Chapter 258 — The Game Difficulty Is Insane
Sharp screams rang out from every direction.
The source of the sound was something she had never heard even once during the thousands of years she had existed.
They were the screams and cries of the heavenly gods.
“Aaaaaaaah!”
“Kuaaaaargh!”
“I-I don't want to die… Kuaaaargh!”
Light exploded in every direction, filling the heavens.
The gods caught in it disappeared one after another with screams.
At the center of it all, Silpherinne stood there with a blank, dazed expression, as if she had been possessed by something.
“Ah……”
Because of her.
The friends she had been happily drinking heavenly fruit and wine with in Symposion Square only moments ago were disappearing.
“Silphe… rinne……!”
A goddess she had been close to reached out to her with frightened eyes.
But she too was caught in the explosion and disappeared with a sharp scream.
“Aaaaaaah……!”
“Why… did you do this?!”
Before despair could even fill her silver-gray eyes, Silpherinne watched the gods disappear while glaring at her with resentment.
She swallowed hard.
“No… I… I only……!”
She stepped backward while shaking her head, desperately denying what was happening.
“I only did what you told me to do… So… this… sob… this isn't…”
“I didn't do this!! Sob! Aaaah!!”
Clades.
The first disaster to ever occur in the heavens.
It all began with the insane plan of dozens of gods who wanted more power and authority than they possessed.
They had long been jealous of the higher gods who had become objects of faith for beings on the surface and gained more power than themselves.
To overturn that situation, they planned to use Silpherinne's power of the unknown and variables to seize control of the Heavenly Law.
“We are family and friends who appeared here together on the same day.”
“But they divided us into ranks and monopolized the authorities.”
“We want to distribute them equally.”
Surrounded by numerous lower gods, Silpherinne initially refused their proposal.
However, she too had long watched the beings of the surface and become fascinated by their marvelous vitality.
Although she had never shown it, she wanted to become a god who was respected and loved by those precious beings she cared for.
In the end, she pretended to be persuaded and joined their plan.
And eventually, she touched the Heavenly Law.
At first, everything went smoothly.
The power of the unknown that Silpherinne released flowed into the Heavenly Law.
Soon, control over it was transferred to them just as they had wanted.
They could have simply modified its regulations.
But what they wanted was to completely possess the Heavenly Law.
At their request, Silpherinne injected even more of the power of the unknown into the Heavenly Law.
But soon, it went out of control.
The Heavenly Law could not withstand the power that was trying to take away its control.
In the end, the powerful force released by the rampaging Heavenly Law caused dozens of gods present there to disappear simultaneously.
Looking at the hell unfolding before her eyes, Silpherinne fell into despair and regret.
Yet cruelly, she alone did not disappear.
Instead, she was confronted by the remaining gods who arrived at the scene later.
She immediately blamed herself for what she had done and apologized.
She promised never to approach the Heavenly Law again.
Then, with the heart of a sinner, she went to a corner of Symposion Square, lowered her head, and remained silent.
Hundreds of years passed like that.
Without even anyone to whom she could offer her faith and seek forgiveness from, Silpherinne spent her days in silence, repenting and regretting her past mistake.
Then, one day, a god suddenly stood before her.
“……?”
A tall man with dark-brown eyes.
He was Yuelos, the God of Fate.
He stared at her for a long time.
“……Hmm. Let me give you some advice.”
“It would be better for you not to move from that spot from now on.”
“If you don't want to repeat what happened before.”
Yuelos said only that and walked away from Silpherinne.
He had probably seen something in her that could distort the flow of fate.
But Yuelos wasn't the only one who saw something in the other.
“Huh……?”
When Yuelos looked at her with his eyes that could see fate, Silpherinne's power of the unknown unintentionally saw through something about him.
The future he had seen.
The end of the world's destined path.
A future where nothing remained.
A future of destruction and extinction.
After Yuelos left, Silpherinne fell into deep thought.
“Everyone disappearing… is that our fate?”
“All of this……?”
Existence was proven through the traces, paths, and marks it left behind.
If the fate written for the world was destruction and extinction, then what meaning did everything that had existed until now have?
If the time of fate came and everything disappeared, wouldn't not only the beings of the surface but even the gods who had existed for thousands of years lose the meaning of their existence?
She understood perfectly well that this was the fate decided for the world and that there was nothing they could do about it.
But.
“I don't want to lose them.”
She didn't want the feeling of love she had developed while watching the beings of the surface repeat countless cycles of life and death for thousands of years, creating new things and displaying the wonders of life, to disappear.
Then, a strange light appeared in her silver-gray eyes.
“……”
Silpherinne quietly stood up from the place where she had been sitting for hundreds of years.
And she made a decision.
She would free the world she loved from its fate of destruction.
She would watch the surviving world, repent for the mistakes she had made, and find hope in continuing to live.
She would make sure that the world that had taught her the emotions of sadness and happiness would not end meaninglessly, but continue onward.
“That was when I began secretly using my power little by little to distort causality without Yuelos noticing.”
“But things didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped.”
“To distort the predetermined fate, I needed to use the power of the unknown and variables with much greater precision.”
“Because if I used it incorrectly, I could distort not only fate but the entire world.”
“When I realized that it was beyond my abilities, I decided to change my strategy.”
“I would create a being that contained the possibilities of the unknown and variables within this world.”
Silpherinne took a breath.
Her silver-gray eyes looked into the distance, as if remembering the countless trials and errors she had experienced over hundreds of years.
“The easiest way would have been to create followers of my own and share my power with them.”
“But beings on the surface wouldn't believe in a god of the unknown and variables, nor would they have any way of knowing that I existed.”
“Well, you are the God of the Unknown and Variables, after all.”
“That's right.”
“So I decided to change my strategy once again.”
Instead of creating an unknown existence within the world, she would bring one in from outside.
“I began slowly sending my power outside the world.”
“After some time, my consciousness reached a world that even I knew nothing about.”
“That was the place I originally lived.”
“Yes.”
“To be honest, I was confused.”
“An unknown world I had never seen before suddenly appeared before my eyes.”
Silpherinne had seen a city filled with gray-white towers.
There were far more people and vehicles moving around than in the world of Gray Eden.
She had even felt frightened.
Although she had discovered an unknown world, she had no idea how to bring one of its inhabitants here.
“The only thing I could do was continue sending my power into your world.”
And Silpherinne's efforts finally bore fruit after hundreds of years.
“Games.”
“Your world had neither magic nor miracles, but you had already created technology capable of creating entire worlds.”
“The moment I became aware of that existence, the power I had sent began unknowingly altering causality little by little.”
“And eventually, a space similar to the world I lived in was created.”
The birth of the game Gray Eden.
“And the power of the unknown that I had sent began selecting the existence that would eventually be brought here.”
“Someone who was more suitable than anyone else to survive in a world like Gray Eden.”
What was needed was knowledge about the world.
How strong someone was or how well they could fight on Earth wasn't particularly important.
In the end, the target became Seong Yohan.
A gamer who had spent half of his twenties accumulating knowledge until he had become so immersed in games that he had practically rotted from playing them.
“So the message that came to my phone back then really was sent by you.”
“But you didn't actually intend for it to happen?”
“It's strange, isn't it?”
“I didn't know anything, but the power of the unknown containing my will planned everything on its own.”
“Yeah…….”
“But now that I think about it, this is pretty funny.”
“The developers probably think they created the entire world themselves.”
