Orthes couldn’t read the chaotic mind of the biological entity completely, but from the few fragments he managed to grasp amidst the whirlwind of words, he could roughly understand the unfolding logic.
The entity was suspicious that Carisia and Orthes might have been created generations after it.
“Just until a moment ago, you treated me like an ancient monster. Your thinking is quite flexible.”
However, it wasn’t entirely incomprehensible.
Usually, a human body has a certain lifespan. Excluding transcendent mages challenging ascension or cyber-wizards who replace their bodies with machines to survive.
“Did it read the flow of time from Carisia’s body? Since it believes itself to be a kindred spirit, it wouldn’t be strange to feel young even if the physical age was young, but Carisia is different.”
It wasn’t a wrong thought. It was just a grand mistake to presume that Carisia or Orthes’s creator was its own creator.
“Are you wondering, ‘Why has the creator, who has remained silent until now, revealed their intentions now?’”
Orthes planned to take advantage of that misconception to learn more about the entity.
“Isn’t it because the time has come? To dispose of failed experiments like you and have the creator appear directly.”
From what he had seen and experienced in this world, he had found that the more ridiculous the bluster, the more effective it was when it succeeded.
In fact, Orthes didn’t even need to do that.
The entity had already been greatly shocked by the declaration, “I am younger than you.”
“Was it not from a much older lineage than mine…?”
The entity knew better than anyone the difficulties of obtaining such a powerful body. Even if it had been lurking since the mythic era, if things went awry, the cult could confine it, leaving it dormant for centuries.
Thus, the entity thought of Orthes as a deliberate and patient being who found a body with particularly high compatibility after careful and secret activity. Unhappy with its current compatible body, it was also an ambitious one waiting for the perfect sacrifice named Carisia.
However, Orthes declared that he was a being from a much later generation, contrary to the entity’s expectations.
Both the high compatibility body Orthes possessed and the perfect sacrifice he had sought in those long years were gifts from the creator.
Jealousy and inferiority flared up. But it could somehow comprehend it. The creator was as fearsome as they were great.
Even though it was puzzling why such blessed conditions, not allowed for itself, were granted to such a young one, it was blasphemy to carelessly speculate on the creator’s grand design.
It did not think that Orthes was superior, thus deserving such gifts.
What truly tormented the entity was the implication of the creator’s true intentions indicated by Orthes’ existence.
The creator desires the purging of biological entities living in this era.
“Why?” Doubts swelled. Why did the creator, who had allowed the activities of kindred for countless years, decide to intervene?
What had disappointed the creator?
Orthes grasped his sword and observed the information around. The provocation had an unexpectedly strong effect on the entity. The movements of the entity’s other terminals came to a halt. It was evidence that the mental shock was greater than expected.
However, Orthes didn’t entirely relish the entity’s shocked silence.
His conviction regarding the identity of the ‘creator’ was growing stronger.
“No. It might be my prejudice. The final judgment can wait until I draw more information from it.”
“Do you have plans for what comes after the fable?”
It truly was a strange question. The mental entity responded to Orthes with layers of compressed hostility and silence.
Orthes slowly nodded, casually continuing – or rather, pretending to be at ease.
“You wouldn’t. You probably think, like a worm becoming a butterfly, or a child becoming an adult. The fable is natural. You haven’t really thought about what comes after.”
“And that’s why you’re the loser.”
“What?”
“Isn’t it strange? The creator gave the instinct of the fable. Yet they didn’t enlighten you on what to do after it? Let’s think again. What did the predecessors of your kind do after the fable?”
The entity recalled the ancient times. In the mythic era, those who completed the fable, embodying relics, often played god. Just like what it was doing now.
Although it had never socialized with each one, it was easy to suspect that a few cults branded as heretical and exterminated by the Divine Cult were their kin’s dwellings.
“As expected.”
Orthes’s reasoning continued.
From ancient times, biological entities must have infiltrated the cults. Gradually distorting the originally normal belief in gods into heresy.
The biological entities that appeared in Algoth City had bled the identity of a cult and acted like nameless gods.
Those elder entities surely did not stop at that stage. Just as the biological entity in Algoth City attempted to obtain the Mage Tower Core to aim for the fable, they likely tried to use the cult’s relic at the core to attempt fables.
