---Third POV---
Just as the door was about to close completely, leaving only a sliver of a gap, Luminaris stuck his head out once more.
"A reform that was clearly visionary and excellent, yet in the story it's portrayed solely as the cause of destruction... Is the world really like this?"
Viktor was caught off guard by the unexpected question and paused momentarily.
"That's something you'll have to ask the God of Time. After all, I'm just a short-sighted undead who's never encountered any thoughts that were ahead of their time."
Luminaris nodded thoughtfully.
After all, the other was just an undead with a lifespan of 700 years. Even if there were decisions far ahead of their era, they wouldn't be within his ability to perceive.
Thinking this, he secretly felt proud.
That was the flaw of non-divine beings, short lifespans!
Since the other refused to become a god, he was bound to regret it someday.
He decided to go ahead and thank Viktor in advance for all the believers he was about to hand over.
He casually tossed out one last question. "You've met the God of Time? Then have you met the God of Light? What kind of person were they?"
He praised his own cleverness inwardly. Only by learning the strengths of the strongest god could he surpass them and become the greatest god of all time.
But unexpectedly, Viktor's tone turned harsh in an instant.
"A hypocritical coward, greedy for life, afraid of death, selfish and narrow-minded."
Before the stunned Luminaris could react, Viktor directly slammed the door shut with magic.
"Alright, today's story time is over!"
Bang!
"Hey, I'm not done asking!"
Luminaris protested outside the door for a while in frustration. But since he couldn't open it, he left reluctantly.
---Viktor's POV---
Inside the room, it became so quiet that even the players joking and shouting across the street could be heard clearly.
I scratched a few times at my head, then picked up the unfinished document on the desk.
"Alright, back to work. Let's see... All 1,000 players will be fully deployed in a week. I'll need to save up 100,000 divine power, which means..."
Click!
The bones in my hand holding the pen began to crumble inch by inch. The feather pen fell along with them into the ink bottle, or rolled onto the desk, the chair, or the floor.
In the blink of an eye, this collapse spread through my entire right hand. Even my left hand that was propping me up started to give way, emitting sharp, grating click-click sounds.
Snap!
A wave of invisible magical energy rippled outward from my body. The desk in front of me shattered completely, sending white paper fragments flying through the air.
"Damn it! Memories again..."
The thing I feared most had happened once more. I gritted out a few words through clenched teeth, and in a wave of regret and frustration, my consciousness was pulled into my inner sanctum by a tremendous force.
After that, my body, like a puppet with its strings cut, collapsed alongside the overburdened armchair...
"Long time no see."
A holy and majestic voice boomed through the space like a great bell. It shook my eardrums painfully. The sheer force snapped me out of the chaos.
I rubbed at the organ that technically shouldn't even exist and struggled to open my eyes. What I saw was a flat island devoid of even a single blade of grass, and, farther away, surging angry waves. Walls of seawater, towering thousands of feet high, continuously slammed against the island's protective barrier. It seemed as if they could shatter the paper-thin translucent shield at any moment.
I looked down at the flesh and veins now covering my hands. A trace of what seemed to be annoyance appeared on my face.
"So I got dragged in after all."
The last sliver of wishful thinking in my heart faded. But I didn't actually feel much sense of crisis. Because this place was all too familiar to me.
In the three hundred years following the end of the Age of Gods, I'd come here more times than the Church had hunted me down. This was the very center of my inner sanctum. Both the surging seawater and the island I stood on were manifestations of my spiritual energy.
I even had the leisure to observe the ocean surrounding the island.
"Hmm… my sanctum's recovered quite well. It can even produce tsunamis now. Not bad."
Having gone so long without experiencing life in a "non-skeletal" form, my facial expressions came out a bit stiff and unnatural, making me look especially twisted. But that didn't stop me from enjoying this brief moment of being human.
If the depth of the inner sanctum represented memory, and the surface's breadth and state represented the present, then I looked quite vigorous and full of life...
