Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 479 Is the world so ugly?
The more powerful he is, the crazier he becomes. By the end of his reign, the god of disaster Abraham had completely lost his humanity, but also failed to obtain the ideal divinity. He was dominated by the animal nature driven by instinct and desire, and became a beast of power and a slave to himself.

"The fanatical pursuit of power is like the drug addicts that were everywhere in the largest city on the peninsula two centuries ago." Fei'er raised his head, his deep gaze seemed to penetrate the dark sky, and saw the city that was once fed by blood and dyed red with poppy flowers. "I thought I could restrain myself, but in the end I just got deeper and deeper. If the original intention of these seven disciples was indeed to repel the powerful enemy and protect the hard-won homeland of the human race, then in the end, they were driven by their own desires and gradually fell into the abyss. They knew that doing so would only make themselves more crazy, but it was difficult to break free."

It was difficult for Lingge to judge this distant and ancient history. Although he knew that Constantine, Zoroaster, Abraham and Baimon were the founders of the four ancient empires of mankind, and these four empires were almost the origin of human civilization, his understanding of them was limited to the cold words in history books, just like regarding Saint Tomi as a myth, out of reach.

He was more concerned about the following plot: "So, did they succeed?"

"Success? Maybe." Fei'er's answer seemed ambiguous, but everyone soon understood why she said that: "The method of strengthening one's own magic power by devouring extraordinary people who have the same path is indeed effective. It has successfully helped the seven disciples transcend the limitations of Sequence 1 and become more powerful than all the gods in the world; however, it cannot be said that they have reached the height of the Maiden Kingship, but a state in between the two, perhaps it can be defined as Sequence 0."

"And the price is - their erosion has become more serious, and they have completely lost their human sanity. This is only natural. After all, they have devoured the corpses of countless of their own kind. While assimilating their magic power, they have also endured the filth and impurity of these souls. If everyone's soul has a color, then what they did is equivalent to splashing countless paints on their own souls, completely covering up the original color."

There was a chilling horror in Fei'er's calm tone: "Generally, extraordinary people are only eroded, and their souls can generally maintain their original appearance. Therefore, as long as they do not degenerate, they still have some human rationality. However, for this state where the soul is completely changed and has completely lost rationality, the word "erosion" is no longer appropriate. Therefore, after conducting in-depth research on this phenomenon, colleagues in the First Research Department gave it an appropriate name: pollution."

Fei Er said word by word: "Their souls have been polluted, and it is impossible to purify them again."

Everyone was silent, feeling that it was absurd and ironic.

They made this choice obviously in order to get rid of the erosion, but ended up falling into deeper pollution... If Lingge didn't know that the potion system originated from the royal power bestowed by the girls, he would really doubt whether the will of the world had some kind of malice towards humans, making them inherently weak and laying a cruel trap for them to become stronger, as if telling them that they either endure their own weakness or accept their own madness. There is no third way to choose.

At the same time, I also felt more deeply how great the great wizard Merlin was, who created the magic system and saved the magicians of later generations from the suffering of erosion. He, like Saint Tomi, was a great sage who changed the mysterious history of mankind and was destined to leave a glorious mark in this unknown history.

Ling'er's mind moved, and he suddenly thought of something deeper.

According to Alice, Master Merlin is also a philosopher from the Earth World. He established the Modern Magic Research Society and launched a war to expel and even eliminate the extraordinary, making the magic system the mainstream system of the Western Continent until it was later replaced by the magic system controlled by the Steam Cult. In the war where the magic system replaced the magic system, a group of great magicians, including Master Merlin, remained silent and never showed up. In the end, the Modern Magic Research Society simply betrayed the magician camp and sold out their intelligence, causing the magicians to be defeated in the End of the Wild War. And Helmut, the first Minister of War Affairs of the Kingdom who established a complete magic corps system and launched this war, is also an Earth philosopher... In this way, everything is actually the result of the secret guidance of the Witch Society? They have been promoting the transformation of the power system of the mysterious world, making it more universal, more stable, and safer.

Is the original intention of the change related to the "Age of Disaster" initiated by Abraham and other disciples, which caused countless people to die numbly?

This question is destined to remain unanswered now, because Fei Er will continue to tell this story -

"In the final battle between the Imperial Alliance and the Dark Dragon Tide, the seven disciples joined forces to defeat the ancient gods of the elves and won the war. However, their spirits were polluted and their minds were completely crazy. After the battle, they lost their minds and slaughtered every living life they saw, destroying mountains, land, rivers, mountain ranges, city-states, villages... and even attacked each other, trying to devour each other." Fei Er commented very accurately: "It's like a crazy beast biting its prey madly, and when it's extremely hungry, it will also extend its fangs to its companions. The death and disaster they caused are even more serious than that of Mecanthus."

