Sovereign of the Infinite Clones [Novel] Chapter 449

My Alter Ego’S Path To Greatness Chapter 449

***

The Conquest of Another World (1)

– Dimension Name : Devour
– Registration Number : A-034BM
– Dimension Type : Fantasy World
– Danger Level : Extremely High, Survival Takes Priority
– ······

The information from the Returnee Association that Hans had familiarized himself with before coming here, information that had stopped being updated entirely several years ago.

After roughly organizing the contents that surfaced in his mind, Hans slowly looked around.

‘So this is···.’

The basement where he had appeared was decorated in the quintessential occult style, the sort of place one would expect to see in an old horror movie.

Bloodstained symbols were drawn all over the room. Candles, worn down until they nearly touched the floor, were scattered about. Bones and skulls had been piled into an altar, upon which lay a human forearm and an eyeball, both still dripping with fresh blood.

‘The dimension where that Executioner bastard originated.’

Standing atop the altar, he stared indifferently at the body parts scattered around his feet before shifting his gaze forward.

Toward the young man who had seemed to be holding out rather well, only to finally collapse unconscious with foam at the mouth, missing one eye and one arm.

‘The Great Demon of Eternity, was it?’

As far as he knew, that was certainly the alias the Executioner had used in this other world.

Apparently, this ritual had been performed with the intention of summoning him.

Hans briefly surveyed the surroundings once more before shaking his head.

‘What a complete mess. And they actually thought they could summon a demon with a setup like this.’

No matter how different the specifics of the ritual might be, someone at his level could tell with a single glance.

There was not a trace of mysticism contained within this ritual.

If the summoner possessed innate talent, perhaps he could have forcibly raised the minuscule possibility of success. But judging by appearances, the young man seemed to have absolutely no talent in that regard.

“Ugh··· G-great demon··· I offer you my soul··· Please, I beg you, fulfill my grudge···!”

Just as Hans was clicking his tongue inwardly, a faint groan suddenly came from below.

A pitiful voice, breaking off every few words as though he might stop breathing at any moment.

Hans looked down at the young man, who had just regained consciousness, with a hint of surprise.

[Oh? Not bad.]

Even though he was suppressing it to some extent, the aura of fear emanating from his body was already enough to make anyone of ordinary ability incapable of even raising their head properly.

It was, quite literally, an invisible form of violence that brought despair simply through its existence.

And yet, despite having one arm and one eye ripped out, the young man had managed to withstand that overwhelming pressure in such poor physical condition.

‘His mental fortitude is at least worth acknowledging.’

Hans slowly stroked his chin.
His appearance during the young man’s ritual had been purely coincidental.

Who could have known that the moment he first set foot in this world, someone would happen to be performing such a ritual?

‘···No. Maybe I can’t simply call it a coincidence.’

The Executioner had once been known in this world as the Great Demon of Eternity.

It was only natural for someone desperately seeking to contract with such a being to choose a ritual site connected to him.

And perhaps it was that desperate plea that had drawn Hans here.

‘His level was too high, so I couldn’t extract his exact location. That’s why I came here while accounting for a certain margin of error···.’

At this point, it was more appropriate to call it fate than coincidence.

Lowering his burning gaze, Hans quietly stared at the young man.

Then he spoke to the man, who was trembling like a leaf yet desperately struggling to remain conscious.

[Heh, good. You managed to stay conscious even with this body standing before you. You look like you might actually be useful.]

“Ah, ah··· T-thank you!”

Now that he had arrived in a new dimension, securing a local informant was essential.

The information he had gathered beforehand was already hopelessly outdated.

In that sense, this young man was probably the most suitable candidate Hans could choose at the moment.

‘Then I’d better deal with that first. If I leave him like this, he won’t last long.’

Hans casually extended his hand.

The eyeball and forearm lying on the altar flew into his palm.

They appeared to have been body parts the young man had cut off himself as the price of the ritual.

But they had already decayed to the point that their original forms were barely recognizable.

‘Can’t be helped. He was too close to me.’

Still, it hardly mattered.

He was a dark mage, not a priest.

He had never intended to simply reattach them as they were.

Fwoooosh—!

Black flames blossomed within his grasp.

Pitch-black fire, ominous as though one were staring into the abyss at the very bottom of the earth.

Yet rather than burning away, the eyeball and forearm absorbed the flames, gradually returning to their original forms.

If there was any noticeable difference from before, it was that they now gleamed with a jet-black luster, as though they had been carved from obsidian.

[Now, then.]

The moment Hans spoke again, the body parts in his hand, engulfed in black flames, shot through the air.

Straight toward the places where they had originally been attached.

Sizzle—!

“Kyaaaaaah—!”

A sound like flesh being seared with heated iron rang through the basement, accompanied by a shriek of agony.

Reunited in the most dramatic fashion possible with the body parts he had once been forced to part with, the young man rolled madly across the floor.

It was a natural rejection response caused by the dead flesh, which had already completely died, mixing with the power of death that rejected life itself.

[If you can’t endure even this much, you cannot call yourself my contractor. Prove your worth yourself. We’ll have the real discussion afterward.]

