the enemy still had the upper hand, after all, three Children of Nightmare were working together.

Moreover, within the invisible Nightmare Realm, the infuriated Berny said to the other two Children of Nightmare:

“Prepare your subordinates. Connect your realms with the Human Divine Realm and attack together.”

The two Children of Nightmare naturally nodded. Their incarnations slowly faded and disappeared.

Then, Lin Xiao, seated in the Divine Realm, felt two realms approaching his own. On the border between the Nightmare Realm and the Divine Realm, two spatial passageways were slowly taking shape.

Lin Xiao’s expression remained unchanged; this was within his expectations. He had been wondering why there was only one passageway before, but it seemed that one of the Children of Nightmare had wanted a one-on-one confrontation with him and became enraged after being shown a lesson.

The other two passageways connecting to the Nightmare Realms gradually took shape in two different directions. Within two hours of their formation, tens of thousands of flying Nightmare Creatures had emerged from Berny’s central passageway. However, not many powerful Nightmare Creatures had come through, let alone another gigantic legendary Nightmare Beast like before.

After these flying Nightmare Creatures emerged, they spread throughout the Divine Realm, and within a few hours, they had flown over the entire realm, including entering the sea. Lin Xiao sensed that as these Nightmare Creatures spread throughout the Main Divine Realm, the strength of Berny’s Domain was also gradually increasing, with the Nightmare passageway silently expanding to more than double its size.

Fortunately, these Nightmare Creatures had not discovered the other Divine Domain spaces—the entrances and exits to the six subsidiary Divine Realms of earth, fire, wind, water, Heaven, and Netherworld, except for the Water Elemental Divine Realm located deep in the sea, the rest were all in Naga City.

As long as the main city remained unbreached, the war would not affect the subsidiary Divine Realms.

In the fourth hour, the joint between the other two Children of Nightmare’s realms and the Divine Realm was completed. A surge of Nightmare energy erupted, and a multitude of bizarre Nightmare Creatures poured out.

The three Children of Nightmare seemed to have an agreement; at the instant the passageway was formed, the first connecting passageway’s already prepared Nightmare Army charged out, coordinating with the other three Nightmare Armies.

From high above, one could see the vast Main Divine Realm being engulfed on three sides by dense, dark Nightmare miasma, which spread and eroded the Divine Realm, accompanied by the myriad Nightmare Creatures.

Wherever this torrent of Nightmare Creatures and Nightmare miasma went, Lin Xiao felt his grip on that area weaken, with stronger enemy forces resulting in a greater decrease in control.

This time, the strategy was defense-oriented. After slaying a legendary Nightmare Beast, the Divine Realm focused solely on fortifying its defenses, regardless of the increasing number of Nightmare Creatures entering. The forces within the City of Truth and Naga City remained steadfast and immovable.

In the sixth hour, the first wave of over one hundred thousand Nightmare Creatures reached the outskirts of the City of Truth, where they were greeted by an onslaught of super Flame Explosions emanating from a multitude of Magic High Towers.

The Magic Towers’ effects were quite singular, greatly amplifying a few specific spells to the extent that they transformed several ordinary spells into hugely powerful, wide-ranging, strategic-level magic.

A total of forty Magic and Lightning Towers stood in the City of Truth, doubling the number in Naga City. The first wave consisted of more than thirty super Flame Explosions, each the size of a round table, and eight super Lightning Chains. After the barrage, mushroom clouds resembling nuclear explosions rose slowly. The earth outside the City of Truth was blasted into over thirty craters, each with a molten perimeter stretching more than a hundred meters in diameter, instantly turning thousands of Nightmare Creatures to ash.

Had the enemy been any other intelligent being, their morale might have plummeted after such a terrifying bombardment, but for the low-intelligence, cannon fodder-grade Nightmare Creatures controlled by the Children of Nightmare, the impact was negligible. They were momentarily instilled with a natural fear before being spurred on by the Children of Nightmare to renew the attack.

“Mage team, prepare!”

Inside the City of Truth, the Wise Goblin Grand Mage Jien slammed his magic wand onto the ground. Lined up behind him was a team of over a hundred genuine Mages, who under his direction, began chanting in unison. A powerful wave of Mana started to ripple outwards.