Chapter 853: Chapter 852: The Augustus Clan’s Little Secret

For hundreds of years, the Eternal Sleepers lurking beneath the Old Capital Typhon had been trying to learn and analyze the secrets of the gods from an ancient device. For a long time, they believed that device, which possessed a powerful restraining force, was a prison cage used to confine a fragment of a god. They never imagined that thing was actually a container and altar built specifically for a god—it bore the Eye of the God.

This was without doubt an immense irony and also... sheer terror.

The only stroke of luck the Eternal Sleepers had was that the primeval containment facility had malfunctioned, and the "Eye of the God" within was truly sealed off. It was temporarily unable to return to the Divine Realm and could only be locked on the "throne" originally prepared for it, like an actual prisoner. Only because of this did it not trigger, back then, a god‑disaster on par with the "Supreme Narrator incident."

The Eternal Sleepers were left with only two options: either completely destroy the Eye of the God within the containment field, or find some safe way to permanently separate the Eye from the Divine Realm, ensuring that even if the containment device failed one day, that eye would never be able to "tell" the gods what it had seen.

Gawain frowned, looking at the starlight polymer floating opposite him. "The Orlandeau Great Collapse was triggered when you tried to destroy or seal the Eye of the God?"

"It was one of the causes, but not entirely our doing," Bishop Megal III’s tone suddenly turned somewhat strange, as if tinged with a sigh at the fickleness of fate. "In the end, we decided to destroy the Eye of the God and drew up a plan for it—over the course of our centuries‑long research, we had gained a certain understanding of that ancient containment device and were able to exert greater control and adjustment over it. We discovered that by shutting down its internal ring stabilization structure at just the right moment, a powerful energy shock could be generated within the containment field. And if we also adjusted the charging level of the outer ring to maximum, that shock wave could even completely annihilate the divine power at the center of the energy field...

"After thorough discussion and calculation, we prepared to implement this plan—and to do that, we needed some time to charge the outer ring of the containment device.

"The accident occurred during this stage—you still remember, don’t you, that the entire ancient ruin was located beneath the Old Capital of the Typhon Empire, under Orlandeau.

"Just as we were beginning to adjust the containment device, the Augustus Clan suddenly decided to renovate the city’s drainage system—looking back now, all of this appears far too coincidental, yet at the time no one noticed anything amiss. Urban drainage in that era was very underdeveloped, as you know; Typhon two hundred years ago was no different from Old Anzu. The so‑called city drains were nothing more than an underground dark river passing right beneath Orlandeau, into which people dumped all their sewage. Aside from that dark river and a limited number of channels, most districts had no sewers at all. It was in these circumstances that the Typhon Royal Family of the time suddenly wanted to build an artificial sewer outside the main urban district, so they began digging down...

"They dug very deep, but at first did not reach the ’dome layer’ of the underground ruins. Yet strange things still began to happen: the workers in charge of digging started having hallucinations underground, and as more and more soil and rock were hauled out, the excavators’ mental state deteriorated further. At first, the aristocrats paid no heed to the condition of those common laborers; instead, they suspected them of shirking and forced them to work even longer hours underground. But soon, these hallucinations began to extend to the Supervisors and even the Knights stationed near the excavation site...

"And while anomalies were appearing on the surface, we were focusing most of our attention underground. It wasn’t until more and more excavators lost control, until the Typhon Royal Family even began sending Elemental Mages to tear up the ground and try to melt through the bedrock, that we suddenly realized something:

"At some unknown point, the containment device had already weakened. That ’Eye of the God’ possessed its own consciousness. Without arousing our suspicions, it had been quietly extending its power, and over years of infiltration and pollution, it had already affected the residents of Orlandeau—even the royal family that ruled Orlandeau."

Standing to the side, Amber couldn’t help swallowing. "A‑and... and then?"

"The situation started to spiral out of control—some royal family members, as well as a large number of workers, Supervisors, and aristocrats sent to excavate the tunnel had been contaminated. They began madly digging downward. Mages loyal to the royal family also joined in. Under the assault of powerful Magic, the various protections we had erected failed to work. They soon dug a huge hole in the center of Orlandeau and found the dome of the underground ruins. Immediately afterward, the dome was breached, and the royal Knights and Mages swarmed inside.

