Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 813 - 812: The World After Decay

When those illusory lights lit up and those dreamlike spiders surged in like a tide, Gawain just watched quietly.

He knew those spiders were menacing and likely carried some of the Supreme Narrator’s strange powers, but no matter what, Yuri and Magnan were still bishops of the Eternal Sleepers. As long as they treated it seriously, they could sustain for quite a while.

Moreover, with Selena Gerfen, who had already broken through to the "mental Protector" level, the situation wasn’t likely to spiral out of control.

As for Gawain himself... he certainly wasn’t doing nothing.

Since entering Sandbox One, he had been dispersing his mind, sensing everything in this world. Although this Sandbox World could blur the lines between reality and illusion, its essence remained a dream realm, where "magical power" was more active and effective than in any other scenario.

Initially, he found nothing, as the edges of his mental detection transmitted simulations of normal perceptions. Even after Duvalt and Nariteer appeared, he couldn’t sense any discord from them. But when those spiders appeared and lights lit up, and those "abnormal" things emerged in this "normal" city-state, he finally perceived the deep fragmentation and discord in this world.

Magnan heard Gawain’s murmur and couldn’t help but shout, "What did you notice?!"

"We always thought the greatest anomaly in this Sandbox World was the disappearance of all its residents, but actually... the reality is more complex than that, and it’s right under our noses," Gawain said slowly. He opened his hands gradually, some bizarre fragments suddenly appeared beside him, while shadows of spiders breeding incessantly in the crevices of light and darkness seemed to be stimulated, frantically surging in at once, as if trying to stop Gawain’s next move.

Though, Gawain had completed what he set out to do.

Complex and meaningless historical fragments surged out from him as the center, transforming into chaotic turbulence that ordinary human brains could not process, washing over everything around. The expansion speed of this turbulence even surpassed Magnan’s mental Storm, surpassing the light that spanned the whole city and even the whole world—

These were historical fragments never seen before in Sandbox One, unfamiliar data the entire mental network also had never processed, and even some... were "knowledge" and "concepts" unheard of by the Eternal Sleepers who created the mental network.

To this whole world, they were malignant bugs.

The entire city shook, the whole desert shook, and finally, the entire space shook—

In the depths of the desert, far from Nim Sandro, atop a mountain standing obliquely on the yellow sand like an inverted limb, Duvalt tried his best to maintain balance in the constantly quaking space. He watched as the desert and the distant city-state rapidly disintegrated, exposing the real world underneath this layer of illusion—a wasteland of an already withered world. His aged face was full of astonishment: "How did he discover it... how did he do it... what are these incomprehensible things after all..."

In Duvalt’s bewildered mumbling, Nariteer, who had been sitting on the ground watching the stars, also seemed to suddenly awaken from a dream. She abruptly stood up, blankly gazing at the night sky above Nim Sandro City-State, with a wheel of silver-white light reflected in her clear emerald eyes.

"What a beautiful... major star."

Duvalt followed Nariteer’s gaze, seeing the celestial body hanging high in the sky.

Bright and luminous beyond any star yet cooler and smaller than the sun, it cast flawless light, under which the "false veil" covering the surface of this world was disintegrating at an even more startling pace—

"What is that thing?"

...

"What is that thing!"

Magnan was shocked, watching the unfamiliar celestial body suddenly appear in the sky, seeing the silver plate far smaller than the sun yet still illuminating the night sky, observing the sky around it rapidly full of cracks as if the entire world was splitting centered on it, momentarily at a loss.

"It’s called ’moon,’" Gawain said with a smile, "something that doesn’t exist in this world."

Gawain didn’t use the existing word "moon" of this world but rather directly used a language from his previous life, producing a peculiar pronunciation to Magnan.

This world had no celestial body named "moon." If one had to find a similar concept, it would only be the "lunar position" imagined by mages in rituals, symbolizing the position of the Goddess of Magic, and the word "month" used to divide the six phases of the calendar year.

These two words actually had no relation to "moon," which Gawain mentally translated into "moon."

And in the real world, every time he looked up at the night sky, he saw a starry sky devoid of moons, entirely alien.

Thanks to this illusion-blurring Sandbox World, he bathed in moonlight for the first time in countless years—though this moonlight was fake and even a fatal bug for this Sandbox World.

Yuri watched in horror as Gawain smiled happily under the illumination of that bizarre celestial body, with only one thought in his mind—

A dreadful Wanderer from Outer Realm leveraged some kind of rule breach to summon a celestial body from their home planet, and this celestial body evidently had extremely terrifying powers. Its mere existence was enough to splinter the world—remarkably terrifying, Wanderer from Outer Realm and its home planet.

Then he felt immensely relieved: Thankfully, this was only a Sandbox World, and the Wanderer from Outer Realm could only summon a projection...

At this moment, the entire world’s quaking and disintegration finally gradually ceased.

The Sandbox System barely recovered balance under this terrifying bug impact, just as Gawain predicted, the flow of erroneous data he alone created was insufficient to destroy the entire "world," but he had achieved the effect he wanted—

Destroying the "veil" covering the real world.

Selena Gerfen looked around and found everything had changed.

