Online Game: I Started with Max Charisma and Caught the Goddess's Eye - Chapter 509 509: The Choice Between Strength and Will
As Luca made his decision, the main hall of the base’s central building shook violently.
Out of nowhere, in the middle of the once completely sealed hall, a staircase leading upward appeared. Without the slightest hesitation, Luca stepped onto the stairs.
The staircase stretched endlessly upward. Luca did not pause for even a moment. He climbed, step after step, for what felt like an eternity before finally reaching the end.
At the top, he pushed open a door. A blinding flash of white light swallowed his vision, rendering him momentarily blind.
When the brilliance finally faded, he found himself sitting in his own home—in the real world.
He was seated at his desk, and a faint numbness lingered in his arm. It felt as if he had just woken from a midday nap. Everything he had gone through seemed nothing more than a long, harrowing nightmare.
“What the hell is going on? Could it be… that everything I experienced was fake?”
His mind was still foggy. Confusion clouded his thoughts, questions leaping one after another in his head.
Just then, a familiar voice drifted through the door.
“Son, dinner’s ready. Come out and eat.”
It was his mother’s voice!
The moment he heard it, a flood of memories tied to his mother surged through his mind. He hadn’t seen her in such a long time.
In that instant, the urge to see her overwhelmed everything else.
He shot up from his seat and hurried toward the door.
But just as he reached it, he suddenly froze. His hand was already gripping the doorknob.
All it would take was a simple twist to open the door… and he would see his mother again.
Yet another thought flashed through his mind.
What if all of this is an illusion? What if I’m trapped in a hallucination? If I open the door, will I really see my mother—or will something far more terrifying be waiting for me on the other side?
Luca suddenly remembered: he was in the middle of a trial.
His task was to unravel the puzzle within the trial.
And it was clear that if he completely surrendered to this illusion, the puzzle could never be solved. His trial would end in failure.
As he wrestled with his thoughts, that same warm, familiar, gentle voice called out again from beyond the door.
“Son, what are you still busy with? Stop playing games and come eat! I made all your favorite dishes!”
At that moment, Luca’s hand slowly fell away from the doorknob.
He had already realized—there was absolutely no way he could open this door.
Then, his mother’s voice came again from outside, but this time, it no longer carried that warmth and tenderness.
“What on earth are you doing? Are you so obsessed with your video games that you won’t even come out to eat?!”
Her stern voice pierced through the silence. Luca took a deep breath.
“I know you are not truly my mother. You are nothing more than a fragment from my memories. That’s why I can’t open this door. I must conquer my impulses with my own wisdom.”
The moment he spoke those words, a sharp crash of shattering dishes rang from the other side of the door.
“What nonsense are you talking about?! You won’t even listen to your own mother now? You really are an unfilial son!”
The voice outside berated him harshly. Though Luca was in great pain, he had completely understood the situation by now.
At that moment, he began to resent the one who had set this trial.
“No matter the reason you’ve chosen to test me in this way, I cannot accept it. When this trial ends, I will make you pay the price.”
Luca swore to himself in silence.
And then, suddenly, the voice outside the door vanished.
Only then did he step forward and push the door open.
In that instant, a brilliant white light engulfed his vision once more.
Within that blinding light, only two words remained before his eyes: one was Wisdom, the other Emotion.
By refusing to open the door, his decision had meant he had chosen wisdom over emotion.
“So this is one of the deepest choices within my heart? I only hope the choice I’ve made is the right one.”
Luca muttered to himself.
The choice between wisdom and emotion was excruciatingly difficult.
In order to make the choice he believed was correct, he had endured no small amount of suffering.
But compared to the choice he would soon have to make, this was but a relatively easy burden.
When the white light faded, Luca found himself standing in a pitch-black void.
At the very center of this endless darkness stood a massive scale.
On each side of the balance sat a single weight.
Etched into one weight was the word Strength, and carved into the other was the word Will.
It was clear—he was now faced with the ultimate decision: to choose between strength and will.
And such a decision was one that Luca found almost impossible to make.
“What is this supposed to be? Why must I choose between strength and will? Are you telling me that immense strength and an iron will cannot exist together?”
Luca suddenly lifted his head and roared.
Though he was trapped deep within the innermost layer of his dream, he believed that his furious outcry could be heard by the one who had set this trial.
