Power of Runes Chapter 522: Seeds of Chaos

Three days had passed since the discovery of the hidden Abyssal laboratory, yet instead of calming down as the investigation spread throughout the Heavenly Realm, the situation had only continued to worsen.

Thirty deaths had already been confirmed during those three days, with most of the victims being Demi-Gods and Early God Rank Angels scattered across completely different regions of the Heavenly Realm, while the sheer distance between each attack made it nearly impossible to find any connection between them.

The number itself was insignificant when compared to the enormous Heavenly Realm, where countless beings lived across an almost unimaginable amount of territory, but nobody cared about the number anymore.

What mattered was who was dying, where they were dying, and whose traces were being found beside their corpses.

Devils.

The hatred between Angels and Devils was nothing new, nor had the two races lived peacefully before the current situation began, because for countless years, the Heavenly Realm and Abyssal Realm had fought wars against each other while constantly scheming and searching for ways to weaken the other side.

The only thing that had changed was the last ten years.

When Eden was formed a decade ago, the Eternals of the three Realms established a Non-Aggression Treaty, temporarily bringing the conflicts between their forces to a halt so that Eden could be given enough time to develop.

It was never meant to erase the hatred between them, nor was it some promise of lasting peace.

Once the appropriate time came, the conflict between the three Realms would eventually be settled through those beneath the Eternal Rank, where the absolute winner would finally be decided without the Eternals themselves taking part.

Until then, however, the Non-Aggression Treaty remained in effect, and regardless of how much the Angels and Devils despised one another, the orders established by the Eternals were absolute.

That was precisely why the Heavenly Realm hadn’t retaliated despite everything that had happened during the past few days.

The evidence was piling up, their people were continuing to die, and an entire Abyssal laboratory had somehow existed inside their Realm without their knowledge.

Thus, instead of retaliating, the Heavenly Realm demanded an answer.

Everything discovered within the hidden laboratory was presented alongside the information gathered from the recent deaths, from the Abyssal materials, creatures, research records, and experimental equipment to the corpses of the God Rank Angels who had clearly been used for experiments.

The message sent alongside that evidence was simple.

The Heavenly Realm wanted to know what the Abyssal Realm was doing.

When the information reached the Abyssal Realm, however, the Devils found themselves facing a problem they hadn’t expected.

They knew nothing about it.

The laboratory itself was undoubtedly real, and there was no denying that the materials, creatures, experimental methods, and much of what had been discovered inside originated from the Abyssal Realm, yet no one responsible for such matters knew when the laboratory had been established within Heaven, who had placed it there, or why attacks had suddenly begun after ten years of restraint.

Naturally, they couldn’t simply tell the Angels that.

The two sides had spent countless years scheming against each other, and admitting that an Abyssal laboratory had somehow appeared within the Heavenly Realm without their knowledge would only make them appear incapable of controlling their own forces.

Thus, the Abyssal Realm denied any involvement in the attacks and placed the responsibility upon rogue Devils who might have been operating independently.

They didn’t claim that the laboratory was fake, nor did they waste their time denying the obvious connection between it and the Abyss.

Their position was simply that whoever had created it hadn’t acted under their orders.

The Heavenly Realm had no reason to trust that explanation.

The Abyssal Realm had no better explanation to give.

And with the Non-Aggression Treaty still standing between them, neither side could simply act against each other.

For the next few days, the Heavenly Realm continued searching for the supposed Devils hiding within its territory, while the Abyssal Realm quietly began investigating the matter from its own side, trying to determine whether some group of Devils had truly been operating behind their backs.

Neither investigation produced anything useful.

The deaths, however, continued.

Another Angel was found dead in one region, followed by a another belonging to another race thousands of kilometers away, while several more bodies appeared over the following days with the same scattered traces of Abyssal Energy surrounding them.

There was still no pattern connecting the victims.

No organization tying them together.

No single region where the attacks were targeted against.

It was as if someone was killing people randomly, which was the truth...but Angels did not believe it. They thought that it was definitely some kind of hidden conspiracy.

Then, while the Heavenly Realm was still dealing with its growing number of deaths, something similar finally happened on the other side.

Deep within the Abyssal Realm, a Devil was found dead.

Such a death would normally have meant little in a place like the Abyssal Realm, but the Divine Energy lingering around the corpse immediately changed the nature of the incident.

Then another Devil died.

And another.

The attacks were just as scattered as those occurring within the Heavenly Realm, with victims dying in distant regions that had seemingly nothing to do with one another, except this time, it was traces of Divine Energy that remained behind.

What neither side knew was that the same person stood behind both.

Within the Heavenly Realm, Ash’s clones continued killing while carrying the traces of Devils.

Within the Abyssal Realm, other clones had begun doing exactly the opposite, taking on the appearance of Angels and deliberately allowing traces of Divine Energy to remain behind after their attacks.

It didn’t take long before the Abyssal Realm sent its own message to Heaven.

This time, the Devils were the ones demanding an explanation.

And the Angels denied everything.

They hadn’t sent anyone into the Abyssal Realm, nor had they ordered any retaliation for the deaths occurring within Heaven, but from the perspective of the Devils, the timing was far too convenient to dismiss.

Angels had begun dying.

The Heavenly Realm blamed Devils.

The Abyssal Realm denied involvement.

And shortly afterward, Devils suddenly began dying with traces of Divine Energy surrounding their corpses.

To the Devils, it looked like revenge.

To the Angels, the accusation itself was ridiculous, because their own people were still dying while the supposed perpetrators remained somewhere within their Realm.

Both sides were telling the truth.

