NOVEL NEXT WORLD Chapter 572 - 572: An Epic Battle and Exposure
Chapter 572: Chapter 572: An Epic Battle and Exposure
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In the seventh year after the appearance of the third generation of Ground Dwellers, an unprecedented event occurred when a ground-dwelling tribe of approximately twenty thousand faced an attack by a band of about two hundred Zoel plunderers. The Tribal Chief made a bold decision to lead his troops in a proactive strike against the plunderers, engaging them in open battle.
Ultimately, despite a casualty count as high as over three thousand, the tribe managed to annihilate the Zoel raiding party.
To the Ground Dwellers of yore, such an event was nothing short of miraculous, an achievement beyond anything they had ever experienced.
This victory, miraculous as it was, ignited the emotions of all Ground Dwellers. In that moment, Lin Xiao could sense that the thread of faith within the entire domain of his Ground Dweller believers had become even more robust, with the leader of that tribe catching his particular attention.
After this battle, which could be deemed a miracle, the faith of this Ground Dweller surged by a thousand times in an instant, rivaling that of a Fanatic Believer of a Supreme Naga.
But it was not just the swell of faith that attracted Lin Xiao’s attention; it was the very transformation of the Ground Dweller himself.
Having achieved this miraculous feat, he received the blessing of some mysterious power, miraculously transforming from an ordinary Ground Dweller into a hero, a Ground Dweller hero.
Upon becoming a hero, this Ground Dweller named Onard suddenly burst forth with intelligence, as though he had attained enlightenment.
Onard collected the heads of all the slain Zoel and personally escorted them across thousands of kilometers to the Ground Dwellers’ sacred site—the Tableland of Hope—where he offered them in sacrifice to the God of the Ground Dwellers.
Lin Xiao joyously accepted the offering and, using only a modest amount of Divine Power, crafted a crown and a scepter, both Demigod Artifacts, to bestow upon him. He then designated Onard as the King of the Ground Dwellers, commanding him to lead all his people.
This was indeed a momentous occasion. Having a strong and wise heroic Ground Dweller to lead his people signified a powerful ally for Lin Xiao.
He had no concerns about ceding any power. He was a god; his desire was for the faith of the Ground Dwellers, not the mere control over their race. To him, that held no significance.
If possible, he would have welcomed the emergence of a multitude of heroes among the Ground Dwellers. Unfortunately, that was unlikely to happen. Having one hero was already the result of the Ground Dwellers’ accumulated luck and destiny exploding after tens of thousands of years.
The newly enlightened Onard swiftly sent out messengers, and with the Tableland of Hope as the Royal Capital, he formally established the Dicavian Kingdom in the ninth year, being crowned as its king.
King Onard, even more proactive than Lin Xiao, ceaselessly dispatched diplomatic teams to other regions in the second layer of the Dark Territory to locate Ground Dwellers and help other tribes establish large settlements to withstand Zoel raiding parties.
Domestically, he encouraged the Ground Dwellers to study blacksmithing and other techniques, starting to manufacture metal weapons. With Lin Xiao’s deliberate teaching, the Ground Dweller smiths quickly mastered the art of metal forging. Various types of metal weapons and armor began to appear, leading to a rapid advancement in the technological level of the Dicavian Kingdom and increasingly strengthening its might.
If possible, Lin Xiao wished for this rapid developmental pace to continue unabated.
However, with the formal establishment of the Dicavian Kingdom, or more precisely after the battle that gave rise to Onard, the Kingdom entered the sights of the Zoel upper echelons.
At this time, it was merely the major Zoel clans that took an interest in the more powerful third-generation Ground Dwellers, viewing them as potential replacements for the filthy Goblins as a new source of high-quality slaves.
After two years of comprehensive reconnaissance, eight Zoel cities conspired, preparing to form an alliance to attack the royal capital of the Dicavian Kingdom, the Tableland of Hope.
The news reached the Dicavian Kingdom quickly. By now, the Ground Dwellers were no longer the frail race of old. At the very least, within the second layer of the Dark Territory, they had become the most powerful race, now brave enough to form groups and leave their tribes.
Some Ground Dwellers discovered the gathering Allied Forces, and the information reached the kingdom ahead of time. Naturally, Lin Xiao was also aware.
But at that moment, Lin Xiao was not worried in the least. He simply decreed a divine mandate for an all-out counterattack and dispatched the Minotaur Jonila to the King City with an array of war machines that had been divinely gifted.
Lin Hong and Lin Bao’s Incarnations had long since arrived. They brought with them a total of four Rank 10 Giant God Soldiers, forty Rank 8 Diamond and Black Lustrous Stone Golems of Legendary Level, and two thousand Rank 6 Steel Golems at the Transcendent Level, equivalent to two thousand top-tier professionals above Level 15.
A True God cannot personally intervene in battles between believers, but these Golems are not within the prohibition.
By now, Lin Xiao had over ten million third-generation Dwarf believers. Compared to the over one billion population of Dwarves across the entire second layer of the Dark Territory, this was but a drop in the ocean—it was simply a matter of not having enough time. From the beginning of expanding his faith up until now, even if he continued to expand non-stop, it would take several hundred years to encompass all the Dwarves of the second layer of the Dark Territory into his faith.
After all, this Primary Material Plane is just too vast.
Lin Xiao anticipated that once the number of his Ground Dweller believers reached around one hundred million, he would have accumulated enough Power of Faith to support his Divine Enthronement.