Hans coldly muttered as he looked down at the young man, whose eyes had rolled back from the unbearable pain.

Of course, he wasn’t tormenting the poor man out of mere spite.

‘In a world like this, I can’t simply trust someone who tried to make a contract with a demon.’

This was a shackle and a monitoring device designed to ensure that he could never betray him.

In other words, it was merely a necessary signature on the terms and conditions before entering into a proper contract.

Of course, accepting it did not come without benefits.

Not only had he regained his lost eye and arm, but by incorporating a portion of death into his body, he would also gain a certain resistance to the aura of death emanating from Hans.

At the very least, he wouldn’t foam at the mouth and pass out simply from being in front of Hans like before.

‘His body has also been optimized for necromancy.’

From now on, he would be able to see things that should normally be invisible through the eyes of the dead, and use the arms of the dead to manipulate things that should normally be beyond his reach.

Necromancy was an ability that shone even brighter in a world where death was rampant. In a world like this, it would be no exaggeration to call it the ultimate ability.

[Hmm. So he eventually lost consciousness. Still, this is quite impressive. I can look forward to what he’ll become.]

Hans slowly nodded as he looked down at the young man writhing on the floor, who had finally lost consciousness from the shock of his newly altered body.

Then he left him where he lay and slowly walked outside.

‘I don’t know when he’ll wake up, so I might as well get a rough grasp of the situation.’

Devour.

A world that had fallen into ruin long ago and had since become a closed-off dimension.

An outsider had just set foot within it.

And with that, he took a momentous first step that would shake this stagnant world to its very foundations.

***

McCarthy was a somewhat unusual young man.

He had done everything imaginable from a young age just to survive, and murder was no exception.

Just like everyone else in this world.

‘If I don’t kill them first, I’ll be the one who dies.’

That was the truth about life he had learned from an early age.

Because he had realized it so soon, he had managed to survive tenaciously until adulthood.

Even as his birth parents, as well as the gangs he had associated with, died one after another without lasting very long.

It was around then that he realized there was something special about himself.

‘It’s dangerous here. I need to escape somewhere else.’

His survival instinct was nothing short of astonishing.

Even when there were no signs whatsoever, he could sensitively detect dangers approaching him.

He couldn’t predict exactly when or under what circumstances the danger would come, but that alone was more than enough to keep him alive.

The moment he sensed danger, all he had to do was flee as far away from that place as possible, without regard for anything else.

After becoming a wanderer, he began drifting from place to place.

From cave villages that rejected outsiders, to canyons crawling with raiders, ruined underground cities, and surface castles ruled by demon contractors.

Naturally stronger than most people, he somehow managed to survive every incident that threatened his life.

Along the way, he witnessed many sights this world had to offer.

A perpetually gloomy sky beneath which the sun never rose.

Barren lands where nothing remained but bizarre plants resembling monsters.

A handful of survivors barely scraping by among the ruins of a civilization that had collapsed.

And the demon contractors who clung to demons and ruled over those few remaining survivors.

There was no land in this world where anyone could farm normally.

Every group was essentially an armed faction engaged in raiding and hunting, and any group large enough to be called an organization was little more than a collection of slaves gathered around a demon contractor.

And McCarthy, who had believed that he would spend the rest of his life wandering before eventually dying alone on some roadside, met the woman of his destiny in a ruined village he happened to visit.

‘Delia···.’

She had become his savior, extending a helping hand when a minor injury had worsened to the point where his life hung in the balance.

In a world where one could not survive without killing others, an act of selflessness was enough to shine brightly all on its own.

‘If it had been me, I would’ve killed him for sure and taken his belongings first.’

Her kindness wasn’t limited to him.

Despite barely being able to survive on her own, she took in orphaned children who had nowhere else to go, even while making a living by selling her body.

A single ray of light cast upon a world filled with nothing but darkness.

It was only natural that he would fall for her.

The wandering McCarthy settled in the village that very day, helping her with her work and gradually developing their relationship over the course of more than a year.

He had never been more grateful for his unusually sturdy body.

And then there was the poison known as love, which had wormed its way into the heart of a man who had lived alone all his life.

It poisoned him completely. And plunged him into despair.

Fwoosh—!

Fierce flames.
Black smoke.

The acrid stench of burning corpses, a smell that had become all too familiar.

Collapsed homes and a village devoid of even the slightest trace of life.

The place where he had once felt warmth was stained with blood and death. But there was nothing he could do.

‘Why?’

He had warned her of the danger, but she hadn’t listened.

No—more precisely, she had understood what he was saying, yet still chose not to follow his warning.

She couldn’t.

There were simply too many things she was responsible for to abandon everything and flee with him alone.

And McCarthy…

did what he had always done.

‘······.’

Only after a long time had passed did he return to the village, where he was consumed by regret.

He should have abducted her and fled, even if he had to do it by force.

He should have stayed with her until the very end and died right there beside her.

He had thought it would be fine, since this was something he had experienced countless times before.

But the sense of loss, as though a hole had been torn straight through his heart, never grew any easier to bear, no matter how much time passed.

