Chapter 1 The Gist of Mad Exuberance

Most of the Lord of Mad Exuberance—including its existence and its power—was formless. The massive, twisted structures in the universe were merely the phenomena it triggered, and the tidal waves of derivatives were only projections of it under specific conditions in the real world. The attack the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace was suffering at this moment… that was something that slightly touched the Lord of Mad Exuberance's true self.

Yet it was completely unobservable, at least with the naked eye.

The ship was being attacked every minute, every second, which was best evidenced by the violent fluctuations of the shield system. Despite there being no physical contact, the sensors were sending signals of damage or imminent threats to the ship. This bizarre phenomenon was perplexing, but in Hao Ren's vision, he could see another layer of scenery in this space.

A viscous, dark “substance” filled the spaces between the space structures, intertwining like clouds. Those were the ultimate nothingness. All normal, rational, and orderly information in the universe would be rapidly disintegrated upon contact with it. Matter would be reduced to elementary particles, elementary particles would be reduced to quantum fluctuations, and quantum fluctuations would be reduced to meaningless clusters of information. That unknowable and unmeasurable viscous darkness was actually the Lord of Mad Exuberance's true self.

It was the “information expression” representing the demise of all things, born at the instant of the universe's creation.

As the ship traveled through them, it inevitably came into contact with them. As an orderly body, the starship was inevitably damaged by these unnecessary things.

Hao Ren tapped the console. “How are the shields?”

“The recharge rate is keeping up, no worries,” Nolan's voice sounded confident. “This ship can fly in the void; this bit of chaos is nothing.”

“I remember the first time I fought the Lord of Mad Exuberance,” Leah said from the side. “That was… tens of millions of years ago, wasn't it? In a fit of hotheadedness, I led a large army in, completely not understanding the meaning of order conflict, nor knowing how to comb through the chaos here. The first team was almost completely wiped out, and I had to learn how to survive in this environment on the battlefield, and then adjust the remaining soldiers. I fought in the heart of darkness for hundreds of years, only to find that this thing had no substance at all… The feeling at that moment was more depressing than ever before.”

“And then you tried to give it a ‘core of substance’,” Vivian said with a faint smile. “You really were obsessed.”

“Yeah… obsessed…” Leah sighed softly. “Perhaps this really is some kind of obsession, but it's not just my own. It belongs to all living beings, to every living and dead life, to this whole world.”

She raised her head and looked at the images returned by the external monitors, as if talking to herself, and as if speaking to Hao Ren and Vivian: “There was a time when I questioned the meaning of all this, wondering whether the struggles of all beings in the universe were worth it—the world is not eternal, I discovered this a long time ago. Even the universe, which seems to last forever, has a limited lifespan. All the stars will be extinguished, and time and space themselves will dissolve. In the face of such ultimate and equal destruction, the vast majority of civilization's lights are insignificantly small…

“Whether it's a king or knight who is eternally remembered on a planet, or an interstellar empire that dominates the sea of stars, none can stop the demise of the universe. When it comes, everyone is equal. And the Lord of Mad Exuberance… perhaps it is the universe's way of welcoming its demise, the natural and normal process of this world. Compared to the fate of the universe, the garden era full of vitality and order that I created may be the anomaly. Vitality and order, and the obsession with not wanting to face death that comes with them, are so diametrically opposed to the universe's destined demise…

“But now, I understand. The questions I once questioned and pondered… are actually meaningless.

“Living beings are born from order and return to order. We live in this world, and we may have to face birth, aging, illness, and death, but those are also part of order. This universe may have its predetermined fate, and all living beings will eventually perish, but that is not an excuse to stop in the face of chaos…

“Because, resistance and survival are also part of the natural process of this universe.”

Hao Ren listened silently, watching the ship cross one dark spatial rift and bizarre nebula structure after another. The starlight in the distance had completely disappeared. The influence of the Lord of Mad Exuberance had penetrated the ship's shields and armor, invading the ship's internal space, but under the protection of divine power, his mind was exceptionally clear and completely unaffected.

Before the Watch Fortress, the Lord of Mad Exuberance's claws engulfed a drone squadron like a tide. The guardians defending the line were soon forced to retreat due to heavy damage on their flanks. The backup drone swarms immediately rushed out of the base, barely reclaiming the airspace occupied by the Lord of Mad Exuberance's claws, but the overall defense line was once again compressed.

Several dazzling beams of light burst out from the Watch Fortress, forming torrents of energy in space. The absolute destructive power of the Annihilation Lances finally slightly curbed the proliferation speed of the derivatives, but the price was that a control tower near the Annihilation Lance array was reduced to ashes in a series of massive explosions.

