Chapter 553 - 549 – THE HYPOCRISY OF THE ANCIENT GODS AND THE LUMINA CRYSTAL BOOKS

The gigantic dome at the underground command center of the ruins was now filled with a low, stable hum. The Astral Star Furnace, which had previously nearly exploded in destructive red nuclear-fusion rage, had returned to calm as a peaceful supernova-blue energy sphere. That was entirely thanks to the absolute authority Sylvia had forced upon the time and reaction process of the reactor.

"Your Majesty," Stacia’s voice came slightly trembling through the magical communication channel in Sylvia’s ear, carrying a mixture of mental exhaustion and explosive enthusiasm. "The spatial anchoring process to transfer the entire structure of this Star Furnace will take approximately twenty minutes. We must align the coordinates of this pocket-dimension space with the hull of the main Dreadnought so that the stellar energy inside does not leak during teleportation. Please wait a moment."

"Do it carefully, Stacia. I do not want my flagship full of holes because you miscalculated a decimal," Sylvia replied in a casual tone, releasing her magical grip on the reactor after ensuring its internal systems were truly stable.

While waiting, Sylvia shifted her gaze from the gigantic reactor and began walking around the chamber. The Elite Zombie Knights stood motionless in a circular formation, forming an absolute defensive barricade, while Celes busily inspected every corner of the room to make certain no more guardian machines were hiding in the shadows.

In a corner of the chamber that radiated a dim golden glow, Sylvia’s heterochromatic eyes caught the presence of a circular altar. Upon the pure white-gold altar table, neatly arranged, was a pile of materials highly unnatural for a machine civilization: books.

Yet these objects were not made of paper, animal-skin parchment, or easily decaying papyrus. The ancient books were formed from sheets of extremely flexible thin crystal, bound with interwoven threads of pure energy. Their surfaces radiated thousands of glowing symbols that continuously moved like flowing water.

Sylvia stepped closer, her evening gown sweeping elegantly across the obsidian floor. She took one of the thickest crystal books and began flipping through its pages.

Truthfully, the Queen of Death was not the type of mad academic reader like Stacia, who could lock herself in a library for months just to solve a single line of magical formula. Sylvia far preferred direct action, profitable negotiations, and conquering her enemies on the battlefield. She often relied on her subordinates for theoretical matters.

However, the fact that she was lazy about reading did not mean she was incapable. Sylvia’s brain had evolved far beyond the limits of any mortal race. If she chose to exert even a fraction of her mental capacity, her processing speed was in no way inferior, perhaps even far superior to Stacia’s biological calculations. She simply found it... too troublesome.

But this time, her curiosity was slightly piqued.

Sylvia’s eyes moved at a speed impossible for ordinary human vision to follow. In a single blink, she absorbed thousands of lines of text, translated the encrypted primordial language within the crystal, and mapped its historical patterns directly into her memory. Merely by glancing and flipping fifty pages in one second, Sylvia had already drawn the red thread and determined the absolute core of every text written in that pile of archives.

"How interesting..." Sylvia murmured slowly, her lips curving into a thin, cynical smile.

The core of these Lumina civilization remnant books was not merely research journals, but an epic chronicle of rise and fall filled with divine blood. The texts recounted that the Lumina Race had once reached an extremely high peak of civilization, surpassing the boundaries of evolutionary logic. They possessed all manner of insanely advanced technologies: intergalactic explorer ships, gravity-altering weapons, even the ability to harvest energy from dying stars.

But there was one fatal problem. The era in which this Lumina civilization stood still belonged to the Age of the First-Generation Gods.

The ancient gods who ruled at that time were extremely arrogant and hungry for worship. They demanded absolute submission from all mortal beings. When they saw the Lumina civilization that was too advanced a civilization that used machines to part the seas instead of praying for miracles these gods felt both threatened and humiliated. To those primordial entities, a created race that no longer needed gods was a cancer that had to be uprooted from the roots of the universe.

Thus an apocalyptic-scale war erupted. The gods decided to destroy the Lumina Race and return the world to a dark age in which humanity knew only how to worship.

Yet the records within the crystal books showed that the war was by no means a one-sided slaughter. The Lumina Race refused to kneel. They raised their extraordinarily destructive scientific weapons toward the heavens and shot down the pillars of paradise.

