Chapter 234 : Chapter 234
Chapter 234. The So-Called Gods
The illusory space instantly fell into absolute darkness. Even the faintest trace of light was devoured, and all five senses were forcibly stripped away.
“The Black Dragon King, Noxarum, the Sun-Eater. It embodies ‘darkness’ and ‘devouring.’ It is the absence of light, the incarnation of ending and decay. Mana, light, sound—any attack that falls within its domain returns to nothingness. Wherever it passes, there is only eternal night and the exhaustion of magic.”
The darkness was torn apart, and a golden radiance brighter than the sun itself rose up, so dazzling that none could look at it directly.
“The Gold Dragon King, Heliocles, the Will of Radiance. It governs ‘light’ and ‘creation.’ It is like a second sun upon the earth. Everything that approaches it is disintegrated by searing heat and lethal radiation, leaving behind only unending daylight and irradiated wasteland.”
When the light faded, a whisper that made the heart tremble sounded in everyone’s mind. Within the vision appeared a purple dragon with an indistinct form. Its gaze made the soul shudder, as though it had drawn forth the deepest fear hidden in one’s heart.
“The Purple Dragon King, Animus, the Spirit King. It disdains destroying the flesh. It governs ‘soul’ and ‘mind.’ It can spread a plague of madness through the psyche, causing an entire kingdom to perish in insanity and mutual slaughter.”
Next, the image refracted and shifted like a shattered mirror. A silver dragon flickered in and out of view within spatial fractures, as if it did not fully exist in this world at all.
“The Silver Dragon King, Specter, the Observer of Space-Time. The most mysterious of them all, it governs ‘space’ and ‘dimension.’ It can fold space to teleport instantly, create fractures that sever all things, and even ‘banish’ itself beyond the dimensions so that every attack misses. That is the terror of spatial collapse and dimensional exile.”
At last, all the illusions converged. At the center of the eight Dragon Kings appeared a sacred existence of flawless white, as though it had been formed from light itself.
“And standing at the apex—the White Dragon King, Aetherion, the Primordial Dragon. It governs the purest ‘Aether’ energy in existence and is the source of all transcendent power.”
The illusion vanished, and silence returned to the room.
Sylvia frowned, one hand resting on the hilt of her sword as she voiced her question. “If the dragon race was that powerful... if they possessed strength almost on the level of gods, then how did humanity win later? I’ve read some vague wording in religious texts saying that the gods descended with divine punishment and drove out the old tyrants.”
“‘Divine punishment’?”
Maggie did not laugh. She merely shook her head calmly, like a rigorous instructor correcting a student’s most basic definitional error.
“That term carries far too much religious embellishment. It is inaccurate. From a sociological perspective, so-called ‘gods’ were, in essence, conceptual weapons constructed by humanity through the collective unconscious for the continuation of the species.”
Sylvia grew even more confused. “Constructed... weapons?”
“When facing ninth-tier lifeforms, beings that transcend conventional logic, individual strength is negligible. But humanity possessed the advantage of numbers, and the qualitative transformation brought about by those numbers stacked together—namely, collective will.”
Maggie extended one finger and lightly tapped Logaris’s notebook, her movement precise and steady.
“When the will of a hundred people gathers, it is merely a disorderly signal. But when the faith of tens of millions resonates on the same frequency, it can interfere with reality and form ‘law.’”
“Through highly unified faith, humanity forcibly aggregated the power of belief and artificially created energy entities of ninth-tier equivalence. That was the earliest form of the ‘gods.’ They were not creators, but embodied vessels of humanity’s will to survive.”
At this point, she pushed up a pair of nonexistent glasses and calmly dropped the startling truth.
“According to my deciphering and study of certain ancient ruins, the original relationship between humans and gods was not antagonistic, but rather a highly unstable period of ‘symbiosis.’”
“At that stage, the dragons, as rulers of the world, did not regard these newborn law-entities as a threat. They even permitted them to share part of their lesser Authorities. Under the pressure of draconic might, humanity gained a brief era of peace through those ‘gods.’”
Maggie’s voice remained completely flat, as though she were describing the evolution of bacterial colonies in a petri dish.
“However, that peace was built upon an imbalance of power. Once the sharpness of the ‘weapons’ exceeded a certain threshold, conflict became inevitable. The so-called ‘divine punishment,’ on the tactical level, was in fact a carefully calculated preemptive strike.”
“The gods created by humanity tore up the symbiotic covenant without any warning...”
At those words, the tip of Logaris’s pen suddenly halted, leaving a small blot of ink on the page.
At that instant, the floodgates of memory quietly shifted, and his thoughts were drawn back to the depths of the Dragon Mountain Range amid howling snowstorms. That magnificent dead city sealed within eternal ice, and the black stone wall standing in the center of the plaza, giving off a soft silver glow.
He remembered clearly the ancient draconic inscription carved upon it—
“When the stars fell, the gods betrayed their oath.”
Back when he had translated those words among the ruins, he had assumed they were merely the resentful rhetoric of the defeated, a common sort of “victim narrative” found throughout history. But now, Maggie’s calm statement about “tearing up the covenant” fit perfectly with that accusation preserved on the stone wall for ten thousand years without fading.
So it had not been rhetoric.
It had been a statement of fact.
Maggie did not notice the flicker of realization in Logaris’s eyes. She continued speaking.
“...Taking advantage of draconic arrogance and negligence, they launched a targeted purge first. It was a surprise assault born from a struggle for survival, not a moral judgment.”
She looked out the window, her gaze calm and deep, as though examining a sealed current of data.
“It was precisely because of that strategic strike that the gods were able to seal and exile the Nine Dragon Kings one by one.”
Maggie paused, then continued in the same tone one might use to explain an alchemical formula.
“But simple expulsion would have led to the loss of ecological niches. The Dragon Kings represented the underlying laws of the world. Their disappearance would have caused the world itself to collapse. Therefore, in order to preserve systemic stability, those ‘weapons’ had to undergo functional replacement and take over the positions that originally belonged to the Dragon Kings.”
She raised a finger and traced two symbols in the air.
“For example, the ‘God of Holy Light’ worshipped by the state religion of the Astrelia Kingdom is, in essence, a usurpation and replacement of the Authority of the Gold Dragon King, Heliocles, in order to maintain the functioning of the laws of light and creation.”
“Likewise, the ‘God of Storms’ of the Tyrenia Kingdom corresponds to the power of the Blue Dragon King, Marifondus, filling the vacuum in the laws governing the ocean and storms.”