Ten years had passed since the Black Tide apocalypse began.
During those ten years, Mydei the Undying found the Titan of Strife in the very first year. After passing the Titan's trial, he became a demigod.
Lady Aglaea, meanwhile, became the demigod of the Titan of Romance after working for one hundred and four hours straight, collapsing into a prolonged sleep, and waking up with the Coreflame already in her possession.
In the second year, the famous fan artist Miss Die obtained the Coreflame of the Titan of Death and became a demigod. The price, however, was that she would have to remain forever in the legendary Underworld, unable to return to the living world.
That same year, the Black Cat Phantom Thief used her wits to deceive the Titan of Trickery, earning THEIR recognition and passing THEIR trial to become a demigod.
After that, more and more people gained the Titans' recognition, passed the trials of the Coreflames, and became demigods, until at last, the final year arrived.
At the end of the tenth year, a young man named Phainon discovered the inheritance left behind by Kephale, the Titan of Worldbearing. Kephale's true body had vanished long ago, and not even an incarnation had remained behind to oversee the succession. All that was left was a Coreflame containing the Titan's power.
Once Phainon inherited that Coreflame, Amphoreus had finally gathered all twelve.
At that moment, Hain, the demigod who had inherited a Coreflame from Fagaina, the Ocean Titan, suddenly learned the final requirement for recreating the world. All twelve demigods had to reach the Vortex of Genesis and perform the act of creation there.
And so the twelve demigods who had inherited the Titans' powers gathered at the Vortex of Genesis, preparing to recreate the world and restore Amphoreus to its former age of peace. But the moment they arrived, Mydei's pupils contracted violently.
Someone was standing there who should not have been.
"It's been a long time, Mydei."
Caelus wore the same black coat that had always looked somewhat out of place in Amphoreus. He owned plenty of other clothes, but this one still suited him best.
"Teacher? What are you doing here?"
Mydei stared at him in disbelief. As far as he knew, his teacher had died five years ago.
Then who was the living man standing before him now?
"I'm sorry, everyone, but there is something I need to tell you. This so-called recreation of the world is a complete lie."
Caelus revealed a cruel truth to the twelve demigods who had reached this place.
"Even if you offer all twelve Coreflames, this world will not welcome a new dawn. It will simply return to the state it was in more than a thousand years ago, and everything will begin again. This world lost its future long ago.
"At your core, none of you are real. You do not truly exist. You are digital lifeforms.
"This world is essentially an enormous computer, and all of you are programs living inside it. The Twelve Titans correspond to twelve forms of authority within that system, while the so-called Black Tide is merely an experimental program deployed by the computer."
Naturally, no one believed such insane-sounding words at first. No one would accept that their entire world was false and that they themselves were merely digital lifeforms because of a single statement.
But then Caelus snapped his fingers.
Everyone immediately sensed the change in their surroundings.
Everything around them became blurred and unreal, like scenery beyond the boundaries of a game map, stripped of detail and rendered with almost careless simplicity.
The vast power surging through the demigods disappeared as well. Even their bodies began to look faint and insubstantial, almost like projections.
After a short while, everything returned to normal. Their strength came back, their bodies became solid again, and what had just happened seemed almost like an illusion.
"All of this was nothing more than an experiment. Its purpose was to collect enough data to accomplish certain objectives. That means your journey ends here.
"Oh, and Mydei, I don't think I ever told you about your parents. The life you've lived until now exists because of me. You could say I was responsible for your parents' deaths. The comrades you met, and all the people you failed to save, can also be traced back to me.
"My only goal was to shape you into the person I wanted you to become, collect the necessary data, and complete the experiment."
"What the hell do you think lives are?!"
Mydei roared and attacked the person he had once respected more than anyone.
Caelus watched him calmly, but it still was not enough. Ten years of cultivation had given Mydei a sufficiently strong sense of justice, and together with the data accumulated across previous cycles, that aspect was already complete.
But the will for vengeance was still lacking.
So Caelus snapped his fingers again.
Right before Mydei's eyes, his closest friend, Phainon, suddenly vanished.
Caelus said, "Your anger still isn't enough, so I deleted your friend's data. I'll make the others disappear in front of you as well. In the end, you'll personally witness the destruction of Amphoreus."
Mydei roared in fury as the flames of hatred burned wildly within him.
"Oh, so this is how you chose to end it?"
Lygus nodded as he collected the data from this cycle and carefully preserved it.
Nearby, Caelus and Cyrene were sitting together on a swing. Cyrene looked at him with obvious distress, one hand resting gently against his chest.
Not long ago, Caelus had allowed the student he had raised for so many years to tear open his chest with his bare hands and rip out his heart.
That heart contained pure power of Abundance.
"Although the goal was to gather several separate sets of data, you could say you ended up using the suggestion I made before, Mr. Caelus. You intend to use vengeance against the Abundance as the symbol that unifies all the behavioral data you gathered earlier, then use that to attract the Aeon's gaze in the end. An excellent idea."
"Caelus, I admit the plan may be effective, but wasn't it a little too extreme?"
Sunday had watched the entire process from beginning to end. He sighed as he asked the question.
"Mr. Sunday, perhaps my judgment is somewhat biased, but when it comes to extremism, I don't believe you have much room to criticize others."
Lygus spoke calmly from the side.
"Do I?"
Sunday genuinely did not think of himself as particularly extreme. The things he had done in the past might have been somewhat radical, but surely they did not qualify as extreme.
"Now only Harmony remains."
Caelus interrupted their exchange.
"Yes. The first demigod will also become the last."
Lygus spoke with a trace of emotion in his voice. Now that everything was finally approaching its conclusion, even he could not avoid the complicated feelings rising within him.
"Everything is about to reach its final ending. The chapter of Amphoreus is coming to a close."
Caelus shook his head.
"What's ending isn't the story of Amphoreus. The only thing ending is the story as seen by spectators and outsiders like us who kept interfering with it. What comes afterward will be something none of us can predict, a new future that truly belongs to Amphoreus.
"A brand-new tomorrow. A real world. A better future."
"To freedom."
Lygus somehow produced a glass of wine.
"To redemption."
Sunday likewise produced a glass of red wine from somewhere.
Caelus looked at the two men who had inexplicably started producing alcohol. After a moment of silence, he took out a glass of his own.
"To the story."
Not to be outdone, Cyrene produced a bottle of local Amphorean wine and smiled.
"To a brand-new dawn."
(To be continued.)
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◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)