Pillars of Ita

“Sel Gios.” “Commander, you’re back.” “Brother, Father is waiting for you.”

Father? Many, many years later, you once again tread the road you came from. Marigolds, like molten gold, sway on both sides of the road, and there is still that tall, black elm tree in the shade, beneath which stands the girl you have not seen for so long.

Selgios looked at his sister, then looked up as if from another world, gazing at the house hidden behind the garden. Vines, still clinging to the dark, heavy walls, stretched out before the house withered. The summer sea breeze, just as he remembered, gently caressed the ancient port.

“Yes, Father has just returned with good news,” Netali said excitedly, taking his hand. “There’s celebration at the port; the spreading curse has begun to dissipate.”

"The parliament has given him the treatment of a hero, and starting tomorrow, our family can regain its former glory. But none of that matters. What matters is that with the Fountain of Youth, no one will die from this plague again."

The girl's eyes sparkled as she chattered away.

He rarely saw his sister so healthy and energetic. Selgios paused for a moment before finally reacting, as if he finally understood what had happened. He smiled slightly, a deep weariness washing over him.

He released his sister's hand, looked at her, and said, "Netali, you go first. I'm a little tired. Let me rest for a bit."

"Tired?" Netali looked at him thoughtfully, her eyes showing concern. "By the way, you haven't really rested these past few days," she seemed to realize something, "Brother, would you like to rest here for a while? Do you want me to keep you company?"

Selgios shook his head. He was really tired. He watched his sister walk out of the yard, looking back every few steps. He looked at the familiar faces in his memory—those he once hated, those he was close to, those who were loyal, and those who were silent.

Faces surrounded her, as if they were truly surrounding the daughter of a great hero. The atmosphere among the crowd was warm and welcoming, just as he had imagined in his memory, if his father had not left, if all the accidents had not happened, if that terrible curse had not befallen the Gios family.

Then perhaps it really will happen. The bells of the bay will never cease to toll, history will one day be back on track, the stench of evil blood will no longer flow across the land, and heroes from the future will save the past.

But he was really sleepy. He leaned back in the armchair under the shade of the tree, as if sitting on his own throne, and all the sounds faded away, and his memories became blurred.

At the edge of that blurry vision, he saw a black-haired boy dressed in an alchemist's robe. The boy claimed to be from the Arlingland family, three hundred years in the future, but he knew that was just a lie.

Because the scourge of dragon blood had not been eradicated in Colin-Ishrian either; he had heard of a dragon calamity that had occurred there as well, but he sensed something different about the other party. That maiden of destiny had promised him that everything would eventually come to an end.

And that moment, which is now, has finally arrived. Lifegard… Maryland… Goddess Elaine, he slowly nodded to her, and Fang Zheng nodded in return.

Then he gently closed his eyelids, and all the memories vanished with the wind, except for the sound of the sea, which continued endlessly.

……

Fang Zheng watched silently as this illusion eventually faded into darkness.

Alessa gently released her hand from his shoulder and looked at him with her golden eyes. He seemed to come back to his senses, his face slightly pale. The all-consuming darkness receded, and they returned to the dilapidated Temple of Tririel.

When Livegard flew out from here, he ripped off the ceiling, leaving only a few broken walls. Sunlight pierced through the clouds and shone directly on the half-destroyed statue of the goddess.

"You didn't have to delve into this dangerous illusion. It's Selgios's last memory. Over the long years, because of that star tracker, his thoughts, along with Livegard's, had long since merged into that chaotic spacetime."

Alessa said coldly, "If he harbors ill intentions towards you, or if my father's spirit still exists, and they want to target you, even I would have a hard time protecting you—so, what exactly do you want to see?"

Fang Zheng remained silent. In fact, he had already seen what he wanted to see at the end of that memory. It was a book, placed next to the great explorer's armchair.

The book's deep blue title page was embroidered with the words "Biography of Perahvin" in gold lettering, but on the title page itself was a design of intertwined silver butterflies and daggers, with a gold coin resting on top.

Fang Heng silently raised his hand, loosened his clenched fist, and in his palm was the gold coin—one side of it was an anchor, and the other side was a profile of a goddess.

He looked up at the Dragon Queen beside him: "Ms. Alessa, do you recognize it?"

“The most precious of the cursed coins that pirates dream of,” Alessa replied calmly. “It also has another name, which I think you recognize: the Coin of Fate. It was minted by Elaine through Roman, and every single one of them has a reason for appearing in this world.”

