Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 809 - 808: The Gods Are Dead

The gods are dead.

Gawain stared at the words carved into the stone for a long time. Because he had no idea how he ought to react for the moment, his expression remained utterly calm. Behind him, Yuri and the other two also came closer, and those warped, dark‑red gouges entered each of their fields of vision.

"...All the ancestors of my family..." Magnan’s eyes widened. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Gawain finally snapped out of his initial shock. Though seeing such a blasphemous line at the entrance of The Temple had stunned him for a moment, he still kept firmly in mind the rule that in Sandbox One one must not believe anything lightly, must not easily draw any conclusions. So the first thing he did was to ask Selena for more information: "The previous exploration party didn’t see this sentence anywhere in the city?"

"No, I can be sure of that," Selena said at once. "Although the previous team hadn’t yet had time to investigate the interiors of the city’s buildings, they had already searched their way to The Temple’s entrance. If they really had seen this, there’s no way they wouldn’t have reported it."

"The gods are dead..." Yuri murmured. "Back during the last exploration this Sandbox World was already empty of people. Who left these words behind?"

"Think of Illusion Town," Magnan muttered. "Empty of people... Maybe it’s just that we can’t see them."

"We should search The Temple, don’t you think?" Selena spoke as she turned her gaze to Gawain—though she and the other two Archbishops were the "specialists" for Sandbox One, their actual actions still had to follow Gawain’s judgment. After all, what they might be facing was gods, and in that regard, the Wanderers from Outer Realm were the true experts.

Gawain knew how the Eternal Sleepers saw him. In truth, he didn’t think of himself as any kind of professional when it came to fighting gods—this field was simply too high‑end; he really couldn’t imagine what sort of person could offer "technical guidance" on deicide. But he had, after all, come into contact with quite a few divine secrets, and he had taken part in the encirclement and cooking of The God of Nature (Folk Replica). At least in terms of confidence, he was a good deal stronger than ordinary people.

Of course, if he added in the theoretical knowledge he’d obtained from his regular exchanges with Veronica Moen and Kamel, plus the experience he’d accumulated from studying ancient classics and the Church of the Holy Light’s collections, then in the fields of theology and anti‑god research he could indeed be considered an expert.

"Let’s search The Temple," he said with a nod. "A religious site is a ’channel’ through which gods influence the real world, and it often can, in turn, reflect the essence and current state of the corresponding gods.

"But remember to stay on high alert. The moment you see anything abnormal or hear any suspicious sound, speak up immediately. In here, don’t trust your own mind too much."

The three Archbishops all nodded, then moved their feet in unison with Gawain, heading into the interior of that temple structure steeped in a strong desert style.

No one knew how long The Temple had stood abandoned. Inside, it felt old and worn, saturated with the marks of time.

After a short stretch of corridor came the hall used for religious ceremonies. The fires that had once lit the hall were long since extinguished. The massive pillars and the hanging draperies stretching down from above intertwined to cast layer upon layer of shadow across the hall. Sunlight spilled in through the narrow high windows, slicing bright "paths" between those shadows. It was currently afternoon in the Sandbox World, and these slanting shafts of light were not particularly strong, which only added a deeper sense of mystery and ancientness to the indoor space.

Gawain casually turned his head to glance out. His line of sight passed through a narrow high window and saw the sun at the horizon. It too was a giant sun; vague wood‑grain patterns could be seen on its magnificent corona, identical in appearance to the "sun" of the real world.

Living on a moon orbiting a gas giant, the Eternal Sleepers had no way to imagine what the suns of other planets might look like. In Sandbox One, they had likewise set up a sun that was almost no different from the one in the real world.

"This place has been abandoned for at least decades... maybe a century, but not longer," Yuri bent down beside a collapsed stone platform, rubbing a severely weathered scrap of cloth that had fallen from it between his fingers. "Otherwise things like this couldn’t have been preserved."

"But the words at the door looked like they were carved not long ago." Magnan frowned and muttered.

Watching Yuri’s movements, Gawain asked casually, "Things in a Sandbox World also weather and decay the same way as in the real world?"

"They do," Yuri straightened up. "And both the form and speed of weathering are pretty much the same as in the real world. For these detailed parameters we directly referenced reality. After all, rewriting an entire set of such details is a task that is almost impossible for a mortal to complete."

"Alas," Gawain couldn’t help but shake his head with a helpless sigh, "the real world can give birth to gods. How could a world so highly similar to the real one fail to produce corresponding religious phenomena?"

Walking beside him, Selena shook her head. "Before this, who knew that gods ’come into being’ rather than ’exist from eternity’?"

The three Archbishops had no answer to that. They could only continue in silence, searching The Temple for clues.

Magnan walked to the very front of the hall. There was a special round high window here, and the light pouring through it shone down on a platform that resembled a Pulpit. Tiny motes of dust danced in the beam of light, their original paths disturbed by the uninvited guests who had come to this place.

Yuri came up beside Magnan and asked offhandedly, "You’re sure you’ve removed the mental Storm from your subconscious, right?"

"For hell’s sake, how many times do you need to confirm that—I’ve removed it!" Magnan glared. "Have I accidentally hit you with a mental Storm that many times? Do you really have to hold such a grudge?"

"...I’ve literally trained up a dedicated resistance to mental Storms. What do you think?"

"...I—am—sure—I—removed—it! Absolutely. Removed!" Magnan stressed each word, one at a time. At the same time he was still examining this platform that looked like a Pulpit, and suddenly his sweeping gaze froze, fixing on a certain corner of the floor. "...It’s here too."

Following his line of sight, Yuri saw a row of rough gouges carved deep into the stone slab—identical in handwriting to the words at The Temple’s entrance—

The gods are dead.

