Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 1104: Chapter 1103: Tacit Understanding

The resurgence of human nature often stems from the decline of divinity.

In the vast, endless Shadow Courtyard, two Gods of Yore simultaneously fell into silence and contemplation. Only the Magic Web Terminal beside them was still projecting lights and sounds from the mortal world. After this quiet lasted for a long time, the Goddess of Magic suddenly broke the silence: ”It seems it was right to find you to pass the time... If it were just me, it would probably take a long time to notice the changes within myself.”

Amoen’s gaze quietly fell on the Goddess of Magic: ”So this is the reason you’ve been coming to bother me?”

”No, the main reason is that you have internet here.”

”...Alright, at least honesty is a good trait,” Amoen seemed like he wanted to sigh but eventually returned to the topic, ”So, tell me about your ’human nature’—do you have any clues why your human aspects are improving so quickly?”

”How would I have any clues?” The Goddess of Magic shook her head, the confusion in her tone was genuine, ”After all, everything I’ve done so far is an adventure, an experiment. There were no prior examples to reference, nor much concrete data during the process. I only estimated the changes in my divinity and humanity by feel. Perhaps this is normal now? In any case... the resurgence of humanity, the decline of divinity, it’s ultimately a good thing.”

”Divinity signifies madness; the more we gravitate towards it, the further we are from reasoning. But on the other hand, divinity also signifies our connection with the mortal trends of thought; mortals won’t suddenly collectively forget things, so this connection can’t disappear out of thin air...” Amoen’s gaze was as clear as a crystal, his voice gently echoed in the courtyard, ”Based on our understanding, there hasn’t been a massive reduction in the mortal world’s population recently, nor is it possible for a worldwide thought shift to happen in just a few months. Yet now, the pace at which your divinity is declining is far surpassing the speed at which mortals forget about you... This is highly unusual. I think it’s best not to casually pass it off with ’it’s all good’.”

”...Okay, I think it’s unlikely that mortals have forgotten about me in just a few months,” the Goddess of Magic paused for a moment, had to gather her carefree demeanor and began to seriously consider Amoen’s question, ”But speaking of my ’human nature’... Old Deer, you seem to have undergone some changes yourself recently, haven’t you noticed?”

”I don’t like the nickname you gave me,” Amoen immediately said. His gaze slightly contracted, a sign that he had fallen into thought, ”You say I’ve changed recently too?”

”Yes, and the change is significant,” the Goddess of Magic said directly, ”The biggest change is that you talk a lot more now, and more ’initiative’ is appearing in your personality—I still remember how lazy and sluggish you were when I first met you. Now, although you remain sluggish, you’re not lazy at all anymore.”

Amoen fell into deep thought, and slowly said: ”So... the divine parts of both of us are in decline, thus leading us to present a more ’human’ state. This change has occurred recently... and the mortal world hasn’t experienced a corresponding significant change recently—so what do you think is the most likely explanation?”

”Something is interfering with our connection to the ’trends of thought’,” the Goddess of Magic’s mind worked quickly as she immediately voiced her thoughts, ”or maybe something is filtering the influence of the trends of thought on us!”

”What could that be?” Amoen’s voice sounded cautious, even with a hint of nervousness. Though once the supreme deity worshipped by elves, now trapped here, he had little control over the direction of anything, making him particularly sensitive to unknown changes, ”Who would interfere with our connection to the trends of mortal thought, for what purpose? And who would have the ability to do so?”

”I don’t know, I’m just as uninformed as you are...” The Goddess of Magic shook her head, but in the next instant, her gaze suddenly landed on the patch of broken earth in front of Amoen—this fragmented ground connected the courtyard of the defied Court and the gates of the distant defied Fortress. It used to be open and barren, but now it held a pile of ”stuff” from the mortal world. There were Magic Web matrices emitting a faint glow, floating crystal devices, and many other new things that even the Goddess of Magic couldn’t identify, seemingly invented by human experts after she left the material world. These various types of magic machineries were distributed around Amoen, operating quietly and in an orderly manner, despite being unsupervised.