Neither side believed the other.

Yet despite the anger building between them, the treaty held.

For now.

That was also precisely the problem.

Thirty deaths in the Heavenly Realm and several more within the Abyssal Realm had created anger, suspicion, and hatred between the two sides, but as long as both Realms continued restraining themselves beneath the Non-Aggression Treaty, everything could eventually calm down once the investigations reached a dead end.

Ash had no intention of allowing that to happen.

He needed more Chaos to actually see the effects of his title, [Chaos Harbinger], and since the deaths alone weren’t enough to push the situation any further, he decided to change his approach while still killing God rank beings here and there.

After all, killing wasn’t the only way to cause Chaos.

The deaths had only been the beginning.

Over the following days, the strange incidents occurring throughout the Heavenly and Abyssal Realms suddenly began increasing at an absurd rate, except this time, killing was no longer the only thing happening.

Within the Heavenly Realm, the treasury belonging to a powerful Angel Clan was broken into overnight, with every valuable resources and artifacts disappearing without anyone noticing when the thief had entered or left.

The security formations surrounding the treasury had been disturbed by traces of Abyssal Energy, while one of the damaged formations contained enough lingering corruption to immediately turn suspicion toward Devils.

Before that incident could even be properly investigated, another treasury was robbed thousands of kilometers away, followed shortly afterward by a transport carrying valuable cultivation resources disappearing somewhere between two cities.

Nothing connected the three incidents except the traces left behind.

Similar incidents began occurring within the Abyssal Realm after a short period of time, where the vault of a powerful Devil Clan was emptied of several valuable treasures while Divine Energy remained within the damaged formations, and elsewhere, an important shipment disappeared after the Devils guarding it were found dead with wounds carrying the unmistakable traces of Divine power.

Neither side could understand what the other was trying to accomplish anymore.

At first, they had believed the attacks were assassinations.

Now their resources were being stolen as well.

Then the sabotage began.

Teleportation formations within the Heavenly Realm suddenly malfunctioned without warning, forcing several important routes to temporarily shut down while they were inspected, and although no one died during the incidents, traces of Abyssal Energy hidden within the damaged formations immediately caused another wave of suspicion.

The Abyssal Realm suffered the same problem soon afterward.

Several transportation routes were disrupted, communication formations stopped functioning in different regions, and important facilities occasionally discovered damage that seemed meaningless on its own but became increasingly difficult to dismiss when Divine Energy kept appearing around every incident.

Ash didn’t even need every attack to cause serious damage.

Sometimes a clone would infiltrate an important location only to damage a formation and disappear.

Sometimes a treasury would lose only a handful of valuable resources despite containing far greater wealth.

Sometimes nothing would be stolen at all, yet the security formations would activate in the middle of the night after detecting the energy of the opposing Realm, forcing everyone inside into a state of alert before investigators arrived and found nobody.

The purpose was no longer destruction.

It was disruption.

If one incident ended, another began somewhere else.

If investigators concentrated their attention upon one region, several incidents would occur far away from it, forcing manpower to be divided again and again until neither Realm knew where the next problem would appear.

Soon, even ordinary coincidences began attracting suspicion.

A teleportation formation breaking naturally was investigated for possible sabotage.

A missing shipment became a suspected theft.

When an Angel disappeared during a journey, people immediately wondered whether Devils had taken them, while a Devil failing to return home on time was enough for those close to them to suspect the Heavenly Realm.

Rumors naturally followed.

Some claimed hundreds of Devils had secretly entered the Heavenly Realm, while others insisted the Angels had already established hidden bases inside the Abyss and were preparing for something much larger.

Ash didn’t create most of those rumors.

He didn’t need to.

He only made sure there were enough real incidents that nobody could confidently dismiss them.

The confusion soon began affecting the powerful factions within both Realms as well.

Some demanded harsher action against the opposing Realm, while others argued that reacting without sufficient evidence was exactly what their enemy wanted, and still others began questioning whether the attacks were truly coming from outside at all.

Old suspicions resurfaced.

Ancient grudges that had remained buried throughout the ten years of non-aggression began appearing once again, and factions that already disliked one another started using the ongoing chaos to throw accusations back and forth.

Ash noticed the change almost immediately.

So he encouraged it.

A treasure stolen from one Angel Clan appeared within the territory controlled by another.

An artifact belonging to a murdered Devil was discovered among the possessions of someone who had absolutely nothing to do with the killing.

Resources stolen from the Heavenly Realm occasionally appeared within the Abyssal Realm, while treasures taken from Devils found their way into places where Angels would eventually discover them.

Only enough to create more and more questions.

To create more and more confusion.

And once enough questions existed, people began creating their own answers.

The situation became even worse when others realized how useful the chaos could be.

Not every theft occurring within the Heavenly Realm was Ash’s doing anymore.

Not every Devil found dead had been killed by one of his clones.

People with grudges began settling them beneath the cover of the ongoing conflict, criminals took advantage of distracted authorities to target places they would never have dared approach before, while rival factions quietly used Abyssal or Divine Energy to disguise their own actions whenever they believed they could get away with it.

A powerful Angel could eliminate another Angel and blame the Devils.

A Devil could steal from a rival Devil Clan and leave traces of Divine Energy behind using some artifact.

Whether anyone actually believed the evidence hardly mattered anymore, because every new incident forced another investigation, every investigation consumed more manpower, and every unanswered question added another layer of distrust to a situation already overflowing with it.

Soon, the chaos began spreading without Ash needing to touch anything.

Security throughout both Realms tightened.

And peace vanished from both realms in a span of weeks.

**