Chapter 1004: Analysis

A gentle breeze swept across the vast, boundless green plains. Whispered murmurs, too faint for human ears to discern, echoed softly on the wind. Though the outside world was blanketed in snow and ice, within this neural network rooted deep in the realm of the mind, the vibrant hues of spring lingered long between the plains and valleys.

At the heart of this endless “Mindscape Plain,” beside a few rolling hills, a colossal city stood silently. Above it hovered a faintly golden, ring-shaped grand magical array composed of countless rapidly refreshing runes. Between the city and this massive array stretched several streams of golden light, piercing the heavens and earth. These beams represented multiple information hubs connecting to the real world. Each light ended at a large building within the city—transit stations where the “residents” of the Dream City came and went.

In the city’s central district, corresponding to the royal quarter of Cecil City in the real world, the largest beam of light connected to a pyramid-shaped facility on the surface. At that moment, the light above the pyramid flickered slightly. Somewhere in the plaza beside the pyramid, a figure suddenly materialized out of thin air.

It was a middle-aged man with a refined, scholarly air, wearing a monocle.

Yuri snapped out of the dizziness that came with reconnecting to the network, gently stretching his neck—though there was nothing physically there, the lingering “neural echoes” from lying in the immersion pod, in contact with the cold metal nodes, still haunted his senses. He glanced around at the bustling plaza, then headed toward a familiar figure waiting nearby. As the neural echoes gradually faded, he raised his hand in greeting: “Magnum!”

“I’ve been waiting for you here for a century!” Magnum’s booming voice exploded right beside Yuri’s ear, loud enough that Yuri suspected half the plaza could hear him. “What kept you tied up in the real world?”

Yuri rubbed his ear instinctively, shooting a slightly annoyed look at his old partner standing before him. “You’ve been away from the real world too long. Have you forgotten how many troublesome things can throw off a person’s schedule? Out there isn’t a convenient neural network everywhere—you need time for everything…”

Magnum cut him off impatiently, waving his hand. “Alright, alright, I get it. I’ll ask Pittman later—I know he’s got some miracle cure for constipation…”

Yuri froze for a moment, then almost completely lost the polished, gentlemanly demeanor he usually tried to maintain. “Damn it! That’s not what I meant!”

Magnum waved him off casually. “I know, I know. I was middle-aged too back in the day… Okay, okay, I won’t say more.”

Before Yuri’s anger could reach its peak, Magnum’s loud voice ended the topic with perfect timing. Yuri, who usually kept a gentleman’s composure in front of students and researchers, flushed red but was powerless to respond. He just glared at Magnum for a long moment before angrily looking away. “Open the channel—I’m not here to argue with you.”

Magnum shrugged and waved his hand through the air, speaking to the void: “Duvalet—we’re coming.”

Invisible ripples suddenly stirred. In the seemingly calm and continuous mental space, a hidden “habitat” deep within the data layers silently opened. A brief, secret passage appeared in the Dream City. Rings of light shimmered around Magnum and Yuri, and then, as if erased by some unseen force, the two vanished instantly from the plaza.

The next moment, they found themselves in another space: an equally vast but even emptier grassland stretched before them. Bathed in night’s shadow, the starry sky above was so bright it banished all darkness. Not far off stood a small hill, glowing faintly as if all the stars focused their light upon it. At the hill’s base rested a massive, pure white spider, seemingly at rest.

This was a deeper layer of the neural network, beneath the “surface layer” and “interaction layer”—the “computation layer.” Here, all network data exchanged rapidly and frequently in its most primitive form. Though this exchange and calculation were almost entirely carried out by the human brain, the human mind could not directly comprehend this place. Thus, everything presented here—the night sky, the grassland, the stars—was merely an interface created by the layer’s overseers to accommodate “visitors.”

For Magnum and Yuri, former priests of the Sleepless Ones, this space held another meaning: it was the dwelling of the “Former Gods,” the upper narrators. It was where Narithil and Duvalet stored their true forms.

The two exchanged a glance, each seeing a trace of emotion in the other’s eyes. Magnum looked up at the star-studded sky and muttered, shaking his head, “The stars are all in the same positions as in the real world now.”

“After the observatories upgraded their technology, they reserved a dedicated data stream for Narithil. She can watch the stars anytime through their equipment—that was the Emperor’s promise,” Magnum explained. Before he finished, a voice came from nearby. Duvalet appeared out of thin air, dressed in black formal wear and holding a lantern. “The starry sky you see now is a direct projection of what Narithil observes from the empire’s observatories. Recently, she’s been trying to record the trajectory of every star to calculate our planet’s position in the universe… or at least its position relative to these stars.”

Magnum blinked. “That sounds impressive.”

“The Emperor agrees,” Duvalet smiled and nodded. Then, stepping forward, he quickly brought the two visitors beside the enormous white spider. “Narithil was worried she’d be reprimanded for using so much idle computing power, but the Emperor fully supports her and even assigned a group of astrologers to assist. But that’s not why we’re here today.”

He raised his arm slightly, pointing to a nearby clearing. Magnum and Yuri looked over and immediately saw a cocoon-like object, about a person’s height, held firmly to the ground by countless spider silk threads. Its translucent shell faintly revealed something trapped inside. Narithil’s humanoid form circled the cocoon repeatedly, seemingly communicating with whatever was imprisoned within.

