The Fall of the Sea God!

"Did you find anything?" Neo asked Karen. "Or is there anything you want to say to me?" Karen looked again at the inscription on the stone tablet. Yes, Raniedal, no doubt about it. Next, Karen looked toward the sculpture in the center of the fountain... The man was somewhat slender, with sharp facial contours, exuding an air of solitude and contemplation. Then, Karen specifically looked at the sculpture's head. Oh, not balding. "Hmm?" Neo prompted softly through his nose. Karen hesitated. He didn't know what to say. Was he supposed to tell him, *Captain, everything our entire squad went through today was cooked up by my dog*? Still, Karen knew that the trigger here and what their squad had encountered today had little to do with the current Kevin. It was merely that the dog had left behind a toy in the past, and now someone had picked it up and started playing with it. "I don't know much about him." "Yeah, I believe you," Neo replied. "However, there's a place you might find interesting—or rather, useful to you, assuming what you told me before was true." "Captain, which matter?" "You told me that your body was once modified by Raniedal." "And so?" "So there's a place I can't enter, but you might be able to." "Where?" "The top floor of the old castle." Karen followed Neo into the old castle. Instead of taking the main gate, they chose to climb through a window. Upon landing, Karen found that one half of the room lay in light and the other in darkness, as if time had been severed right down the middle. "It was deliberately arranged like this. You probably understand this kind of thing better than I do," Neo said. "It's to deepen psychological suggestion. What we encountered outside the castle and what's inside are likely on entirely different scales. The people operating this place probably poured most of their effort into this." "Yes. Fortunately, I didn't bring you all inside, or else I'm afraid that once this ended, my squad might have ended up with a few more idiots. I couldn't abandon or kick them out, so I'd have to orchestrate a scenario in the next suitable mission where they sacrificed themselves to rescue everyone. That would be quite a hassle." "Captain, I don't think you should be saying things like that to a squad member." "Doesn't hurt to hear it. Don't worry about other teammates thinking you're heartless or bashing you if they see through your intentions. When drinking in private, they might grumble that you're cold-blooded, but deep down, they agree with your methods. Though I think if the reward is generous enough, most ailments can probably be cured right away." Karen didn't reply, quietly following Neo as they continued forward. The two climbed the stairs from the first floor, eventually reaching the fifth. During this time, Karen felt as if he were touring an amusement park at night. Even without being activated, the setup of many things induced an intense sense of inner discomfort. If activated, that severing and distortion of time would be enough to completely upend someone's previous perception of time. When they reached the fifth floor, Neo checked his wristwatch and said, "We still have plenty of time. If we miss this chance, getting in next time will be tough. I suspect we'll be put on the list of unsuitable test subjects. Oh right, almost forgot—how did you get here? Were you isolated, or was the whole squad isolated?" "The whole squad was isolated." "Then it won't be long before our entire squad gets released, but we still have enough time." Recalculating the time, Neo asked offhandedly, "How did you manage it?" "The operators created a fake you." "Mm, and then?" "In front of the entire team, I shot the fake you." "Hmm?" "The fake you." "You really had the stomach for it." "Because I knew it was fake." "All right, you did well. Those bastards treated us like test subjects this way. No matter how generous the reward is afterward, we should curse them fiercely in our hearts. Of course, messing up their test so they couldn't keep it running was an excellent way to express it. Here we are. It's this door." Neo pointed to the red door in front of them. Its presence here clashed sharply with the surrounding decor and layout, yet that only accentuated its singularity. "I couldn't push it open. It feels like a wall. Give it a try." Karen nodded and reached out to touch the door. But he felt no resistance at all—in fact, he didn't feel anything, because his hand passed straight through it. Watching this, Neo nodded. "All right, now I completely believe that this body of yours was modified by an evil god." "You didn't fully believe it before, Captain?" "I always believed you, but completely believing is a tier higher." Karen pushed his other hand through as well. Ripples formed across the door, turning it into what looked like an upright surface of water. "Captain, do you want to come in together?" Karen pulled one hand back and extended it toward the captain. "If something goes wrong while I go in, will I get stuck and die here?" "This is just mental consciousness." "But the sensation of death is real. If your mind accepts that you've died here, what kind of chain reaction do you think our bodies would suffer in reality? Mental spells specialize in that." Hearing this, Karen suddenly realized that if his aim had been just a bit truer earlier and he had successfully headshotted Marlo, wouldn't Marlo have... Poor Marlo had only been fooled by the fake captain, after all. "Then stay outside, Captain. I'll go take a look." Karen was genuinely curious about what kind of toy his dog had left behind back then. If he missed this opportunity, waiting for another would be difficult—even if the former owner of this thing was currently living as a dog in his house. "No, I'm willing to give it a try." Neo grabbed Karen's hand. Immediately, his body seemed to gain permission to pass through the door as well, and the two quickly vanished into it. *Buzz!