Child of Destiny

Chapter 2236: The Hidden Hand

...

Shin was able to collect himself a few moments later.

He slowly exhaled, forcing the turmoil in his mind to settle.

"It is still only a potential world event," he muttered with his voice regaining its usual calmness. "Nothing has been set in stone yet."

That single sentence was enough to steady his thoughts.

As terrifying as the quest panel appeared, it also meant there was still some time to stop the worst-case scenario from becoming reality.

Instead of letting overwhelming rewards and penalties cloud his judgement, Shin shifted his attention back to the quest itself.

There had to be more clues hidden within the description.

His eyes carefully skimmed through every line once more. He reread each sentence, refusing to overlook even the smallest detail.

Eventually, his gaze halted on a particular passage.

"For unknown reasons, an unidentified existence has begun corrupting the primordial guardian from within."

"Unknown reasons...? An unidentified existence..." Shin suddenly narrowed his eyes behind the mask.

He then proceeded to read the sentence again a couple more times. The more he thought about it, the more unnatural it sounded.

An Elemental Being was not an ordinary existence. It was one of the most ancient inhabitants within the game settings.

Not anyone could just know about them, much less summon them.

There must be connections that everyone had overlooked that led to the current situation. It might be a quest of someone.

Someone who could deliberately target such a powerful existence. And someone who would dare to upset the balance of the game.

The more he thought about it, the more convinced Shin was that someone must have orchestrated everything.

The realization suddenly sent a chill down Shin’s spine.

Almost instinctively, a single figure suddenly surfaced in his mind.

"Immortal." He spoke the name in a low, solemn voice.

There were only a few people who possessed such knowledge about the game and dared to meddle with such powerful beings beyond common understanding of the current state of the game.

Adding his brief encounter with the infamous Lich God earlier also flashed through his thoughts.

Back then, Shin assumed that Immortal’s objective was merely the Demonic Orb in Leviathan’s possession or secretly targeting the sealed dimensional portal found by Felix and Felicia from their Empire Quest.

Now, those assumptions no longer seemed convincing.

"So-..." he started piecing the fragments of information that he had together. "Everything was part of your plan from the very beginning."

His mind then replayed all the other information he had right after logging back into the game earlier, particularly the reports from both Alucard and Diablo that had given him before losing contact with them.

The information about the dimensional portal was leaked. Rumors claimed that it was leading toward a Secret Realm, which was the most recent feature added into the game after the most recent update.

The sudden appearance of this news immediately attracted a lot of attention, particularly the major forces surrounding the Lesser Kingdom of Juron, especially the Titan Guild that was the largest among them.

At first glance, everything was perfectly normal, especially after hearing the side of the story that Felicia and Felix had.

Greed alone could explain the massive influx of people.

But now, looking back at the sequence of events, something felt fundamentally wrong. The information had not simply leaked. It had spread far too quickly and far too efficiently.

It did not take that long before the information reached almost all the notable forces surrounding the kingdom before further spreading to the others.

It was as though invisible hands had deliberately fanned the flames, ensuring that no influential faction in the surroundings remained ignorant of its existence.

Not many would have questioned it. Most people would simply assume that the news had spread naturally through players, particularly the information brokers and intelligence networks.

After reviewing all the information at hand, Shin felt that everything was a bit too perfect and too calculated.

Each rumor had appeared at just the right time. Each piece of information had reached exactly the people it needed to reach.

Rather than an accidental leak or betrayal from the higher echelons of the guild that Felix and Felicia used to lead, it resembled a carefully orchestrated campaign.

Something that was designed to lure as many people as possible toward this very place.

Shin’s expression then gradually darkened. "If that was true, the reinforcements...

"What happened to them?" he mumbled before trying to deduce everything again.

He immediately began replaying every major event that had led to the current situation, arranging them one after another like pieces of a puzzle.

"It all started with the dimensional portal..."

Rumors of that portal being related to a secret realm spread across the surrounding regions almost overnight.

The Guilds, the mercenary groups, adventurer teams, and independent experts in the surrounding area.

Naturally, some of the demonic players were drawn to it as well.

After that came the first clashes.

They were nothing more than small skirmishes between the righteous players and the demonic players, each side probing the other’s strength while attempting to secure control over the area surrounding the dimensional disturbance.

No one found those battles strange.

Competition over newly discovered regions or treasure happened all the time.

However, the conflict did not stop there.

Instead, it had escalated into an even bigger mess. More factions arrived, and more people were drawn into fighting.

The isolated skirmishes gradually evolved into a full-scale war between the righteous and demonic players.