“Our brilliant ones. You must know the ending of those who, while pretending to be gods, have turned into false gods. The war with the Divine Cult, and their defeat. Ultimately, death.”
“Do you not understand that it is the creator’s will?”
Why did those false gods, who shed their cocoons and became their ultimate forms, not exist in this world?
Orthes’s experiences and intuition quickly yielded the answer.
When thought through, it was strange. Since the Mage King was betrayed by his disciples and disappeared until now, during all those extended years… why has the Divine Cult never regained the upper hand in the war against the Ten Towers even once?
No matter how weak their forces had grown, the Ten Towers also underwent consecutive succession battles during literally chaotic times. Yet, the Divine Cult had never restored its forces since the Mage King had stifled it.
“The reason the Divine Cult could not recover its capabilities was those false gods.”
False gods appeared at critical junctures of recovery, instigating internal strife. While hunting the false gods, the Divine Cult would’ve repeated a self-destructive cycle.
False gods. A ticking time bomb implanted to prevent the unification of the sacred forces and cement the dominance of magic.
Questions stirred in the entity’s mind. If opposing the Divine Cult was the heavenly mission revealed by the creator, then to strike the now more threatening Divine Cult, a fable was indeed necessary.
“While the efforts of those who went before were commendable, didn’t the command to annihilate the cult fail?”
“So you’ve withdrawn your mission from me?”
Just because others failed? A sentence unspoken ignited in the entity’s thoughts. Orthes sensed that strong sense of frustration.
“Not just you. It’s a failure disposition for the entire species. In the end, the creator has become deeply disappointed in all of you for not managing to crush the cult.”
“The creator isn’t some major who’s disappointingly sighing every time; they wouldn’t abolish a steadfast sabotage apparatus just because of one failure.”
Orthes contemplated the whereabouts of the vanished false gods. Not every false god had been exterminated.
The mental parasite that had appeared in Algoth City had survived without undergoing the fable until this point, hadn’t it?
What about the words of the false gods that hadn’t been utilized to whittle down the Divine Cult’s forces?
And this very question marked the initiation point of the most dangerous speculation that Orthes’s intuition warned against. False gods appearing periodically, inducing discord in the Divine Cult. When the Divine Cult had become sufficiently weakened, what decisions could the false gods, who no longer felt the need to stir conflict, make?
Orthes knew even in the original novel, there were gaps in the settings.
*
The means by which the Mage King was resurrected.
The set-up that allowed the protagonist to be resurrected in 2077, hidden in the fog. Something that ‘casually’ resurrected the Mage King.
If a mental parasite seized a matter with the extraordinary mana storage capacity like the Apex Tower’s core, it could attempt a fable, and if it possessed a body with overwhelming magical talent like Carisia, it could undergo a more complete fable.
Even if it wasn’t a perfect fable, it was clear that it had enough strength to warrant a hunting effort from the Divine Cult.
If it had fully undergone a fable, it would naturally become even stronger. These beings appeared human but wielded mana beyond individual capacity.
…I know such beings. The tower masters wielding the power of the Ten Commandments.
Assuming that they could be defeated by the declining level of the Divine Cult, it could be inferred that the individual strength of the false gods must not reach that of the tower masters, specifically the tower masters connected to the Ten Commandments. But sometimes, having numbers could compensate for quality.
Just as Adoosiam had done in the Temple of Pluton, the Mage King had the capability to design magic operational even after his physical demise.
Before my eyes now, this entity appeared to be agonizing over whether it was truly abandoned for not receiving a ‘mission after the fable,’ but in reality, the situation might be different.
After completing the fable, a new mission would likely be injected. In other words, the fable was a certificate of authenticity. A badge stating, “This validates that the fable has been completed” needed to access a mission after the fable.
If the creator of the biological entity were the Mage King,
then he likely inscribed a conditional command based on the assumption that he ‘had vanished.’
The surviving false gods would have become burnt offerings.
The Mage King’s substitute body. If a completely fabled false god existed, it might have become his vessel, while he could have created a new body by receiving several partially fabled false gods as offerings.
I recalled the 2074 years from the time the Mage King vanished to now.
The Mage King…
“How many gods has he devoured?”
