[Lord of Abundance] Chapter 45 — The Three-Race Covenant Tablet

 

Chapter 45 — The Three-Race Covenant Tablet

“My Lord, are you alright? Your hair…”

The guard hesitated mid-sentence, but Kun already knew what he meant.

The guard standing before him was entirely white.

His clothes were white.

His armor was white.

His hair and eyelashes—everything except his pupils—looked as though he had fallen into a vat of white dye.

Kun probably looked no different himself.

After all, they had just been baptized by the Sky Goddess’s divine power.

Even the rainbow-colored Ether Liquid pool had been degraded into highly concentrated holy water.

“The clothes and equipment are all valuable now. Calling them sanctified items wouldn’t be an exaggeration.”

“If you had possessed even one such ‘pure white’ object when we first entered the ruins, those ghosts would’ve fled the moment they saw you. They wouldn’t have dared possess your bodies at all.”

“As for the hair and eyelashes… you’ll just have to shave them off and wait for them to grow back.”

“Dawn, are you all alright?”

Dawn, now equally pale white, clutched his severed arm and nodded.

But his exhausted expression was impossible to hide.

Losing an arm was one thing.

Combat between warriors had always been like this.

If one lacked skill, even death was only natural.

But as a guard, allowing the lord he was meant to protect to instead protect them—

even though he was no longer technically a guard—

filled Dawn with indescribable heaviness.

That feeling of helplessness made him hate himself.

Kun patted Dawn’s shoulder reassuringly.

“Don’t worry. Leave the arm to me. Growing you a new one will only take three to five days. Afterward, Granny Grace can attach it.”

In truth, cultivating a replacement arm normally wouldn’t require nearly that long.

But if he wanted the new arm to perfectly match Dawn’s original third-tier body, more careful work was required.

After all, Dawn had been injured in the line of duty.

Kun naturally had no intention of neglecting him.

If something was worth doing, it was worth doing properly.

That had always been Kun’s principle.

Dawn’s expression softened slightly.

“Thank you for your mercy.”

Originally, Dawn had intended to keep the missing arm as a scar to remind himself and push himself forward.

After all, one only needed the right arm to wield a sword.

But seeing Kun’s serious expression, Dawn—already burdened by guilt—didn’t dare refuse the lord’s goodwill.

He silently accepted it.

“Creak… creak…”

The screeching sound of grinding glass echoed from the distance, causing everyone’s expressions to change.

Kun himself looked stunned.

Even a crystal containing the Sky Goddess’s divine power couldn’t fully purify you?

Just how deep did this undead creature’s obsession run?

Fortunately, it was only a false alarm.

No matter how powerful the crystallized skeleton warrior had been, it still encountered its natural nemesis—the power of holy radiance.

It had been blasted down to half a skull.

The soul-fire within flickered weakly like a candle in the wind, ready to extinguish at any moment.

“Creak… save… save me…”

“I’ll tell you… all the secrets of this ruin…”

“These are the secrets… of the Seven Gods…”

Kun manipulated a vine to lift the broken blade—the only object that had remained completely intact beneath the divine radiance—and casually drove it into the skeleton’s skull.

The soul-fire instantly went out.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Save your lies for the ruin guards you slaughtered yourself down in the underworld.”

Kun didn’t merely distrust the creature.

He simply didn’t want trouble.

Secrets about the ancient elves were one thing.

Even if he dug up the ancient elves’ ancestral graves, what could they do?

No ancient elf was suddenly going to climb out and seek revenge.

But the secrets of the Seven Gods were entirely different.

True, he was curious.

Very curious.

But seven gods—and probably six of them were still alive.

Their followers existed across the entire continent.

Even the guards he brought with him could potentially serve as their eyes and ears.

Investigating divine secrets recklessly—wasn’t that simply courting death?

He was merely the lord of a small Fengrao Territory.

All he wanted was to farm peacefully, unlock the secrets of the Fertility Mark in his hand, and maybe build his own “garden” along the way.

He had no conflict of interest with the Seven Gods—or Six Gods.

For matters that could cost him his life, the less involvement, the better.

At the very least, he lacked both the strength and qualifications to touch such things right now.

When it was time to bow one’s head, then bowing wasn’t shameful.

As the final trace of life within the crystallized skeleton warrior was absorbed by the broken blade, its soul-fire vanished completely.

At the same moment, a colorless crystal roughly the size of an egg appeared within the remaining half of the skull.

Kun’s eyes lit up immediately.