"Is it related to the final battle between the Orin pantheon and the Dark Saints?"

"Do you think this is a setup by someone?" Alessa asked him.

“Indeed,” she nodded gently, “In fact, from the moment you met the Dragon Witch, your fate was already sealed. Either you would die at her hands, or you would rebel against this fate and come here step by step. It was all calculated.”

"This is not a plan, but a game of chess. However, you are not the only ones involved in this game. Even the gods have placed themselves on it. Or rather, from the moment you accepted the call of the Star Gate, you have already been in this game."

Fang Zheng then raised his head and looked at the other person.

In fact, he had already sensed something since the Battle of the Greys, and the goddess of fate had also been quite frank about it. After the battle with Livegard, he saw even more clearly what was hidden behind the scenes.

The dark dragon king was trapped here, and Selgios and his family had a grudge against him. It just so happened that a star tracker, the core of this fortress, fell into the hands of the other party, helping him to devise this plan that would last for three hundred years.

The star tracker, under Livegard's machinations, changed hands several times, from the hands of the wanderer Alter to the hands of Catherine's father, and finally returned to their possession.

The Seven Seas Troupe happened to be personally involved in a series of events related to the Dragon Witch.

They had encountered the green dragon Torragtus, traveled to Emory Castle, learned about the origins of the wanderer Maryland, understood the shattered Moa's Holy Sword, and inexplicably obtained two dragon-slaying holy swords.

Even the soul of Lifgard was freed from the underworld of Idus by their own hands.

Even if Lifgard's schemes were behind all of this, what about before his soul was freed? How can that be explained? If it's all just coincidence, there are just too many coincidences.

The cover of the "Biography of Perahven" featured a design he recognized, closely related to the organization 'Star' belonged to and the organization he was searching for called the 'Shadow Society'.

It is closely related to the deaths of his parents.

The mystery behind it all seemed like a vast net, constantly shrouding him. Could it be that everything from his birth to his entry into this world was preordained?

What is the point of this trip? If the outcome is already predetermined, what is the value of one's efforts? If every step he has taken so far has been nothing more than going with the flow, then his so-called courage is destined to be nothing but a joke.

Although Elaine had answered his question when they were atop the World Tree, and he had witnessed countless instances of fate going against the tide, he knew that the future was just one of many choices.

But the strong sense of conspiracy still made him suspicious. Elaine was just one of the Saints of Orin. Were she, Lady Roman, the Goddess of Life, and the Goddess of War deceiving him?

Only Alessa could answer this question. This Dragon Queen was once an enemy of the Saints, and even now, she cannot be considered to have truly integrated into this world.

Moreover, Fang Zheng understood that Alessa was also hiding something from him.

—From the moment you accepted the call of the Star Gate, you have already been part of this game.

He listened silently to those words, then asked, "Ms. Alessa, that's exactly what I want to ask: what exactly is a Stargate?"

“You’ve finally asked the question,” Alessa said casually. “I thought you were going to hold back much longer.”

Fang Zheng looked at her with some surprise, but Alessa said, "Have you heard of the Great Filter?"

Fang Zheng was stunned for a moment, feeling that he had heard this word somewhere before, but he searched through his memory of the corresponding concept of Aetaria but found nothing.

It took him a while to realize that this was a word from his own world, related to the Fermi Paradox—that there is a contradiction between the fact that if the Milky Way is vast and ancient, yet humanity has not observed any signs of extraterrestrial civilizations and the high probability of their existence.

In fact, before the emergence of stargates, people generally accepted several classic hypotheses, such as the zoo hypothesis, the penetration hypothesis, or the dark forest theory, and the most famous of them was the Big Filter hypothesis.

In other words, on any planet, from the birth of life to the formation of civilization and then to interstellar colonization, a long process is required. Each key node in this process is probabilistic and can be called a filter.

Therefore, the Big Filter hypothesis suggests that the formation of an extraterrestrial civilization that we can detect requires navigating a vast number of nodes, and the probability of successfully passing each test is extremely small. Even multiplied by the enormous number of planets in the Milky Way, the number of extraterrestrial civilizations is still likely very small.

However, after the appearance of stargates, people generally believed that stargates were products of higher-dimensional civilizations. Therefore, the discussion on the Fermi Paradox took a new direction, and over time, these related hypotheses were no longer frequently mentioned.

Fang Zheng was surprised that the Dragon Queen Alessa's answer used such a 'novel' word, a concept from his hometown.

