Chapter 494: The Wolfgrave Fortresses ( Final )

After reading those texts, he also went to other parts of the Wolfgrave Fortresses and found several more ruined temples.

The same meaning was repeated in the other temples as well.

The eight Divine Eyes of Chaos were a symbol of seeing eight different possibilities.

The eight hands represented the ability to choose and touch different paths.

The endless spiral also showed that there was no final and unchangeable state.

Even in some writings, death was described as the "Final Order", the end of all possibilities, and apparently, some extreme branches of this religion had tried to reject even that.

This part made Lian stop for a moment, he knew a little about the Seven Divines, but seeing the religions and traditions that had once existed here was interesting to him.

The basic traditions were the same as the ones they had found in the previous Ruined Realms, but the interpretations were somewhat different.

It was normal, two people could get two different ideas from the same sentence.

The next building appeared on the map with another name.

[Temple of Unwalked Paths.]

Inside, more wall paintings had survived.

One of them caught his attention.

A wolf, but not something like the one he had fought a few hours ago, this wolf was large, perhaps twice the size of a normal one, but it still had a natural appearance.

Dark fur and two eyes, without any bones sticking out, and beside it stood eight humans wearing long ritual clothes.

[Guardian of the Eight Paths.]

Lian remained still for a moment.

"Two..." or at least that was the guess that came to his mind, but after moving forward, he realized that his guess had also been correct.

That monster had not always been the Eight Disasters, and in fact, it had once been the guardian of this place.

[Ritual identified.]

[Rite of Eight Possibilities.]

Lian read the damaged explanations, the purpose of the ritual was stranger than he had expected.

The followers of the Divine of Chaos wanted to force a living monster that they had managed to tame to follow eight different evolution paths at the same time instead of following only one evolution path.

For them, this was perhaps the purest proof of the philosophy of the Divine of Chaos.

The guardian wolf had been chosen for the ritual, and unlike what he had expected, the ritual had not failed.

It had succeeded.

Eight evolution paths had formed inside one body, but no living creature had been made to carry such things at the same time.

The paths collided with each other and the body began to change, eight eyes were formed.

Each evolution path turned into a huge transformation, and later they were called the "Eight Disasters".

Lian looked at the simple picture of the wolf on the wall.

"So you made it yourselves." But he had no idea how such a thing had been possible.

There was no information about what the ritual was or how it was performed.

But it did not make sense at all either, he had never heard that it was possible to interfere with the evolution path of monsters, and such a thing had never been seen in the previous Ruined Realms.

He had only seen one special example where someone’s evolution path had been changed, and that was Kain, and that was because he had absorbed the tear of the Divine Of Light.

But there was one connection between them, both that poor wolf and Kain had their evolution paths changed with the help of things that belonged to two Divines.

The next part of the information was darker.

The wolf’s body had started to show unholy features, maintaining eight paths required far more energy than its body could produce.

At first, it consumed meat, then blood, monster cores, and finally living creatures.

And it did not take long before it had lost control, that creature had been only a monster from the beginning that the followers of the Divine of Chaos had managed to tame, something similar to what some summoners could do.

Their goal in doing this was for the monster to protect them from other monsters.

But it should not be forgotten that in the end, it had been a monster that had turned into something that should not have been possible, and the final result was not good. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

It had destroyed parts of the shelter and killed many of the same people it had once protected.

On the wall beside it, there was a broken stone inscription.

[We wanted to prove that no creature is trapped in a single destiny.]

[...but what we created no longer had a destiny that it could remain in.]

Lian stayed silent for a few seconds, that was a good sentence for admitting failure.

The next question was obvious, why had they not killed it?

The answer was in the deeper part of the temple, they had tried, several times, but after the eight paths had evolved, killing the wolf was no longer simple.

Every time one of the structures of its body was damaged, one of the other paths could change the situation of the battle.

And worse, the amount of energy stored inside it had become so great that completely destroying it inside the shelter could destroy a large part of the city along with it.

In the end, the eight High Priests had made another decision.

Instead of killing it, they sealed each of the paths.

And the Crown of the Eight Paths was the core that connected all the seals together.

The entire structure of the shelter was later changed to strengthen this one prison.

Young Vorhelm raised his head slightly.

"My guess was right, these Fortresses eventually changed from a city into a prison for this monster."

After all, it should not be forgotten that their world had been attacked by monsters, and it did not take long for this city to fall as well, and after the fall of the civilization, Two was still trapped inside the cage.

But it had been trapped for a very long time.

The monster had slowly understood the structure of the seal network.

And then it had done something that strangely matched the philosophy of the people who had imprisoned it.

It had found another path.

It could not break the seals directly, so it had reversed the network.

It had connected the wolf monsters around it to the network.

The pieces of black bone behind the necks of the Howlers were actually changed forms of the nodes of that same network.

Through them, it gave commands, gathered corpses, and sent biomass and the remaining mana into the network.

And then it used the prison system to eat its own prison.

Generation after generation and corpse after corpse, it took time until the seal erosion reached 43%.

If Lian had entered this area later, perhaps a few more years or a few more decades would have been enough for Two to escape without anyone’s help.

After all, he now understood why (Unholy) was written beside Rank Two, although it was still only a guess, he was somewhat sure.

That wolf had been a Fallen, the followers of the Divine of Chaos had managed to tame a Fallen, although it was amazing, it was not impossible either.

And the ritual they had performed on that monster had caused it to go beyond all Fallens, but it still had not truly become an Unholy.

And the system also did not know how it should rank it, so it had done it this way.

But this made him curious, was there something he could do to make Two become a true Unholy in the future?

This was a question he did not have an answer to for now.

A few hours later, the gray light of the sky had become weaker.

When he returned to the main field again, there were no more corpses, and the Devouring Egg had consumed them.

Only dry skins, useless bones, and a few pieces remained.

One was also standing beside the last group of cores.

[Multiple Monster Cores absorbed.]

[First Evolution Saturation: High.]

[The requirement for the First Evolution has not yet been completed.]

"Still not?" Lian looked at One.

One’s antennae moved, it was clear that he was not happy with this situation either, he could not wait to complete his first evolution.

Then he walked toward the Devouring Egg.

"It’s time to go."

The egg turned into tiny particles and joined his body again.

He looked at the ruins of the Wolfgrave Fortresses one last time and then opened the World Memory.

The path back to Base #9 was shown on the map.

When they passed through the hidden area, a small notification appeared in front of him.

[Wolfgrave Fortresses have been left.]

[The Pioneer of the Forgotten Realms regional feature has been deactivated.]

Young Vorhelm continued without stopping, and a few hours later, the lights of Base #9 appeared in the distance through the fog.