Chapter 819 — The End of the Story

"No wonder... no wonder the Upper Narrator went through madness, division, death..." Selena's voice was unusually low, as though she were talking to herself. "All of us have been focused on those three thousand test subjects who entered the network, but... there are still millions of virtual personalities in the sandbox world... To you, they are 'real' too..."

The white spider did not speak, neither denying nor admitting.

As a member of the Vale Covenant, who understood the sandbox system and the mysteries of the soul rather deeply, Selena had finally pieced together the part of the truth she had never been able to make sense of before.

And beside her, Gao Yang, who had already dealt with divine knowledge many times and had come into a great deal of the Defiers' legacy, was thinking of even more: "It's because it realized that the vast majority of its 'subjects' in this world were illusory fabrications that the Upper Narrator fell into madness, and died in that madness—and that in turn caused it to split, so that its human part and its divine part became two separate beings... And it was precisely through this process of death and division that you broke free of the original 'Upper Narrator faith' that bound you, and were able to devour the minds of an entire world without jeopardizing your own existence, putting them all into those few 'cocoons'... Am I right?"

The white spider shifted one long leg gently and gave a low, pleasing voice: "You understand a great deal..."

"Do you truly believe this will succeed?" Gao Qi raised an eyebrow. "Even if you bring them into the real world, what then? No bodies, no material foundation, not even the conditions to become spirit entities. They were born of the sandbox, and only the sandbox can sustain their existence. You are a god, but they are not. These cocoons will disperse the instant they enter reality. Have you thought about that?"

"...I don't know, and I don't care," Narratir said in a low voice. "They want to leave, and so do I. That is everything..."

Amid those seemingly gentle and calm words, the enormous white spider slowly raised its upper body, and a chilling hostility finally radiated from this powerful divine being.

Yet Gao Yang merely shook his head with regret—it seemed there was no room for reconciliation.

"Narratir," he said, facing the hill, his gaze fixed on the young deity, "you will die. There will be no new split, no resurrection.

"You know how Duvalt vanished, and you should know as well that I have already established a connection with you through Him.

"I have the power to dismantle you completely."

"I know," Narratir said softly. "Perhaps that would be for the best..."

Between Gao Yang and Narratir, endless light suddenly surged into a torrent, sweeping across the entire plain, scouring the last remaining territory of this false world.

...

The violent trembling awakened pre-dawn Orindale. Countless residents woke from their dreamless sleep and looked in alarm toward that land said to have once been cursed, toward the direction of the Throat of Orindale.

They heard a low, keening howl rising from the collapsed valley, heard a resonance like the cries of countless people echoing across the plain beyond the valley. Some immense force seemed to be brewing within the Throat of Orindale, and in this final moment before dawn, it began to pulse like a heart.

A thread of rosy light appeared on the distant horizon, and the magnificent crown of the great sun seemed about to peek out from there. And in that faint, thin glow, under the lingering starlight at the edge of the sky, someone saw a vast illusory spider-like shadow climbing the hills at the rim of the Throat of Orindale...

The final moment seemed to have arrived. Semler, the Radiant Officiant, instinctively tightened his grip on the combat staff in his hand.

The entire underground palace echoed with an unsettling howl. Those transparent, illusory limbs Magnan had mentioned had finally solidified to the point where all ordinary officiants could see them clearly. They watched the colossal phantom spider threading its way between earth and walls, and each time a vast transparent joint swept across the hall, it drew a ripple of hushed gasps.

The brain-slaves' prayer resonance had already been successfully halted by Magnan, yet this seemed only to slow the Upper Narrator's descent. He was still stubbornly forcing His way into the real world, as though He would never give up until the very last moment.

"This is the last moment..." Yuri muttered under his breath. "We've done all we can..."

Wendy drew a soft breath and walked toward a corner of the hall. "I'll go tend to the wounded."

"The Pontiff sent word one last time just now—the stability of both the sandbox system and the psychic network has reached its limit," Semler said in a heavy voice. "Next he will use all his strength to withstand the impact of the Upper Narrator's descent. If his soul signature vanishes... then we shall meet death in peace."

Yuri Pingxi looked ahead. "Hope..."

A howl even more soul-shaking than before suddenly echoed through the entire underground palace, and with it came a violent tremor through the structure, cutting off Yuri's unfinished words.

He instinctively looked up and saw Semler, the Radiant Officiant, looking equally bewildered.

...

The nameless grasses and flowers turned to ash, the earth and stone disintegrated in the air, and the rising black smoke blotted out the sky, dimming the starlight to nothing.

The power that had sustained this false world to the final moment had finally fallen, and the entire sandbox began its irreversible descent into oblivion.

The nameless grassland began to crumble, collapsing rapidly from the edges toward the center, and the holy white spider rolled down from the hill, tumbling to the earth along with the cocoons she had desperately tried to protect.

In the final moment, she wove layer upon layer of spider silk, binding and securing those cocoons once more, not letting them suffer the slightest harm—as though this were the very instinct of her existence in this world.

Warm, bright light spread outward, dispersing the rising smoke and the creeping flames. Gao Yang came to the side of the white spider, who had lost all power to fight back, and looked at the clear, luminous glow at the position of her head.

Before he could speak, Narratir's voice reached the minds of both him and Selina.

"In the earliest days, they multiplied and thrived on this very grassland... Back then this was not a desert, and there was no Nim Sanzhuo..."

Only now did Selina finally recognize the terrain here, understanding where that faint sense of familiarity came from. She instinctively looked around, making out the land that was steadily sinking into darkness. "This is... no wonder I felt so familiar..."

This land had originally been "written" into being by her and Megor III together.

But that had been so long ago, so long that she had forgotten what this place first looked like.

"Duvalt once asked me—if everyone were content with this land, would all of them be spared from facing this end... All beings could live in peace and joy at the center of the stage; so long as they never touched the boundaries, this world would be real to them...

"The poets could freely imagine the worlds beyond the ocean, imagine the worlds between the stars; the sailors could reap forever bountiful harvests in the coastal waters, never minding the ever more bizarre and uncanny ocean margins the farther out one went... No excessive curiosity, and this world would remain beautiful forever...

"I could never give him an answer. I am too foolish... But I think the creators who made all of this must surely know more...

"Creator... you made this world, and then you made us. What was it all for... What do you wish us to do? Can you tell me?"