* Behind the door was an expanse of stars, breathtakingly beautiful. Yet these were not real stars, but an algorithm. It was the core that structured the entire consciousness space. Walking within it, one could feel one's own insignificance—an overwhelming suppression born of intellect. "I think this space must be what Raniedal left behind," Neo said. "A sea of intellectual stars." Karen nodded, but another frustration immediately welled up. If his dog had left behind something else, he might have been able to walk away with it—nominally returning it to its original owner. But out of all things, he had left *this*... something Karen couldn't haul away even if he wanted to. Sigh, no wonder Raniedal had left so few traces in the mortal world. Setting ordinary people aside, even priests were basically unaware that such an evil god had ever existed. If the dog had left behind more things like a Blade of the Evil God, Sword of the Evil God, Axe of the Evil God, or Shield of the Evil God—even with prefixes like "Tattered" or "Cracked"—his renown would certainly have been different. Karen and Neo kept walking forward. Just when the two thought there was nothing behind this door but this starlight, another door appeared before them. This one was not red, but blue. "Try again. See if you can get in." "All right." Karen reached out with both hands again, but this time, the door stopped them. Seeing this, Neo let out a sigh of disappointment. "Looks like it won't work. We can only go this far." With that, Neo turned around, pointed back in the direction they had entered, and continued: "The things in this room should be what Raniedal left behind. I'd even wager they couldn't enter that red door either. Because they feared forcing their way in would damage these stars, they could only borrow the 'wisdom' here to run this realm of consciousness. A pity. We can't enter this innermost door either. Probably no one has ever stepped inside to see what's in there." The captain meant that what Raniedal left behind was likely an abstract "brain." The relevant departments of the Church of Order feared damaging its internal structure, so they didn't dare dissect it, merely embedding it here as a component to keep things running. "This is the most important place, yet at the same time, the least important," Neo sighed. "Let's go. Time to head back." *Creak...* Just then, Neo heard the sound of a door opening behind him. Neo turned around and saw Karen holding the doorknob, pulling the door open. "Captain, you can't phase through this door, but you can pull it open." "Oh, is that so?" Neo walked back, and the two stepped into this innermost room together. Strictly speaking, it was a shack. Because they had stepped out of a battered wardrobe, and in this rough stone house, the most valuable object was probably that very wardrobe. Neo began closely examining the surroundings. Karen asked, "Captain, can you tell what era this is from?" "Traces of any era have little to do with the poor." Karen nodded. "I think this must be the place etched deepest into Raniedal's memories. Most likely his very first home." "Yes, I think so too. Then these three shut windows..." "We can push them open and take a look." Neo chuckled. "Peeking into the deep memories of an evil god feels a bit improper, doesn't it?" Even as he said it, Neo still walked toward the first window on the left. "I don't think the great evil god would mind such a trivial matter." Karen approached the window as well. After this ordeal, Karen felt it was necessary to thoroughly interrogate his dog once he got home. Just because it couldn't speak didn't mean he could let its past slide. Take today, for instance: if he had known about this earlier, he wouldn't have been on edge for so long from the start, let alone nearly blowing Marlo away. Karen seemed to recall that when everyone was "arranged" into the sealed space, not only was Richard furiously making hand signals at him, but in the distance, Marlo had also been pointing frantically at the wound on his shoulder, shouting some kind of protest at him. But then again, maybe he had just seen wrong. Yes, definitely seen wrong. In short, the task of interrogating his dog was best left to his cat. Neo reached out and pushed open the first window. When the first window opened, a vast azure sea was revealed outside. A beautiful young girl in a long white dress was walking along the sandy beach, gathering shellfish and sea produce. Behind her, a tattered boy followed cautiously. Sunlight, beach, waves, a beauty, and a boy—it was a cliché, yet one that people never tired of seeing. Many could see themselves in that girl; many could see themselves in that boy. In those naive days of youth, perhaps a ray of sunlight shone down, highlighting a strand of hair or the subtle curve of lips, touching someone's heart in an instant. Everyone had been that age; everyone had lived through it. Closing one's eyes and reminiscing, one could almost always find a similar memory. It was just that she might never know someone's gaze had once lingered on her like that. At that moment, Neo and Karen both propped their elbows on the windowsill. They looked like two brothers standing by a second-story window facing the street, idly watching and passing comments on the pretty girls passing by. "That boy is the evil god?" "Most likely." "Really surprises me. To think an evil god once had a side like this—honest, wooden, shy. Who would've thought someone like that could grow into an evil god? Tsk, tsk. By the way, is that girl an ordinary person?" "If I'm not mistaken, that girl should be... Mills." "Goddess Mills?" "Yes." "So Goddess Mills and the evil god once had the kind of friendship where they fell into the paste vat together." People in Wien loved bean paste, and almost every household had a paste vat. Thus, two children "falling into the paste vat together" meant their families were extremely close and could share a vat—the Wien equivalent of childhood sweethearts. "I don't think Goddess Mills and the evil god ever fell in together." "Oh?" Hearing this, Neo looked more closely and realized the boy was merely following far behind the older girl step for step, treading in her footprints. When the older girl turned back and saw him, she only gave a polite smile. By the looks of it, the two didn't seem to know each other at all. *Hiss...