“Emanation Tower No. 3 is destroyed!” a guardian commander exclaimed. “All Annihilation Lances are entering forced cooling!”

Salaman connected to the frontline fleet: “Brothers and sisters, the Annihilation Lance array needs an hour to fire again. The defense line depends on you… Don't forget the beings behind us!”

“For the Mother, for all living beings!!”

…

Tens of billions of light-years away, on the barren wilderness of Ansu Continent in Koro.

A golden flame flew from the side, shattering a mass of twisted flesh in mid-air, scattering pieces of charred, foul-smelling flesh and blood all over the ground, some of which landed on Veronica's arm.

Veronica pulled her longsword from a monster's corpse, which then turned into floating gray-black smoke. She raised her head and nodded in thanks to the “Einherjar Heroic Spirit” emitting golden light not far away. The latter's support had saved her from a fatal sneak attack.

The battlefield princess of Talos had returned to her military attire. Her light purple hair was stained with blood—red blood, from humans, but she had no time to care where exactly that blood came from from which brave soldier.

After a brief two years of peace, Koro had once again ushered in war, and the enemies were still old rivals—the monsters from chaos and nightmares.

This wasn't a bad thing—Veronica shook off the filth and rotten flesh from her longsword—Koro was once a prison, and everyone in this world was a jailer. Fighting those evil monsters was an inherent instinct of every Koroan. Although Locke Marton had been eliminated, the source of chaos still wanted to stir up new wars, so let it be.

Even without the goddess's warning, without the notifications from those “Heroic Spirits,” Koro's prophets and scholars could smell the aura of chaos about to make a comeback. Months ago, the humans of this world had prepared to meet the challenge. The divine decree issued by the goddess only made everyone understand the ins and outs of this war even more clearly.

“Your Highness, the monsters here have been dealt with!” a personal knight came to Veronica. The knight's breastplate was covered in filth and blood. “The Shadow Jungle is sending a message that a new ‘infiltration point’ has appeared there!”

The source of chaos at the center of the universe had broken free from control and was launching a counterattack against the entire orderly world. The goddess and her allies were fighting to the death with that monster in the deepest parts of the stars, and the aura that monster leaked out bypassed the defense line, trying to corrode the mortal world behind the goddess and use the flesh and souls of the mortal world as its source of power.

Therefore, Koro had large and small polluted areas called “infiltration points.” In the polluted areas, those familiar monsters that had once been driven out of this land were making a comeback.

However, the Koroans were not afraid of them.

The Koroans had been dealing with these monsters for countless years.

Veronica nodded to the knight: “The barbarians from the Holy Wolf Tribe Country are responsible for that side; we don't need to worry about it.”

“Those… barbarians,” the knight's eyes were slightly strange. He couldn't help but look into the distance. “Speaking of which, it's really hard to believe that they actually formed a country…”

At the end of the knight's line of sight, one could see a team with a style completely different from that of the human kingdoms' troops. They were another group of people sent by the Holy Wolf Tribe Country. They were a joint force formed by various magical beasts and demihuman races, wearing tattered and disorganized armor, and wielding a wide variety of weapons. At this moment, having won the battle, these barbarians were cheering and celebrating around a huge flag, on which was painted a majestic white giant wolf.

That was the totem of the Holy Wolf Tribe Country, and also the symbol of its highest leader—the Head Wolf.

As far as Veronica knew, the Holy Wolf Tribe Country would only ever have one supreme ruler, and that was the “Head Wolf” who led the beast tide through chaos and established civilization. The Head Wolf would never abdicate, and a tribal representative group called the “Ring of Magical Beasts,” similar to a parliament, would rule the country on behalf of the Head Wolf when the Head Wolf left the beast herd.

To this day, many kingdoms in the world of Koro couldn't believe that a group of magical beasts and demihuman races had actually established a country, but the Kingdom of Talos, which bordered this “Magical Beast Country,” had established exchanges with this emerging country a year ago. On the one hand, they had indeed seen the wisdom and rationality displayed by these magical beasts and demihumans. On the other hand, they were quite familiar with that “Head Wolf.”

The scholars of the Kingdom of Talos believed that it was probably because of the divine influence of that “Head Wolf” that the beast tide it led had gained some kind of “evolution” in the process of traversing chaos. Compared to their distant relatives in the forests and wildernesses, they were smarter, more rational, and better able to control their primitive beast nature.

Therefore, a kingdom established by magical beasts really appeared in the world of Koro…

“They are also intelligent beings,” Veronica shook her head. “In the face of chaos, all intelligent beings are natural allies.”