But faced with his suspicious gaze, Alessa did not answer directly. Instead, she answered with another question: "How do you view our world?"

Fang Zheng paused slightly again. Regarding Cangcui, the world's second ominous star, it was actually the world of the Shadow People. By now, his understanding of that world far surpassed that of many others, after all, he had personally witnessed the apocalyptic scene in that illusion.

All he knew was that the Shadows had caused the entire world to be swallowed by a deathly shadow because of their abuse of Starlight, forcing them to invade Aetaria time and time again in their desire to seize this world overflowing with Starlight.

But Alessa shook her head before saying, "I'm not talking about verdant greenery, but the world the Shadow People come from."

"What world do these filmmakers come from?"

Fang Zheng looked at the other person in confusion, "Isn't that just lush greenery?"

“No,” Alessa said. “Ed, there are only a few people in this world who can answer your question, and among those few, even fewer are willing to answer.”

She raised her head, her golden eyes gazing at the sea of ​​clouds. "Fortunately, at this moment, I'm willing to talk to you about this topic—"

"We—the world they come from—are not verdant," she said, as if recalling a past event, "but like you, like those elves, the shadows come from a world beyond a stargate." A world beyond a stargate.

This information struck Fang Zheng like a hammer blow, leaving him speechless for a long time.

He even looked at the Dragon Queen with some shock, although he had some guesses about the origins of the Numelin elves and even the Sinhast snake people.

But Alessa's words were still beyond his comprehension.

“Ms. Alessa… wait, you said… them, you mean… the Shadow People, like us, came from the Stargate, they were also Chosen Ones?”

“Shadow People?” Alessa sneered. “Yes, that’s the name you gave them, and that’s what they call themselves now, but originally they weren’t much different from you.”

“Before I became who I am today, I heard a story from a young man like you,” Alessa said. “I heard that in your world there was an era when reptiles ruled the planet, and they developed civilization from that ignorance.”

Fortunately or unfortunately, that civilization did not perish in a catastrophe like its distant relatives on Earth, who were not very similar to it.

Civilization slowly ignited its spark, then flourished, passing through the first great filter in its ignorance, waging war against each other, and venturing into the stars.

Using technologies that were both different from and similar to those on Earth, they began to explore their galaxy and universe, but soon encountered the same problem—

The Fermi Paradox.

Until the stargate appeared.

"But unfortunately, behind that stargate, they weren't as lucky as you. They didn't have pioneers like the Numelin elves, nor did they have the Sinhast serpent people to lay the foundation for history—"

"Therefore, they ran headlong into the first calamity of that world, the first ominous star, and they became the losers. And the original inhabitants of that world, that is, us, became what you call—the Dark Dragons."

“Ed, the Stargate is not what you simply think it is. The war that happened decades or even centuries ago is insignificant. The upcoming Third Calamity Star is the real test.”

"Only those who pass through it can see the real scenery beyond."

Fang Zheng swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. It took him quite a while to process the information in those words.

In fact, the military had already made some guesses about the origin and intentions of the calamity star. Su Changfeng had also told him that the fate of Earth would be closely related to the world beyond this star gate.

Xingmen Port and other countries have already been preparing for this.

but……

Fang Zheng looked at the Dragon Queen in disbelief. "You mean... the Star Gate is actually that giant filter? Why are you only telling me this now, Ms. Alessa?"

“Because I forgot,” Alessa said casually, as if the crisis involving two worlds was nothing to her. “You should know that dragons’ memories are passed down in their blood. The seal made me forget many things, and that’s why I keep trying to find them—”

“You mean,” Fang Zheng asked, “that after absorbing Livegard’s power, you regained this part of your memory?”

“Part of it,” Alessa replied. “I also realized why I was so determined to break free from all of this, Ed. This world was created by the Creator Ita, and is known as the ‘Pillar of the World.’ The Saints are his descendants and the administrators of the world beyond this Stargate. The starlight and the laws of the world all originate from him.”

"Since the Pillar of the World broke, Etalia is just one of the more shining fragments. Besides the gods who have fallen into darkness, the Saints of Orin are also vying for this fragment."

"No one knows their plans. We are the mighty dark dragons in the eyes of mortals, but on this chessboard, we are just pawns. Look, even my father has died here silently."

Alessa said with some emotion.

"...You mean to say that in other worlds, there are also gods like the Saints of Orin," Fang Zheng asked, "and your relationship with the dragon god Bahamut...?"

