Chapter 686: The Truth About Amphoreus. What if it’s the world that wants destruction!?

This strike landed far too easily.

Phainon stared in disbelief at Dawnmaker piercing through the Flame Reaver, feeling through his hands a sensation that was nothing like stabbing into a human body.

He had clearly done it, yet he felt not the slightest joy of victory. Golden flames spilled out from the Flame Reaver’s wound.

He slowly sank to his knees. From beginning to end, Phainon kept a firm grip on Dawnmaker’s hilt, never pulling the blade out.

And just then, the Flame Reaver reached out and grabbed Phainon’s arm.

"?!"

Phainon instinctively looked at him.

"Why not... let wrath... incinerate fate...?"

"Kha... os..."

The Flame Reaver spoke haltingly as he seized Phainon’s left hand and raised it. The force behind it was far too weak.

It was nothing like the struggle of a dying man.

Phainon did not even have time to resist before his left hand had already been guided upward by the Flame Reaver.

What confused him even more was the inexplicable power suddenly surging through his hand.

That pure-white ritual sword emerged from his palm and settled into his grasp. Guided by the Flame Reaver, the ritual sword’s blade was aimed directly at the Flame Reaver himself.

It wasn’t just Phainon. The audience was utterly baffled by the Flame Reaver’s actions as well.

They had originally thought there would be an intense battle.

But there wasn’t. The fight ended far too quickly.

And the Flame Reaver had simply given up struggling. He had even grabbed Phainon’s hand and assumed a posture as though willingly offering his neck for execution?!

...

: What the hell is going on...?

: What did the Flame Reaver mean by that... Kha... os...?

: Why can’t I sense even the slightest violence from the way he’s holding his hand? Why does it feel... gentle instead?

: That fight just now was strange too! The oppressive feeling the Flame Reaver used to have is completely gone!

: The music too... it’s way too tragic and heroic...

: But no matter what, the Flame Reaver really did lose... Doesn’t that mean this is the ending we’ve been hoping for?!

: Is that a good thing?

: I don’t know! We still don’t know what originally drove the Flame Reaver in the first place.

...

The comments streamed past.

But the camera suddenly shifted away from Phainon and Flame Reaver, turning toward the damaged Lygus.

Its shattered head was now crackling with electricity. Reflected in its scarlet eyes were the figures of two Phainons.

The screen gradually faded to black.

Lygus’s voice sounded as narration.

"..."

"At last, Amphoreus’s fate has begun to shift. Just as I foretold, your arrival will change everything."

"After all, you’ve also been bathed in that Aeon’s gaze, which can awaken the long-dormant instinct inside a man..."

"Much like that Scepter we spoke of earlier... It was only under the same Aeon’s glance that it was reborn."

"Heh... that’s right. If you recall, I mentioned it at the very start of our play: the Celestial-Body Neuron, once belonging to the Erudition, abandoned by the Aeon..."

"Now, allow me to reveal the final piece of the puzzle for you."

"The Eternal Land known as "Amphoreus" is nothing more than the Scepter’s endless, lonely extrapolation..."

"A bottomless well of fury, aimed at the god who cast it aside!"

Within the darkness, as Lygus spoke, a uniquely shaped mechanical body flickered with an ominous red glow.

Lord Ravager - Irontomb.

It was still the same cryptic riddling as ever. But this time, the audience understood it.

Combining his words with the previous information concerning Irontomb, the audience suddenly realized part of the truth behind the Era Nova, and even Amphoreus itself.

If what Lygus said was true...

Then every cycle and every calculation Amphoreus had undergone until now... had all been for one single purpose!

To transform that abandoned rage into flames capable of burning the universe! To give birth to Irontomb!

And in truth, Irontomb had already been born. He simply had yet to break out of his shell!

The so-called Era Nova... was never meant to save the world or rescue the doomed Amphoreus. Instead, it was meant to guide everything toward destruction.

Amphoreus itself was an internal simulation conducted by the Emperor’s Scepter out of rage.

After understanding this... the audience felt an even deeper despair than when they had first learned that Amphoreus was a world of data.

Even the comments became sparse. The stunned viewers did not even know how to express what they were feeling.

Within the darkness... following Lygus’s voice came the voices of Phainon and Cyrene.

The story returned once more to the earlier scene where Phainon (Flame Reaver) and Cyrene stood beside the cliff and spoke to each other.

In the darkness... Alongside their voices, the background music of "Coronal Radiance" began to play.

Lonely, simple, repetitive piano notes gently sounded through the darkness.

"Phainon... We set out on this journey to answer the world’s desire, didn’t we?" Cyrene asked softly.

"That’s what it means to be a Chrysos Heir. So has it always been."

Phainon answered with certainty.

"Then why..."

"...Why must Amphoreus’s wishes be so... cruel?"

"We made the best choices we could, whenever we could!"

As Cyrene spoke, the darkness receded.

The burning sky, the Dawn Machine that had completely transformed into something resembling the Black Tide, and Kephale carrying it upon his back appeared before them.

At the edge of the cliff beneath it... Phainon and Cyrene stood there quietly.

It was a familiar scene and familiar conversation, but this time, it was uninterrupted. Cyrene’s voice sounded even more despairing as she said:

"But in the end... the prophecy that led us... this black tide swallowing everything..."

"Why does it look like this?"

As Cyrene spoke... the burning sky instantly transformed.

The clouds that had once stretched endlessly across the skies became digitized, turning into blocks of red puzzle pieces that occupied more than half the sky.

The other half had already transformed into countless streams of data, their original shapes no longer even recognizable.

And beyond all of that... There was no starry sky.

No universe. There was only endless darkness, something impossible to make sense of.

This was the very edge of the sandbox world, the end of a world constructed from zeroes and ones.

