Free Web NovelChapter 592: Chapter 592 - Trial End
Before Seravelle could see the ending of the war, a few more things occurred.
The scene changed again.
This time, there were no enemy monsters at first.
Seravelle found herself standing in the middle of a ruined city.
The Thousand Races were still there.
But they no longer stood as one army.
Different banners hung from different towers.
Different races moved in clusters, their eyes filled with suspicion whenever others passed too close.
The war had changed its shape.
Seravelle slowly looked around.
Then the objective appeared.
[Objective Updated]
[Obtain an Origin Core fragment.]
[Condition: The ending cannot be viewed without carrying a fragment.]
Seravelle went still.
Nearby, shouting erupted.
A group of wounded soldiers dragged a chest through a broken avenue while another faction blocked the road. Neither side looked monstrous. Neither side looked insane. They looked exhausted, terrified, and convinced that if they surrendered what they held, their people would die later.
The chest cracked open during the struggle.
A crystal light leaked out.
Seravelle’s covered gaze fixed on it.
An Origin Core fragment.
The moment the light appeared, the street exploded.
People who had survived monsters together turned their weapons on each other.
Clara’s face tightened.
Seravelle’s fingers clenched around her prayer cord.
She had heard that the Origin Core had split.
The Monastery’s oldest records mentioned fragments of the world’s beginning.
But the records did not smell like blood.
This did.
The crystal rolled across the bloody street.
Everyone reached for it.
Seravelle whispered, "No."
But the trial did not stop.
The objective remained.
[Obtain one Origin Core fragment.]
Clara looked at her.
Seravelle understood what that look meant.
They could not see the ending without the fragment.
The trial was not asking whether they approved.
It was asking whether they would learn what history had demanded from those trapped inside it.
Seravelle’s face paled.
Then the crowd surged toward them.
•••
This stage was ruthless.
Not because the monsters were stronger.
Because the enemies were people.
The Origin Core fragments passed from hand to hand.
Through ambushes sieges, betrayals, and mountains of dead bodies.
The united army of the Thousand Races had become divided, and that division made them easier to manipulate.
Seravelle saw it.
She saw rumors planted in refugee camps.
She saw factions accuse each other of serving monsters.
She saw old allies refuse to open gates because the people outside belonged to another banner.
Her Ninth Bell True-Sight rang with pain.
The fragments were not evil.
But the fear around them was.
The greed around them was.
The desperation around them was.
The blood around them was so thick that even the origin core fragment seemed stained.
Seravelle’s faith had already widened once on the battlefield.
Now it was being wounded.
•••
Far above the chaos, the friendly Primordial Incarnations remained.
They did not descend to claim the fragments.
They did not choose one faction over another.
They did not raise a hand and command the Thousand Races to kneel.
At first, Seravelle almost wished they would.
Then that wish frightened her.
If the Guardians had chosen one side, the rest would have become enemies of divinity.
If they had forced all factions to obey, peace might have arrived quickly.
But it would not have been freedom.
It would have been order imposed by beings no mortal could resist.
The Guardians looked helpless in a way Seravelle had never imagined.
They could hold enemy Incarnations in place.
They could prevent the monster side from immediately devouring the broken world.
They could keep certain seals from shattering.
But they could not repair trust by decree.
Seravelle watched one Guardian extend a hand toward two factions preparing to slaughter one another.
The hand stopped halfway.
Slowly, the Guardian lowered it.
That single movement hurt more than battle.
Clara saw it too.
For once, she had no clever remark.
The trial continued.
Eventually, Clara and Seravelle reached a ruined sanctuary where one fragment had been placed at the center of a defensive ritual.
The people guarding it were not villains.
That was the cruel part.
They were protecting children below the sanctuary.
They believed the fragment kept their underground shelter hidden from monsters and hostile factions.
And they were right.
The fragment did help.
But the trial objective did not change.
Seravelle stood before the sanctuary doors, silent.
