# Chapter 33: Prison of the Gods 7400
Priest felt as if he had fallen into a vast and bizarre dream.
When over six thousand years of information from the Aklafa Hub transformed into an endless stream of data, surging forward at a speed that no ordinary Gold-rank expert could possibly withstand, Priest—who appeared flustered—had actually been prepared all along.
At the end of the day, it was merely a mental shock. As the captain of an alien world exploration team, how could Priest possibly explore a relic with a sentient voice without preparing countermeasures in this regard? But even though he had prepared in advance, he never expected the information impact to come so quickly, so suddenly, and so massively.
Time sufficient to destroy and rebirth an entire civilization flashed by amidst interweaving light and shadow. Alternating bright and dark rays mixed with infinite images and videos flowed like a river. Priest struggled alone within the torrent of historical information that could wash a person into idiocy.
"It's not... stronger than Teacher's pressure!"
One could see that countless blood spots had burst inside Priest's brain in reality. Large numbers of capillaries had ruptured, and brain tissue was being destroyed by the nearly materialized mental impact. But because of the Restorative Pillar, no matter how severe his injuries, he would be completely restored the next second.
A miracle capable of resurrecting the dead—such was its unreasonable nature.
Vaguely, Priest could see memories gradually playing in reverse, from recent times all the way back to the ancient past.
The sun above his head rose in the west and set in the east, dragging an orange arc across the sky. Time flipped backward in units of centuries, surging like a mighty river. But Priest's soul, far tougher than an ordinary Gold-rank, could swim against the current, tracing back toward the past.
He saw the sun set and the moon rise, saw clouds scatter and wind surge. He saw a flying car suddenly streak across the sky, activating the Hub's long-dormant automatic positioning protocols. He saw centuries pass swiftly in environments as stagnant as dead water, while the Hub's originally thick rock shell gradually thinned, the forests outside grew sparse, and the moon in the sky became smaller and smaller, farther and farther away. Priest even discovered with surprise that the Aklafa Hub had not been shaped like a mountain peak several hundred years ago—its silver shell had not been covered by rock and still radiated brilliant, bright light.
Until that moment... when rock rose as if alive, covering one enormous Hub after another across the land, turning this originally flat world into one dotted with mountain ranges.
Priest saw who had sealed so many Hubs, transforming them into towering mountains. He saw the ancients who might be considered the last civilization in this final unknown world.
Civilization was not human. As a collective of intelligent life, civilization lived far longer than any individual. For most of its existence, it maintained a young and vibrant form, constantly moving forward, bright and glorious like the morning sun.
But could civilization truly be immortal and unchanging, forever maintaining that hopeful, vibrant form like the morning sun?
The answer was, of course, no. Civilization also aged, also decayed, slowly declining from strength to weakness—just as the sun could be extinguished, and morning would eventually become evening. A vibrant civilization could become corrupt and decadent under various circumstances, lifeless and stagnant. Individuals once filled with the desire to explore would sink into enjoyment and waste, gnawing at civilization's foundations like parasites.
Most importantly, civilization ultimately needed people to maintain it. If even the most basic population requirements could not be met, no matter how beautifully one spoke, decline and weakening were inevitable facts.
Just like now, what Priest saw in the illusions from a thousand years ago.
Before the Aklafa Hub, illuminated by bright magical light, a small squad of humans barely covered by clothing, along with another small squad of elves, stood at the foot of this silver artificial mountain range, gazing at the enormous structure before them with complex expressions.
"We have lost eighty percent of our inherited memories... The decay of books and the erosion of Chaos on our bloodline foundations mean that no Ultimate-rank inheritance exists in our settlements anymore."
The leading human, whose clothing had a hint of modern style, spoke in a hoarse voice: "I am probably the last Ultimate-rank human in this world... and I have already forgotten how I broke through back then."
"Books decay, memories become chaotic. Even if we carved stone tablets from an entire mountain, we couldn't record one percent of our inheritance. We use the Mother Tree to store knowledge, barely maintaining our collective existence—but this is just drinking poison to quench thirst... If one day the Mother Tree is also eroded, then we elves will be doomed beyond redemption."
