Experimental Log of the Crazy Lich - Chapter 473

Chapter 473: Black and White

“Pure good and evil are merely imagined concepts that don’t truly exist. There was never any absolute barrier between black and white to begin with. The beginning of everything stemmed from the two Goddesses of Order and Chaos having such powerful differences. Compared to their mortal creations, they were pure, far too pure—pure to the extent where the entire world was dragged into their conflict.”

Ilmisya rather than Karwenz was the one who just made that comment, as she had just successfully retreated from the battlefield. However, she was clearly scorched black all over yet still trying to put on a serious expression, which made me really want to laugh.

“I didn’t betray my tribe, I only betrayed the will of the Chaos Abyss. I never told my tribe beforehand because this needed to be kept an absolute secret; as long as any information leaked out at all, everything would be for naught…”

Obviously, Karwenz wasn’t someone skilled at explaining things, so Ilmisya apparently wanted to explain everything with that mature and naturally alluring voice of hers. However…

“Shut up! Karwenz! You tell me!”

Right now, I was still shocked at what I’d just learned and angered at the way Karwenz still addressed Cynthia. I wanted to hear from the person himself.

“As expected, Goddess of Chaos Cynthia was truly the culprit who destroyed the Mist Kingdom!? Mother Cynthia? You knew the truth and still call her your mother? You can tolerate such a thing…?”

“I’m merely stating the facts, Roland. She is indeed my mother. You know about the so-called Child of Fate, right? Then, do you know how the Children of Fate come to be?”

“Child of Fate? You even learned about that? Aren’t Children of Fate simply the most important chess piece of their generation, with the deepest ties to karma, allowing them to possibly change the fate of the entire world?”

That’s right, a Child of Fate was still nothing more than a chess piece for those even higher to better control the situation. No matter how powerful a Child of Fate was, he or she would still be nothing more than a chess piece under the control of the God behind the scenes. No matter how hard the Children of Fate worked, or how many victories and accolades they gained, nothing would happen except for the eternal Holy War entering its next cycle. It was so for Karolan during the previous Holy War, as well as “Roland” from the game’s history.

“Then, how did they become able to change the fate of the world? Have you carefully thought about this?”

Karwenz’s words caused me to pause in surprise. I had only learned recently about the Child of Fate, and had so much on my plate that I naturally didn’t have the time to deeply research this topic.

“Chaos’ very essence is unpredictability. If Fate is a power of Order, then breaking the chains of Fate and restoring everything back to pure Chaos is naturally the power of the Chaos Abyss. The so-called Child of Fate is a child of the Abyss, the Prince of the Abyss. Not only do I need to call Cynthia my mother, you’re her child as well.” Karwenz revealed a playful smile. “Time and Space are the most foundational Concepts of Order. Prophecy is a product of these Concepts that allows to see the future. And as Mother Cynthia is enemies with Order, she naturally needs a so-called ‘Child of Fate’ who can shatter all the prophecies.

“Before every Holy War, Mother Cynthia will use her powers of Creation to split off a part of her own soul and give it the ability to evolve limitlessly, creating a new artificial soul and tossing it into the Mortal Plane. The Order Faction calls this person the Child of Fate, but if I had to name it, I think Child of Anti-Fate would be far more accurate.

“It would seem that the Goddess of Order Astrya on your side didn’t tell you the truth at all. No, lying to you will be easily seen through, so as long as she isn’t stupid, she probably didn’t tell you the whole truth!”

So much information was just revealed to me. Combining all of this information and analyzing seemed to bring me to the truth.

Indeed, my System hadn’t lied to me. She simply didn’t tell me the whole truth. This was a wordplay tactic that I was extremely familiar with using myself. And, I actually fell for it.

“The Order Faction has its great precognitors, so the Chaos Faction will naturally have its own Child of the Abyss of Anti-Fate. And, the previous generation’s Child of the Abyss was scammed by Astrya into crippling himself. It’s already such a joke that a Prince of the Abyss mysteriously became one of the strongest supporters of Order. Astrya wasn’t even satisfied with that as she even scammed Karolan into abandoning his sense of self to ascend to Godhood. That put a complete end to him.”

[…Karolan did it of his own free will. He was unable to resist Cynthia’s temptations, and could have become fallen at any moment…]

“Shut up!”

Pain? Anger? Distrust? I was probably feeling all those emotions right now.

I was roaring angrily in my mind, and felt so aggrieved that I really wanted to shout out loudly at the top of my lungs. Yet, I still forced myself to smile as now wasn’t a time that I could allow negative emotions to cloud my judgement.

“Hey hey hey, Elder Brother, don’t smile at me like that. You look terrifying. Check the corner of your lips.”

I wiped my mouth and found that it was bloodied. I had unknowingly made myself bleed by biting my lips too hard. It would seem that I had used too much force.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as I couldn’t allow Karwenz to continue controlling the pace of this conversation. I then spoke up in a heavy voice, “Continue. What exactly happened with us back in the year?”

“Yeah, this Holy War is highly likely to be the final Holy War of all. Mother Cynthia desires to have the strongest Prince of the Abyss in history in order to finally defeat her eternal enemy. No, she desires to completely destroy her eternal enemy Astrya, the Goddess of Order. You know as well that the Goddesses of Order and Chaos are the rulers of the dimension of Eich. It will be impossible for any product of Eich to destroy Astrya.”

