Chapter 1140: 127. What Wrong Have They Done?

“Wh-what... what is that?”

Marcie was so frightened she fell sitting to the ground.

The clear sky stretched cloudless for ten thousand miles, blue as a mirror, so beautiful it made one sigh.

But at this moment, that dazzling colored mirror was no longer perfect. A clear fissure divided the highest part of the sky, and a majestic molten-gold great sun hung there, competing with the other sun for radiance.

No.

That was not the sun.

That was an eye.

The eye of some terrifying, unimaginable creature.

Marcie had never seen that kind of creature before, and she had no idea what sort of existence it was. Only, when she raised her head and looked at it, both her soul and her flesh began trembling instinctively.

She hurriedly lowered her head, not daring to look again. With just one glance, that terrifying sense of pressure had nearly made her faint.

And it was not only her. All of Annabawei, just like Marcie, was kneeling and crawling on the ground in terror, shivering like ants.

They did not even know what had happened. Their minds were still in a blank state. They only instinctively felt... that the ending to this story, which should have been beautiful and bright, seemed to be moving toward another extreme in an almost plummeting posture.

“M-Muen.”

Marcie was already lying prostrate on the ground, her forehead pressed tightly against the earth. It seemed only this could ease the fear in her body.

Her mind was in complete chaos.

The Pollution on Muen’s hand, and the unknown existence in the sky... Hadn’t it been agreed that once they defeated the Goddess, everyone would have a bright future? Then why... why did she instead have a very bad feeling?

“That, that thing in the sky... do you know it?” Marcie noticed that Muen was different from them. He did not have much fear, nor was he being crushed by that pressure.

“I do,” Muen said.

“Huh?”

“Didn’t I tell you? One of my goals in coming here was to find my companion.”

“You mean...”

“Yes... She is the companion I’ve been searching for all this time. Miss Dragon...”

Muen raised his head and met that familiar golden pupil’s gaze. Ignoring the stabbing pain in his mind, he tugged at the corners of his mouth in a daze, seeming to cry and laugh at once.

“I just didn’t expect that you had never actually come in at all...”

Where was Miss Dragon?

Miss Dragon was outside.

That was why Muen had never been able to find her.

That made sense too... How could such a tiny Annabawei possibly hide Miss Dragon?

It was only that he had been somewhat trapped by his own preconceptions, thinking that since he had already entered, Miss Dragon, who was much stronger than him, must naturally have already entered long ago as well.

But in reality... the only one who had entered was him.

Only now had Miss Dragon found this place.

Following that light. Following that noise and those fireworks.

But for Annabawei, for the people here who had been oppressed by the black night for several hundred years, that did not seem to be anything good.

Because to the people here, she was no longer the Miss Dragon in Muen’s eyes.

She was a natural disaster.

The Dragon of Death and Doom, Hamreign!

The existence that brought destruction and death!

“The Fog Wall outside Annabawei, and another special layer of barrier, were all specifically aimed at her. Over these several hundred years, she passed through the void above Annabawei who knows how many times. If not for the fact that we hid in the cracks of time, perhaps we would have been discovered by her long ago.”

The Goddess of Night sat upon that false divine throne, lifted her head, and gazed affectionately at the golden pupil in the sky. She seemed to cry and laugh at once, tear tracks sliding down her aged, withered face.

She had turned back into that “kind” Goddess.

“But in the end, after hiding for so long, we were still found... How wonderful.”

“So you... or the other you, really did everything for Annabawei? This long black night was also to hide from Miss Dragon, who had narrowed down her search range and was roaming outside the Fog Wall more and more frequently?” Muen closed his eyes and began connecting all the complicated clues and thoughts together.

The black night was not pure black night, but a kind of protection.

That was why... it had been so long.

“Miss... Dragon?”

The Goddess of Night smiled. “What a... gentle way to call her.”

“Answer my question.”

“Once upon a time, that one had such a gentle name to us as well. Unfortunately... when the truth of Tars was revealed before her, the rage and fangs of a natural disaster tore apart that gentle false exterior and completely destroyed the entire city.”

The Goddess of Night still did not answer along Muen’s line of questioning. Instead, she began speaking on her own.

The black night had disappeared, and it seemed that the pressure on her had also completely disappeared along with it. Even her words became continuous and clear.

“More than eight hundred years ago, after Tars was destroyed, we fish who slipped through the net and survived by relying on ancient relics began fleeing separately in order to prevent her from catching up and killing us.”

“I came here and met my children. I knew she would not give up, so I built the wall, manipulated the sky, and protected me... and my children.”

“My children... like me, were born carrying an innocent sin. They were destined not to be accepted by the world. So I brought them and hid here, so that they could live too.”

“That was truly a happy time...” The Goddess of Night’s aged face trembled, and a trace of yearning appeared on it. “This place had not yet been discovered. Of course my children could enjoy the sunlight freely. They developed civilization here and moved toward prosperity. With my help, this place almost became another Tars, a beautiful land isolated from the world.”

