"An entity born within the same civilized era cannot defeat it. That is the Calamity Serpent's deadliest core mechanic."
"Exactly. It's like an ultimate bug born specifically to deny the current civilization itself, designed to smother any hope of resistance."
In the dim light of the library, the corners of Anaxagoras's mouth curled up.
It was hard to tell if he was mocking their cruel, predetermined fate or simply marveling at the sheer ruthlessness of creation.
"Hey, hey, hey! That's just straight-up cheating! What the hell is that thing?!"
Cipher couldn't help but jump up from the ruined bookshelf she had been perching on. Her voice rang sharply in the cavernous room.
"Perhaps," the man replied noncommittally.
The mocking sneer on his face slowly faded, returning to a scholar's calm, detached demeanor.
He turned around, his single eye once again tracing the mottled murals on the wall. "That being said, during its initial phase, the people of the Previous Era—the Flame-Chasers—didn't actually take the Calamity Serpent seriously. In fact, they weren't even clearly aware of its existence." (Fresco = mural okay, this cleared this way)
"Why not?" Cipher sat back down, though she leaned forward in anticipation.
"Because of its nature: the incarnation of all fluids, formless and faceless."
Anaxagoras extended his index finger. He lightly traced the abstract lines on the mural that represented wind, clouds, ocean waves, and air currents.
"It wasn't born as a physical, biological entity, nor did it have a fixed shape. The moment it appeared, it naturally assimilated into the world, merging completely with the wind, the water, the atmosphere, and the flowing leylines."
"It had no ego, no intent to attack, and perhaps not even the basic instinct to protect its master, the Herrscher of Wind."
"For the longest time, it simply existed as a natural phenomenon—like a typhoon, an earthquake, or a tsunami. The monitoring technology of that era simply didn't register it as a distinct, independent threat."
He paused his lecture and glanced at Cipher, checking to see if she could grasp the bizarre conceptual nature of the entity.
"I get it," the catgirl nodded, her tail swishing.
Calamities were like pre-programmed software. They met trigger conditions, spawned phenomena, and wouldn't stop until their specific cancellation requirements were met.
For instance, the localized Calamity of Cheng Lixue only existed because the Frost Cavalier wanted to witness her master's happiness. The moment that condition was fulfilled, the anomaly naturally dissipated.
Anaxagoras nodded approvingly and continued. "Blended seamlessly into nature, the Calamity Serpent merely triggered various extreme weather events within its area of effect."
"Because Honkai eruptions were already incredibly frequent during the Previous Era—with abnormal natural disasters happening daily—no one realized that these phenomena all shared a single, unified source."
"Furthermore, it was still in its infancy. Its scale and influence were severely limited."
"To the hardened soldiers of the Previous Era, who were used to watching Emperor-class Honkai Beasts and Pseudo-Herrschers ravage the globe, a few localized weather anomalies probably seemed less dangerous than a standard Honkai beast tide."
"But the turning point arrived the moment the Fourth Divine Key was completed—the 'Key of Radiant Skies: Planetary Regulation'."
The scholar's single eye gleamed faintly. He pointed at the complex diagrams on the mural, which depicted satellite orbits and atmospheric circulation.
"As a Divine Key forged from the core of the Herrscher of Wind, one of its primary functions was to actively intervene and regulate the global climate, atmosphere, and geography when necessary."
"To do that, it had to constantly gather data on the Earth, conducting the most comprehensive and meticulous scans imaginable."
"So, the Calamity Serpent got caught?" Cipher asked, keeping pace with his logic.
"Correct." The man nodded. "When the Key of Radiant Skies' massive monitoring network began scanning the globe, the anomaly was finally exposed."
"Because it shared the exact same origin as the Divine Key, the aggregate of twisted rules that had perfectly disguised itself as background nature suddenly stood out—like a drop of black ink on a blank sheet of white paper."
"And then? And then?"
"And then, it was sealed."
"Huh?"
"Is that so hard to grasp?" Anaxagoras countered. "Even the ultimate Calamity needs time and nutrients to grow when its scale hasn't yet reached incomprehensible levels."
"This discovery happened shortly after the Previous Era defeated the Herrscher of Dominance. The MOTHs were at the absolute peak of their military power."
Fully structured squads of MANTIS fusion warriors were being deployed. Several supreme powerhouses wielding Divine Keys were actively researching Imaginary Space and the Sea of Quanta. And an endless array of superweapons designed specifically to eradicate Honkai energy were rolling off the assembly lines.
"Under those circumstances, concentrating their overwhelming forces to ambush a Calamity that hadn't even fully matured yet... is it really that surprising they managed to capture it?"