"The entire city of Orlandeau was shrouded in a strange, fearful, and tense atmosphere. The commoners had no idea what was happening, petty aristocrats and merchants were terrified by this frenzied excavation, rumors of all kinds spread, and some high aristocrats claimed that treasure had been discovered underground, which only intensified the chaos in the city...

"The Eternal Sleepers were powerless to stop any of this, and more importantly... the Eye of the God had begun to show signs of becoming active.

"It knew what we intended to do and it resisted. The members of the Eternal Sleepers are all powerful mental‑type Mages and had already developed firm resistance toward the gods. Under the suppression of the containment device, it was unable to do anything to us directly, so it turned the defenseless people on the surface into its tools. While the royal Knights were entering the underground ruins and destroying energy stations everywhere, the Eye of the God also began to assault the magnetic cage of the containment device, whereas the energy we had prepared to annihilate the Eye was not yet ready. If we rashly initiated the setup, there was a high chance the Eye would escape the force field and return to the Divine Realm...

"My only choice at the time was to stop those out‑of‑control, deranged excavators, and to stop the Typhon Royal Family from continually sending more Knights to the front.

"I and several Archbishops risked using other passages to reach the surface and infiltrated the castle of the Augustus Clan, and to our astonishment—we found that half the aristocrats in the castle, as well as a considerable number of royal family members, were still struggling to resist the Eye’s erosion. Even the emperor himself... was barely maintaining his sanity.

"More than half of the excavators and Knights pouring into the underground ruins had not been dispatched by them. No one knew who had given those people the order to keep digging and to invade the ruins. Another small portion of the people had been sent by the barely rational emperor in an attempt to stop and investigate what was happening, but the moment they entered the ruins, they went mad as well and lost contact with the castle. Receiving no reports back and with its own judgment impaired, the castle kept sending more investigation parties, and so more and more people flooded into the ruins.

"Fortunately, after we established a powerful psychic barrier, we managed to free the emperor and some of his ministers from the Eye’s erosion—and with the Royal Guard Corps surrounding us, I revealed the truth about the underground to the Typhon Emperor of that time.

"Of course, I did not tell the emperor that behind the ’Eye of the God’ stood a ’true God’ in the eyes of the masses, because the way normal people view gods is clearly very different from how we view them. I told him it was a mad Evil God, and that our research and the surface excavation together had awakened It.

"We—the people underground and the people above—had together poked a hole in the sky, but by then there was no time to argue about responsibility. After rapidly assessing the situation in the underground ruins, the emperor decided to evacuate the entire city, withdraw everyone who had not yet been contaminated, and create a no‑man’s land around the city, while we would, in that window of time, activate the annihilation plan below and completely destroy the Eye of the God."

Gawain nodded slightly. "Evacuate the civilians, create a mental isolation zone to keep the psychic pollution from spreading, destroy the center of contamination... The line of thinking was correct. And then?"

Megal III fell silent for a moment, a hint of a sigh in his voice. "Driven on by the pioneering knights and the aristocratic Soldiers, the evacuation was completed very quickly. I and several Archbishops then returned to the underground ruins and sealed off all the inner passages, blocking those frenzied knights and diggers who had already entered. That successfully bought us some time. At the agreed‑upon moment, the energy was finally sufficient, and we successfully triggered an energy shock in the restraint device. The Eye of the God was reduced to dust under the tremendous impact—we started cheering, right up until Earth’s Wrath and the Annihilation Seed came crashing down on our dome one after another."

Amber blinked and spread her hands. "...Exactly what I had in mind."

"But it never occurred to us at the time," Megal III said in a self‑mocking tone, "that we were a group of... researchers, perhaps extreme researchers. We were a dark sect, fallen priests, obsessive, cold‑blooded, having chosen a horrifying path—but stripped of all that, our identity was still that of researchers—and that includes myself.

"A researcher’s mind is not very good at guessing how Earth’s Wrath and the Annihilation Seed that fall on his own head are going to play out."

"The Typhon Emperor two hundred years ago made a cold‑blooded decision, but would you like to hear my view on it?" Gawain spoke slowly, his gaze resting upon that mass of starlight polymer.

"...Understandable, is it?"

