Chapter 28: Fatlervi 6200
The dreamlike scenery gradually faded, and the story of a boy, a youth, and a man from a thousand years ago slowly came to an end.
Having abandoned all illusions of goodness, the man who devoted himself entirely to hunting down chaotic superhumans ultimately became the nightmare of the entire world.
When a person who could pause 'time' no longer had teammates to protect or cover for, and no longer had various restrictions limiting his freedom to act, then there was virtually no person or thing in this world that could stop him.
He could kill anyone, because he acted within a frozen world imperceptible to ordinary people. Before this ability, even the most heavily fortified strongholds were nothing but empty shells. He could destroy anything, because if once wasn't enough, he could try ten times, and if ten times weren't enough, he could try a hundred times—he had all the 'time' in the world to study and dismantle things.
In a world where civilization and order had collapsed, he walked through snowfields, grasslands, swamps, and city ruins, leaving behind countless corpses and bloodstains. One after another, groups of superhumans who committed crimes were destroyed; one after another, post-apocalyptic human settlements were turned to scorched earth. He killed violent thugs who committed every evil, and he also killed ordinary people who looted supply warehouses. He killed superhumans who enslaved others and proclaimed themselves emperors, and he also killed former high-ranking officials of the Siberia government who gathered refugees and tried to rebuild a world government.
The man treated everyone equally. Thus, the once-prosperous City of Sin became a graveyard overnight, with not a single human trafficker or violent organization resident surviving. Thus, the most powerful Southern Sea Fortress sank in a single night, and the twenty-seven fusion warheads loaded within it vanished without a trace.
The man roamed across the entire Siberia continent, hunting down anyone who created chaos and influenced the world with their personal desires—whether they were superhumans or remnants of the world government.
He was very patient. If killing one reckless leader resulted in a hundred equally terrible successors, then he would kill those hundred as well. If those hundred had ten thousand successors, he would continue killing. After all, killing one person or ten thousand was but an instant to him—it didn't matter much, and he didn't mind killing a few more.
If the world had gone wrong, then let him correct it. If the people of Siberia had fallen into chaos, then let him eradicate them. Some said that order could not be built on violence and slaughter. Some said that darkness and chaos could never be completely eradicated. The man once believed this, but now, he did not.
And he was correct. Fear and blood could indeed forge order.
And so, the man grew stronger through endless killing. His ability had originally been to freeze time within a five-hundred-fifty-meter radius centered on himself for fifteen seconds, with a ten-second cooldown before it could be used again. Later, it became twenty seconds, twenty-five seconds, even half a minute, a full minute, while the cooldown shrank from ten seconds to five, to three, to one, until it became almost negligible.
The range of the freeze also grew larger. Originally, his ability could at most cover a single street, but this range rapidly expanded to several major avenues, half a city district. When the man grew to the point where he could clearly 'see' the ubiquitous 'essence of superhuman power' around him, he could already freeze the time of an entire city. He could see colorful particles, like meteorites, seeping in from the outside of the world, spilling out from the bodies of dead superhumans. They traveled throughout the world, were captured and absorbed by his body, slowly strengthening his ability.
By the time the man had traversed the entire world and killed everyone who attempted to maintain chaos, he could already freeze time measured in hours, and the range of his ability was nearly half a nation. Now, no force dared to expand, and no one who thought themselves exceptional dared to rule. Everyone lived in constant fear, because an invisible nightmare roamed the continent.
The man defined rules and order. For all who disobeyed, there was only one outcome: death. Those who dared to resist had long since turned to bones years ago. What remained now were only people whose courage had been shattered. They dared not resist, and they were powerless to resist, because their enemy was time itself.
What was the ultimate limit of extraordinary power?
It was to suppress an entire civilization, an entire world, with the strength of a single person.
When everyone in the Siberia world trembled in fear at the name of one man, not daring to make the slightest move, that man became the de facto ruler of the entire world. His will was law; his preferences were rules. When the name 'Fatlervi' spread across the world, everyone on the Siberia continent held it in awe and reverence. And for those who were originally ordinary people but merely held power as superhumans, their defenses were too weak. Even a weak superhuman could, through a surprise attack, kill a powerful superhuman, even if the latter had precognition or warning abilities.
As long as there was intelligence and ambition, order would never come to the Siberia world.
Therefore, there was only this one way.
Without Fatlervi needing to say it, Joshua could guess the subsequent development himself.
Because the birth of superhumans was far too random, completely unpredictable, and no matter what superpower it was, it posed a massive hidden danger to fragile order. So, Fatlervi, using the technology of the old Siberia civilization and the newly discovered wondrous substance known as the soul, created the existence of the Soul Puppet. For a Time Pusher who did not age or die, learning and developing various soul technologies was merely a matter of time. And a matter of time was never a problem for Fatlervi. In the frozen world, he optimized the structure of the Soul Puppet generation after generation, using it as the foundation of his order.
