Chapter 148: Glimpsing the True Form Within the Void

Dagon is depicted as a merman, or a half-man, half-fish entity.

He is an ancient Semitic agricultural deity, a Mesopotamian god of fertility, and was worshipped by the Philistines.

Because of pagan worship, Milton portrayed this ancient deity in *Paradise Lost* as a great demon dwelling beneath the deep sea.

Yet Amy Ulysses knew very well that this Dagon was not that Dagon.

Though he manifested to the world in the same half-human, half-fish form, what was ravaging the City of Hermetica was not the ocean god evolved from the deity of fertility, but a presence far more chaotic, insane, tyrannical, and evil.

Hydra—

He was crowned with this alternative designation.

He was revered as the Father-God by the Deep Ones, and moreover, as a servitor of Cthulhu. One legend held that he was a lesser Great Old One, while another maintained he was merely a gigantic, extremely ancient Deep One.

Yet... regardless of his true identity, the youth with black hair and dark eyes had no interest in getting to the bottom of it right now.

His mind was not even dwelling on Hermetica.

As if stimulated by the emergence of Dagon, the long-sealed gates of memory cracked open just a sliver.

And then...

Taboo knowledge, unrecorded in paper documents, seeped forth from within.

——*Al Azif*

Malignant knowledge poured into the hollows of the soul amid a chorus of frenzied, wailing shrieks. At this moment, the young Scion of Glory seemed to be extracted from continuous space-time, cast into a cavern of darkness amid infinite alls. He heard the frantic beating of drums, the sickening, monotonous tones of flutes, and the endless, directionless, and blindly foolish howling of the Outer Gods—some formless, terrifying entity dwelled within ultimate chaos, endlessly and insatiably gnawing on something in absolute void.

Trembling, trembling, trembling—

His body shook entirely beyond control, and his soul emitted painful, irrepressible shudders.

For the first time, Amy Ulysses realized his own shallowness, ignorance, and insignificance, yet despair was entirely absent.

Why despair?

One should rejoice at the existence of unnamed entities operating outside human reason.

This was destruction, this was death, this was terror—

Yet, this was also hope.

A smile, which could barely be called delicate or heroic, surfaced on the youth's face as he trudged forward through the endless, frenzied clamor.

Not enough, not enough, still not enough.

His spirit was dragged down, his will teetered on the brink of collapse. Logically speaking, he should have long since fallen within this infinitely extending dark cavern, losing his sanity, his soul, and his sense of self, leaving behind only a blindly foolish, hollow husk to wander aimlessly in the darkness, wandering and wandering, until all things in creation were devoured by the formless, terrifying entity lurking within the dark chaos, reduced to nourishment for its growth.

Yet this terrible fate ultimately did not come to pass.

Exhausted to his absolute limits, Amy finally reached the infinite end, catching a glimpse of the visage of truth through the aperture.

——The world spun invertedly.

The universe inverted in a single instant, heaven and earth crushed against one another, and the cosmic rivers of stars flowed backward.

Amid this inconceivable aberration, his consciousness plunged into slumber.

When the symphony composed of great drums, flutes, and the lamentations of the Ancient Gods faded into the distance, the youth who had escaped from the dark cavern finally regained his clarity. In an absolute void devoid of gravity and all physical properties, he opened his eyes.

What greeted his vision was a expanse of starlight.

Of course, this so-called "starlight" was not literal stars; its magnificence and splendor far transcended mere heavenly bodies.

These were worlds.

An infinite, innumerable, unimaginably vast multitude of worlds.

Some were stellar cosmoses of brilliant galaxies; some were Pangaean continents with square earths and circular heavens; some were dreams inadvertently birthed by three-eyed deities; some were golden dunes piled high in the primordial seas; some were mysterious realms growing like fruits upon a tree; some were colossal worlds borne upon the backs of giant elephants and dragons—worlds of every strange and bizarre variety, countless and inexhaustible, where endless living beings rose and perished, and boundless civilizations burst forth only to march toward their fated ends.

And even higher than these was the ancient light that transcended dimensions.

Beneath them, however, was a black quagmire that swallowed most of his body.

——The Abyss.

The destination of all worlds, the bottomless deep.

He or It was known by such a name.

It was as if an invisible hand had accelerated the flow of time, and worlds more magnificent and wondrous than stars fell from their positions like birds stripped of their wings, plunging into the black mire, plunging into eternal darkness, devoured to the last by the formless entities dwelling within. Deities that were once supreme and ruled over all creation sank and degenerated in the filth, reduced to desperate, mad, and frantic gods whose true visages could not be gazed upon.

And within the endless, bottomless abyss, not a single droplet of water splashed.

There remained only the never-ending symphony of madness.

"Where on earth is this?" Amy Ulysses surveyed the deserted, absolute void. There was neither anxiety nor unease in his gaze, which was as calm as a clear spring undisturbed by a gentle breeze. "What do you want to tell me?"

Naturally, there was no reply.

"This is reality," the young Scion of Glory only muttered to himself, "the real world."

Not the reality of the world, but the real world.

The history of the domain of order could only be traced back three thousand years—

In the first millennium, the glory forged by the Ancestors had already dimmed.

In the second millennium, even the radiance of the Kings was lost along with it.

In the third millennium, the world lost its light.

