Chapter 139: Altered Destinies

Something was wrong.

The mental trance lasted for only a fleeting, infinitesimal moment, but Amy Ulysses felt an inexplicable sense of dissonance—as if the entire world had become strange during those few seconds of distraction.

Something had been changed.

Deep within the darkness.

Standing by the window of the thirty-second floor of the Supreme Tower, the youth gazed into the distant dark, his brow slightly furrowed. What had happened there?

"Amy," Joshua’s voice pulled him from his private thoughts. "Did you notice?"

"Hmm?" The young Glorifier did not immediately react. After a pause of about zero point zero three seconds, he asked, "Notice what?"

"The sound," Joshua replied, concise and direct. "The tide... no, the sound of the raging waves."

"It’s gone." Guided by his friend, Amy finally realized the change in the world. "An unexpected shift... It seems those big shots in the Council truly have a few tricks up their sleeves."

As he said this, he couldn't help but recall the trance he had just experienced, and the sense of discord that had followed.

Could it... be related to this?

Narrowing his eyes slightly, the youth seriously considered the possibility.

—But before he could reach an answer, his consciousness plunged once more into a murky abyss.

Death.

The death of many.

Under the dim light refracted by crystal lamps, within the turbid darkness, a scarlet path paved with shattered corpses lay across the ground. The blood, limbs, and remains of humans and Deep Ones alike were intertwined with deformed metal shells and craters, forming a bloody tapestry filled with a cruel beauty.

This was... a battlefield.

Just one glance was enough for the youth to grasp this reality.

The carnage and cruelty of war, even to a battle-hardened veteran like Amy Ulysses who had taken many lives, struck a profound and overwhelming terror into his heart at first sight.

It was true; he had killed many people.

But in the heat of combat, in the exchange with his enemies, he could feel their longing for survival, their hunger for victory—he could feel the burning, unspoken will to live.

Admittedly, he had killed them.

Yet, in the midst of the slaughter, he had never demeaned their lives; he had never taken the act of killing, of extinguishing a person’s right to exist, as a matter of course.

However, war was entirely different from a fight.

It was a distortion of humanity, a trampling of life—

A life-or-death struggle, naturally, requires no justification. On a battlefield where victory and death hang by a thread, there is no room for hesitation, nor for any deep reflection. No matter who you are, and no matter how passionate you are about life, you cannot change the singular, brutal fact that you have only one choice: to keep killing. And those who denied this fact... without a doubt, were all dead.

The survivors had to continue killing to stay alive; they had to become pure, mechanical engines of slaughter.

He sighed softly at the cruel, even tragic scene before him—wait? A sigh? Only then did the youth notice that he was not observing this impending future of death from an objective perspective; rather, he had been thrust into this situation in his own body.

What was this? A premonition of death? Or a new branch of his precognitive abilities?

Amy could not be sure.

But one thing was certain: this body was not physical.

Several times, he tried to pick up a discarded weapon on the ground, but his hand passed directly through it, as if he were in a different world entirely.

In other words, he should be immune to most physical harm.

Does that mean... he could attempt to head toward the center of the battlefield?

The youth’s eyes darted around, a decision forming in his mind—although he couldn't be certain if this was a premonition of the future or if he had traveled to the actual battlefield in spirit form, since he was unlikely to be harmed in this state, there was no need to be timid.

Having been toyed with in the Lower District due to a lack of intelligence, his emphasis on first-hand information had become almost pathological. Regardless of whether he was in the future or the present, determining the course of the battle was crucial for setting his goals and planning his subsequent actions.

And so, he stepped forward.

The main battlefield was not far from his position. In less than ten minutes, Amy caught up with the Glorifier troops.

The battle was nearing its end.

Only the final mopping-up remained.

Hundreds of Glorifiers gathered to fight, yet the battlefield, which was far from spacious, did not appear chaotic. Even without the formations of a mortal army, one could still discern a pattern in their constant shifting and regrouping, as if an invisible hand were guiding these descendants of glory, causing them to abandon individualistic heroism and merge into a collective, perfectly executing the role of a team.

This coordination... was it based on some kind of ability?

Amy Ulysses’s gaze swept across the orderly battlefield, finally settling on a figure protected by layers of others—a young woman.

Someone he didn't recognize.

She appeared to be about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, not in his or Joshua’s age group, so... there was no possibility of social connection, and naturally, he knew nothing of her abilities.

Pointless speculation was of little use.

Fortunately, one thing was certain: she was at least a person of some authority.

After a moment of thought, the youth moved closer to the main body of the Glorifiers.

"Can you hear me?"

He asked, but no one replied—no, it wasn't as simple as no one replying; it was... no one heard his question at all, no one was aware of his existence.

Amy Ulysses did not feel frustrated; after all, it was what he had expected.

