Chapter 1: Welcome

Chapter 1: Welcome

The open grayish-blue doors, the stone steps descending outside them, the sea flecked with patches of golden light, and the brilliance that seemed to be everywhere once again entered the eyes of Liaval, Candice, and the other residents of the City of Silver.

As members of the previous exploration team, this was not their first time seeing such a scene. Even so, it still shook their souls so deeply that they instinctively held their breath.

Derrick stood at the very front, carrying the giant hammer, Thunder God’s Roar. He was two meters tall, broad-shouldered and silent.

Nearly a minute passed before Liaval cautiously spoke.

“Elder Berg, when do we go out?”

He was a Sequence 5 Guardian, nearly two and a half meters tall. The proportions of his arms and legs were faintly abnormal.

Derrick stared at the golden patches rippling across the sea for several seconds before saying, “Wait a little longer.”

Several days had already passed since he had opened this door. During that time, he had led the exploration team back to the City of Silver with the ashes, Beyonder characteristics, and Sealed Artifacts of the Chief and Elder Lovia. Relying on that hidden secret, he had gained the trust of the current Chief of the six-member council, Waite Chirmont.

This time, Derrick would lead twenty Beyonders from the City of Silver as pathfinders. Their task was to explore a safe route and confirm the situation in the outside world.

In this matter, he had declined Mr. World’s proposal to use the Staff of the Stars and directly transfer the entire City of Silver out of the Forsaken Land of the Gods. He wished to measure the road of hope step by step with his own feet, to remember what the “dawn” looked like after the City of Silver had endured and sacrificed for more than two thousand years before finally finding it.

Hearing Elder Derrick’s answer, Liaval, Candice, and the other members of the pathfinding team said nothing more. Each took one step back and continued gazing at the beautiful scenery.

They still did not fully trust Derrick Berg. After all, he had close ties to outsiders, and both the Chief and Elder Lovia had died in that previous exploration. Only this Unshadowed One and that foreigner had survived. If the six-member council had not chosen to trust Derrick, their present emotions would certainly have contained more hostility and rejection than vigilance.

After an unknown length of time, the sea shimmering with golden patches was suddenly shrouded in darkness.

Deep within the darkness, a faint mist could vaguely be seen. Inside the mist stood a black church with a pointed roof and all kinds of buildings, giving off the feeling of something halfway between reality and dream.

Derrick and the others were not unfamiliar with darkness. Those who could glow began to glow by instinct; those who carried tallow candles lit them. The twenty-one-person team swiftly surrounded themselves with protection through light, calm despite the change.

Only then did they look with confusion toward the town in the mist and the indistinct pedestrians within it, unable to understand what exactly was happening.

This was not the darkness they knew.

At that moment, Derrick, whose body naturally radiated pure light, lifted his left hand slightly and said in a low voice, “Depart.”

Without waiting for the team members to respond, he took the lead, passing through the doors and descending the stone steps outside, step by step, into the darkness.

Liaval, Candice, and the others exchanged glances, gritted their teeth, and not one of them fell behind. They followed the newly appointed elder of the six-member council, Derrick Berg, out of the Giant King’s residence.

In the dense darkness, they completed the stairway. Then their eyes abruptly brightened as orange-red light and a stretch of black, monastery-like buildings entered view.

“So this is the outside world?” Candice looked around, both cautious and curious. She discovered that, without realizing it, they had arrived opposite the Giant King’s Court, separated from their original position by a sea of clouds dyed orange-red.

“No.” Derrick compared the present environment with the descriptions given by Mr. World and Madam Hermit, then nodded slightly. “We still need to wait here for a while. You may each find a place to rest.”

This Unshadowed One, no longer possessing the slightest trace of youthful immaturity, arranged everything with quiet steadiness.

Liaval glanced at the tightly shut doors of the black monastery and asked with faint confusion, “Do we not need to explore this place and search for the exit?”

“No.” Derrick shook his head.

The members of the pathfinding team asked no further questions. Nor did they rest. They simply remained where they were, waiting patiently.

As time passed second by second, one ray of dazzling sunlight after another suddenly shone into this world, turning everything a blazing white before the scene faded and vanished.

Derrick, Candice, and the others instinctively looked around. Once more, they saw that golden sea and sensed the terrifying aura that made them unwilling to look directly at it.

Only now, unlike before, they were already standing on an island. Behind them were clusters of enormous, golden, bizarre plants with smiling faces. Their condition contained not the slightest sense of degeneration or mutation, allowing every member of the City of Silver’s pathfinding team to sincerely experience the joy of life.

We really came out… This really is a different world… Liaval, Candice, and the others could not stop such exclamations from echoing in their hearts.

Immediately afterward, they confirmed one fact:

Elder Derrick had not betrayed the City of Silver. His cooperation with the foreigner truly had been for the sake of leading everyone away from that cursed land.

“Elder Berg…” Candice hesitated for a while before saying, “Thank you.”

Derrick nodded slightly, his back perfectly straight.

Liaval did not express the apology in his heart as Candice had. Instead, he looked left and right before asking, “Elder Berg, how should we leave this place? Build a ship?”

“Build a ship” was a term that existed only in their history books. Spoken now, it sounded exceedingly unfamiliar on his tongue.

“There doesn’t seem to be any material here for building a ship…” Candice and the others immediately examined the small island and found no trees or similar plants.

Derrick shook his head again.

“No need. Wait a little longer…”

Before he could finish, a dark speck appeared where sea and sky met.

