Chapter 16: A Gloomy Future
Mycroft Continent · Far South · Vicinity of Sea Dragon City.
Gray clouds poured rain onto the land, turning the world between heaven and earth into a hazy blur. Thunder could be heard roaring within the layered cumulonimbus clouds.
Ocean Sage Faina stood in the backyard of her own courtyard. She raised her head, looking at the sky. Her expression, obscured by the psionic veil, was unreadable. Yet this small gesture alone seemed to press the pause button on the surroundings of Sea Dragon City, which was usually filled with lightning and thunder during the rainy season. The torrential rain abruptly stopped, the storm ceased, and the world, previously filled with the clamor of rain and thunder, instantly became utterly silent.
"Milady, are you in a bad mood?"
A middle-aged maid standing behind Faina stepped forward, offering this legendary expert a precious high-grade magical potion. This magical potion, known as 'Heart of the Rock,' was originally a secret art of the Earth Mother Goddess Temple, requiring various precious magical materials as extraction sources. It had the effect of strengthening the mind and providing a certain degree of magical resistance. However, not long ago, all major powers and transcendent experts had opened up a large number of previously top-secret scriptures and formulas to the public, and the Heart of the Rock was among them.
Now, although the Heart of the Rock was still rare, it was much more common than at the very beginning, barely qualifying as a luxury item. Thanks to this, within the scope of Sea Dragon City alone, quite a few talented psychics had been discovered. After all, families with a bit of spare money, middle-class households, could grit their teeth and buy a bottle to test their children's luck, hoping they might one day become a disciple of the local legendary expert.
As a member of the Earth Mother Goddess Temple, a descendant of the God's bloodline, and also the most powerful among them, Faina had been raised since childhood by the grand elder of her lineage, drinking this potion. So, even though this magical potion had no effect on her now, smelling this familiar scent allowed Faina to recall the warm and reassuring childhood of the past, and also helped her calm down from her confusion.
"Yes." Faina replied somewhat languidly. "It's not exactly a bad mood, it's just..."
"Just a bit unsure of what to do, right?"
The maid smiled as she draped a fire-silk gauze robe over Faina. Although, as a legendary expert, Faina had no need for such cold-weather clothing, it was a habit of this woman who had accompanied her for decades—more a close friend than a maid. Faina allowed the other to arrange her clothes, feeling a warmth in her heart.
After a moment of silence, Faina spoke somewhat abruptly: "Raya."
"Tell me, if you suddenly learned a very, very terrible piece of news, so terrible that it was almost impossible to solve, completely at a loss, and you had no idea how to face it... what should you do?"
As she said this, although Faina's expression was still hidden by the psionic veil, anyone could hear that this powerful psychic, who had mastered the conversion of matter and spirit, capable of merging herself with heaven and earth, was now deeply lost in confusion and doubt. "Raya, tell me, if there is simply no road ahead, even if I painstakingly carve out a path on a rugged road full of disasters, the future of that path is inevitably destined for an end... what should I do?"
The maid, called Raya, upon hearing Faina's words—so confused, more of a self-doubt than a question—her expression became noticeably serious.
She was the same age as Faina, and they had grown up together. Faina had become a legendary expert, her face ageless, while Raya, even with the help of magical potions, now had a few streaks of white in her hair. From any angle, Raya was merely an ordinary Silver-rank transcendent, one forcibly elevated by resources, clearly not in the same world as the legendary Faina.
But precisely because she was such an ordinary person, precisely because she lived day and night with a legend, Raya knew that even legendary experts could feel excitement, joy, confusion, and sadness. Legendary experts were super lifeforms, but they were still life, still possessing emotions. They, too, could occasionally feel overwhelmed and needed others' opinions and comfort.
"Milady."
So, after thinking for a moment, Raya spoke softly: "Although I don't know what you're troubled by, or how terrible that news is, is this thing that worries even you a disaster that will happen immediately?"
"No." Faina shook her head. She was still looking at the sky, the surging gloomy colors mirroring the legendary expert's mood. She replied in a low voice: "Even if it comes, it will be a very, very long time from now... Anyway, in a few decades, we have a major hurdle to cross. If we can't even cross that, then we have no future."
