Chapter 401 Reincarnation Plane
In the core laboratory of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane, Jemin frowned slightly as he looked at the third military message displayed on the magic network terminal.
Instead of looking at the mission overview or dimensional data first, his gaze habitually slid down to the battle damage statistics column at the bottom.
This can be considered a habit he developed.
Before truly understanding the enemy, assessing the cost to one's own people is often the quickest way to determine the "nature" of the battle.
Then, he stopped moving.
Current number of casualties: 0
zero.
A glaring zero.
Jemin stared at the number for three seconds, then suddenly felt a throbbing pain in his temples.
Having experienced various extremely difficult interdimensional wars, he has become almost numb to the battlefield with its "high mortality rate".
Wars in the Wizarding World are never child's play; it's not uncommon for the death toll to have several zeros following it.
But "zero deaths"?
This was even more unsettling than the 90% casualty rate.
“This is troublesome…” Jemin muttered to himself, his fingers tapping unconsciously on the obsidian tabletop.
Based on his previous experience in the "Just" planes and the many cases he had heard about, all planes that experienced "zero deaths" or "extremely low casualties" in wizarding wars had only one thing in common:
The enemy cannot be dealt with by conventional means.
The wizards were either "unbeatable", "invincible", or "useless to defeat".
The worst-case scenario is something like a fair dimension, where you don't even have the chance to fight him...
Jemin took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.
Zero deaths usually have two possibilities:
The first scenario is where one side is overwhelmingly stronger than the enemy, who is so weak that they cannot even inflict casualties.
In this situation, the military would not mobilize "elite combat units" to provide support at all—simply sending a few regular legions would be enough to push through, so why waste resources?
That leaves only the second possibility.
"The other side... is that kind of 'mechanic monster'." Jemin rubbed his temples, some unpleasant memories from the past flooding his mind.
He took a deep breath before turning his gaze back to the beginning of the message and beginning to read it carefully.
Plane Name: Tentative Code Name: [Reincarnation Plane]
Plane Level: Large
Civilization type: Insect-based advanced intelligent life
Primary hostile target: Scythe-Skull Clan (tentative name)
A 3D image is attached below.
It was a creature about three meters tall, covered entirely in a dark purple carapace.
Its head is a sharp triangle, with compound eyes occupying two-thirds of its face. Its mouthparts are four serrated mandibles that can open and close, and its overall outline does indeed resemble a praying mantis.
However, the body is more like the flat oval shape of a cockroach, with six strong and powerful limbs and two pairs of semi-transparent wing membranes folded on the back.
Detailed physiological and anatomical data scrolls alongside the images:
Basic individual combat strength: Stable Level 1 Extraordinary.
Social structure: a highly centralized, insect-nest mentality, where individuals possess independent intelligence but are subject to the collective will.
Technological level: Simultaneous development of biotechnology and basic energy utilization, and mastery of transdimensional detection technology.
Special Talent: The carapace possesses adaptive elemental resistance, quickly generating corresponding resistance layers after being attacked.
Jemin quickly scanned the area, feeling somewhat puzzled.
On paper, this isn't some outrageous monster.
A level one extraordinary individual combat ability is simply not enough in front of a formal wizard.
He continued looking at the combat strength comparison:
"The enemy's high-end combat force consists of five level-eight creatures, more than one hundred level-seven creatures, and countless level-six and below creatures, with a total force estimated to exceed one trillion."
"Our forces have deployed: one level eight archmage ('Star Forger' Artorias), three level seven wizards, approximately 1.2 million level six and below official wizards, and 300 million auxiliary cannon fodder troops."
A very standard configuration.
With an eighth-level archmage leading the team, they are more than capable of suppressing all of the opponent's high-end combat forces.
Three level-seven wizards were in charge of clearing out the middle layer, while more than a million official wizards dealt with the extraordinary swarm of insects.
Despite the vast difference in numbers, the wizards actually have the advantage in terms of combat power.
According to the usual script, this should be a textbook example of a planar conquest war: an eighth-level wizard takes action to eliminate the enemy leader in a targeted manner, while also preventing the enemy from triggering the planar origin to launch a self-destruction.
The level seven wizards tore through the defenses, and the official wizard legion commanded the cannon fodder legion to advance steadily. At most, the main body of the civilization could be disintegrated in three to five years. What remained was a long process of cleanup and resource extraction.
But since the military has sent a request for reinforcements...
Jemin's finger slid to the most crucial paragraph.
"Battlefield Anomaly Records (Excerpt)"
"First engagement: Lord Artorias took direct action, killing five level-eight Scythe-Skull Clan leaders within three seconds. The enemy's command system collapsed, and our army launched a full-scale advance. Four hours and twelve minutes later, the enemy civilization's main defensive line crumbled, with less than three percent of its resistance remaining."
"The anomaly occurred when the enemy civilization was on the verge of destruction (the number of remaining individuals was less than one-thousandth of the total population), and a plane-level spacetime fluctuation was detected. In the next instant, all participants (except Lord Artorias) returned to the point in time when the invasion began. Memory checks showed that, except for those at level eight, no one retained any memories of this timeline."
"Further confirmation: All fallen wizards have been resurrected, consuming resources to restore them to their original state. Fallen enemy units have also been resurrected. This is preliminarily determined to be a 'civilization-level time reversal' phenomenon."
