Chapter 426: Another Abomination

It was an ordinary day. The White Dragon Lord had just concluded an important magical experiment and was admiring the exotic flora gathered from across the multiverse in the imperial palace gardens. He was in a good mood.

"White Dragon! Something has happened in the Madilan World!" It was the voice of the Life Titan, Delisve, her tone laced with fear and panic.

The White Dragon Lord frowned. He had given her a Dragon Scale imbued with communication magic so she could notify him to collect the Divinity when the Abomination was near death. He hadn't expected it to deliver bad news instead.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I don't know! So many people have gone mad! Even my kin are affected! I don't know what's going on! I... I want to destroy..." the Life Titan screamed hoarsely.

Her mind was on the verge of collapse.

The White Dragon Lord's expression instantly turned grave. He had initially assumed this was a minor issue, but for something to cause a High-Tier Legend titan to suffer a mental breakdown, the trouble in the Madilan World was far from simple.

"Calm down. I'll be right there."

The White Dragon Lord teleported to Glamorgan, the third largest island of the Yafeiawei Empire. The Portal leading to the Madilan World was located there.

Pouring in his magic, he activated the Portal and shifted into his dragonborn form to step into the swirling vortex. In one fluid sequence of motions, the White Dragon Lord arrived at the Sacred Mountain of the Madilan World.

"Huhat! What's wrong with you?!"

"Hurry! He's gone mad! Tie him up!"

"No! Kill him! It's a disease! It's contagious!"

The moment he arrived in the Madilan World, the White Dragon Lord heard the furious howls of the deranged, the panicked shouts of the sane, and the rasp of blades being drawn from their sheaths. The entire Sacred Mountain had plunged into chaos.

The White Dragon Lord flashed into the sky, looking down at the chaotic academy below. A group of students dressed in the holy land's robes—both Orcs and humans—were scattered across the grounds. A human student was swinging his sheathed longsword at his companions like a madman. Most fled in terror, though a brave few drew their swords to fight back.

Seeing that the frenzied student was about to be stabbed to death, the White Dragon Lord quickly intervened.

A trace of dragon might descended from above, pressing down upon the crowd surrounding the madman. The aura froze them all in place.

Suddenly, the White Dragon Lord realized the frenzied student was completely unaffected by the dragon might. His longsword was about to crash into the head of one of the paralyzed students.

Fortunately, the White Dragon Lord's power was immense. He materialized on the ground in an instant, snatched the longsword away, and subdued the madman.

The White Dragon Lord stared in disbelief at the thrashing madman in his grip. Dragon might inflicted mental pressure on the weak, stripping away their will to resist. The fact that the madman was unaffected meant he had lost his biological instincts and the ability to sense danger entirely.

Frost magic locked the frenzied student's knees and shoulders, instantly rendering him immobile. Yet he continued to struggle, trying to bite anyone within reach. Foul saliva trailed down his face, and his bloodshot eyes looked like those of a rabid dog.

With a solemn expression, the White Dragon Lord inspected the afflicted student's body. He discovered that the boy had completely lost his reason. His brain had been ravaged, meaning he would never recover, and a mysterious power was fueling his intense aggression.

"What is going on here?"

He withdrew his dragon might, and the students collapsed to the ground.

The White Dragon Lord picked out a shivering human student whose eyes still held some clarity and dispelled the lingering effects of his aura from the boy.

"What happened here?" he repeated.

"Are you a lord from the Nordhill World?! Yes! Only lords from the Nordhill World possess such miraculous power!" The student lunged forward and hugged the White Dragon Lord's thigh, looking at him like a savior. "My lord! Save us! Please save us!"

The White Dragon Lord cast a buff on the boy to stabilize his mental state. "Calm down and tell me what's going on. I can only help you if I understand the cause of all this."

The human student calmed down, though his lips still trembled. "I don't know! At first, a lot of people started complaining about having nightmares last night. Then they became irritable and aggressive! The smallest disagreement would trigger arguments and even fights. I swear, they were never like this before."

He pointed at the restrained madman on the ground. "Huhat is a kind member of the nobility! A true gentleman! He had the nightmares too, and then today he just snapped! He wasn't the first. So many people have lost their minds. I even heard that kings and ministers have gone mad right in their royal courts. The whole world has descended into chaos..."

While the student spoke, the White Dragon Lord observed the sky. He could sense a force brimming with malice and chaos—an indescribable evil. He could feel its presence, yet he couldn't see it.

