Chapter 769 — Tremors
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The kaleidoscopic streams of light receded like a tide, and within the resplendent circular hall, the figure of a Solaris Order cleric vanished into the air.
Daniel, having finished attending the Arcane Order's council meeting, also rose to his feet and bowed slightly to Selina Gelfen, who remained where she was and had not yet departed: "Then I shall go inspect the state of the Pan-Consciousness Stability Barrier, Lady Selin of the Solaris Virtue."
"I leave it in your hands, Daniel of the Solaris Pole," Selina nodded slightly. "Your security team is of utmost importance to us now."
After a flicker of flowing light, Daniel too left the hall. In the vast interior space, only Selina Gelfen remained, standing quietly, along with a cluster of starlight hovering above the round table—a mingling of deep purple ground and silver-white motes, its surrounding outline swelling and contracting without cease.
After a long silence, a drawn-out sigh at last emerged from that starlight aggregate: "Selina, today's situation reminds me of seven hundred years ago."
"The situation is indeed dire, Your Holiness," Selina said softly, "even... worse than seven hundred years ago."
"The druids have failed; the children of the deep sea are already lost in the abyss; and the path we have held to seems to be facing its own dead end," Pope Megor III's voice sounded quietly. "Perhaps in the end we shall have to abandon the entire Mind utterly, and even pay for it with the lives of hundreds, thousands of our kin... But compared to those losses, what I regret most is that our seven hundred years of effort seem to have..."
"Your Holiness, it is too early to speak of such things now," Selina suddenly interrupted Megor III. "We have not yet reached the moment when we must make that choice. The thing in Sandbox One... at least for now, is still held under our strict confinement."
"But it is already consciously attempting to escape. It has realized where the boundaries of its cage lie, and next it will stop at nothing to seek a breach. If it leaves Sandbox One, it can enter the Mind, and through the Mind, by way of those kin who live in the real world, it can reign over reality. When that time comes, I fear we shall truly have to call it 'Him.'"
Selina said nothing, but in her heart she recalled her experience in the Phantom Town, and that "extra person" who had nearly returned to the Arcane Pivot City along with the exploration team.
Though the Phantom Town was merely an "overflow projection," not Sandbox One itself, in this present age when the contamination had gradually spread, for something within a projection to seek entry into the Mind was itself one of the attempts by the "thing" in Sandbox One to break free of its prison.
She could not help clenching her fist with some force, could not help recalling those darkest, most despairing days of seven hundred years ago.
The contamination originating from the divine had robbed countless thousands of their minds; even the staunchest priests and believers had fallen into madness overnight; the "Lord" they had once deeply revered had become an indescribable monstrosity; the church they had sheltered in had shattered into fragments; and their kin had lost themselves and fallen in the frenzy...
Those who remained sane had paid an unimaginable price to rebuild order. The surviving kin had taken hundreds of years to recover step by step, all for the sake of that faint, all but self-deceiving hope. These survivors, treading the border between reason and madness, had obsessively laid their plans and obsessively come this far.
And then, in the space of a mere two or three years, all the paths had been cut off one after another. The seven hundred years of perseverance and that faint, remote hope had in the end proved to be nothing but the blind, arrogant delusion of mortals.
Every effort had merely been paving the way for the gods.
But... was "striving to survive" itself truly nothing but delusion?