On the other side, a leading elf who looked somewhat familiar to Priest—similar to Su Er and the antlered elf—nodded slightly and replied heavily: "But our survival or extinction is unimportant. The Seeds of Life and the 'Rebirth Plan' stored in the Aklafa Hub are things that cannot afford even the slightest mistake!"
"We cannot observe Mycroft... our homeland may have already been destroyed. We might be the last survivors of the Radiant Civilization in this star river. Precisely because of this."
At this point, all the surviving humans raised their heads together, staring at the enormous Aklafa Hub before them. The leading Ultimate-rank commander said in a deep voice: "We absolutely cannot continue to rely on the Aklafa and other Space-Time Hubs for shelter."
The elves remained silent, while the humans continued muttering to themselves.
"If not for the Hub's Order Force field slowing Chaos invasion, we might have already been completely eroded by the Chaos power remaining in this land. But this consumes too much of the Hub's energy... 'That Existence's' transformation process takes thousands of years. If the Hub's suppression module shuts down midway due to lack of energy, then 'That Existence' could reverse and revive at any moment."
"If it revives, then everything is over. The sacrifices of the nine leaders, the reason we have persisted until now—all of it will become a joke. The future of all Mycroft races will sink into darkness... But if the Rebirth Plan succeeds, 'That Existence' will transform into a perfect, flawless world like paradise... Then, the lifeblood backups stored in the Hub will be endlessly replicated and deployed into that world. They will be our successors. The Hub will shelter them, teach them, let them inherit everything from us, and become a new 'Radiant Civilization'!"
"...So then."
The elf asked in a low voice.
"We should quickly self-destruct, then shut down the Hub's active defense system, leaving only the suppression module, detection system, and information collection module operational."
The human said frankly: "Don't look at me like that. I haven't been eroded by Decay. This is the most rational thought. Our existence now is just wasting the Hub's precious energy. We are no longer a civilization—we are just a group of wretches isolated at the end of the World Star River by temporal anomalies. Our deaths are unimportant. What matters most is the 'Future'!"
"If we die, not to mention the future, even the present ceases to exist."
The elf retorted, but after a moment of silence, he shook his head helplessly: "...Fine, I admit you're right. But I don't think self-destruction is the only option."
Priest tried his best to memorize the entire discussion, but he couldn't. Six thousand years of historical torrent had only passed one-third. Even with his brain bleeding, he couldn't record any more.
Time flowed rapidly again.
And from then on, there were no more detailed records of events—only fleeting fragments like passing shadows.
Priest saw that, accompanied by powerful magical force shaking heaven and earth, the continental rock layers rose amidst thunderous roars, sealing and covering one silver giant structure after another. He saw brilliant, bright lights disappear one by one. But this was not self-destruction—it was sacrifice for a more distant future.
Time reversed like a dream. Elves who had degenerated to covering themselves only with grass leaves began to appear wearing armor and even magical equipment. Not only that, ruins reversed like rewinding video, transforming back into solid towns and houses.
Priest saw that several thousand years ago, in this world now peaceful and comfortable to the point of disgust, there were still infinite dangers. Town after town of humans, elves, and even dwarves resisted Chaos invasions falling from the sky. They fought in primeval forests, chased across desolate grasslands. At that time, the various races who had not yet lost too much inheritance battled monsters from the sky, underground, and on the surface, purifying them into harmless ash.
Everything was bizarre. As history regressed, the era became more ancient, yet the equipment and civilization of humans, elves, and other races became more advanced. The monsters appearing from sky and ground also grew more powerful—mountain-sized core-eating worms that could burrow deep into the earth, Chaos star-butterflies that could travel through atmospheric void and stir up typhoons with their wings. One terrifying existence after another appeared like a revolving lantern, making Priest gasp.
And all these monsters died under the suppression of void warships and various Hubs.
Until the very end of history—six thousand seven hundred years ago.
Time seemed to freeze at this moment.
For a moment, Priest felt he saw nothing.
All around was pitch black. No sun, no stars, no light source. Chaotic darkness rolled in the void, like an eternal, undispersable fog... In that instant, Priest's mind went completely blank. He couldn't remember anything, as if he had never remembered anything, as if he had always been this ignorant.
