Chapter 249: A Gap
After Kyle Lak Orazen died, he became an Apostle. On the last day of the funeral, the appearance of Apostle Kyle allowed the citizens of the Empire to finally compose themselves and rise again.
Kyle then faced Lakrak at the entrance of the pantheon. Apostle Kyle looked younger than he had in life, so his outside appearance was more youthful than the middle-aged Lakrak. Despite not being fit from constant physical activities like Lakrak was, the difference in stature made them look like an adult and a child from afar.
Kyle bowed before looking up. "I greet you, Thunder Dragon Emperor Lakrak."
"Let's not do that. There were no such formalities when I was around."
"…Um, understood."
"Besides, we know each other, don't we?"
"Yes."
During the war with the Union Kingdom, Lakrak had often revealed himself and had previously encountered Kyle, who personally commanded on the battlefield.
Leading Kyle, who was summoned by Night Sky, Lakrak said, "Moreover, Night Sky doesn’t really care for petty formalities."
"I thought that might be the case."
"Hm…" Lakrak paused to think for a moment and said, "It may go even further than you expect. Even if Night Sky says something surprising, don't be startled. Nevertheless, it will be a pleasant conversation since He is a good being."
"What would Night Sky say?"
Upon hearing the question, Lakrak crossed his arms and tilted his head to think.
"...What should I say? He might ask you if you can complete a task that seems impossible. For example, do you remember when I defeated the five guardians of the Angry One?"
"Of course." Kyle nodded and replied, "You were a great help at that time, Lakrak. Your efforts are why we could fight on equal footing with the Union Kingdom."
"Enough with the flattery. Anyway, Night Sky asked at the time, 'Can you fight and defeat those beings?'"
"So you said it was possible?"
"No, I said it wasn't." Lakrak added, "But He told me to just do it anyway, claiming it was possible."
"…I see."
"And I did it."
Lakrak grasped Kyle's shoulder and said, "The lesson here is simple."
"I understand. Night Sky knows us better than we know ourselves, right?"
Lakrak blinked several times, as if surprised by Kyle's interpretation.
"No, what I mean is, when told to do something, you do it."
"Oh."
Lakrak laughed heartily and opened the door, pushing Kyle, who was somewhat speechless, forward.
"I hope you have a good conversation. You won't regret it."
The room he entered would later be known as the Sanctuary, and in the middle of it was Night Sky, Sung-Woon.
Despite having lived most of his life as a king and an emperor, Kyle felt that Night Sky’s presence was greater than that. Kyle had the thought that it might not be originating from Night Sky himself. Kyle had a theory that there existed a sort of power, something that could be called divinity, among creations, Apostles, and divine beings, which exerted influence over those without divinity.
However, after seeing Sung-Woon, Kyle thought that might not be the case.
"With respect, I greet Night Sky."
Kyle, unusually tense, waited for Sung-Woon's response.
"There’s no need for such formalities. A simple greeting will suffice from now on."
"Yes, I understand."
"That manner of speaking as well."
"Yes."
Resting his chin on his hand, Sung-Woon quickly moved on to the main topic.
"Do you think you can create the machine I am portraying?"
"...Pardon?"
What Nebula showed was a computer. Of course, explaining what a computer was required several steps, especially since, at the time of Kyle's death, even electricity hadn't been fully understood. They would have to start with primitive calculators first.
The concept involved two states of change, which could be called 0 and 1, being recorded, and that logic circuits capable of reading this information were being collected. Once these logic circuits reached a certain quantity, they could accomplish even more astonishing feats. In fact, it was theorized that this world could also be nothing more than fragments of information combined. Perhaps it would be possible to capture the essence of the world with that machine.
After Sung-Woon finished with the explanation, Kyle’s expression had become dead serious.
"That's a very complicated machine."
"Do you think you can do it?"
"To be honest, I don't know."
Sung-Woon shook his head.
"You're wrong, Kyle. You can do it."
Kyle couldn’t help but recall Lakrak's earlier words. When told to do something, he had to do it.
The times that followed were anything but easy. Kyle first gathered scholars, met other gods, and began to learn about this artifact of the gods—the computer. The most significant and valuable help came undeniably from the Binding God, Wisdom. Kyle thought Wisdom could be uncomfortable with him due to their past conflicts in history, but the god held no such grudges.
Wisdom fully supported Kyle and the group of scholars, and before a decade had passed, they created a primitive vacuum tube computer, which could output answers to simple equations.
Despite advancements in electromagnetism inside the pantheon, there was a certain delay in significant development, and it was only after another decade that electronic computers appeared.
It wasn't entirely beneficial for the players to know the development of computers since there were trials and errors in the process of reaching that point.
From here, the pace accelerated. The first electronic computer could perform addition and subtraction three times per second, but by the following year, it was capable of 60 calculations per second. Several teams split off to create different versions of computers, and with clear goals and directions, more precise technological advancements followed.
