MoP: Ch. 172

---Third POV---

Viktor looked up. "Two thousand seven hundred years?"

Wolcen showed a knowing smile.

"You sensed it too? As expected of someone chosen by the world's laws. There's always something special about you."

Viktor stayed silent for a moment, then moved directly to the next question.

"What are the warnings and prophecies?"

"That's what I should be asking." Wolcen fixed his gaze on the ghostly blue soul-flame burning in Viktor's eye sockets. "Do you know my true self? How is he now?"

After speaking, he shook his head.

"Since you made it up here, my true self must already be dead."

He opened his eyes again.

"I want to know why you dislike me."

Viktor looked at him. "Is that question important to you?"

"Perhaps," Wolcen replied.

He turned his head, gazing into the distance, nostalgia surfacing in his eyes.

"In my era, this mountain was called Erebus, meaning 'the Inferno of Flames.' Every eruption of Erebus claimed countless lives from my people. So my desert tribe could only keep migrating, wandering the sands in search of new oases the gods granted out of pity. The tribe cursed the volcano, thanked the gods for their grace, and slaughtered half our livestock every year as offerings..."

Around them lay boundless white snow, roiling clouds above.

Yet in Wolcen's story, Viktor pictured an ancient desert.

A primitive tribe that had only just learned to use stone tools, slaughtering their livestock and placing the offerings before the first crude idol. On a wide clearing, the tribespeople knelt in rows.

Wolcen's tone shifted.

"But I was an exception. I began to think. To think about why the gods would help us rebuild oases. To think about why my people died so quickly once we left the desert. The gods possess the great power of creation, so why don't they simply solve the problem of our inability to leave the desert?"

Viktor spoke at the right moment. "You suspected that the curse preventing your people from leaving the desert was also created by the gods?"

Wolcen remained silent. After a pause, he said, "I don't know. In order to find the answer, I became a god."

He looked at the snow around them.

"More than two thousand years have passed, and this snowy mountain still hasn't melted. That means my true self must have already solved that problem. He changed the living environment of our people."

Viktor nodded.

"Your miracle of turning sand into snow is still sung by believers today. The people of that time thrived on the new fertile land, building one prosperous empire after another."

"Is that so?" The stern god's eyes softened. "A fine ending."

He withdrew his gaze, his eyes seeming to pierce through souls.

"So tell me, why do you dislike me?"

"I've seen eyes like yours once before, the second time I faced the arrogant God of Light."

"After two thousand years, have I changed too?"

Viktor remained silent for a long while.

"The memories you possess end at the moment before Wolcen Wintrian became a god. After that, fate split completely. The other one was just a pitiful wretch who died in the War of Divine Fall. Why fixate on his ending?"

Wolcen let out a long breath.

"I see."

Not answering was, in itself, a kind of answer. He let out a bitter smile.

"So my ending isn't a welcome one."

"No, just not welcome to me," Viktor retorted. "Can we get to the real matter now?"

"Of course."

Wolcen opened his right hand. Two twelve-sided crystals floated above his palm.

One was as blue as the ocean, the other as clear as pure snow. Their lights intertwined, radiating an overwhelming, terrifying aura.

Viktor immediately stood up.

"Divine essences?!"

Wolcen nodded.

"They are mine and the God of Sky's divine essences. In the future foreseen by the Gods of Time and Space, the savior becomes trapped in confusion. These are the solution."

Viktor reached out to take them, but Wolcen dodged sideways.

He frowned.

"What, you still want to ask me more questions?"

If two divine essences were the reward, he didn't mind accepting this so-called savior identity. It was just a title, after all.

Wolcen shook his head.

"Both divine essences come from six hundred years ago. The God of Sky entrusted them to me and asked me to promise him one thing. The savior, once accepting the divine essences, must ascend to godhood here on Mount Wolcen."

Viktor's voice turned cold. "So there's no avoiding those meddling gods after all. And if I refuse?"

"Then the God of Sky's divine essence will remain in my custody."

Wolcen's expression was firm.