“But she was ultimately still herself, the strongest creature beneath the firmament... Even through a brief temporal displacement, she was gradually approaching this place. Starting from that point four hundred years ago, I could sense her existence...”

“I was afraid... So I hid all my children away.”

The Goddess of Night lowered her head. When she thought of these things, the madness and rage in the depths of her eyes surfaced once more. Several hundred years of torment had indeed turned her into a madwoman.

A madwoman on another level.

But the reason for this madness was not any Pollution, but something deeper hidden beneath that madness and rage.

Love.

She loved her children.

How could she not know what Annabawei would become in the black night?

Decline, ruin—she had seen all of it with her own eyes.

She also knew that if humans wanted to survive, they could not leave light behind.

But she understood even more clearly what this place’s fate would be if that one found it.

That was an ending even more terrifying than the endless black night, than the fog in which no exit could ever be found, than increasingly scarce resources...

She could not bear it, yet she had no choice.

She was like a fragile mother who sensed the approach of a wild beast, yet did not know the beast’s exact location, and so could only press her children firmly beneath herself, not letting them make a sound or movement, using the last of her strength to shelter them.

Even knowing perfectly well that if this continued, her children would all suffocate to death.

She wanted to save her children, yet could only drink poison to quench her thirst.

She wanted to seek a solution, yet was powerless.

She wanted all of her children to live in bright sunlight, but in the end, she could only watch helplessly as they died one by one in the black night.

Pain... conflict... anger... and finally madness.

And this madness, in turn, drove her own children to hate her.

So under the pressure of all these things, she finally went completely mad and even split into two personalities.

One was an “evil” personality that carried anger and love, had long since lost clarity under the endless mental tension, yet still remembered to protect her own children.

The other... was a “kind” personality that constantly tried to make light shine upon this place, tried to draw in the natural disaster, tried to let this place be destroyed, and tried to find release.

The two fought each other, splitting each year into a long black night and a brief daylight. This fragile balance continued in this way for more than four hundred years.

“Four hundred years ago, when that child named Alan came before me, I once thought of giving up just like that.”

The Goddess of Night stroked the sacred artifact in her abdomen. This weapon was very powerful, but back then, if she had not already been in despair and carried the will to die, how could Alan possibly have succeeded in stabbing it into her body?

“But when I felt death approaching, I... or the other me, regretted it again. I knew her methods. She would completely destroy this place, leaving nothing behind...”

“But if I kept holding on a little longer and did not let her find this place...”

Confusion appeared in the Goddess of Night’s eyes, because even she could not determine that future. “Perhaps in the end... something might still be left? That was the other me’s thought.”

“...”

“Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

She sighed.

“Her mind was already broken to that extent, yet she still clung tightly to that little obsession and refused to let go.”

Absolute destruction.

And destruction that was not absolute.

Both were destruction, and the Goddess of Night had chosen the latter.

Even if... that would cause her to be hurt and hated again and again by the children she had always protected.

The pain formed by these factors had left her half-mad for all these years, with little time spent lucid. It had also caused the evil believers protected by her to become half-mad as well. Of course, a large portion of those people had simply been unwilling to accept the truth.

Just like...

“You... you’re lying to us, right!”

Marcie, who had been listening from the side the entire time, abruptly lifted her head. She had actually broken free from the suppression of that pressure for a short while.

Her eyes were full of terror. “You mean... all of us were wrong? We hurt the person who was protecting us? We pursued light... and that was wrong too? Something we shouldn’t have done?”

“...”

The Goddess lowered her eyes and said no more.

Muen also did not know what to say. He only lowered his head and looked at his palm, which was still being corroded by Pollution.

The Pollution was still spreading. Only, gradually, he was suppressing it with black flames.

At first, Marcie froze at the silence between them. Then her gaze gradually shifted as well, landing on Muen’s malformed palm.

She was very clever, so she quickly understood something.

But she was still unwilling to believe it.

Because if she believed it... wouldn’t that directly negate everything Annabawei had done over these four hundred years?

So much effort... so much hardship... so much sacrifice...

Had all of it been meaningless?

Had they even, on the contrary, hurt the Goddess of Night who had always been protecting them, and even brought Annabawei’s destruction forward?

“It’s fake, right... Those unbelievable things you’re saying... they’re fake, right... Complete destruction or whatever... how could that be possible? Why do we have to be destroyed? What did we do wrong? If it’s like you said, then we clearly didn’t do anything wrong, did we?”

Marcie’s face was covered in tears.

She did not understand. If the Goddess was not lying, and Muen was not lying either, and that terrifying existence in the sky had been pursuing and killing them all this time... then why?

They were only alive.

They only wanted to live.

They had not hurt anyone else... What wrong was there in that?

Why... did they have to suffer destruction?

Whether it was the black night... or the terrifying existence above the dome of the sky, why were they so fixated on destroying them?

They... what wrong had they done?