These words caused me to suddenly think of a possibility that caused all my hair to stand up ends. And, my inference was proved the very next moment.

“Perhaps you know already that Eich was almost destroyed previously by dimensional invaders. This is the foundational reason why the two Goddesses desire so much strength. And, Mother Cynthia who was helpless to destroy Astrya suddenly thought of an idea thanks to the dimensional invaders…”

At this moment, Karwenz paused intentionally for a moment to bait my expectations and smiled nefariously.

“…’Since there’s no knowledge or power in this dimension that can possibly kill the Goddess of Order, perhaps it will be possible to do so with knowledge and power from another world.’ And so, as Mother Cynthia was one of the Creator Goddesses of this world, she paid a tremendous price to break through the dimensional walls in order to insert the soul of the Child of the Abyss into another world. This helped him to obtain knowledge and memories from that world. Then, just like a fisherman, Mother Cynthia reeled his soul back in to Eich…”

I fell silent after hearing this. Although I’d already expected this as there were only definites and no coincidences in the world, the truth was still difficult to accept. So, in the end, even my transmigration was arranged by the Goddess of Chaos herself? We were nothing more than chess pieces from the very start?

“You should already know what happened after that. Since the previous generation’s Child of the Abyss was scammed into going down the wrong path, the will of the Chaos Abyss directly attached itself to this generation’s Child of the Abyss. The result was that when Astrya came looking for her Child of Fate—the two Goddess’s remnant souls had yet another fight that forcefully tore the Child of the Abyss into two souls.

“And, what happened next was even more inconceivable. Originally, every soul should have a portion belonging to both Order and Chaos. Yet, the two half-souls split up like this just happened to be far purer than ordinary human souls. If normal human souls are 50% Chaos and 50% Order, both these souls were more than 90% pure Chaos or Order. And so, a true Child of the Abyss and Child of Order were born! These two children were naturally able to obtain the favor of Chaos and Order, respectively, ever since birth.”

Karwenz still spoke with a smile, as if he was talking about someone else rather than ourselves.

“Just like the differences between the upper and lower dimensions, the Order-oriented soul floated upwards, was born first, and became the older brother Roland. The Chaos-oriented soul sunk downward and became the younger brother Karwenz. This was the best possible result for the Goddesses of Order and Chaos! And so, both of them attached themselves to their respective children, and attempted to control their fates so that they would fight and kill each other.”

Since Karwenz had explained so much already, I could pretty much figure out the rest on my own.

Cynthia attached herself to Karwenz, giving him a ridiculously cheat-like ability to grow powerful. And, she also arranged the most tragic fate possible for him, because she hoped that he would grow even more powerful after being spurred on by tragedy. That was why she destroyed our Mist Kingdom.

And, Astrya attached herself to me and learned about the concept of “Systems” from all the random webnovels I loved to read in my previous world. After analyzing the information from my world, she decided to give me her prophecies in the form of a “game walkthrough” in order to try and guide my fate.

And so, Karwenz was indeed the Prince of the Abyss, while I became known as the “illegitimate child of Holy Light.”

“But! But! They’ve finally lost control! Their chess pieces have exceeded their capabilities to control.”

A fervent smile appeared on Karwenz’s familiar face. His mysterious fervor made me feel fear, as his smile actually distorted with excitement, fear, fearlessness, and numerous emotions that made his face seem like a jigsaw puzzle with too many different emotions. I could sense that this was the true Karwenz. Since his soul had almost been entirely stripped of Order, he was the purest Child of the Chaos Abyss that had ever been born.

“Haha, my dearest Older Brother, you possess knowledge from another world, don’t you? Right, right, I don’t have any such knowledge at all, so it can only be you! You also invented all sorts of random things when you were young. That must have been knowledge from that other world. And, being able to create such a dimension here must be the result of your knowledge from that other world. Yep, this is so delightful, Mother Cynthia’s goal that she didn’t have much hope in has been actualized; you’ve truly created a weapon that can actually kill the Creator Goddesses! Do you know just how happy I was after hearing this!?”

Karwenz’s fervent gaze looked upon this patch of ice and snow in the Indifference Inferno of Sloth, but he seemed to see through everything. He saw the Tower of Holy Light which represented Salvation at the very top of Hell, and he also saw the invisible Tower of Death. He had long since known the functions of the Four Towers. And, he came to this Tower of Ice for this very moment.

“Wonderful, it’s truly wonderful. This is it, this world. Elder Brother, you’ve succeeded! This is the God-slaying weapon. You’ve created the guillotine, and I’ve brought along the prisoner to be executed. Now, we can execute these two Creator Goddesses that caused the world so much pain. Let us take our revenge! Let us first kill our Mother Cynthia, and then kill that hypocritical Goddess of Order! Come, let us shatter the shackles of the old generation, and give Chaos true freedom! Let everything return to true freedom! This is revenge, as well as a declaration of enthroning ourselves! The generation of the Goddesses of Order and Chaos is over. The future generation belongs to us! The Twin Stars of Order and Chaos!”