The city-state Nim Sandro, once abandoned and standing silently in the desert, had vanished. Even the entire desert had turned into a cracked and barren wasteland. The previous lights and spiders disappeared like dreams, replaced by countless collapsing city walls, chaotic fortresses, disproportionate mountains and cities, layers of urban ruins stacked like discarded models haphazardly piled on the endless plains, extending to the limits of sight, reaching the world’s border.

The world was abandoned, and things once used to compose all things had become chaotic piles of garbage, placed on the world’s ruins to slowly rot.

"This is..." Magnan murmured softly.

"After the world ends," Yuri frowned, "Is this... the real Sandbox?"

"Above this real world lies a layer of false veil. The previous exploration team failed to see through this veil, and thus they were gradually eroded in endless battles with illusions. The so-called ’fighting with themselves’ in their memories was probably erroneous memories instilled by the veil," Gawain said slowly, his gaze gradually rising, falling on that colossal shadow in the distance, "And now the most crucial problem is the Supreme Narrator..."

The ground rose in the distance, forming a structure like a spiral tower, or a conical hill, and an incomparably huge body lay quietly at its midpoint.

It was a black spider, or some "creature" similar to a spider. Its... or His scale had exceeded human comprehension, nearly as large as a small hill. Countless indistinct patterns covered its carapace and limbs, and those patterns seemed to have life and continued moving incessantly.

Cold moonlight shone from high up, spilling onto the vast spider’s body, making this immense "monster" appear not frightening, but rather infused with a noble and majestic aura.

And that spider lay quietly under the moonlight, as if it had been dead for a century.

A faint yet pervasive stench of rot filled the heavens and the earth, lingering on this plain after the end of the world.

The gods are dead, and have rotted.

Magnan glanced into the distance, his gaze falling on that colossal spider. The next instant, he felt as though his soul was being pulled from his body. Every cell throughout his body seemed about to mutate, and a sense of being enveloped by invisible threads rapidly overwhelmed his perception, as though intending to control his thoughts, blocking his intention to call out.

The red-haired Archbishop instantaneously realized what had happened—he had been contaminated by the Supreme Narrator!

"Damn it!" Magnan fought desperately against the spiritual erosion, shifting his gaze with all his strength away from the colossal spider, while quickly dispelling the "external spirit" that had begun altering his various levels of consciousness, and laboriously said, "Beware of contamination!"

A bright, warm light shone beside him, quickly lessening the pressure on Magnan and Yuri. Selena Gerfen, holding a portable lamp, stepped forward, blocking the influence of the Supreme Narrator, instinctively looking at Gawain: "Wanderer from Outer Realm, that’s..."

"It is indeed the Supreme Narrator," Gawain’s gaze fell on the gigantic divine spider in the distance, his tone indescribably complex, "Looks like it’s been dead for a long time..."

"Dead, really dead..." Magnan had applied sufficient Mind Protection to himself but still dared not directly observe the massive divine corpse, mumbling in disbelief, "Really dead?!"

"At least it appears so," Gawain frowned tightly, "And it indeed looks like... it’s truly a god."

The spider lying on the hillside did possess certain characteristics of the gods—formidable spiritual erosion, unobservable, untouchable, even having turned into a corpse, it remains extremely dangerous to approach incautiously without protection. Even Magnan, a powerful figure, almost suffered deep-seated contamination upon first contact.

Even though there may be differences in specific "contamination intensity" between the Supreme Narrator and real gods, Gawain had reason to believe that the massive spider had truly treaded upon the path of divinity.

Only at this moment did he finally confirm some of the guesses about the gods...

As for Gawain himself, as previously expected, the Supreme Narrator’s contamination was equally ineffective against him.

This allowed him to calmly observe the distant huge spider for a long time, before leisurely retracting his gaze.

"Are you managing to hold on?"

"Already feeling better," Magnan exhaled deeply, "I suppressed a part of my magical power to prevent it from subconsciously attracting external contamination, and I remembered this—"

While speaking, he outlined complex magic symbol patterns in mid-air, those patterns curved intricately, carrying the deep-sea aura, exactly the "sea demons Runes" previously gifted by Gawain to the Eternal Sleepers.

"The contamination came too swiftly earlier, I didn’t have time to construct the magic symbol," Magnan smiled bitterly, and solidified the magic symbol into fixed light and shadow, imprinting it on his clothes, forming a special "Mind Protection Layer", "...Phew, feels much better now. When are we going to dig up... oh, never mind."

Yuri and Selena likewise constructed sea demons Runes and formed Mind Protection Layers around themselves. After finishing all this, Yuri shook his head, his face carrying a helpless and bitter smile: "Is this what it’s like to behold the gods... Mortals are indeed fragile, almost dying so easily."

"Gods die too," Gawain pointed at the vast spider under the moonlight in the distance, "And already has."

Magnan cautiously glanced at the conical hill in the distance, only daring to lift his gaze after confirming the sea demons Runes could indeed help resist the Supreme Narrator’s spiritual contamination: "Are we going to... where that thing is?"

Gawain nodded naturally, turned and walked toward the hill: "Of course, isn’t that the reason we came here?"

Magnan clicked his tongue, shook his head, stepping to follow Gawain’s pace, as he muttered to Yuri behind him: "Damn it... perhaps I should have borrowed some paper and pen from you before leaving..."