Victor smiled as he stood up and adjusted his clothes.

Making sure he was ready, he quietly left the cabin, making sure not to wake up the two exhausted elf girls who were tasked to ‘heal him up’ after he hurt himself connecting to his other soul part! Although he had to decrease his charm by 95%, it was still very effective on them.

Well, he was not complaining. Now it was time for work though…

According to the information he gathered since coming here, this world, Ismeralia, currently had one large continent that was cut in half by that deathly gorge, but that was not always the case.

In old times there was one other larger continent. But it seemed to have perished with all the empires and kingdoms on it in an old war. People here only know legends about it in folklore songs about a heavenly weapon that fell from the sky and killed everyone there.
This intrigued Victor’s curiosity as this weapon might be the artifact the fate lord wanted!

This remaining content was also in a state of war 1500 years ago when the demons first arrived from the many tiny space fractures that were caused by that same weapon.

Apparently due to the fractures’ size only weak demons could pass here so naturally they were not considered a danger at all! On the contrary, some people actively searched for the fractures and began farming the demons to get the reward they dropped when they died.

Many different parties, like the Sun temple that appeared about 350 years ago, preached against those demons and demanded the fractures to be sealed up but no one cared.

This all changed 300 years ago when a certain incident happened in the Zarami Empire, the strongest human Empire that subdued most of the other races at that time.

According to folk tales, the king there was approaching the end of his life and in a bid to extend it, he tried to connect to another world, the Dragon realm from which his ancestor came.
He failed miserably, opening a portal right into Hell. It seemed like the wizard who was supposed to be helping him turned out to be a great demon in disguise! A classic demon method!

This portal was not like the dangerous and unstable space fractures! It was able to support much stronger demons and from it, those demons did come. Legions after Legions!

In just 3 days the empire fell followed by the adjacent moon elves theocracy.

After that, the demons spilled out everywhere, attacking all the surrounding kingdoms and burning them to ashes before a coalition was quickly established by the rest of the world to fight them!

Knights and wizards from all over the land hurried to join the war and sure enough, managed to stop the demons right at the gorge before pushing them back again and again.

The demons seemed to have many restrictions on them after coming to this world through the portal and the more they walked away from it the weaker they became, so when the coalition army forced them to fight by the gorge, despite holding up, they were greatly disadvantaged and suffered many losses!

The demon’s armies were finally repelled in 5 years after suffering a great defeat when thanks to the sacrifice of a great hero, the demonic gate was closed, rendering even the strongest among them greatly weakened and on the run! Allowing the coalition army to finally enter the devastated lands to free it!

The world was filled with joy, and everyone presumed it was just time before all the lands were reclaimed.

Sadly, the reality was much crueler.

In the five years of occupation, the demons who controlled half of the continent seemed to have successfully managed to use the old fractures to start merging the world with theirs.
Although high demons still couldn't pass through, all the land beyond the gorge seemed to have been infected with something. It was as if it was slowly becoming a part of Hell.

No crops could be grown there and all living things other than the demons seemed to get sick if they spent too much time there.

On top of that, people who tried to seal those fractures quickly discovered that the demons who lived beside them seemed to have most of their powers, so approaching them was pure suicide. Demons there were at a level that the people in this world had no way of defeating!

So after a few years of pointless fighting and trying to seal the fractures, a decision was made to create a barrier and completely isolate the devastated land and leave it as farmland to raise demons and butcher them for treasures.

After that, a certain delicate balance was created until this day. The only ones who wandered beyond the gorge were adventurers and treasure hunters who wanted to search for their luck in the ruins of the devastated kingdoms!

That was the official tale. And although most of it was probably true, Victor didn’t believe it fully.
Although the story made the world powers seem to be harmonious when they united, he was sure that there must have been a lot of drama...
He had a hunch that some players might have been using the demon on purpose to advance some agenda.

Anyway, nowadays, other than the demon-infested wilds, only three large kingdoms still exist.

The first was the Sun Elves kingdom that borders the gorge. It spanned a massive expanse of land, as the elves shamelessly claimed that even the deserts and forests around the kingdom belonged to them.

Despite all the lands, most of the sun elves lived in the holy capital where they were ruled by an elf king and they only allowed their own race to live in there, discriminating even against other elves like the moon elves who were reduced to mere slaves!

The second was the Royal Union in the southern marches which bordered the desert he was in. It was a huge conglomerate of many small kingdoms of different races that unified to fight the demon despite the many wars between each other. They were the ones who supported the sun temple and hated the guts of the Sun elves.

The third was the Silver Empire which was the last human empire. It was separated from the Sun elves' domain by a huge mountain range that the sun elves naturally claimed it was theirs.

