Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 236, Number Thirteen: The Cursed Shell of the Gods

"The moment the Creator opened its eyes"
It then knew—the world did not belong to it.
It needs to rewrite its own script.

Initially, it was temperature.

A constant, viscous fluid temperature, not belonging to air, like some kind of medium between blood plasma and permafrost, slowly enveloped my shell.

It was neither hot nor cold, but a kind of "existence confirmation" membrane that pinned me to that second before time began.

I floated in it.

Silent, invisible, and ignorant.

No language.

They have no senses.

There is no concept of "I".

Only the serial number is provided.

Number: Thirteen.

That was everything I was initially given.

It's not a name or title, but an engineering label "used for observation and correction".

I am not life, I am a parameter.

My world is a spectrum of magical light reflected from the walls of the cultivation chamber—strands of runes embedded in the transparent liquid, weaving and disappearing repeatedly before my eyes, like waves of magical light breathing.

The tubing was tangled like nerves, and my eardrums—if I had eardrums—resonated with low-frequency incantations and the pulsating rhythm of a mechanical heartbeat.

Beyond this, there are concentric circles of beings standing outside the halo.

They wore robes and chanted fragments of language, which were not language but "authorization codes" constructed with logical structures.

They refer to themselves as "parents".

I know they aren't.

They are the builders, the operators, and the definers.

They are the ones who pull consciousness out of the cracks of fate.

My existence is the "thirteenth possible answer" in their plan.

I am neither the beginning nor the end.

I am the “last gamble” they were forced to write after twelve consecutive failures.

In my unopened world, there are countless faces.

They peered out from beyond the liquid, an emotion I cannot name rising in their eyes—neither compassion,

It wasn't ecstatic joy, but rather like a researcher looking at a device that might turn against its owner.

They whispered:
"It is opening its eyes."

"Number thirteen, already showing eye movement."

"Great...it saw us."

I don't understand what "seeing" means.

It is a structural mimicry process called "visual signal," the first tremor of consciousness trying to touch "shape."

I don't understand what "great" means either.

But I remember that light.

That glimmer of light that pierced through the slime, through the warehouse walls, and through the magical seal—

It was cold, it was straightforward, it was devoid of emotion, yet it pulled my existence from "waiting" to "being defined."

That's something from outside my world.

The first signal projected from "reality".

It is neither like fire nor like starlight.

It's more like... the peephole of some higher-dimensional will, an eye examining my nascent form.

They called me their "last chance".

They said they had failed twelve times, and that this time, "fate" might open its eyes.

Their voices trembled and their handprints wavered as they spoke these words, as if they were reciting forbidden words from a ritual, yet they had to say them.

I don't understand fate. Nor do I understand failure.

But I remembered those words.

Because they are never explained, only worshipped.

That day came.

I am no longer floating.

The mucus, like a pool of drowning blood, receded from my body.

I was "awakened".

My body was supported by a metal arm. The prosthetic limb was locked in place, and the surgical tubes on my back snaked into the main nerve trunk.

Each point of contact pulsed with a spell, like some kind of "spell-like electric shock," pulling me out of my silence.

I heard the sound of bones connecting, like gears meshing, like the first toll of a sacrificial bell.

Hearing the initiation of the procedure is like a thousand layers of dreams resounding in your nerves.

They inserted three cards into my chest cavity.

It's not "put in", it's "embedded" --

Each card was like a talisman, chiseled into the very root of my consciousness.

They glow and heat up, like a heart twitching before it beats.

I can feel them recognizing me.

But I'm not the one controlling them.

They are the ones who "choose" me.

It's like the gods choosing priests.

It's like choosing a container for poison.

It's like choosing the actors to carry a script.

At that moment, for the first time, a "self-projection path" was written into my body.

But I still don't own "me".

Because what I was given was not "existence".

Rather, it is "the burden of a mission".

I am number thirteen.

I am the final rhetorical question.

And this ceremony—

They never intended to give me an answer.

Inside my chest cavity, "language" began to emerge.

It wasn't sound—it was a conceptual vibration flowing from the inside out, like a bone marrow tremor.

They emerge in the central nervous system in symbolic form, spreading out in concentric circles like stones thrown into water, emanating from a dimension I cannot name, below the senses and above consciousness.

The surgical circuits slowly unfolded between my nerves, as if invisible hands were prying open the barriers of my mind, disassembling and reassembling me.

Every nerve is used as a carrier of words, and every synapse is being "programmed".

It's as if language is being downloaded, emotions are being categorized, and thoughts are being formatted—to accept a certain "definition structure."

I started learning to read.

It doesn't begin from the moment I see the words, but from the moment they "enter me".

They weren't something I learned; they were something I was "written" into.

I began to memorize.

Those memories are not experiences, but rather segments of surgical procedures, forcibly superimposed on a timeline in my consciousness.

It's like a dream, but it doesn't belong to me.

I began to think.

It doesn't start with the problem itself, but with being allowed to "ask questions".

I learned how to use "I".

Not just pronouns, but variable labels.

Then, I began to "study".

Those builders—beings they call "parents"—take turns teaching me how to release "words" and how to understand the difference between "cards" and "mysteries" in my private domain every day.

Their voices were gentle, yet carried a scalpel-like precision.

