Chapter 858: The Narrator’s Plan

At first, the vast empty fields were only stirred by the endless wind sweeping across them.

But soon, Yuri sensed a strange presence rapidly converging nearby. It was intangible and formless, yet its overwhelming aura drew everyone’s attention—as if an enormous creature, invisible to the naked eye, was slowly approaching them. Though its shape remained hidden, low, heavy breaths and an instinctive sense of oppression emanated from all directions.

Everyone’s eyes widened in tension and confusion. Semler instinctively summoned his battle staff. Wendy’s brow furrowed sharply. Suddenly, Magnum’s figure materialized out of thin air. Before he could even greet Yuri and the others in his usual loud voice, his eyes locked onto Gawain’s direction with alarm—

A faint, translucent outline had already begun to take shape before Gawain, and in the next moment, it solidified into a tangible form.

It was a gigantic white spider.

The creature lay quietly on the flat grassland, enveloped in a nearly transparent white cocoon of light. The grass around the edges of the cocoon swayed as if licked by an unseen tongue. The instant the white spider appeared, Magnum’s startled shout rang out: “By all my ancestors! Mindwind—”

Gawain casually pointed at Magnum and snapped, “Shut up.”

A massive mental turbulence instantly slammed into Magnum’s mind. Before he could finish saying “Mindstorm,” his consciousness exploded into a dazzling burst of fireworks—though, of course, he reformed two seconds later, promptly shutting his mouth and standing quietly, clearly unable to summon another mindstorm anytime soon.

Gawain had fought alongside Magnum before and was well prepared.

This sudden outburst jolted everyone back to reality. After a brief moment of stunned panic, Yuri was the first to regain his composure. He eyed the spider cocoon warily, already suspecting that this “deity” was currently under control. Swallowing nervously, he asked, “Your Majesty, this is…?”

“The Upper Narrator, a preserved fragment,” Gawain replied casually, glancing at the ever-alert Sleeper faction. “Relax. It’s harmless. Even direct eye contact won’t corrupt you—its divinity and humanity have been stripped away and purified. Only pure consciousness and ‘personality’ remain. In essence, it’s quite similar to Magnum or Selina.”

As he spoke, the transparent cocoon surrounding the white spider trembled gently. Then, as if awakening from a long slumber, the massive spider twitched, and the cocoon silently shattered and dissipated.

The “Upper Narrator” had awakened. Its enormous segmented limbs moved aimlessly twice before it gradually found its balance. It propped itself up, its aimless head turning in this strange new world. Though it had no eyes, a soft glow rippled across its head’s surface, conveying a sense of confusion and bewilderment that seemed to seep into everyone’s minds.

Almost simultaneously, a shadowy figure appeared out of nowhere—a black-robed old man holding a worn lantern. Duvalet stood at the spider’s feet, equally bewildered as he scanned the surroundings, soon noticing Gawain and the others nearby.

“Welcome back,” Gawain smiled and nodded at them. “I hope this ‘sleep’ hasn’t caused you too much harm.”

“We…” Duvalet hesitated, sensing the tense atmosphere but seeming oddly indifferent. He whispered, lantern flickering, “We should have fallen into eternal darkness…”

“We should have ceased to exist,” the spider-form Narithil finally shook off her confusion and turned her gaze—her glowing head—toward Gawain. “What happened?”

“You did vanish once,” Gawain sighed, resigned. “But didn’t you know? Data can be ‘repaired’ if conditions are right.”

“Data repair?” Narithil’s voice was laced with puzzlement. “What is that?”

“It’s complicated to explain. Just know this—I ‘preserved’ you at the last moment,” Gawain said, tapping his temple. “It was a massive amount of data, but you should understand—compared to the entire sandbox world’s data, it’s nothing to me.”

Narithil paused, lowering her massive limbs to look at Duvalet beneath her. “Duvalet, do you understand?”

The black-robed old man stared at Gawain in shock, then suddenly seemed to grasp something. With a thoughtful sigh, he murmured, “I think I understand now…”

He recalled what had happened that day, the events after he forcibly entered his divine form and tried to corrupt Gawain’s mind—how he was swiftly defeated, leaving no time to analyze. Now, finally, he could piece it all together and comprehend what had happened to him and Narithil.

“I should have realized…” His expression was complex. “Corruption is mutual. Mind devouring can go both ways… Your memories and soul are so vast even gods fear them. When we recklessly connected with your mind, failure was inevitable. You… devoured Narithil and me!”

Almost everyone’s eyes widened in shock. Even Yuri and Magnum, who had witnessed the first half of the battle, exchanged stunned glances. The Sleeper archbishops looked at Gawain with newfound reverence. Veronica’s silent gaze deepened, and Hetty’s expression grew thoughtful. Only Gawain remained calm, glancing at Narithil and shrugging, “Well, I just ‘spit you back out.’”

If Amber had been there, she’d have immediately quipped, “Spitting out doesn’t count as eating—at most, you just held it in your mouth for a while.” But the elf’s absence—busy managing public opinion after the Holy Dragon Principality’s diplomatic recognition—left no one to catch Gawain’s joke.

