Chapter 885 – Meteorite
In the end, those who survived had no choice but to completely convert to the Transcendental Church, and to prove their loyalty to the Transcendental Church, they either practiced fanaticism or became friends and colleagues of shallow faith. He even tried to prove his religious purity by snitching on his family.
“… Crazy bastards.”
『Exactly. We went completely crazy in just one moment.』
Illax tells Seong-il that after that, as Seong-il knows, the Is race turned into complete fanatics under the guidance of the prophet, crossing dimensions, attacking intelligent civilizations, capturing them, and conducting human experiments on them.
『Unsurprisingly, work used to be quite difficult.』
Of course, not all civilizations are primitive or only at the Earth level, so it is said that the Transcendence Church sometimes encountered strong resistance.
『We encountered all kinds of cases, such as encountering civilizations with technology as powerful as ours, or those with less advanced technology but stronger psionic abilities than ours, etc.』
“Definitely… That type of civilization would be the most difficult.”
“No. There was a separate being that was the most difficult.』
“…?”
Illax explains that surprisingly, when crossing dimensions, there are times when you encounter transcendent beings that are just as scary as AI.
『Cosmic beings. Really. I only encountered them occasionally on very rare occasions… But they were truly terrifying beings.』
Illax is exploring an endless dimension. This explains that, in unlucky cases, the Transcendent Church often encountered ‘something’ so powerful that it could easily be considered a god.
『There was a cosmic being that immediately caused the mind of the being looking at it to collapse, or corrupted it… Or even forced it to escape into another ‘something’. What was scarier was that even though they had no malicious intent, we were as broken as bugs when we faced them.』
However, when faced with such terrible and great beings, a weak being clings even more to faith. Paradoxically, the occasional encounter with a cosmic being and a terrible disaster served as an opportunity to further strengthen the faith of the Isians.
『Then we finally found it. A race ‘suitable’ for transplantation.』
“… Is that the current Earth?”
“No. But humanity was right.』
“…?”
Seong-il frowns at Ilax’s unexpected words. He calmly continues his explanation to Seong-il with an expression that says there is no need to rush.
『The first humans we discovered were humans in a world slightly more developed than the one you live in now. Although there were still many shortcomings, such as electric brains, prosthetic hands, etc. We were able to use cyborg technology, and although it was a joke compared to the technology we used in the past, we also had a high-performance AI.』
“… Us?”
『Once again, they are ‘humanity’ but not ‘you’.』
Illax decisively cuts off Seong-il’s words and begins to tell him another shocking story.
『They were another form of ‘humanity’ in the multiverse.』
“…!!”
『Anyway… As always, we went to war with the newly discovered civilization. We used to raise the captured humans from the world as if they were livestock or conduct biological experiments to check whether they were ‘suitable’.』
And unfortunately, the Transcendent Church realizes that the human population in that world line has awakened ‘God’ psionics by a narrow margin. With the fact that there was a possibility of transplantation if it had been discovered just a little earlier.
『When all the believers of the Transcendent Church realized that fact, they all despaired. Of course. They are a ‘suitable race’ that was barely discovered after wandering through dimensions and facing hardships for countless years, but due to unlucky timing, they missed the timing and mental transplantation became impossible.』
Illax is 10 years old. It explains that if the Transcendent Church had visited that dimension just 10 years earlier, the Church would have secured humanity in that dimension and performed mental transplant surgery, truly succeeding in ‘transcending’.
As the expectations were high, the shock was also great, so many Transcendental believers lost their minds or fell into despair and began to lead uncontrolled lives again. At that time, apocalyptic thoughts were covering the entire world. Suddenly, the prophet calls the believers and claims an unconventional plan, saying he received another ‘revelation’ from a meteorite.
『The prophet made an unconventional… No, crazy proposal to ‘re-fix’ the meteorite.』
Since the prophet has confirmed that the human race here is a ‘suitable species’, he claims that if we divide the past, present, and future infinitely starting from the time of the human race here, one day, we will be lucky enough to encounter humanity just before the enlightenment of psionics. .