"I guess... not really," Cipher admitted sheepishly, feeling she had overreacted. "So, they defeated the Calamity Serpent, but because of that bullshit 'unkillable' mechanic, they couldn't permanently destroy it. So they had to settle for sealing it?"
"Learning to summarize and deduce on your own. Not bad. You're improving."
Anaxagoras's tone carried a rare hint of genuine praise, though it quickly returned to its usual icy cadence.
"Because its fundamental nature was the 'incarnation of all fluids,' standard sealing methods were useless against it."
"Ultimately, the MOTH scientists decided to use the very thing that shared its origin—the Key of Radiant Skies—as its prison, forcefully locking it within a specialized spatial structure inside the Divine Key."
"Their plan was to survive the inevitable arrival of the Herrscher of Finality, wait until humanity entered a new era, and then dedicate time to studying how to permanently eradicate this unkillable cancer. Or, failing that, just shoot the entire Divine Key into deep space and exile it forever."
"But then came the passage of fifty thousand years."
"By the time the surviving Flame-Chasers awoke from their cryo-pods after the battle against Finality, the Earth was unrecognizable."
Thinking of the universally acknowledged tragic end of the Previous Era, even a man as rigidly rational as Anaxagoras couldn't help but sigh.
It was like a wanderer returning home after an age, only to find the world they knew had turned to dust.
"Upon awakening, these Pioneers—burdened with the monumental task of Project Ember—naturally thought of using the Key of Radiant Skies."
"They planned to activate its environmental regulation systems to repair the devastated early Earth, paving the way for the smooth execution of Project Ember."
He paused for a moment. "You do know that environments damaged by the Honkai eventually repair themselves at a slow but steady rate over time, correct?"
"The reason that happens is entirely due to the underlying programming of the Key of Radiant Skies."
The Planetary Regulation satellite was originally built to restore the planet's ecology after the Herrscher of Finality—or any other apocalyptic catastrophe—ravaged it.
However, as Dr. MEI and the others deepened their research, they realized a fatal flaw.
If civilization failed the Honkai's trial, the Herrscher of Finality would forcibly reset the entire planetary ecosystem anyway, making the Key's restoration function somewhat redundant.
Thus, its primary directive was altered to passively maintain Earth's stability in peacetime, ensuring the environment remained viable for normal humans to survive and reproduce.
This was also one of the hidden reasons why factions like Anti-Entropy often gritted their teeth and tolerated Overseer Otto Apocalypse whenever he casually weaponized localized natural disasters to annoy them.
First, directly attacking a Divine Key was tantamount to declaring all-out war on Schicksal. Taking a minor loss was better; they could always retaliate elsewhere.
Second, the stability of the entire global environment genuinely depended on that satellite continuing to operate.
"Of course, the Pioneers hadn't developed amnesia." Anaxagoras steered the conversation back on track.
"They clearly remembered that the Calamity Serpent was still sealed inside the Key of Radiant Skies. It was a massive ticking time bomb."
"And so, the First of the Thirteen Flame-Chasers—the strongest warrior, bearer of the Signet of Deliverance—traveled into space to personally handle the matter."
"He went to ensure the seal would hold when the Divine Key was activated, or to find a permanent solution."
"And then... an accident happened."
"An accident?" Cipher's cat ears twitched upright, her muscles involuntarily tensing.
"In the Previous Era, when a sequential Herrscher died, their core—which served as the primary material for the Divine Keys—would permanently sever its connection to the Imaginary Tree. It could no longer draw upon infinite Honkai energy."
Anaxagoras explained with clinical precision.
"To ensure the Divine Keys remained viable in prolonged combat, the scientists designed them with the ability to passively siphon ambient energy from their surroundings."
For example, the Judgment of Shamash.
Without the user actively pumping massive amounts of Honkai energy into it, the weapon typically took about two hours to passively absorb enough ambient energy to unleash a full-powered Might of An-Utu strike.
"It was a well-intentioned design flaw."
"As you and I both know, in a true life-or-death struggle, having an ultimate attack that can be unleashed instantly without paying an extra toll is often the deciding factor in battle."
"But the Key of Radiant Skies was a massive satellite meant to orbit the Earth for millennia, executing global environmental regulation."
"Its energy absorption capabilities were heavily supercharged."
"Solar energy, thermal energy, cosmic radiation, Honkai energy... it could capture and absorb virtually every form of ambient energy to sustain its terrifying consumption rates over countless centuries."
"And all of that astronomical, incomprehensible amount of energy... ended up feeding the Calamity Serpent sealed deep within its core."
Anaxagoras sneered. "Fifty thousand years. The Divine Key's endless supply acted as the ultimate incubator, allowing the Calamity Serpent to evolve to its absolute peak."
"The moment the Key of Radiant Skies was activated! The Calamity Serpent broke free entirely and fused with the planet's entire fluid cycle!"