"But, Raya."
Saying this, Faina turned around. She took her friend's arm—an ordinary person—and slowly strolled through the courtyard. As she walked, she said helplessly: "I know you'll definitely say, 'Since it's such a distant thing, what's the point of worrying now?' I also know you'll secretly laugh at me, saying, 'I'll be dead by then, no matter how great the disaster, it has nothing to do with an ordinary person like me,' using your own lifespan to distract me, using this kind of worry to make me temporarily forget the greater worry."
"But this disaster is different from the past, different from the rampage of the fishmen, the great tsunami, the calamity of the mad dragons, the invasion of otherworldly intruders... What I'm worried about isn't the 'disaster' itself, but the feeling of decadence that has arisen in my heart—that 'resistance is meaningless.'"
Saying this, Faina sighed deeply. In her mind, the vast amount of file data sent to her by a certain warrior surfaced again, along with his conjectures about the current situation and a large amount of analysis supporting those conjectures.
Joshua van Radcliffe.
Why can you always paint such a terrifying and despairing picture of the future?
Why can you always keenly perceive the shadows that lie in the darkness, deeper than the darkness itself?
Sometimes, even as a legendary expert, even with a resilient spirit that would never yield to any disaster, one still feels powerless when faced with true despair.
Faina knew that she could face any powerful enemy without fear, even any evil god, because she knew that after a valiant struggle, even if she died, the darkness would eventually pass, and light would surely come. Even if humanity was destined to fail, at least they had fought, offering their final efforts for the arrival of light.
But this time... what Joshua told them was the extremely dark reality that 'perhaps light simply does not exist.'
"Even if we defeat the evil god that will arrive in a few decades, what then... The future is destined to be dark, and there isn't even a solution. Even if we imitate the Sages and march towards the center of the multiverse, given our strength, we will inevitably fall into that endless trap of time..."
And even if we successfully reach the center of the multiverse, what then?
Why did the World Star River stop? Why did the First Flame 'contract' and 'retreat'? Why has this multiverse not given birth to any new World Star Rivers? Does the mastermind behind the scenes... exist or not? If it does, what is it, what is its purpose, and how can it be defeated?
Too many whys. Even if humanity exhausts all its strength, it can't solve even one. There's simply no starting point. It's truly frustrating.
"It would have been better not to know... That way, even if I were kept in the dark, I could at least muster the courage of ignorance..."
Faina murmured to herself, letting out a self-deprecating laugh.
And as Faina laughed at herself.
All the legendary experts in the Mycroft World, without exception, fell into a similar silence.
What Joshua had revealed to them was a future too gloomy. Compared to this, even absolute despair could be considered merciful, for it at least concealed the face of the end. Even in death, one could die with faith, without regret or pain.
Through the star charts accessible to anyone via the Metal Dragon God and the Unified Grand Database, Joshua ruthlessly revealed to everyone the terrifying prospect of the future void: the World Star River had stopped rotating, the Mycroft World had also fallen into stagnation not long ago, the First Flame was contracting, no new World Star Rivers were being born. Even the Void Behemoths and Ancient Dragons were merely repair systems bred by the Star River for its own self-preservation.
But even so, the Star River would eventually face its own extinction, just like the World Star River that was the home world of the Astral Dragon Clan. After the passage of eons, it would become the endless dark wreckage between the Mycroft World and other World Star Rivers.
In such despair, even the arrival of the evil gods seemed acceptable. After all, evil gods were, in the final analysis, enemies with physical forms. Whether one could defeat them or not, at least one could fight back.
And now, what all the legendary experts faced was the void.
No hope, no future. Everything was meaningless gray and white. No matter how fiercely a flame burned, it would eventually turn to ashes, sinking into eternal slumber, or awakening in desperate resentment to become a part of the darkness.
At the top of the Sky-Piercing White Tower, Barbarossa stood alone, looking around at the clouds and the high sky, the night where only stars and moonlight remained. The legendary mage silently gazed up at the stars. He didn't know which of those stars had long since gone out, and whether the silver light he now saw was its brilliant radiance from not long ago, or its light emitted hundreds of millions of years ago.