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After all, the Power of Faith provided by the Ground Dwellers had reached about a quarter of that provided by normal Humans. A Devout Believer among Humans would provide around three points of the Power of Faith daily, which means a devout Ground Dweller worshiper could offer about 0.8 points of the Power of Faith each day. Normally, one hundred million Ground Dwellers could harvest eighty million points of the Power of Faith, equating to an income of eighty points of Divine Power a day.
This income is, in truth, not very high; it’s far from enough to maintain a True God under normal circumstances.
Considering that a newly Divine Enthroned Deity at God Level 0 also needs one thousand points of Divine Power each day to maintain their Divinity, it appears that most True Gods in this world likely don’t harvest enough Divine Power to sustain the existence of their God Level.
In fact, the main reason why there are tens of thousands of True Gods in this world is that the vast majority of them do not possess a God Country.
The daily maintenance cost of one thousand points of Divine Power includes the maintenance of both the Divinity and the God Country, with the latter accounting for the majority. This holds true even for Son of Divine Realm True Gods like Lin Xiao, except the God Country is replaced with a Divine Realm.
If a God Country is not utilized, maintenance costs can be reduced to about one-tenth, which means that the Divinity maintenance cost for a newly Divine Enthroned New God only requires one hundred points of Divine Power.
Which is to say, the so-called myriad deities of this world are mostly those without a formal God Country, possessing Weak Divine Power, largely ranging from God Level 0 to 4.
Lin Xiao only needs about one hundred million third-generation Ground Dweller worshipers to obtain enough Power of Faith to sustain his Avatar Descend to Divine Enthronement in this world.
After all, the vast majority of third-generation Ground Dwellers are more than just Devout Believers—they constitute a significant number of Fanatic Believers.
Moreover, this demand for worshipers would continue to decrease with the emergence of a fourth and even fifth generation of Cave-dwellers in the future. When the time comes that Cave-dwellers have been developed to be stronger than Humans, perhaps only a million Cave-dweller believers would suffice to support the existence of a True God. By then, given the ever-growing number of Cave-dwellers…
Thinking up to this point, Lin Xiao felt that the future was bright for this race, which had initially been overlooked by all.
The allied forces from the eight Thorium Cities could be considered extremely strong, but the third-generation Ground Dwellers were no longer the weakest at this point.
While the Thorium Alliance Army wasted months squabbling and delaying before finally assembling their troops, the Ground Dwellers, under the coordination of Onard, the King of the Dicavians, had gathered an entire million near the capital.
Therefore, when more than twenty thousand Trojanguic along with nearly fifty thousand servant Races of the Allied Forces arrived near the Tableland of Hope, they were surrounded by over a million Ground Dwellers.
Killing a million pigs could exhaust a person to death, let alone when the Ground Dwellers now were not weak. With the average combat strength of the third-generation Ground Dwellers not inferior to that of Humans and rallied by Ground Dweller Heroes, supported by the conviction to defend their homeland and driven by a millennia-old blood feud, their erupted power shocked even the gods.
Countless Ground Dwellers pressed on relentlessly, without fear of death, determined to plunge their crude weapons into their enemies, even if it meant perishing together.
Despite many Trojanguic Mages within the Allied Forces summoning large-scale spells that killed an untold number of Ground Dwellers, and despite the Allied Forces having numerous Priests of The Lord of Darkness bestowing various positive BUFFs on the Trojanguic, the sheer number of Ground Dwellers was overwhelming, inexhaustible in their masses.
Eventually, as the Zoel Priests prayed to The Lord of Darkness, and just as the Incarnation of The Lord of Darkness was about to descend, Lin Bao’s Avatar Descend occurred within a Thorium City in the third layer of the Dark Territory, immediately drawing the attention of this Incarnation of The Lord of Darkness.
Compared to this battlefield, that city, which housed hundreds of thousands of Zorel Elves, was of greater significance.
Though The Lord of Darkness possessed Medium Divine Power and could maintain as many as five powerful Incarnations of God, under most circumstances two would be constantly stationed within the God Country to guard the sleeping True Body, with the remaining Incarnations nearly always being preoccupied—either traveling the Void in search of opportunities in Different Domains or scheming conspiracies. Only one was generally available to respond immediately to the believers’ summons.
In the end, after over two hundred fifty thousand Ground Dwellers died in combat, with countless others injured, and with Lin Bao’s subordinate’s Incarnation of God severely wounded and gone missing, this Trojanguic Allied Force was entirely destroyed except for a few hundred elites, including Trojanguic Priests and Mages, who managed to flee.
An unprecedented, epic battle came to an end, and the entire Dark Territory was astir.
It was then that the Trojanguic of the third layer of the Dark Territory, along with the other Races of the Dark Territory, realized that the Ground Dwellers—a Race they had always perceived as weak—had become incredibly formidable without their knowledge.
As various Races and their backing Deities turned their attention toward this development, they naturally discovered Lin Xiao, the God of Underworlders, lurking behind the Ground Dwellers.
Soon after, Lin Xiao sent Jonila, the Minotaur Messenger, to the first layer of the Dark Territory to express goodwill and seek to join their Alliance against the tyrannical Lord of Darkness.
The Deity of the Minotaurs was the first to agree, followed by the Deity of the Grey Dwarves casting their approval. To maintain internal unity, the remaining Deities all agreed to accept the Ground Dwellers and their Guardian God into the Alliance against The Lord of Darkness.
Meanwhile, an Incarnation of Lin Hong stealthily infiltrated the fourth layer of the Dark Territory, revealing the presence of a Son of Insect Tribe Divine Realm nestled within the Kingdom of Heart-devouring Demons there, immediately drawing The Lord of Darkness’s gaze, forcing it to briefly shift its focus onto this foreign Race’s God sandwiched between its own God Country and believers.