Chapter 500
Chapter 500: Truth and Essence
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Facing Mephisto’s so-called ‘invitation’, Roy’s first reaction was vigilance.
Although Mephisto was not someone like the King of Lies Belial or Kil’jaeden the Deceiver, it would be a huge mistake if he really thought that the King of Hatred would not lie. It was hard to say if one in ten sentences an old ‘demon’ like Mephisto said was true.
Therefore, Roy did not intend to answer his question at all. “I have my own plans on which world I want to go to, so you don’t have to worry about this!”
His words were not polite at all, but Mephisto was not annoyed at all. He continued to smile amiably and said, “Young man… as a new demon king, it’s not too much for me to call you young, right? After all, I only have the qualifications to boast about being a little bit older.”
“Not at all! How can you be as simple as a qualified senior?” Roy smiled and pretended to be polite. “Just the name of the King of Hatred Mephisto can make the Abyss tremble. You’re too humble.”
Mephisto waved his hand and sat back in his seat. He held his cane in front of him and slowly said, “Osiris, you’re a newly matured demon, so you may not know much about the situation in the Abyss. Tens of thousands of years ago, most of us demon kings were still in the Abyss. During this period, we fought against each other and fought for territory. It’s funny. At that time, the wars in the Abyss were basically fought by us demon kings… Not like now, where only demon lords are fighting.”
“Oh?” Roy asked curiously. “Why is that?”
“There’s nothing we can do…” Mephisto sighed. “Because during the Middle
Ages era, although the Gates of the Abyss also connected to the Infinite Worlds, there were not as many worlds as there are now. It could even be said that there were pitifully few. Back then, once we went to another world, we would basically encounter angels. The moment both parties saw each other, we would fight each other to the death, and we couldn’t avoid it even if we wanted to. Although the Eternal War is like this, after fighting for too long, we would also get tired of it. Not only us demons, but the angels are the same. So over time, both sides formed a tacit understanding. The demon kings and Archangels would not easily go to these eternal battlefields and only let the demons and angels under their command fight on their own. ”
“Then… why did the tacit understanding break?” Roy asked.
The reason Roy asked this was that he knew that it was very difficult to see the demon kings in the bottom of the Abyss, so the demon kings had naturally gone to other worlds.
“It’s because of the species explosion! ” Mephisto said something that surprised Roy. Under his surprised gaze, Mephisto smiled and explained, “To be precise, this tacit understanding was broken since humans were born.”
“Really?” Roy rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
Mephisto smiled. “It’s as you imagine. The souls of humans are extremely attractive to demons and angels, so when this intelligent species was born, the tacit understanding was broken! But… this is only one of them!”
“Are there other reasons?” Roy looked at him.
The expression on Mephisto’s face became a little strange. He reached out to stroke his meticulously combed hair and said, “There’s another reason. We discovered that ever since the birth of humanity, be it the Gates of the Abyss or the Gates of Heaven, the number of worlds that they could connect to suddenly increased. It’s as though… as though these worlds were born with humans.
Especially as human intelligence continued to develop, more intelligent races gradually began to appear, and the number of worlds in the Infinite Worlds increased with each passing day. Especially in the past couple of thousand years, this growth rate has reached its peak. Even us ancients can’t tell how many worlds exist now.”
Mephisto paused for a moment before saying something that surprised Roy.
“Out of curiosity, we’ve also tried to study humans, and then we discovered an astonishing fact. As human imagination grows, additional parallel worlds will appear!”
Roy looked at Mephisto in astonishment. He did not expect Mephisto to come to such an astonishing conclusion.
When he went to other worlds and found people and worldviews that he was familiar with, he had suspected that the so-called Infinite Worlds were simply worlds in the imagination of humans. It was just that these worlds were more real and concrete. He thought that he might be the only one who knew about this, but he did not expect that old monsters like Mephisto seemed to have discovered this long ago!
This indeed caught Roy by surprise.
“Surprised, right? But judging from your expression, you seem to have discovered some truths, right?” Mephisto looked at Roy with a smile. “So, what were your thoughts when you discovered this? Did you have a similar thought to ‘do we all live in a certain book?”‘
This time, Roy nodded. He had indeed thought of this.
