Despair.

  Nothing else.

  Patrick and the others finally understood—their struggles were utterly futile before that being. The only reason they still existed was because she had simply chosen not to erase them.

  Time travel?

  Completely meaningless.

  Even the supreme conceptual deity of Time—master of the complete concept itself—had been forced into feigned death by her hand. What chance did he have, when his own concepts had not yet even solidified?

  Three people?

  Every god of the universe had already been slaughtered.

  Each time Patrick and the others recalled the vision of divine corpses drifting in the cosmic void, their own efforts felt absurd. Their resistance was meaningless.

  A bright flash.

  The three of them reappeared in 1860, Goliath City, Royal Academy of Sciences. None of them intended to travel again. Futility had hollowed out the very idea.

  The girl said nothing.

  Patrick’s eyes were vacant, steeped in despair.

  Gaunt stepped down from the platform, calm but resolute, and asked her:

  “You know where she is, don’t you? Tell me.”

  Patrick muttered, “What are you going to do?”

  “Bring about an end.”

  In some ways, Gaunt’s character mirrored Vergil’s—unyielding, driven, touched with a self-sacrificing madness, recklessly stubborn.

  If there was no way forward, and no way back,

  Then he would carve out an end himself.

  He refused to serve as a puppet of the gods. Refused to die pitifully, his body used as fodder for their return. Impossible.

  Even if it meant death, Gaunt would choose the manner of his own fall. While he still had breath, even without hope of victory, he wanted to stand against that being and force an ending.

  At least he would die in battle—under the name of Gaunt.

  This was his final dignity.

  The girl finally answered:

  “Downing Street, 179.”

  “Thank you.”

  Gaunt grinned. The despair clouding him vanished, replaced with blazing exhilaration. To stand against such an existence… was, in its own way, an honor.

  Patrick only watched him go. He did not follow. He was not ready to die; he still longed to live.

  Bowing his head, broken, he whispered:

  “While there’s still time… do what you truly want. Don’t leave regrets.”

  Gaunt walked the streets like any ordinary man, moving through the crowds, watching the buildings and carriages pass by. He sighed.

  “Time really flies.”

  In the blink of an eye—over a thousand years had passed.

  The fall of the Firenze Empire still felt like yesterday. He had risen from a backwater nobody to the Progenitor of Immortals. His life had been spectacular enough.

  There was nothing left to cling to.

  His stride never slowed. He drew out the Blood of God he had obtained earlier, caring nothing for its suppressive effect on Immortals.

  Without hesitation, he crushed the glass vial.

  Crack.

  Golden-red blood streamed down his arm, some of it dripping into his mouth.

  He no longer cared. All he wanted was to taste its power—to plunge headlong into one last moment of unrestrained madness before death.

  And then—

  Agony tore through him as a violent force erupted. His blood boiled, his body steaming with a red aura.

  Golden veins spread like burning patterns across his skin and face. Behind him, a faint halo ignited, drawing gasps from those nearby.

  “Hahahaha! Not bad at all!”

  Gaunt roared with laughter, shoulders shaking as he endured the pain.

  Then—

  Boom!

  A colossal cleave tore through the city, splitting buildings as though the world itself were being unzipped, its destructive will bearing down on Downing Street with unstoppable force.

  For a moment, ordinary people nearby stood frozen. Then panic struck.

  “Run!”

  They scattered in all directions. Whatever madness was unfolding, survival mattered most.

  The devastating strike carved everything apart like a hot blade through butter. Yet, just as it was about to obliterate Downing Street, the cleave abruptly shifted, veering upward. It ripped into the sky, blowing a gaping wound through the clouds.

  Footsteps echoed beside Gaunt. Mei had been there all along.

  Gaunt turned, seeing her dressed in a suit. He smiled.

  “I thought you disdained to act.”

  Mei’s only response:

  “Audacious.”

  Her gaze swept over him. To Mei, Gaunt was a mosaic of memories—Adelaide’s power, Vergil’s unyielding will, Julius’s swordsmanship.

  Among all the vessels, he was the one most entwined with her. And since he was already resolved to die, Mei would not intervene. His end simply meant Existence would turn to another vessel.

  Gaunt raised his sword.

  His figure blurred, lightning-swift, cutting toward Mei.

  “Well? Faced with the provocation of an ant like me, do you truly have no temper at all?”

  Mei’s mind remained utterly still.

  The instant his blade was about to cleave her head, Gaunt froze in mid-air. A sound like breaking glass rang out—

  And he shattered.

