Endless Journey: Infinite Realms 102 Footsteps on the Mountains

5 hours later.

"And now we've come to a full circle." Alex thought to himself as he peered at the assembly of people and monsters in front of him. "All my efforts for this day really had worked out well."

"Hmph, if you did not have those children as hostage with you, then all of this will not work out the way that you wanted it." Asteria muttered behind Alex as she seemed to be irritated with Alex's smug look.

"Well too bad for you I got them as hostages already." Alex replied back cheekily, with him not bothering to look back at Asteria. "If everything goes well in this meeting, then we will be able to leave already."

"Well, you better make it good, since I am already feeling bored in this World. "Asteria said as she let out an irritated sigh. "How about a bet? If you fail to complete the Mission after this meeting, then you will have to give me 10 more jars of honey, If you succeed though, I will teach you a secret Fairy Art once we arrive at the new World."

"That seems like a good deal to me." Alex replied as he stood up. "Take note of what you said in the deal, okay? I want to make sure that you will uphold that once I win."

"Hmph, you better win first." Asteria muttered as Alex approached the meeting table.

"Hallo guys…" Alex said as he sat on the edge of the meeting table. "How are you all holding up?"

"Hmph, it it weren't for you taking my daughter with me, I will not be staying here." Divine Knight Sylvester said as his eyes drilled on Alex.

"Oh, is that the only reason that you attended this meeting?" Alex said as he shook his head. "Didn't your World Tree force you to attend this meeting?"

"..."

"So, my suspicions were right." Alex muttered to himself as he saw the reaction of the Divine Knight. "Your World Tree is also interested in this meeting. That is the only reason why all of you Divine Knights and Mages are not attacking me…"

"Little bastard…" Divine Mage Imago muttered in the background, with his eyes also busy glaring at Alex.

Now that Alex was sure that the World Tree of the Essence Humans seemed to be interested on having this meeting, Alex felt more confident with his plan.

Alex gave a nod at Alina, who gave a nod back to Alex.

"So, this meeting is just going to be short and precise." Alina said as she stood up.

To Alex's delight, he saw that the other General-Class Monsters seems to be not that interested on disrupting Alina's talk.

Well, they also had no way to disrupt the meeting, as Alex was holding General Draria as hostage, and there is also the fact that the Queen Mother had instructed the monsters to respect Alina.

This thought made Alex smile wider, as he realized that Queen Mother was actually agreeing with his plan!

Now, Alex and Alina will only have to play their cards right, and everyone can leave this place satisfied!

"I only have few points to make, and I wish you all to be honest with this." Alina said as she started to talk in an authorative way.

"First of all, I want to know the reason for the creation of the Monster Birth Program." Alina said as her gaze went through all the participants of the meeting. "I want to know everything…"

".…"Even if his face looked slightly green, Divine Mage Imago managed to give out a decent reply.

"You can say that this whole situation was caused by something that our World Tree did." Alex nodded at this, knowing that his suspicions were actually right.

"So, what did your World Tree do?" Alina asked as she and Alex felt the pressure in the meeting starting to get heavy. Most of this heavy pressure came from the Monsters, who all seemed to be pissed off with Divine Mage Imago's confession.

"Our World Tree… created a biological agent that rendered the Monsters sterile." Divine Mage Imago said as he let out a sigh.

"Oh wow, that is something else." Alex muttered to himself as he remembered a certain book that he read before.

In that book the main villain wanted to save the whole world from overpopulation by making a large portion of the population sterile.

Of course the science in that book was slightly questionable, but Alex could understand its philosophical implications.

But right now, Alex was able to see an actual mass sterilization of a Race!

Naturally, Alex was slightly shocked by this revelation.

But he did not show this shock in his face as he asked the Divine Mage,

"How did your World Tree managed to do that? From what I know, each World Tree can only create one sentient specie… For your World Tree to create a biological agent that made the Monster sterile seems to be quite far-fetched…"

"Living creatures evolve over time, and that includes World Trees too." This time, the one who talked was General Chimera, with most of his eyes focused Alex alone. "After battling with the Monster Race for a long time, the World Tree of the Humans managed create its 'antibody' to kill us off. And in this case, that antibody was the sterilization agent."

"Umm, couldn't she have just created something that can poison you all to death?" Alex asked as he tilted his head. "Won't that be more effective than just making you all infertile?"

"It will take the World Tree of the Humans a very long time to produce such kind of biological agent." General Chimera replied as he let out some wry smiles. "By the point that it creates that agent, we Monsters could have won the war already…"

"So their World Tree rushed itself, unleashing a sterilizing agent because creating a killing agent will take a very long time." Alex said these words with a wistful tone as he gazed at the Monsters and Human with confusion. "That's the gist of it all?"

"Yes." Both camps replied before they went quite again.

"Ok then.." Alex rubbed the bridge of his nose as he tried to process the information that he just got.

A few second passed by before Alex started talking again.

"Hooohh…" Alex let out a deep breath as his eyes let out a strange glint.

"Let me guess. Since the Monsters were unable to increase their brethren anymore, The Queen Mother was forced to do something to prevent the Monster Race from going extinct. And the solution that she had was…"

"A biological agent that forces Humans to turn into Monsters." It was Divine Knight Sylvester who said these words. "That agent is the one that caused the whole Monster Birth Program…"

The Monsters in the meeting did not rebuke what the Divine Knight said, confirming what Alex just said.