Then, the leaders finally stepped onto the battlefield while chasing after Felicia and Felix.

Poseidon and Dragulia fought a huge battle while Leviathan took on Felix and Felicia on the other side.

Not long afterward, Diablo and Alucard arrived to lend a helping hand to the twins, forcing the two leaders from the Demonic Churches to retreat.

Based on what the two had shared, Diablo then figured out that the Demonic Church of Terror was trying to conduct a massive sacrificial ritual in the area.

Every death, every fallen soldier, every slain monster—the slaughter was not incidental.

It was meant to gather more energies, accumulate and converted into the fuel required for a Grand Sacrificial Ritual.

He then proceeded to lead the people from Deicide to look for the sacrificial altars and destroy them with the best of their abilities.

However, it was still not enough even after Hades and Loki appeared.

Realizing this, they then immediately abandoned the idea of meeting the enemy head-on. Instead, they withdrew and retreated their forces into the Oath City.

The city became a fortress, a defensive stronghold intended to minimize the casualties and prevent the opposing forces from growing stronger while waiting for their incoming reinforcements.

Shin slowly narrowed his eyes when he thought about this. "That was exactly what they wanted, though."

Once the defenders chose to fortify themselves, the next step naturally followed. The siege of the demonic creatures began.

Wave after wave of attacks assaulted the city. The demonic churches continuously pressured the defenders without fully committing to a decisive assault.

To everyone watching, their objective seemed obvious. It was to break the city’s defense, massacre everyone inside, complete the ritual.

Even Shin had reached the same conclusion at that time.

"But-..." he slowly shook his head. "That was not the real target."

The city was only a bait.

The longer the siege continued, the more desperate the situation became and the more desperate the defenders became—the greater the number of reinforcements they would request.

He then started frowning deeply. "The church of terror never intended to sacrifice the Oath City-... they intended to sacrifice everyone rushing to save it."

Then...

Another detail suddenly resurfaced in Shin’s mind. "The reinforcements..."

When he first arrived at the battlefield, he had instinctively searched for the massive army that was supposed to have reached the Oath City before him.

After all, based on the information he had received beforehand, the first batch of reinforcements should have already joined the battle, which was composed of huge forces of players and even some NPCs.

However, he had not seen them. Not a single trace, nor had he witnessed the all-out war that should have engulfed the entire region.

Instead, the battlefield had fallen into an eerie silence. The once bustling Oath City had become almost desolate.

Only the surviving defenders remained, desperately holding while being imprisoned within the Independent Realm projected by the overwhelming consciousness of the Elemental Being sealed in that gate.

It was as if everything outside that isolated world had already ended.

Shin then slowly raised his head. His gaze followed the countless rivers of crimson energy flowing through the sky.

They stretched across the heavens like blood-red rivers before converging toward the ancient gate wrapped in innumerable chains.

The sheer quantity was overwhelming.

It was not something that could be produced by an ordinary battlefield, nor was it something born from the deaths of a few thousand combatants.

"A sacrifice-..." His voice was barely above a whisper. "Something... or someone... had been sacrificed to produce this much slaughter energy."

His grip around [Yamato] unconsciously tightened.

He still did not know what happened to the missing reinforcements. He had not witnessed their disappearance. But looking at the crimson rivers endlessly pouring toward the gate...

He could no longer dismiss the possibility. "The reinforcements... they did not simply disappear... they have become part of this."

A heavy silence fell over him.

Consumed or sacrificed through some unknow ritual, he did not know. But one thing had become painfully clear: the slaughter energy sustaining the awakening of the sealed Elemental Being had come at an unimaginable cost.

"Immortal..." he mumbled in a heavy tone. "He must have been the one who had convinced Dragulia to choose this place."

Not by revealing the truth, but by presenting just enough information to make the Arch Heretic of the Demonic Church of Terror believe this battlefield was the ideal location for the Grand Sacrificial Ritual.

The dimensional portal and enough mana source. The battlefield capable of drawing countless sacrifices.

For Dragulia, that alone would have been more than enough. He would never have questioned it because everything appeared to benefit the Church of Terror, especially if Immortal had revealed the portion of the hidden plot he had prepared for the ’sacrificial materials.’

"You have manipulated him." Shin muttered, "You have turned him into the executioner without ever letting him know who the true victim was."

"No... It was not the kingdom. It was not the city. And it is definitely not related to the Secret Realm." His expression gradually became solemn. "It was always whatever is sealed beyond that gate."

A cold breeze swept across the mountain.

Shin was still not clear about a few things, but one thing had become clear—somewhere down the line, the sacrifices had already been made, and the corruption process was already in progress.

......