"Have you seen enough?"
That majestic, resonant voice rang out again.
I finally withdrew my gaze and looked ahead.
A man bathed in radiant light stood before me, divine brilliance swirling around him like he hailed from the highest of heavens. The chains on his body had been broken, the shattered links scattered across the ground with crisp clinks. Even in the middle of the crashing of the waves, the sound rang out clearly. All around, countless crosses stood tall, each one binding a different god.
Their expressions ranged from rage, to scorn, to indifference. Hundreds upon thousands of divine gazes locked onto me in unison, their hostile presence weighing down like a physical force.
I, however, was completely unfazed. I smiled cheerfully and greeted them all.
"Long time no see, you bunch of undead relics. Especially you, Aureal."
I looked calmly at the only god who had broken his chains, the God of Light.
"Playing the earthbound spirit role just fine, and now you're up to tricks again?"
The god, radiating a soft golden light, looked down on me with scorn.
"Insignificant ant. You think you can stop this? This inner sanctum shall soon become the cradle of my rebirth!"
I scratched my ear.
"There it is again. I really ought to figure out a way to preserve your memories from each time you die. Otherwise, you just keep repeating this same damn line."
"Pathetic bluffing." The God of Light's voice dripped with arrogance and absolute confidence, as if everything was already in his grasp. Then, he slowly raised his hand.
The surrounding radiance suddenly transformed into countless sharp blades of light, which roared toward me.
With a flicker, I dodged. The black energy I had been secretly gathering in my hand now formed a shield. The light blades clashed with the shield, erupting into dazzling sparks. The immense force pushed me back several steps, but the wariness in my eyes had mostly receded like the tide.
"That's it?"
My smile was filled with contempt, and the shield in my hand doubled in size. Under the barrage of light blades, I pressed forward, slowly but steadily, toward the god.
"Resurrecting an ancient god requires an enormous amount of divine power. Your followers are still struggling to preach your name. And yet the god himself can't wait any longer, so you're planning to forcibly possess my body for your revival, huh?"
When I was just three steps away from Aureal, the light blades here were already so dense that there was no visible safe gap. I suddenly halted my force, and the shield in my hand dissolved into light smoke.
The blades of light passed unhindered through that barrier, yet stopped just before touching me. As if someone had pressed pause, they moved no further.
Aureal's arrogant gaze tightened slightly.
"Are you not afraid of death?"
"Death?" I repeated the word.
Then took another step forward. Every blade of light retreated with perfect synchronization.
Aureal's eyes flickered.
I smiled, as if there wasn't a blinding light blade about to stab me in the eye.
"Of course I'm afraid of death, but certainly not as much as you. A god cannot reincarnate by simply relying on 'I think, therefore I am.' If my body dies, that's it for you, there's no restarting from scratch."
I stepped forward again.
Aureal instinctively retreated.
The blades of light, each about half a meter long, now formed a perfect barrier between him and me.
I narrowed my eyes slightly and said with a smile.
"Even though you're just a fragment of Aureal. The cowardice of your original self still shows. You can't change that."
Aureal fell silent for a moment, then a wicked grin appeared on his once-holy face.
"Oh? But what if I do obtain the power of a god?"
I frowned.
"What do you mean?"
There wasn't even the shadow of a god-resurrection ritual. Did he actually think he could revive as a god just by borrowing power?
Then, a cold female voice came from behind. "Human, don't forget, the one awake this time isn't just the God of Light!"
A rough male voice sneered, "Ha! You think a few rusty chains in an inner sanctum can bind us? How naive! Aureal, I'm lending you my divine power!"
"Take mine too."
"I'll help, just know the interest is double."
"Mine has to be paid back first."
"Do I really need to help with something this petty? You're disgracing the Old Gods."
Divine lights of all kinds surged from the crucifix, converging on Aureal at the front. The God of Light spread his arms, eyes closed, basking in the surging divine power. His aura began climbing layer by layer, forming a whirlpool of energy around him.
