Chapter 344: Carving out the Subterranean Labyrinths! Taking the Initiative to Hunt the Zerg!
...
A short while later...
Inside Elder Yang's private office.
Having returned from the sanctuary, Elder Yang walked behind his heavy desk and slowly sank into his chair.
"So, the world shifts from a fractured multi-nation setup straight into the era of three major factions?"
Previously, the Planet hosted nearly two hundred independent countries, each navigating a highly competitive global arena. But now, with the system dividing the world among three distinct races, a brand-new multi-faction age had officially arrived.
He had a feeling the coming era would be far more interesting than the past.
"Hear me, all beast factions! I am the Dragon God, Azure Dragon! Every member of our race is ordered to immediately congregate on the Sacred Beast Continent!"
"Hear me, all flora populations! I am the World Tree, sovereign of the Vegetation Race! All members of our kind are ordered to immediately report to the Verdant Continent!"
Hearing the thunderous divine decrees echoing through the upper atmosphere, Elder Yang propped his chin in his hand.
"They're moving fast. However..."
Sensing the vast, boiling presence locked deep within the subterranean crust, Elder Yang let out a soft sigh. Seito had laid down a crystal-clear boundary: the Zerg could not be systematically wiped out by the gods.
Because of this restriction, the newly ascended deities could not personally intervene. They had to leave the active hunting and suppression entirely to the general public. While diving into the depths to cull the swarms would undoubtedly result in logistical casualties early on, their baseline metrics would steadily stabilize over time.
Elder Yang rubbed his temples, adjusting to the fresh structural headache.
...
The synchronized decrees of the Azure Dragon and the World Tree rippled seamlessly across every coordinate block of the globe, leaving every newly awakened intelligent creature completely frozen in place.
In the very next fraction of a second, the exact coordinates of the Sacred Beast Continent and the Verdant Continent perfectly manifested inside their minds. Without a single shred of hesitation, the massive herds of transformed beasts and awakened flora broke away from the human territories, migrating toward their respective continental zones at absolute velocity.
Out on the city streets...
"Look at them go..."
Watching the massive, orderly exodus of the beast and flora populations, the human citizens stared in absolute awe. But a moment later, the context of the divine announcements clicked in their minds.
"The Beast Factions and the Vegetation Race... I can't believe our planet suddenly birthed two entirely new intelligent civilizations right alongside us!"
"It's a massive variable. With three distinct intelligent factions on one world, it's hard to tell if this is a blessing or a curse for our progression loop."
"Talk about a logistical headache."
"Wait a minute, aren't the Sacred Beast Continent and the Verdant Continent just the expanded territories of Africa and South America?"
"..."
The player base engaged in a frantic wave of discussion. The areas claimed by the two newly risen civilizations happened to be territories everyone was intimately familiar with. The sheer scale of this world restructuring was simply mind-blowing. One could only wonder how the displaced foreign populations would react upon realizing their former national borders had been completely overwritten and partitioned by the system.
Amidst the crowd, a player dressed in a sharp black suit raised his eyes to the sky, chuckling confidently. "It looks like Seito-sama has cleanly smoothed out the planetary core issues ahead of schedule!"
"Watch your mouth! That is the supreme Main God of our entire world you're talking about!" a shorter youth standing nearby barked, glaring at him.
"Why should I watch my mouth?" The black-suited man turned around, staring at the youth in utter bewilderment. "The guy is literally my Guild Master! Our Boss treats everyone in the guild incredibly well; what's wrong with saying his name? Who the heck are you anyway?!"
As a high-ranking member of the Fatui guild, he was intimately familiar with Seito's easygoing disposition. He knew the God-King didn't care about minor formalities in the slightest, which was why he spoke so casually.
But what was up with this random guy trying to lecture him?
The black-suited player found it highly suspicious. The fact that Seito was incredibly approachable was common knowledge among the core player base. How could someone living in this sector be completely clueless about it?
"I... I am..." The short youth began to stammer, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead as he failed to provide a clean identification track.