His confusion had reached its absolute peak.
He simply could not understand why a choice had to be made between strength and will.
If there was no unyielding will, then no matter how great one’s strength, it would be impossible to accomplish arduous tasks.
And if there was no strength, then even if one possessed an unbreakable will, what meaning would it have? One would still be unable to overcome those same arduous tasks.
Yet no matter what Luca shouted, the fact remained—he had to make a decision.
And he knew as well: this was the final choice buried in the depths of his heart.
As he stood there in silence, the pitch-black space around him suddenly began to tremble.
The entire realm was unstable now.
Strange, ominous wisps of Dreamweaving Mist seeped in from all directions, a sign that the power of darkness had pierced through layer upon layer of dreams, arriving now at the threshold of the deepest one.
Luca no longer had much time to think.
One way or another, he had to make his choice quickly.
“Which will it be—strength or will?”
He stared at the great balance before him and muttered under his breath.
In that moment, the black space around him shattered like glass.
The Dreamweaving Mist vanished completely, gone in an instant.
Endless darkness surged toward Luca, flooding in from every direction.
“There’s no time for further thought. Then I’ll make my final decision according to the true voice of my heart!”
Clenching his teeth, Luca shut his eyes tightly and seized the weight that represented Will.
The very instant he grasped it, he felt himself violently expelled from the dream.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself once more in that same pitch-black space where it had all begun.
On the surface, nothing seemed to have changed. Yet instinctively, he glanced down at his palm—there, resting in his hand, was the weight that represented Will.
“Have you understood what the riddle truly is?”
As Luca stood there frowning in thought, that ethereal, genderless voice drifted into the void once again.
Luca lowered his gaze to the weight in his palm, then spoke slowly.
“I understand now! The true riddle is about how one can maintain their true self while standing between completely different forms of power. And the only way to achieve that… is through an unshakable will, never submitting to overwhelming strength.”
As he spoke these words, his eyes grew more resolute, his expression firm.
He had finally grasped the complete truth behind the trial.
At last, he understood why the Goddess of the Night had left behind such a puzzle.
It was because only a successor with an iron will could possibly aid the Goddess of the Night.
“Very good. Since you have solved the riddle, I shall now let you know everything you ought to know.”
The genderless voice grew fainter, dissolving into the air like mist.
At the same time, a flood of memories suddenly poured into Luca’s mind.
These memories seemed to belong to the Goddess of the Night herself—yet at the same time, they also felt like they belonged to another, a Chaos Deity who had been silently observing all along.
Within these memories, Luca saw that the Ancient Gods, beings who embodied the Primordial Lands, had launched countless assaults against the Eternal World.
Sometimes, their assaults were repelled by the Eternal World’s own world will. Other times, the defense was carried out by the Chaos Deities who resided within the Eternal World.
But as ages passed, the strength of the Eternal World’s world will gradually diminished.
This meant that the burden of resisting the Ancient Gods’ assaults fell squarely upon the shoulders of the Chaos Deities.
Several millennia ago, the Goddess of the Night had taken up this responsibility.
She wielded her dominion over darkness and managed to seal away a tremendous Primal Power.
But this act also had dire consequences—the darkness she commanded became tainted, corroded by that very Primal Power.
As a result, the Goddess of the Night herself came under its heavy influence.
Because of this corruption, those who worshipped the Goddess of the Night gradually fell prey to the insidious erosion of the Ancient Gods.
In the end, to prevent the Ancient Gods from using the corruption of her followers as a bridge to invade the Eternal Continent, the Goddess of the Night placed a curse upon all of her own believers.
Only those whose wills remained steadfast, untouched by the Primal Power’s taint, could survive.
All the cursed followers Luca had encountered before—those who bore the mark of the Goddess of the Night—were in truth already consumed by the Primal Power belonging to the Ancient Gods.
At long last, every unanswered question had been resolved.
And the task the Goddess of the Night entrusted to Luca was this: to find a way—at any cost—to remove the corruption of the Primal Power that had seeped into her being.
It was for this purpose that she had set the riddle before him.
By solving it, Luca had proven himself—and as a result, he gained the ability to wield the power of darkness.
At the same time, entirely new skills connected to the darkness awakened within him.