"Understandable." Gawain nodded slightly. "If you had failed to destroy the Eye of the God, then the Orlandeau Region would have become the epicenter of the catastrophe. Destroying the entire region might not have been enough to prevent the descent of the ’Evil God’, but at least it could have bought more time for everyone else to evacuate. If you had succeeded in destroying the Eye of the God, the Typhon Emperor of that time still would not have allowed you to go on living—you were a Dark Cult, and you had been flourishing for centuries right under the nose of the imperial capital and the royal family. In a sense, you even had the ability to trigger upheaval across the entire Empire. No ruler can tolerate that.

"So regardless of the outcome, you all had to die in Orlandeau."

"I figured that out afterwards," Megal III said with a soft chuckle. "Many of us figured that out afterwards."

"But you had no way to seek revenge against an Empire—especially after suffering such heavy losses," Gawain said unhurriedly. "More importantly, as time went on, new generations of believers kept joining, and the Eternal Sleepers would inevitably forget everything that had happened in Orlandeau. The Augustus Clan would also believe that, with the entire city having collapsed, it was impossible for any survivors to remain. Given the technical conditions of the time and the chaos after relocating the imperial capital, they should have had no ability to thoroughly investigate what lay deep beneath the ground—this horrifying incident, which might stain the royal family’s name, would be buried. Everyone would forget it, and even if anyone remembered, the matter would never be acknowledged."

"And on the other hand, later facts also proved that the Typhon Emperor’s judgment back then was actually quite accurate—only two hundred years passed before you bunch of ’researchers’ unfettered by law or morality managed to produce a second ’divine calamity’ on the very same spot. This time, the divine calamity was even a god you yourselves created.

"If I hadn’t shown up, how great a disaster would the Supreme Narrator have caused?

"I am convinced that the scale of that catastrophe would certainly have warranted the Typhon Royal Family sending their Mage Corps to smash the entire Orlandeau Region once more with the Annihilation Seed—and to obliterate every last one of you along with it."

The star‑lit body of Megal III contracted, his tone full of helplessness. "...Supremely ironic, and impossible to refute."

"So if you sum it all up, it comes down to a single word—" Gawain sighed lightly. "Deserved." 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Megal: "..."

"Let’s stop talking about this topic," Gawain shook his head, drawing a line under that part. "We now have evidence that your attempt to destroy the Eye of the God back then does not seem to have been completely successful—the lingering mental contamination of the gods remained. The curse on the Augustus Clan is the proof."

"We suspect that at the final instant before its destruction, the Eye of the God escaped. But having been grievously damaged, it no longer had the power to return to the gods, and instead parasitized itself within the bloodline of the Augustus Clan," Megal III replied. "For two hundred years, that curse has continued—neither strengthening nor weakening. Some Archbishops whose lifespans had been extended and who had lived through the events of that year even believed it to be the price the Augustus Clan paid for their ’betrayal’... Of course, after the ’Supreme Narrator’ incident, those Archbishops’ outlook should undergo some changes; the blow was simply too great."

Gawain now understood why the Archbishop circle of the Eternal Sleepers had chosen to follow the Cecil Clan with such determination—his identity as a ’Wanderer from Outer Realm’ was only one of the reasons. The remaining factors were clearly tied to that disaster in Orlandeau two hundred years ago.

Aside from that, what concerned him most at this moment was the curse of the Augustus Clan.

"Do you think the ’Eye of the God’, after entering the bloodline of the Augustus Clan, still has any possibility of recovering and escaping?" He frowned, his expression grave as he asked in a low voice.

"The likelihood is very low," Megal III answered. "We have always been monitoring the curse of the Augustus Clan. That curse has clearly turned into a pure phenomenon, similar to the sequelae of mental contamination. Moreover, as the bloodline is diluted and transformed generation after generation, the ’divine portion’ within the curse can only grow weaker and weaker. After all, the soul grade of a mortal is far lower than that of the gods. When divine power parasitizes a mortal’s soul over the long term, it is destined to constantly decline. Of course, what decays is only the ’divine’ aspect within the curse. The overall intensity of the curse itself... over these two hundred years, it does not appear to have diminished in the slightest."

"Is that so..." Gawain rubbed his chin, speaking as if to himself. "Will anything related to gods really vanish so easily..."