  Bang!

  Nothing remained.

  The disparity was absolute: a gulf of concept, of level, of existence itself. “Worlds apart” could not begin to describe it.

  At his peak, Gaunt had reached Tier 3, wielding only fragments of conceptual power. Against a prime conceptual deity, the comparison was laughable.

  For Mei, his death required no effort. A single thought erased him. She had not spared him for his courage—she had ended him, clean and decisive.

  And in truth, such a swift death was mercy.

  A release.

  The girl appeared at Mei’s side. She inclined her head and said softly:

  “Your Majesty, may I offer you a deal?”

  Mei did not seem surprised at Fate’s manifestation.

  “Speak.”

  The girl’s calm tone carried an almost pleading weight:

  “I humbly request that you no longer interfere with my fate—allow me to live my own life, if only for a time. Two hundred years from now, I will willingly condense the concept of Fate. At that point, all will be yours to command. I will no longer have the will to resist.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  For so long, she had believed her destiny lay in her own hands. Even when Mei discovered her presence, she had thought Mei lacked the power to interfere with her fate.

  She had been wrong.

  Only recently, when she realized she herself had led Fantasy, Existence, and Time into Mei’s grasp, did she finally understand: her fate had been under Mei’s shadow all along.

  In truth, Mei did not tamper with “fate” directly—she interfered with causality. Yet whether it was causality or fate, the outcome for the girl was the same.

  Always, she remained bound beneath Mei’s control.

  Unless she chose death, she could never escape. So long as she lived, the concept of Fate would inevitably coalesce within her. But if she wished, she could prolong that process for ages.

  “Two hundred years of freedom is enough.”

  The girl pressed her plea to Mei:

  “Two hundred years from now, I will actively condense the concept of Fate. At the very least, you won’t need to expend effort pursuing that concept yourself.”

  Mei remained indifferent.

  “As you wish.”

  Two centuries meant nothing to her. Even if she refused, what could Fate do? Resistance was impossible.

  Thus the girl’s tone carried the weight of near-supplication.

  Locked in her struggle against Causality, she had stretched the time it would take to condense her concept to the limit. This sliver of delay was all she could win—and all she could offer.

  At the very least, for Mei, the deal was not a loss.

  “Many thanks!”

  The girl bowed lightly.

  At that moment, footsteps approached.

  Samuel and several members of the Hermitage Society arrived, drawn by the chaos. They were still in Goliath City, after all—how could they not intervene?

  What startled Samuel most was seeing Mei again.

  He froze.

  “Your Majesty… we meet again.”

  Outwardly composed, inwardly he felt only dread. To be entangled with her once more… the last thing the world needed was the rebirth of another Firenze Empire.

  Apprehension gnawed at him. His instincts screamed that Mei was tied to the fallen empire’s highest echelons, though he lacked the proof to confirm it.

  “Hm.”

  Mei gave only a faint sound before vanishing without a trace. She had no interest in wasting time on trivial matters.

  “...”

  Samuel wanted to stop her, but there was nothing they could do. Just like in Burlington, the encounter ended with her slipping away, aloof and untouchable.

  After she left, his barely veiled hostility turned toward the girl. His eyes burned.

  “What did you do to Rosinante?”

  The Hermitage Society clashed with the girl. It ended quickly, with Samuel’s people injured. The girl rarely fought, but that did not mean she was weak. On the contrary, she was terrifyingly strong.

  At least—exceptionally strong for Tier 3.

  No matter what methods or relics they employed, it was fate itself that bent to her hand. Even armed with holy artifacts, they found themselves overmatched, unable to restrain her.

  The battle lasted only moments. A few breaths. Victory decided, minimal destruction left behind.

  “?!!”

  Fabian stood on Downing Street, staring wide-eyed at the massive trench carved across the earth. Spinning around, his gaze locked instantly on Mei.

  He rushed over, breathless.

  “I was gone for only a bit, and when I came back it looked like this! What happened? Did the United Kingdom of Westland unleash some secret weapon?”

  Mei answered with a question of her own:

  “What kind of weapon do you imagine could cause this?”

  Fabian fell silent.

  The trench stretched at least a hundred meters in length, more than ten meters wide at its broadest, its depth no less than five.

  No weapon known to humanity could produce such devastation.

  He hesitated, then gave Mei a suspicious look.

  “Why do I always feel like you’re trying—intentionally or not—to make me acknowledge things that are… beyond ordinary?”

  This wasn’t the first time.

