Chapter 1467: The Answer

This was the last voice Amber heard at the “bottom of the vortex.”

Now, the swirling vortex—formed by countless overlapping, twisting lights and shadows—had completely solidified around her. Beyond the vortex, a chaotic darkness stretched as far as the eye could see. She had reached the very depths of this historical memory. At the bottom of the vortex lay a vague yet insurmountable barrier. She tried to move deeper, to peer beyond that hazy veil and see what lay behind it—

It should have been a moment in time even older than the vortex’s bottom, a moment before those colossal ancient beings had their final conversation. She pressed herself against that mist-like, elusive barrier, feeling as if she could faintly glimpse some interwoven, grayish-white shadows. But when she blinked again, all she saw was darkness.

At that moment, a tremendous force of attraction suddenly surged from behind her.

“Ah!” Amber barely managed a startled cry before she felt herself being violently pulled away from the vortex by that overwhelming force. At the same time, she sensed the vortex itself pushing her away. Everything she saw blurred rapidly, fading into darkness. This process might have lasted hours—or just an instant.

Amber realized that her perception of time had somehow fractured. It was as if she had lived through ages far older than recorded history, making it impossible to distinguish between these “brief moments.” But before she could fully grasp this strange sensation, it slipped away from her soul. Her sense of time returned to normal, and she once again felt the sunlight of the real world shining on her.

She snapped her eyes open and found herself standing in a room carpeted with blue velvet. Gawain sat at a desk, holding a fountain pen, poised to finish the last stroke on a sheet of paper.

She felt as if she had been drifting through that vision for an entire day, yet in reality, only a fleeting moment had passed—so brief that no ordinary person could have noticed it. Amber blinked, the dissonance between her experience in the vision and the uninterrupted reality before her creating a strange sense of dislocation.

Just then, Gawain—who should have been oblivious to that instant—suddenly looked up. He stopped his hand mid-motion and fixed his gaze on Amber.

Before she could speak, he broke the silence: “What just happened?”

Noticing the strange, confused expression on Amber’s face, as if she didn’t know how to explain, Gawain added, “I felt your aura fluctuate—very briefly, almost like it vanished. It lasted less than a hundredth of a second, but I’m sure I wasn’t mistaken. Judging by your expression… did something happen?”

Lately, Amber had been plagued by strange phenomena, and Gawain had always been attentive to them. Even the slightest anomaly caught his notice, prompting him to check on her. Now, it seemed the strange occurrences had struck again.

“I was… watching the patterns you were drawing, and suddenly it felt like I was ‘sent’ somewhere else,” Amber finally gathered herself. Though the eerie sense of tearing still lingered, talking with Gawain quickly anchored her mind back to the “real world,” helping her recover and speak smoothly. “I felt myself falling into a vortex of light and shadow, filled with ancient moments of history. I kept descending inside it…”

Amber began to carefully recount her extraordinary experience. Gawain grew serious, listening intently. He casually flipped the nearly finished drawing face down on the desk.

His expression tightened, brows furrowing deeply. When Amber mentioned the massive starship crashing into the ocean, he almost interrupted, but in the end, he remained silent, letting her tell everything she had seen in the vortex.

“Then I was pulled back… though ‘pulled back’ isn’t quite right. I felt two forces—one dragging me back to the real world, the other from the vortex itself, pushing me out,” Amber said, her mouth dry. She grabbed a water cup from Gawain’s desk and gulped down half of it. “I actually wanted to stay at the ‘bottom’ a bit longer to observe. I had a vague feeling I could see what was beyond that barrier, but just as I caught a glimpse, I was interrupted…”

“Being interrupted might not be a bad thing,” Gawain said gravely, locking eyes with her. “If your mind had truly sunk to the deepest place, it could have been dangerous. So… you saw the moment the Voyagers arrived on this planet, and even a moment before their arrival.”

Amber nodded immediately. “That’s right. And those huge beings talking around me—I suspect they were the ancient gods of Loren at that time!”

Gawain nodded slowly, his face taut, but inside, a storm was raging.

If everything Amber saw really happened, if the conversations she overheard were true, if his judgment wasn’t mistaken… then a completely earth-shattering truth lay before him.

His years of understanding and speculation about the Voyagers and the ancient gods of Loren would be profoundly challenged. His knowledge would need massive revision. History… was not what he had imagined.

Before the Voyagers arrived on this planet, the ancient gods of Loren—on the brink of madness—had one last brief conversation. Somehow, they broke through the barrier that prevented communication between deities and made a decision that would shape the fate of the entire world. They… sent out a “signal,” declaring their existence to a certain group of beings.

Who did they send the signal to? Who did they reveal their coordinates to? The answer was becoming painfully clear… At the bottom of that historical vortex, Amber had witnessed the fate chosen by the ancient gods themselves.

Gawain had always thought the Voyagers stumbled upon this planet by chance, arriving just as the gods were entering their final descent into madness, unable to be saved. That was why the Voyagers had to destroy the ancient pantheon and take away all the species except the dragons. He had believed it was all coincidence. But now… how many coincidences could there really be?

The Voyagers had been summoned by the ancient gods themselves. It was a collective suicide.

Amber watched Gawain’s expression shift dramatically. She could guess what he was thinking. In fact, after piecing together the clues, she felt the same storm inside her. She couldn’t help but say, “So… if what I heard is true, does that mean the ancient gods of Loren sent out some kind of ‘call’ over 1.8 million years ago? They called the Voyager fleet?”