The two Archbishops were silent for a moment before Magnan suddenly spoke: "Yuri, honestly—do you believe what’s written here?"

"There’s only one ’god’ in the sandbox. If these words are true, if the god really is dead, then we could actually go back and celebrate," Yuri said with a bitter smile. "Unfortunately, the ones who were contaminated are still contaminated, and the out‑of‑control sandbox shows not the slightest sign of recovery. Seeing this ’the gods are dead’ here and now... all it does is make everything feel twice as bizarre and terrifying."

Magnan nodded in agreement. "Makes sense. Whoever left these dreadful words here, their mind clearly wasn’t very sound anymore..."

On the other side, Gawain and Selena were checking several rooms connected to the main hall.

In a display room located to the rear side of the Pulpit, apparently dedicated to storing important items, they saw many offerings brought by the faithful. These things had been placed into square openings in the walls and were being carefully preserved.

Selena frowned slightly as she looked at those exquisite gold and silver vessels and jeweled ornaments. "The Supreme Narrator enjoyed the devout faith of the locals... These offerings are probably only a small portion."

"A pity that these mundane things should mean very little to a God," Gawain said casually. Right afterward, his gaze was drawn to an ornate and finely crafted single-handed sword placed all by itself—the sword was not set in a wall niche like the usual offerings, but on a platform at the far end of the room, protected by sigils around it. There also seemed to be writing on the platform, making it stand out as particularly unusual.

Gawain walked up to the platform and saw a line of text recorded upon it:

"Presented to my Lord by the most holy and mighty King Balmora, on a summer’s day in the Year of Chamomile."

"Seems to be a King’s offering to the Supreme Narrator..." Gawain looked at that line and commented offhandedly.

"King Balmora..." Selena also saw the line of text, and a trace of contemplation showed on her face. "I seem to remember something about him."

"Oh?" Gawain raised an eyebrow. He had originally thought it a trivial name, yet from Selena’s expression he sensed something out of the ordinary. "What did this King Balmora do?"

"According to the data output by the log system, he was a virtual persona automatically generated by the Sandbox," Selena said, thinking as she spoke. "At birth he was a slave belonging to the Nim Zhuel City-State. Then, according to system settings, he fought as a slave gladiator to win his freedom, became one of the city-state’s guardians, and slowly rose to the rank of captain of the guard..."

"A guardian who started out as a slave?" Gawain couldn’t help being surprised. "Then how did he become a King?"

"Let me think... By the time scale inside the Sandbox, it should have been about two hundred years before the system went out of control. The Nim Zhuel City-State was shrouded in an insect plague, the water sources were contaminated, the crops all failed, locusts and black beetles devoured most of the stored grain. The city-state’s aristocratic class fled, and the King also took his confidants and treasures to seek refuge in a nearby country. In that dire situation, those still alive in the city-state decided to choose a new King—whoever could find a way to fight the insect plague, to find a new source of food and water, would become the new King.

"And just as you’d imagine, this ’Sandbox resident’ named Balmora accomplished those things—he discovered the root cause of the insect plague, led the city’s people to a new water source, then led the Soldiers to catch up with part of the fleeing aristocratic nobles and take back some of the grain they had carried off... All of it was remarkable, even beyond the ’script’ we had pre-set. No ’virtual resident’ had ever before accomplished such history-shaping feats; events of that scope usually had to be driven by externally injected scripts... so he left an impression on me."

"So what became of this great King in the end?" Gawain asked, unable to hide his curiosity.

Selena seemed to hesitate for a moment before saying softly, "...Deletion."

"Deletion?"

"The script deviation was too large. The Sandbox judged that the system was at risk of imbalance, so it automatically executed a correction. Balmora suddenly died in his prime—in truth, he was Deleted. Of course, he left a name of his own in the history of Sandbox One; at least that part of his reputation was not reset."

For a moment Gawain said nothing. He simply gazed quietly at the sword resting on the platform, as if looking at a virtual persona born in the dream realm and manufactured by the system—watching him go from slave to Soldier, from Soldier to general, from general to King, to a mighty sovereign, and finally... to Deletion.

All of a sudden, he felt something different for those multitudes rising and falling in the Sandbox World.

His attention soon returned to this Temple belonging to the "Supreme Narrator."

"So, judging from the clues here, this King Balmora presented his sword to the God," he said to Selena at his side. "Which means that in Balmora’s active years, the faith in the Supreme Narrator had already come into being, and had even become the core belief of this Nim Sandro City-State."

Selena had clearly thought of the same thing; an intent, pensive look came over her features. "It appears... that’s the case."

"At that time, the Sandbox System had not yet gone out of control—yet you external monitoring personnel knew nothing of the appearance and existence of this Temple."

"That’s correct."

Gawain lifted his eyelids slightly. "What do you think is the reason?"

Selena pondered, then spoke slowly. "Either... after the Sandbox went out of control, the Supreme Narrator twisted time and history, weaving into the Sandbox World a course of events that had never originally existed; or the Sandbox System lost control much earlier than we imagined, and even the monitoring system has been deceiving us all along."

Gawain fell into silence.

Neither possibility was good news.

If it was the first, it would mean that the Supreme Narrator’s erosion and control over the Sandbox System was far more severe than anticipated, that it had even acquired the ability to manipulate time and history within the Sandbox World—something that went beyond mere mental contamination;

If it was the second, it would mean that its contamination had leaked much earlier than anyone expected, and that it was highly likely to have already left, in the real world, hidden dangers yet undetected and liable to erupt at any time...

In all honesty, Gawain would rather it be the first case.