The atmosphere turned a bit awkward.

As for what happened back then, it was pretty much as Duvalet said. But this wasn’t Gawain’s first time “devouring” another consciousness. Years ago, he had done the same to a reckless Sleeper who tried to invade “Gawain Cecil’s” mind. That opponent was torn to shreds by Gawain’s vast memory bank and absorbed. That incident provided Gawain with valuable intelligence on the Sleepers and eventually made him an “Outsider” capable of infiltrating the mental network.

What he was doing with the Upper Narrator was essentially the same—though the scale and difficulty differed, with the satellite database’s immense power, it was just a matter of download size.

Gawain found it hard to explain the technical details to outsiders, but he guessed the people present didn’t need much explanation. They could just chalk it up to the awesomeness of their ancestors, the Outsider, or the legendary pioneers.

Of course, “devouring a god” sounded impressive, but Gawain figured he could only pull it off once. Without the perfect conditions—being inside the mental network’s consciousness world, encountering an Upper Narrator whose mind he could tightly control, and facing a relatively inexperienced and weak opponent—success was impossible.

The conditions were so stringent that the feat was not replicable. Ultimately, the sea hags’ physical “devouring gods” were still more formidable.

A flurry of thoughts passed through Gawain’s mind. He cleared his throat softly, then looked at Narithil and broke the silence again: “That’s why I wanted to tell you I have better methods—but you didn’t listen and ran off. I almost couldn’t drag you back.”

The giant spider’s long limbs idly scraped the ground twice. Narithil’s gentle voice echoed in everyone’s minds: “I was… anxious then.”

“I understand,” Gawain smiled. “Completely.”

“Your Majesty,” Semler finally found his chance to speak. The serious middle-aged man stepped forward nervously, glancing at the enormous white spider. “You ‘preserved’ the Upper Narrator… is it because you intend to—”

As Semler spoke, Narithil and Duvalet’s attention turned to Gawain. Duvalet even voiced the same question: “You kept us here—what do you want to do?”

“I want to conduct further research,” Gawain answered frankly. “Those of us here have a complicated relationship with the gods. We’re curious about their powers and weaknesses, so we need the Upper Narrator. Also, I want to test a personal theory—a ‘god’ stripped of most divine traits. Your very existence fascinates me.”

He spoke openly, his gaze steady and honest as he looked at Narithil and Duvalet, revealing no attempt to hide his curiosity.

The Upper Narrator was the most precious treasure Gawain had salvaged from the mental network—a unique divine specimen embodying the cycle of godhood’s birth, death, and rebirth. It had been purified of divinity and humanity, free from spiritual corruption, and safely controllable. That was why Gawain had gone to great lengths to keep it, even naming the newborn empire’s computational network the “Narrator Neural Network.”

Narithil shifted uneasily, retracting some of her limbs. Her massive body swayed slightly as she sighed, “So this is another ‘experiment’ project?”

“It is an experiment,” Gawain nodded. “But not all experiments are bad. Some are mutually agreed upon, harmless, even cooperative.”

“I know,” Narithil interrupted. “I understand these things.”

Gawain raised an eyebrow. “Then what do you think?”

Duvalet closed his eyes briefly. After a few seconds of silence, Narithil spoke softly, “What meaning does this have for us? We were meant to perish, as you once said. There is no place for us in the real world. But if you insist, then so be it…”

“I hope it’s based on fair cooperation, not coercion,” Gawain shook his head. “The Sleeper Cult is no more. This is Cecil, governed by Cecil’s order—I don’t want to force you.”

Duvalet opened his eyes. “We need a reason.”

Gawain looked at him quietly. After a moment, he said slowly, “Let’s say it’s to remember those who once lived in Sandbox One.”

Narithil moved one of her long limbs.

“The history of Sandbox One has come to an end, and its former inhabitants no longer exist,” Gawain said calmly. “When someone dies in the real world, their family and friends remember them, their neighbors remember them, and even if no one does, their bones remain behind. But the personalities created within that sandbox—no one in the real world remembers them, and there are no remnants of them left in the network. Nariel, Duvalet, you two are the last traces of them.

“I don’t mean to trap your thoughts with this perspective, but I want you to consider this: the ‘Overarching Narrators’ are now the final memory of the entire sandbox world. If you choose to stay here as citizens of Cecil, then in a way, you become a continuation of those who once lived in Sandbox One.”

Nariel and Duvalet fell silent simultaneously. Seeing this, Gawain didn’t pause and continued, “Furthermore, if you decide to stay, I promise you’ll be able to access the ‘real world’ in some form.

“You’re currently inside a new kind of network, different from the Mind Network. There’s no sandbox system here. The new terminal technology allows you to interact with reality to a certain extent—I can provide you with the data to prove I’m not lying.

“In exchange, I want you to become part of this new network. Of course, you’ll be subject to its rules—these restrictions mainly exist to protect the network’s nodes. I can assure you, they won’t harm you.

“How you weigh this choice is up to you.”

(End of chapter)