The dark speck grew larger and larger, rapidly approaching along the safe route between the patches of golden light.

Before long, it revealed its outline. It was a hybrid-powered ship, smoke gushing from it, sails unfurled. Hanging from the ship was a blue-green sea-serpent flag.

“A ship?”

“That is a ship?”

Liaval, Candice, and the others voiced their questions while remaining on guard.

Derrick had received common-sense education during Tarot Club gatherings and had seen pictures of various ships. Hearing this, he nodded lightly.

“Yes.”

As they spoke, the ship drew closer and closer, causing the figure standing at the bow to gradually grow clear.

It was a man with yellowed brows, deep blue eyes, and a black cloak. He jumped onto the dragon figurehead and slowly spread his arms toward the people of the City of Silver.

Seeing this, Derrick, who had maintained a solemn posture the entire time, secretly exhaled in relief. Everything had proceeded according to expectations, without accident.

Danitz had originally wanted to jump straight down from the ship, walk to these believers of Mr. Fool, and announce to them that they had been saved. But after glancing at the height of the people from the City of Silver, he silently steadied himself.

Standing atop the dragon figurehead, he fully opened his arms. With a reserved smile, he said to Derrick and the others,

“Welcome to the bright world promised by God!”

…

Above the gray fog, inside the ancient palace.

Klein sat in the high-back chair belonging to The Fool. Through the crimson star symbolizing The Sun, he had watched the City of Silver’s pathfinding team the entire way, prepared at every moment to intervene if an accident occurred.

Only after that “history,” sealed away for thousands of years, intersected with the current “era,” boarded the ship belonging to the new government of the Rorsted Archipelago, and left the most dangerous core waters of the ruins of the divine war, did Klein finally breathe out in relief. He put down the Staff of the Stars in his hand and beckoned, drawing two items over.

They were respectively the Miracle Invoker Beyonder characteristic separated out from the “curtain,” and the Star Worm from the Secret Saint, Botis.

After thinking for a moment, Klein stretched out his left hand and grabbed a large mass of dark-red, nearly black liquid from the historical void.

This was the blood of the Dark Demonic Wolf, Kotar—a full three hundred milliliters. It was one of the main supplementary ingredients of the Miracle Invoker potion.

Of course, as a supplementary ingredient, it had only one purpose: to reduce the negative effects brought by the Beyonder characteristic and buffer the corresponding mysticism influence. Therefore, whether it was a historical projection did not matter. As long as it could play its role during the potion preparation and consumption stages, that was enough. Once the image from the historical void reached the limit of its duration, Klein would either have failed his advancement and collapsed into a monster, or he would already have become a Miracle Invoker, initially controlling the Beyonder characteristic. At that point, the supplementary ingredient would no longer be needed.

Immediately afterward, Klein took another object from the fog of history.

It was a segmented Worm of Time.

Because of the intense psychological shadow Amon had left on him, Klein chose, this time, to summon the Worm of Time Pallez Zoroast had once given him, avoiding any unexpected accident.

Once the ingredients were ready, he conjured an iron pot and tossed in the three hundred milliliters of Dark Demonic Wolf blood. Then, in order, he placed the Worm of Time and the Star Worm, which shone with brilliant starlight, into it.

The dark-red, nearly black liquid in the iron pot turned deep and dusky. Its surface became clear and translucent, while hidden whirlpools surged in its depths.

Without hesitation, Klein picked up the Miracle Invoker Beyonder characteristic.

Its appearance was like a heart, crystal clear, yet from time to time tiny bubbles rose within it. Each bubble seemed to contain an illusion.

The moment that Beyonder characteristic touched the liquid in the iron pot, it immediately fused into it. The dusky liquid instantly condensed, becoming profound, as if countless eyes had opened inside at the same time.

After staring at it for a few seconds, Klein poured the prepared Miracle Invoker potion into a glass bottle and, through a bestowment ritual, sent it into the real world.

On an uninhabited island in the Sonia Sea, Klein, who had arrived there directly by teleportation, looked at the potion in his hand and suddenly hesitated.

Once he became an angel, he would inevitably be influenced by the Beyonder characteristic. He would become colder, crueler, more indifferent to life, and he would need enough anchors to maintain his humanity.

This was not something that could be avoided simply because he had completely digested the potion in the earlier stages and grasped the acting method. Back when Emperor Roselle had advanced, the first half of his path had gone extremely smoothly, yet at Sequence 2, at the angelic level, he had nearly mutated and almost lost control.

As for the angels Klein knew, they all seemed relatively normal on the surface. But what they were truly like, and what their states were when hidden behind the curtain, he had no way of knowing.

If a Sequence 4 or Sequence 3 Saint could already obtain a long lifespan and live for a thousand years, then it was true that such a Saint would not have much motivation to advance to angelhood.

Combining this with the statement that the higher the Sequence, the closer one was to the Primordial, Klein suddenly understood why the White Saintess Katarina had only advanced from Sequence 4 to Sequence 3 after more than a thousand years.

But I have no way back… After a brief silence, Klein sighed inwardly.

Amon and Zaratul, both nearby, the apocalypse that was about to arrive, and the reality that he had previously been unable to interfere with the war and could only contribute through donations and similar means—all of them were pushing him toward the angelic level.

His gaze flickered for a few seconds, then swiftly grew calm. Klein lifted the bottle of potion and poured the liquid inside into his mouth.