"But the God of Snow's divine essence can be given to you. When the Gods of Time and Space visited me right after I ascended, they told me to create this divine avatar because they worried the future me would go back on my word. According to the agreement from two thousand years ago, this God of Snow divine essence will still be given to you unconditionally."

Viktor, who had just taken a battle stance, froze. His arms slowly dropped.

"You really are completely different from the you two thousand years later."

Even so, the desire to seize the essences in his eyes did not diminish at all.

"And what if I decide to take them by force?"

He had already guessed the content of the so-called prophecy and warning. His current dilemma was the inability to increase the number of divine avatars, to create more players. The solution was to absorb other gods' complete divine essences, to "take over" other gods' avatars.

If his intuition was right, the God of Snow's essence was just a bonus.

The one that truly mattered had to be the divine essence of Kalil, God of Sky of the same ancient pantheon as the God of Light!

Wolcen's brows tightened.

"Then we die together. I indeed cannot defeat you as I am now, but aren't you curious why you were able to climb this mountain without any trouble?"

Viktor's eyes narrowed sharply.

"The Gods of Time and Space foresaw even that?"

He had been wondering, Mount Wolcen sat in the heart of the Great Oak Forest. How could there be no high-level magical beasts?

Turns out they had all been foreseen and hidden away beforehand.

Wolcen nodded.

"As long as you agree to accept the God of Sky's divine essence, the divine power within it is enough for you to ascend within three days. After that, you can leave Mount Wolcen safely."

"Safely leave?" Viktor interrupted. "Didn't you say the God of Snow's divine essence is free for the savior?"

Wolcen answered calmly, "Helping you leave safely was not part of the original agreement."

Crack, crack!

Viktor's bones popped as he clenched his fists. So in the end, the only way to leave Mount Wolcen safely was to become a god. Then what was the point of giving him a choice earlier?

If he had to ascend anyway, he might as well take Kalil's divine essence.

Crack!

A strange noise shattered the stagnant atmosphere.

Wolcen lowered his head, looking at the gravel almost blended into the snow.

"Aren't you going to take a look?"

Viktor tilted his head and glanced over.

"No need."

Players tried to find him hundreds of times a day. If he wasn't careful, he'd forget to refuse their communication requests.

If the Shadow Contract Stone shattered, then it shattered. At worst, he could give them another one when he went back.

He accepted the God of Snow's divine essence.

A refreshing, penetrating power spread from his palm through his entire body.

A rough estimate: at least six digits of divine power.

Seeing him stare at the essence, lost in thought, Wolcen spoke at the right moment.

"You are now a Grand Mage, possessing mental strength on par with the gods. Merge it with my divine essence, and you can directly ascend to a mid-tier deity!"

"What is there to hesitate about?"

Crunch, crunch.

Just like when Viktor had first arrived, the man stepped closer, bit by bit, extending his right hand still holding the God of Sky's divine essence.

"Come, inherit my authority. Inherit the God of Sky's creed. Seize the might of the divine. You are the destined savior!"

Not only did this speech fail to persuade Viktor, it had the opposite effect.

He closed his hand.

"So you've learned these disgusting cult-leader tricks at a time like this? All my breath wasted."

Wolcen frowned. "You overstep, undead!"

"What, you're planning to steal my kill so you can revive, and still expect me to be respectful?"

Viktor toyed with the God of Snow's divine essence in his hand.

"Steal the kill?" Wolcen echoed in confusion.

"Well, true. When the God of Sky awakened you six hundred years ago, he probably didn't expect the person you'd end up waiting for to be me."

Viktor tapped the essence against the table, the rhythm light and playful.

"Let me put it another way. According to what I've learned from you, after becoming a god, your nature changed drastically. But your inner thoughts didn't. You still want to force people into godhood?"

Wolcen fell silent for a moment.

"Divine power itself isn't good or evil. You are the savior, fated to be different from us."

"And why," Viktor countered, "should I believe that? Just because two old fools who only know how to spout nonsense saw some 'future'? They also said the signal for the War of Divine Fall would be the death of the God of Light. But the one who died was the Goddess of Wisdom. That bastard lived to the very end, one of the few survivors, before dying from the backlash of faith power! And you can clearly sense with your divine perception that I don't give a damn about this so-called savior crap. If not for needing to keep living in this world, I wouldn't care at all about its future! If a time-space rift opened right now and let me leave this wretched world, I wouldn't spare this mess a single glance! Screw your savior!"

