ALL NOVEL Chapter 818 - Ship of Theseus
Chapter 818: Ship of Theseus
“Karwenz is a bug.”
This was no praise or insult. It was simply a statement about the existence known as Karwenz being a mistake of the entire “world”.
According to my knowledge of the fundamentals of Order as well as the four elements that made up the world, only Time and Space were the most fundamentally Order type powers of all. Time and Space were like the X and Y coordinates of the world, creating coordinates for the entire world.
Yet, these two powers had forever been at the very bottom of the natural laws of Order.
Correct, the very bottom. They were the foundation for everything. All other natural laws and existences could only exist with Time and Space being relatively stable as the prerequisite. The powers of Time and Space were a foundation, but also a source and the very peak.
Meanwhile, the two major corresponding elements of Chaos were Souls and Life… well, I won’t get into that for now.
The most incredible power of Time and Space wasn’t the so-called miracle of stopping time, nor was it mysterious instantaneous teleportation, but rather the incomprehensible and mysterious ability to give “true prophecies”.
Unlike normal prophecies, Time and Space prophecies didn’t rely on trying to control the River of Fate, nor were such prophecies mere rubbish from some prophet. Instead, the power of Time and Space would be used to analyze the entire current situation as a data set and then extrapolate along the X-axis and Y-axis to obtain new coordinates that would be the likely future.
To give an example to make things easily understandable for my readers, an existence who had such a power could watch the world as if they were watching an anime episode. She would only need to drag along the episode’s timeline to view the prerecorded data and skip to the story in the later parts.
This ability was obviously far beyond mortal comprehension, just as how those in 2-D would never understand the 3-D world. “The people in the anime episode” would obviously never gain the ability to drag the episode’s timeline. Such a game master-like ability could only possibly be held by the entire world’s game master.
Astrya, the Goddess of Order, was the only existence in this world who possessed such an ability.
However, this ability had an obvious weakness.
Whenever Astrya felt that the upcoming plot wasn’t to her liking, she would have to try and personally change the present in order to change future developments. This was the equivalent of her giving up her “3-D status” and joining the 2-D world. In that case, she would naturally lose her ability to continue viewing the timeline as she pleased.
Astrya’s very existence and all her actions had already changed the original plot of the game’s history, making everything go out of control.
She only had one opportunity to fix things, so she naturally wanted to find the critical point.
“Karwenz is a bug. Karwenz should never have existed in this world.”
The Abyss Prince, the Child of Fate, Cynthia’s most precious illegitimate child, the crystallization of the power of Chaos, and the most important character to her for winning the Holy War.
In the original plotline that Astrya saw… the Abyss Prince named Roland would have knowledge from his original world and become the “protagonist” of the entire world. His fate was so wild that it would be enough for a novel of more than 20,000,000 words… but let’s skip all of that. Roland would then be heartbroken with human society which was led by the Holy Church, and finally lose all his trust in humans as he walked into the Chaos Abyss in despair.
Roland would then one day lead demon armies to the mortal plane, ending the era of humans as the ruling species of the world.
Such a critical character was someone capable of changing everything. Astrya unhesitatingly used the same strategy as before as she attached her remnant soul to Roland’s pregnant mother, quietly waiting for Roland to be born.
Unfortunately for Astrya, Cynthia had learned her lesson due to the “betrayal” of the previous generation’s Abyss Prince Karolan, who even ended up creating Holy Light and the Holy Church. Thus, Cynthia also attached the will of the Chaos Abyss to Roland’s mother’s body, intending to personally guide the Abyss Prince’s growth and shape his worldview.
Two thieves had reached into the same victim’s pocket… ahem, I meant that two sisters joyously met each other unexpectedly, and had a major scuffle.
In the end, their fight was just like the story of the Judgment of Solomon, where two mothers both claimed the same child. The end result was that the real mother was identified because she gave up on the child because Solomon declared that the child should be cut in half… However, the wise Solomon had probably never considered another possibility. What if both mothers weren’t the actual mother at all!