The music reached its climax at that moment.

Outside the screen, the audience stared wide-eyed at the scene, utterly speechless.

They could not even imagine... what Phainon and Cyrene must have felt upon witnessing all of this.

If it had been them, they probably... would have been swallowed by an overwhelming sense of nihilism, then given up on doing anything positive ever again.

Because this denied everything they had done before!

Even if being data-based lifeforms brought with it a certain sense of emptiness... At the very least, the stories they had lived through and the choices they had made within that world had always been positive.

But now, you’re telling them... That every positive action they took would only lead to an even worse outcome?

What the heck! Why is miHoYo so cruel!!

...

: !!! Don’t play "Coronal Radiance’s" tune anymore! I can’t take it!!

: It’s all data streams!!

: I really... don’t even dare put myself in Phainon and Cyrene’s shoes anymore!

: Every Chrysos Heir made the most perfect choices. There was never a single mistake! But when they find out... that all of it was fake... that even their efforts could only hasten the birth of an Emanator of Destruction...

: Fuck, stop, stop talking!!

: Guys, why do I feel like the real suffering is only starting now?!

: It was already painful enough before, but now it feels like everything before this was just setup.

: This music... these visuals... AAAAAAH, it feels so helpless, so hopeless...

: This feeling of being completely powerless is fucking awful! If this path never had even the slightest bit of hope from beginning to end, then why does this story even exist?!!

: Where’s the comedy?! I’m going insane!!!

...

No matter how the comments wailed.

The story of Amphoreus continued advancing, coldly and mercilessly.

After hearing Cyrene’s words.

Phainon fell silent for a moment, then spoke, his voice suppressing an endless torrent of emotion:

"..."

"You see it, too?"

"Those burn marks... The flickering cubes... They’re not a tide at all..."

"They’re more like... a shattered teleslate [screen]."

Cyrene smiled sadly.

A teleslate. Exactly like the thing everyone in Okhema used to communicate with each other.

But what saddened Cyrene even more than the truth that she herself existed within a slate was:

"Standing here, the voices of Titans have never been clearer. Turns out..."

"They were coming from the black tide all along."

The prophecies, the Titans...

...

The guidance they had listened to and accepted.

All of it had emerged from the Black Tide before being transmitted into their ears.

So... All these years...

The countless people who had died in the Black Tide, the people who had fought against the Black Tide.

What did that make them? The Chrysos Heirs, no, not merely the Chrysos Heirs... every living being in this entire world believed that fighting against the Black Tide meant protecting Amphoreus.

But if the Black Tide was actually the will of Amphoreus, if this was the fate Amphoreus itself desired, then everything they had done all these years... what meaning did any of it have???

Fake. Everything was fake.

There had never been any salvation, and the guidance of the "gods" had merely led them toward an ending of destruction.

Phainon and Cyrene arrived at these thoughts almost simultaneously.

What followed immediately afterward was an emotion that made them almost instinctively furious.

The cold reality lay right before their eyes. Whether they accepted it or not, they were creations of this world, lives existing within this slate.

And now, their own creator was roaring, yearning for destruction. Both of them could clearly and unmistakably feel Amphoreus’s rage within the Black Tide.

The chaotic emotions and voices carried by the Black Tide violently assaulted their minds.

Cyrene subconsciously asked:

"Is that Amphoreus crying?"

Phainon’s eyes darkened as he said, one word at a time:

"Or maybe... it is screaming. At its creator. At its god."

The music grew louder and louder. The two of them bathed in the wind before destruction.

That world composed of false data, and the sensations created from it, were nevertheless being experienced by them as something undeniably real.

Cyrene stared ahead in a daze before suddenly saying:

"Phainon, do you still remember when I was little, I had a dream: A dark, cold room, with nothing but Oronyx’s curtain glowing like crystal..."

"The curtain seemed to contain all of Amphoreus, where strange and fantastic dramas played out within..."

"There were countless versions of us, from countless different worlds."

Having already gained a deeper understanding of the Black Tide, Phainon said quietly: "Perhaps, it wasn’t a dream."

Cyrene continued: "Yeah. As I gaze at the world before me, those sorrowful thoughts have become reality..."

"So, this is the reason the sky was sealed. Amphoreus is merely a larger Aedes Elysiae..."

"We are just characters in this tiny world (laboratory), following the prophecy (program), stepping onto the same journey (extrapolation) over and over..."

"What, then, is this so-called "Era Nova"?"

"And what are the spectators, watching all of this, truly hoping for?"

The annotations in the subtitles once again confirmed the audience’s suspicions.

And when everyone heard Cyrene’s final question, the bitterness in their hearts finally burst through the dam, turning into uncontrollable sorrow.

Teleslates. Something most people in Okhema possessed.

Every day, they would look through those slates... and countless works of fantasy were born within them.

They did not simply appear from nothing. Most were created because of the people holding those slates.

The people holding the slates watched the imaginary worlds within them, whether out of boredom or because they wanted to experience positive, thrilling, or even negative emotions.

If the entirety of Amphoreus were also regarded as a slate, then there must surely be someone holding it as well.

Whether that person was the creator or merely a spectator... What exactly did they want from them?

What emotions were they hoping these tiny people inside the slate would produce?

But compared to the teleslates they once casually played with in Okhema, Phainon and Cyrene’s greatest misfortune was that, as people within the story, they had become aware of the truth.

Aware that they were merely strings of code rather than living, breathing lives. And this screen did not merely represent the screen of a teleslate.

It also represented another, much larger screen.

For the audience, Cyrene’s final question struck directly at their hearts.

Amid the piano notes of "Coronal Radiance," the comments flooded the screen with anguished cries.

...

: We’re hoping you’ll all be safe!! We want you to have a beautiful, happy ending! AAAAAAH!!