Due to the considerable size of the computers, a significant amount of Faith points was used in their creation. Once, players, including Jang-Wan, argued that all of this was meaningless, and Sung-Woon seriously contemplated it too, especially after a great battle with the Union Kingdom where their lack of total Faith points led to their failure in securing a decisive victory.
However, Wisdom, who initially opposed the plan, was the one to actively counter this argument. Although not as modern, the computer, which had shown a satisfactory level of computing power, began to be developed in a downsized direction to reduce the consumption of Faith points, and around this time, the speed of development slowed again.
Earth's modern computers were the byproduct of various technologies. They were influenced by not only electromagnetism, but also various semiconductor technologies and even quantum mechanics, and even the scholars of the Pantheon had their limits. Scientific progress couldn’t be sustained by an elite group alone.
Nonetheless, after a long time, Kyle could finally say to Sung-Woon, "It's not a certainty yet, but it seems we have achieved the basics of what you have requested."
The computer Kyle had created was quite close to modern computers. Wisdom, along with the scholars, invented a new computer programming language, which also resembled the one he had used. The scholars called Wisdom's programming language the sacred language.
This could be considered faster than any other computer. The computing device of small boxes filled an entire room. It was divided for heat dissipation, but was a massive single computer called the Sanctuary, named after the space it was in.
The Sanctuary was currently equipped with only one software. Whether more computers like the Sanctuary would be created in the future was unknown, but the future had yet to arrive. Since the Sanctuary was made only for one feature, it required more effort from the scholars to change it.
The software installed on the Sanctuary was named Lost World 2.0. This software didn’t have elements of the real world that Sung-Woon had hoped for. Rather, Lost World 2.0 was almost an exact replica of Earth's The Lost World.
The players remembered every element of The Lost World, and if there was a difference, the adjustments were made on purpose to reflect the various elements that had changed upon entering this world as well as the new elements. The fourth continent and the evil gods, unfamiliar species, and a few Unique Domains that had only been discovered this time were added.
Additionally, Lost World 2.0 supported functions that the original did not support, which was setting up a world and a viewpoint and simulating what could happen in that setting. This feature was the most crucial part of Lost World 2.0, and it had required the most effort. Lost World 2.0 could run up to 120,000 such simulations.
Sung-Woon was able to confirm that Kyle had realized the basics of simulations. When a set of simulations were run to reflect the current world, the future that showed the highest match rate actually happened. A single simulation could achieve an 80 percent match rate, and increasing the number of simulations brought it close to 99 percent.
The Pantheon had truly gained the power of foresight now.
'Of course, nothing can be perfect.'
However, such massive computations required a commensurate amount of Faith points to be consumed. Just one simulation had Faith points drained by the percent, so Wisdom began to research whether the structure of the computer could be replaced by something other than electricity.
Of course, a better solution would have been to build their own power plant, but the Pantheon's research group was preoccupied with the Sanctuary, and so progress on that front was not easily achieved. Moreover, certain resources consumed more Faith points, so there was no certainty on how much improving the generation method would help.
Regardless, the existence of the Sanctuary was a decisive factor in the Pantheon's victory over Hegemonia. Quite a few decisions originated from the Sanctuary; where the revolution would start, who the inventor of electricity would be, what Hegemonia's strategy was, and what forces Hegemonia would bring to Rasdasil were discovered or reaffirmed.
On the surface, the Pantheon seemed to be solely occupied with opposing the Angry One, but internally, they were creating more stable achievements. And again, at the command of the Sung-Woon, the Sanctuary, having consumed a massive amount of power, had found out on which individual Hegemonia would use Divine Control.
Just minutes before, the Pantheon's second apostle, Kyle Lak Orazen, acquired a skill that lived up to his reputation.
[The one who fulfills the will of the sky: Only under your direct command, attacks will be infused with the same Divinity as your current Divinity level.]
And the Moving Castle’s artillery was under Kyle's command.
***
Hegemonia couldn’t have predicted all this.
'...Divinity in the artillery?'
Even with the accelerated thinking ability due to her Divinity, the actions taken by Sung-Woon and the Pantheon required too much imagination. The irrational and illogical fact of preemptively discovering the location of the body to be used for Divine Control and attacking it with Divinity-filled artillery. But still, Hegemonia didn’t deny this fact.
Hegemonia was unaware of the Pantheon's Sanctuary, but she was aware of the second apostle, who rarely revealed himself. She always stayed cautious about him. She believed that the Pantheon was hiding something when they used less Faith points than Hegemonia expected. There was some gap in the movements of the Pantheon. Hegemonia knew this fact.
'Was that gap...this? For this very moment?'
She had come to the realization, but she couldn't respond.
The projectile fired from the Moving Castle’s artillery shattered the body of the Orc that Hegemonia was in.
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