Chapter 50: No Room For Discussion

Jiang Qiao didn’t go to the Divinity Plane using his Summoner character, instead summoning a ghostly being that looked like a Probe from Starcraft.

Jiang Qiao held the probe and stuffed it into the star map that was projected in front of him, directly over the coordinates of the Divinity Fragment Plane.

This transportation didn’t even use up a hundred points of maker energy, because the probe didn’t have any battle prowess and was just sent for scouting purposes.

After doing all this, he found a chair and sat down comfortably, leaning back and closing his eyes to connect his vision to the probe he sent out to the Divinity Fragment Plane.

“Aren’t you coming?” Jiang Qiao opened his eyes slightly to peek at Ocean Blue, who was fixated on the star map.

Ocean Blue opened her mouth slightly, before blinking and shaking her head.

“Alright then.”

Jiang Qiao didn’t press the issue further, closing his eyes and connecting his vision to the probe again.

Upon reopening his eyes, he saw a gray sky that was different from the blues and whites of the sky in Sacred Souls. Looking down, Jiang Qiao saw a city with strange buildings, but he could still recognize the city walls, and a building that seemed to be a palace, as well as…The warzone outside the city walls.

“How tragic.”

Jiang Qiao floated over to the warzone, and there were only corpses as far as the eyes could see. The scene of two enemy soldiers piercing each other to death was forever frozen in time.

There weren’t any living humans on the warzone, and all the blood had thoroughly dried out. Jiang Qiao made his way over to one of the corpses and plucked off the soldier’s helmet with one of the probe’s ‘arms’.

The corpse had completely dried out, but it hadn’t been turned into a skeleton. It’s dried skin stuck to its bones, and it looked like a mummy from Egypt.

“They’re completely mummified…They going to come back to life when the players come here, aren’t they?” Jiang Qiao deadpanned, already knowing which enemies are going to come from this plane.

Occean Blue’s Divinity Fragment Plane was a Level 60 dungeon, and when the players raid it these dried out corpses would be probably all revived in response.

“Who knows if burning them works, lemme go check the rest of the city out.”

Jiang Qiao set the helmet back onto the corpses’ head, before floating towards the interior of the city.

What shocked him was that the city was still hustling and bustling…Or seemed to be.

Jiang Qiao could see people in commoner’s clothing milling around the city doing their daily activities—The merchants were trading with the citizens on their stalls, the children were chasing each other and playing, the roads were flooded with carriages and there were even robbers and thieves that were extorting victims in the back alleys…

It sounded like the picture of a city filled with life, but it was only a crude imitation upon closer scrutiny…The citizens of this city were all dead.

All of them were dried out corpses like the soldiers outside the city, and were like puppets with gears that repeated the same actions every day.

This reminded Jiang Qiao of a status effect in a game he played before… Zombification.

“Hello miss, you lost your head.” Jiang Qiao floated over to a woman that had been turned into a zombie, and waved his hand before her face, wanting to attract her attention to her head that had already rolled onto the ground.

Of course, the woman didn’t respond to Jiang Qiao at all, continuing to wave a dried carrot at the merchant in front of her, as if she were asking him why it was so expensive.

“They don’t have any intelligence, as expected.”

Jiang Qiao looked towards the direction of the palace, and floated over to it to investigate.

In ghost mode, Jiang Qiao easily passed through the walls of the palace, and upon entering the palace he hid in at a corner of the palace when he heard people talking.

There were two zombies in clothes like nobles walking in the hall of the palace, and even though they were already converted into zombies, it seemed that they still retained their consciousness.

“Queen Maya finally found another divinity fragment of the goddess Ocean Blue!”

“Shush! Don’t mention that name! Do you want your right the sleep get stripped away by the queen?”

“Ah…How long do we have until we can be released from this endless loop? I’m so sick of it! If it weren’t for the fact that we could sleep for decades at once, I would have probably gone crazy.”

“Who isn’t? The ones that still have their rationality are probably Her Highness’ knights and the lictors, yes? Let us go wake them up quickly, to break this damned loop!”

“I just want to taste wine again.”

Jiang Qiao was eavesdropping on the zombies discussing this with their hoarse voices, and Jiang Qiao seemed to have come in at just the right time to hear the most important part of their conversation.

There were quite a number of zombies that have their consciousness on this plane, and these would probably be equivalent to minibosses and elite monsters, while the queen that they talked about was the final boss?

