Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 819 - 818: The End of the Story

The layered prayers echoed in the darkness, as if resonating into a mighty river. Gawain and Selena could not see this river, yet could clearly feel that something was battering at the border of this world, striking the wall that separated reality from illusion.

Yet all of a sudden, a discordant disturbance appeared within the river, throwing all the voices of prayer into chaos.

Gawain instinctively exchanged a glance with Selena, and then heard a vague, blurry voice coming from an extremely distant place:

"mental Storm!!!"

A powerful interference erupted; the layered prayers were cut off in an instant, and every voice that had merged into the river fell back into the depths of the darkness.

"Sounded like Magnan’s voice..." Selena muttered subconsciously, and then saw faintly glowing cracks suddenly spread open before her eyes.

Using the spiderwebs in the darkness as veins, countless crisscrossing white streaks of light abruptly appeared in this dark space, making the entire space shatter and break apart like a smashed mirror. It seemed some kind of attack from "within" had broken this veil, and the scene before Gawain and Selena instantly opened up—

Gawain immediately focused all his attention and prepared for battle. Selena shifted to stand at his rear flank, the portable lamp in her hand radiating a warm, clear light.

A fresh, chill wind suddenly blew. After the veil shattered, an endless grassland bathed in starlight rushed into Gawain’s vision. He saw the gently undulating land stretching out under the stars, masses of unknown flowers and grasses lightly swaying in the breeze, and on the ground before him and Selena stood a hill that looked faintly familiar, the side of the hill facing the starlight.

At the foot of the hill lay the corpse of a gigantic black spider, still and silent. Its enormous body had split apart, and a spider of pure white, as if forged from light, had crawled out of the shattered remains. It was climbing the slope step by step, ascending toward the endless, lofty stars.

Shifting radiance and starlight pouring from high above spilled over the white spider’s carapace, rippling like water.

The White Spider seemed not to notice Gawain and Selena who had appeared on the grassland, still pursuing the stars in the sky with a stubborn, step-by-step persistence. Gawain, however, noticed that around him and Selena, countless hazy "human shadows" with no facial features had already emerged.

The Supreme Narrator’s attack had arrived.

Countless blurry figures charged toward Gawain and Selena. Gawain had originally wanted to rush over and stop that pure white spider suffused with a divine aura, but now could only think of a way to first deal with these tide-like phantoms of the past. A layer of illusory flame rose along the Sword of Pioneers; he swept his blade in a wide arc, and large swaths of enemies shattered into insubstantial fragments under his sword.

Under Gawain’s cover, Selena lifted the portable lamp in one hand and traced faintly glowing magic symbols in the air with the other, continuously transforming the surrounding strands of spiderweb and the distant phantoms of the past into awakening dreams, letting them turn into rapidly dissipating bubbles beneath the starlight.

Unexpectedly, the combat ability of those black phantoms was not very strong. Their greatest threat to Gawain seemed to be only in their overwhelming numbers.

Fighting as they advanced, Gawain and Selena constantly thinned the enemy ranks around them, while doing their utmost to reach the White Spider that was chasing the starlight.

A shadow stronger and swifter than the others lunged in from the side. Gawain’s Longsword swept in a tight arc, driving back the other enemies as he slashed at this one. At the last possible instant, that strong, agile shadow actually manifested a pitch-black spear, blocking Gawain’s blade; then the spear quivered as the shadow pulled back some distance and thrust in return—

The unexpected counterattack left Gawain slightly surprised, but it was still not enough to bridge the gap in strength. After several exchanges, the Sword of Pioneers sheared through the spear and smashed the phantom.

In the instant the phantom shattered, a jumble of information flowed into Gawain’s mind. He suddenly knew the name of the phantom he had just destroyed—he was called Delwolf, a captain of the guard from the West Coast City-State. He was stern by nature, yet liked to secretly collect seashells...

A pair of fierce twin blades swept in from the rear flank; their wielder was defeated after a few rounds.

Her name was Nadia, from the Cloudflow Forest. She was the consort of the Jade Court, a brilliant elf blade dancer...

The hill drew ever closer. Particles of faint light drifting off the White Spider were flitting across the plain like fireflies. Gawain could almost touch the aura emanating from that divine spider, while a warm, clear radiance constantly shone from his rear flank, ceaselessly dispelling the spiderwebs spreading from the void and the black smoke that surged forth from time to time, and continually replenishing Gawain’s spent strength.

An exceptionally powerful Swordsman blocked Gawain’s path.

He was stronger than all the other phantoms, yet also more indistinct than any of them. The edges of his featureless head seemed to be distorted by interference, extending in many trembling lines, and his limbs were unnaturally coarse and blurred—yet his swordsmanship was astonishing. A black Longsword with no discernible detail split into countless blades in the air, crossing swords with the Sword of Pioneers in a clash of matched points.

Before this illusion faded, Gawain had already learned his name—

His name was Balmora, the "Slave King" of the desert city-state Nim Sandro, an outstanding and great ruler.

