Peaceful Life System: I only need to live peacefully

"Why does it sound eerily familiar?" Clara whispered in Riku’s mind.

Riku already had more or less confirmed his early hunch based on Clara’s reaction, yet he did not say anything and silently eyed the projection.

"Your journey ends here, Riku," the Hooded man’s projection continued. "For this door cannot be opened. No one has been inside for millennia. Behind it lies the beating heart of a fallen god, a being from another world, sealed away by forces lost to time. We of the Society do not control it. We merely... study it. We collect the faint aura of power that bleeds through the seal, amplifying it, refining it into the glorious gift of the Creep."

"And what of the people you sacrificed for this ’gift’?" Riku’s voice was cold. "The families torn apart, the lives destroyed by your plague? Is that a worthy sacrifice for your ’knowledge’?"

The hooded man let out a soft, condescending laugh. "Humanity? Morals? Such quaint, fleeting concepts. hahaha."

"Boy, you see a plague; I see a crucible. A necessary trial to weed out the weak and elevate the strong. The suffering of a few thousand insignificant lives is a paltry price to pay for unlocking the next stage of human evolution. I am not destroying humanity, Riku. I am forging it into something greater, something that will not fear gods, but become them."

The man gestured grandly. "This is the end of your road. There is no key. There is no entrance."

Riku listened patiently. When the projection finished its speech, he simply shrugged.

"That’s a shame."

Then, he reached into his satchel and pulled out the Mysterious Key. It pulsed with a soft light, a perfect counter-harmony to the pulsating runes on the door.

The projection of the hooded man went rigid. The calm, condescending demeanor shattered, replaced by a surge of pure, unadulterated alarm. "That key! Impossible! Where did you get that?!"