In the deep sea, the Fishman High Priest was alone, carving inscriptions on the rock wall of the seabed. This had been Godar's only hobby for a hundred years. He was used to inscribing summaries of all the major events he had experienced on stone tablets. But today, the High Priest hesitated to begin. He tried to start several times, but each time, his raised hand was lowered with a sigh.
Deep underground, after thirty-two years, having created the 'Divine Hammer Gandalin,' the Dwarf Master Smith personally took action for the first time. He lifted his hammer, entered his long-sealed forge, and began to repeatedly strike a red-hot metal block. Whenever he felt his heart wavering, Flo Ironfinger would engage in such work. But from the sounds coming from the forge, it was clear that this time, the master smith's heart was hard to calm.
In the sky, in the laboratories, whether traveling through the void or debugging within the magic net, whether at the Holy Mountain Fortress or in the central monitoring hub in the sky, all legends, all deities, all the experts of the Mycroft World, were plunged into deep contemplation because of a message sent by one man.
Of course, the legendary experts could convince themselves. They could say that the inevitably doomed future was at least a few hundred million years away. They were currently worried about the evil god invasion in a few decades; what was the point of worrying about this?
They could certainly say, take it one step at a time, don't scare yourself, don't worry about unnecessary things.
They could completely act like ostriches, pretending this didn't exist. After all, there was currently no evidence to prove that some powerful entity had destroyed those World Star Rivers. The same went for the mastermind. Perhaps those World Star Rivers were all naturally destroyed, and this was the natural law of the multiverse? If so, when the World Star River was destroyed, it was uncertain whether humanity would even exist.
Yes, they could do that.
But no one would.
Israel temporarily cut off the main server of the Heaven Net monitoring system. He stood up from his throne, then looked down upon his empire from the monitoring throne located tens of thousands of meters in the air.
The Nature Mentor and the Fairy Empress stood hand in hand on the branches of the Eternal Mother Tree of Life, carefully caressing each of its leaves, clearing the energy circuits for this ancient life that had witnessed the development of the Starfall Elf civilization.
Eagle rarely sat in the prayer room. The Six Gods were also thinking at this moment, but the Pope had no intention of communicating with his deities anyway. He just stared intently at the portraits of past popes hanging around the prayer room.
No one would 'escape.'
Because they were the leaders of civilization.
Ordinary people could ignore it, could disregard it, could convince themselves that danger might not come. Even if darkness was inevitable, they could at least enjoy a complete life. It simply couldn't affect them.
But as legendary experts, as the beings closest to immortality in this world, as the leaders of an empire, a race, a religion, as representatives of the Mycroft transcendent civilization, they could not deceive themselves like this. They had to think about how to deal with these problems, how to solve the inevitable end of the future. They knew very well that if Joshua's conjecture was correct, and behind all these anomalies there was one, or a group of, masterminds, then the Mycroft World, which had also fallen into stagnation, was in its most dangerous moment in thousands of years.
They had already entered the mastermind's game board, just like those other destroyed Star Rivers. Whether they lived or died depended on the decisions of other entities, not on their own efforts.
That was precisely why they felt powerless, desperate, deeply lost, and began to truly contemplate.
At this moment, Joshua, located in the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground, was unaware of the reactions of the various legendary experts.
He was just floating beside the Silver Sky Radiance, chatting idly with the Dominant Will of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground.
The warrior certainly knew how demoralizing the information he had discovered was. He certainly knew that some people, even some civilizations, would be directly knocked down by such information. In his battles against the Death Evil God, he had seen far too many similar situations.
Civilizations driven mad by an unstoppable giant meteor, self-destructing through social unrest before the apocalyptic impact arrived.
Civilizations facing the Chaos Minions, simply giving up resistance, the entire clan becoming food for Chaos.
Civilizations facing the fact that their sun would go out in a few hundred years, making no effort or progress, simply and naturally meeting their end in peace.
There were far, far too many civilizations that had fallen in the darkness, swallowed by despair and collapsing. They were like burned-out torches, discarded, becoming dead memories.
Was the Mycroft Civilization, and the experts within it, also one of them?