To a deity of Amoen’s immense size, they were like many shining little stones scattered around him—unremarkable, yet somewhat pretty and cute.

The Goddess of Magic showed a contemplative expression: ”When they were setting up these things to help you, did they inform you about the name and function of each machine?”

Amoen sighed: ”I told you already, the mortal who came to install the equipment was called Kamel. He came and went quickly, didn’t explain much to me. Why, is there a problem with these machines?”

”Although I strongly suspect you either didn’t remember or didn’t understand the mortal’s explanation, I have no evidence,” the Goddess of Magic said, her eyes filled with arcane magic slightly narrowed, ”I don’t see a problem, but I have seen how mortals’ ’Magic Web Communication’ systems function. I didn’t pay attention to the machines around you before, but now that I think about it... If it were merely to maintain communication between the defied Court and the material world, there’s no need for so many machines, especially these floating crystals...”

”What are those floating crystals for?” Amoen couldn’t help but ask curiously.

”In most cases, they are used to disperse Magic Web signals or stabilize a magic-pervasive environment—the defied Court is vast, but actually, covering such a large courtyard would only require one crystal, or two or three devices if backups are considered, but you have a dozen or so crystals gathered here, along with these matrices and that oversized... thing I can’t decipher its use.”

The Goddess of Magic said, finally standing up, her figure rising like a tall tower, she walked among those varying devices, her gaze sweeping across the area around Amoen the Giant Stag, until she seemed to have an epiphany: ”... Only a small part of these things is probably truly for maintaining the communication function of your Magic Web Terminal, the rest... creates some kind of ’environment’ around you.”

Amoen gradually comprehended this, his eyes becoming clear and bright: ”So, it’s an experiment—an experiment conducted under the guise of helping to set up Magic Web communication.”

The Goddess of Magic turned her head, looking at the once God of Nature with a slightly playful smile: ”What? Feel like they deceived you? Unsatisfied with them hiding their true motives?”

”No, they’re helping me.” After several seconds of silence, Amoen softly broke the silence, his voice as gentle and pleasant as ever, ”I’ve been lying here for three thousand years, but my ability to think hasn’t degraded.”

”They’re helping us,” the Goddess of Magic watched Amoen for a while, then slowly returned to her previous spot to sit back down, ”Though I don’t know exactly what they’ve done, they clearly are trying to sever the lingering chains on us... it turns out, the effort to break free from the chains isn’t just coming from us so-called ’gods’.”

This time, Amoen did not rebut the use of the term ”us” by the other; he merely contemplated silently and, after a long time, said: ”So, they are still on our side...”

”That requires a bit of tacit understanding,” the Goddess of Magic added.

Amoen said nothing, he closed his eyes, pondering over something unknown, until after an indefinite period, his voice sounded again in the chaotic and somber world: ”Don’t wander off, the power of these devices might only cover this little courtyard of mine.”

No response came from beside him, prompting Amoen to open his eyes. Looking over, he saw that the lady, as towering as a clock tower, had at some point leaned against a huge wreck of a spaceship engine, her head lowered as if she had fallen into a dream—in recent days, she’s been consciously keeping her distance from these wrecks, as the legacy from the Voyagers always agitated her divine aspect. But now she leaned against it, soundly asleep without any guard.

Amoen quietly watched in that direction, ultimately choosing not to awaken her—to a deity, having a good sleep isn’t easy.

”Good night.”

...

In the experimental hall of the Imperial Computing Center, Node Scholar Yuri gently rubbed his forehead, which was slightly sore from prolonged concentration. His gaze swept over the data projected in mid-air from a monitoring device beside him, then he withdrew his gaze and continued to observe the ”tide” behind the Mind Nexus.

The essence of this ”tide” is actually the ”Non-directional Thought Trend” from the deepest layer of the neural network. It is the data ripple generated by the unconscious dreams of tens of thousands of human minds. These originate from human minds, but are devoid of any significance, constantly refreshing and reorganizing, a vast and intricate byproduct of the neural network.

