<h4>Chapter 1488: Origins</h4>


    <b>Trantor:</b> Henyee Trantions <b>Editor:</b> Henyee Trantions


    <i>Custodian?</i> Rnd pricked up his brows and said, “A guardian to ensure that every civilization will walk towards destruction?”


    “I knew you would ask that... but that is a solution that cannot be helped.” The entity stood up from the throne and dragged its right hand lightly. Following that, a sphere of light appeared in its hands before peeling away,yer byyer, to reveal theplicated structure within. This continued until Rnd recognized what it was.


    Although he had anticipated it, only when he saw the scene before him did his heart skip a beat.


    Floating in the entity’s hand was the world they were from.


    He saw the Land of Dawn, the Fertile ins, as well as the Kingdom of Graycastle. Beyond this continent, there were the ckstone region and the Sky-sea Realm. But those weren’t important. What was important was that the entire world was enveloped in a honebed shell, just like the barrier that isted a from the outside.


    And beneath the continent and oceans hid an extremelyplicated core. It wasn’t like a’s core which formed a spherical shape due to the pressure ced on it. Instead, it was an irregr geometric body. The protruded Sky-sea Realm was located on the boundary of a geometric solid, and Rnd could even see that the Swirling Sea’s bottom was connected to the Sky-sea Realm. The path resembled a Klein bottle.


    Without a doubt, this world appeared so unharmonized solely because it wasn’t naturally formed.


    The artificial he saw In the second scene was just like the present real world.


    The clouds and celestial bodies observed by people were simply projections formed by the barrier.


    And in the real space beyond that, all Rnd saw was dead silence.


    “You were the ‘pair of eyes.’” Instantly, he suddenly understood the answers to many questions.


    God sighed slightly. “I’m not sure of what information you have collected, but that doesn’t matter. Time is a measure that can be as long and short as required. I will satisfy your curiosity... before destroying you.”


    “As expected of what a Custodian will say—it’s like a student not needing to go to sses, or a pharmaceuticalpany not needing to produce drugs,” Rnd said sarcastically as he spread his hands. Regardless, he was now representing humanity, or perhaps all living beings in reality. Even if the entity across him was God, he could not cower in fear. “What I wish to ask is why is there a Battle of Divine Will? What do you n to achieve?”


    “I thought you would ask from the trivial questions. Fine.” It retracted the sphere of light in its hand and waved one hand. Countless ‘screens’ soon appeared behind it, and in the spartan space, they formed a stunning wall.


    Rnd discovered that the contents depicted by the screen were... all sorts of living beings.


    “Project Gateway was a sess. Its results were almost identical to the calcted oue. With the help of many civilizations, this universe’s gravity was pulled apart eventually, producing an extremely tiny rift,” God said slowly. “But Project Gateway was also a failure. The energy which surged in from another territory destroyed most of the sentient lifeforms, including the creator of Project Gateway.”


    <i>Was that the final scene of the third act...</i>


    Rnd recalled the extreme grief, as though he was connected to all the civilizations which had participated in the n.


    “That’s right. This energy is what you call magic power.”


    “It’s not light, nor does it have temperature. It’s neither made up of particles or waves. To be simple, ites from a space that haspletely differentws from the universe wee from. Physics and math be meaningless in the face of such energy. In almost an instant, it influenced and changed the entire world.”


    “What’s... on the other side of the rift?” Rnd couldn’t help but ask.


    “An urate description isn’t avable because no one has passed through that distorted membrane, but ording to an analysis, there are basically two possibilities. One of them being a universe that includes our universe. This is the easiest theory to understand.” Having said that, the entity’s voice turned ethereal and hollow. “A new singrity can be born within the universe to produce an explosion to form a new universe, and thus, creating a set ofpletely independentws and physical constants. Therefore, even if our world stems from a universe beyond the membrane, it doesn’t mean that life or matter can easily proceed without obstruction.


    “The second possibility is that our world is in the empty gap within the multiverse. You can think of it as a pot of thick soup, and we are just rising bubbles with their appearance, intion, fusion, and bursting happening... Of course, reality is a lot moreplicated, but that has already exceeded the limits of yourprehension.”


    “Fine... let’s turn back to magic power.” Rnd curled his lips and said, “You previously mentioned that you would destroy arge majority of life, but you were the one who created the normality of the real world. Isn’t that a contradiction?”


    If humans were said to be the chosen ones of the universe, it would have been too incredulous.


    “Magic power possesses a very unique set ofws. One of them is that it would change via will. Meanwhile, it will also change the mind of the possessor.”


    Rnd was suddenly surprised. “What?”


    “The first batch who had their lives change were the participants of Project Gateway. Their forms were warped and reconstructed, and after ten million years of evolution, they finally became a special crystalline body, which is the magic stones you use,” God said calmly. “As I’m not considered a lifeform, I was lucky to survive, but simrly, I suffered tremendous damage which took me tens of thousands of years to recover from. And from that moment forth, gravity was no longer the force which is most deserving of reverence.”


    Upon hearing this answer, Rnd was momentarily unsure how to continue.


    However, Rnd wasn’t surprised by the notion that the Custodian wasn’t that of a lifeform. Project Gateway was a humongous program that spanned over trillions of gxies, with more than 170,000 civilizations participating in it. To ultimately take the correct path over such long periods of time, the coordinator definitely could not be a particr lifeform or race.


    The entity had appeared because of the project.


    “After that, the Cradle was created. It uses magic power to construct a world; however, the amount of energy suffers a particr limit. From an iplete data bank, I chose life and began to foster them, allowing these creatures to live again under new rules. Aspetition can increase a race’s development speed, the Cradle will deliberately choose lifeforms who lived in simr environments to foster. But the calctions soon discovered that this process would take an inestimable amount of time. With limited resources, it limits free growth. As such, the choice of involving external forces became inevitable.


    “... Legacy shards,” Rnd said in a deep voice.


    “That’s only a part of it.” The entity nodded. “As for what I ultimately want, it’s not thatplicated. The creator of Project Gateway, which is the civilization that created me, doesn’t only want the universe to ‘live on.’ It had never had the intention of stopping progress, even so at the moment of destruction. Opening the rift was only the first step. Its true goal is to see that territory which no one has ever stepped in.”


    “It handed me this mission, and my final duty is to create a civilization that can adapt to thews of the two worlds.” The entity paused for a moment. “And thispetition and its development is what you call the Battle of Divine Will.”