Chapter 1208: The Mad Lord
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The other things they needed to show Raven 12345 were the four scrolls.
Hao Ren also remembered the series of visions that happened by reading the scroll in the forest, so he took them out carefully. Although they seemed less dangerous than the ‘cosmic fragment’, they were just as strange. He put the scroll in front of Raven 12345 and told her what happened in the forest. “… In the end, it caused a brief change in the sky, which, if I’m not mistaken, was the distortion of the real world that you felt before.”
Raven 12345 looked at the scrolls with interest. She tapped her finger on one of them and said, “Just some common materials. It’s just plain magic parchment and laurel handle soaked in the potion. It was made by the Olympians, no doubt, and it wasn’t the kind of ‘extraordinary material’ like the god-slaying sword and cosmic fragment.”
“But it’s strong enough to distort reality…” said Hao Ren.
He had no idea how powerful the Olympians were. But judging from the way Hesperides fought and some information of the demon hunters, they could see that this ancient family was just a relic of some magical civilization. Their technical level was maintained at the planetary level, and their understanding of the forces of nature was still very simple and crude. With such a civilization, it is hard to believe that they had the technology to shake the rules of reality.
But before he could finish, he suddenly realized where the power of the scroll came from: from what was written on it.
“Got it?” Raven 12345 looked at Hao Ren with a smile. “Do you know more about these out-of-control superpowers now?”
Hao Ren took a deep breath and asked, “The ancient kings and the Mad Lord recorded on it are the chaos of the absolute beginning we discussed just now? And the one who came to this world refers to the goddess of creation, right?”
Vivian was a little surprised. She had been intensely curious about those mysterious sentences when she heard Hao Ren recite the words on the scroll, but then something happened that kept her from thinking about it. And now the question seemed to be getting interesting.
As a blood creature created by the goddess of creation herself, she was now instinctively interested in all the secrets of the goddess of creation.
“Very likely.” Raven 12345 confirmed Hao Ren’s guess. “The scrolls themselves are not special. What is special is what is written on them. These records have touched on some of the deepest secrets of the universe, and supernatural forces have infiltrated the messages contained in these words, so reading them is strong enough to release the power.”
Hao Ren was stunned. “It’s just some words… And they can be so powerful?”
“Yes.” Raven 12345 blinked. “For some special being, power can reside in everything, and this is not the patent of a true god. The only difference between true and false gods is an information disturbance called ‘symbolic power’, which enables us to better control the rules of the world. However, under this circumstance, false gods can also show the similar power of gods within the rules of the universe. ‘The Mad Lord’ is so close to a god that its name and deeds have considerable power. These scrolls… I don’t know how the Olympians got their knowledge of these taboos, but they recorded them and brought the power of the Mad Lord into the universe.”
Raven 12345 smiled a little as she said, “But unfortunately for this creature, I have a seat in the universe, and it can do anything it likes, which only makes it easier for us to understand its nature and weaknesses.”
Vivian looked at the scroll strangely and said, “Wouldn’t it be terrible if such dangerous forces could be brought out so easily? If someone else copies this scroll in large quantities or talk about it all over the place… I can’t imagine.”
“There is no need to worry because this kind of ‘power leakage’ cannot be duplicated. It is not the scroll, nor the words on it that carry the power, but the ‘truth’ behind it,” Raven shook her head and explained. “It’s hard to explain. In a word, only when the person who really knows the truth, who knows the cause and effect and record his knowledge with his own hands, the Mad Lord will have a chance to spread his power to the outside. And for a person who knows nothing, it would not do any harm even if the person copied the scroll a thousand times.”
Hao Ren touched his chin thoughtfully and said, “Oh, I see. In other words, only the person who knew the Mad Lord in the first place could make this scroll, and the second person who learned this knowledge from the scroll could not copy it?”