  She had spoken of vampires and immortals before. And now, indirectly, she was nudging him again: this destruction was not born of any weapon.

  Fabian’s sharp instincts told him as much. He realized it at once.

  “You’re overthinking it.”

  Mei shook her head. She hadn’t meant to guide him toward the truth. The problem was Fabian himself. The boy was unusual. He rejected the extraordinary so stubbornly, he refused to admit its existence.

  “Right!”

  Suddenly recalling something, Fabian abruptly changed the subject. Clutching a thick bundle of documents, he hurried home and scattered them across the floor in excitement.

  “I’ve made a discovery. A huge discovery. A discovery so massive it could overturn the history of human civilization!”

  “Oh?”

  Mei allowed a faint smile.

  “And what discovery is that?”

  “Look here—here, and here!”

  Fabian spread the documents across the floor, flipping rapidly between them for Mei to see. Each was a written record from a different era of history.

  At first glance, nothing seemed wrong.

  “But!”

  His voice rose, trembling with excitement as he jabbed his finger at specific lines. “Historical records themselves look fine, but you know how every writer has their own quirks, their own grammar and habits, right?”

  He leaned forward, words rushing out.

  “Two people can describe the same thing in completely different ways. Some use long clauses, some break things into short paragraphs. Some scatter modal particles at the end of sentences. Some hammer their point with rhetorical questions. It’s natural—everyone writes differently.”

  But when those habits didn’t change—across centuries—that was the problem.

  Fabian shoved one record atop another. “Look at these sentences. Supposedly written decades apart, even centuries apart… and yet the style is identical. It’s like they came from the same hand.”

  “And it’s not just here. Not just these few books.”

  He opened volume after volume, page after page, his fingers trembling with the thrill of discovery. With painstaking care, he pointed out dozens—hundreds—of recurring stylistic tics.

  “The same habits. The same fingerprints. Repeated again and again across the centuries!”

  “This isn’t coincidence. It means someone has been tampering with these records. Editing them. Fabricating them!”

  He straightened, breathless.

  “If it happened once or twice, even a dozen times, maybe you could wave it off. But over hundreds of years? Across completely different documents? Again and again the same quirks?!”

  His eyes gleamed, fever-bright.

  “It could even be the same person forging history across all that time!”

  It had to be said—this kid Fabian was remarkable.

  The claim alone was earth-shattering. To reveal it would mean either being branded a lunatic… or rewriting human civilization itself.

  Mei inclined her head slightly.

  “It is, indeed, a significant discovery.”

  The Hermitage Society hadn’t done a flawless job. They’d been meticulous about altering historical content, yet careless with the small things—their grammatical habits slipped through unchanged.

  Not that ordinary people would ever notice. But for Fabian, of course, it was obvious.

  “I suspect there’s a person—or a whole circle of them—fabricating history on a constant basis,” he declared with conviction. “What we call ‘history’ might not be the truth at all.”

  Mei’s eyes flicked toward him. “So, do you plan to publish your grand discovery?”

  He barked a laugh. “Do I look like such a bore? Let the ignorant stay ignorant.”

  With a casual toss, Fabian scattered the books aside and stretched across the sofa. “I’m just showing you my brilliance. No one else could have uncovered this.”

  Fabian was arrogance embodied—conceited, self-righteous, contemptuous of nearly everyone. Once he believed something, no argument could touch him. And now he was convinced: he had pierced a great secret hidden in the shadows of the world. Human civilization’s history wasn’t merely flawed—it had been engineered.

  The reasons behind it? Still unknown. Which only stoked his fascination further.

  But Fabian wasn’t chasing conspiracy. He basked in the thrill of discovery itself—content that his insight let him, alone, measure up against powers vast enough to forge the memory of the entire world.

  For his own satisfaction, he prowled bookstores day and night, borrowing old texts, combing them for similarities. He defaced so many borrowed volumes with his notes that he ended up buying them outright, sinking his already thin wallet deeper into poverty.

  Not that he feared starvation.

  When rent ran short, Fabian simply found himself a wealthy young lady. With silver tongue and practiced charm, he won her over with ease. Now, he lived off her, unashamed and even proud.

  “The gifts heaven gave me ought to be put to use,” he liked to say. “Otherwise, what a waste. Besides—those rich young ladies can’t resist me.”

  He lounged with books spread across the table, reading feverishly while carrying on idle chatter with Mei.

  “Seriously—” he ruffled his bird’s-nest hair, eyeing her with mock seriousness. “If you were a man, with your style, taste, and temperament, you’d be lethal. That solitude, that erudition, that faint aloof melancholy… young women would fall like dominoes. Completely irresistible!”

