Chapter 26: Chapter26-World Bubble, Astral Colossus
LoranBlade, standing nearby, also understood that what came next was John’s private conversation. Carrying his A-rank longsword, he quietly left.
Lord and John moved to a secluded place. With their backs to the crowd, they began to talk.
Lord could barely contain his urgency as he asked, "Honored Hero, what exactly did you see inside the royal palace this time?"
John pondered for a moment before saying, "Listen carefully."
Then, he slowly recounted how he had consumed the Phoenix Blood and obtained the memories of the Old Emperor.
After hearing everything, Lord’s expression filled with shock.
"You actually obtained the emperor’s memories?"
John nodded and continued, "Within those memories, I discovered something rather interesting."
It turned out that before the Old Emperor had fallen, he had already learned of the prophecy that the world was about to be destroyed, guided by the empire’s astrologers.
However, at the time, the emperor had not truly understood the prophecy.
He merely believed that a disaster capable of sweeping across the entire realm was about to descend, and that all his subjects would perish when it came.
In order to prevent such an apocalyptic outcome, the emperor, who had always loved his people as if they were his own children, chose to use a forbidden object.
That object was the Phoenix Blood.
No one knew how a mortal empire had managed to obtain the blood of such a divine-grade mythical beast.
In the Old Emperor’s memories, he only knew that throughout the generations, the Phoenix Blood had been regarded by the royal family as both a sacred relic and a taboo.
Any living being that mastered the Phoenix Blood would gain the power of immortality and indestructibility.
To save his empire, the Old Emperor made an incredibly bold and dangerous decision.
He wanted to use the Phoenix Blood to grant eternal life to the countless citizens of the empire.
And the imperial capital became his first experimental site.
To begin the experiment, the Old Emperor summoned all the high-ranking arcanists in the nation.
He ordered them to refine the Phoenix Blood into the clouds above the city, then make it descend as a rain of blood.
The blood rain instantly spread across the entire royal capital, bathing countless citizens beneath it.
However, the Phoenix Blood was the blood of a divine beast. How could ordinary mortals possibly endure it with their flesh?
Under the baptism of the Phoenix Blood rain, the people of the imperial capital did indeed obtain the power of immortality.
But at the same time, they were forced to endure the terrifying burning flames contained within the Phoenix Blood, dying and reviving again and again.
Everyone would be resurrected, only to suffer the agony of being burned once more.
In that endless cycle of death and rebirth, their reason and humanity gradually vanished, until they degenerated into monsters like living corpses.
After witnessing such a tragedy, the Old Emperor tried to salvage the situation. He organized the soldiers who had not yet been assimilated and ordered them to imprison the living corpses.
But the horror of the Phoenix Blood far exceeded his imagination. Even the army eventually became part of the living dead.
In the end, the emperor had no choice but to use his own body as a vessel, personally devouring the living corpses in order to reclaim the Phoenix Blood.
After Lord finished listening, he fell silent for a long time.
He had never imagined that the truth would be so horrifying.
A moment later, Lord asked, "And what happened afterward? Did the calamity truly descend?
"Why were people like us isolated beyond the towering mountain wall?
"And this great wall—did the emperor’s memories contain any explanation for it?"
John shook his head. "I don’t know what happened after that either."
Hearing this, a look of disappointment appeared on Lord’s face.
But at that moment, John said, "However, from my personal judgment, the calamity has already descended. And the truth is far crueler than you imagine."
Lord looked startled. "What do you mean?"
John continued, "The so-called calamity was, in the most literal sense, the collapse of your world.
"If my guess is correct, your empire was destroyed long ago, together with the world itself.
"Only the towering wall behind you remains. It is the sole pillar supporting this tiny patch of reality.
"Although I do not know who built this section of the wall and left it standing here, it is obvious that your empire no longer exists.
"And neither does your entire world."
The truth was far too cruel.
After hearing those words, Lord immediately collapsed to the ground.
He simply could not accept such a brutal reality.
Pain surfaced across his face as he questioned John, "No... impossible. Just who are you? Why would you know these things? And why should I believe you?"
John bent down slightly.
"You do not need to believe me, because..."
Halfway through his sentence, he suddenly stopped.
"Wait. Why hasn’t the quest Beyond the World shown as completed yet?"
Before his words had fully faded, the bronze gate behind them suddenly let out an ear-piercing, teeth-grating screech.
Creeeeak—
Everyone abruptly turned to look.
They saw that the bronze gate had begun to collapse bit by bit.
At the same time, the surrounding wall also began to tremble violently. Cracks appeared one after another, spreading and splitting open.
Upon seeing this scene, everyone’s faces filled with terror as they frantically retreated.
However, the wall cracked far too quickly. Countless chunks of stone came crashing down, killing several waves of players and City Watch guards.
Only after retreating a certain distance did everyone realize that it was not just this section of the wall.
Almost all of the towering walls had begun to show massive cracks and were gradually collapsing.
The surface of the wall completely peeled away, revealing the core hidden inside the mountain.
They were stone giants whose bodies towered into the clouds!
They stood side by side. The so-called towering mountain wall had actually been formed from layers of stone fused to the surface of their bodies.
And after the wall’s outer layer crumbled away, these stone giants seemed to awaken with consciousness and began to struggle.
Rumble!
The already ruined wall completely collapsed, and one colossal stone giant after another was revealed.
Everyone stared in horror.
They saw that all the giants were densely lined up in a row.
And through the gaps between them, when they looked beyond, they saw a vast, boundless galaxy like an endless cosmic sea!
Such a terrifying sight instantly stunned everyone.
Before the crowd could even react, a terrifying vacuum force suddenly erupted from the boundary.
No one could resist it.
In an instant, they were all dragged toward the vast universe beyond the collapsed wall.
Whether NPCs or players, none of them had the power to fight back.
Some unlucky ones who had been standing too close to the border were swept into outer space on the spot.
The players transformed into white light and vanished instantly.
The NPCs managed to hold on for only a brief moment before their bodies rapidly swelled, then froze into blocks of ice.
In the end, they became cold corpses drifting through space.
The entire scene immediately fell into chaos.
NPCs and players screamed and wailed without end.
Lord and the guild leaders’ expressions changed drastically. They immediately ordered everyone to retreat.
The main force withdrew all the way into the forest, barely stabilizing themselves by clinging to trees, rocks, and anything else they could grab.
Amid the surging crowd, only John directly stabbed the longsword on his back into the ground. Relying on his powerful Strength attribute, he forcibly stabilized his body.
As he resisted the terrifying suction by force, all his attention fell upon the giants that had broken free from the towering wall.
John’s gaze sharpened.
"Where did these giants come from? What exactly are they?"
With a thought, John activated Detect.
A panel immediately appeared before his eyes.
[Fallen Divine Servant of the Goddess of Space: Astral Colossus]
[Rank]: ???
[Level]: 100
[HP]: 104,000,000
[Constitution]: 1,040,000
[Spirit]: 21,000
[Agility]: 39,097
[Strength]: 57,000
[Intelligence]: 19,500
[Physical Defense]: 630,000
[Magic Defense]: 760,000
[Skills]: ???
[Description]: A fallen divine servant of the Goddess of Space. The Astral Colossi stand upon the borders of countless universes. They watch over all things, and they watch over the stars.