"The second to seventeenth contact battles: various tactics were tried, including slow attrition, decapitation followed by rapid occupation of the core area, and inducing internal divisions. It was confirmed that the trigger condition for time reversal was 'the main body of the Scythe-Skull Civilization is on the verge of extinction (less than one in a thousand individuals remaining)'. After each reversal, the enemy's tactics have obviously evolved, and targeted anti-wizard tactics have emerged."
"Current inference: This time reversal ability is a 'near-death protection mechanism' of the Scythe-Skull civilization, which may randomly awaken among the remaining individuals after certain conditions are met. No cost has been found for using this ability (or the cost is also reset by time reversal)."
"The core issue: the ability's effect is limited to within this plane. Observers outside the plane are unaffected, but everything within it (including matter, energy, and memories) is reset. Lord Artorias retains his memories due to the eighth-level 'Law Solidification' property, but he cannot prevent the phenomenon from occurring."
"Reinforcement Request: We need wizards with experience in studying spacetime mechanisms or with the ability to 'interfere across timelines' to assist in breaking the time loop of this civilization, or to capture individuals who possess the ability to break the time loop."
Jemin turned off the light screen and leaned back in his chair.
Only the low hum of the element pool and the soft tapping of his fingertips on the table remained in the laboratory.
“Time reversal… civilization-level protection mechanism…” he murmured to himself, his mind racing through the relevant records in the Great Dao Library.
The cultivation world also has similar methods—the "Sect Restart Array" left behind by some ancient powerful beings can forcibly reverse time when a lineage is on the verge of extinction. The price is usually the consumption of the origin of a world or the sacrifice of billions of living beings.
But those were all "one-off" events, and at a heavy cost.
The Scythe-Skull Clan possesses abilities that seem to allow for infinite cycles with no apparent cost...
“Either the cost is so hidden that even an eighth-level wizard wouldn’t notice it, or…” Jemin’s eyes narrowed slightly, “this is not ‘their’ ability at all.”
He considered another possibility.
Certain extraordinary ancient artifacts, a dormant spacetime concept entity, or even the "self-protective will" born from the plane itself—all treated the Scythe-Skull civilization as "immune cells," and would initiate a reset program once a "pathogen" (wizard invasion) was detected.
If it's the latter, then the problem is even more complicated.
What you are fighting against is not a civilization, but the underlying rules of an entire plane.
However, based on the current situation, the latter is more likely.
Because the impact of this time reversal is too limited, confined to a single plane of existence.
Although this plane is considered a large plane, it is insignificant compared to the entire endless chaotic void.
“And the most troublesome thing is…” Jemin couldn’t help but pinch the bridge of his nose, “What wizards want is not destruction, but conquest and plunder.”
If the goal is simply to wipe out the Scythe-Skull Clan, there are actually many ways to do so.
Even a level seven wizard could destroy the entire plane by attacking it from outside the plane.
But doing so would be pointless.
The wizarding civilization conquers endless planes for resources, knowledge, and a new understanding of the laws.
A plane that can infinitely reverse time is itself a huge treasure.
If we could crack its mechanism, or even exploit it...
That value far exceeds one hundred ordinary planes.
"That's why the military is so cautious, and that's why there are zero casualties." Jemin rubbed his temples. "It's not that there were no casualties, but that before this ability is cracked, any damage, whether to friend or foe, is meaningless."
He reopened the screen, retrieved detailed information about the cycle of reincarnation, and began analyzing it line by line.
Based on the existing seventeen cycles of records, the Sickle-Skull Clan's evolution speed is extremely fast.
During the first cycle, they didn't even understand the basic structure of wizarding magic and were easily crushed by Artorias.
But by the seventeenth time, the opponent had developed an "anti-magic field" technology that could briefly interfere with the spellcasting of a level seven wizard, as well as a specialized resistance variant against elemental magic.
“They are learning.” Jemin stared at the data. “Each cycle retains a portion of the ‘experience,’ which may be transmitted through some kind of pheromone, or it may be secretly guided by the individual who awakened the time ability.”
"In that case, the longer it drags on, the harder it will be for the enemy to deal with."
"But the key to breaking the time loop lies precisely in having a sufficient number of 'experimental samples'..."
A classic paradox.
Jemin closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking into his own mind to take stock of his various trump cards.
Qi cultivation techniques, body tempering techniques, talismanic artifacts, the Black Giant...
But what if time could be reversed...?
The only thing that might work is one's own inner world, which is in another dimension and is unlikely to be affected.
but……
“Not very useful,” Jemin sighed.
After much thought, he realized that there was actually very little he could do right now.
Breaking the time loop?
That was a problem that the eighth-level archmage Artorias had studied for dozens of cycles without success. As a fourth-level wizard, even with the knowledge of the "Great Dao Library," he couldn't possibly have any breakthrough ideas in a short period of time.
Change tactics?
The military must have tried all the conventional methods, otherwise they wouldn't have issued this "recruitment of special talents" order.
So, there's really only one option left.
"Given the uncertainty about the effectiveness of the internal inner cave, let's maximize our combat strength. In any case, increasing our combat strength is never a bad thing."
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com