Chapter 2244: origin |
After Blokan departed to begin his great undertaking, Robin continued staring at the battlefield below with steady, powerful eyes for a long time, his attention fixed upon the endless struggle taking place beneath the cliff as though he were attempting to memorize every movement and every change occurring across the battlefield.
The law vortex Althera had unintentionally created was greatly assisting the defending forces. The number of slain beasts continued to rise, while attempts to flee had nearly vanished altogether. The space beasts seemed increasingly unsettled by the changes occurring around them, their reactions becoming slower and less coordinated with every passing moment.
There was no opportunity to catch one’s breath in the presence of the Imperial Guard, let alone escape, and every moment of hesitation was quickly punished by blades, arrays, or overwhelming attacks descending from every direction.
"...." Morgana sighed as she saw Robin focusing on the battle and ignoring everyone around him. "Your Majesty, I’ll return to the other side. The young space beasts have probably started gathering again. If they are left unattended for too long, they’ll begin rebuilding their numbers."
"Morgana..." Robin murmured while watching the battle. "What do you know about that thing lurking inside your Soul Domain? We haven’t talked about it yet."
"Oh, you remember..." A wide smile appeared on Morgana’s face, but moments later her expression turned awkward as memories she would rather forget resurfaced. "Oh... you remember."
"There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Morgana." Robin smiled. "That thing forced the Executioner to think twice before killing you. You should be grateful to it... and I’m grateful to it as well. Regardless of what it is, it played a role in keeping you alive."
"...." Morgana’s face reddened with happiness.
What pleased her was not merely the compliment.
"What do you know about it, Morgana?" Robin smiled and returned to the subject.
"I don’t know much..." Morgana shook her head. "It’s the same abomination that wanted to kill me, and Your Majesty used your own methods to purify it back then. But afterward I started noticing changes... It didn’t disappear, and after some time it appeared again, except it no longer wanted to kill me. Instead, it began whispering ideas to me and talking to me. Sometimes it says clever things, and sometimes it says foolish things. Sometimes it encourages me to kill, and sometimes it gets excited while I’m teaching children and starts giving me ideas for the next lesson. Honestly, there are times when it behaves like a bloodthirsty monster, and other times when it sounds more invested in my students than I am."
Then she looked to the side.
"There was only one time when I was on one of my personal planets gathering Soul Emeralds for the special training program of the Burton Family descendants. A large group of Specters attacked me. Before I could do what I do best, it appeared and killed every single one of them, displaying terrifying power, power greater than my own, and it didn’t consume a single one of my Soul Units while doing so! The entire battle ended so quickly that I barely had time to understand what had happened before everything around me was already dead."
"I wanted many times to come to you so you could find an explanation for it and investigate the matter, but..." Morgana lowered her head. "It hates you very much, and I didn’t want you to be harmed if I forced a meeting between the two of you. Even right now, I can hear it insulting you inside my head... sorry. The moment I realized how hostile it became whenever your name was mentioned, I decided it was safer to leave things alone."
"There’s nothing to apologize for." Robin chuckled. "I don’t blame it for hating me. It suffered quite a bit while I was purifying it. If someone had dragged me through the same process, I’d probably complain about them too."
"But if it weren’t for what you did, I’d be dead right now, and it wouldn’t have survived either. The abomination controlling it tricked it into believing it could survive without a body, but that’s impossible!" Morgana raised her voice in response. "Everything I’ve learned since then tells me the same thing. Whatever future it imagined for itself simply couldn’t exist."
"Hmm, it’s definitely listening right now, and the fact that it hasn’t come out to try and kill me means it’s at least somewhat convinced that I’m not quite as evil as it thinks." Robin chuckled before looking toward Morgana. "But judging from your words just now... it sounds like you already know what it actually is, don’t you?"
"...." Morgana nodded. "How could I not? It has lived inside my Soul Domain for nearly a million years. I’ve felt its presence for so long that there are periods of my life when I genuinely forget it wasn’t always there. I know where it came from, I know how it was born, and I know what it was originally supposed to be, but I don’t know what it has become after everything it has gone through."