When Alice heard a strange name appear in the story again, her head began to ache and she couldn't remember clearly: "Stop, stop, stop, who is Mercantius?"

"He is also a disciple of Saint Tumi. Remember what I said before? After receiving the holy weapon from the young royal families, Saint Tumi and his thirteen disciples began to study this power. When the four great empires were established, there were twelve disciples. But you seem to have never noticed where the missing disciple went."

Fei Er said this with a sly smile on his face, as if he was proud of his language trap not being discovered: "The answer is that as a pioneer on the road of exploration, he used himself as an experimental subject and merged the [Crimson Sword], which symbolizes the power of 'dispute' among the fourteen holy artifacts, with himself. He got the powerful power as he wished, but he ran away because he could not bear this power, lost his mind and fell into madness. He slaughtered innocent people and burned the hometown of all spirits, Ardes, to ashes with crimson flames. He woke up after three days and three nights, felt painful for the crimes he committed, and exiled himself. It was his loss of control that made Saint Tumi realize the flaws of the power of the kingship for humans, and named it erosion. In this way, Mecanthus can be regarded as the first eroder in the history of human mystery. Later, some classics mentioned this disciple and called him: Crimson Disaster."

After briefly explaining Mecanthus's identity and experience, she got back to the point: "The seven saints - in the words of the time, seven gods, their indiscriminate slaughter and destruction caused a huge disaster, bringing more trauma to the land that had already suffered in the war. Some people tried to awaken the gods, but failed and were devoured; others believed that the gods had fallen into madness, lost their minds, and would never recover, so they tried to seize the power of the empire and call on others to rebel against the gods; and some extraordinary people and Chaos believers who were oppressed in the Dark Ages launched an uprising in an attempt to overthrow the rule of the empire and avenge the suffering they had suffered. In this way, the four empires had just ended an epic war, but instead of ushering in the expected peace and glory, they fell into a more chaotic war. The situation intensified, and almost no one could stop the gods and stop them from fighting each other. Mountains were pushed down, rivers were cut off, the earth was torn apart, and city-states were shattered. This was after the catastrophe: the change of gods."

"At such a critical moment, someone asked for help from Saint Tomi in the All Saints' Gospel Monastery. Saint Tomi, who was studying the nature of the kingship and trying to find a way to resist the erosion, knew nothing about what was happening in the outside world. He was shocked when he heard about this and hurriedly took the remaining five disciples to try to stop the disaster from spreading. However, at this time, the believers of Chaos, who had been persecuted, slaughtered, and even reduced to nutrients, led the 'Red Cult' who believed in the Red Dragon Witch and launched an uprising against the rule of the empire. They doubled the means used to harm them and even implicated innocent people, creating more blood and death, and used the souls of the dead to perform sacrifices. This ritual of creating chaos, disputes, and disasters seemed to be essentially the same as the power of the Chaos Kingship. Therefore, on some level, it resonated with the Chaos Girls who were supposed to be isolated from the outside world and silently maintain the operation of the laws, causing them to temporarily divert their attention and focus their sights on the distant human world."

"At this moment, the isolation between the Heavenly Temple and the human world was broken. The girls who held the royal power realized the existence of the planet under their feet for the first time, and recalled the man who came here to seek their guidance. After he brought the power of the royal power back, did he help his compatriots gain the power to protect themselves as he wished? Did he still remember the promise at that time? The girls' royal powers want to know the answer to the question."

"But the maidens of order were used to living in isolation from the world. They followed the instructions of the goddess and were unwilling to leave their peaceful home. The maidens of chaos were more casual and became interested in the distant world. So they left the Temple of Heaven one after another and came to the human world, wanting to see how the mortals who had received their gifts were doing now."

"And what did they see?"

At this point, Fei'er's smile slowly disappeared. For this story, she is now a bystander and a narrator, but a long, long time ago, she was a personal experiencer. She did not mention in detail what she saw at the time, but with just a few simple words, people could feel her disappointment and anger: "War and death, disaster and fire, ruins and wreckage, withering and corruption, numbness and mourning, wailing and screaming, tears and pain."

“This is the world we protect.”

"It's so ugly that it's unbearable to look at."

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)