Yuri’s eyes widened in surprise. “Narithil can communicate with that captured ‘fragment’ now?”

Duvalet shook his head. “It’s a one-sided interrogation. Narithil keeps probing the mind fragment, trying to extract more secrets, but I don’t think her methods are effective.”

Yuri and Magnum exchanged a look and began walking toward the cocoon. Halfway there, they heard Narithil’s incessant questioning. The upper narrator paced around the cocoon, stopping every few steps to ask:

“Where did you come from?
The war god you worship—how many legs does he have?
Do you think the war god knows you’ve become like this? Did he transform you? How exactly?
How do you communicate with the war god? Do you still need to pray after becoming like this?
Can you hear me?
Oh, you don’t want to answer? Then… where did you come from?”

Inside the translucent cocoon, the spirit of Malm Dunit was tightly bound by the upper narrator’s power. He had not yet dissipated but had clearly lost the ability to respond. His face was stiff, his eyes vacant and lifeless, staring blankly.

“By all the ancestors,” Magnum muttered, shrinking his neck, “If it were me, I’d have cracked long ago…”

“Ah, you’re here!” Narithil finally stopped pacing when she heard voices nearby. She smiled brightly and ran over to Yuri and Magnum. “Where have you been?”

“I just finished work in the real world. Magnum was probably patrolling the various nodes,” Yuri replied immediately, then glanced at the cocoon. “Any progress?”

“If you mean direct ‘interrogation,’ not much,” Narithil shook her head. “The internal logic of this mind fragment has collapsed. I’ve tried various methods to stimulate and rebuild it, but it still can’t respond to external communication—like you see, it’s mostly beyond repair.”

Magnum quickly caught on. “So you’ve made progress beyond the ‘interrogation’?”

“Sort of,” Narithil considered. “I tried dismantling the fragment and directly reading its memories. This method misses a lot of information and risks further damaging the sample, but it yielded some results.

“From the memories I extracted, this mortal pope named Malm Dunit performed a mad sacrificial ritual, tearing his soul from his body to offer it to his god. That god did something unknown, turning the soul into a state that can split and recombine at will… which is why we only captured an ‘avatar’…

“Malm Dunit’s true self is likely no longer in this world. He’s probably beside that ‘war god,’ but the fragment’s remaining memories don’t mention how to contact the true self or how to connect with the war god.

“Also, I found something important—not only did we capture an ‘avatar,’ but if I’m correct, a human emperor named Rosetta Augustus also captured one.”

Magnum’s eyes widened. “Rosetta? You mean Emperor Typhon also caught a Malm Dunit?”

“Yeah,” Narithil nodded. “These avatars can act independently but seem to sense each other’s states. In a fragmented, blurry memory, I saw one avatar defeated in some extraordinary duel, consumed by a powerful force. The strongest message it sent as it fell was a name: Rosetta Augustus.”

Magnum and Yuri exchanged stunned looks. After a brief moment of shock, they both grasped the significance of this information.

The Malm Dunit inside the cocoon was a dull, fragile “avatar,” suppressed and miserable. But that was because he faced the power of an upper narrator—a former god who had left divinity behind. Even weakened, such a being was far beyond what a mad mortal soul could resist. Without Narithil’s intervention…

Malm Dunit would be a terrifying threat! He had devoted himself to a god and gained strange, unpredictable powers. Beyond his ghostly avatar projection, he carried the spiritual corruption of the war god—a uniquely deadly and insidious taint. Ordinary mortals who dared to resist it risked enormous danger and great cost!

Yet it was precisely such an incarnation that suffered a tragic defeat in the “transcendent duel” against Rosetta Augustus—so much so that it was even “devoured”…

“Devoured.” That’s not a word to be thrown around lightly. It means Rosetta Augustus had a trump card up his sleeve—one at least on the level of a higher-order narrator!

Was he holding that card just to deal with the God of War? Or was he planning to use it against Cecil after this divine catastrophe?

“We have to inform His Majesty immediately!” Yuri said without hesitation. “Rosetta Augustus can ‘devour’ Malm Dunit, who’s been tainted by divine corruption. That’s beyond the scope of any normal human. He’s either no longer human, or… he’s tapping into some extremely dangerous power!”

“This is exactly why I summoned you both,” Nariel nodded seriously. “I know you two come from Typhon, and you both have unique backgrounds—Yuri, you were once a noble of Alden, and your family had long dealings with the Augustus clan. You should be familiar with the ‘curse’ that haunts them. And Magnan, I know you come from the Church of the God of War. You must know something about that deity, right?”

As a “god” personally shaped by the former Sleeper, Nariel clearly knew a great deal. Yuri wasn’t surprised by this and fell into a brief moment of contemplation. Beside him, Magnan muttered awkwardly, “Well… it’s been many years since I left the Church of the God of War…”

Yuri shot him a glance. “Your memory hasn’t faded so much that you can’t recall the strict rules and doctrines you followed as a cleric, has it?”

“Uh… my time in the Church of the God of War wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Even after becoming an official cleric, I mostly did menial tasks… though I did handle some other things from time to time,” Magnan scratched his face, looking even more embarrassed. “Of course, I did come into contact with those doctrines… Alright, I’ll have to dig deep into my memories. This really does seem important…”

(End of chapter)