He collected all three items at once.

The half-skull of the crystallized skeleton warrior naturally went without saying.

It was a vital ingredient for creating transcendent bloodline fusion potions.

Though the Ether Liquid pool had interfered with his analysis, preventing him from identifying exactly what type of battle aura the creature had used in life, the fact that it retained so much intelligence and rationality even after becoming undead strongly suggested affinities toward darkness or necromancy.

Then there was the broken blade.

Its hilt was pale wood.

Kun examined it for quite some time before realizing the material appeared to be Restwood, a legendary tree said to grow only in the underworld and capable of calming undead spirits.

The blade itself was thin—far too thin to resemble a normal longsword.

Golden patterns covered its surface, intricate and profound.

The designs abruptly ended where the blade broke, yet somehow gave off a strange sense of incomplete perfection, as though the fracture itself was intentional.

Even with Kun’s knowledge, he couldn’t identify the origin of those markings.

A powerful curse seemed attached to the blade.

Anything wounded by it would have its life force effortlessly stripped away.

Yet in all his memory, Kun could recall no divine weapon matching this strange sword.

A mere broken blade had resisted the Sky Goddess’s divine radiance.

It had also pierced through the Mother Tree’s root defenses.

Its value was clearly no lower than the divine crystal itself.

But what delighted Kun most was the colorless crystal left behind after the skeleton warrior’s death.

It felt slightly soft to the touch, elastic even.

More like a massive lump of transparent gel than a crystal.

Yet that softness existed only physically.

Anyone attempting to probe it with spiritual power would feel as though they had slammed headfirst into an entire mountain.

No physical or magical attack could reduce or damage it in the slightest.

“Neither increasing nor diminishing, illusory world glass.”

That was the magical world’s evaluation of this material.

Like something that did not truly exist within this world—impossible to destroy, yet appearing in the form of crystal or glass.

It was even rarer than Soul Sand.

Soul Essence.

A crystallized source of the soul itself.

Caressing the egg-sized chunk of Soul Essence, Kun grinned happily.

“With something this large, I could make a Horcrux from it.”

“Heh… when I finish the real thing, Li Tianyun’s poker face is definitely going to crack.”

As Archmage Tom’s number one admirer, Kun had never abandoned the dream of creating a Horcrux.

After all, what better way existed to close the distance between fan and idol?

The problem was that magical artifacts capable of evading death demanded impossibly harsh materials.

Archmage Tom had used innocent souls alongside magical objects deeply connected to himself—items possessing unique magic and difficult to destroy.

He had also split portions of his own soul and hidden them within.

But as a rational fan, blindly following a predecessor’s footsteps was meaningless.

Only surpassing one’s predecessor counted as true respect.

So Kun had always researched methods to eliminate the side effects of death artifacts.

Splitting the soul was no trivial matter.

One mistake could turn someone into a madman.

Kun certainly didn’t believe he could divide his soul seven times like Archmage Tom and remain sane.

That was why the old master was the old master.

Experience truly mattered.

Using the Sharing ability of Abundance's First Cornerstone as a foundation, Kun had developed an Abundance spell called Life Link, capable of connecting two living beings—and even their souls together.

His intention was to bypass the soul-splitting step entirely during Horcrux creation.

Originally, he had planned to condense massive quantities of Soul Sand into a soul crystal capable of containing a backup of his soul.

But now that he possessed this superior Soul Essence, such preparations were no longer necessary.

As for the remaining Horcrux materials—indestructible magical artifacts,

vast quantities of souls—there was no shortage of such things upon the Eternal Dawn Continent.

For example, the broken blade he had just obtained from the crystallized skeleton warrior, capable of ignoring even the Sky Goddess’s divine power, perfectly fit the criteria.

Truthfully, Kun already possessed several items bearing similar “Indestructible” properties.

After some thought, Kun tossed the broken blade toward Dawn.

“See if you can use it. If you can, it’s yours.”

No matter how valuable the equipment was, leaving it buried in storage made it no better than scrap.

Only when put to use did it have meaning.

Besides, equipping his subordinates meant strengthening the Fengrao Territory—

which ultimately meant strengthening himself as lord.

There was nothing to hesitate over.

Dawn grasped the broken blade and inspected it repeatedly before speaking with slight disappointment.

“This isn’t a broken sword.”

“It’s a Severing Dagger. It was originally meant to look like this.”

“A Severing Dagger?”

“Yes. A killing weapon specially crafted for assassins. Fatal upon drawing blood.”

