Chapter 304: The Borderlands of the Dense Forest

"The second time, I defected to the Aboriginal camp with Guy." Alex recounted in a low voice.

"This time I was encouraged by Guy to learn about this group of natives and their belief in evil gods, which I once thought were very ignorant, but that time, for the first time, I thought ignorance was a good thing."

Alex laughed twice: "Their faith comes from the land and the evil gods, and they would never leave the territory given to them by the evil gods to invade other places, in other words, they would not follow up with a major war and invade other places like my army."

"I was foolish enough to think that if I let the natives win this war in peace, it would all be over."

"I have learned that it is useless to hide the potion because those whom I saved would have told their side of the camp about its effects anyway, so this time I chose to tell the natives directly about the potion's effects."

Alex kept his head down and could not see his face: "After resurrecting two more dead natives, the group easily believed me, I created a large army of undead natives, made a plan to attack the enemy in a methodical manner and soon I achieved a stage victory."

"When the other side was desperate, ready to use artillery in large numbers, I ambushed them with an army of undead and diverted this huge quantity of artillery to the indigenous side."

"On the sixth night, under the combined intimidation of the undead army and the massed artillery, they finally backed down, opting to negotiate peace with the natives and abandoning further attacks."

Alex's voice was hoarse: "I didn't know how long such a false peace could last, but for a moment I was relieved, after signing the peace, after the war had stopped, I thought for sure I would win the game this time, but I never expected ...... "

He closed his eyes and took two hard breaths before continuing with difficulty, "...... By the time I got back to the natives' camp, they were aiming their artillery at the army of undead that had been fully resurrected."

"The natives said that these undead were evil, beings cursed by the gods, and that they had tolerated the existence of this group of undead until the end of the war, until now when they finally decided to judge them."

Alex said hoarsely, "No matter how much I explained that this group of undead would be no different from normal people when fully resurrected, they still did not believe me, and unspeakable fear pervaded every face, screaming loudly that this group of undead would not die easily and that they would have to be repeatedly blasted with cannons and blasted to pieces before they could not be resurrected again. "

"...... The group of undead who were once their parents, friends, lovers, even children, who knelt before me, clutching their corpses and crying for me to resurrect them, but now, after using this group of undead to gain victory, are so intimidated by the power of the other side that they turn around and pronounce the other side heretics and to condemn the other to hell."

Alex snorted, "How ironic that the foolishness that I had celebrated in not hurting others has become a sharp weapon to hurt myself this very moment."

"I screamed at the top of my lungs for the undead to flee, but they stayed put without moving."

"Because they gradually revert to their memories of seven days ago during the resurrection process, they don't know what happened during those seven days, they just dumbly open their arms and smile at their friends and family who come near, and then allow themselves to be set up on fire."

Alex clenched his teeth: "Until the very end they were targeted by the holes in the artillery, they still Buming white what was happening, and I watched as they were blown to pieces by the people closest to them the moment they came fully alive, screaming the names of those closest to them."

"...... For the second game, I lost again and I chose to read the file and start over again."

"In the third game, I didn't join any of the camps, I went crazy and kept creating my own army of undead to attack and control the other two camps, and the more they resisted, the more people died and the more my army of undead grew in numbers."

Alex took two deep breaths, "That was it, soon I took over and the other two sides had to stop the war in order to clamp down on me and chose to work together, one transporting artillery in large numbers and the other using the terrain to work with each other to attack me."

"But the artillery was intercepted by me again, and having gone through the first two, I was not only proficient in fire rationing but also had an uncanny knowledge of the terrain, and I thought I just had to make it through to the end of the seven days like that."

Alex paused: "On the sixth night I went and asked the evil gods, and I said that as long as no war broke out in those seven days I won, right?"

"He said yes, but the world line you are in will continue to run with this world line that you won."

Alex shed a tear as he intoned, "...... That means that if I win in this world line, I will have to keep creating undead all the time to keep my camp strong and clamp down on the other two camps to cooperate so they are not allowed to go to war. "

"But these undead will become living by the end of the seven days, they will no longer be undead, they will be normal living people of flesh and blood, and if I am to continue making undead, I must keep killing, and if I stop killing, the Great War will continue to break out, and everything I want to change remains essentially unchanged."

