Chapter 15: The Path That Should Be Taken
The Seven Gods.
Returning from the void, back to the Ural Plains, Joshua stood upon the earth, gazing up at the sky. His gaze was fixed upon the Boundless Heaven outside the world, as if observing the deities within.
The illusion from the gods dissipated amidst the increasingly strong wind of the northern lands. The dry, cold wind caused the warrior's cloak to flutter erratically, beating against his dragon-hide cape. It could brush away a person's anxiety, but it could not brush away Joshua's doubts.
The Seven Gods of Humanity.
He repeated this term in his mind.
This was not an unfamiliar term. On the contrary, it could be said to be known to everyone. Anyone living on the Mycroft Continent knew the names of the Seven Gods, even the most ignorant beggars and farmers—they might not be able to name each god's divine name and title, but they knew of Their existence and prayed to them when needed.
These great beings, who had sheltered all living beings since the early days of the Era of Falling Stars, had long become an indelible part of the entire continental civilization. They taught the early humans, elves, and dwarves farming and forging, imparted divine arts and magic, and witnessed how a race evolved from a member of the natural cycle to the primate of the world. In a sense, the Seven Gods were the guides and sustainers of humanity. Had it not been for Them, the development of civilization would have been delayed by several millennia.
"What a hassle."
Gazing at the sky, Joshua murmured. Then, he closed his eyes, lowered his head, and muttered to himself, "Even after talking face-to-face with Him, I didn't get many answers. On the contrary, I only have more questions."
If a world were a book, then the Seven Gods of Humanity in the book of the Mycroft World were undoubtedly crucial characters, even one of the cores of this book. Yet, such an important core was riddled with puzzling mysteries, leaving many perplexed.
In the understanding of most people, gods require faith. In reality, the gods of the Mycroft Continent were no exception. Whether it was the former racial gods of the orcs or the Ocean Lord who sheltered the fishmen, They all needed faith. However, for Them, faith was not the source of power as most believed, but rather a stabilizer to maintain Their own existence.
This was actually easy to understand. Because of the powerful assimilative nature of divinity and divine power, it could easily wash a person's self-awareness clean, like a blank slate. Even a willful Legendary expert like Joshua couldn't hold out for long under the impact of divinity, and the same naturally applied to the gods. To protect themselves from the immense assimilative force of divinity, They needed the faith of living beings as an intermediary medium to safely control divine power.
A god who lost faith would not lose Their power, nor would They die. They would simply be easily and completely assimilated by divinity, becoming part of the Great Source of the multiverse. But without a doubt, for a mind with self-awareness, this outcome was even worse than death. Therefore, almost all gods established churches, encouraged believers to proselytize, and occasionally performed miracles to make more lives believe in Them and follow Their doctrines and ideals.
But the Seven Gods of Humanity were an exception.
Since the establishment of the Church of the Seven Gods, no one in the world had personally witnessed a miracle of the Seven Gods. If it weren't for the fact that every clergy could use the unique divine arts of the Seven Gods, and that every temple altar would react during the corresponding festivals and grand ceremonies of the Seven Gods, people would surely doubt Their existence. These seven great beings were completely different from the gods of other races. They strictly adhered to the supreme principle of 'non-interference in the world,' to the point where Their presence was often less felt than that of a small country's king.
They seemed to have no need for faith at all, and even deliberately kept a low profile. It must be known that if the Church of the Seven Gods didn't have a considerable presence on the continent, if successive popes weren't among the top experts in the entire world, and if the clergy weren't exceptionally skilled in battle, the faith of the Seven Gods would surely have declined under the instinctive suppression of other forces. In the previous life, if not for the Abyss invasion, the alliance of nearly a dozen layers of the Abyss, and the possible Evil Gods behind the scenes forcing Them to act to save the world and block the enemy's high-level combat power, even the players wouldn't have known that these seemingly silent background figures were actually that powerful.
Therefore, this attitude, which completely defied the instincts and basic survival laws of gods, must hide some secrets.
This was the first point of doubt. Secondly, there was the relationship with the Sage.
Every god was an existence who had reached the pinnacle in magic, battle qi, or other paths of power. Their power might have slight flaws due to the limitations of the era in which they ascended to godhood, but without a doubt, they all bore distinct personal characteristics. The divine arts and special powers They bestowed were certainly never the same.
