Memory Reaper's Ascension - Chapter 204: The Great Corruption

Chapter 204: The Great Corruption

Ishiki’s eyes continued their methodical journey across the wall, drinking in revelations that seemed to grow more disturbing with each passing image.

He had reached a new section now—one that depicted events of such magnitude that even the Demigod’s crude carvings couldn’t diminish their terrible significance.

The first image showed a single figure that looked human, sitting on a throne above everyone else. Below this solitary form was a paragraph of text, scratched deeper into the stone than most.

“I have recently discovered something that changed everything I thought I knew about the world.”

“My father—the God Mandecium—was once a normal human. An Awakened human who ascended through the ranks of what I’ve learned is called the Neural Matrix System.”

“I questioned many beings. All of them confirmed the same impossible truth: the gods were not born divine… but, they earned divinity through life and death.”

“This system… the Neural Matrix System… it exists across the entire world. Each of the Five Major Continents has their own gods. And every single one of them was once human. And even these gods are mortals… just with power that no mortal should be given.”

“Awakened humans can become gods.”

Ishiki stopped reading, his eyes widened as he looked at those words.

The Neural Matrix System. The very same system that had dragged him and two thousand other players into Aethelburg. The system that granted levels, skills, protocols, and vestiges.

That system could create gods.

The implications were staggering. If Mandecium had once been human and had climbed through the same progression system that Ishiki now navigated, then godhood wasn’t some unreachable pinnacle.

It was a destination he would eventually reach, a final tier of the synth reactor maybe. It was something that could theoretically be achieved by anyone with sufficient strength, luck, and determination.

Ishiki’s hands trembled as he continued reading the text below the image.

“I was envious when I learned this truth.”

“My father had earned his divinity through conquest and accumulated power. He had started from nothing… and climbed until he stood among beings who could reshape reality.”

“And I—his son, born with divine blood already flowing through my veins… was still considered half-mortal.”

“I wondered then if I could do what he had done. If I could earn what he had given me as mere scraps.”

“I never got the chance to try.”

The bitterness in those final words was palpable even through stone.

Ishiki forced himself to move on to the next image, though part of him wanted to stop reading, dismiss Sorrow’s Edge and sit in darkness and think again about what he had learned.

But he couldn’t afford ignorance and he didn’t have much time. He could not stop when the truth of this place might be the key to survival.

The next carving showed the World Tree again—that massive, continent-spanning entity with roots that burrowed to the earth’s core and branches that clawed at the heavens.

But this time, the tree wasn’t alone.

Surrounding it were dozens—no, hundreds of smaller figures. They were human armies judging by the size and proportions.

The armies were depicted in various positions of conflict. Swords raised, spears thrust forward, bodies falling.

It was the chaos of War.

They were fighting each other, Ishiki realized. Not attacking the tree, but warring amongst themselves for control of the ground around it.

There was no text beneath this image.

Ishiki moved to the next carving, and what he saw there made ice water flood through his veins.

The World Tree again…. it was still massive and dominating the landscape.

But now, rivers of blood flowed beneath it. Streams of crimson liquid poured from countless corpses littering the ground. The armies from the previous image had been decimated, reduced to nothing more than offerings for the earth itself.

And those rivers of blood… were flowing in one direction.

All of them were converging toward the World Tree’s trunk, where the liquid disappeared into the bark as if the tree were drinking directly from the carnage.

The detail in this carving was extraordinary. He could see how the blood darkened as it approached the tree, and how it was being absorbed by the tree itself.

Below this horrifying scene was a single line of text:

“The Tree drinks deep from mortal ambition.”

Ishiki swallowed hard and forced himself to continue.

The next image showed five large figures suspended in the air above the blood-soaked battlefield. They were massive compared to the human corpses below—three, maybe four times the size of normal men.

They all were gods, without a doubt.

All five of them, drawn with more care and detail than any other figures in the Demigod’s entire chronicle.

They were fighting… against each other.

But what made Ishiki’s blood run truly cold was the position of the gods relative to the World Tree.

They were fighting directly above it. As if the tree itself were the prize they sought to claim.

“Why?” Ishiki whispered to the empty chamber. “Why would gods fight over a tree that corrupts? What could possibly be worth so much?”

Ishiki in all his knowledge could not answer that simple question… he suspected that the tree either provided some kind of power or maybe relief. As it was already established that the gods were also players, so that meant they too had their own corruptions corresponding to their titles or such.

With that understanding, he moved to the next image.

The five gods were shown again. But this time, they were falling as their perfect forms were bleeding from countless wounds.

And below them, the World Tree had changed.

Its bark had darkened and there was a huge fruit that grew from its largest branch.

Below this apocalyptic scene was another paragraph, this one carved with such force that the letters had actually cracked the stone in places:

“The gods bled and their blood made the world tree resent the very form of humanity.”

“The World Tree drank their divinity, and got corrupted by their desires. The prophecy was coming true.”

Ishiki stood frozen before this carved prophecy of doom, his newly healed heart hammering against his ribs.

This was it. The origin point. The event that had changed this entire world from a thriving place into a cursed shadow of its former glory.

He moved to the final image in this sequence, though dread made his feet heavy as lead.

What he saw there would haunt him for the rest of his life, however long or short that might be.

The image was divided into two panels, like a before-and-after comparison.

The first panel showed a sun. Bright, radiant, warming. The kind of celestial body that supported life and marked the passage of days. It hung in a sky filled with clouds, benevolent and distant.

The second panel showed that same sky. But the sun was gone.

In its place hung a moon.

Not a natural moon… instead It was massive, bloated and radiated a sense of dread. Around it the sky had turned completely black as a void without anything.

The Demigod had scratched the surface of this particular carving until the stone showed different textures. In some places, it was reddish. In others, darker.

The overall effect suggested a moon that was almost crimson in color.

Beside this corrupted moon was a small note, carved in letters so tiny that Ishiki had to lean close to read them:

“The Corrupted Sun.”

And below both panels, stretched across the entire width of the carving, larger than anything else on the walls, was a title.

“THE GREAT CORRUPTION”