Chapter 1 What Rockmarton Left Behind

"This is what's left of Rockmarton..."

Hao Ren said with some emotion as he took the faintly glowing "material" from the singer Tunala.

It was a shimmering fragment the size of a fist, its overall texture hazy, like a wisp of incorporeal smoke, yet completely opaque and possessing a certain weight. Even with Hao Ren's experience, he couldn't tell if it was solid or ethereal. At the same time, although the fragment's owner was dead, it was still contracting and expanding rhythmically, as if it still retained life.

Silvery spider silk enveloped the fragment, but without touching it, like a loosely structured cocoon, with the fragment floating in the center.

The spider silk isolated the fragment from the outside world, just in case.

"It looks like a solid 'image' left behind after an extremely powerful soul shattered," said Anton, who also had some knowledge of the soul realm, stroking his beard. "This 'Rockmarton' was indeed incredibly powerful. If we couldn't directly borrow the power of the Goddess to attack it, it would have posed a significant threat to ordinary Inspectors."

The singer Tunala paced back and forth, her eight elegant and slender spider legs seeming to dance to a rhythm: "When I attacked it, I felt a 'recoil' similar to the divine power of a True God, which is consistent with the information you mentioned, Bomb Ren. Others probably didn't perceive it as clearly as I did, but they should all have felt it to some extent."

Tunala was an Inspector with similar seniority to the Dragon Queen. As a demigod who ascended from a Spider Demon, she possessed exceptional perception, an enhancement and extension of her former race's talent.

"Ahem... Ms. Tunala, my name is Hao Ren, not Bomb Ren," Hao Ren coughed awkwardly, looking very seriously at this "singer," suspecting she was doing it on purpose. "If the vague impression I gleaned from the Stone Tablet of Truth is correct, Rockmarton did possess some of the divinity of a True God, but lacked the crucial informational dynamics and true control over that divinity. It could not yet be called a True God."

Tunala crossed her arms, her red eyes, more slender and gloomy than a human's, sparkling with interest: "Is that so... how interesting. After you go back and get some results, give me a copy of the research data. I like collecting knowledge in this area."

"Maybe we can get some results right now," Hao Ren fiddled with the spider silk outside the shimmering fragment. "Can you two help me out? Protect me."

Tunala was taken aback: "Protect you? What do you mean?"

Anton, who usually had a lot of interaction with Hao Ren, knew a bit about this "Bomb Ren." The old mage suddenly recalled some of Hao Ren's special abilities from the database: "You're planning to directly read Rockmarton's memories from the fragment?"

"The main body is dead, and the soul is just a fragment. This thing shouldn't be that dangerous," Hao Ren said with a smile, raising the "cocoon" in his hand. "Ms. Tunala, how do you open this thing?"

"Just call me Tunala, we're all in the same unit. Adding 'Ms.' makes it feel distant," Tunala said with a smile, then casually swiped the "cocoon," and the spider silk seal, which originally required a powerful energy cutting device to break, directly cracked open. "I think I know what you're going to do—don't worry, Anton and I will watch over you. To be honest, I'm quite interested in your legendary mind-reading ability."

Hao Ren steadied himself and slowly reached out towards the Rockmarton fragment.

He felt his fingers touch a cold and constantly rotating "air mass." The density of the air mass increased towards the inside. When his fingers penetrated about two centimeters, the density reached a point where it could not be easily penetrated.

A slight dizziness struck, and then a flood of ancient memories, from who knows how many years ago, surged in like a tide...

At first, there was a hazy light. Then, moving things appeared in the light. The swaying images gradually distinguished different details, and then gradually became clear, transforming into a red ocean and a monotonous sky.

This monotonous sky and sea lasted for a very, very long time, until a special individual suddenly appeared.

It was a figure rising from the red ocean, shrouded in a layer of mist. Or perhaps it was because the memory was too distant, causing the face to blur. Or perhaps it was for some more mysterious reason, Hao Ren could not see the figure's face clearly. But the moment the figure appeared, Hao Ren realized who "she" was.

From Rockmarton's perspective, the figure quickly approached, seeming very surprised and excited, circling around and around, a dozen times in all, before a voice sounded directly in Hao Ren's heart, no, in the heart of Rockmarton from back then:

"Ah—it's moving! It's moving! Success! I succeeded!"

