Chapter 1581: The Gathering of Maniacal Monoliths. II
1581 The Gathering of Maniacal Monoliths. II
"Quick, let's put them on the ground next to each other."
Lord Marduk swiftly began working on arranging the one hundred and sixty broken monoliths.
Each piece, a fragment of ancient knowledge, was carefully placed on the ground, forming a seemingly chaotic pattern that stretches across the landscape.
Felix and the others watched with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism.
Time passed, and a sense of restlessness began to permeate the group...Whispers and murmurs rippled through the crowd, a growing impatience at the apparent stillness of the scene.
The monoliths did absolutely nothing.
Knowing that all they could do was be patient, Felix questioned, "Does each monolith reallyrepresent a primogenitor?"
He was told before that each monolith represented a primogenitor and his element, but to see one hundred and sixty monoliths in one place was a lot on its own.
He couldn't imagine one hundred and sixty primogenitors used to exist in the universe.
"That's what we believe at least." Lady Sphinx clarified, "When we were bestowed gifts upon, the lightning that struck us, left some inscription written on the ground. We broke a piece of the ground with the inscription and kept it with us when our intelligence stabilized. Since everyone we have asked had this happen to him and we found a total of one hundred and sixty monoliths, we assumed that each monolith represented the birth of a primogenitor."
"I see..." Felix nodded in understanding, "But if it's like this, how can you be sure that 160 is the limit?"
"I have been sent holographic pictures of each monolith and I have pieced them manually until they got merged perfectly into one. While the rocks themselves have different sizes, the sentences were aligned perfectly straight, making the monolith resemble a book page." Lady Sphinx anwsered.
In other words, it was highly unlikely that a couple more monoliths were to be hiding somewhere.
"If there are a hundred and sixty primogenitors, how can the majority be dead?" Felix still found it hard to believe that such a large number of primogenitors were dead with the kind of gifts that made them overlords.
"You have no idea about the dangers of the universe in our times." Fenrir shook his head, "We spent at least thousands of years adjusting to our strength, intelligence, and powers. Just me alone have almost died ten times by making stupid mistakes like jumping in weird dimensions and such."
Felix did recall the first memories of Jörmungandr. He was a mere little dumb snake before it got struck by lightning, and when he turned humanoid, he was exploring anything and everything with great passion.
He could imagine a primogenitor in his earliest days dying from getting poisoned by a plant or a food...They might be immortals from old age, but they were easily killable during their young age.
"Plus, at least ten primogenitors ended up dead after we made the pact, not waiting until Lord Loki had created the illusion world. There are a few more, who are still alive, but secluded themselves in separated dimensions, having no interest in the outside universe." He added, "Like the glass ancestor and plasma primogenitor."
"There is even a ancestor for plasma?" Felix was slightly surprised.
"This is nothing, there are much weirder ones." Lady Sphinx named a few, "There is chaos primogenitor, capable of controlling the mysterious powers of unpredictability and forces of disorder. There is the nebula primogenitor, she can manipulate the cosmic dust and gases. There is even a radiation, magnetism, and aether primogenitor."
"For each peculiar element, there is a primogenitor for it. But, unfortunately, they have not survived the earliest years and have not left any descendants, which completely killed off their elements from making the light of the day."
"Damn, I wonder if the universe has created eggs to replace them and maintain their elemental manipulation," Felix said.
Felix wouldn't mind a perfect manipulation of some of those elements, having a strong feeling that they could be quite powerful like vibration element.
But, if it was like they said and they have died way, way earlier than even the Primogenitors Era could pop off, then there wasn't much of a hope unless he got super lucky.
Plus, he didn't even know if the universe created eggs for primogenitors who had yet to leave a drastic change.
For example, Carbuncle spread his seeds far and wide until there were many gemstone species and beasts related to him, which maybe pushed the universe to fix an imbalance he left behind...But, the same couldn't be said about vibration and other dead or lost ones.
"I think it's a failure?" Lord Khaos suddenly interjected.
"Let's give it some time." Lady Sphinx frowned.
She knew that nothing was guaranteed to occur while bringing those monoliths together, but still, she held onto a bit of hope that the result wouldn't be this disappointing.
Alas, they had waited and waited...The monoliths stayed unmoving akin to any ordinary stones.
Just as the tension reached its peak, Lord Marduk suggested, "Maybe, they needed to get activated?"
"How so?"
"Let's see if this works." Lord Marduk said a single word in the universal codex language: "Activate."n.)/(((ℯ-(//./I--n
The simplicity of the command belied its power.
At Marduk's utterance, a profound change swept over the monoliths!
They started to levitate, rising from the ground as if imbued with a life of their own!
"The hell, it worked?!"
Felix and the rest were left speechless, having no idea what Lord Marduk had done.
A ballet of stone ensued, each piece gracefully moving through the air, guided by an unseen force.
The dance of the monoliths was mesmerizing, a display of cosmic choreography that defied explanation.
"It's happening, it's actually happening." Lady Sphinx's pupils widened in elation and agitation.
It had been a long time since she felt this way and the scene before her was enough to make her cry if she wasn't in control of her emotions.
Who could blame her, she had been collecting them for millions of years and had risked way too much for their sake.
Gradually, the fragments started to converge. In a few moments at best, the individual pieces, once broken and disparate, fused to form a single, massive monolith.
This newly formed structure stood tall and imposing, its surface alive with the dance of inscriptions.
"The letters are jumping from one monolith to another, forming new words and sentences!" Felix exclaimed as he watched the inscriptions jumbled together.
Upon the monolith, the random inscriptions from before started to move, swirling and coalescing into coherent patterns and sequences!
The once chaotic symbols found harmony, creating a tapestry of knowledge that stretched across the stone's vast surface!
Lord Marduk, his eyes fixed on the monolith, started to murmur, "Now, I understand, now, I understand..."
His voice was a mix of awe and revelation, as the inscriptions revealed their secrets to him...It was like he was blind before and now he could finally see!
Meanwhile, Felix and the rest were still not as affected...They never really understood the previous inscriptions and those new ones seemed just as foreign.
"I have wasted an entire billion years using the wrong data for my translation..." Lord Marduk didn't know whether to cry or laugh.
With just one glance, all of the unsolved questions that had caused him great headaches for millions of years were anwsered.
The monolith was like a cheat code to understand the universal codex language as a whole and he was using a wrong version of it, which didn't just feed him false information, but misled him many times over his journey!
All of this he because he believed the inscriptions on the monoliths were the right ones...
"Oh, I understand now, I understand how it is." Lord Marduk suddenly broke into laughter, causing everyone nearby to give him weird looks.
"What are you on about?" Fenrir asked in confusion.
"I think I know what he means." Lady Sphinx shared coldly, "Those beings gave each of us a part of the key to understand our inscriptions...But, they knew that most of us won't hand our most precious object following our birth so easily."
"Are you saying they gave us incentives to fight each other to collect those monoliths?"
"Yes." Lady Sphinx nodded, "If we cheated and copied just the inscription without possessing all the monoliths in one place, we will get the wrong version of it."