The war was so brutal and terrifying that several ultimate weapons created by the Lumina humans truly succeeded in piercing divine defenses and killing several of the highest gods on the enemy side. They tore the divinity of the gods apart using antimatter cannons and dimension-cutting swords.

Sylvia narrowed her eyes as she read the names of the fallen gods in the text. These entities were completely unknown to her. Their existence was far older, far more ancient, and far more primitive than the Greek pantheon such as Zeus, or the Nordic gods such as Odin. Even their history stretched far beyond the era of Mesopotamian gods like Anu or Tiamat. They were the earliest parasites that had inhabited the youth of the Earth.

"A civilization capable of killing ancient gods with science..." Sylvia closed the crystal book, allowing the blue light from its pages to fade. "But history is always written by the victors. In the end, the Lumina Race was destroyed and sealed in this discarded dimension, while those gods erased every trace of this war from the memory of the universe."

Sylvia lightly tapped the crystal cover of the book with her slender index finger. Her thoughts drifted. If those extremely powerful ancient gods had succeeded in winning the war, why was there not a single cult, religion, or record of them on modern Earth? Where had those almighty existences that even predated the Mesopotamian era gone?

Of course, Sylvia did not know the answer. But she knew very well who the entity was that surely held every dirty secret of this planet since the first day of its creation.

While still holding the book, Sylvia simply stood silent in place. Not even ten seconds later, the air to Sylvia’s right began to distort, radiating the scent of wet earth after rain and a very soothing emerald-green glow.

Particles of life gathered, forming the graceful silhouette of a woman whose hair was made of interwoven glowing roots. The World Avatar had appeared once more, standing right beside Sylvia with her arms folded across her chest.

"Hmm," the World Avatar murmured softly, glancing toward the pile of crystal books on the altar table. Her eyes, which radiated the wisdom of billions of years, looked slightly nostalgic. "The records of that civilization... I had buried them quite deeply at the bottom of this pocket dimension. But it seems the Ley Line Compass I gave you truly cannot lie. That tool guided you straight to the most hidden center of history."

Sylvia slowly turned her head, gazing at the World Avatar’s face. The Queen of Death said absolutely nothing. She merely remained silent. Yet the sharp, demanding stare of her heterochromatic eyes was as keen as an executioner’s blade. Sylvia’s silence was not confusion, but an invisible pressure, a forced invitation for the planetary entity to explain everything without needing to be asked.

The Earth Avatar, who had mastered the will of millions of living beings, immediately understood the meaning of Sylvia’s silent gaze. The woman who was the embodiment of the planet sighed softly, then gave a small laugh that sounded like the rustling of autumn leaves.

"You truly dislike wasting words on things whose answers you already know, don’t you, Sylvia?" The World Avatar slowly shook her head, surrendering to the Queen’s psychological game. "Very well. Since you have already read half the truth, I will tell you the rest."

The World Avatar took a step closer to the altar and touched one of the crystal books.

"You are curious about where the ancient gods who destroyed this Lumina Race went?" the World Avatar asked, her tone turning colder, filled with the absolute authority of a planet judging the pests upon its body. "The answer is simple. Those first-generation gods were expelled by me from the Earth."

Sylvia raised one eyebrow, slightly surprised yet still maintaining an elegant expression. "You expelled them? It was not other primordial gods who killed them in a struggle for territory?"

"I did it directly," the World Avatar smiled cynically. "After they destroyed this beautiful Lumina civilization, those ancient gods grew even more swollen-headed. They believed that because they had won, they were the absolute rulers of the universe. Their arrogance reached the point where they tried to subjugate and devour the will of this planet itself. They tried to control me."

The World Avatar slowly clenched her fist. As she did so, the obsidian floor beneath their feet trembled slightly, responding to the residual anger of the past.

"So I awoke from my long sleep," the Earth Avatar continued, her voice echoing with power. "I cut off the flow of pure mana from the Earth’s core that had been the source of their immortality. I overturned the acid oceans, erupted thousands of primordial volcanoes simultaneously, and used the law of absolute gravity to crush their golden temples. I delivered a planetary death sentence upon them all without mercy."

Sylvia listened intently. A satisfied smile began to form on her lips. Hearing stories of god-slaughter was always a particular entertainment for the Queen of Death. "And then? Did they fight back and die with the honor they so often preached?"