“What do you mean… Are you saying that we should re-fix the black meteorite to the world line of humanity at the time and from that point onward travel across the infinitely separate multiverses to find humanity in a suitable state?”
『That’s right.』
“Crazy bastard…”
Hearing Illax’s explanation that he not only tormented the human race in his own world line, but threw a black meteorite and cursed the human race in infinite world lines, Seong-il clenched his fists and started shaking his hands, as if he was trembling.
『I’m sorry. I wish I had the power to stop it…』
“… That’s it. Continue explaining.”
Although he was feverish, Illax in front of him was still one of the few sane beings among the Ys people. He is also somewhat of a victim, so rather than blaming him and relieving his anger, Seong-il swallows his anger in order to hear the truth.
『The opinion in question… Is good… It is difficult to regard this as good…』
“It must have been a good plan from the Transcendent Church’s point of view. I’m not a fool to lose my mind after hearing such a choice of words, so just explain.”
『… Anyway, from the perspective of the Transcendent Church, the prophet’s argument was a very plausible theory, but it had a very fatal flaw.』
Although the Prophet’s opinion was truly unconventional and genius, it had a serious flaw. That is, if the power of the black meteorite was momentarily stopped to try to fix the dimension again, there was a 100% chance that the space of the overlapping dimension would be instantly released and the AI that was persistently pursuing them would be able to specify the location of the dimension. .
『In a situation where ‘it’ created the anti-thesis of the black meteorite, if we temporarily release the overlapping coordinates, we will be lucky enough to be quickly chased by the white meteorite, or at worst, ‘it’ will be caught in an instant. There was a problem that they could be immediately chased down and killed.』
‘… Could it be that this is why black and white meteorites appeared around the same time in another world?’
After listening to Illax’s explanation. Seong-il finally realizes that one of his worst assumptions may be true.
‘The game world… The world I thought was the game world… Maybe it wasn’t a game at all?’
Seong-il thinks that maybe the world he has been wandering around is not a game, but a part of a dimension that was created by a meteorite.
‘But to say that… The game master’s actions…’
However, the game master’s behavior was too different from the AI’s behavior pattern for the game world to be a different world line differentiated by meteorites, so Seong-il felt confused and felt something contradictory even though he seemed to know something.
‘If the game master really wanted to act according to the AI’s purpose, wouldn’t it be okay to just calculate the coordinates and have the AI descend into our world, rather than having me go in and out of this or that world?’
‘Or you can break through the barrier to our world by communicating with AI in a world without dimensional barriers… What on earth is the game world?’
Illax, who saw Seong-il’s confused expression, assumed that he thought he was confused because of the tragedy of his people, and continued his explanation in a cautious tone.
『Luckily, the Transcendent Church was able to barely escape the clutches of ‘it’, which quickly pursued it as soon as it released the fixed coordinates.』
As the AI’s rapid pursuit was expected, the Transcendent Church prepared to escape to the dimension more desperately than at other times. Thanks to their desperate preparations, they were able to briefly stop the AI that invaded while unblocking the dimensional overlap and installing the meteorite, and barely escaped.
『Usually, this is the scene I show when I bring in a capable human hunter. A terrible sight of countless microscopic colonies of machines devouring our people.』
“…”
Illax recites information to Seong-il and subtly checks whether he knows the facts. However, fortunately, thanks to his mental strength that has become extremely strong through numerous extreme experiences and training, Seong-il shows an expert appearance that does not get caught in the slightest by Illax’s fishing.
‘I’ve been through a lot to be caught up in such a shallow tactic.’
“Like that. We once again traveled around the differentiated world lines, desperately trying to find ‘humanity’ in a suitable state. It wasn’t easy though.』
“Why wasn’t it easy? Anyway, since the suitable race was identified, the chances should have been higher, right?”
