Chapter 428

Chapter 428: Burning a God

Light flowed through the thicket of thorns. The thoughts of the Elder Gods spread in the darkness. A broken body squeezed through the narrow gaps between the thorns. A shaking will crossed the abyss of madness and foolishness.

[How long had she been moving through this space full of chaos? How much corruption from the Elder Gods had she already touched? Was she still a whole person now, or only a shard drifting in the chaos, about to be taken in and absorbed by it?]

Agatha could no longer tell. She could not tell anything apart. She could not even tell where her body ended and the mass of chaos around her began. In her sight, her body looked like a blot of ink slowly spreading in water. The edges of her body were blurry, like liquid soaking into paper. It felt as if she was not walking through this darkness, but flowing forward inside a thick, sticky fluid that had the same nature as her own body.

She knew that everything was almost at its limit. elements. She did not know whether this thing had really created all things in the world. But one point was clear: it had created the body she had now.

Ice melted into water. Mist turned into wind. A replica that had condensed out of elements would return to the “sea” made of elements. The so-called “personal will” inside this body would soon turn into a small, unimportant point of light in that chaotic sea, food for the tiny glimmers that kept moving through the thicket of thorns.

She was only a replica. She was only a shadow. She carried memories of twenty-four years of life. In those memories were her home, her comrades, and everything she loved or hated. But out of those twenty-four years, what truly belonged to her might be only three days, or even less.

For some reason, Governor Winston’s voice suddenly seemed to echo in her mind, full of sighs and regret:

“There was no meaning in any of it…”

A living man who had a real life had summed up his own years like this in the endless dark. A replica who had only three days of life was now walking through the darkness, trying to face the Elder Gods head-on.

“So stupid…”

Agatha sighed softly as she spoke. Her voice melted into the darkness and turned into faint ripples. In her mind, endless streams of information kept rising and falling. A mysterious will made of “0” and “1” washed over her thoughts.

She knew she was about to melt into that vast will. Even though this place only stored one flash of thought from the Elder Gods at a single moment in time, its huge size was still far beyond what her weak mind could bear.

But it was fine. She had already arrived.

She had walked through the huge forest of thorns and reached the deepest part of the darkness.

That “tentacle” like a pillar holding up the sky stood quietly before her. The surface of the great pillar was full of strange dark blue lines. Against the dim, chaotic background, it looked like some kind of monument that recorded ancient Truth.

Agatha slowly raised her head, then reached out a hand and tried to touch it.

Black fragments and smoke drifted up in her sight.

The thorns had already cut countless wounds across her skin. A substance like black sludge now poured from inside her like fog. It spread out and melted into the space around her. The rising black fragments and smoke were things drifting out of her own body.

Agatha felt that she must now look like a horrible doll covered in cracks. Even if someone wrapped her whole body in bandages, it would not hide this terrifying shape.

At the same time, the “tentacle” of the Elder Gods did not respond to her touch.

It did not show any mighty power. It did not show any frightening side. It did not even react to the outside world at all. Her fingertips only felt a touch that was a little cold and soft, with a bit of roughness in it.

[Is it because this is only a vision projected here from the Deep Sea? Or because my existence is too small, so small that I cannot even draw the Elder Gods’ notice?]

Agatha frowned. She tried to think about whether there was anything she could still do in these last moments. But after thinking for a long time, she found that there seemed to be nothing left she could do.

She had reached the end. She had learned the truth of this darkness. She had walked through the thicket of thorns that stood for the Elder Gods’ thoughts. At the very end of this darkness, she had seen part of the Abyssal Lord’s true form. She had even touched this tentacle of the Elder Gods with her own hands.

There was no more truth left for her to dig out, and no more mission waiting for her to carry out. This last stretch of road was, in truth, less for the duty of a Gatekeeper and more to satisfy one bit of her own stubborn will.

Now, it was time to rest.

So Agatha let out a light breath and relaxed her body. She slowly turned around and leaned against the huge tentacle beside her, as if leaning against a pillar.