‘Who did this?’

Identifying the culprit wasn’t difficult.

The perpetrator was someone who had no reason whatsoever to hide the fact that he had done it.

The Great Lord who ruled the largest castle among all the surface castles still standing.

The contractor of the Great Demon who stood at the very top of all the demons roaming this world.

***

Lapua.

The ‘Hunting Festival’ he had held for the sake of his master was the true cause of this tragedy.

‘The Great Demon of Infinity. And Lapua.’

There was no chance of revenge.

The right choice would have been to forget everything and leave in search of a way to survive.

Just as he had always done. Just as he had done only recently.

But after having lost everything, he refused to give up.

He made full use of his ability and desperately searched for a way, until eventually—

he managed to obtain a single record.

‘The Great Demon of Eternity.’

A being who had once been called the strongest in the world, before the Great Demon of Infinity.

One of the decisive culprits responsible for ruining the world after slaughtering countless heroes, before suddenly disappearing from the world approximately a hundred years ago.

‘If only I could make a contract with him···!’

He didn’t care that the target was a demon just like the one he sought revenge against.

In this world, it wasn’t particularly uncommon for demon contractors to kill one another, nor for demons to kill other demons.

He had heard that the Great Demons, who were practically lords among demons, were not on particularly good terms with one another.

Perhaps that would make him even more receptive to McCarthy’s proposal.

Thus, with the goal of summoning the Great Demon of Eternity, he crossed countless lines between life and death and prepared the ritual.

[The Great Demon of Eternity···? Where did you get the audacity to bring such a lowly name before me?]

In the end.
He failed to accomplish his goal.

[Heh heh heh. I am the King of All the Dead, the Lord of Death. Hannibal Strauss.]

But he did not give up.

If there truly existed a being capable of dismissing the Great Demon of Eternity, who had been said to be the strongest for a hundred years, as ‘lowly’

If there truly existed a being who could call himself the ‘Lord of Death’ —

then perhaps there was still a chance.

‘Even if it’s nothing more than a demon’s lie.’

And so, after squeezing out the last of his strength and clinging desperately to that being···

Whoosh—!

High above the ground, where the earth appeared distant below.

“Ughhh···!”

The burning pain in his left eye and left arm, aggravated by the biting wind, brought McCarthy back from his memories.

He gritted his teeth and looked toward his ‘master’ , who was calmly gazing down at the earth from the same lofty height.

[Hmm. So you’re saying that the demons, including that Great Demon of Infinity, are the ones responsible for turning this world into this mess?]

“That··· would be a fair assessment. It happened so long ago, and as you can see, there wasn’t exactly an environment where proper records could be preserved. The exact truth is probably known only to the demons themselves—and the contractors who heard the story from them.”

As he had done until now, he faithfully answered every question.

Fortunately, his years of wandering and exposure to countless rumors allowed him to answer most of Hans’s questions without much difficulty.

[I see. So that’s how it is.]

A short phrase rang ominously through the air.

Whoosh—!

The instant those words left his mouth, their bodies, which had been floating in the air, rapidly descended toward the ground.

The pain radiating from McCarthy’s arm and eye intensified, but he clenched his teeth and somehow swallowed back his scream.

[Well, the details don’t really matter.]

Hans lightly touched down on the ground and muttered in a low voice without even glancing at McCarthy, who was staggering behind him.

The explanation he had heard thus far was already enough to make it perfectly clear what he needed to do.

[At the end of the day, you’re saying demons are the root cause of all this, aren’t you? Then it’s simple. We just wipe them all out first. Khehehehee!]

A strange man calmly spouted something utterly absurd with a low chuckle.

Yet McCarthy could not bring himself to argue.

Because, through the arm and eye that had bound him to his master, he could instinctively sense it.

Those words were not empty boasting.

They were backed by absolute confidence.

‘Could he really···?’

The moment McCarthy unconsciously swallowed hard— the anomaly had already begun.

Kieeeaaaah—

Wooooooooo

Uuuugh—

Startled by the ghostly wails coming from all directions, he looked up at the sky.

Through his left eye—the dead man’s eye, carved like a piece of obsidian—he could clearly see what was happening.

Countless spirits had gathered, covering the entire gloomy sky.

There were easily more than ten thousand of them, surging toward this place like a great wave.

And at the very front of the mass, as though representing them all, a ghost wearing a hat adorned with a black veil and a dress resembling mourning clothes prostrated herself before the king.

[Olivia.]

[Command me··· my king··· I, your servant··· have arrived···.]

Olivia, the Banshee Queen and Director of Intelligence for the Undying Army.

She had gathered the countless spirits scattered throughout this land according to the king’s command from the moment McCarthy lost consciousness, and now respectfully bowed her head.

[Find them.]

Toward her great master, whose reach had finally extended beyond the boundaries of one world and into another dimension—

[Those who rule at the very top of this world.]

[I shall obey your command···!]

And so, the moment arrived when her infamous name, which had transcended the limits of the dimension known as Auterica, would finally take root in the dimension of Devour.