“So, what did you see?”
Even though she had already guessed what Fido and the others had found out, Irene still cooperated and asked, the trace of confusion on her face making it seem as if her curiosity had truly been piqued.
“I saw...” Faced with the question, Fido paused. He looked at Irene, and as their eyes met, he slowly uttered, “...a piece of true history.”
Before Irene could speak, he continued, “This history might be a bit hard for you to believe, Your Grace.”
“In fact, when I first saw those images, I couldn't believe any of it was real either.”
As he spoke, Fido looked down. “To make matters worse, after transmitting this information, this magical supercomputer suffered some kind of intrusion and fell into eternal silence. We couldn't ask it about the source or authenticity of those images.”
Then, the storage ring on his finger flashed slightly, and he put the damaged magical supercomputer back inside.
“However, by analyzing those images, we were reminded of the legends passed down through the tribes for generations.”
Fido's tone suddenly grew deep. “And the stone tablets that were passed down alongside those legends.”
With those words, Fido raised a hand. The storage ring on his finger shimmered, and one ancient stone tablet after another flew out from the space gem set in the ring. Assisted by magic, they floated in the air like pieces of an automated jigsaw puzzle, seeking their respective positions and slowly piecing themselves together.
Clack!
As the final tablet filled a gap near the corner, a massive rock painting that nearly reached the ceiling appeared before everyone.
There were numerous gaps in it.
It looked like a mural carved onto a cave wall by primitive humans.
Yet, it was even more minimalist than primitive murals, its only color being a deep black that had seeped into the stone.
It was the last lingering echo of dried blood, having lost its bright red coat after being ravaged by thousands of years of time.
“These are the tablets we gathered from all the surviving tribes in the God-Forsaken Land.” Fido glanced at the rock painting and tapped it with his finger, producing a dull thudding sound. “After we pieced them together for the first time, we realized that the scene they depict is exactly what I saw under the influence of the magical supercomputer.”
“Because of the gravity of the matter, Gar and I sealed these tablets away. No third person knows about this.”
He then looked at Irene, a complex expression in his eyes. “This is the... truth I wished to present to you.”
Irene's eyes had been locked onto the tablets from the moment they began to assemble. Without needing any explanation, simply gazing at this “historical record” painted in blood made her feel as if she had traveled back tens of thousands of years through time.
At this moment, Irene felt as if she had returned to her dreams once more.
She saw the great upheaval of the world.
She saw the invasion from another world.
She saw the despair of humanity.
And she saw the birth of the half-beastkin and beastkin.
Hundreds of thousands of years of hymns, epics, war, and iron blood were condensed within this rock painting.
From the decline of humanity to the slaughter of the gods.
Although there were many gaps due to missing tablets, it did not detract from the overall picture.
Irene's gaze swept rapidly across the rock painting.
Her gaze suddenly stopped when she reached the last few tablets, which formed a series of scenes.
In those scenes, she saw the expeditionary force that had completed the Great Crusade returning triumphantly in their starships to the Material Plane.
Yet, welcoming them were twelve entities sitting high upon thrones.
Combined with the earlier descriptions in the painting, these had to refer to...
deities!
Irene frowned.
She continued to look down.
In the painting, the expeditionary force launched a fearless god-slaying war against those twelve deities.
But they failed.
Most of them were killed.
The few survivors were banished to the ruins.
As punishment, the deities brought down yellow sands, hailstorms, and even a scorching sun upon them.
The expeditionary force still wanted to resist, but they found more and more of their comrades gradually losing their memories and their sense of self.
To prevent forgetting all of this, they used blood as paint and whatever was around them as brushes to carve everything they knew onto the tablets.
With this, the entire truth was laid bare before her eyes.
After viewing the entire rock painting, Irene fell into a long silence.
It was as if she were digesting this massive amount of information.
After a long while, she suddenly murmured in a low voice, “So... that's how it is?”
Then, Irene's gaze suddenly snapped to Fido. In a tone completely devoid of emotion, she asked, “Why are you letting me know this?”
Her eyes gradually turned cold.
“Don't you know that, according to the descriptions here, as a black dragon, I am also an 'invader' from another world?”
In other words...
“I am the... enemy that you beastkin, half-beastkin, and even humans should unite against.”
“Aren't you afraid that I will slaughter you all to keep this a secret?”
Silence—
At that moment, the air in the entire conference room seemed to grow incredibly heavy.
The previously harmonious atmosphere was replaced by tense anxiety.
Until a sudden voice broke the tension.
“If you wish to take my life, Your Grace, I will not have a single complaint.”
Fido stared back at Irene's vertical pupils, which hid none of their killing intent. The expression on his face did not change in the slightest as he spoke in a steady voice:
“If not for your arrival, our Iron Tooth Tribe would have likely vanished in this desert long ago.”
“Let alone achieving what we have today.”
“It was your arrival that saved me, and saved the tens of thousands of lives on this land that should have perished.”
“Now, because of you, we, who were cursed by the gods, wear clothes that cover our bodies and eat full meals that we never dared to dream of before.”
“The tribes no longer need to slaughter one another just to fight over meager resources to survive a little longer.”
“Before your arrival, such a life was something we couldn't have imagined in our entire lives.”
“It was something completely out of our reach.”
The more Fido spoke, the more emotional he became.
“Your Grace!”
He suddenly clenched his fist and struck his chest heavily.
With a face full of fanaticism, he roared, “It was you who redeemed me from that abyss where no light or hope could be seen! Even if your will is for me to face death, I will do so without hesitation!”
“Me too!”
Gar stood up abruptly, copying Fido by slamming his mechanical arm heavily against his chest.
Clatter.
The chair toppled to the floor.
Arthas, who had been silent the entire time, also stood up.
Unlike Fido and Gar, after standing up, he reached behind his back.
He gripped Frostmourne, which had been charred pitch-black from Irene using it as a staff to cast spells.
The two patches of soul fire beneath his helmet locked dead onto Gar and Fido.
It was as if the moment Irene gave the order, he would draw the chainsword on his back without hesitation and execute these two colleagues he had spent over fifty years with on the spot.
Even though...
...he had once been a human as well.
Rate on N.U.