Bang!

He slammed the God of Snow's divine essence onto the table.

The crystal-like essence bounced a few times, then rolled back toward his hand along its edges.

"Whew."

He straightened his collar and let out a long, satisfied breath.

"Much better."

He'd wanted to curse since the moment he saw the man's face.

Wolcen froze, stunned. The sudden flood of information hit him so hard he didn't even notice the insults mixed into Viktor's words.

He only managed to ask, "The God of Light lived until the end?"

His brows knitted into a deep frown.

"Impossible. If the God of Light didn't die, the War of Divine Fall could never have happened!"

This certainty came not only from the prophecy of the Gods of Time and Space, but also from all the memories he possessed. The authority of light held by the God of Light influenced not just the mortal world, it constrained the other gods as well.

Light overpowered darkness. How could they possibly have fought?

"People change, and gods even more so. Just like you could never imagine what you'll look like two thousand seven hundred years years from now."

After speaking, Viktor finally managed to pull out the God of Snow's divine essence from his inner sanctum and projected it forward.

A white-haired, white-robed deity, like a sculpture of ice, was tightly bound to a black cross by iron chains. Beside the black-haired god, the contrast was extreme.

One was wild, like an emperor of the desert. The other was delicate and beautiful, like those identical statues in a cathedral.

Their temperaments couldn't be more different.

Wolcen widened his eyes and instinctively stepped back.

"This is..."

"It's you."

Viktor rubbed his temples in exhaustion.

Fortunately, he had "cleaned up" the guy not long ago.

Otherwise, if the deity suddenly woke up midway, dragging him back would've been a real problem.

Once the side effects of rapid mental depletion faded, he stared into Wolcen's trembling eyes and said seriously, "You pride yourself on being different from mortals. But even if you change in the future, it's no different from human memory. Every stage despising the previous self. So, can you accept this version of yourself?"

To carve a bloody path through the cruel desert and figure out a way to ascend in an era with few new gods, Wolcen's personality was not gentle. During his travels across the continent, Viktor had found traces the man left before godhood.

A heroic king who killed his own chieftain, led a weak tribe to conquer the entire desert step by step, and created a slave-based feudal kingdom. The thing he despised most was the emotionless divine statues hanging in churches.

The next second, a flash of white light passed, and the white-haired god, cross and all, shattered into dust.

[Divine Power +11!]

Viktor dismissed the automatically popped-up notification and looked across in surprise.

"Seems you're even less able to accept it than I thought."

"Enough!" Wolcen cut him off.

He opened his eyes, his voice carrying undeniable killing intent and authority.

"That is my future?"

"Overwhelmed by the backlash of faith, unable to break through the fate of divine fall, reduced to clinging to someone else's mind like a parasite just to preserve the last shred of self? A useless wretch who can't even control his own appearance and ends up looking like some effeminate statue?"

Viktor coughed twice, withholding the full truth.

Actually, in the future, he enjoyed looking like that.

Once he calmed himself, Wolcen lifted his gaze again.

"I understand now why you refuse to become a god."

He looked at the azure divine essence in his hand.

"That thing probably also contains a divine avatar of the God of Sky."

Kalil never cared about Aeltia's future at all.

Giving away his origin essence was simply because the savior had the highest chance of ascending. If the takeover succeeded, nothing of value was lost.

After that, the two stood facing each other in silence for a long time.

Wolcen moved first. He handed over the essence in his hand, his gaze complicated.

"You say you're not the savior, yet I can sense that you are doing things that save this world. That essence belongs to you. But if you don't become a god, how will you use it?"

Viktor stored away the second essence and thought for a moment before answering, "That's my own business. I am trying to stop the world from being destroyed, but that's only to repay a debt. It has nothing to do with being a savior."

Wolcen shook his head helplessly.

"I'm just a fragment of consciousness on the verge of dispersing. You don't need to be so wary of me. Before I disappear, I want to give you a gift."