And in that moment, Priest suddenly felt very familiar.
This feeling of forgetting seemed very similar to what he had experienced in recent days—dreaming as if he remembered something, but then forgetting it all.
"Something... is eroding my memory..." He barely managed to gather a little consciousness in the dark fog, but before Priest could think about what he had forgotten, his eyes suddenly became vacant: "Strange... who am I?"
And just as Priest seemed about to be completely devoured by the fog in the Aklafa Hub's historical data...
In the darkness, a silver star suddenly lit up.
And the next instant, the silver star swelled, transforming into a scorching beam of light that pierced heaven and earth, tearing through the darkness like a sword, sweeping away the fog.
At that moment, Priest's thoughts immediately returned to normal. His scattered, vacant eyes suddenly refocused, clearly recalling his memories. But before the young warrior could feel fear toward the strange black fog from before, he suddenly discovered that he was now in the void, and behind him was a silver mixed with black, hazy, indescribable, nameless Chaos star.
Silver and black light flickered simultaneously. The holy yet terrifying star continuously released twisted, strange fog. One could see it suddenly burst forth with thousands of energy arcs that twisted space-time like tentacles, lashing at the void. Each arc-tentacle was comparable to a mountain range, capable of sinking continents.
But nine scorching silver beams interwove into a giant net, completely suppressing the star. The terrifying arc-tentacles were easily torn and severed, dissipating into silver light particles.
Priest watched this scene in shock. As a young Gold-rank, he had never witnessed such a spectacle. Even back in World One, the battle between the Black Mist and Teacher didn't seem as shocking as this strange war.
Swallowing his saliva, Priest turned his head to look at the source of the beams—and stood frozen on the spot.
What he saw were nine enormous void warships, entirely constructed from silver metal.
Actually, this scene alone wouldn't have surprised Priest. Unlike the Chaos star he had never seen before, he had already witnessed civilization creations or powerful beings far more shocking than these void warships... What truly made Priest freeze on the spot was the bow design of one of the nine ships.
It had three protruding shapes... exactly the same design as the Aklafa Hub.
"We've finally caught you."
From the void came a familiar yet unfamiliar mental voice. Her tone was cold and stern, like a queen on high. Priest could easily tell that this was the prototype of the Aklafa Hub's mental voice.
And this voice, in a tone almost grinding its teeth, said word by word: "Decay Evil God!"
...
In reality.
Around Priest's brain, a large mass of black gas suddenly emerged. Actually, using "gas" to describe it was somewhat imprecise. Compared to simple fog, it was more like a strange power that twisted light, causing the spectrum to weaken and dim.
As soon as this power appeared, it seemed to want to spread outward from Priest's brain as the center... But from the very beginning, its movements fell into an awkward situation.
Because all around it was pure Steel Force from Joshua.
Seeming somewhat at a loss by the sudden appearance of this black gas, the Restorative Pillar flickered for a moment, but soon began operating at full capacity, performing the most thorough "treatment."
Crack! Sizzle! Zzzz!!!
With a series of strange sounds, the twisted strange power immediately dissipated into nothing. Moreover, this fierce, violent, devouring-desire-filled, extremely difficult to control and dangerously powerful Steel Force even began to reverse-erode along the source of the strange power!
Boom!
The earth shook.
The five people still waiting around the Aklafa Hub for Priest to come out suddenly felt the ground shake violently.
Rocks cracked, the forest undulated. Originally flat soil suddenly bulged into countless hills. The already precarious rock layer covering the outside of the Aklafa Hub completely fell off.
"Wha, what's going on?!"
The knight who had been preparing to climb a tree to survey the surroundings was thrown directly from the treetop by the tremor. He lay on the ground, bewildered: "Why is there suddenly an earthquake here? Could the Captain have caused some big trouble inside the Hub?"
The others didn't speak, but seemed somewhat in agreement.
But this time, they were indeed wronging Priest. If they were high in the sky, they would see that it wasn't just the Aklafa Hub that suddenly shook—the entire world's surface had begun an undulating, ten-thousand-mile super-tremor. In areas without the Mother Tree of Life or Hub suppression, the earth's surface kept bulging and retracting... as if something deep underground was writhing.