"Once again, I chose to read the file and start over."

Alex was quiet for a long, long time, and his eyes looked vacantly at the idol of the old evil god: "...... I started over ten times, and I did everything I could to try to stop the Great War from breaking out, to try to stop everyone from dying."

"But even if I had an unlimited amount of immortality potions, with ten do-overs, a large number of people would still die in this war."

"I realised that neither the potion nor I could save anyone and that the only way for the war to stop was for there to be no initiator of the war so that the harm of the war would not extend further."

Alex wept numbly, "So on my last read-through, I chose to pour all the paint the evil gods had given me over the arsenal and kill everyone myself on the eve of the Great War."

"In the end the real world just ran with the ending of me killing everyone for the last time and the world's time continued to flow forward."

"And I lost the game with the evil god, so he combined my experience of cycling through it ten times to create this nightmarish, ever-revolving world of war, fixing me forever as a character in his game, viewing my suffering as the intended interest."

Alex hung his head, tears dripping from his jaw, "...... Every cycle in this war world I exist in begins with a new batch of soldiers I've never seen before moving in, and then ends with these soldiers playfully sinking these undead I've created into the bottom of the lake for a count. "

"I can't remember how many times Guy has been sunk to the bottom of the lake and reappeared in the tent, lying beside me, because other living dead people come back to life and forget what happened seven days ago, they don't remember anything."

"But I remember."

Alex tore his heart out and laughed nervously at the evil wooden statue, tears rolling down his face in big drops, "-every cycle, I remember them all!"

"Because I am not the living dead, I am the only living person in this world of the living dead, and God forbid I should die, so I cannot forget, I remember it all."

Alex's voice was hoarse to the point of near-gas.

"At first I was stuck here and tried to change what was happening here, tried to save them in this virtual world, but then I grew desperate - I couldn't change anything."

He smiled with a blank expression.

"No one understood what I was doing, except Guy, who trusted me completely, so I confided in him about what might happen and Guy said, well, let's run away."

"We found a foggy blank space that was supposed to be the border of this virtual war world and couldn't get out by many means, but Guy and I didn't give up and after each cycle I spoke to Guy again and we came back here to find a way out."

"Until one day." Alex murmured softly, "I was on my knees at the border, the desire to be trapped was driving me crazy, and I heard the voice of the evil god once again, and he asked me, do you want to get out?"

"I said yes, and he said he could devise an avenue for me to get out, but only one of Guy and I could escape from here and let me choose."

Alex's eyes were red: "I chose to let Guy out."

" Guy didn't know anything, he couldn't hear the evil god, I watched him disappear into the mist and a surprised voice came through from the other end saying Alex, I'm out!"

"The mist disappeared before my eyes in a flash and I saw Guy standing on the other side of the boundary, he smiled and beckoned me to get out as well, I said I had to work on the pattern of this going out again, it might have just been a mistake, I might have to wait the next seven days to get out."

Alex blinked slightly, " Guy is the living dead and I know he will come back to life completely in the next seven days and forget that I am trapped in this world and he will probably think I am dead in that real world."

"But at least, one person, the love of my life, was saved by me."

" Guy came to me every day at the edge of the knot, he couldn't get in, and every day he shared with me what he saw out there, and he surprised me by telling me that he had found my grave with him, with Elena's letter and wedding dress on it, and he said that the little girl had grown up and actually made him a wedding dress."

Alex's voice choked with emotion: "He was holding up his wedding dress and smiling so happily that I felt for a moment that all my pain had meaning."

"But seven days later, I was at that border again, ready to see Guy one last time before the cycle restarted ......"

Alex's whole body shuddered: "I found Guy on the other side of the knot, holding up his wedding dress, turned into a senseless corpse, he turned into a green and white zombie."

"I almost went mad, slamming the wooden statue of the evil god over and over again, questioning him why."

"The evil god told me that Guy was originally the living dead, and that when he left this virtual world and entered reality, the time in him was also out of virtual world time and synchronized with real time."