A strange thought suddenly came up in Agatha’s mind. She leaned there in the dark and muttered to herself: “I probably don’t even have a soul that can set off on the road…” But soon she gave a self-mocking smile and shook her head: “Of course not. If I had a soul, I would have given that other ‘Gatekeeper’ a lot of trouble when I went through that door… And after I went over, what about her? A person can’t walk through that door twice…”

She went on in a low voice: “I wonder how things are at the Cathedral… Did that group who went down the shaft make it back… But it seems they don’t really need to worry…”

She kept talking to herself in the dark like this, as if she could not control the drifting of her thoughts. Whatever she thought in her heart, she let it slip out in words.

But just then, a strange burning heat suddenly cut off her mumbling.

Agatha jolted out of her dazed fog.

In that instant, she felt flames baking her whole self. The terrible heat seemed ready to burn through her soul at once. She felt her mind boil in the fire. The thoughts that had almost been fully taken over by this place also cleared up. She struggled to stand in this vision of fire burning her body. She did not know what had happened, but in the next second, a voice drilled into her mind—

“The fire is lit.”

It was her own voice.

In the dark, Agatha opened her eyes wide. It was as if she saw a vision. She saw herself standing before a deep pool full of rolling black sludge. The rim of the pool was ringed with disgusting cultists and demons. The mud in the pool churned and spread malice. She stood before that mire, raised both hands high, and they blazed up like the Sacred beacon Torch.

A faint green suddenly rose in her sight, as if the vision had pierced the line between real and unreal.

Agatha looked down. On the surface of her arm, which had already started to break apart and drift away, flames were rising. The ghost-green flame was exactly the same as the one she had seen in the vision.

In the passage that this flame built, she suddenly felt it—she felt another mind, another self.

The other self also felt her.

She understood what she should do now. She still had something to do.

Agatha suddenly turned around and stared at the tentacle that rose like a pillar to the sky. The brightest smile she had worn since she entered this darkness bloomed on her face. A clear light showed in her eyes again.

She took a step forward and reached out both hands toward the tentacle. Flames quickly swallowed her whole body. Yet the pain of being burned now felt like a great reward. Agatha spread her arms wide. It was the same pose she had seen herself take before the deep pool in that vision.

Like an embrace, the Gatekeeper threw herself at the tentacle.

One great power would clash with another. Those mad cultists wanted to use the Gatekeeper to build a bridge for the sacrificial victim. But this roaring fire would cut that bridge off for good.

Boom!

A terrible roar rang out in the dark. Almost in the blink of an eye, the flames swept across this twisted, chaotic space. In the spirit form fire that rolled and rose like a storm, the huge tentacle turned into a burning Sacred beacon Torch and shook hard in the fire.

Agatha felt her flesh and blood quickly melt in the flames. Her body, which had been made of corruption from the start, now became one part of this complete purification by fire. Yet she did not feel any fear. Instead, she struggled to lift her head and looked back in the direction she had come from.

The “thicket of thorns” was also burning. Under the wildly spreading spirit flame, it looked like a strange and grand crown of trees.

“Goodbye… Governor Winston…”

Agatha whispered to herself and hugged the tentacle even tighter in the fire, quietly waiting for the end of her fate.

But just before her mind faded away, she suddenly felt something.

The flames burned through her and burned through the tentacle as well. In the bridge that the spirit form fire built, she felt for the first time this “limb of the Elder Gods” respond to her.

She lifted her head in shock and looked at the patterned surface of the tentacle. She watched the fire run inside and outside it. She felt the stream of information that poured into her mind from the spirit flame. She saw what looked like countless eyes opening at once all over the surface of the tentacle. Every eye was madly sending knowledge and information into her.

In the end, all the knowledge and information turned into a storm inside her head—

11101001…11100101 10001000…10010011…

The long strings of “0”s and “1”s filled the last bits of thought Agatha had left.

But this time, she understood what they meant.

“Error… replicant…”

Shocked, she sounded out the message that this limb of the Elder Gods sent to her. She understood its will and at last pieced together the answer.

She stared at the tentacle she had set on fire.

“This is also… a replica?!”

In the next second, the blazing green flame swallowed the last trace of her mind.