At the same time, an invisible ripple—a nameless information torrent that only Ultimate-rank, or even Legendary-rank experts could perceive—began to spread outward in a painful, angry, gradually awakening momentum, beyond this sealed world, toward the other side of the entire World Star River.
On one side of the World Star River.
The wandering Star Shepherd world fleet suddenly stopped moving.
Countless void behemoths that had been feeding on matter from various worlds halted their instinctive swallowing, frozen in place, not moving at all.
Some of these worlds were lifeless dead worlds, some were primitive worlds with primitive life but no civilization, and one or two were life worlds with intelligent beings that had not yet developed civilization... Void behemoths were not picky, nor did they choose. They simply pried open worlds at will, devouring their mass... At the same time, they released their offspring into the worlds, leaving their seeds.
Like a beetle opening a small hole in an egg, sucking out the egg white, then laying its own eggs in the not-yet-finished eggshell.
As for whether there was life in the devoured worlds, whether those lives would be destroyed by their actions, or whether they would be completely consumed by juvenile void behemoths... that was not their concern.
They didn't care.
The Eight-Legged Fungus didn't care either.
In the Star Shepherd royal court, the hastily arrived King of the Void knelt again respectfully before the twisted mental void. He didn't need to ask—the fact that all void behemoths had stopped moving was too significant. The merciful Great Khan would actively explain everything to them, the shepherds.
Sure enough, from the mental void came a clearly audible voice.
"Kumosinda..."
This time, the Great Khan's voice was no longer as sluggish, slow, and dreamlike as before. His voice became serious and solemn: "I have sensed the fluctuations of a World Devourer."
As the king who shepherded the fungal colonies and behemoths on behalf of the Great Khan, Kumosinda had witnessed countless terrifying void disasters. He had seen worlds collide, seen void storms sweep across half a World Star River. He thought he had long forgotten what bewilderment meant. But the moment he heard the term "World Devourer," the King of the Void's thoughts still went blank for an instant.
"There's... a World Devourer here too?!"
Kumosinda wanted to say more, but the Great Khan's voice interrupted his muttering: "Of course. The Multiverse has no pure land, and this is the Lost Star River."
"This place was originally the 'Great Battlefield' where ancient ancestral civilizations fought countless World Devourers... It drifts outside the normal Multiverse, isolated by countless devoured material vacuum zones. Only distorted starlight can prove its existence."
The Great Khan's voice carried heavy echoes, as if it were simultaneously speaking hundreds or thousands of completely different sentences. Countless echoes intertwined, forming a mental impact that made even Kumosinda's face show pain. After the brief echoes, the Great Khan's slightly cold voice could be heard.
"Turn back, Kumosinda. Pass down my order—the fleet turns back. We go to where the World Devourer's fluctuations came from."
Amid the King of the Void's shocked trembling, the Great Khan spoke thus: "It is a weakened World Devourer, a remnant that has just escaped from the seal of ancestral civilization. We must destroy it. If even this one cannot be destroyed..."
At this point, Kumosinda felt as if a cold existence was staring at his fungal cap: "Then even if the Star Shepherds flee to the end of the Multiverse, barely surviving until the end of all things, there will be no possibility of returning to our homeland."
...
"I sense Chaos fluctuations."
Joshua, who had just teleported to the edge of the World Star River, said this.
"I sense them too."
Beside him, Galannod and the somewhat listless Nostradamus both nodded, because obvious Chaos fluctuations were coming from not far away.
Of course, this "not far" was relative to Legendary experts. The distance between worlds would take ordinary void warships years or decades to traverse. Even Mycroft's high-speed void warships would take seven or eight days to travel between very close worlds, and if the distance was slightly greater, it would take years to calculate travel time.
But on the silver planet cocoon, Joshua shook his head: "I'm not talking about this fluctuation. It's from my Steel Force... a fluctuation from the Restorative Pillar."
That said, even Joshua couldn't immediately figure out whether the Chaos fluctuation he and the Restorative Pillar sensed was the first one.