“It’s not just you. We old fellows have similar thoughts!” Mephisto sighed. “This is a despairing conclusion. It’s the same for angels and demons. It almost made us go crazy, so we broke the tacit understanding and started desperately going to other worlds to search for the truth.”
“The result?” Roy asked nervously.
“Result?” Mephisto looked at him with a teasing expression. “The result is… we were all wrong!”
“Huh?!” Roy could not understand.
“The growth and appearance of the Infinite Worlds are indeed related to the imagination of humans!” Mephisto looked at Roy’s distorted expression in amusement and explained, “But it’s not as we thought, that we’re living under a certain two-dimensional world. In fact, it should be said that the imagination of humans is indeed the origin of the Infinite Worlds. But once these worlds appear, they will reflect the imagination of humans instead!”
“Wait, what do you mean? Why do I feel a little confused? What do you mean by reflecting the imagination of humans?” Roy quickly asked.
Mephisto leaned back in his chair and raised a finger. “For example, if a certain human had an imagination and imagined a bizarre story segment, and he repeatedly pondered over this imaginary story segment and even shared it with others to let more people know and become familiar with it, then this collective consciousness might affect the will of the Void, causing a world related to this story segment to be born in the Void. But such a newly born world is real and will evolve on its own with the source, which is the story segment, as the benchmark. And this evolution will, in turn, cause disturbances, causing the humans who know the story segment to further perfect their imagination! But at this time, human imagination has completely turned into fiction, and a real world has evolved there, but it has nothing to do with the human imagination…”
“… There’s such a thing?!” Roy felt even more confused. He seemed to understand, but he did not understand at all.
Mephisto paused for a moment to let Roy calm down before continuing, “Don’t underestimate this conclusion. In fact, in order to understand this truth, we old fellows created clones to reduce the price of power and enter many worlds to investigate at the same time. As a result, this caused the clones with independent personalities to be unwilling to return because the clones think that they are also true existences… Hmm, that’s a little off-topic. I don’t know if you’ve observed the activities of humans or if you’ve seen the widely circulated literary and artistic works born in the human world. You have to know that the existence of many worlds can find their source from literary and artistic works. But after our research, we found that these worlds are not unchanging. Artificial intervention might cause the evolution of these worlds to go in another direction, and it won’t continue to follow the development of the plot in the literary works!”
Hearing this, Roy immediately understood. Indeed, he had noticed this before. For example, in the Van Helsing world, he had picked up Gabriel’s soul fragment after Van Helsing died. This did not match the plot he knew at all. But the problem was that this world still existed and did not die because of it. It was the same for the Heroes of Might and Magic world. Because of his appearance, the plot he was familiar with had long changed beyond recognition, but Sareth, the Dark Messiah who should have existed, was still living well in the Abyss…
This should be what Mephisto said. The Infinite Worlds were actually real and evolving…
“The world is real, and we are real!” Mephisto saw what Roy was thinking. “There’s no doubt about this. Although it feels a little strange, I think it should be the Creator’s deep meaning. It’s just that we can’t understand it. The first-generation demons and angels like Lucifer and Michael worship the Creator deeply, so they’ve always wanted to find the Creator to ask for an explanation, but I don’t have this thought. I’m a demon, and I think I just need to play my role well.”
“That’s right!” Roy nodded.
“Then, here comes the question. As a demon, what should my role be?”
Mephisto narrowed his eyes and revealed a strange smile.
“… Destroy the world?” Roy tilted his head and looked at him.
“Yes, I am a spirit who is forever negating! As long as it is born, everything will naturally be destroyed, so it’s better for nothing to happen. Humans and angels call this destruction and crime. Simply put, it’s called ‘evil’, but this is my intrinsic attribute.” Mephisto spread his hands. “This is also the intrinsic nature of demons!”
“Then, you appeared here to invite me to destroy the world with you?” Roy asked in amusement. “Pardon my frankness, but great King of Hatred Mephisto, shouldn’t you borrow the hands of others for this matter?”
“This…” A trace of hesitation appeared on Mephisto’s face, but in the end, he still said, “Because I… encountered a problem, a huge problem… This problem even exceeds my control…”