Chapter 101: HOPE

Liam sat by the throne, feeling devastated, like someone who had completely lost the will to continue living. His body remained still while his eyes stared blankly at the destruction below, watching more and more casualties die without showing even the slightest reaction.

There was no anger left in him, nor was there fear or desperation. The emotions that had once made him care about his creations seemed to have been drained away, leaving behind nothing but an unbearable emptiness as the consequences of his choices continued unfolding before him.

"This is the end."

The words left his mouth quietly, almost like a whisper meant only for himself. Liam no longer had the strength to deny what he was seeing, because every destroyed city, every dead creation, and every desperate cry below him served as proof that his world had reached its final moments.

"WAHH... WAHHH..."

A sudden cry echoed through the ruined surroundings.

Liam’s eye twitched. "...Is that the baby?"

The sound was so small compared to the destruction around him, yet somehow it managed to reach the part of him that had become numb. He slowly turned his head toward the hallway, listening to the familiar cry of a child who had no understanding of what had happened to the world outside.

Liam raised his hand and used his power to levitate the crying baby from Trias’s room toward him. The small figure slowly floated through the hallway before reaching Liam, her tiny body trembling as she continued crying, completely unaware that the people who had once surrounded her were no longer there.

Liam gently reached out and touched Eazi’s face.

Her skin was warm.

That simple sensation felt strangely painful to him, because it reminded him that despite everything happening around them, there was still something alive in his hands.

She was too young to understand death, too young to understand that the world she had been born into had already been torn apart.

"I’m so sorry..."

Liam’s voice was quiet and weak.

"Everyone you knew is dead... and that’s all thanks to me."

He stared at Eazi for several seconds, his fingers remaining against her small face. He remembered the Pantheons who had once gathered together in this place, the civilizations they had protected, and the countless lives that had once looked toward him as their creator.

He had thought he could protect everything.

He had believed that because he possessed powers beyond anything his creations could understand, he would eventually be able to solve every problem that appeared. Now, sitting among the remains of everything he had built, that belief felt almost laughable.

"I’m so sorry."

Liam narrowed his eyes.

Then he blinked. The moment his eyelids closed, something felt wrong.

He tried to open them again, but they would not move.

At first, Liam assumed that he had simply lost control of his body for a moment. Then he realized that he could no longer hear Eazi crying, and the sudden absence of that sound made his heart sink.

The crying disappeared first.

Then the distant screams vanished.

The sound of destruction outside slowly faded until even the violent battle that had been raging across the planet became completely silent. Liam could no longer hear anything, as though someone had suddenly placed him inside an empty world where sound itself had ceased to exist.

His sense of smell disappeared next.

The familiar scent of the council chamber, the smell of the Pantheons who had spent countless years gathering within it, and even the scent of the earth outside gradually faded away. One after another, every familiar trace of his world was stripped from his consciousness until Liam could no longer even recognize where he was.

Then the birds stopped chirping.

Those tiny sounds had always existed somewhere in the background whenever he observed the world. They were insignificant, something he had never paid attention to, yet their disappearance made the silence feel even more unnatural.

Liam tried to move.

He tried to feel the throne beneath him, the floor beneath his feet, or even the presence of Eazi that had been right in front of him moments ago. There was nothing, and for the first time in hundreds of years, Liam experienced something that even his planetary existence could not easily comprehend.

Complete emptiness.

For several moments, there was simply nothing.

Then Liam’s consciousness suddenly began to stretch.

The sensation was horrifyingly familiar.

It reminded him of Consciousness Override, when his consciousness would be pulled from his body and forced into another vessel. Except this time, Liam had not activated anything, and there was no destination waiting for him.

His consciousness continued stretching farther and farther, as if something had grabbed his very existence and was pulling it through an endless darkness. Liam could not resist it, nor could he understand what was happening, and for a moment he wondered if this was simply another part of his world dying.

Then a familiar voice suddenly rang through the darkness.

[PLAYER MILESTONE REACHED.]

[THE ACT OF BUILDING THE FORCES.]

Liam remained motionless as the system’s voice echoed through his consciousness. The familiar mechanical tone felt almost foreign after everything he had experienced, yet hearing it again reminded him that he was still here.

[PLAYER REWARD ACQUIRED.]

[CALAMITY OVERSEER]

Another notification appeared.

[DESCRIPTION: ALLOWS THE PLAYER TO SEE THE FUTURE IN WHICH A THREAT HAS OCCURRED, EXPERIENCING IT AS IF THE PLAYER HAD LIVED THROUGH THE EVENT THEMSELVES.]

Liam remained silent.

For several seconds, he could not process what he had just heard. His mind was still trapped between the destruction he had witnessed and the strange reward that had suddenly appeared before him.

Then his consciousness slowly returned.

Liam opened his eyes yet again.

The first thing he noticed was the light.

It was not the light of destruction that had filled his world moments ago, nor was it the dim light of the ruined council chamber. Instead, something about the scene before him felt completely different, so different that Liam almost wondered if he was still looking at his own world.

He looked around slowly.

His senses returned one after another, and with them came the sounds, smells, and sensations he had lost moments earlier. Yet unlike before, none of them felt painful; they felt precious, almost unbearably so, because Liam had just experienced what it was like to have everything stripped away from him.

Then he saw it.

Something inside his chest seemed to loosen.

The emptiness that had consumed him began to recede, replaced by a feeling he had almost forgotten existed.

Hope.