The immense joy spread along the connection of minds, and this emotion became the first emotion in Rockmarton's memory: joy.

The birth of life is something to be joyful about.

"You'll keep me company from now on!" the figure that Rockmarton understood as "mother" quickly said. "I'm going to give you a name... Names are necessary, they're very useful!"

Though she said she was giving a name, the mother actually pondered for a long time without being able to come up with one, because she herself didn't seem to understand what a "name" really was.

It wasn't until the glowing fireball in the sky had flown by several thousand times that it was given the name "Rockmarton."

Slowly, Rockmarton learned many things about its mother, and the process of its own birth.

The "mother" seemed to be the only life in this world—not counting itself, which was born later.

She had lived in this place for many, many years, not knowing where she came from, nor where she should go. The mother could never explain her origins, nor could she explain why no second individual similar to her could be seen in the entire world. She wandered aimlessly on this boundless red ocean, with nothing to do. Before she thought of the good idea of "creating a little thing to keep her company," her greatest hobby was lying on the sea and observing the sun's movement and the stars at night. Observing the sun's movement was an extremely boring thing, because it was always the same, but watching the stars was more interesting, because there were many stars, and they were always changing.

Very, very occasionally, something even more interesting would happen: a burning stone would suddenly fall from the sky, splashing a very, very large amount of water on the sea.

The mother could get excited about these splashes for thousands of days and nights.

But observing the stars and waiting for meteorites to fall on the water surface weren't very interesting things either. The mother finally began to tire, becoming bored. The increasingly strong sense of loneliness frustrated her.

After a long period of time, she finally decided to create something that could accompany her, something similar to herself, or at least something that could move and communicate.

She failed many times, and finally, after a haphazard tinkering, she finally succeeded in creating it, Rockmarton.

A blindly wriggling, ignorant lump of flesh.

That was the process of Rockmarton's birth.

In some wonderful, detached perspective, Hao Ren saw Rockmarton in its "childhood."

It was a small, dark red lump of flesh, only the size of a human head, with no visible organs or symmetry whatsoever. It floated lazily and ignorantly on the water, sometimes held in its mother's arms, communicating with its mother with clumsy gurgles and tremors.

The mother took it to tour the entire "world," chasing storms in the red ocean, chasing the sun, observing the stars, searching for glowing fissures on the seabed, and even drilling into the fissures to explore among the scorching lava. They also found a small piece of land on the sea surface, the only land in the entire "world." The mother built a small house on it with stones, and the open space around the house was filled with the mother's collections: stone fragments, crystals, and the metal cores left behind after the stones that fell from the sky burned out.

In Rockmarton's most primitive memories, everything had a warm feeling.

However, after countless years of precipitation and wear and tear, the emotions in many distant memories had long faded. Hao Ren read Rockmarton's memories, and apart from the initial deep joy, most of the content was empty and cold.

It coldly recorded these extremely distant things, like an emotionless machine archiving these memories and storing them in the corner of its soul.

In its memories, it gradually grew up.

The mother also gradually grew up.

The mother slowly discovered some of her own powers, and then began to gradually master them and experiment with them.

She seemed to think that her child should also learn these techniques, so she injected her divine power into Rockmarton's body.

After that, the memories seemed even colder and paler.

The power of the gods was too powerful a toy for Rockmarton, and it was deeply fascinated by it.

It began to squander these powers, and it would be satisfied no matter what consequences these powers produced—creation or destruction.

It gradually became dissatisfied with its mother's discipline and dissatisfied with this monotonous world.

The mother liked to observe the stars and then had the idea of going to those stars. She learned how to enter space and even flew around the surface of the big, hot, luminous ball in the sky. When she came back, she told Rockmarton that it was a very, very bright place.

Rockmarton thought this was an opportunity, an opportunity to leave this monotonous red planet, so it became docile again, hoping to explore the stars with its mother.

The memories became even colder, and even those vibrant images gradually became covered in a layer of black mist.

It seemed that something terrible happened during that adventure. It would explain why Rockmarton was completely twisted, as well as some of the secrets of the Goddess of Creation, and this memory was buried very deep.

Hao Ren continued to dive deeper into the memories.