Fatlervi purged the entire world. He killed all threatening superhumans, leaving only the most submissive batch of ordinary people. He imprisoned these humans in enclosed garden territories completely managed by Soul Puppets, and used profound soul technology to brainwash them, stamping them with ideological steel brands. He sealed the imagination and associative abilities of all Siberians, turning the once-intelligent Siberians into creatures inferior even to beasts, with only two modes of life: labor, sleep, labor, sleep.
In this way, even if an ordinary person suddenly awakened a superpower powerful enough to destroy the entire world in an instant, without any self-awareness or intelligence, they could only live on as livestock, becoming part of the farm. And Soul Puppets, unlike humans, did not show favoritism and could eliminate all possible hidden dangers.
Joshua knew that this was definitely not Fatlervi's initial approach. He must have failed many times, pondered for many years, and improved again and again before finally creating this suffocating order... But even so, Joshua still found it difficult to understand.
"This doesn't explain why you farm Siberians and harvest their souls."
The warrior said in a deep voice: "You didn't need to keep those people alive at all... You hate superhumans, you hate the Siberians—why didn't you just kill them all? You have no reason to keep them alive!"
Compared to other inexplicable things, this was the greatest puzzle for Joshua.
Fatlervi had no reason to maintain order. His sister was killed by a superhuman raid. His parents were severely injured as a result and died a few years later. Years after that, his comrades were annihilated due to the betrayal of the world government. Everything the man cherished was destroyed by the Siberians. Whether superhuman or ordinary person, they were all his mortal enemies. He had absolutely no reason to maintain the order of this world. The destruction of Siberia civilization should have been what pleased him most.
Fatlervi should have destroyed this world long ago, leaving not a trace. Why would he go to such lengths to establish order and construct a system like the farm garden that could last for countless years?
"There is only one explanation."
Facing the Time Pusher, who had not responded at all and had even closed his eyes, Joshua controlled his puppet body and spoke in a mechanical tone with no inflection: "You need a massive number of souls—to be precise, you need an astronomical amount of energy to accomplish something... Yes, you need an endless supply of souls."
Saying this, Joshua paused, then slowly continued: "To reverse time."
"Just like you did when you reversed my attack earlier."
As these words were spoken, the entire world fell into silence again. Above, over sixteen hundred soul stars began to flicker with an unsteady light. The spiral tower beneath Fatlervi also began to flow with a deep blue radiance. Joshua did not rush to speak further. He simply watched Fatlervi. After a moment, the massive puppet said: "But..."
"But, I know."
At this point, Fatlervi finally spoke. He opened his eyes again. In his pupils, the clockwise-rotating pointer had completely stopped. The master of time said calmly: "Time is an illusion."
The Time Master spoke as if talking to himself: "Time is merely the scale of material motion. A scale cannot flow backward."
"I know. Over a thousand years have passed. Counting the time I have frozen, it has even been several thousand years. Of course I know this... Time doesn't really exist. It is merely the process of material motion. My time stop is simply freezing the motion of all things."
"So-called time reversal is merely reversing the motion of matter. Your breaking free from my stop was also because the force you unleashed exceeded the degree of my freeze. It's that simple. I only now understand it."
Fatlervi casually revealed the truth of his ability, because he knew that the reason Joshua hadn't acted from the start was that he hadn't yet seen through the truth of his ability. And the reason he himself hadn't acted from the start was that he hadn't understood how the warrior had broken free from his ability.
But now, both sides had clearly seen through each other's methods... This meant that the peaceful stalling for time was over, and the real battle was about to begin.
"One last question, Fatlervi."
In the bright world, flames burned fiercely. The massive steel puppet greedily absorbed energy from the surrounding atmosphere, shattering the frozen dark world around it. Joshua, preparing to go all out, spoke with a voice that had become deep and grand, carrying a rumbling echo: "Did you engage in this brainwashing and soul farming to save your world, to reverse the flow of time?"
"Of course not."
A flat voice came from the top of the tower. Countless intricate patterns began to spread through the atmosphere. Fatlervi, with a ring of runes appearing behind him, had eyes as unchanging as rock that had endured ten thousand years: "Saving the world has nothing to do with me."
The Time Master said indifferently: "I just want to make this world what I want it to be."
"Is that so? What a pity."
Looking at the other party also beginning to exert his full strength, Joshua's voice gradually turned cold: "I originally wanted to say that knowledge and power should be used to build ladders, not to build fences... There are countless worlds in the multiverse where extraordinary power and ordinary people can coexist. You could have gone out and seen for yourself... But it seems you simply gave up."
Because he couldn't find the answer, he despaired and stopped in place, even beginning to fantasize about reversing time, no longer moving forward.
"Stop wasting words, Descender. You understand nothing and know nothing... I have already found the correct path."
To the warrior who clearly showed killing intent, Fatlervi's hand condensed a heavy, massive silver serpent staff. He stood holding the staff, releasing a vast and majestic aura. Above, over sixteen hundred soul stars blazed with light, dyeing the entire world into a white day.
In the Time Controller's eyes, the pointers began to rotate: "I am order. I am the world."
"I judge all people, all things."