"Oh shit..."
Cipher froze completely.
Because of her deep bond with Boss Pardo, she knew the name Kevin Kaslana very well. She knew exactly what his status and strength meant in the Previous Era.
Yes, Pardofelis had beaten up a freshly-awakened Kevin and Su before they had regained their peak strength (Volume 3, Chapter 43).
Deliverance and Bodhi had stumbled upon the nameless cat demon and couldn't win even going all out.
But that was only the beginning. Once Kevin recovered and acclimatized, even if he wasn't at his absolute peak, his strength was still firmly at the top-tier Sequence level.
He could practically walk sideways across the galaxy unchallenged.
Yet, against the newly-freed Calamity Serpent, even Kevin had to watch as it effortlessly slipped through his fingers?
Even accounting for its formless, intangible nature, that feat was absolutely terrifying.
"Then what?" Cipher's throat felt dry, her tail lashing the ground anxiously.
"Then? The Era of the Great Flood descended."
Atlantis sinking in Plato's Dialogues; the world-ending deluge brought by the gods in the Epic of Gilgamesh; Manu creating an ark to save the world in the Shatapatha Brahmana; the fifty-two years of endless rain that ended the Fourth Sun in Aztec mythology...
To this day, almost every ancient civilization with a shred of recorded history shares a myth about a world-engulfing Great Flood that wiped out the old humanity.
Scholars debated this endlessly.
Some believed it was merely an exaggeration of cyclical flooding in ancient river valleys like the Nile, Yellow, and Yangtze rivers, which repeatedly devastated early human tribes.
Others theorized it was a deep-seated genetic memory of global climate upheavals—like the Carnian Pluvial Event—projected and amplified within the collective human consciousness.
But the brutal truth was: in the early days of the Current Era, a literal, global apocalypse flood did happen, and it very nearly snuffed out the flames of civilization!
And the source of that catastrophe was the unleashed Calamity Serpent!
"The incarnation of all fluids... water is a fluid..." Cipher muttered.
She instinctively looked up at the fake dome dotted with dark red stars. Her gaze felt as if it could pierce through the heavy seawater to the raging Sea God currently tearing the ocean apart above them.
Those two entities were, in a very real sense, cut from the exact same cloth.
And Kevin—the man who had personally released it...
"And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually..."
"And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh..." Anaxagoras quoted softly.
That was the truth behind the myths.
It wasn't God punishing sinners; it was an out-of-control Calamity scouring the mortal realm.
Anaxagoras gave his temporary student a moment to process the sheer weight of this revelation before continuing.
"Before the Pioneers could even comprehend the severity of the situation, the global deluge wiped out numerous seeds of Project Ember."
"The Eastern regions fared slightly better because they had a deeper foundation and a higher concentration of Pioneers stationed there, but the casualties were still catastrophic."
As the ancient Shenzhou texts recorded: 'In times of antiquity, the four pillars of the world collapsed, the nine provinces shattered; the heavens could not cover all, the earth could not support all; fires raged unquenched, and the mighty waters swelled without end.'
"You could say the entire Earth was turned into a boiling pot of chaos," Anaxagoras noted. "But no matter how scorching that mess was, someone had to step up and swallow it."
"And so, a grueling, prolonged war of attrition began."
That was the missing puzzle piece.
If the Immortal Empyrea had been completely unburdened at the time, she could have easily marched to the Shenzhou coastline, swiftly executed the demonic god Chiyou before it reached its final form, and achieved a perfect, happy ending.
But she couldn't.
She was busy protecting the survivors, fighting alongside her comrades against an even more terrifying, incomprehensible enemy.
She—and all the others—were fighting a war on two fronts.
"Of course, given that our current civilization still exists today, we can consider the final outcome a marginal success." Anaxagoras didn't sound particularly thrilled about it.
"Through the legendary decades-long river-channeling efforts of Yu the Great—later revered as one of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors—and the endless sacrifices of countless others who threw themselves into the meat grinder, the global flood caused by the Calamity Serpent was finally contained."
"Its scale was forcibly weakened to its absolute limit."
"Considering that the heavily damaged Earth desperately needed the Fourth Divine Key to repair the ecology, the Pioneers had to make an agonizingly difficult decision."
"They extracted the Key's core—the Celestial Fresco—severed its ability to absorb ambient energy, and used it to seal the drastically weakened Calamity Serpent once again."
"Then, they carefully selected a human tribe carrying the Stigmata of Wind gene sequence, blessing them with the sacred duty of guarding the seal."
"This tribe took the Celestial Fresco far away from the mortal world, building a subterranean super-city deep beneath the sea where no one could ever find them, guarding the dangerous seal generation after generation."
"And that... is the true origin of the Sky Kingdom."