"Hmm, that makes sense." Robin nodded. "That thing... it was the first consciousness of the first Royal Star you ever compressed, wasn’t it?"
"...?" The Royal Soul Masters of the Burton Family exchanged glances.
They had all heard about what happened beyond the gate, about the enormous black-and-white Specter that had appeared and fought thousands of nascent space beasts by itself. Naturally, all of them had been curious about its identity, but this answer was far stranger than anything they had expected, so strange that several of them instinctively questioned whether they had misunderstood Robin’s words.
Simply because the first Royal Star was not supposed to produce a complete consciousness capable of communication or independent action in the same way that the consciousnesses of the second, third, and subsequent stars could.
The role of the first star’s consciousness was to strengthen the original consciousness residing within the nascent soul. It increased thinking speed, enhanced learning ability, and accelerated casting and comprehension to extraordinary levels. That newborn consciousness was generally regarded as little more than a tool that amplified mental capabilities. It did not possess a genuine independent existence, nor was it expected to develop one. Throughout history, countless Royal Soul Masters had reached six stars, yet nobody spoke about the first star’s consciousness as an independent lifeform because there was usually no reason to.
That was why it was commonly said that a six-star Royal Soul Master possessed five separate vessels rather than six.
"Mm." Morgana nodded. "That’s exactly what it is."
"....?!" Everyone’s confusion deepened.
Was that actually true?
The answer sounded ridiculous.
Yet neither Robin nor Morgana appeared uncertain.
"The first star contains a consciousness just like the others, but it’s weak. It doesn’t manifest and it doesn’t think independently. It remains trapped inside the first purple star, which is why it’s usually ignored..." Robin began explaining while continuing to watch the battle below, his eyes never fully leaving the battlefield even as he spoke. "But it exists."
"And you, Morgana, obtained the Specter Shepherd strand, then the abomination struck your Soul Domain while you were still very young. At the time, you hadn’t even formed your first star yet. Your entire cultivation path developed under circumstances that should never have existed to begin with."
"...Then the miracle happened. Through your astonishing talent, you managed to compress a star inside a wounded Soul Domain, one that was collapsing, overflowing with corruption, and filled with dancing Specters. Inside that first star, that dormant consciousness was born within a bizarre environment, an environment where it should never have existed in the first place. It wasn’t born inside stability, purity, or order. It was born inside chaos."
Then he chuckled.
"I still remember that day on Specter Valley Planet when the corruption invaded me because of Arkalon. I saw my soul creatures suffering, I saw Evergreen and Niri running around screaming in panic..." He shook his head slightly. "I can’t even imagine what it must have felt like for that newborn consciousness to awaken in such an environment without any real chance of survival from the very beginning. Imagine opening your eyes for the first time and finding yourself surrounded by fear, pain, madness, corruption, and endless negative emotions. There was never a normal childhood for it, never a peaceful beginning."
Then he looked toward Morgana.
"And not only that, it lived inside that polluted environment for hundreds of thousands of years. The star and the consciousness were both soaked in that filth day after day, night after night. The influence became so overwhelming that the newborn consciousness, which was originally supposed to do nothing more than assist you, eventually gained the ability to think independently because of the endless negative thoughts surrounding it. Every fear, every moment of despair, every hateful impulse, every dark thought left traces upon it until it gradually became something far more complex than it was ever intended to be."
Afterward Robin’s smile faded slightly.
"Then it began reaching conclusions of its own. It developed desires of its own. It started looking for a way out of its situation and eventually attempted to escape in the only way it could imagine... by killing you. Even if doing so meant its own death afterward. From its perspective, death may have appeared preferable to remaining trapped forever in that environment."
"...." Morgana remained silent.
More importantly...
The endless stream of curses and insults echoing through her Soul Domain had fallen silent as well.