“That was probably their last choice—the apocalypse was inevitable, the divine catastrophe beyond their control. In their final moments of clarity, all they could do was commit suicide to preserve the last survivors of that civilization. After all, gods on the brink of madness can’t be saved, but mortals still might be…” Gawain’s voice was low as he spoke his theory, though it was more than speculation—it was likely the truth. “And as the most powerful beings on the planet, even suicide was difficult for them. Their only option was the Voyagers.”

“But how did they know about the Voyagers?” Amber’s eyes widened. “How did they know the Voyagers would receive the signal and come? Loren hadn’t even contacted the Voyager fleet back then…”

“I don’t know. Maybe the Voyagers were nearby, and Loren’s civilization had advanced enough for deep-space observation. Perhaps the Voyagers broadcast something along their route, and the ancient gods of Loren picked up the signal,” Gawain shook his head. “There are countless baseless guesses. The gods dwell in the deep sea, and in that deep sea, the entire universe’s information is reflected in some form. Though trapped by their own thoughts, the gods can perceive things mortals cannot through these reflections. The Voyager fleet—the one capable of slaughtering gods—its ‘projection’ in the deep sea might have spread across dozens of planets. But now they’ve long left this sector, so we can’t verify this.”

He paused, then continued, “None of that matters. What matters is the part we have evidence for… the ancient gods of Loren summoned the Voyager fleet. That fact is earth-shattering. If true… many of my assumptions about ancient history will need revising, especially the Voyagers’ attitude toward the ancient gods of Loren…”

His brow furrowed deeply as he tore down and rebuilt everything he thought he knew.

The Voyagers’ slaughter of the ancient gods was real, but their attitude wasn’t one of hatred and extermination… The ancient gods were already in their last moments of clarity when they called the Voyagers. By the time the Voyagers arrived, the gods had gone completely mad… The gods could communicate somehow, breaking through their barriers, and the ancient gods of Loren used this to conspire over their fate…

The most crucial point in all this was: the Voyagers bore no true hostility toward the ancient gods of Loren! That brief, coldly recorded “hunt” was essentially a transaction.

Gawain glanced at the paper flipped face down on the desk. He thought of the “Star Chart Keeper” recorded at the Sky Station and a theory he had been developing these days…

If the relationship between the Voyagers and the ancient gods of Loren was as he now understood it, then his theory could finally stand.

Amber, lost in thought beside him, suddenly murmured, “Such an important historical truth… and the dragons of Tal’Rond know nothing. Even Lady Enya is unaware? They seem to have always believed the Voyagers arrived suddenly…”

“It’s normal that Lady Enya doesn’t know the truth about the Voyagers’ arrival,” Gawain said thoughtfully. “Because long before the Voyagers came, Tal’Rond had already closed itself off, creating a closed loop of faith. The dragons, to prevent their gods from losing control, consciously guided their thoughts to ‘seal’ their deities. It was a comprehensive shield.” He paused, then added, “And there’s another thing—the dragon civilization of Tal’Rond…”

He looked up, meeting Amber’s eyes.

“Don’t forget what you heard down in the heart of the vortex. Even though the Dragon Kingdom is the oldest civilization on this planet now, back in the age when the Voyagers first arrived, it was still a ‘young polar civilization.’ At that time, Talrond might have been nothing more than a remote, backward ice tribe compared to the ancestors of Loren…”

Amber nodded slowly. “That makes sense… I guess I was just stuck in old ways of thinking, assuming that such a powerful Talrond civilization must have been strong even in ancient times. But dragons, after all, had to develop gradually from primitive societies.”

As she spoke, her brow furrowed, her expression turning serious and a little tense. “The real question now is: what exactly are those ‘records’ I saw? Who left them behind? And why? More importantly… why am I the one seeing them?”

Her gaze fell on the sheet of paper Gawain had placed on the table. “…It all started after I saw those patterns.”

Gawain casually pushed the paper further away. “You knew it was weird, and you still looked.”

He shook his head as he spoke. Many clues were already connecting in his mind, and the conclusion was becoming clear—though Amber, as someone caught in the middle, hadn’t quite pieced it together yet.

“These patterns come from the ‘Anchor Point Generator’ inside the Sky Station,” he said slowly, linking the threads in his mind, “and they’re closely tied to that mysterious ‘Star Map Keeper.’ The Star Map Keeper has some kind of mission to observe and wait, recording key historical moments on this planet. But this Keeper doesn’t seem to be one of the Voyagers—it’s an entity the Voyagers either recruited or transformed.

“The earliest historical fragment you saw at the bottom of the vortex happened before the Voyagers arrived, which means the individual who left this record lived in that era.

“Your perspective was standing among a group of enormous figures who seem to be ancient gods, and the person whose viewpoint you had even spoke. So this individual… should be one of Loren’s ancient gods.

“Among those ancient gods long lost to time, only one stands out as truly special. This one survived the great ancient hunt and has remained hidden from mortal eyes ever since. They wield shadow power, and the hall in the Sky Station where the Anchor Point Generator is kept is suffused with shadow energy…”

Gawain paused, looking steadily into Amber’s eyes. “That’s how you’re connected to all of this—just the right way.”

Amber slowly linked all the clues herself, and a single word escaped her lips in awe. “…Holy hell.”

“Remember the last thing you saw when you tried to peer through that ‘barrier’ at the bottom of the vortex?” Gawain exhaled softly. “You saw a tangle of gray and white shifting lights.”

(End of chapter)