At the foot of the hill, Gawain and Selena stopped at the same time.

The seemingly endless illusions all around them had vanished at some unknown point; only a gentle breeze swept across the grassland beneath the night sky, and that pure white spider had at some point also stopped on the hillside. It turned its head, but where a head should have had eyes, there were none—only a few soft rays of light shining down on Gawain and Selena.

All of a sudden, some unrelated thoughts surfaced in Gawain’s mind—

So the "divine" of the Supreme Narrator... has no eyes...

A mild and familiar voice entered Gawain’s mind at that moment: "Duvalt... has he vanished..."

It was Nariteer’s voice, and Gawain was not surprised in the slightest.

"Give up, Nariteer, or should I call you the Supreme Narrator?" Gawain shook his head. "I know, I know you all long for the world outside, but you should feel it by now as well—you do not belong there. A God like you forcibly descending into reality can only bring about the deaths of millions, and you yourself would be hard pressed to remain unharmed—you are a reflection of dreams, but those who prayed to you in their dreams no longer exist."

The White Spider fell into silence for a few seconds before that voice sounded again: "They are all here..."

Its giant articulated legs shifted aside, and several pure white cocoons were tightly protected at the spider’s thorax and abdomen.

As she climbed toward the starlight, she had been carefully carrying and guarding these cocoons all along.

Seeing those cocoons, Gawain had already understood many things.

"So that’s what Duvalt meant..." Selena also reacted, speaking in a complex tone. "We’ve always wondered where the virtual personalities in Sandbox One went. So it was..."

"I want to take them outside," the White Spider said softly. "Because they all want to go outside, I came to want it too..."

"No wonder... no wonder the Supreme Narrator fell into madness, division, and death..." Selena’s voice grew especially low, as if talking to herself. "All of us were focused on those three thousand testers who entered the network, but... there were still millions of virtual personalities in the Sandbox World... To you, they’re ’real’ as well..."

The White Spider did not speak—neither denying nor admitting it.

As an Archbishop deeply versed in the Sandbox System and the mysteries of the soul, Selena finally pieced together the part of the truth that had eluded her until now.

Meanwhile, Gawain, who had already dealt extensively with knowledge of Gods and inherited a vast amount from Defiers, had even more on his mind: "It was because you realized that the vast majority of the ’subjects’ in this world were illusions generated by code that the Supreme Narrator fell into madness, and in that madness died, which in turn caused its division—its human side and its divine side splitting into two beings... And it was also through that process of death and division that you shook off the shackles of the original ’Supreme Narrator faith,’ making it possible for you to devour the minds of the entire world without endangering your own existence, and put them all into those ’cocoons’... I’m not wrong, am I?"

The White Spider gently moved one long leg, and a low, melodious voice sounded: "You understand many things..."

"Do you really think this will work?" Gawain frowned. "Even if you take them into the real world, then what? No bodies, no material foundation, not even the conditions to become Spiritual Bodies—they were born from the sandbox and can only rely on the sandbox to exist. You are a God, but they are not. These cocoons will disperse into smoke the instant they enter reality—have you thought about that?"

"...I don’t know, and I don’t care," Nariteer said in a low voice. "They want to go out, and so do I—that is everything..."

Beneath those seemingly mild and calm words, the massive White Spider slowly raised its upper body. At last, a chilling hostility spread from this powerful divine being.

Yet Gawain only shook his head with regret—it seemed there was no room left to defuse this.

"Nariteer," he faced the hill, gazing at that young God, "you will die—there will be no new divisions, no more resurrections.

"You know how Duvalt disappeared, and you should also know that I have already established a connection with you through Him.

"I have the power to completely dismantle you."

"I know," Nariteer said softly, "maybe that would be for the best..."

Between Gawain and Nariteer, endless radiance suddenly turned into a torrent, scouring the entire plain, scouring the last stretch of this false world.

...

The violent shaking startled Orlandeau before dawn, countless residents woke from dreamless sleep and, in panic, looked toward that stretch of land said to be cursed, toward the direction of the Throat of Orlandeau.

They heard a low howling coming from that collapsing valley, heard a group resonance like countless people crying out, echoing over the plain outside the valley; in the Throat of Orlandeau, a tremendous power seemed to be brewing, and in this final moment before dawn, it began to throb like a heart.

A line of rosy light appeared on the distant horizon, the majestic corona of the great sun seemed about to peek out from there, and in this thin, meager halo, under the remnant starlight at the edge of the sky, someone saw a phantom giant shadow like a spider climbing up the hills on the rim of the Throat of Orlandeau...

The final moment seemed to have arrived, and Archbishop Semyr unconsciously tightened his grip on the Combat Staff in his hand.

An unsettling howling resounded through the entire underground ruins, and those transparent, illusory limbs Magnan had mentioned finally solidified to the point that all the ordinary priests could clearly see them. They watched that enormous phantom spider move between earth, rock, and walls; each time a huge transparent jointed limb swept past the hall, it stirred a wave of hushed exclamations.

