Chapter 767: The Birth of a God

At the Arcane Technology Research Institute, on the second underground level, a classified conference room.

Gawain entered the room wearing a dark blue coat. This meeting chamber was heavily guarded and never open to outsiders. Inside, everyone invited to the meeting was already waiting.

Leight and Veronica were whispering to each other. Pittman absentmindedly twirled his beard. Kamail floated beside the conference table, his body radiating a calm blue arcane glow. When Hetty saw Gawain arrive, she was the first to stand and bow deeply. “Ancestor.”

The others stopped their activities and rose to pay their respects as well.

Gawain scanned the room, his gaze briefly lingering on an empty seat at the long table. “No need to stay hidden now.”

Amber’s figure immediately appeared. “Old habit, old habit…”

Gawain shook his head and took the seat at the head of the table. “This is an internal meeting—no need for formalities. Today’s main purpose is to exchange intelligence and… I need some expert advice from those present.”

Veronica looked up, glancing around the room, already understanding. “This has to do with knowledge about the gods?”

“Exactly,” Gawain nodded. “You’ve probably already heard from Amber before the meeting about the recent anomalies in the Sleeper’s psychic network?”

“Just half an hour ago,” Leight replied. “I had no idea our infiltration of the Sleeper Cult had reached this level.”

“This matter has been kept highly classified, and there’s no overlap with the Church’s intelligence. It’s normal you didn’t know,” Gawain said, his expression growing serious. “But things have changed. Some information must be made public.

“In short, according to the latest intelligence I just received, the Sleeper’s secret operation within the psychic network may have inadvertently touched the realm of the gods—and… they might have uncovered the secret of a god’s birth.”

Gawain’s blunt announcement instantly silenced the room. Everyone’s breath seemed to catch, even Kamail’s glow dimmed for a moment. After a few seconds, Pittman’s lips twitched, breaking the silence. “I knew something big was up with such an urgent, secret meeting, but this… this is a bit too much.”

He lowered his head, looking ruefully at the several strands of beard he’d accidentally pulled out earlier. After hesitating, he carefully rubbed the whiskers back onto his chin and cautiously used magic to reattach them.

Gawain ignored Pittman’s muttering. Seeing that his bombshell had captured everyone’s attention, he began to recount his recent experiences inside the psychic network, detailing his exploration of the so-called “Phantom Town.”

Everyone listened intently—even Amber, who usually nodded off or drifted away during meetings, was unusually focused.

“…That’s the whole story,” Gawain exhaled after nearly twenty minutes of narration, summarizing, “My guess is that the worship of the ‘Overarching Narrator’ is the main cause of the sandbox’s loss of control. What exactly this ‘Overarching Narrator Church’ is brewing in the dreamscape, and whether this ‘thing’ is merely a conceptual entity within the dream world… that’s the key question.”

Before he finished, Veronica, seated second from the left, broke the silence. “Are you suggesting… that the faith in this so-called ‘Overarching Narrator’ within Sandbox One’s psychic network actually created a god?”

“There’s no proof yet, but yes, that’s my suspicion,” Gawain nodded. “The Sleepers have found no way for a god to have infiltrated Sandbox One—no evidence or clues as to which god, by what means, or when it bypassed the sandbox’s defenses and entered the system. We all know the three major dark cults have the deepest knowledge of the gods, yet even their top researchers can’t find any trace of divine intrusion in the sandbox system… So maybe we should consider a bolder hypothesis: the corruption didn’t come from outside.”

…

In the psychic network, inside the Central Cathedral with the highest security clearance, archbishops gathered around a round table inscribed with various symbolic runes.

All attending archbishops had shed their disguises, revealing their true appearances from the real world—per the Church’s internal rules, indicating the meeting’s utmost secrecy and importance.

Archbishop Yuri, clad in white robes, stood beside the table, his tone grave. “Based on my and Archbishop Selina’s analysis, the corruption… may originate from within Sandbox One itself. The so-called ‘divine erosion’ likely stems from the cult worshipping the ‘Overarching Narrator.’”

Opposite Yuri, a short man with fiery red hair standing on end and a booming voice rose. “This is utterly unbelievable! Residents of the dream world suddenly begin doubting their reality, start worshipping a fictional ‘Overarching Narrator,’ and that actually births a god? And this god causes Sandbox One to spiral out of control? Isn’t this just a convenient excuse when we can’t find any other explanation?”

Yuri looked at the red-haired man—Archbishop Magnum—with a hint of helplessness. Magnum was known for his fiery temper and loud voice, but Yuri understood his loud objections weren’t personal or malicious; it was just his nature to speak his mind. Still, in this psychic space, couldn’t he lower his volume a bit?

“Archbishop Magnum,” Yuri shook his head slightly, “Everything I’ve said is speculation. I know it sounds incredible, but don’t forget—we’re dealing with gods, and gods themselves are beyond comprehension.”

A cluster of starlight particles hovered above the ornate table, its voice resonating in everyone’s mind: “Is there any evidence that the ‘Overarching Narrator’ worshipped by that dream world cult has acquired any divine attributes?”