By now, the remaining Deep Ones had been annihilated. After a brief rest, the Glorifier contingent set off again. Along the way, they encountered a few scattered Deep Ones, but faced with their absolute individual combat power and numerical advantage, the enemies had no room to resist or struggle, vanishing like soap bubbles submerged in water, without even a ripple.

Beyond that, however, the main force of the Deep Ones remained nowhere to be seen.

Under the illumination of the dim crystal lamps, the darkness ahead was like a gaping maw waiting to devour, or a web spun by a spider, waiting in the profound silence for the intruders to venture deeper.

Something was wrong—

The Deep Ones should not be such fragile enemies.

Clearly, the youth was not the only one to notice this. The commander of the nearly one thousand Glorifiers was equally alert. It was palpable that, compared to the beginning, the troop was now significantly more stifled and vigilant.

Unfortunately, some things could not be avoided by mere vigilance.

When the Glorifiers reached the Sighing Wall that separated the Upper District from the Lower District, the massive, blood-red sigil inscribed in front of the gate, with a radius of at least ten meters, drew everyone's attention.

The Glorifiers seemed to be discussing something, but just as they could not hear Amy speak, Amy could not fathom what they were saying.

What was certain was that this sigil... or alchemical matrix, was not simple.

No—

Memories from the depths of his consciousness flowed out once more.

"—This is a magic circle, a magic circle of Chaos Magic."

A voice seemed to be whispering.

Magic?

A spark seemed to ignite in his consciousness, and inspiration poured forth—it clicked. It matched the bone skeleton he had encountered earlier that seemed to follow the orders of the Chaos Cult, and it matched the various abilities of the Deep Ones that required chanting in that blasphemous language.

Those... must all be Chaos Magic.

Magic that borrowed the power of ancient evil gods, filled with madness, chaos, and the tendency to strip one of their sanity.

It was a power that should not exist within the territory of Order.

Having acquired the relevant knowledge from the depths of his consciousness, Amy Ulysses shifted his gaze away from the magic circle and controlled his body to ascend.

Since it was not a physical flesh-and-blood body, but something akin to a spirit or something else, the youth easily broke free from the shackles of gravity and soared into the high air.

He had actually done it?

There was surprise in his heart, and concern, but his intuition gave him no warning of danger—more than that, he even felt a faint sense of being summoned, and a budding curiosity about the world behind the Sighing Wall.

After a brief hesitation, he made his decision.

And so—

He ascended, and ascended, and ascended again.

The false form simply ceased to be maintained in an environment unsuitable for human life. Human perception was naturally stripped away, replaced by a sense that transcended the bounds of darkness.

It was a composite sense, similar to sight, yet capable of perceiving temperature and scent simultaneously.

It was truly wondrous.

Yet, compared to the magnificent scenery before him, it was nothing.

What emerged before his eyes was not the Lower District he was familiar with, nor the roaring, surging ocean, but... a world of ice and snow!

A frozen continent, frozen giant waves; the entire world was left with nothing but a pristine white.

Was this the countermeasure of those big shots?

It was truly extravagant.

Awed by this great power that conquered heaven and earth, the youth sincerely marveled at everything before him.

But that was all.

Having roughly determined the means by which the Council’s big shots were countering the Great Flood, Amy Ulysses abandoned the idea of ascending further, allowed his ethereal body to re-condense, and plummeted downward.

He landed as lightly as a speck of dust, almost without sensation.

Then, with just one glance, he determined the dire situation the Glorifiers were facing.

It was an ambush—

A meticulously prepared ambush.

Countless Deep Ones swarmed in from all directions, surrounding the isolated force that had ventured deep into the territory. A sea of scarlet eyes lit up in the dense darkness, and then... they swarmed forward.

No tactics, no coordination, just a simple, overwhelming rush!

Were they surrounded?

Perhaps.

Conversely, the Glorifiers had their own confidence. As they engaged, the roar of artillery once again resounded, lighting up the long night.

For a time, shattered limbs flew everywhere, crimson blood splattered at will, and everyone’s face was stained with hysterical madness, all throwing themselves into this feast of slaughter.

No one was an exception.

Except for Amy Ulysses, whose true self did not exist here.

Thus, he saw it. He saw the splattered flesh and blood merging into the magic circle behind the Glorifiers, and then... the bloody luster circulated, and faintly, a terrifying, ominous aura began to bleed out.

This was—

In the next instant, his eyes widened.

—Dozens, perhaps nearly a hundred tall Deep Ones, adorned with bone ornaments from head to toe, emerged from within the magic circle and raised the spears in their hands high.

Throw!

"Watch out!"

Even though he knew his voice could not reach the Glorifiers in another spacetime, he still roared with uncontrollable intensity at this moment.

And then, as expected, it had no effect.

The flower of blood bloomed there.

The flower of life withered there.

And then... the world shattered before his eyes.

He woke from the dream.