Other than that there were numerous free cities and small countries around the continent, but those were not important at all as all of them had some sort of a protection agreement with one of the three superpowers. The border town he was in at the moment was under the influence of the Sun Temple like most of the lands around the gorge.

The sun temple although seemed to have power enough to rival entire kingdoms, had stayed on the sidelines for its entire existence. Not concerned with worldly things and only fighting demons!

Knowing all this, Victor’s plan here had changed drastically from what he had in mind when he came here.

At first, he just wanted to just build a hidden base in preparation to slowly save his family members and get whatever treasures this world has to foil the demon’s plan.

Now, he changed his priorities. Especially after the notifications he got when he enslaved Astran.
It gave him two names, the Sun lord and Zifr the Great. From those names, it was clear that the former was a Lord and the latter was a demon.

This notification had confirmed his suspicions that beyond all this war drama there must have been some people plotting behind the scenes.

He was pretty sure it was those two who were trying to control this world. If not, why would they be able to detect his connection with Trilaria which had nothing to do with them?
The interference meant that they already had some kind of formation or artifact that engulfed this entire world or monitored it.

Now he had four questions that would define his future plans.

The first was whether the Sun lord and Zifr were the only major players left around like some other lords, and how strong they really were! If they were to be on the same level as that Huahua girl, it would be extremely dangerous!

The second was whether those powers knew about each other's existence. That Zifr the Great might still keep his existence hidden. If such, was the sun lord the de facto leader of this world or were there others?

The third was to what was the current world’s powers alignment.
Did the sun elves follow that sun lord? What about the Sun temple are they a demonic temple or did they also work for the Sun lord? What about the Free Empire and the Federation, did they also have weaker backers or were they just a distraction!

The last question was about the Artifact that destroyed this world… It was probably the one that allowed the demons to control this world eventually. According to Lily, it must have been in the human empire. But what the fuck was it? And how much time did he have?

What he knew was that the war here in Ismeralia was near its end, and this meant that the major players had already set their pieces for the last battle. He was pretty sure that by this point every major world power must have already been infiltrated with a myriad of demon spies ready to make their move!

Victor shook his head. This world would require a long time to really understand, and he had no such leisure, so must take things one step at a time.

Now, it was time for him to see who got the dragon bones in the auction. He was hoping that it would be some big fish that he could use. Dragon bones were very precious even in this fantasy world and he was sure they might lead him to the top as they changed hands.

Adjusting his disguise that of the old man, he left the cauldron that he hid under the bed in the inn then he froze.

It was night time and the cauldron was still under the bed where Victor materialized, but the bed was under piles and piles of rubble.

Putting the cauldron away, he quickly crawled from under the bed, began to push the rubble away, and emerged to the surface into a scene of a devastated town… Fires and destruction everywhere, women and children screaming and weeping over corpses that piled in the streets!

WTF happened while he was away?

He grabbed a random guy who was scavenging through the ruins of the inn and pulled him toward him.

“What happened while I was asleep?” he asked.

“Who the fu….. AWWW…. AHHH……. AH……… “ he didn’t continue as Victor started beating the shit out of him.

“PLEASE STOP! I WILL ANSWER!” the man who finally realized who the boss was, pleaded.

“What happened here?” Victor asked.

“Some fool auctioned a dragon bone at the auction… I don’t know what happened after that, but all of a sudden people started teleporting here one after another as more than one party wanted the bones including a fucking elven prince and an old DragonKin… I am not sure what happened but those guys began to fight and before we knew it all hell broke loose!” the man answered.

“Elven prince?” Victor paused. Was it the one he wanted to grab and ask a few questions? Impossible... There were a lot of princes. “Who else?”

“Ah…. Yes…. I am not sure but there were people from the south and a few giants who fought with a wizard who snatched the bones from them, burning the entire town. It was a fucking mess…” the man said. “I also heard there were some demons in disguise, they prompted the sun temple to intervene!” the man added.

“I see…” Victor said This got bigger faster than he anticipated.

He let go of the man who quickly escaped, then sighed looking around.

“It seems like I caught a whale rather than a fish…” he said to himself as he made his way through the streets “That’s the way I like it!” he smirked.

He could see it, the three dragon bones which he marked with his tracker and gave to the auctioneer were going in three different directions. One of them was at the temple where he was headed.

…

Zed, who finished killing a zombie dog with his sister, looked with fascination, watching as his cousin Zoe slowly pulled back her strange-looking sword from the Giant Ghoul's back while the tan girl Kuu let go of its neck that she was squeezing with her fascinating bare legs, allowing it to fall to the ground then turn into dust.

“You did good!” Zoe said, wiping her sword that was super effective against the undead. “With this, it is only a matter of time until you master your skills!”