At that question, the World Avatar’s laughter exploded. It was not an elegant laugh, but a mocking laugh filled with absolute contempt.

"Honor? Don’t make me laugh, Sylvia!" The World Avatar covered her mouth, trying to suppress the amusement in her belly. "That is the part that makes them look so hypocritical and pathetic! When they faced my true wrath, when they were confronted with absolute death from my judgment... those great gods who for centuries had cursed technology and looked down upon machine civilizations suddenly lost all their dignity."

The World Avatar pointed toward the faded holographic projections on the chamber ceiling.

"Instead of fighting to the death to defend their divinity, those cowardly gods dismantled the seals of the remaining Lumina military facilities that had not been completely destroyed. Do you know what they did? Those ’holy’ entities fled this solar system by stealing and boarding gigantic space ships, space vessels created by the humans of the very civilization they had just slaughtered!"

Hearing the conclusion of that story, Sylvia fell silent for a full two seconds. She tried to process the level of irony and hypocrisy so thick within that history. Gods who hated science ultimately saved their own lives using the very science they had cursed.

And then Sylvia could no longer hold it in.

A melodious, elegant laugh filled with dark, lethal mockery spilled from Sylvia’s lips. The sound of her laughter echoed throughout the underground dome, causing Celes and the Zombie Knights to slightly lower their heads in respect.

"Heavens..." Sylvia wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of her eye. "That... is truly the most ironic joke I have ever heard in my entire life. Gods fleeing by using mortal machines. If only the later generations of gods knew about this secret of their ancestors, the entire system of faith in this world would collapse overnight out of sheer shame."

"Truly amusing, indeed," the World Avatar nodded in agreement, her eyes shining with satisfaction. "From that moment on, they became galactic vagrants, sailing across the void inside the steel hulls created by the race they considered inferior, never daring to set foot upon my soil again. So, if in the future explorations of your fleet you happen to cross paths with those hypocritical gods in the sea of stars..."

"You need not worry, Miss Earth," Sylvia cut in, her killer smile once more adorning her beautiful face. "I will gladly take over your unfinished execution duty. I will tear those cowardly gods from their stolen steel thrones and turn their divine bodies into fertilizer for the bonsai trees in my office."

The World Avatar smiled gently, her body beginning to dissolve back into emerald-green light particles. "I knew you would say that, Sylvia. Enjoy your new toy gift. Until we meet again."

In a single cool breeze, the Earth Avatar vanished completely, returning to merge with the planet’s energy network, leaving Sylvia alone before the archive altar.

At that very second, Stacia’s voice rang out loudly once more, shattering the silence.

"Your Majesty! Spatial calibration calculations are complete! Anchoring accuracy is at one hundred percent! The Astral Star Furnace is locked. Beginning the forced extraction process in three... two... one!"

SWUUUUSSSSHHH!!! BOOOOM!!!

A silver pillar of light whose width equaled the diameter of the entire chamber suddenly descended from the illusory ceiling, piercing the solid obsidian stone layers without damaging their physical structure. The teleportation light struck the Astral Star Furnace reactor, wrapping the gigantic energy sphere in extremely thick mana nets.

In the blink of an eye, accompanied by the sound of air rushing to fill the vacuum, the gigantic metal structure and the pulsing blue star within it vanished from the chamber.

The underground dome that had previously been brilliantly illuminated suddenly plunged into gloomy darkness, lit only by the glowing red eyes of the Elite Zombie Knight ranks and the holy aura of Celes’s sword.

Sylvia swept her hand across the altar, storing the pile of Lumina civilization crystal books into her spatial storage ring. These objects would become perfect bedtime reading for Stacia, or perhaps design references for Nocture’s weapons department.

The Queen of Death turned her elegant back and stepped once more toward the dark corridor leading to the surface.

"Let us return to the ship, Celes," Sylvia ordered, her voice returning to coldness and filled with absolute leadership. "The core energy has been secured. It is time we leave this floating graveyard and continue our hunt in the next anomaly zone. This new world still hides a great many jokes and treasures waiting to be harvested."

"As you will, Your Majesty the Queen!" Celes shouted with full spirit, leading the thousands of living-corpse troops marching behind Sylvia, leaving the ancient city that was now truly dead forever, advancing toward a new page of history that would be written with the black ink of Nocture’s death.