Elemental Eye!

There was no elemental anomaly. To be precise, the elements in the air were so sparse they were practically nonexistent; the Madilan World was a magic-less world.

Soul Sight!

This time, the White Dragon Lord noticed the anomaly. A sinister, spectral purple energy permeated the sky above the Madilan World. He instantly recognized it as the root of the disaster, for the energy was already attempting to corrupt him.

"Hmph!"

Invisible soul power shielded the White Dragon Lord, barring the purple energy from his body. As an Abomination Rank powerhouse, he could resist the corruption, but ordinary people...

The catastrophe devastating this world was far more severe than he had imagined!

"The Portal at the mountain peak is still open! You can organize the survivors and evacuate through it. Hurry! The magic I left behind will only hold it open for an hour!"

Leaving those words behind, the White Dragon Lord took to the sky. He tried to trace the source of the purple energy, but it drifted like a thin mist without any discernible pattern.

After a moment of thought, he flew toward the Eye of the Earth. The Life Titan, Delisve, might know more.

The White Dragon Lord soon arrived at the Eye of the Earth. He dove into the pitch-black chasm and pushed open the Gate of Steel, only to find that the Rock Titan who usually stood guard—Occam the Gatekeeper—was missing.

He quickly made his way down the deep passage. The sound of his own echoing footsteps was the only noise, making the eerie silence of the cavern feel even more profound.

The White Dragon Lord stepped out of the corridor and entered the beautiful underground luminescent forest. It remained as stunning as ever, but it was deathly still, completely devoid of any sign of life.

In the strange silence, the White Dragon Lord reached the Life Titan's palace. At last, he saw living beings—a group of Titans and giants huddled in Delisve's grand hall, praying in hushed voices. Off to one side of the hall, several giants and Titans were tightly bound by plants. They, too, were mindless madmen, drooling and gnashing their teeth like rabid hounds.

The White Dragon Lord bypassed the magical formation at the entrance. "Delisve! What in the world is happening?!"

Upon the Flower Throne, the High-Tier Legend Life Titan opened her eyes. Her once-captivating gaze was now marred by faint, bloodshot-like veins of purple. She was exhausted, her mind teetering on the brink of total collapse.

"I don't know the exact details either," she replied.

"Then tell me what you do know, from beginning to end. Don't leave out a single detail." As he spoke, the White Dragon Lord cast a stabilizing buff over the Life Titan.

The Life Titan's mental state improved slightly. She took a moment to recover. "The first anomaly occurred over a hundred years ago. I sensed a powerhouse descending upon this world, landing in the Endless Desert in the west. After a while, his presence faded. I gradually forgot about it until recently, when I had a nightmare."

A nightmare?!

The White Dragon Lord found that strange. Once a being reached the High-Tier Legend rank, they ceased to dream entirely. Where did a nightmare come from? The only explanation was that someone was trying to use the power of dreams to corrupt Delisve. "What kind of nightmare? What happened in it?"

A flash of terror crossed Delisve's eyes. "Darkness! Endless darkness! An unknown entity constantly whispered to me, urging me to worship him. I wanted to wake up but found that I couldn't. In the end, my kin noticed my slumber and used magic to pull me out of the nightmare."

The White Dragon Lord's face grew somber. To force a High-Tier Legend powerhouse into a nightmare from which they needed outside help to awaken meant the instigator was at least at the Peak Legendary Rank on the verge of stepping into the Abomination Rank, if not an Abomination Rank powerhouse already. Furthermore, they had mastered the laws of dreams.

"After that, I noticed my kin were also having nightmares and becoming mentally unstable. A few days ago, several of them went completely mad." Delisve gestured toward the restrained Titans and giants at the side of the hall.

The White Dragon Lord pondered the information revealed in the Life Titan's words. A mysterious powerhouse had descended in the west over a century ago. That was likely the root of the disaster.

No! It could have been even earlier!

The White Dragon Lord recalled the missing Flame Demon, Ogresa. Back then, Ogresa had also disappeared in the Endless Desert.

Following that line of thought, the White Dragon Lord remembered an even older disappearance: the titan sinner, the Thunder Titan Coverdale. Legend had it that he, too, vanished in the Endless Desert, an event that occurred a millennium before the White Dragon Lord even arrived in the Madilan Plane.

There was a high probability that some ancient evil lurked within the Endless Desert!