For the past few centuries, the Eternal Sleepers regarded it as an extremely dangerous ”mental quagmire” because it can devour any ordinary mind that falls into it—within that chaotic, unordered swamp of thoughts, the most fragmented, illogical, and incomprehensible consciousness fragments of humans surge like chaotic turbulence in the ocean. Neither reason nor madness holds meaning in the face of this absolute emptiness and chaos. Any mortal mind that mistakenly enters it would instantly collapse, and yet no one ever thought that this ”quagmire” which could exhaust and confuse any mind could also be useful.

Anti-Divine Barrier.

A beautiful lady with her hair tied up, wearing a white researcher’s uniform, approached Yuri. Her voice was as melodious and gentle as a song: ”It seems that the barrier generators we set up in the Courtyard area are effective. After deploying the Non-directional Thought Trend as a barrier around the target, the divine pollution it leaked was quickly weakened to near-safe levels.”

”The extreme of human nature is godhood, the extreme of godhood is madness, but the premise of this chain is that the ’thought trend’ must be directed towards gods—if even the thought trend is non-directional, then the strongest chain will break as if it lost a key link... Such a simple truth, yet we only realized it today.”

”There are many simple truths in the world, but with bad luck, we might not realize them until the end of the world,” the melodious-voiced lady smiled, then shifted the topic, ”Unfortunately, we still can’t directly confirm the state of the target itself, and don’t know how the target feels during this process...”

”Perhaps we can only rely on tacit understanding, Lady Wendy,” Yuri said. ”But the good news is that we are making rapid progress, and it might not be long before we can communicate directly with ’that side’, and everyone won’t have to coordinate based on intuition anymore.”

Wendy nodded, her gaze then falling on Yuri’s face—a hint of fatigue hidden deep in his features, and his eyes seemed even darker than yesterday, which worried her a little: ”Shouldn’t you take a break? It seems you haven’t rested at all recently while testing these things.”

Yuri waved his hand, casually took a small glass bottle from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and drank the alchemical potion inside in one go, instantly becoming revitalized—except for the unchanged dark circles: ”No worries, compared to the working load when researching neural simulation pulses back at the Orlandeau headquarters, this is nothing.”

Wendy looked at the alchemical potion bottle Yuri carelessly threw into the nearby trash bin, sighing helplessly, she also took out an identical potion from her bosom...

Since when did the former Eternal Sleepers lose their sleep one by one?

...

Beneath thirty-two solemn ancient stone pillars, the meeting hall was in the final silence before the vote.

This was the last vote of the entire agenda, yet it was more important than any previous round of voting for the representatives present, and the decision was even more difficult.

As Gawain said—the establishment of a theocracy Authority Council is not just about the manpower and resources costs for the kingdoms. It implies many social changes, and for some countries, it means their social order will be tested. Not all rulers have the courage to face such a challenge.

But this matter also holds another layer of attraction for many representatives—for those who want to weaken the church’s authority and for those leaders who wish to strengthen centralization, part of the concept of a theocracy Authority Council aligns with their wishes.

Yet the parts that involve spreading education and enhancing citizen rights leave some people hesitant.

The balance of individual interests makes the decision difficult.

Gawain looked calmly at the quiet conference hall, and finally, in the silence, the voice of Emperor Rosetta Augustus broke the silence first: ”Typhon joins.”

Not far away, beneath the giant stone pillars, the surface of the black flag with red patterns shimmered with magical radiance, the Typhon seat becoming bright in the glow.

”The Silver Empire joins.” Queen Belsetia’s voice then followed, and the elves’ banner lit up next.

”Talronde joins.” ”Sacred Dragon Kingdom joins.”

”The Highmountain Kingdom is willing to join the theocracy Authority Council.”

”The Northern City-States unitedly agree.”

”The tribal country of Augari...”

The difficult balancing act finally ended, as if a halo suddenly spread throughout the hall. The flags representing the Mortal Nations lit up one by one, the clear light rising from all around the meeting hall like the first light of dawn, enveloping the faces of all the delegates present.

Regardless of how many among them still waver in their hearts—once the bowstring is pulled, there’s no turning back.

”Then, I declare the theocracy Authority Council officially established.”