Chapter 712 - Karwenz’s Goal
“...He hasn’t even evolved to the point of knowing what regret is. But right now, I really do hope that he will regret, and that he will consider the consequences.”
What exactly was Karwenz doing? What was his goal?
I had some good inferences already, but I was unable to come to a final conclusion.
The reason for this? I didn’t dare to believe that he could possibly be that foolish.
Leona had been correct. Karwenz’s personality was quite pure. For his whole life, he always did whatever he wanted. If he wanted to cry, he would cry. If he wanted to cause a ruckus, he would cause a ruckus. If I as his older brother made him angry in some way, he would directly rebel.
His natural talents and abilities had always supported him successfully along the entire way. It could be said that in Karwenz’s mind, everything had always gone well for him.
It would only be natural for someone like Karwenz to do something that could be considered major international news. He lacked fear and respect due to being favored by the heavens. He would instinctively feel that everything going his way would be for the best.
That all made him fearless.
Meanwhile, I was the exact opposite.
I could probably be called the embodiment of pessimism. Countless failures caused me to habitually account for everything “unexpected” in any plan that I made. I wouldn’t count on anything that possibly relied on luck. If even a 90% success plan could fail, then I could only scheme until the plan reached 120% success rate and eliminate all possible unexpected outcomes.
Maybe this sounded too abstract, so allow me to give an example.
For instance, if there was a lottery, Karwenz might buy two tickets on a whim and hope that he would win on that same day. With his luck, this was actually possible.
As for me, I would never play a lottery to begin with, since I would know that I would never be lucky.
If I actually purchased a lottery ticket one day, the only possibility would be that I had already bribed the lottery’s organizer to let me win.
As for this time, if my inference was correct, Karwenz intended on using the entire world to buy a “lottery ticket”.
The chance of winning would be infinitesimally small. If Karwenz didn’t win his gamble, we would all be finished.
“...Roland, just what does Karwenz want to do?”
Indeed, just what did he want to do?
Actually, the clues were before me already. I just didn’t dare to think about what he might be doing.
Karwenz was searching for the location of Cynthia’s true physical body. He was trying to seize the power to control the Chaos Abyss itself. Basically, he was trying to seize the Creator Goddess of Chaos Cynthia’s power and authority.
Was he doing this for the sake of power? Actually, power by itself would be meaningless. Everyone in the world knew that the strongest individual existence in the world was the God of Holy Light. Yet, it would still be impossible for the God of Holy Light to defeat the entire Chaos Abyss by himself.
Karwenz was already standing at the peak of the world in strength. What if he became even stronger? Even if he became able to completely suppress other Main God level existences, it would be highly difficult to kill them. And even if he became able to kill them, what would that change?
This was a gigantic world with countless species and innumerable Gods. The death of certain individuals, including Main Gods, would indeed cause certain species to weaken immensely. However, this would still be far from changing the entire world.
If you killed Main God A, that Main God’s species would remain weak for the next several centuries. A new Main God B would naturally appear to take over the position left empty by Main God A’s death, and a new species would take over under Main God B.
Perhaps those species in question would really mind such things, but the world wouldn’t mind at all.
It wasn’t Karwenz’s style to only seek more power. If that was all this was, Karwenz definitely would have showed up in front of me to brag already... and I would have no reason to stop him!
He had been constantly avoiding me, which meant only one thing: what he wanted to do was something that he knew I wouldn’t be able to accept.
He was trying to seize the authority of the Creator Goddess of Chaos in order to realize a goal. This goal was something I absolutely wouldn’t be able to accept, to the point where I would likely try to fight him to the death.
Karwenz’s goal was now evident to me with all these clues.
I hadn’t dared to believe it, and had constantly searched for additional evidence as this time, he was going truly overboard.
“...Karwenz intends to open up Eich’s dimensional barriers.”
The silly cat paused in surprise for a moment, but then she had an expression that indicated she didn’t care.
In Harloys’ eyes, she probably viewed the dimensional barrier as being around the world of Eich, but since the Holy War had started and plenty of dimensional invaders would be attacking, there wouldn’t be much difference even without the dimensional barrier.
“I’m not talking about the dimensional barrier that you’re thinking about. I’m talking about the dimensional barrier that cuts Eich off from the countless universes.”
The silly cat’s expression became even stranger. As she was a native resident of Eich, this was beyond her original level of understanding.
To give an analogy, this would be like trying to tell someone from the Middle Ages of my original world of Earth that there were actually aliens on planets which were thousands of light years away. That person from the Middle Ages would likely first ask you what the word “planet” meant.
“What’s outside the dimensional barrier?”
