Chapter 539 (1): Horseman of War, Do You Dream of Electric Sheep?

Pale rain poured ever harder. The Horseman of War looked up at the sky, his cold energy eyes gleaming with human-like confusion. He raised one hand and watched as white droplets fell on his palm. The white foam writhed, trying to corrupt and burrow into the machine. Some actually did. They found their way through the seams of the machine and entered the insides of the Horseman of War and his mount.

Large swathes of white foam wrapped around the Horseman of War, extending tentacles to grapple, strangle, and stir him.

White rain fell upon the streets of Berlo before rising as heavy white fog, pushing aside the red fog that had filled everyone’s sight. There was something inexplicably threatening about the white fog, evoking an undefinable fear in the loyal followers of the Horseman of War. Whispers filled the silence, indecipherable yet impossibly convincing.

A breeze swept by, carrying the whispers across Berlo. They reached the millions of troops at the border as well as the tens of millions of Prussian people. Soon, intense fear twisted their faces, and they rushed to find cover.

It wasn’t just ineffective. It had no effect at all.

As soon as white droplets and fog touched the ground, trees, buildings, and even the pedestrians’ clothes, they were colored pale. The cacophony of noises and the cries for help on the streets faded, replaced by a deathly silent paleness.

The trees lost their green and morphed into twisted white statues. The buildings became obscured in the pervading whiteness. Those walking within the fog slowly lost their original shapes, their forms writhing.

The whispers never let up. Like countless intangible tentacles, they brushed everyone’s face and tickled their ears, telling them the taboo knowledge from a bygone time. Past everyone’s mental defense, the whispers triggered a primitive fear and insanity.

Those with a better resistance clutched their heads and sobbed while fighting the voices invading their heads; those with weaker will went into a catatonic state with blank eyes, as if their souls had been extracted.

The usually energetic cats and dogs mutated amid the low growls. Their eyes turned pale first, then their fangs and claws softened and shot out in the form of twisted white tentacles.

The flora were no different. All of them had lost the conventional concept of life. Pale leaves hung down, pulled into viscous threads in their entanglement with the white rain. The canopies wriggled and turned into incomprehensible shapes.

The buildings, vehicles, tools, land, and air... The distant ineffable existence was now right within reach, bestowing upon the tangible and intangible beings the same knowledge.

Rumble!!

A pale tsunami hit the downtown area of Berlo, rushing endlessly in all directions and roiling toward the borders, sweeping the twisted tanks, planes, and cannons, as well as the soldiers whose limbs had liquefied.

Once everything settled down, Prussia seemed no different from what it had been before. People smiled in peace and serenity, standing in the hazy mist like wooden posts. All around them, the buildings remained obscured, and the trees remained twisted. Only in the details could the changes be observed: in the growths climbing along the seams of the walls, in the massive tentacles crawling along the sewers, in the pale blood vessels hidden in the crosses in the churches...

Unfortunately, no one could sense the changes. They had become one with the paleness and were themselves part of the changes.

The mages in Prussia were no exception. Compared to the pale ocean, mages’ thoughts were stronger than those of regular people, but not to a meaningful extent. A low whisper was all it took to make them listen.

Be it barriers or wards, all defenses crumbled under the pouring rain. Only one voice remained in all of Prussia...

“I knew there were no engineers in parchment paper in the sewers. It’s a myth.[1]”

Tens of thousands of white droplets gathered and transformed into Wayne. He put a human skin on himself, easily blending into the environment. Wherever he went, countless people in the thick mist smiled at him, either taking off their hats or putting a hand on their chests to salute their faith.

“Praise be to the great gift. I’ve come to understand everything...” xN

The innumerable voices murmured. The chorus shook the veil of rain, resulting in noises that sounded like a march of entangled tentacles.

“It’s too creepy and villainous.”

Wayne covered his face. This was why he had been reluctant to resort to corruption. If he couldn’t reverse it later, all of the Chosen Land would turn out like this. While he was trying to save the world, it would seem to others like he was trying to blend all humans into juice to take down the barriers between individuals, creating a collective hivemind[2].

Boom!

A crimson sphere expanded and generated endless currents with devastating shockwaves, erasing Berlo from the map.

Writhing paleness generated the buildings anew. The people continued to smile serenely.

Aside from Wayne and the Horseman of War, everyone was at peace.

Hum—

A second red ray crashed in with layers upon layers of wild currents, soaring into the sea of pale clouds and putting a hole in the sky. Shockwaves shot outwards, uprooting the city of Berlo. After razing all the buildings and mountain ranges to the ground, the red light charged toward the more distant city.