“Um!” Kuu nodded with longing and determination as she redid his ponytail that had come loose earlier. According to what she said earlier, the class she got when the Dungeon started was a Monk, so she was very good at fighting!

“Good job!” Zed said in a friendly manner, but the girls ignored him. He had been trying to get to know those two better for the last few hours but to no avail. At first, he thought they were ignoring him because he was an outsider, but watching them get along with his sister, he knew that it was just because he was a guy! The only guy in this group!

Earlier in the day, all the family players were divided into teams of seven each headed by an elder or an elite heir.

The elders with Ann and Zed’s mother headed toward the center with a few others to conquer the boss.

This group, composed of Zed, Zola, Alice, Zoe, Kuu, and two other servant girls, had two elite heirs because it was full of beginners!

They were tasked to patrol the perimeter and get rid of any monsters that appeared. It was the easiest mission around and Zed was glad with that as he was worried about his sister.

Hopefully, his mother was ok too… She was strong, but this place was treacherous!

He sighed, looking at the tall volcano that towered above them. They were now on the beach of this new volcanic island that appeared out of nowhere.

If one didn’t know better he would think that it was a normal tropical island with a sandy beach and virgin jungle that surrounded a tall mountain. That was if he ignored the poisonous purple sand, the withered ominous vegetation, and the occasional monster that sprung and tried to eat him.

“I think that’s it for this area!” someone said. It was Alice who also finished killing the undead ogre she was fighting alone. “What to do now?” Alice pondered, putting her massive sword on her shoulder as she looked around, letting the ogre corpse behind her turn into dust.

“Aren't you the team leader?” Zed asked in sarcasm. She had been ordering him around all day.

He didn’t like Alice one bit! In general, he never liked dominating strong women.

“I am…Should we try to move a little deeper?” Alice said, ignoring Zed as she looked at Zoe.

“I think we can try it…” Zoe, who got what Alice meant, said with a confident smile!

“No way!” Zed quickly interjected. “I am not putting my sister in danger!” he said. He already figured out that both Alice and Zoe were definitely not level 33 and 36 as they announced on the island earlier. He was not stupid. Those girls could easily decimate a full swarm of ghouls like they were cutting weeds, something that his mother whose level was 54 could never do.

But that didn’t mean he and the others were safe with them! On the contrary, attempting to go deeper was a suicide! That place was definitely full of traps and poisonous monsters!

“Zed!” Zola scolded. “I can take care of myself!” she scolded.

“But…”

His sister ignored him.

“Let’s take a rest then… We will try to move one mile after that!” Alice said ignoring the drama and making the two servant girls hurry to prepare a rudimentary camp.

“Sister Alice, I wanted to ask you about the ghoul earlier…” Zola as if naturally hurried toward Alice and began to ask her about random things.

Zed sighed. His sister seemed to have been completely fascinated by Alice after getting to know her. Damn it!

Well, maybe he would be able to use the time to get to know that Kuu girl better… She was 100% his type! A docile and obedient girl!

…

Reaching the grand Sun temple, Victor found it as expected, still standing majestically in the middle of the rubble. It was the only building that was left intact in the entire town. The slave market in front of it had ling perished into ashes.

Many people were trying to go inside for shelter, but the guards shunned them all saying that demons might try to infiltrate or something…

Victor ignored the chaos and moved past the unsuspecting guards. No one noticed him.

Victor pressed No.

 

Victor didn’t answer… What kind of a question is that?

He didn’t dare to press ‘No’ as the artifact might do something to indicate it failed and alert the temple.

He started to strengthen his disguise. Usually, he kept it at a certain level to hide his existence and obscure his identity as the more he disguised the more it drained him.
This artifact though seemed to be locked onto something else.

He started to strengthen his disguise one bit after another… Remove his breath, his aura, his soul, his mana, his bloodline…

The message didn’t disappear… How the fuck was this thing locking in on him? No matter what he disguised, nothing changed.
Was it locating his intent? If such, how can he disguise that! His skill didn’t have that option.

Victor frowned.

Maybe he should retreat for now? NEVER!

Shit, he had no time for this…

Thinking for a moment, quickly created a disguise around himself, disguising the world itself as if it were just outside the temple.

“Would this work?” Victor wondered as he prepared himself for a fight. If he couldn't sneak in, he planned to barge in with brute force. Even if it was dangerous, he was sure he could escape if anything went wrong. That was the best thing about being in another world, he didn’t need to think about the consequences!

Still, he preferred to act low-key to lower his enemy's vigilance!

A success!

Victor sighed and then slowly continued his path into the temple. The first thing he was going to do was to get that fucking artifact and spank its butt. It really scared him for a moment there.