"Joshua, this level of Chaos fluctuation is several times stronger than the void mother beast we killed before... and far more than that!"
Having exhausted all his strength to cooperate with the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground to teleport Joshua's world-sized original body here, Nostradamus—even as a Legendary expert—looked nearly exhausted. But even so, he still forced himself to stay alert and warn the warrior: "Either it's multiple Legendary-rank Evil God Minions, or... it's a true Evil God!"
But could an Evil God be this weak? Nostradamus himself was somewhat puzzled, because although the distant Chaos fluctuation was powerful, it was still slightly inferior to the Black Mist Mother Entity. In short, it wasn't as powerful as everyone had imagined.
Beside him, the Nature Mentor frowned. She sensed the distant fluctuation, then spoke in a deep voice: "It's getting stronger... Don't waste time. It's recovering rapidly at a perceptible speed!"
"Fortunately, I brought my original body this time... Interesting. This feeling is quite unfamiliar."
Frowning slightly, then relaxing, Joshua—caught in an unexpected incident for the first time rather than causing one himself—didn't say much. The other two Legendary experts were preparing to send urgent messages to summon other Legendaries to deal with this sudden Chaos fluctuation.
But soon, Nostradamus and the Nature Mentor discovered that the message couldn't be sent out at all.
"Very strange fluctuation... This Chaos fluctuation can decay energy waves, even reducing the energy transition level of elemental force. Our communications were decomposed into meaningless low-energy waves the moment they were transmitted."
Nostradamus's eyes flickered with deep blue light as he analyzed microscopic space-time phenomena, somewhat troubled: "I could set up a stable space-time bridge to send the information back directly... but it would take some time. I haven't recovered yet..."
"Then Galannod and I will go check the situation first."
Joshua also sensed the unusual nature of this Chaos fluctuation. This kind of distinctive, specially anomalous Chaos fluctuation was something he had encountered for the first time.
So this was... the special characteristic of an Evil God? Such phenomena before even appearing.
For some reason, Joshua felt he had forgotten something. Sensing something wrong, the warrior who was about to steer the silver planet cocoon toward the source of the Chaos fluctuation frowned thoughtfully, then nodded as if understanding something.
"I see."
"The battle has already begun."
...Inside the Unknown World, Aklafa Hub...
"Ah!!!! It hurts! It hurts!!!"
Awakening from the endless information impact, the first thing Priest felt was infinite pain.
From nerve endings to the soul, every component—the endless information infusion had impacted his brain and soul into neural system chaos, his soul on the verge of collapse. Even though the Restorative Pillar was operating normally, repairing Priest—who felt he was about to explode—back to intact condition, the extreme pain remained unchanged.
One could even say that being continuously repaired by the Restorative Pillar, continuously waking up, unable to faint, enduring one hundred percent of the pain—Priest couldn't even escape.
But thanks to this, Priest didn't forget those things he absolutely couldn't forget.
"I absolutely... have to tell them, tell Teacher, tell Mycroft Headquarters..."
Forcing himself to stay rational, Priest decisively raised his left index finger and directly inserted it into his left ear. His thick Battle Qi was released precisely, accurately destroying the pain-perceiving area between the left and right brain, temporarily shielding the physical pain that made his hands and feet tremble and prevented normal walking. Besides that, Priest swept his entire body with his own Battle Qi, completely necrotizing the Divine Mechanism nerve endings, controlling all actions purely with Battle Qi.
Anyway, with the Restorative Pillar, brain and nerve things—if they broke, they could be fixed. Priest thought extremely carelessly, and then, he strode forward, walking toward the door of the Aklafa central control room.
"This place isn't a world at all... The moon in the sky isn't a moon either..."
"This is a sealed land, the greatest sealed land, the experimental field of the Sages and the Gods, the most terrifying prison in this world!"
Standing on the energy field of the automatic navigation system, Priest knelt on one knee, staring at the ground. His gaze—whether fearful or forcibly calm—seemed able to penetrate metal, to see deep into the earth, beneath the crust.
"Beneath our feet... is imprisoned a Chaos evil spirit!"