* Neo took a deep breath and continued, "Why do I suddenly feel a bit sorry for this Lord Evil God?" "Me too," Karen agreed. Neo turned his head to look at Karen and asked, "Have you ever lacked women in your life?" "What?" "I mean, when you say that, does your conscience truly not hurt?" "..." Karen was speechless. Looking out through this window, the girl walked continuously, and the boy followed behind her without ceasing. The two walked from dawn to noon, from noon to dusk, and from dusk into the starry night. Perhaps this memory was simply too beautiful—so beautiful that its owner wished it would never end, carrying on like this forever and ever. "Let's look at the second window," Neo suggested. "All right, Captain." The second window was pushed open. Outside, the scene turned into a rocky reef. A young man stood there, watching a woman board a small boat under the gaze of everyone on the island, sailing into the boundless sea, until she was finally swallowed by a colossal curtain of water and a whirlpool. Karen had seen this scene before when loosening his dog's seal. Neo spoke up: "The day Goddess Mills attained godhood." Karen nodded. To protect the prostitutes on the islands from further abuse, Goddess Mills had willingly entered the sea to become the Sea God's lover. From then on, pirates never dared refuse to pay prostitutes, lest they suffer the punishment of being swallowed by the ocean waves. Paying prostitutes actually embodied respect and dignity. "He's furious," Neo said, pointing at the young man standing by the rocks. "Yeah." "So I'm really looking forward to the third window. The Sea God Religion was once an Orthodox Church, but it fractured at the end of the last era. Among the splinter churches carrying on the Sea God Religion's lineage today, the highest is merely a mid-sized church. Did the collapse of the Sea God Religion have something to do with this Lord Evil God? Hold on. Don't say a word. I want to open the window and see for myself!" What Karen actually wanted to say was that he didn't know either. But one could roughly guess that it was indeed so. Otherwise, there was no explaining where his "Sea God's Armor" had come from. It couldn't be that his dog had cozied up to his romantic rival back then to beg for it, right? Neo opened the third window. In an instant, a terrifying majesty swept outward. Karen, who was walking over, was suppressed by this terrifying pressure, instinctively hunching his back, barely managing to keep himself from dropping to his knees. In front of him, Neo gripped the edges of the windowsill tightly with both hands, supporting his body. This frightening aura had come so abruptly that it caught them entirely off guard, in stark contrast to the quiet presentations of the first two windows. Finally, Karen adapted to the pressure, walked up to the windowsill, and looked outside. Ahead lay an endless expanse of azure ocean. Karen and Neo now seemed to be leaning against a porthole, looking out. Yet below, deep within the sea, a colossal circular void had appeared. Inside it stood a gigantic altar—an altar comparable in size to a small island. And on that altar, a man of immense stature clad in archaic blue armor was shackled by chains of molten lava surging up from the depths of the earth. He struggled, and every struggle gathered a horrific thunderstorm above, like the roaring of the ocean, yet every struggle was in vain. "Is that... the Sea God?" Karen asked in disbelief. It truly was a body as massive as a mountain. A being like this, even without divine power, would be enough to dominate the ocean purely through size alone. Neo pointed a finger toward the sky above. Karen leaned his head out, gripping the windowsill with both hands to look up. Directly above floated a black throne. Neo asked, "What do you see?" Karen replied, "The Throne of Order." Neo said, "So back then, the one who helped the evil god suppress the Sea God was our God of Order." Karen nodded. "Yet the one who judged Raniedal as an evil god was also our God of Order." Just then, the figure of a man appeared above the Sea God's altar. The difference in size between the two was like gravel to a mountain peak, yet the moment he appeared, an eerie aura seemed to stain the surrounding seawater all at once. In his hand, the man held aloft a sphere of magma. Below the altar, vast quantities of magma began bubbling up as well, on the verge of submerging the Sea God's colossal form. "I once swore that I would bring about the extinction of the Sea God Religion and cause the fall of the Sea God. Today, I have done it." "Raniedal, in the name of the sea, I place a curse upon you!" The Sea God's furious roar reverberated through the surrounding space. "I curse you: your divine throne shall be stripped away! I curse you: your freedom shall be suppressed! I curse you: your body shall be pillaged! I curse you: your soul shall be exiled! I curse you: your dignity shall be trampled! Hahaha! I curse you to be a slave for generations, living like a dog!!!" Above, having listened to the Sea God's curse against him, Raniedal let out a scoffing laugh, saying with utter contempt: "Heh, childish."