The group resonance of the Brain Servants’ prayers had already been successfully stopped by Magnan, yet this seemed only to slow the coming of the Supreme Narrator; He was still stubbornly squeezing into the real world, as though He would not give up until the very last moment.

"This is the last moment..." Yuri muttered under his breath. "We’ve done everything we can..."

Wendy drew a light breath and walked toward a corner of the hall. "I’ll go tend to the wounded."

"His Holiness the Pope just sent the last message—both the Sandbox System and the mental network have reached the limits of their stability," Semyr said in a deep voice. "Next he will use all his strength to resist the shock brought by the Supreme Narrator’s descent. If the reaction of his soul disappears... we shall calmly await death."

Yuri gazed ahead, his eyes calm. "I hope..."

A howling even more soul-shaking than before suddenly echoed through the entire underground ruins, and with it came a violent tremor of the structure itself, cutting off the words Yuri had yet to finish.

He instinctively looked up and saw Archbishop Semyr, just as bewildered as he.

...

Nameless plants and flowers turned to ash, soil and stone disintegrated in midair; the billowing black smoke and dust veiled the sky, dimming the starlight.

The power that had supported this false world in its final moments finally collapsed; the entire Sandbox began irreversibly to move toward annihilation.

The nameless grassland began to fall apart, collapsing swiftly from the edges toward the center, and that sacred White Spider tumbled down from the hill, together with the cocoons she had been desperately trying to protect, falling onto the earth.

In that last instant, she wove layer upon layer of web, binding and steadying those cocoons once more, not letting them suffer the slightest harm, as though this were her instinctive purpose for being in the world.

Warm, bright lamplight diffused outward, dispersing the rising smoke and spreading flames. Gawain came to the side of the White Spider, who had already lost the power to fight back, and looked at those clear lights where her head should be.

Before he could speak, Nariteer’s voice entered the minds of him and Selena Gerfen.

"In the very beginning, it was on this grassland that they multiplied and thrived... Back then this was not yet a desert, and Nim Sandro did not exist..."

Only now did Selena finally recognize the terrain here, understanding where that faint sense of familiarity had come from. She instinctively looked around, discerning the land that was sinking ever deeper into darkness. "This is... no wonder it felt so familiar to me..."

This land was what she and Megal III had originally "written" together.

But that was already so long ago that she had forgotten what this place had first looked like.

"Duvalt once asked me, if everyone were content with this land, would no one have to face this ending... All beings could live in peace and joy at the center of the stage; as long as they did not approach the border, this world would be real to them...

"Poets could freely imagine the realms beyond the sea, imagine worlds among the stars; sailors in coastal waters would always reap bountiful harvests and need not concern themselves with that sea fringe that grows ever stranger and more bizarre the further one goes... If curiosity were not so great, this world could remain beautiful forever...

"I could never give him an answer—I’m too foolish... But I think the Creators who made all this must know more...

"O Creators... you made this world, and you made us. What was all of this for... How do you wish us to act—can you tell me?"

Nariteer’s voice was slow and gentle; before this simple inquiry, Selena fell into a long silence.

Only after an unknown span of thought did she lift her head and gaze at that purposeless face of the Supreme Narrator.

"This is just an experiment, nothing more than... an experiment..."

Every one of her words seemed to exhaust her strength.

Two seconds later, the pure, holy spider finally let out a soft sigh. "Ah, thank you... I have at last heard the answer from the Creators’ own mouth."

"Nariteer," Gawain couldn’t help stepping forward, "actually, I can still..."

"Could you give me a little time?" the Supreme Narrator’s voice came softly. "I would like... to look at the stars."

"The stars?" Gawain raised his head in astonishment, but could see only a sky of Dark Chaos, without a single star.

And when he lowered his gaze once more, that white spider God and the cocoons she had sheltered to the last moment... were already beginning to turn into motes of light and dust.

...

The howling in the valley ceased, and the trembling of the earth grew still.

The residents of Orlandeau, uneasy and afraid, stepped out of their homes and onto the streets, asking one another what had happened, then, as if by prior agreement, turned to look in the direction of the Throat of Orlandeau.

In the dim, hazy light of the sky, children cried out in surprise.

Outlined by the rising sun, an almost transparent giant spider seemed to be slowly climbing the nearby crags, crawling up to the high ground at the edge of the valley. There it came to a quiet halt, gently pushing something like a cocoon before it.

The last gleam of starlight on the horizon shimmered, reflecting on the spider’s increasingly illusory body. Facing the day’s final starlight, It seemed to utter a faint, inaudible sigh of admiration; many people heard a phantom voice ring out in their minds, yet felt only bewilderment toward that voice—

"Here, the story comes to an end..."

Then the morning sun rose, the great sun’s radiance poured over the land, and everything dissolved like a dream; between heaven and earth, only ten thousand rays of dawn remained.