Raven 12345 nodded slightly and then explained, “This is why there are many heretical churches that preach distorted doctrines all day long because they want to make the ‘gods’ they worship known to more people. Only when more and more people understand the distorted and taboo knowledge can the power of evil gods have a chance to spread. There is a general rule in this regard: the more you know about an evil god, the more you will become its power carrier. When you know about it to a certain extent, you are qualified to be the next ‘missionary’. You can obtain taboo power by writing the name of the evil god and recording the deeds of the evil god. But in turn, you will be gradually eroded and eventually consumed by the taboo power.”
Hao Ren then muttered, “Is it possible that the Olympians have secretly turned to the ‘Mad Lord’? Well, it doesn’t seem right. According to the records on the scrolls, they clearly see the Mad Lord as a risk factor.”
“If I’m right, the Olympians are believers of the goddess of creation, or at least in opposition to the Mad Lord,” said Raven 12345. “They don’t want to spread the power of the Mad Lord, they want to record some truth. According to the first paragraph of the scroll, they see the Mad Lord as a disaster and the god that follows as the savior of order. It is quite a dangerous behavior for mortal people to study the world of gods. Although they are very careful and even use a variety of complex text encryption to prevent the power of the Mad Lord from leaking out, their contact with the forbidden knowledge is essentially a kind of ‘learning’ that, the more they fight against it, the more they become its carrier… I think that even without the Twilight of the Gods caused by the demon hunters, sooner or later, these Olympians will one day be devoured by the nightmares in their memories.”
Hao Ren frowned and looked at the scroll floating in front of him. “So it used a variety of words and grammar not to prevent anyone from deciphering it, but to prevent the power of the Mad Lord from leaking out of the scroll… But where on earth did they learn these secrets? Even the guardians of the goddess of creation do not know the Mad Lord, how do these Olympians know?”
“I don’t know,” Raven 12345 said and shrugged. “To be honest, I’ve always thought something was wrong with the guardians of the goddess of creation. They were supposed to be the closest ones to the goddess, but now it seems that the goddess of creation kept a lot of things from her children. She did not tell these guardians anything before they were born.”
Not only Raven 12345 feel puzzled, but Hao Ren and Vivian have also long suspected it. In any case, the guardians should be the most trustworthy ones to the goddess of creation. The goddess should not be afraid of her children, let alone, from the information at hand, that the goddess of creation placed great trust in her guardians. If so, why did she not tell them the truth?
Was it only because of the reason that Raven 12345 had speculated: that the goddess of creation did not dare to let the name of the Mad Lord come out of her own mouth, so as to prevent the ancient evil from taking the opportunity to escape?
“There may be answers to these questions in the scrolls,” Raven 12345 said. She snapped her fingers, the four scrolls were then enveloped in a ray of light and then descended slowly to the low table in front of Hao Ren. “Take it back and study it. And also the cosmic fragment. I’ll leave both of them to you.”
Although it was not the first time that she had given Hao Ren all the work, he was still curious. “Give it all to me? Wouldn’t you like to keep it for further investigation?”
Raven smiled and said something that seemed to mean something else. “All I have to do is watching you.”
Hao Ren looked like there was something running in his mind, but in the end, he did not say anything.
After these things were handed over to Hao Ren, he mentioned another thing, “In fact… I came into contact with a very strange vision after Hagrids’ death.”
“A very strange vision?”
“Well, it seems like a cosmic starry sky,” Hao Ren said, nodding his head slightly and describing the hazy and twisted starry sky he saw to her. “… and, for no apparent reason, I was being pushed out of it again. It seemed to be a static place. I didn’t see any clues.”
“By the look on your face, I think you should have guessed something about this place,” Raven 12345 said. She looked into Hao Ren’s eyes and asked, “What do you think?”
Hao Ren did not answer. He raised his hand and showed her the ‘cosmic fragment’ in his hand.
The cosmic fragment lay quietly in the palm of his hand, and the brilliant stars twinkled against the dark background.
“You suspect you saw the inside of this thing?” asked Raven 12345.
“Not only did I see it, but I suspected I had been there once.”