What was outside? I really wanted to bring out the dimensional invaders from the game’s history to slap Karwenz in the face with... Yet, he would probably instead be filled with fighting spirit, wanting to challenge them. However, my System stopped me.
[My abilities are only effective in Eich. The extradimensional existences are what I extrapolated from previous information.]
The Creator Goddess of Order’s power was limited to only calculating things related to the world of Eich. The mystical existences outside of the dimensional barrier were beyond her abilities to begin with.
And in the game’s history, the Goddesses of Order and Chaos had revived and fought each other to an end result of both dying. The dimensional barrier created from their power which protected Eich naturally then disappeared.
Naturally, it wouldn’t be possible to calculate things that were beyond the Creator Goddesses’ abilities. That was why Astrya had used data on the dimensional invaders from back before her first battle with Cynthia... But, there really wasn’t much meaning to it, as when the two Creator Goddesses died, everything else in Eich had died as well.
In a way, the development of the world of Eich was incredibly distorted. Such distortion originated from the Creator Goddesses’ battle over the world.
Originally, this world had been quite peaceful under the rule of the Goddesses of Order and Chaos. Ordinary mortals coexisted peacefully in this world. Demons weren’t born evil, as they had originally been the guards of this world. Nor had angels represented order. The Titans were the strongest artisans around. The dragons didn’t see other species as insects back then.
Dimensional invaders came to Eich. Cruel war destroyed everything. Although the residents of Eich were able to obtain victory under the lead of the Goddesses of Order and Chaos, all that remained to them was endless pain, sorrow, and rubble left behind by the war.
In order to avoid such catastrophe from repeating itself, the two Goddesses combined their powers together to create a dimensional barrier protecting Eich. Since they had seen already just how powerful the dimensional invaders could be, there was a possibility that their barrier could be broken through, so they couldn’t rest assured.
And so, the Goddesses wished for themselves as well as the species of Eich to become stronger.
That was the reason behind everything. Let us now look at the results.
Ever since then, civilization in Eich began to develop in a distorted fashion. When countries and even entire species began to seek only greater power, and all cultural progress was measured by their effectiveness in war, this was evidently no longer normal.
Whenever war was ongoing, art, music, literature, and other such “luxuries” would be deemed no longer necessary. Only weapons and military industries would be supported. Progress in magic wasn’t for the sake of making life easier for the citizens, but instead in order to kill one’s enemies in an even better and quicker manner.
But at this time, the mortals and Gods still had fresh memories of just how powerful the dimensional invaders had been. It seemed only logical to search for greater strength so that they could protect themselves.
After that, the Goddesses of Order and Chaos disagreed with each other on how to become stronger.
The Goddess of Order Astrya believed that Order was the greatest source of strength. She wanted to transform all of society into a mega behemoth where all existences were simply parts of the greater whole. Having strict Order enforced would help this behemoth to become even stronger... This meant to her that every individual of every species had a responsibility to carry out their own “Order” assigned to them ever since birth.
As for the Goddess of Chaos Cynthia... well, the Chaos Abyss and the demons were the best evidence of what she thought. The Holy War, in its own way, was also this world’s version of a civil war. The Goddess of Chaos desired evolution and survival of the fittest. She believed that weaker civilizations and species deserved to be eliminated in the Holy War. Civilizations and species which were still able to progress would grow ever stronger on top of the corpses of other species.
Of course, with the Holy War ongoing for countless years already, mortal species had long since forgotten the original reason for the Holy War. They would be quite happy already if they could survive until the end of the Holy War.
But... what if the dimensional barrier protecting Eich suddenly vanished all day? What would happen if the powerful dimensional invaders from other universes reappeared?
Such a thing shouldn’t have been possible to begin with. The two Creator Goddesses still tightly held on to the keys to the dimensional barrier. Even if the dimensional barrier collapsed, it would only collapse on the day of Armageddon in the game’s history.
But now, Karwenz had successfully rebelled against Cynthia. Perhaps he had already obtained the key to the dimensional barrier. In that case, it was possible for anything to happen.
Maybe countless dimensional invaders would descend and completely destroy this world?
I wouldn’t be able to accept that no matter what. I had worked so hard to ensure that this Holy War would be the final Holy War to end all Holy Wars. It was finally the dawn before the next morning, yet the battle’s scale was going to be elevated yet again?
I truly hoped that I was wrong with my inference, and that Karwenz wouldn’t be so foolish... But I kept feeling like no matter what angle I looked at things, this was the most convincing conclusion I could come up with.
“...Perhaps I truly won’t have any ability to hold back anymore.”