Wayne narrowed his eyes, extending the pale clouds’ coverage with an impassive look on his face. The pale ocean reached the sea in the north, rushed into Ostarrichi and Enoria in the south, invaded Franc in the west, and flattened the impoverished nation in the east. At the same time, he connected himself to the octopi he had placed in those countries to activate them. Thick tentacles rose from the ground to stir up insanity and disseminate whispers.

He acted like a great villain to protect the world. At least... he kept everyone alive.

As the saying goes: they’ve lost everything, but they have their lives.

In comparison, the Horseman of War seemed way too heroic.

A large hole had been put into the pale ocean of clouds above. Warm sunlight shone through and cast the Horseman of War and the red glow around him golden. His brave, heroic figure looked righteous from every angle.

The Horseman of War's first attack erased Berlo from the map, and the second was meant to destroy all of Prussia. Both attacks, however, ultimately failed. His energy eyes scanned the now restored streets of the city, collecting data to evaluate the opponent’s danger level. He concluded that Wayne was capable of greater destruction.

The corruption of the paleness was absolute and irreversible. When he realized that, the Horseman of War stopped attacking blindly. His thoughts locked onto Wayne as he activated all of his weapons and assistive systems, recording Wayne’s every move and utterance.

“Hey, metalhead. Do you talk?” Wayne floated up, transforming into the Pale Knight under his human skin.

“The Horseman of Pestilence?!” The Horseman of War spoke in a dull, electric voice. “If you are Pestilence, why have you descended before me? If you’re not, why do you manifest the same way as Pestilence?”

“Good. If you can talk, you can think,” Wayne said coolly. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Wayne. You may call me the Lord of the Void, the Anointed One, the God of Nature, the Lord of Deceit, the Death Knight...”

“Now, would you mind telling me what you are? Are you a god Elohim captured during the War of Faiths, a creation of His, or... are you a program?”

It was a complicated question. The Horseman of War considered it for a moment. “I was born out of war with no past. I’m a knight named War!”

“That’s not right. I don’t think it’s right when I think about it,” Wayne said, arching an eyebrow. “You’re born out of war and are destined to come into existence. Then you haven’t come out of nowhere. You have a past and existed in the past. You’re a living being with free will. That is you.”

The Horseman of War paused, confused. He tightened his grip around the energy greatsword in his hands.

“No rush. Let us talk properly before we fight. We don’t want to fight until the end and not know who the other is. Then you won’t know your killer, or I won’t know mine.”

Wayne took a step back and didn’t respond to the challenge. “No offense, Horseman of War, but do you dream of the electric sheep?”

The Horseman of War paused again. According to his database, there was no such thing as an electric sheep in the Chosen Land. Combining the separate components of electric and sheep, though, he could decipher ‘electric sheep’.

Something electric would be a mechanical life like him, while sheep symbolized desires, most representative of which would be lust—the most primitive, instinctual part of personhood. Therefore, Wayne was asking him if he possessed the basic desires of a living being.

The Horseman of War nodded. “I was born for war. I am war. War is my desire!”

“Then what does war satisfy in you? The desires of your id, the desires of your ego, or the desires of your superego?” Wayne perked up, asking more questions and considerately explaining what id, ego, and superego were.

“The question means nothing.”

“How can it mean nothing? It concerns whether you’re alive and whether you are War.” Wayne raised his eyebrow. “Hear me out. I listed a few aliases and names, which you don’t have. I only know that you’re known as the Horseman of War, and that you emerged for war. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

The Horseman of War nodded. Although Wayne was being intentionally misleading, he made sense—at least to a mechanical life like War.

Your logic is sound. Keep going!

“That begs the question. Just because you call yourself War, you are War? Who approved of it? Who acknowledged you as it?” Wayne spread his hands. “Or let’s look at it from another angle. If I call myself the Horseman of War, can I represent war and become you, replacing your role?”

The Horseman of War fell into deep thought. His logic told him that Wayne was right. If he could be the Horseman of War, Wayne could, too. A name was but a representation of an existence. Its meaning was not absolute.

“I understand.”

“If I can represent war and I am the Horseman of War, what are you and what do you represent?”

“I am you,” said War. “You can represent war, then I can, too.”

“You’re right. You are me, and I am you. Just like them. See? They are me...” Wayne pointed at the people of Berlo filling the streets. Whichever person he pointed at, their face would become his. Then he pointed at the Horseman of War and said, “If everyone is a Horseman of War, won’t you be killing yourself by destroying us and fighting me?”

“...”

1. Referring to a reference made way back. There are urban legends about how German engineers had left spare components wrapped properly in Qingdao’s sewage system after constructing it. It’s a story about stereotypical German conscientiousness. ☜

2. A reference to Evangelion, where humans were to be made complete, turning into fluids in the process. Their souls would become one, and individual emotions would remain. Because the fluids looked like orange juice in the anime, it’s known as orange juice in the online community. ☜