Chapter 144 - 2nd Stage of Genesis: Matriarch of Death

’’Her steps fell upon the vibrant earth, giving existence a mortal birth. Her mind knew the pain the bright light had spun, calling forth the dark to blot out the blinding one. Standing on the horizon as the day was done, she became the Eclipse of the Fading Sun.’’

Reading the opening words, Magna was quite surprised to find them describing the light as something bad and the darkness as something good, which was usually the opposite.

It was almost as if the narrative was written in a biased way from the Matriarch of Death’s side.

But he didn’t find it too strange for it to be biased. He himself found the Matriarch of Life quite irresponsible, unable to take care of her children and only causing them pain and sorrow.

Until he read further, and his thoughts about Death changed too.

’’The rivers stopped their relentless flow, leaving behind deep, arid trenches like open wounds. The air grew cold as life bled from the world, leaving only ash and ruin where the living once walked.

The first child stopped crying, closing its eyes, finally finding eternal peace.

All that was once lively and thriving ceased to live and thrive. Death had descended upon them.’’

Magna had to check the book cover again to make sure he was really reading the correct book.

He saw the title, Five Stages of Genesis, which confirmed it was indeed a history book about the creation of the world.

He murmured in disbelief. ’’Are they really those respected Matriarchs? What is wrong with these women? One creates flawed life, causing living beings to suffer, while another just comes along to destroy everything?’’

Thinking about how undependable and incompetent these Goddesses were, he suddenly remembered the first time he had created a world for one of his first games.

He had been quite inexperienced and incompetent back then too, his game full of bugs and errors, to be honest.

But even he had never messed up like this. Instead of giving up or destroying something, he had worked harder until he made it perfect.

He was quite confused about how these five Mothers had become so loved after reading all this.

Of course, he knew the events described in the book weren’t real events, but merely metaphors pieced together from legends passed down from ear to ear.

Still, the fact that they were described this way was enough to make it clear that they weren’t exactly reliable people.

Sleep started to hit him hard, but he still forced his eyes open and kept reading, curious to see where this Matriarch’s story would lead.

’’The Mother watched all that was once beautiful wither and corrode. Before her eyes, everything that had lived and breathed in that fleeting moment vanished.

From the despair and regret born of her mistake, she turned toward the golden light, offering her gaze until it burnt her blind.

With Death rendered sightless, Fate stepped into the darkness.’’

—

Magna was so bored while reading that he fell asleep, once again falling into a dream.

This time it wasn’t as strange as before. By dream standards, it was at least almost logical.

In his dream, he grew 2 pairs of wings on his back and flew through the night toward the azure moon.

It was quite depressing. No matter how hard he tried to flap his wings, he couldn’t reach the moon, which always seemed so distant.

It was as if it were escaping from him, right up until it reached the horizon and gave way to the bright, vibrant sun.

At that moment, Magna slowly opened his eyes, daylight filling the room and greeting him.

Looking at the book still in his hand, he realized he had fallen asleep.

Putting it aside, he got up from the bed and went to stand in front of the window, where he began stretching to get his blood flowing and loosen the muscles that had stiffened during the night.

His eyes drifted toward the sky, following the clouds passing by, when he suddenly caught sight of a dark point in the distance.

’’Hm? What’s that?’’ He stopped and narrowed his eyes, looking at it.

It couldn’t be a bird. As far as he knew, there were no bird species in the area that flew at such a high altitude.

It couldn’t be a plane either, for obvious reasons.

It was also moving so fast toward his direction that he could finally make out its shape.

’’A person? A Witch?’’ He could at least see that it had a humanoid silhouette.

He started to think about whether he should warn Celeste and Titus, but soon decided against it, since the person was approaching too fast. By the time he went to warn them, the person would probably already be there.

He got a better look once the silhouette got close enough, and then it even started to lose altitude.

He had guessed right, it was a person, but not a Witch at all.

It was actually a man as bulky as Titus, wearing full-body black metallic knight armor.

Looking at the angle he was rapidly losing altitude at, Magna even realized something unimaginable.

The man probably wasn’t flying at all. It was as if he had simply jumped and was now about to land somewhere nearby.

And that was exactly what happened.

After losing more altitude, he eventually disappeared from Magna’s field of vision, with Magna only hearing a booming sound coming from somewhere nearby. He wasn’t even sure whether the man had fallen to death or safely landed.

Being too curious, but also keeping his guard up, he immediately left his room to go check what kind of person had arrived at the mansion this time.

He was still quite traumatized because of Melisandre, so he didn’t rush, giving Celeste and Titus enough time to reach the place first.

They must have heard the sound too, since it had echoed throughout the entire area. He assumed they had already gone to check what had happened.

He walked down the corridor, neither too slowly nor too quickly, heading to the other side of the mansion to find a window he could see where the man had landed.

On the way, he unexpectedly ran into Celeste coming from the opposite direction of the corridor.

"Magna." She was the first one to call out to him, even sounding like she had been looking for him.

She also wasn’t looking worried or rushing at all, which made Magna quite confused and surprised as he approached her.

"Didn’t you hear that sound? Someone just fell from the sky," he asked, trying to understand why she was looking so relaxed.

His words didn’t seem to surprise Celeste at all. She even laughed, looking quite amused. ’’Yes, we heard that. Titus has already gone to greet him.’’

Finding the word "greet" strange, Magna asked, "Greet? You know him?"

"Yes." She held out her hand for him to take. "Come with me. He is here to take you to the Tower."

For a moment, Magna simply stared at the hand she had held out to him, his mouth hanging open with shock.

He had been expecting a luxurious carriage or something similar, like the one that had come to take Faye, but it turned out that the one who had come to take him was just a bulky man.