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Chapter 619: The Final Plan

Roel couldn’t be more familiar with the name ‘Astrid’.

Astrid was the first member of the Ardes he stumbled upon back when he first noticed the peculiarity of the Ascart House and followed the trail of the Kingmaker Clan and the Twilight Sages Assembly. She had protected him and Lilian in the Witness State, and he was thankful to her for that.

Astrid, as the Twilight Sages Assembly’s ‘Academic’, was in charge of the team dealing with the Savior. For hundreds of years, she had lain undercover in Saint Freya Academy, maintaining the Chaos Dream to ensure that the Savior remained in deep sleep.

She practically gave away everything for this mission, not daring to even visit the Ascart House despite being concerned about them. Despite her selfless sacrifice, she was rewarded with neither fame nor fortune. The only thing that drove her was the Ardes’ noble will and ideals.

Roel respected her greatly, which was why he was as excited as Antonio to learn that she was about to regain consciousness.

Antonio brought Roel to his room. In the middle of his room, a vague human silhouette lay inside a floating sphere of iridescent lights, looking as if it was about to break out from within.

The Chaos Dream was a treasure the Second Epoch’s Twilight Sages Assembly paid a heavy price to obtain. It was made out of otherworldly materials that could only be maintained inside a dream, which was why it was entrusted to Astrid, who possessed the Dreamwalker Bloodline.

“Principal Antonio, this is…”

“Yes, Lord Astrid is about to wake up. The awakening of the Deviant Sovereign had shaken up the Chaos Dream, and your subsequent victory over Banjol created a brief window of downtime. That gave time for Lord Astrid to wake from her slumber.”

“That’s wonderful!” Roel hadn’t expected his actions to have unintentionally helped his ancestor. “How much longer will she be in this state?”

“I’m not sure, but it shouldn’t be long before she fully awakens. In fact, she briefly regained consciousness not too long ago.”

“She did?”

“Yes, that’s the reason I went to look for you.” Antonio’s expression suddenly turned severe at this point. He took his time to carefully select his words before saying, “Lord Astrid’s behavior was unusual during that brief period.”

“Unusual? What do you mean?”

“Lord Astrid wasn’t fully conscious during that window, but she was desperately trying to tell us something.”

“Do you know what she’s trying to say?”

“I couldn’t fully decipher it, but it’s something related to the doomsday prophecy. It seems like the Second Epoch’s Ardes had created a final plan concerning it. Do you have any clues what it might be referring to?” Antonio asked.

Roel gave the matter some thought before shaking his head.

For reasons unbeknownst to him, there was a gap in the Kingmaker Clan’s heritage from the Second Epoch to the Third Epoch. Due to that, the awakeners in the Ascart House could only blindly feel their way forward.

Winstor Ascart was lucky since he had the Twilight Sages Assembly’s aid, but the Twilight Sages Assembly vanished before Ro’s generation. Ro had to search up relevant information and piece together the puzzle by himself.

It was practically an archaeology project by the time it reached Roel’s turn. Thinking about the hardships he had been through evoked a sigh.

Antonio, as the Twilight Sages Assembly’s ‘Guardian’, was aware of the Ascart House’s plight and wasn’t surprised by Roel’s answer. In certain aspects, he might have even more information than the Ascart House.

He gripped his staff tightly as he recalled the Twilight Sages Assembly’s internal documents he had seen before saying, “I remember seeing a portion of the final plan proposed by the Second Epoch’s Ardes. The gist of it involves suppressing the Savior’s and the Mother Goddess’ powers before they fully awaken.”

“I see. That sounds quite normal. What’re the execution details?”

“The original plan was for the Ackermanns, with the support of the Ardes and the Twilight Sages Assembly, to gather the entirety of humankind’s forces and work together with the other races to fight against the supreme beings. As this plan is a partnership between the Ackermanns and the Ardes, it’s dubbed ‘the Twin Eagles Plan’.”

Roel raised his eyebrows. “Twin Eagles? How ironic,” he snorted.

He was suddenly reminded of his encounter in Saint Freya Academy’s Night of the Demons with Ro’s soul fragment, who had told him about Emperor Charles’ letter.

The Austine Empire’s ‘Twinheaded Eagle’ insignia used to be two overlapping eagles back in the Second Epoch, symbolizing the tight bonds between the Ackermanns and the Ardes. Yet, the Ackermanns cast aside their vow and betrayed the Ardes, leaving them vulnerable to the Savior’s worshipers. In the end, the Ancient Austine Empire collapsed.

“What exactly does the Twin Eagles Plan entail?”

“The plan is huge and complicated; I don’t know the full details. The formation of humankind’s united army was a part of the plan too, but it wasn’t the center of it. Nevertheless, that’s the only part we were able to accomplish,” Antonio replied with a bitter smile.

Roel was surprised to learn that there was such a context to the formation of the united army. Before he could snap out of his daze, Antonio went on.

“Actually, we suspected that the Spirit Cataclysm of the Capital, the tragedy that forced humankind to migrate westward, is related to the final plan.”

“What?” Roel exclaimed with a tight frown.

That was the most famous and enigmatic calamity that had happened in humankind’s history.

Thus far, the Spirit Cataclysm of the Capital had been thought to be a mana phenomenon, as it had sent countless transcendents’ Degree of Assimilation spiraling out of control, causing them to mutate and lose their minds. The wretched screams of tortured souls made it impossible to sleep at night.