“Your Holiness,” Archbishop Yuri bowed his head, “There is no evidence yet. Our intelligence is too limited. We can only confirm that such a cult exists within Sandbox One, and its activity coincides with the sandbox’s loss of control.”

The starlight cluster pulsed. “Then if evidence emerges proving that the ‘Overarching Narrator’ faith within Sandbox One truly created a god—or something akin to a god—all answers will be revealed.”

Yuri frowned. “But… if that thing really is a god, how do we deal with it?”

“We don’t know yet,” Pope Megal III’s gentle voice echoed in their minds, “But isn’t that the very secret we’ve been seeking? We’ve always tried to uncover the mysteries of the gods, to understand their origins. Now, we may be closer than ever to the truth…”

…

“The secret of a god’s birth… might be hidden inside Sandbox One,” Gawain said gravely. “If the ‘Overarching Narrator Church’ truly harbors the shadow of divine power, then the concept of gods will be utterly overturned.”

“It’s not that gods created humanity, but that humanity created gods…” Pittman muttered, his hand trembling and pulling out a few more strands of beard.

Veronica, holding a platinum scepter and surrounded by a faint holy light, had been silent and deep in thought since earlier. Now she suddenly looked up. “This… was actually one of the original hypotheses behind the Rebellion Project.”

“You once speculated this?” Gawain looked at Veronica in surprise. “You thought gods might be born from human faith?”

“We never went that far or that directly,” Veronica replied. “But we did suspect that human belief—or rather, the collective consciousness of mortals—could influence divine activity to some extent. That idea was too shocking, impossible to prove or disprove, or at least nearly impossible. So until the fall of the Gondor Empire, it remained just a theory.”

“But now the Sleepers’ bold experiment might prove your old theory right…” Leight said with a sigh. “It’s hard to imagine that the gods mortals fear and revere are essentially creations of mortals themselves.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions, and don’t become blindly confident or underestimate the gods,” Veronica said gently. “The faith of billions projected into a dimension beyond our understanding can become gods. The changes that occur during this process surpass our comprehension. Maybe gods truly arise from mortal belief, but we’re not yet qualified or powerful enough to call them our ‘creations.’ Perhaps we should see them as a terrifying, uncontrollable, yet inevitable ‘natural phenomenon.’”

“Natural phenomenon…” Gawain repeated the phrase thoughtfully.

He nodded. “Exactly as Veronica said. Perhaps it is a natural phenomenon—and an inevitable one at that.”

Faith and religion are almost an inevitable stage of social development.

Civilizations always go through fragile periods. Mortals, emerging from ignorance into a mysterious, dangerous world, confronted with incomprehensible and unpredictable nature, as intelligent beings, naturally develop awe and fear toward the natural world and the unexplained.

In the process of moving from the unknown to the known, trying to understand everything, mortals inevitably seek explanations for what they fear and revere.

When knowledge is scarce, power weak, and civilization in its infancy, these explanations inevitably point toward gods or similar concepts.

Within that closed Sandbox One, a man-made world running for centuries, its inhabitants must have faced the same question: Where did we come from? Who created this world?

Perhaps a “prophet” accidentally glimpsed the data streams behind the world, or an adventurer stumbled upon the sandbox’s boundary. They were horrified by the vast, chaotic psychic sea beyond and saw the scripts and operator commands behind the world.

So they explained their world: it was created by the “Overarching Narrator.”

And thus, the “Overarching Narrator” came into being.

“The Sleepers are outstanding soul engineers and excellent researchers, but unfortunately, they only focus on technology and don’t understand how society functions,” Gawain shook his head, a hint of regret in his voice. “If they had understood social mechanisms and the stages of civilization development, even if they couldn’t predict Sandbox One’s loss of control, they would have foreseen that ‘religious activity’ inside Sandbox One was inevitable—and taken precautions.”

The room fell into a heavy silence.

Although everyone here was aware of the Rebellion Plan, and though each person had, to some degree, been involved in Gawain’s audacious schemes to challenge the gods and defy tradition, today’s revelations still hit them all like a thunderclap.

Each of them was carefully processing the news, repeatedly running through every link in the chain of assumptions.

Pittman pressed his hand to his chin, cautiously stroking his beard as he spoke, “If it’s really true—that they created a ‘god’ inside Sandbox One… then this might spiral completely out of control. We could handle that stag from the End of All Things with artillery or the Kraken legions, but how do you fight a god that exists inside a dream?”

“Don’t be so pessimistic just yet,” Gawain said calmly. “Even if it is a god—or something godlike—it’s just been born, and it’s trapped inside a dream. As long as we can figure out how it works, it won’t be so hard to deal with. Besides, the Sleeper will fight tooth and nail to survive and solve this crisis.”

Pittman frowned deeply, tugging hard at his beard. “Ugh… I shouldn’t have listened to Amber back then. My old age is anything but peaceful…”

With a sigh, the old druid looked down at the handful of beard hairs he’d just pulled out, his expression growing even more troubled.

“Maybe just leave it be,” Leight, sitting across from him, said with concern. “I don’t think it’ll grow back.”

“…Sigh…”

(End of chapter)