Actually, he had suspected it a long time ago.

In Aetaria, some of the dragons betrayed the dragon god Bahamut, and were therefore cursed by the dragon god, becoming dark dragons unable to cast spells.

But the Dark Dragon of Eitaria is not the whole Dark Dragon. The real Dark Dragon comes from the Calamity Star Azure, a land controlled by the Dark Saints. What is its relationship with the Orin pantheon?
Alessa's words now cleared up his doubts. It seemed that before the Green World fell, it was once the territory of the Orin gods.

“Yes, in our world, there are also gods who govern light and the sun, and gods of knowledge and destiny, but they don’t use these names,” Alessa replied. “Just as the Sinhas snake people have their own gods, the Orin pantheon has also been broken up and rebuilt.”

"As far as I know, the war that destroyed the world once affected every corner of this world, so the pantheons of various worlds were scattered and disintegrated, and countless others fell into darkness."

The Dragon Queen replied, "The once glorious path to ascension has now collapsed. The Numelin elves are not the successful ones, and the gods are still searching for the path to the 'end'."

"end?"

Fang Zheng recalled the missing Numelin elves and the Sinhas Serpent People civilization, which had also disappeared or even degenerated into what it is today. They had once saved the world, but what happened after that?

If the Stargate is truly, as Alessa claims, a great filter for civilization, then did the Numerin elves and the snake people succeed? Judging from the Dragon Queen's tone, it's hard to say.

The Numerin sprite also appears to have failed.

So where did they go after passing through the stargate?

Alessa began, “The Creator Saint Ita once built this path of ascension, but it collapsed due to a disaster. The Star Gate’s selection of you, along with the Saints’ plans, are all for the purpose of returning to that end.”

"I guess--"

"The so-called 'end' is the real scenery beyond that star gate."

The Dragon Queen looked at Fang Zheng with her golden eyes, "So, you don't need to doubt whether your efforts along the way have been in vain. On this point, Elaine shouldn't need to lie to you."

"Because their chessboard never favors just one person. You are simply choosing your own destiny within that vast net, overcoming all obstacles to arrive here, and just happened to walk into their sight."

"Just as your performance in defeating the Dragon Witch made you the chosen ones in the eyes of Selgios and Livegard, fate can never be arranged; it simply chooses the one who happens to be chosen."

Fang Zheng listened silently, which put his mind at ease. He didn't need to doubt himself or the Seven Seas Brigade's efforts along the way; it was just that what he had witnessed was somewhat unbelievable.

Including the stargate, and everything that has happened along the way.

But he also realized that Alessa's sudden revelation of all this wasn't without reason. Knowing the Dragon Queen as he did, he knew she wouldn't easily waste time on meaningless matters.

Even when she appeared that night, she may have already realized that this was the place where her father, the Dark Dragon Lord Livegard, was sealed.

Suddenly, he seemed to remember something, looked at Alessa again, and asked, "Ms. Alessa, is there something you're still hiding from me about Livegard's soul?"

As Fang Zheng spoke, he pressed his hand against the Golden Flame Ring with a missing corner. Although the ring had absorbed Livegard's power, it did not show any abnormalities.

Alessa glanced at him. "I did omit one small thing: when you pulled my father out of that fragment, the first star was freed."

"From then on, the prophecy came true."

"prophecy?"

"When the first star falls, the year of the falling star will arrive, and when the twelve stars come together, the Holy Grail of the Spirits will be revealed."

Fang Zheng was completely confused, but he did know something about the Holy Grail of the Elves.

Alessa's golden gaze lingered on him, "...But what I didn't tell you is that the location where the second star fell is the origin of the Scar of Asha."

"When the first star was unsealed, the second and third stars also rose. You also witnessed the strange phenomena in the sky when my father was freed."

"And this second star is actually the seal beneath Heimwall."

"Wait a minute," Fang Zheng suddenly realized, looking at her with some surprise, "Ms. Alessa, are you saying that when we extract Livegard's soul, the second star will also be unsealed?"

Alessa nodded.

"So that means..." Fang Zheng suddenly froze.

At that moment, a somewhat tense voice came through his communication crystal, "Ed, we've restored communication with the outside world," it was Luo Hao's voice, "We just received a request for assistance from the military, the Imperials... the Imperials..."

"...The Ausy fleet has launched a surprise attack on Heimwall, and the Empire and the Hill of the Giant Trees have entered into war without a declaration!"

...(End of chapter)