"The evil god said in a compassionate voice, Alex, have you forgotten? In the real world, in that ending you chose, Guy would have been blown up by you, he would have been a corpse."

" Guy can only live for seven days, after which he will become what he should be in the real world."

"I'm not happy, I've tried time and time again to get Guy out of here and I've failed, but it's just made for an unknown number of more zombie brides on the border."

Alex's voice fades: "I finally gave up and numbly took the wedding dress and the letter that Zombie Guy brought back, waiting until the next cycle to give it to another Guy so he could marry me in Elena's wedding dress before he died, which was probably the happiest thing he could have done."

"...... Other than that, there's nothing else I can do."

The Reverse God gazed at him, "You should hate the Evil God, I Buming understand why you are helping the Evil God with this ritual of the new Evil God's successor this time?"

Alex's eyes rolled for a moment, seeming to look at the Reverse God, then turned back to the statue of the new evil god: "- do you know how to escape the grasp of a god?"

The Reverse God was quiet for a moment: "To make a new god, is it?"

"How can you be sure that this new god is a good person and won't continue to design games to torment you?"

Alex's voice was so soft it was almost inaudible.

"I don't know, but I've never seen the evil god have such a strong fixation on some new soldier, and the moment that soldier called Bai Liu entered this war world, I heard the evil god say to me with pleasure that the new evil god, his long-chosen successor, had finally arrived."

"I could barely contain my dislike for Bai Liu in that moment, and I hated the subordinates he brought in so much that I hated their contact with Guy."

The Reverse God recalls - so Bai Liu told him earlier that his favorability rating fell below the safe level the first time he met Alex in the game, while those of them who chose to be on the opposite side of Alex's camp had a stable favorability rating of 60 or more.

It turns out that there is this layer of this reason behind it.

Alex continued, "But soon I was less disgusted with Bai Liu because the evil god told me that once the new god took shape, he would fall and his hold on me would be lifted - this Bai Liu had come to destroy him and then inherit his godhood. "

"The rotation among the gods is also so brutal that it's not that different from humans." Alex couldn't suppress the mocking smile on his face, "-probably because gods, by their very nature, are also human beings full of desire."

"Have you ever wondered why the evil god would tell you this information that is harmful to him?" The Reverse God spoke up, "In case he was trying to get ...... killed"

The Reverse God stopped abruptly at this point.

Alex inclined his head to look at the Reverse God, his browbone pressed low, his eyes brooding, his laughter maniacal: "-to get me killed or who? The one thing I'm not afraid of right now is death."

"I don't want to save anyone or have anything to fear anymore, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to put an end to this."

Alex gasped, his eyes red.

"That guy, that evil god was laughing from his heart when he told me these things, that Bai Liu would destroy him."

"He was fully expecting Bai Liu to kill him to become the new evil god."

Alex sneered morbidly, "-probably he was as tired of living as I was of waiting for death in this world of ugly human desires until he was going crazy, and that's why he was so looking forward to someone to end his life."

Alex looked straight at the wooden sculpture of the old god of evil.

"You know, new soldier, I talked to this evil god once after I lost the game and he condescendingly grilled me and asked me if I knew why I lost the game?"

"I said I didn't know, I did my best and still couldn't change anything, why couldn't everyone survive."

"So he laughed and said that most of the time human desires are based on mutilating each other, and the more unhappy a man is, the more he wants to hurt others or the stronger his own desires, the more meaningful his existence becomes."

"He is the insighter, the repository and the listener of all evil desires in this world, and as long as there is one person in this world whose desires are tinged with blood, the game of the evil gods will never cease."

Alex's eyes gradually move from the old wooden sculpture to the face of the new one: " - and Bai Liu, the player he found, the most compatible with the game related to desire, his desire is so strong, so strong that it can go beyond this game and touch the presence of God. "

" Bai Liu is a player made for the game of the evil god, who has carefully prepared everything in the game, war, destruction, death, souls, to celebrate his coming."

"God favoured him and was willing to die for him." Alex paused, "both the last one, who fell long ago, and this one, who is full of expectation."

The smile on the old wooden carving of the evil god grows more and more eerily tender and sweet, and the new wooden carving of the evil god is less than a third of the way to being perfectly born from the original wood.

