Chapter 412: There Are No More Gods (Bonus PS)

The words from Dorrik were not entirely unexpected; even if I did not say anything, my arrival alone was filled with mysteries, and a lesser man would not be able to endure my silence.

I opened my mouth to answer, but the words did not come. It was not that I did not want to tell him. It was that I did not know where to start. The loop, the deaths, the gates, the Sovereign, the Pivot- it was all too much, too tangled, too vast to fit into a single conversation.

"One day," I said. "When I understand it myself. I am still... lost."

"Ah, I will have to hold back my curiosity." Dorrik sighed, "The beast you ate was not supposed to be that effective. I had planned six more trips, but I feared that I would not be able to make it. The storm has delayed the advancement of the armies of the fallen gods, but it would not hold them back forever, and the Sky-Deer is an elusive prey for one like myself, but to heal the soul, there is nothing better."

"Oh, then if I want to heal fast, I would have to find this Sky-Deer."

Dorrik studied me for a long moment. Then he nodded, as if he had expected that answer. "One day, then. But for now, you should rest. Your body is strong, but your soul is still mending. You will not be able to do much for a while. These beasts are not just fast; their command of the wind is unmatched."

I looked at the tablets on the shelf, peering at all the knowledge that was waiting for me. "I can read."

He followed my gaze and smiled. "Aye. You can read. The tablets will not hurt you. They are the shape of a world that was, and they have been waiting for someone to remember them. The world is changing too fast, so it would be good to have one more person who remembers what was... There is great power in memories and legacies, and so many of us have forgotten this truth."

I walked to the shelf and reached for the tablet I had been reading before I fell into the void, and Dorrik shook his head, "Not that one... not if you want to learn the cooking recipes of the Frost Giants... they have a lot of them, for a race where their land is nothing but ice and wind, you would be amazed at how deep their culinary culture goess."

He went to the third row of the rack, pulled out one specific slab, and turned it over twice in his hands before setting it in front of me. There was care in the choosing that had nothing to do with picking a book off a shelf, almost ritualistic.

"This one," he said. "Names of things and where they stand. If your memory is broken, then you need to understand names first, or nothing you read here would mean anything to you."

"Names," I muttered as I took the slab from him, and it was heavier than I expected, likely weighing several tons. I slowly placed my right palm on the tablet, and it let me look into it.

∞

Terra.

The name was the first thing that entered my mind, pouring the meaning of the world into my soul.

I froze, not fully comprehending what this meant even though the truth was staring at me right in the face. Terra was not just a name; it was the name of my world... every god, Sovereign, and mortal was born on Terra, her first and only name.

From what I could tell, this name had been lost, or systematically eradicated over the years until in my present age, no one remembered the name of our world, and this was just the tip of the iceberg, as what came next was even more shocking, since Terra did not have seven continents... it had eleven.

I looked up from the tablets at Dorrik, "Is this right? There are eleven continents on...on Terra?"

Dorrik cocked his head to the side, "Of course, why do you say this as if it is something special? There are twenty-two intelligent species of Terra, and eleven is not nearly enough for all of us."

I stared at him. Twenty-two intelligent species, and the countless animals and other strange creatures on the planet. Eleven continents. A world that was so much larger than anything I had ever known, so much more complex, so much more alive. And I had never known any of it.

I stared back at the tablet, fully noticing the size of Terra, and my eyes widened, since the size of the planet did not make any sense, since it was hundreds of times bigger than what I expected the size of my world to be.

There was no way a planet with our density should be this size without crushing every mortal to paste if I followed normal logic, but all of this still felt meaningless when I considered what I had seen when I was in space and turned back to look at my world.

I saw that my planet had literally been sliced in half, and only a hemisphere remained. There was too much going on for me to think about this earth-shattering discovery, but perhaps I had just seen where the rest of the world went.

Terra was much bigger than before, and in the past, fuck, in the coming future, the gods are not just going to be wiped out, including the Dragon God, the Caeliths would fall, and half of the damned world would be sliced off, and that was not even considering the fact that in the present, humans could be seen as the only intelligent race on the planet.

There were goblins, and some were creatures who barely had intelligence, but they were nearly extinct. How did everything go wrong? How can there be so many deaths and devastation in the blink of an eye?

If what I was seeing was correct, the extinction rate of the species on Terra was higher than 99.999%, and in the future, where our foolish Sovereigns were fighting over more power, the last few humans left were about to vanish from the surface of the earth.

"How did everything go wrong?"

The words left my mouth before I could stop them, and I felt the weight of the question settle into the silence of the hall. Dorrik was quiet for a long moment, his ancient grey eyes fixed on me.

"Wrong is a matter of perspective," he said. "For the Dragon God, everything is going exactly as he planned. For us..." He gestured vaguely at the walls, at the mountain, at the world beyond. "For us, it has been a slow, grinding loss."

I looked at the tablet in my hands, at a world vast and alive and full of wonders I had never known, and about to be forever lost, and somehow, my secrets do not seem so monumental anymore.

"The world I know," I said slowly, "has seven continents. Only one intelligent species. The others are... remnants, almost extinct. There are no more gods; even their names are lost, just men, killing what is left for greed and power."