In a very short period of time, the Ancient Austine Empire’s prosperous capital turned into an uninhabitable land.

Roel had never considered the possibility that the Ardes were the ones who caused this tragedy, especially since the Kingmaker Clan was desperately fighting for its survival at that juncture, not to mention that it went against their ideology.

Antonio noticed Roel’s confused expression and explained, “You should have noticed how the effects caused by the Spirit Cataclysm of the Capital are similar to the Savior’s influence. There’s something known as the ‘Diffusion Plan’ proposed inside the final plan.”

“Diffusion Plan? You mean diffusing the Savior’s powers?”

“Yes, but the plan has been scrapped. It involves having a large populace fall into depravity within a short period of time to temporarily weaken the Savior, so as to create an advantageous condition for a final showdown. In gist, it’s sacrificing a group of people to save the others…”

Roel’s frown slowly loosened as he grasped the gist of the Diffusion Plan.

While the Diffusion Plan sounded insane, it was a trap created using the laws of the Sia Continent. There was one thing that absolutely couldn’t be circumvented in the Sia Continent—the tradeoff between power and price.

Power always came at a price.

Ordinary transcendents paid for their strength through physical mutation arising from them accepting mana into their body. The Savior’s worshipers suffered from insanity from taking on the Savior’s powers. This law was common sense in the world.

However, very few people stopped to ponder what price the Savior had to pay for expanding His worshipers.

Supposing the Savior’s madness was a result of the Black Moon’s influence, He could be passing down the madness to his worshipers to alleviate its effect on Him, so that He could regain His senses. In compensation, He had to bestow a portion of His powers on His worshipers.

By this logic, the Savior would be temporarily weakened if He rapidly expanded His worshipers within a short period of time. On top of that, His reduced madness meant that His attackers were less vulnerable to being afflicted by His madness. If so, there was hope in defeating Him.

To carry out this plan, humankind would have to tribute many of their own people to become the Savior’s worshipers. This was better than going extinct, but it was hard for anyone with scruples to execute the plan. That was also how Roel felt.

“But the plan was scrapped in the end,” Antonio said, much to Roel’s relief.

“Why?”

“While the plan temporarily reduces the Savior’s strength, it also frees Him from His madness. A clear-minded enemy will be much harder to deal with than a mad one.”

“…Indeed.”

Roel nodded as he thought about the young silhouette he had come into contact with in the Witness State. He did think that there were many similarities between him and the Savior, such as their thorough planning before marching off to war.

The Savior had lured the Mother Goddess into His land of awakening so as to imprison Her and vanquish Her armies while She was trapped. While Roel, as the Kingmaker, abhorred His plan, he had to concede that the Savior was far more strategic than the Mother Goddess.

Allowing the Savior to awaken for even just a brief moment could cause irreversible damage.

It’s better for him to remain a lunatic, Roel thought.

This glimpse into the final plan showed how seriously the Ardes regarded the doomsday prophecy; they would have gone to such an extent to stop the Savior. It was no wonder the Savior’s worshipers frenziedly hunted down the Ardes to drive them extinct.

If one thing was clear, it was that the final plan was useless now.

Both the humongous empire that harnessed the full power of humankind and their greatest ace, the overwhelmingly powerful Ardes, had already fallen from grace. The ones to execute the plan were no longer around, so everything else was just empty talk.

“But why did Astrid mention the final plan, then?” Roel asked.

Antonio shook his head, expressing his confusion.

Roel lowered his head in contemplation, trying to piece together the bits of information he had gathered in recent days. All of a sudden, he had a bad feeling.

“Roel, did you think of something?”

“It’s the opposite. I feel like I am overlooking something…” Roel stroked his jaw as he tried to trace the source of this ominous feeling.

The fact that Astrid had brought up the final plan suggested that it had caused tangible effects on the real world, and she was trying to warn Antonio of this matter. Building on this assumption, what would happen next?

The final plan was humankind’s desperate struggle for survival, and the goal was clear: reducing the Mother Goddess’ and the Savior’s strength as far as possible.

The countermeasure for the Savior was the Diffusion Plan, but it would be nigh impossible to execute it in the current era, since it required mobilizing a huge number of sacrifices. No existing nation was as powerful as the Ancient Austine Empire, able to pull off something as insane as that.

As for the Mother Goddess, the way to weaken Her was to vanquish the Six Calamities and…

“…Alicia.”

“What?”

“Alicia is in danger!” Roel said with widened eyes.

Antonio was momentarily stunned before realization dawned on him.

“No one is in more danger than Alicia if someone were to put the final plan in action. Killing her would result in the Mother Goddess permanently losing a vital part of Her powers. The benefits of that far outweigh vanquishing the Six Calamities!” Roel exclaimed.

Seeing that Roel was about to dash out and do something reckless, Antonio quickly held him down by his shoulders and consoled him, “Calm down, Roel! You might be right, but there’s nothing to be agitated about. There is no one to execute the plan now.”

Roel shook his head and asked, “Is there really no one to execute the plan?”

“This…” Antonio hesitated to answer that question.

Silence lingered between the two of them.

Little did they know that during their conversation, in the deep abyss, a pair of golden eyes suddenly lit up in the dark and gazed upward.