The smile on the face of the new Shinto wood carving is warm and serene, as if the god of compassion were hypocritically looking down on all beings.

Shrine.

The petrification of the seer sitting on the stone bench had spread to his heart, which made it difficult for him to pronounce his words and his voice became arduous: "- what did you put down inside this copy?"

The man in the hood wore the same eerie, gentle smile as on the old wooden carving of the evil god, and as he closed and then opened his hands, a pure black whip and a hovering reverse cross appeared out of thin air between them.

"-his original arms and faith."

The whip is covered in bone spikes and is incredibly sharp, and in contrast to the previous Siren bone whip and Spades' lizard bone whip, this whip, although similar in appearance, carries a very distinctly fierce aura.

The reverse cross is made of some unknown stone, the colour of which seems to flow as if it were blood, and contains a soul-stirring light.

The prophet's pupils crinkled for a moment, "You put Bai six's weapon and the reverse cross into this copy?"

"Bai Liu is the perfect heir from all the Bai six I have chosen." There was an indulgence in the man's smile, "I broke his original weapon and reverse cross, it's time to give him something newer and better, isn't it?"

"It's like I killed his old god, and it's always time to give him a new, more perfect god."

The prophet gasped with all his might: " Bai Liu hates you, he will not become your believer, so your argument about giving him a new and more perfect god is not valid at all, he will not believe in you and will not want what you give him, Bai Liu will believe in only - "

" Tavel." The man under the hood lifted his eyes and smirked, "But Prophet, in the absence of Tavel, you have also left out someone Bai Liu would believe in."

The prophet was stunned, and his face was completely frozen this time.

The man under the hood smiled, "- that would be Bai Liu himself."

"By a more perfect new god I don't mean myself, but Bai Liu himself."

" Bai Liu doesn't like me, hates me, hates me all he wants, I need him to feel that emotion towards me." The man had a smile in his eyes that didn't fall out of his eyes, "I will keep taking away the things he cherishes so that Bai Liu will have to face me squarely and kill me to do so."

" - for it is only God who has the power to kill God, and Bai Liu should have fully understood this by now, and in order for him to kill me, he would have had to take over all the gifts of God's power that I had given him - "

The man laughed softly, "-and then became, as I wished, the new evil god who killed me, the old god."

The prophet said, as if he could not breathe, "Do you really want Bai Liu to become a new god? You are going to be destroyed by him for this."

The man in the hood slowly stood up, his back to the prophet, who was about to be completely petrified, and looked out at the waves rising from the sea outside the temple, a smile on his face, nothing reflected in his eyes:

"Prophet, you can see the future, then you should know that everything in this world cannot last forever, the rocks, the water, the waves, the sky and the earth, even the gods will one day perish."

"- that's why living things have the instinct to reproduce, all sentient things are instinctively looking for some way to perpetuate their existence."

The prophet choked out, "Are you trying to seek the continuation of your existence in Bai Liu?"

"No, I find it boring to pursue the continuation of that existence." He smirked, "So I want someone, a guy who fits the rules of my game perfectly, a player who can break all my games to come to me breaking all the rules I make for each world and kill me as the game designer himself."

His eyes, hidden under his hood, shone with a strange kind of light: "- don't you think it's fun to be killed by such a man in a game way?"

The prophet spoke hoarsely, "- of all the Bai six who could have won your game, why did you choose Bai Liu to be your heir?"

The man turned back slightly and asked in return with amusement, "-then I ask you, why did you bet all the chips you had to win me on this one Bai Liu, and why not on the other Bai six."

The prophet was silent.

The man turned his head, the sea breeze whipping his long ponytail that showed outside his hood, and he lowered his eyes, smiling gently, "- because you and I both know that this Bai Liu is just not the same."

" Bai Liu is a completely different soul from those crude Bai six, he is the most perfect and interesting."

"He possessed a soul full of desire and full of restraint."

"If I am to fall in some way." He looked out over the endless vastness of the sea and smiled in full anticipation, "I hope it is Bai Liu, who has such a soul, who will kill me himself."