In historical circles, the era lacking historical records, when the Ancestors were active, was called the Pre-Ancient Era. Everything concerning that epoch seemed shrouded in the Fog of the Nameless, with only half-true, ethereal legends passing down—scholars had debated this for millennia, and neither the skepticism-leaning school nor the archaeology-leaning school could produce persuasive evidence. The only certain thing was... the Ancestors were not the aboriginal inhabitants of the dark chaos.

They came from the light—

Longswords shattered the darkness, and flames illuminated the path.

They waged war against the Great Old Ones flowing forth from the primal source of chaos—desperate and mad ancient gods, kin pursuing the footprints of the Great Old Ones, beasts of chaos manifesting in the mortal realm. Countless enemies surged forward like a tide; some were powerful, some bizarre, some insane, but among them, there were none who cowered.

No one knew how long this war lasted, nor how the Ancestors ultimately achieved victory.

It was only known that once the Great Old Ones flowing from the primal source of chaos were suppressed as pillars beneath four great cities, the domain of order was firmly established, and the blindly foolish dark chaos could ultimately only halt beyond the Long Wall of Eternal Night.

This was the truth passed down among the Scions of Glory, and also the creation myth of this world.

If what he saw today and the unexaminable creation legends known to the Scions of Glory were not falsehoods, then it was easy to piece them together.

Here—the domain of order was situated beneath the endless abyss capable of driving supreme deities to madness, and the Ancestors who pioneered order and established laws here evidently possessed authority and power surpassing the gods encircling the worlds. Thus, they were either the aggregation of the strongest beings in the entire infinite void, or they hailed from that ancient light which transcended this dimension and condescendingly looked down upon the rise and fall of worlds.

What was their purpose in coming here?

Did they intend to eradicate this abyss that threatened to swallow everything like a malignant tumor, or did they harbor other schemes?

Everything has a purpose and a cause.

An individual might do things lacking clear motivation out of mere whim, but a collective would not.

The Ancestors who descended into the dark chaos must have had a purpose; otherwise, who would visit the bottomless abyss—where even worlds and gods were swallowed—for no reason at all?

To take a bath?

Moreover, if Ignati's conjecture held true, the final fate of the Ancestors was far from favorable.

They—

At least the vast majority of the Ancestors—had perished, leaving behind nothing save the spark flickering through the Dark Millennium.

And then there was the Dark Millennium...

The prophecy written on the flyleaf of the Sacred Code of Hammurabi—whether true or false, none could tell.

Amy Ulysses pressed his lips together. The more he pondered, the more he perceived the existence of a conspiracy, and the more his thoughts tangled like a ball of yarn played with by a cat, leaving his mind an absolute blur.

Incomprehensible, unfathomable—

Even more baffling was what role he was playing, or was expected to play, within it all.

His birth was bound to carry a certain mission.

Long ago, the young Scion of Glory had faintly sensed this.

It was only recently, however, that he became certain of it.

——Find the door.

Yet how to find the door, what he should do after finding it, and what kind of changes it would bring about?

He knew nothing.

Connecting this to the severe illness a few years ago that cost him part of his memories, recalling it now was filled with deeply suspicious traces—could that have been a petty trick played within the rules of the game by an entity whose interests conflicted with the chess player standing behind him?

If so, he was truly a pathetic figure.

No, whether true or not, being reduced to a chess piece was a thoroughly pathetic state of affairs.

The youth with black hair and dark eyes thought this and gently clenched his fists.

There was no need for harsh words.

So-called determination was not a matter of empty slogans.

It was action.

He had to take action.

If he wished to seize fate by the throat and snap the puppet strings woven around him by the mastermind behind the scenes—

He had to at least become a Chosen One who had stepped half a foot into the realm of the divinities!

Yet... how should he do it?

Lowering his gaze slightly, the probability of a Chosen One awakening later in life was already low, and lacking any method to temper his bloodline, the probability of advancing further was vanishingly slim.

Yet if he were to give up because of this?

Pardoning himself, he could not do it.

His fist tightened involuntarily, then relaxed.

At this moment, the vast, boundless world shattered like a mirror into millions of pieces, and the young Scion of Glory naturally opened his eyes. What greeted his vision was... a little girl with black hair and dark eyes?

"Jasu?" He raised an eyebrow, whispered her name, and then surveyed his surroundings, his right hand instinctively brushing the short sword Dark Blood tucked at his waist. "Where are the others?"

"The others" referred to Joshua and his party.

"Who knows?" A playful smile surfaced on the face of the girl he had once briefly met. "Perhaps they left, or perhaps they're still searching everywhere for you."

"Searching for me?" Amy was slightly startled, then roughly guessed the reason and let out a gentle sigh. "At least they should have said hello first."

"N-o-n-s-e-n-s-e," Jasu said, pronouncing each syllable distinctly and shaking her head. "The only one I wanted to see is you—I am, after all, a person of noble status; I'm not someone just any stray cat or dog can meet."

"Then who exactly are you?" Having crossed paths with Pandora, the youth dared not take the entity of a little girl lightly, even if she exhibited no malice.

"Take a guess?"

The petite girl blinked, then spread her hands. "Though you won't get any candy even if you guess right."

"Then," Amy Ulysses paused instinctively, "what is your purpose?"

"As a reclusive and exalted sage, naturally I am here to issue a quest to the hero," she walked close to the youth with supreme familiarity, stepped upon the nearby ruins of a building, stood on tiptoes, and patted his shoulder with great magnanimity, deliberately putting on a coarse, elderly voice. "Hey—"

"Young man, interested in saving the world?"

At the final "ah," she failed to hold her breath and burst out laughing.