Clara looked at the crystal beyond them.
Then at the trembling defenders.
"We do not have to like this," Clara said quietly.
Seravelle’s voice was strained.
"But we still have to do it."
"Yes."
The battle that followed was not glorious.
When the last defender fell into light and dissolved as an echo, Seravelle stood with shaking hands.
The Origin Core fragment hovered before her.
She did not want to touch it.
Clara did not force her.
After several breaths, Seravelle reached out.
The fragment settled into her hand. frёeωebɳovel.com
It was warm.
Then... the objective changed again.
[Origin Core fragment obtained.]
[Final sequence unlocked.]
Then new words appeared.
[Live and survive for the next generation.]
Seravelle stared at them.
There were no instruction to win.
Only that.
Live.
And survive for those who would come after.
Her hand tightened around the fragment.
Then the final sequence began.
•••
The world changed again.
The battlefield returned.
The enemy Primordial Incarnations stood above the monsters.
The friendly Guardians held them back, but the world was too broken.
The Origin Core had already split.
Half its fragments had fallen into the hands of the monster side.
The world was close to becoming a grave.
Then a shadow fell across the battlefield.
A slime descended through the broken sky.
It looked like something no sane battlefield should have allowed.
And yet, the moment it appeared, the entire war paused.
The enemy Primordial Incarnations struggled.
They were only incarnations.
The being above them was not.
The Primordial Slime had come in its true body.
Clara stopped breathing.
Then her eyes became dangerously bright.
Clara clasped her hands together with visible restraint.
Seravelle did not understand Clara’s reaction yet.
She was too overwhelmed by the sight above them.
The Primordial Slime moved.
Creation authority spread across the battlefield.
The enemy Incarnations roared.
They resisted.
Their monsters surged upward like a black tide trying to devour the sky.
The Primordial Slime did not destroy them.
Perhaps it could not.
Perhaps causality forbade it.
Perhaps the fractured world could not endure the cost.
Perhaps even a true Primordial could not casually erase what had already become tied to the world’s fate.
So it sealed.
Half the Big World groaned.
Boundaries folded.
The monster side was forced back, farther and farther, until half the world became a prison.
Then black mass spread.
As a sealing medium.
It covered the sealed half of the Big World and trapped the monsters inside.
The enemy Incarnations were also sealed one by one, roaring until even their voices were swallowed.
The friendly Guardians watched.
The Thousand Races watched.
The world did not celebrate.
It survived.
Seravelle’s Ninth Bell True-Sight rang so loudly that her knees almost failed.
The truth was too vast.
The Silent Guardians had helped save the world.
The Thousand Races had helped save the world.
The nameless dead had helped save the world.
And this impossible Primordial Slime had sealed half the world so the other half could breathe.
•••
The scene changed again.
Peace did not arrive immediately.
That was the next truth.
After the sealing, the survivors rebuilt.
The friendly Guardians remained for a time.
Their presence stabilized the world.
But it also changed the way people looked at the sky.
Seravelle watched it happen.
The Monastery’s oldest doctrines had always said the Guardians disappeared after the war.
But seeing the time before that departure changed everything.
They had not left because they did not care.
They had left because they cared enough to understand the danger of remaining.
Finally, the last scene appeared.
The friendly Primordial Incarnations stood together, their bodies faint and cracked.
Around them, some representatives of the Thousand Races knelt, stood, wept, argued, prayed, and begged them to remain.
"We broke your chains." An Incarnation spoke.
Then another finished.
"Do not make us your chains after we have broken yours."
The words entered Seravelle like a blade made of mercy.
Clara stood beside her, silent.
Then the friendly Primordial Incarnations broke their own incarnations.
They became light.
Then resonance.
Then silence.
One by one, they disappeared.
The world remained.
The Thousand Races were left with grief, fragments, distrust, damaged lands, and the terrible freedom to continue.
Then the scene faded.