The White Dragon Lord looked at the throne beneath the Life Titan, and the name of a specific evil entity flashed through his mind—Abomination!

Not a powerhouse at the Abomination Rank, but a genuine Abomination!

The White Dragon Lord sifted through his knowledge of Abominations. Most were born from the corpses of fallen gods, though pregnant goddesses could also spawn them. The vast majority inherited their progenitor's powers. Judging by the current situation, this Abomination had likely inherited the power of a deity whose divine portfolio was related to dreams.

Such Abominations often possessed the ability to absorb energy from nightmares. The reason it had gone out of its way to tempt the Life Titan into submission was because a High-Tier Legend Life Titan possessed the power to destroy seals.

So it wanted to break its seal!

It wanted to escape its prison!

"I think I roughly understand what's happening. If my guess is right, we're in trouble." The White Dragon Lord flew straight out of the Eye of the Earth, hurtling westward across the Madilan World.

In the past, the White Dragon Lord had used the mountain range where the holy land was located as a dividing line, splitting the entire Madilan World in two. Half was given to the Orcs, and the other half to the humans. Using the interdimensional Portal at the heart of the holy land as an incentive, he had established a new structure of peace for the Madilan World.

Now, the White Dragon Lord's carefully orchestrated peace was shattered.

The roars of the mad and the terrified shouts of the sane echoed everywhere across the land. The cities were gripped by such paranoia that every shadow seemed like an enemy. Ordinary people had no idea what was happening, with many assuming it was a contagious disease. The world's order was rapidly collapsing.

Flapping his wings, the White Dragon Lord flew over Orc cities and past Blade Fortress, entering the Great Orc Prairie.

The Great Orc Prairie was originally the final homeland of the Orcs. However, with the White Dragon Lord's assistance, the Orcs had breached Blade Fortress and occupied half of the Madilan World. After that, the vast majority of the Orcs had left the prairie for more prosperous regions.

And it was fortunate that most of the Orcs had left!

Perhaps because the Great Orc Prairie was closest to the Endless Desert, it had already fallen completely. Wandering madmen roamed everywhere. Unable to find targets to attack, they would sometimes lash out at rocks and trees, battering their fingers and fists into bloody pulps. The White Dragon Lord even saw a frenzied Orc sinking its teeth into a wild wolf, biting it to death.

The White Dragon Lord sped through the sky, tearing through the clouds along the way. Finally, he spotted a distinct yellow dividing line on the emerald horizon. It was the border between the Great Orc Prairie and the Endless Desert.

With a powerful beat of his broad dragon wings, pushing the air to propel himself forward, the White Dragon Lord entered the Endless Desert.

Soul Sight!

The White Dragon Lord found that the concentration of the spectral purple energy here was extremely high. If the previous energy concentration was like a thin mist, the saturation in the Endless Desert was like a thick fog.

He knew he was in the right place!

As the White Dragon Lord flew, he pondered. Why was there another Abomination here?!

How had it broken free from its prison?!

It had to be known that The Gods took Abominations extremely seriously. The prisons prepared for them were absolute dead ends, nearly impossible to escape from.

Could that mysterious powerhouse have destroyed the prison?

Who was he?

Why would he do such a thing?

It seemed the only way to get answers to all this was to find that Abomination.

Comparing the energy concentration distribution as he flew to find the source of the spectral purple energy, the White Dragon Lord finally stopped above a particular sand dune.

This sand dune seemed no different from its surroundings—the same yellow sand, the same lack of life. Yet the White Dragon Lord sensed a dense malice here, radiating a chill so profound that not even the scorching sun in the sky could banish it.

A wicked, ominous aura!

Senseless ravings!

Indescribable chaos!

The White Dragon Lord was certain an ancient Abomination existed beneath the desert sands. His eyes flickered with uncertainty.

Even The Gods could only seal Abominations away rather than kill them. The White Dragon Lord wasn't even sure if he could defeat this Abomination; confronting it directly would carry an immense risk.

After a moment of deep thought, the White Dragon Lord decided to investigate whether the Abomination had already broken its seal.

If it hadn't, the White Dragon Lord would attempt to repair the seal and put an end to this disaster.

If it had already escaped, the White Dragon Lord would turn around and leave immediately. It wasn't for a lack of courage to fight, but because it wasn't worth the risk. He had better solutions, such as notifying the powerful deities of the Justice Pantheon.