"Hmm? Your behavioral metrics are looking a little glitched out, friend." The black-suited man's eyes narrowed. Drawing a heavy blade from his belt, he leveled the flat of the steel right at the youth's chest. "Recite the national anthem right now!"
"This..." The youth froze, his mind blanking as he failed to open his mouth.
Seeing the sudden tense standoff, the surrounding citizens immediately picked up on the anomaly. Within seconds, a dense perimeter of high-level players closed in, boxing the youth in from all sides. A few casual players even pulled out their devices to record the tracking data.
"Speak! Which faction do you actually belong to?!" the black-suited player barked, his voice turning ice-cold.
How could an actual citizen fail a basic anthem check? This was a massive structural red flag.
Before the youth could piece together an excuse, a burly, high-level player abruptly stepped out from the inner ring, launching a heavy kick straight into the youth's side!
BAM!
"Brothers, this guy isn't one of ours! I recognize his registration log! His family formally renounced their citizenship years ago to migrate overseas. He's just a stray foreign asset trying to blend into our safe zone!"
Hearing the confirmation track, the surrounding crowd let out collective grins. A stray anchor asset caught out in the open? This was turning into a magnificent piece of entertainment!
"Alright, boys! Let him have it!"
"Teach him a lesson!"
"This idiot is absolute peak comedy! He doesn't even hold citizenship here, yet he didn't even bother to memorize the baseline anthem before trying to blend in?"
"Talk about a total system failure."
A dozen players instantly pinned the youth to the asphalt, delivering a relentless barrage of heavy boots to his ribs. A few veteran players purposefully targeted his structural weak points, causing the youth to shed bitter tears of absolute regret.
...
Meanwhile, up in the upper atmosphere.
Hovering in the deep void beyond the clouds, Seito looked down at the brilliant azure sphere of his home planet, remaining perfectly silent.
As of right now, the primary source of sustainable, high-density meat resources across the globe had been shifted entirely to the subterranean Zerg. Although the insect swarms had yet to launch a coordinated surface invasion, it was mathematically certain that they would inevitably breach the crust before long.
Rather than waiting passively for the tides to spill into human cities, it would be infinitely wiser to project their military metrics downward, forcing the three surface factions to systematically clear the subterranean depths instead. That way, the strategic initiative would remain firmly in human hands.
With that calculation finalized, Seito unleashed a massive surge of his spatial divine energy!
Down on the surface...
BOOM!
RUMBLE!!!
"What's happening?!"
"No idea! Why is the planetary crust shifting so violently all of a sudden?!"
"Holy crap! Is this a global earthquake script?"
"Healers, brace the vanguard structures!"
"Did another foreign divine faction trigger an offensive against us?!"
The three major civilizations fell into immediate panic, frantically deploying their defensive grids to scan the rapidly shifting topography. The sudden kinetic tremors were far too massive to easily predict.
Seito ignored the localized panic, pouring even more divine power into the core planetary grid. According to his structural layout, he intended to establish massive subterranean labyrinths beneath every primary city and settlement across the globe.
The labyrinths would perfectly mirror the progression curves of the God Domain, systematically divided into exactly one hundred floors. Once finalized, the setup would allow the three major factions to form specialized raid squads to clear the depths.
BOOM!
RUMBLE!!!
One after another, colossal, ancient gateways leading straight into the hollow crust of the subterranean world were forged from pure divine energy, rising majestically from the earth.
Countless intelligent lifeforms across all three factions watched in absolute awe as these massive, mysterious monolithic structures anchored themselves right outside their perimeters. Their expressions were deeply perplexed, and no one dared to approach the structures early on. After all, nobody could verify if the gateways carried a lethal trap parameter.
A short while later, seeing that the global layout had reached 100% completion, Seito reined in his divine energy. He projected his thunderous voice across the global network, letting it echo perfectly within the soul of every living being on the Planet:
"The subterranean labyrinths—the dedicated hunting corridors to suppress the non-intelligent Zerg Swarm—have been officially initialized!"
"Let every living creature of the Planet march into the depths to cull the swarms! The Zerg are the eternal, sworn enemy of our world!"
....
Thank you for reading.