According to his senses, Jiang Qiao explored further into the palace, coming to the throne room of the queen.

As he saw the silhouette sitting on the throne, he had an extremely bad premonition.

“F*ck it…” Jiang Qiao threw an inspection spell on the silhouette, and her data and stats were immediately displayed in front of Jiang Qiao.

[Name: Heretic Maya Steyn]

[Level: 68]

[Class: Mage Type/Warrior Type/Priest Type]

[Description: The queen that consumed the divinity fragment of the goddess Ocean Blue. She has been waiting for a chance to repair her broken country.]

These stats aside, the most eye-catching was probably the HP of the queen that the inspection spell fed-back to him.

[66390117/95123511]

Her maximum HP was more than ninety million, but her current HP was somewhere around sixty-six million HP. Perhaps there was an accident that caused her HP to go down?

The HP displayed here was not only the condition of the queen herself, but the entire plane too. In other words, if Jiang Qiao burned all the corpses and zombies outside to a crisp, her HP would go down too.

Of course, that wouldn’t work if they couldn’t be destroyed with fire.

Her HP was shared with the entire plane.

65 million HP was still quite difficult to shave off even with the Devouring Law that players were blessed with, but the most troublesome fact of the queen was that…

She was way too good looking!

Jiang Qiao floated around the queen in ghost mode, and it seemed like she had already died on her throne.

At least that’s what it looked like, judging from the sword that impaled her chest and pinned her to the throne.

But this didn’t make her any less beautiful, her appearance seemed to cast a light halo of sacred light in the throne room.

This queen wasn’t zombified, and her head was lowered while her eyes were closed. Her hair was a gradient of silver to platinum blonde, and even though he was staring very closely, he couldn’t see any blemishes or flaws on her face. Even in her current state, her beautiful face had a solemn expression.

She had an undeniable air of holiness, as if just looking at her were a sacrilege.

Wasn’t this a real goddess? Coach! Ocean Blue is definitely a fake!

Jiang Qiao started comparing her with the gluttonous goddess back home, and from each and every angle the queen won!

Jiang Qiao couldn’t feel the queen breathing, and blood was still flowing out through the wound on her chest, the blood trickling down her legs towards the ground.

It was at this point that Jiang Qiao noticed that as her blood trickled onto the ground, it seeped in and spread out towards the city in pulses, or towards the whole plane…

She was using this method to keep her country ‘alive’, to maintain the entire plane.

Jiang Qiao floated closer, and tried to pull out the sword impaled in her chest experimentally.

As Jiang Qiao was about to touch the hilt of the sword, it was grabbed fiercely by the queen’s right hand.

Her movements were ferocious at first, but became gentle as she grabbed his arm, and as Jiang Qiao looked towards her face again, he came face to face with a pair of glacial blue eyes.

“Why must you disturb the slumber of the dead…” Her voice was void of any emotion. “Ahh…I feel a despicable presence from you.”

She released his arm, and Jiang Qiao quickly retreated. In this time, she slowly stood up from her position on the throne.

The moment she stood up, she pulled out the sword impaled in her chest with a sudden movement, the blood gushing out from her chest as if a stopper had been pulled.

“Ocean Blue, the great and powerful goddess, once my only belief, and the enemy that I must erase,” She spoke slowly, her tone cold as she walked through the pool of blood under her towards Jiang Qiao.

Hey hey hey, was the boss fight going to begin just like that?

“Miss Maya please wait, I have something to ask you before you enter the boss fight!” As he shouted, he realized his vision was split into two.

It was at this moment that he realized that the probe was cut into two halves in a fraction of a second.

He felt the bit of consciousness he imbued on the probe being absorbed by the queen, and so he could only expend another ten points to revive it.

“Can’t we negotiate?” Jiang Qiao asked as he fixed the probe together again.

“Negotiate?” She tilted her head and thought for a moment, before Jiang Qiao was split into Jiang Qiao 1/2 again. ” I will not listen to the deception of the Devourer God.”

How bad was Ocean Blue’s reputation?! None of her past believers liked her anymore!

As he grumbled about the bad reputation of his goddess in the starmap, he used another ten points of Maker Energy to revive next to the queen.

“I’m not here to talk as the Devourer God, but as a game developer…We can make a deal!” Before he could finish his words, he was split into Jiang Qiao 1/3.

So there was no room for discussion?