Chapter 368: A Puzzle

"I will be the one to confront them myself," Atlas declared, causing every person in the grand hall to widen their eyes in horror. Their pupils contracted as they immediately began to object to his decision, unable to believe that their king would make such a reckless choice.

"N-No, Your Majesty! You must not do that! Even if you are a Sword Master yourself, you will die fighting an army of millions!" The man standing beside the throne shouted, his voice filled with urgency, while another person seated on the left side of the grand hall spoke up as well.

"Your Majesty, you should listen to us! We need you, the King, to guide us even after we escape from here! Please, Your Majesty!" Her concerned voice echoed throughout the hall, but before Atlas could respond, another person shouted from the right side, drawing his attention toward them.

"T-They’re right, Your Majesty! We should set a trap in this palace before escaping today. Once the enemy army invades the palace, they will be caught in it and die. You shouldn’t throw your life away!" Atlas listened to their arguments one after another before raising his hand once more.

"You all, silent." Atlas couldn’t help but find himself in a rather critical situation as he watched them fall quiet, ’What am I supposed to do? Isn’t this test too easy? I can literally kill all of them, even if there are millions...’

He glanced at the people waiting for his response, his mind turning over the possibilities while he tried to understand the purpose behind this entire situation. ’Is this some kind of psychological test? Do they want me to identify the spies and execute them?’

However, that explanation didn’t make much sense to him. Even if he managed to identify and execute every spy within the empire, the Kingdom of Razathor would inevitably attack while Eldrion remained weakened, and removing the spies wouldn’t change that fact.

’No, something else is going on here.’ Atlas still couldn’t figure out the actual objective of the test, much less determine how he was supposed to approach it.

For the moment, he decided to address the people before him. "Do you think the Kingdom of Razathor will simply let you escape? Those spies must have already informed them about our situation. Their army could already be marching toward us, or some of their soldiers might even be hiding among our own forces as we speak."

"Do you really think we can escape under these circumstances?" He explained the situation, wondering whether these people were idiots or simply too desperate to consider the obvious.

’They can’t even see something this simple?’

As soon as his words reached them, the people in the hall lowered their heads, unable to offer an immediate response. The man beside the throne, whose name Atlas had learned from the memories he inherited was Hapul, spoke in a weak voice.

"W-We had considered that possibility, Your Majesty, but we have no other choice at the moment. We have already planned to escape regardless." Atlas nodded slightly at his words before shifting his attention toward the front, his thoughts returning to the dilemma he had yet to resolve.

’If I slaughter all those people...’ His thoughts drifted toward the moment when Seraphiel had expressed her concern about him becoming some kind of mass murderer without a genuine reason.

Remembering her words, Atlas sighed as he felt another headache beginning to form in his mind. ’Is this what the test wants from me? Hmm, those seven individuals didn’t even specify anything about the test itself.’ The more he considered the situation, the less he understood what kind of challenge they had prepared for him.

He shook his head as the memories of the original King Brundhamel resurfaced in his mind. ’His family was slaughtered right in front of his eyes by assassins. He killed them and learned that Razathor had sent them...’ Atlas paused for a moment, narrowing his eyes as another part of those memories came to the forefront.

’But he couldn’t execute his vengeance...’ Despite everything the king had suffered, his revenge had remained unfulfilled, leaving Atlas to consider whether he was expected to complete what Brundhamel had been unable to accomplish.

Closing his eyes, Atlas thought about the matter more carefully. ’It is never my responsibility or my business to take care of someone else’s vengeance. Doing so would stain my own heart and being.’ He had come to understand this through the many experiences he had gathered over time.

Regardless of the circumstances, he knew that taking revenge on someone else’s behalf was not something he should do simply because the situation was like that.

Just then, Atlas’s eyes snapped open as a possibility suddenly occurred to him.

’What if... all of this is a puzzle? What if this entire situation was orchestrated to corner me into choosing what I want to do?’ His thoughts immediately began connecting the pieces as he reconsidered everything that had happened since the test began.

’From what those seven beings did, this is no ordinary test... It must have done something to me.’ The possibility seemed increasingly reasonable, although he still couldn’t be certain about the exact nature of the interference.

’Either the ’creator’ of this test knows about my situation with Seraphiel and even knows about the promises I made to her in the past, or... it has at least gathered enough information to understand my personality.’ Atlas’s left hand rested on the armrest of the throne, and his fingers began tapping against it as he continued thinking.

His eyes narrowed while he examined the two possibilities, eventually arriving at a conclusion that seemed to fit the circumstances. ’It really seems highly likely that it wants me to choose between killing mercilessly or letting these people die while Brundhamel’s revenge remains unfulfilled.’

’Perhaps the test doesn’t care whether I win the war or lose it. Perhaps it wants to see what decision I’ll make after being forced into this situation.’ Atlas couldn’t help but curse those seven individuals inwardly.

If they had simply thrown him into a battle against some monster or powerful opponent, he could have dealt with it without much difficulty. However, everything about this situation suggested that fighting wasn’t necessary at all, and that realization made the test far more troublesome.

Instead, this appeared to be a psychological and moral decision.

’It is not that I cannot or would not kill millions of people. It is that I have no enmity with these people, so why should I kill them? If they were my enemies, they would have already died many times over.’

After reaching that point in his thoughts, Atlas lifted his head and directed his perception beyond the palace, observing the sky and the clouds above as his mind continued to work. ’My Metadata Axiom should never allow some foreign memories to alter my soul or permit someone to make changes to it without my knowledge. That means... this entire setup is nothing but information forced into reality by someone else.’

At last, he felt that he had grasped the fundamental nature of the situation, and the answer was far simpler than the complicated possibilities he had been considering.

When the realization finally settled in, Atlas raised his hand as though he had found the answer to the test, ’Whatever its actual purpose, I don’t have to accept the choices presented to me. If this entire situation has been imposed upon reality through information, then I should be able to erase that information itself.’

’I don’t need to kill those people, and I don’t need to destroy the world. I only need to remove what created this situation in the first place.’ With that thought, he raised his right hand and prepared to put his conclusion into action, no longer intending to play along with the dilemma that had been placed before him.

"Thank you all, thanks to you, I have been able to realize something very deep about myself."

As Atlas finished speaking, black flames of Nothingness began gathering around his raised hand. The people surrounding the throne watched him in silence, their expressions gradually changing as they observed the flames.

There was no sudden panic or confusion among them, only an inexplicable sense of awe as they looked at their king, as though the realization he had reached held a significance they could not put into words.

"We are grateful to Your Majesty. May our lives provide you with what you need to achieve even further greatness in the future."

Atlas nodded one last time, accepting their words without offering a response. He then turned his attention toward the reality surrounding him, his raised hand ready to carry out the decision he had reached.

The black flames of Nothingness spread outward, beginning to erase the information that had given this entire situation its form.

A reality that had been created from information belonging to someone else.