Deep beneath the earth, a man sat submerged in shadow. Even in a void where light never reached, his post-human form felt no discomfort. The Silver Blessing he had received from another world had granted him supernatural strength. Before the Power of Silver, even the deepest darkness could not veil his sight. Indeed, that power could govern all things in this world; it was, for all intents and purposes, omnipotence.
Yet, it was not absolute. The man—Eudas—was painfully aware of that fact.
"I suppose... I underestimated them," he whispered.
His murmur vanished into the darkness, a monologue intended for no one’s ears.
He had been accumulating strength ever since receiving the Power of Silver. Knowing his path would inevitably lead to conflict with the gods of this world, he had remained in the shadows, shunning the public eye. He had used a cult as his shroud, cultivating followers to serve as his hands and feet. Simultaneously, he had used the Power of Silver to transform beasts and lesser monsters into his kin, swelling his ranks. While beasts lacked true tactical value, there was a certain strength in sheer volume. They should have been more than sufficient as a vanguard to consume and dominate this world.
After a long period of dormancy, the time for revolution had arrived. Eudas rose, intent on trampling the impotent gods and staining the world in the Power of Silver. The Apostle of the Destiny God—once a potential concern—had proven far less formidable than feared. There should have been no one left to stand in his way.
And yet, the plan had met a significant hurdle.
His initial design called for the Silverized Beasts scattered across the lands to multiply through encroachment, slowly pulling the continent under the sway of the Power of Silver. For a time, everything had proceeded according to script. The number of Silverized Beasts swelled until the Adventurer's Guild was overwhelmed. Dominion over the world was all but guaranteed. That was how it should have been.
But it was not meant to be. Gradually, pockets of resistance emerged where the encroachment speed stalled. Before he could even investigate the cause, the unthinkable happened: his kin began to vanish by the thousands.
A loose connection formed by the Power of Silver bound Eudas to his kin, allowing him to vaguely perceive their existence while they remained active. The reason he had been so slow to notice their disappearance was simple: he had absolute faith in the immortality of the Silver.
Even if a Silverized Kin lost its physical form, it was not supposed to perish. However, without a physical vessel to anchor it, the connection would break. Consequently, when a signal vanished, it was impossible to tell if the creature had merely lost its body or if its very essence had been snuffed out.
Eudas had assumed the connections were breaking because adventurers were destroying the creatures' physical shells. It hadn't been a reckless assumption; under normal circumstances, it was impossible for anyone to truly destroy a Silverized Kin.
The only exception was that boy, the Apostle of the Destiny God. But even if the youth had worked himself to the bone, there were limits to what a single person could achieve. One boy should not have had the influence to overturn the entire board.
"Can he lend his strength? No... if it is happening across the world simultaneously, he must have bestowed it upon others. A power truly befitting a god."
Such a wide-scale erasure of his kin was impossible for an individual. Eudas concluded that the Apostle must have granted the Silver-Slaying Power to others. While the method was actually the distribution of magic tools, his conclusion was functionally correct: the power was now in the hands of many. For Eudas, this was a far more dire development than the appearance of a few gifted warriors. Magic tools could be wielded by anyone with a shred of magic power, talent notwithstanding. Moreover, if a wielder fell, the tool remained, ready to be picked up by the next hand. In effect, every person on the continent had become a potential natural enemy.
"That boy... Tort, was it? I should have dealt with him personally while I had the chance."
He felt a pang of regret. It seemed that even after transcending humanity through the Power of Silver, such emotions could not be entirely purged. He had erred by dismissing the boy as insignificant and delegating the task to his subordinates. If only he had ended the boy’s life himself. The thought circled his mind like a vulture.
"...No. I must look to the future."
Ruminating on the past was a waste of time. The only thing that mattered was his next move.
The current plan lay in ruins. Most of his kin had been eradicated by the Adventurer's Guild. Rebuilding his forces to their former glory would take decades.
Lifespan was no longer a concern for him. If necessary, he could wait out the centuries. However, time alone offered no guarantee of success. Given the accelerating rate at which his kin were being purged, every passing day only weakened his position. He was forced to concede: the plan to dominate the world through sheer numbers was no longer viable.
"There is no other way. I must open the Gate."
Multiplying weak kin was a pointless endeavor. He had no choice but to draw the source of the Power of Silver directly from the other world.
It was a bitter pill for Eudas to swallow. It was an admission of his own incompetence—proof that he had failed despite being granted the power to rule the world.
"Yet, even that is a triviality when measured against our grand ambition."
Personal pride meant nothing against the Silver Will. The choice of priority was self-evident—in fact, there was no choice to be made at all. While the boundaries of the individual appeared to exist, they were an illusion. Their wills and thoughts were intertwined, forming a single entity: the Silver. An individual's desire was insignificant compared to the consensus of the whole. The only reason they had not opened a Gate until now was because Eudas’s caution had happened to align with the desire to preserve the main body’s strength.
But circumstances had changed, and so had their path. They would bridge the gap between worlds and begin the encroachment in earnest. Everything would be stained by the Silver Will.