Chapter 191: Clash of Corruption
[Connect your mind to the passage of our world, see through our eyes and feel through our fingers, breathe the breaths we have breathed and inherit the memories engraved here within, let them settle into your thoughts as though they had always belonged to you, do not distinguish between yours and ours, for there has never been such a distinction, hear our profanities and our laughter, witness our despair and our joy, our beginning and our end, our countless deaths and countless awakenings, abandon the illusion that your thoughts belong only to yourself, come, bear witness with your own eyes, comprehend what every existence was always destined to understand, and behold... The secret of this world is........]
...........w h a t?
no... h ow c o uld thatb e tr ue?
t h a t... t h a t i s n ’ t p o s s i b l e.
Adam staggered backwards.
His eyes lost their focus as the "secret" forcefully embedded itself into his mind.
"...No..."
His body froze and his gaze slowly drifted toward the ground, empty and lifeless.
Within that brief moment of time, his thoughts were no longer his own.
The secret repeated itself.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Each repetition felt more convincing than the last.
His memories began twisting as his beliefs started collapsing.
Everything he had lived through, everything he knew, everything he had fought for...
The secret quietly offered another explanation for all of it.
One that sounded so horrifyingly reasonable that Adam almost accepted it.
His lips unconsciously parted.
"...I..."
He almost spoke the secret aloud.
The instant that thought surfaced, every instinct in his body lashed out to stop him.
Don’t say it.
Don’t think about it.
Forget it.
Adam violently looked away, as though merely seeing the words inside his own mind would allow them to spread even deeper.
He desperately tore the secret from his thoughts before it could take root.
The instant he tried recalling even a tiny fragment of it, an unbearable pain exploded inside his head, thus he desperately erased the "secret" from his own thoughts.
His breathing became ragged as his heartbeat pounded wildly against his chest.
Cold sweat poured down his face while his stomach churned violently.
No...!
If this continued, his very existence would be corrupted!
This can’t go on!
Adam clenched his teeth.
[Authority of Disconnection].
The Authority immediately responded.
An invisible force spread through his consciousness, severing every connection between his mind and the "secret."
The thoughts that had begun taking root were violently cut away.
The memory itself unraveled as Adam deleted it from his memories.
Every fragment that tried to connect itself to his understanding was forcefully disconnected before it could become part of him.
It was as though Adam had never learned it.
As though the "secret" had never entered his mind in the first place.
His thoughts grew quieter before they disappeared into silence.
Adam staggered backward, breathing heavily as he struggled to steady himself.
His entire body trembled uncontrollably. Luckily his teammates were too busy restoring their mana and resting to notice his current state of mind.
For one horrifying moment... It had felt as though something far beyond his comprehension was rewriting him from the inside.
A form of corruption just like what the sticker had done just minutes ago...
A secret so profound that anyone whose State of Existence was too low would slowly lose themselves simply by comprehending it.
If Nawh hadn’t borne part of that impossible burden for him... Adam’s mind would’ve completely shattered the very moment he learned it.
Countless questions began appearing inside Adam’s head as he slowly analyzed the situation, trying to connect the pieces together. Every possibility seemed more impossible than the last, yet every single one of them pointed towards the same conclusion.
Something had clearly gone wrong due to the fact that Guin’s Reflection was invaded by an odd entity....
It was not merely a simple distortion or an abnormality within the floor, someone had directly interfered with the very existence of the reflection itself!
Adam began forming assumptions based on what he knew.
The first possibility was that it was Guin’s future self who had abused a certain loophole within the current floor.
Perhaps due to the fact that the reflection was created from Guin herself, the future Guin was able to temporarily establish a connection between herself and the reflection.
A connection between two existences that should have never been able to interact...
This, in itself, should border the line of an Authority... something similar or directly opposite to his own [Authority of Disconnection].
His authority allowed him to separate things, to sever connections, relationships, and even concepts that were linked together.
But if there truly was an opposite existence, then perhaps the [Authority of Connection] would allow someone to force two separate things into becoming connected.
However...
The original owner of [Authority of Disconnection] was the [Holder of Severance].
And that meant the user of an authority related to connection should not originate from within this universe.
So how could Guin have used such a power?
Was it an item?
Was it through someone who possessed a similar authority that she’d met after their universe connected with other universes?
Or perhaps...
A sudden thought flashed through Adam’s mind as he remembered the reflection’s final words.
"You will absolutely need her. She perfectly embodies the [Authority of Omnipresence]. If she dies, then you will..."
"...[REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED]."
Celestia?
Could it have been her doing?
With the [Authority of Omnipresence], such a thing was technically possible...
After all, omnipresence meant existing everywhere at any given time and location. A being with such an authority would not be bound by the same limitations as ordinary existences.
Although Adam’s understanding of Authorities was still shallow, he was also an authority holder now. Because of that, he naturally possessed some understanding of their possibilities and limitations.
The future Celestia helped Guin arrive at this exact point in time and this exact universe?
Does that mean timelines truly exist within reality?
Does that mean this was simply one possible branch among countless others?
No...
Perhaps that line of thinking was wrong.
What if...
This universe...
This time "reversed" and granted by the viewer [???]...
Was fake?
What if AdamHadBeenMerelyPlayingThePawnUponAGreatBeing’sBoredom
W h a t i f e v e r y o n e i s d e a d
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