For example, the unique [Berserk Instinct] of the orc [Chosen Generals] and the [Multiple Berserk Bloodlust] of the [War Shaman] all pointed to the brutality of the former God of War. Meanwhile, the fishmen under the Ocean Lord, because their god was proficient in excavating the power of their own bloodline, had [Atavistic Awakening] for [Awakened Guardians] and [Ancient Form] for [Ancient Priests]—all secret arts that allowed them to temporarily evolve or return to the most powerful form of their ancestors.
The Seven Gods should have been the same. In fact, Their clergy did indeed have their own special secret arts. But surprisingly, the core power system of the Church of the Seven Gods came from the path of Holy Light left by the Sage from the Era of Radiance. The followers of the Seven Gods needed to achieve considerable proficiency in Holy Light before they could choose to cultivate special secret methods. For other gods, this was unthinkable. Who would use another's power path to cultivate their own faction? Who would do something that essentially meant working for someone else's benefit? It was the height of foolishness.
But the Seven Gods did just that. Not only did They do it, They even promoted Holy Light—nowadays, more people, elves, or dwarves know the name of Holy Light than those who know the unique secret arts of the Seven Gods. Even the Seven Gods Themselves used Holy Light. If these beings claimed to have no connection with the Sage, Joshua would be the first not to believe it, and he would question the intelligence of anyone who believed such words.
But now was not the time to be entangled with such speculations.
The warrior noticed that the thought circuits of the Divine Mechanism siblings following behind him were starting to heat up. After witnessing too many unbelievable illusions and personally witnessing the descent of a divine avatar, Ying and Lin were now somewhat dazed. Sensing that Joshua's mind had returned from afar, the silver-haired girl and her brother carefully tugged at the corner of his cloak.
Joshua bent down gently, and the girl stood on tiptoe, whispering uneasily in his ear, "Master, are you still our master?"
The Divine Mechanism girl didn't understand what the rapidly flashing scenes in the illusions meant. She didn't have the capacity to think about overly complex things. But precisely because she didn't think about those superfluous things, she could keenly sense that the warrior from a moment ago was so unfamiliar, as if there was a world of difference between them.
"Of course."
Joshua replied patiently and decisively. He said this without a moment's thought or hesitation. The warrior, who wasn't good at comforting people in this regard, simply picked them up, one in each arm, amidst the siblings' surprised cries, expressing his stance with the firmest attitude.
Of course not.
He thought to himself. You are certainly not my servants, not my weapons, and I am not your master.
The warrior silently spoke to himself in his heart.
—You are my only family in this world.
And in the outer void, at the edge of the Boundless Heaven, the God of Might looked down upon the mortal world. The rotating black ring flickered with an inconspicuous light. This god was silently thinking.
"Joshua," He said to Himself after a long while. "Hinur can't find your weakness, but I can."
His gaze did not linger on the somewhat shy boy and girl in the warrior's arms, but focused on the young lord who was gently smiling.
Warrior, your weakness is your too-strong will, and your belief in never giving up, never admitting defeat.
Faced with endless, nearly unstoppable, undefeatable enemies, you will never despair, never flee. As long as there is a glimmer of hope for victory, you will keep fighting, and you will never be defeated.
Therefore, precisely because of this, you will fall into a cycle. Facing those true enemies, how can you, who doesn't know how to compromise, retreat, give up, or endure, achieve true victory? You will only stalemate with them in endless slaughter, eventually becoming a part of them, or falling into eternal combat—an eternity no different from death.
Just like civilization. A civilization that only knows combat and slaughter cannot achieve final victory before the ultimate moment arrives. They are destined to burn, like a star at the end of its life, releasing a brief but extremely bright light, then vanishing into the vast river of time.
"So, do not become a god. Do not follow our old path."
In the void, the god's sigh echoed amidst the chaotic currents of magic tide and spacetime. "That is a path destined to be bound."
The black ring rotated slightly, 'looking' towards the magic tide, towards Xing Zheng looking at the long, radiant path leading to the other end of the multiverse. Countless worlds and civilizations, immeasurable by numbers, rose and fell in the brilliant mist of light. The burning First Flame was so conspicuous in the god's eyes, as if containing infinite radiance.
This is the path you should take.
—Mycroft Continent.
The warrior did not know that, in the distant void, a god had paused because of his existence.
On the surface of his body, a faint radiance flowed. Vast and immense power surged within his body, transforming every single detail of this man, gradually shifting his form towards the most condensed, heaviest, and most indestructible state in this world.
That was the 'Steel' left behind after a star burned out.