“Such a tragedy!”
The pitiful child was directly torn into two halves by two stepmothers before he was even born.
As the host mother was still pregnant, the child’s physical body was simultaneously changed due to his soul being forcibly torn into two. The one child became twins. However, having an incomplete soul was one of the cruelest inborn deficiencies of all. Anyone who was missing part of their soul would be born as an idiot or severely mentally handicapped. The two stepmothers needed to do something unless they wanted to obtain two useless idiots.
What could they do? They completed the two souls with their own.
Correct, as could be seen today, the two sisters made the exact same choice. They used their own souls to make up for the tattered souls of Roland and Karwenz, just as if they were mothers feeding breast milk to a newborn. However, this was far more overboard than that would ever be. The two Goddesses were basically using their own flesh and blood to make up for the newborns’ insufficiencies.
The two “mothers” became connected to the newborns, and became a very part of them.
The two newborns were also “really lucky”. Due to having part of the two Goddess’s souls, I would naturally be drawn to Order, while Karwenz would naturally be drawn to Chaos. This was no coincidence at all; it was a definite.
This then created an amusing hypothetical question similar to the question about the wooden ship which had all its parts changed out so many times already. Was that really the same ship? When you changed out one person’s “parts” and created two souls from one, finally creating two people from the same person, were these two now independent individuals?
Nobody should have known the answer to this question. There was no real practical purpose to it, either. However, a certain accident gave me the answer beforehand.
I died.
The Abyss Prince was also someone living who was a part of the Cycle of Reincarnation, and had no special ability to surpass the Cycle. However, I merely circled around in the Cycle and swam a bit in the River Styx before I was revived.
The reason for this? It wasn’t simply because of Astrya’s existence. All she could do was protect herself in the River Styx. She wasn’t capable of protecting the soul of a mortal. She was only a remnant soul who couldn’t move anything but her mouth.
“The River Styx was unable to devour me, because… I’m still alive.”
Indeed, the world still viewed Karwenz and myself as the same existence. Only the “Roland” portion had perished, but he still wasn’t actually dead yet. His living spirit had yet to become dead, and his soul was still complete, so the River Styx was unable to take him, naturally meaning that I was unable to be returned to the Cycle of Reincarnation.
What was the reason for this bug in the system being created? It was likely directly connected to the two Creator Goddesses’ game master-like abilities.
This was the truth behind the “Undying Roland” and my seemingly inconceivable ability to never stay dead.
[Has Karwenz ever died before? That’s probably something that only he knows. But, since he knows the truth behind our undying nature, he’s probably died before as well. He’s an Abyss Prince who doesn’t fear death or failure. No wonder he grew in power so quickly.]
Astrya knew the truth better than anyone, but she never told me the truth. In fact, it was rather the opposite as she encouraged me to think about my undying nature as a special property of being a transmigrated soul. Actually, when analyzing this some more, shouldn’t a transmigrator’s soul also have to undergo the same treatment as a local soul? What difference was there?
The real reason why Astrya never told me the truth was…
“You were afraid that if the situation became bad, I would choose to try and commit double suicide in order to stop Karwenz?”
[Isn’t that exactly something you would do?]
I thought it over and answered incredibly honestly for once. [Yes, I would. As long as I can stop Karwenz from opening the door to the dimensional barrier, I will make use of all possible resources and use any strategy necessary. Since Karwenz and I have such a connection, I’ll naturally take advantage of it.”
Astrya saw through me and told me a lie. Karwenz also saw through me and told me the truth. That was how he had succeeded in convincing Elisa to try and stop me because Elisa had also seen through me.
“This really is… subtle to the point where I’m displeased.”
Currently, I really didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry as I looked at my “younger sister”, who had Karwenz’s familiar soul wavelengths in Leona’s body.
Fortunately, this current situation was also within my expectations. Karwenz wasn’t undefeatable.
Perhaps I could stop Karwenz without having to commit double suicide.
“There’s a magic sword that’s capable of destroying all souls…”