  Mei sat unbothered, sipping her tea, a newspaper open in her lap. She let his chatter wash over her, offering no reply until he abruptly shifted topics.

  “Actually, you and I are the same kind of person.”

  Mei raised an eyebrow. “In what way?”

  “Outcasts.”

  Fabian scratched his wild hair, nodding firmly. “We’re different. Even if we blend into the crowd, we stand out like cranes among chickens. Makes things awkward. That’s why I’ve never had friends—I don’t waste my time with fools. Look at you. You’ve got no friends either.”

  “You’re wrong about one thing,” Mei said evenly.

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  He leaned forward, genuinely intrigued.

  Flipping to the next page of her paper, Mei replied in a calm, almost bored tone: “I have plenty of friends. I just don’t feel the need to prove it to you.”

  “Really?!”

  Fabian gawked, as if she’d revealed a new continent. “You—with actual friends?!”

  To him, Mei was pure distance incarnate: untouchable, detached, indifferent to the world.

  He, meanwhile, looked at others and saw only idiots—primitive grunters, barely worthy of acknowledgement.

  Mei was sharper than him, flawless in every way. If God existed, Fabian thought, then Mei must have been created specifically to torment him.

  “You can actually stomach such foolishness?” he muttered, incredulous.

  "Like right now."

  "…"

  Mei’s single remark left Fabian speechless. He shot her a furious glare but then snapped his mouth shut, retreating into silence.

  Fabian wasn’t entirely wrong.

  At least,

  Mei didn’t dismiss everyone as fools. Even the weak, weren’t worthless in her eyes.

  She could stand at the summit, or vanish into seclusion. Her original reason for seeking strength had never changed: first to survive, then to live freely—moving through the world as she pleased.

  If, on the strength of power alone, she viewed the world eternally from on high, her humanity would eventually decay. In that state, her so-called freedom would mean nothing.

  She would become nothing but a puppet of power, an empty shell. And an empty shell doesn’t care about freedom.

  Brisk footsteps sounded at the door.

  "Fabian, I’ve come for you!"

  A wealthy young woman, elegantly dressed, pushed inside, her face glowing with joy and anticipation. At the sight of Mei, she quickly composed herself.

  "My apologies, miss."

  "It’s fine."

  Mei kept on with her newspaper. Fabian, seemingly oblivious to the young woman’s delight, remained buried in his books.

  The girl glanced between them.

  The atmosphere sank into a momentary stillness.

  Only after a long pause did Fabian finally look up and, in his usual flat tone, say, "There’s tea over there. Help yourself."

  "Okay."

  Anyone assuming Fabian would sacrifice his dignity to curry favor with wealthy ladies would be dead wrong. This arrogant, self-absorbed man would never stoop so low.

  He could draw them in purely through his wit and charm.

  And he excelled at the role of a kept man.

  Gloria’s eyes shone as she fixed on Fabian. Admiration radiated from her; to her, a man absorbed in his work radiated endless allure.

  She asked curiously, "Fabian, what are you doing? Editing history?"

  The clever young woman had chosen the perfect entry point. At once, Fabian broke his silence.

  He declared proudly: "I’ve made a major discovery."

  "A major discovery?"

  Gloria’s eyes widened: "Can you tell me?"

  "Of course."

  One high IQ.

  One high EQ.

  Hard to say who was playing whom—but together they were a perfect match. Mei, half-amused, turned the page of her newspaper, where a headline caught her eye:

  【National Announcement! Lieutenant Colonel Weber has achieved brilliant military success in the Sudrieu defensive counterattack, securing vital gains for our forces. He is specially promoted to Brigadier General!】

  General ranks were the highest in the military. Even as a Brigadier, the Nova Federation had few generals overall—proof of a limitless future.

  There were no global wars in this age, but local clashes were constant: naval battles at sea, border skirmishes on land.

  Day after day, without end.

  The Age of Exploration was, in plain terms, an era of blatant plunder. Great powers, relying on their might, expanded overseas, colonizing, seizing wealth, enslaving peoples.

  Small nations could only scrape by.

  With luck, a gamble might bring sudden prosperity. Without it, they would be crushed under the heel of giants.

  Goliath City thrived in peace, a utopian capital of the Nova Federation. But outside its borders, the brutal law of the jungle reigned.

  Sudrieu had tried to expand its territory—only to be crushed mercilessly by the Nova Federation.