I raised my arms to shield my head, struggling against the suction force as I retreated.
"A coalition, huh… This is the first time I've seen something like this."
Inside my inner sanctum were imprisoned the avatars of 1,273 gods.
That number represented every god born in Aeltia's history, without exception. They were locked there for the same reason that Luminaris sought me out. After the Age of Gods, I was the only one with the qualifications to ascend.
To resist the corruption of belief power, they had each created an avatar during the peak of their self-awareness and planted it in my inner sanctum. Once I became a god, they could be reborn with their true personalities, instead of being twisted into gods who blindly loved humanity.
But there was only one spot for resurrection. These 1,273 gods were supposed to be rivals, fiercely competing.
Cooperation? Completely impossible!
I stood firm in the howling winds, squinting at the now tenfold larger God of Light. The figure now looked like a giant light bulb, painful to stare at for more than a few seconds.
I glanced back at the waves crashing on the shore, they had doubled in size compared to earlier.
I didn't try to stop any of it.
Once the transfer of divine power began, approaching would be suicide, completely meaningless. Instead, I turned my gaze to my own hand.
"Even like this, divine power can still flow in?"
Because Aureal was trying to ascend within my inner sanctum, my spiritual energy was increasing alongside him. Presumably, my physical body in the real world was also being washed by divine power from unknown sources. I might have already broken through to the level of Archmage… maybe even Magus!
Just then, the divine power channels in front began to narrow, shrinking from pipe-sized conduits to thread-thin strands. Finally, they snapped completely.
The recently awakened gods once again fell into slumber upon their respective crucifixes.
High in the air, Aureal slowly opened his eyes.
"Power… this is the might that belongs to the God of Light, everything has returned to me!"
He extended tendrils of spiritual energy outward. He could already faintly sense the breeze of the real world.
It was like a soft feather brushing the depths of his soul, so delicate it left him longing for more… He couldn't help but sigh with emotion.
"A body! The body that will belong to the future God of Light, let me see… hmm?"
He froze in disbelief, what he sensed outside was just a pile of scattered bones.
"You actually became an undead?"
I leaned casually against one of the crucifixes, nodding with amusement.
"Oh, yes, quite the sexy view, right? All thanks to you lot. So? Still want to take over my body?"
Aureal's eyes flickered with a brief hesitation, but it was quickly replaced by resolve.
"I see… To escape the fate of becoming a vessel for gods… You even gave up your identity as a human and sealed away all memories related to us."
He looked down at me with a rare expression of pity.
"No wonder you managed to hold out until… hmm, 600 years after the Divine War."
Feeling the information passed through sunlight, he was struck with emotions no god should possess, emotions only mortals had. His memories were still anchored in the golden era of divine rule. And now, with one blink, he awakened into a desolate age, where gods were extinct.
He steadied himself.
"But unfortunately… this is your limit. You're still just a mortal, lacking a will that can never be worn down. Sealing memories doesn't mean they're erased. As long as we still exist in your memory, as long as the world still praises our names… You will never stop thinking about us! And the moment you remember us… all those painstaking efforts to imprison us will become meaningless!"
I looked at the one crucifix without a god, and the broken chains on the ground beside it. I nodded in agreement.
"Hm... That's true."
As expected of an Old God who had existed since the birth of the world. I hadn't said a word, and yet Aureal had already guessed most of my actions. After the avatars were forcibly stuffed into my inner sanctum, I had indeed gone out of my way to create an island and crucifixes to trap them all in a deep sleep. But not because I feared they'd constantly try to possess my body.
It was because having over a thousand gods talking at once was just too damn noisy. I looked up at him, who floated high above, and spoke, "But I didn't seal my memories. Only an idiot would do something that turns them into an idiot."
If I really wanted to erase all the memories corrupted by the gods, I'd have to seal everything from the moment I transmigrated up until the end of the Age of Gods, which would basically mean I skipped straight to the post-god era.