Chapter 668: Extrapolating The Entire Plot! An Undeniable City Of Villains!

"Seriously? Even you had met them?"

Illogical matters aside, Aurora stared sharply at Leo before subsequently relaxing her gaze.

She didn’t dare to fully place her trust in someone other than herself, but Leo was the person who came closest to obtaining it aside from Kara.

Most importantly, if Leo was truly on the City Council’s side, he wouldn’t have bothered helping her so many times, saving her, as well as explaining everything to her.

Unless he was the kind of sick individual who dictated his life to manipulating people for pleasure, such an absurd scenario where he does all of that only to push her off the ledge wasn’t possible.

At the very least, he would have made sure to omit the fact that he had made the very same invaders.

"I didn’t meet with their glorified invaders specifically. However, in the Hidden Gate that I found, I did meet another foreign entity that seemed to harbor similar intentions."

Starting from here, this was a real story. At least the core facts were.

"It offered ’Absolute Power’ in exchange for eternal servitude. Once I received that proposal, I immediately thought of the broken City Council. They must have received the same offer!"

This so-called foreign entity was none other than the Master of Darkness, the one who sent a blob of flesh as a messenger to create an interdimensional slave, as well as the one Leo extorted the Seed of Darkness from.

"Naturally, I didn’t accept that offer, but I learned a lot. Having shown its subtle desire to conquer our world through me, that foreign entity also attempted to deceive me by mixing truth and lies, even going as far as snitching on its fellow foreign friends."

In reality, while the Master of Darkness did indeed have plans, it wasn’t anything as short-term as Leo was insinuating, but it wasn’t like Aurora needed to know that.

"It tried to scare me into believing that it was my only hope for survival, explaining that an invasion was imminent, and telling me about Encroachment Gate; it wove a story where I, with its gift of absolute power, reduced the Encroachment rate to absolute zero, saving the world only at the cost of allowing them passage at a later date."

"So that’s how you came to know about it all... Is our world really that great? Why are we targeted by so many foreign entities?"

Needless to say, Aurora bought everything that Leo told her. After all, it all made sense.

As a reader who had read too many books, fabricating a convincing tale was far too easy.

"I don’t know the exact answer, but from the hints I got from the foreign entity I met, it seemed like our world was merely a footnote amongst thousands of worlds being conquered simultaneously, no different from the Gates we were mining for Enigma Stones."

In reality, the novel really failed to elaborate much on the world-conquering setup, but it left points that could be extrapolated from.

As such, Leo simply told the image he managed to extrapolate, relying on the more in-depth knowledge he obtained in the novel.

Just the Multiversal Arena of Ascension on its own was enough to tell Leo that this multiverse in this novel was quite vast.

"For instance, the being I met might have represented a foreign entity, but it wasn’t the foreign entity itself, merely a thread of its consciousness. In an attempt to catch as many fish as possible, it cast a wide net, spreading those threads through many worlds."

Once again, this was just a hypothesis of Leo’s.

While the original Villain who received the Seed of Darkness didn’t participate in any world-conquering shenanigans, the Master of Darkness had to have a reason for handing out these seeds; it just likely didn’t fall within the scope of the novel that Leo read.

"By only investing in the gifts it sold as absolute power, it obtained a lottery-like chance to conquer one world through the backdoor using virtually no resources. As much as I despise both conquerors, the sneaky one I met definitely took the smarter approach."

"A mere footnote, huh..."

"Unfortunately, while the lies they sell are bogus, their power is indeed unrivalled. Just as that fanatic expert of theirs said, the expedited construction of Enigma City was indeed the effect of their gift, and so is the mild brainwashing effect covering the entire City. The ’guy’ I met also revealed that fact in order to tempt me with a gift of my own."

This time, the detail Leo recounted came straight from the novel.

While the mention of how and when they met the invaders was omitted in the novel, faint details of the Ability the councilman received and their purpose were mentioned alongside the reveal that Enigma City was being controlled by a cult.

"In essence, Enigma City was specifically built to gather and control humanity’s foundation for any resistance that would arise against the invaders when they descended. In simple terms, Enigma City was a city built by villains, for villains."

While there were many reasons for the novel’s title, the core reason why it was called the City of Villains was precisely that.

A city built a cult of villains that betrayed the entire human race, all for the sake of the biggest villain of all, the final boss known as the World Conqueror!

"Do... Do we even stand a chance?"

’You really did change.’

Although he had been singing this song for a while, hearing Aurora’s weary words, it hit him dead center for the first time.

Aurora was meant to always persist no matter how tattered she became.

Even in the novel where she had it much worse, she remained steadfast to the end, but now, the Hero of Light faltered quite easily.

It was a weird thing to say, but...

’She feels like a proper human now.’

Ironically enough, this weak-hearted state of hers showed the basic attributes of a human that the protagonist in the novel was completely devoid of.

"If we really were no threat, would the invaders have bothered to prepare the world for their invasion?"

Although the gap between invader and invaded was quite vast, this was precisely why the Encroachment system was enacted!

With Leo’s consistent effort at reducing the Encroachment rate from the beginning, Aurora’s turnaround, and Kara’s full compliance, this world might as well stand a chance, even without having to sacrifice the one true guardian they had!