"Ok, let me cool down a little first…" Alex said as he rubbed his face with his tentacles.

He continued doing this for a minute before he found the right mood to talk again.

"So, because the Monsters were all sterile, they can only rely on the Queen Mother's biological agent to increase their count." Alex said as he sat back on his seat. "The rumors about the Monster Birth Program created by a Monster was just false. As for the Humans, they have no way to counteract this biological agent, since it was something created by Queen Mother."

Everyone in the meeting nodded, although the Humans looked quite angry.

As for the Monsters, they all looked quite smug, although they looked quite pissed too.

"Hmph, Queen Mother said that she will only stop using her biological agent once your World Tree destroys its sterilization agent." General Chimera said as he glared at the Humans in front of him.

"I have tried telling that to our World Tree, but she is not interested on doing it." Divine Knight Sylvester said as he shook his head.

The Divine Knight then looked at Alex, as if he was trying to tell Alex something important right now.

Alex just sighed after seeing this look, as he quite understood what the Divine Knight was pertaining to.

"And that is why I cannot get the cure…" Alex said as he slumped his shoulders. "The only way for me to cure the children that was victimized by the Monster Birth Program was by making Queen Mother remove her biological agents. But for her to do that, the Human World Tree must remove her sterilizing agent first. But the Human World Tree does not want to do that…"

"Just like what I told you earlier, it is impossible for you to get the cure." Divine Knight Sylvester said he focused his gaze on Alex.

The Divine Knight was currently gripping his chair so tightly that Alex feared that he might break it.

Luckily for the chair, the Divine Knight was able to keep his calm as he let out a shuddering breath.

"You are just wasting your time here, visitor." Divine Mage Imago said as he slowly stood up, with his eyes still focused on Alex. "You had no way to cure them, so I suggest that you should just give up right now!"

"Give up? Those two words are not in my vocabulary!" Alex declared, as he seemed to be unfazed with the revelations that he received.

Everyone in the meeting who saw Alex's look started to feel confused, as they wondered how Alex was able to still feel positive even when the odds of their current situation was against him.

"You know, after I received the info about the World Trees, I started to sense something fishy in that info." Alex said as he looked at Alina. "And that was the fact that there was still something about the World Trees that was not being told to me. Or maybe, its not being told to anyone."

"Because of that, I instructed Alina here to grill the Queen Mother about that missing information." Alex said as he used one of this tentacles to point at Alina.

Alex ignored the stunned and affronted looks on the faces of the Monsters as he continued talking.

"According to Alina, the Queen Mother refused to tell her anything about this missing information. But after Alina reasoned out that this missing information could save her race, the Queen Mother caved in and told her everything."

"Are you serious! You blasphemer!" General Chimera stood up angrily, as his massive body stared down at Alina, who just looked back at the furious General quite calmly. "You dare blackmail our Creator? You deserve to die for that!"

General Chimera's body started to shimmer, as if he was preparing to attack Alina.

But before he could do so, the ground suddenly started to quake.

"Voom…."

This shaking of the ground, which was as strong as a magnitude 6 Earthquake, did not weaken or even disappear.

Instead, the ground continued on rumbling intensely, much to the dismay of everyone.

This elicited some panicked reactions among the meeting attenders, especially from General Chimera.

"After Alina told me the missing information that the Queen Mother was holding, I could not help but laugh at that time." Alex said as he seemed to be enjoying the quaking ground. "As it turns out, the missing information that she had was the key for me to succeed!"

Alex then started to laugh as a massive, green skinned figure suddenly appeared from the horizon.

Just by looking at the figure, it was quite obvious that it was massive.

Its upper body was nowhere to be seen, as this portion was way higher than the clouds.

What everyone below could only see was the figure's torso and legs.

"Boom!" The rumblings in the ground was caused by the massive figure's footsteps, as the figure was currently walking!

Its feet, which were large enough to squash kingdoms, looked certainly imposing as the figure's pace started to increase.

"Oh s**t, let's run!" One of the Divine Knights said as everyone in the meeting realized on thing.

And that is that the massive figure was currently heading towards their direction!

Nobody will stay that composed in front of this realization!

After all, a gigantic being whose head was way higher than the clouds was in all ways downright terrifying!

In fact, everyone in the meeting except Alex and Alina were all shaking in surprise and fear!

Alina looked slightly uncomfortable as she looked at the gigantic being, although it looked like she did not fear it.

As for Alex, he just continued laughing as the gigantic figure approached them.

"Do you want to know what the missing information is?" Alex said as he wiped the tears from his laughter. "Well, since the clusterf**k is about to start, then maybe I can tell you all already."

".…." Even if all that they wanted to do right now was to run, everyone in the room stayed still as they tried to listen to what Alex will say next.

Alex smiled upon seeing this kind of attention given to him, making Asteria snort behind him.

Alex's tentacles then swayed behind him in an erratic manner as he said,

"As it turns out, a World Tree can sacrifice its extremely long lifespan in exchange for it gaining a body of a sentient being! Oh, and before you can ask it, I am telling you all now that this transformation is quite permanent. Once a World Tree has done this exchange, there is no going back from it!"

"!!!!!"

Chapter end

Report