“It possesses terrifying lethality, but few assassins can truly master it, so they’re rather rare.”

“This weapon doesn’t suit a broad-style warrior like me.”

As he spoke, Dawn returned the Severing Dagger to Kun.

After hesitating briefly, he added:

“It’s light enough that you could carry it yourself as an off-hand weapon.”

“As for someone within the territory truly suited for it… that would be my disciple, Nia.”

“But considering her current contributions and rank as a warrior, it wouldn’t be appropriate to grant her such a precious treasure yet.”

“Thank you for your honest advice.”

Kun accepted the suggestion and stored away the Severing Dagger—a weapon that could practically be called divine.

Since Dawn couldn’t use it, there was no rush.

Besides, Kun wanted to study the terrifying life-draining curse attached to the weapon.

One of the guards retrieved the clay tablet and wooden box from the altar.

Both had likewise been dyed pure white by the divine radiance.

Fortunately, while their colors had changed, the symbols engraved upon the tablet remained untouched.

Kun felt genuine excitement.

After causing such an enormous commotion, what had it all been for?

These treasures, naturally.

In the eyes of a Legendary Archmage like Kun, only two things in this world truly deserved to be called treasures.

Truth.

And history.

Gold, jewels, magical materials, and rare artifacts might hold immense value to ordinary people—

but to Kun, such things were merely embellishments.

Optional luxuries.

Unworthy of the title “treasure.”

The most famous archmage in Eternal Dawn history, Zelos Little, once said:

“Low-tier mages endlessly absorb knowledge and study magic.”

“Middle-tier mages alter battlefields, reshape history, or pioneer entirely new magical systems, immortalizing their names across the continent.”

“High-tier mages uncover historical truths amidst fog and thorns and seek ultimate truth.”

History represented the past.

Truth represented the present.

Only then could one gaze toward the future.

Sadly, ninety-nine percent of mages never progressed beyond the first step.

Even Kun—having stepped into the Heroic Realm and pioneered the Abundance Magic system—had only reached what the great archmage termed the “middle-tier mage.”

But now…

He had undoubtedly approached the final realm.

Zelos’s status among mages was equivalent to that of the Great Sage, revered for eternity on Blue Star.

His three ranks of mages were essentially the magical equivalent of establishing virtue, achievement, and philosophy.

How could Kun not feel excited?

Though most mages—including Kun himself—still didn’t understand why Zelos placed the pursuit of history and truth upon equal footing.

But that didn’t stop everyone from following his teachings anyway.

Not understanding was normal.

After all, didn’t low-tier mages and the nobles of the royal capital likewise fail to understand many of Kun’s seemingly irrational actions?

They had even mocked his behavior as jokes during casual conversation.

The difference between Kun and Archmage Zelos was simple.

Kun still lived in the stage of doubt and skepticism.

But when Archmage Zelos spoke, no one questioned him.

His words were treated as truth itself.

To doubt him was to doubt truth.

Seeing Kun silently tracing the symbols upon the clay tablet for a long while, one guard finally asked curiously:

“My Lord, can you read the writing on it?”

“What kind of question is that? The lord is a famous archmage from the royal capital who has mastered the common tongues of eight races. How could ancient text possibly stump him?”

Kun answered calmly.

“It’s manageable.”

“Of the three languages on this tablet… I can barely understand one.”

The pure-white clay tablet had been divided evenly into three sections by deeply engraved lines.

Kun had studied many ancient racial languages across the Eternal Dawn Continent.

Yet he had never seen anything resembling the symbols in the other two sections.

Only the lowest third of the tablet contained writing he recognized—the ancient elven script known as Moon Text.

“So it’s just a racial covenant tablet after all.”

“And the material is literally just ordinary clay.”

Kun’s expression turned strange.

This supposedly important covenant tablet was genuinely nothing more than a fragile lump of ordinary clay that could be crushed with one hand.

Though he understood only one-third of the text, he guessed that the other two sections likely contained the same content.

Whether he could read them or not hardly mattered.

The tablet recorded a covenant between the ancient elves, the giant race known as the Titans, and the diminutive race known as the Yimi.

The Three-Race Alliance Pact.

“‘At the thousand-year appointed time, when the blazing sun sinks and the dark star rises high—’”

“‘At the twilight of the gods, when the violet moon ascends, the three races shall stand and defend together.’”

“‘With mud and blood as covenant, with souls as oath, even after returning to nature, this vow shall remain unchanged for ten thousand years.’”

“‘…’”