“The Guardian,” Roland raised an eyebrow, “Guarding every civilization towards its clear demise?”
“I knew you would ask that… but this is the only way.” The other party rose from the throne, right hand raised as if holding something, and a sphere of light appeared in its hand. Then the sphere began to unravel layer by layer, revealing the complex structure inside, until Roland recognized what it was—
Despite having expected it, his heart still skipped a beat when he truly saw this scene.
Floating in the other party's hand was the world they were in.
He saw the Dawn Border, the Fertile Plains, and the Kingdom of Graycastle. Beyond this continent, there were also the Blackrock Region and the Sky-Sea Realm—but that wasn't the point; the point was that the entire world was wrapped in a honeycomb-like shell, like a barrier isolating the planet from the outside world.
And beneath the continent and the ocean, there was an extremely complex core. Unlike the Earth's core, which is spherical due to pressure, it was an irregular geometric shape. The raised part of the "Sea Line" was precisely located on the edge of a cube. He could even see the bottom of the Whirlpool Sea connected to the Sky-Sea Realm, its path resembling a Klein bottle.
Without a doubt, the reason why this world was so discordant was entirely because it was not formed naturally.
The artificial planet he saw in the second act's fragment was now the real world.
The clouds, sun, moon, and stars that people observed were all projections created by the barrier.
And in the real outer space, Roland only saw a desolate silence.
“You are ‘That Pair of Eyes’.” In an instant, he suddenly understood many things.
The god sighed softly, “I don’t know what information you have obtained, but it doesn’t matter. Time is a unit that can be long or short here. I will satisfy your curiosity, and then… destroy you.”
“Worthy of the words of a Guardian—like students not needing to attend class, or pharmaceutical companies not manufacturing drugs.” Roland frankly spread out his hands. In any case, he now represented humanity, or rather, all living things in reality. Even if the other party was a god, he couldn't back down. “What I want to ask most is, why is there a Divine Will Battle What do you want to get?”
“I thought you would start with smaller questions. Very well.” It retracted the sphere of light in its hand, then raised one hand, and countless “screens” quickly appeared behind it, forming a striking wall in this pure white space.
Roland discovered that the content displayed on the screens was all… various life forms.
“The Door Project was successful. It was almost identical to the calculation results. With the cooperation of many civilizations, this universe was finally torn apart by gravity, and an extremely small crack appeared.” The god said slowly, “But the Door Project was also a failure. The energy that poured in from another realm destroyed most intelligent life, including the creators of the Door Project.”
These were the scenes at the end of the third act…
Roland recalled that extremely sad feeling, as if at that moment he was connected to all the civilizations involved in the project.
“That’s right, this energy is what you call ‘Magic’.”
“It is neither light nor heat; neither particle nor wave—simply put, it comes from a space with completely different rules from our universe. Physics and mathematics are meaningless in the face of such energy. Almost instantly, its influence changed the entire world.”
“What… what is on the other side of the crack?” Roland couldn't help but ask.
“An accurate description does not exist, because no one has crossed that twisted membrane yet, but according to analysis, it can be basically divided into two possibilities—one is the universe that envelops our universe, which is the easiest to understand theory.” Speaking of this, the other party's voice was ethereal and缥缈, “A new singularity can be born inside the universe and erupt to form a new universe, and produce a completely independent set of rules and constants. Therefore, even if our world originated from the universe outside the membrane, it does not mean that life or matter can travel freely.”
“The second possibility is the ‘gap zone’ between multiple universes. You can imagine it as a thick soup, and we are the bubbles rising. It appears, expands, merges, ruptures… Of course, the reality is much more complicated, but that is beyond your comprehension.”
“Alright… let’s talk about magic,” Roland twitched his lips, “You said earlier that it extinguished most living beings, but now it has become the norm in the real world. Isn’t that contradictory?”
If humans are the chosen ones of the universe, that would be too incredible.
“Magic has a very unique set of rules, one of which is that it can be changed by consciousness, and it also changes the owner of consciousness.”
Roland was stunned, “What?”
“The first batch of life forms to be changed were the participants in the Door Project. Their structures were twisted and reorganized, and after tens of millions of years of evolution, they eventually became special crystal-like substances, which are the Magic Stones you use.” The god said calmly, “I survived because I don’t belong to the category of life, but I also suffered great damage and spent tens of thousands of years recovering. It was from that time that gravity was no longer the most revered force in this world.”
Hearing this answer, he didn't know what to say for a moment.
However, Roland was not surprised by the Guardian's statement that it did not belong to a living being—the Door Project was a vast project spanning hundreds of billions of galaxies and involving 170,000 civilizations. To always walk on the correct path and coordinate in such a long period, the coordinator must not be a single living being or a single race.
It came into being because of this project.
“Next, the ‘Cradle’ was created—it is a world built with the help of magic, but the energy intensity is limited to a certain extent. I selected life from the incomplete database and restarted cultivation, allowing these species to be reborn under the new rules. Since competition can greatly increase the evolution speed of the population, the Cradle will deliberately choose species with similar habitats to coexist. But the calculation quickly discovered that the time for this process would be so long that it could not be estimated, and the limited resources also restricted free growth, so intervention by external forces became a last resort.”
“…Inheritance Fragments.” Roland said in a deep voice.
“This is only a part of it.” The other party nodded, “As for what I ultimately want to get, it’s actually not that complicated. The creators of the Door Project, that is, the civilization that created me, not only wanted to let the universe ‘live on’. It never intended to stop moving forward, even until the moment before its demise. Opening the crack was only the first step, its real purpose was to see the realm that no one had ever set foot in.”
“It entrusted this task to me, and my final mission is to create a civilization that can adapt to the rules of both worlds.” It paused slightly, “—and this competition and evolution is what you call the Divine Will Battle.”