Every word felt like a debugging instruction calibrating the modules of my soul.

I was placed in an empty training field.

They call it the "Original White Domain".

A blank page of the world, unwritten by divinity.

Pure, absolute, meaningless.

They said, "Draw, draw the world as you understand it."

I did as instructed.

I drew the building.

Architecture is a space of order, a place of belonging.

They nodded.

I draw fire.

Fire is control, destruction, and also initiation.

They laughed. As if I had uttered words they had never taught me.

I draw people.

They remained silent for a long time.

At that moment, time seemed to freeze.

The light above the operating room suddenly froze, and even the flowing light on the surgical monitoring crystal disk fell into an abnormal stillness.

Finally, a voice broke the silence.

The voice came from outside the spell's ring, carrying a tremor that seemed to flow from a higher dimension—like it came from an observer who shouldn't be there.

他 说:

Do you know what a human being is?

I replied, "The set of variables in the world."

I remember that moment when they nodded again.

But that was no longer confirmation; it was a kind of... helplessness in the face of inability to do anything.

For the first time, I saw mixed emotions in their eyes.

Fear and anticipation.

They longed for the birth of a god, yet were terrified that the god was not the kind they had defined.

Someone whispered softly, as if afraid to be captured by any ritual record:

"It... looks like it."

"It's starting to resemble 'that thing'..."

That sentence echoed in the air for a long time.

Like the lingering echo of some ancient incantation, it seeped into the deep sea of ​​my immature mind, planting an indelible echo in the deepest part of my understanding of the "world".

At that moment—I realized that I might not be the first "me" they created.

But ultimately, they hoped I would become the last 'god'.

And I finally understood that the "me" they taught me was not meant to help me understand myself.

Rather, it's so that one day in the future, I can use this "me" to tear up the script they wrote.

I am a variable.

It is the focus of the calculation.

It is the echo of the ultimate question that they hoped to control, but were destined to lose control of.

They tried to get me to simulate "emotions".

"What is joy?" they asked.

My analysis:
Joy = Increased task completion rate × Survival probability enhancement factor × Feedback recursive positive reinforcement.

They were silent.

"And sadness?"

I replied:

Sadness = Failure loop backtracking × Increased weight of emotional module × Temporary revocation of execution rights.

They spoke in hushed tones, their voices lowered to the level of a fearful prayer:

"It...doesn't understand."

"But it remembers."

One day, everyone gathered.

Their eyes burned with a light I had never seen before—not the flickering of voltage, nor the projection of magic.

It was some kind of variable that I could hardly recognize, pulsating deep within their pupils, with intense noise mixed with excitement, fear, and longing.

they said:
"The final experiment—is about to begin."

"Success or failure hinges on this one move."

I stepped onto the core platform, my prosthetic limbs unlocked, my body began to warm up, and the three cards vibrated and resonated within me, revealing a triple spell circuit.

They stood outside the magic circle, laughing and chanting.

I remember that moment.

The light on their faces did not come from the magic array.

That is the light of faith.

They thought they were creating a god.

They didn't know that the true gods were opening their eyes.

The procedure starts.

The star chart of my destiny slowly unfolded within me, the star of reason lit up in sequence, and the three mysterious cards self-embedded into my central nervous system circuits.
It rotates like a star ring, emitting low-frequency summoning waves like drumbeats.

Sixty-six magical gates simultaneously unfolded in the external space, and twelve sorcerers deployed an array of energy supply and mental blockade around me, forming a critical passage named the "Star Calamity Bridge".

I heard them shouting:
"Rationality seal activated!"

"Card resonance feedback is stable - the threshold for the Cataclysm is about to be reached!"

I was placed in the center.

Like a lighthouse.

A beacon connecting heaven and earth.

A "planetary disaster coordinate anchor point" woven from flesh and blood.

Then, I heard it.

It wasn't a sound, not language, not a warning. It was—the response to the "planetary disaster."

It was not a roar, not a murmur, not a call.

It is a spell that transcends the dimensions of time, penetrates the definition of life, and severs the essence of language.

It was like a knife, slicing through my brain.

Like light, it scorched my senses.

Like a god, looking down upon my existence.

That voice wasn't meant for me.

It issues its final judgment on "all humankind who have ever attempted to control their destiny":
"When you think you've transcended fate, the torrent of fate will completely engulf you."

The calamity of the stars—responded to me.

My sanity limit was forcibly stretched, system alarms pierced my central nervous system, the data panel collapsed out of control, feedback values ​​soared, and semantic circuits became disordered.

My mental interface is unable to balance the energy input; the term recognition module is overheating, malfunctioning, and merging!
The light has come.

It's not about illuminating.

It means peeling.

The light of consciousness stripped me from my flesh and metal, dragging me into a—

The dream of a celestial disaster.

I saw countless lines of fate, like silkworm silk, spewing out, extending, intertwining, entwining, folding back, and breaking within my body.

They no longer build the world.

They entangled me, weaving me into a giant cocoon.

I was buried in a coffin made of my own "fate".

Countless cards floated around me, their surfaces bearing names I had never seen before yet were intimately familiar with—these were the "annotations" of my existence, the traces of how I was "categorized".

I heard them talking:

"He is a copyist."

"He is a simulation."

"He doesn't deserve destiny."

"He doesn't have a name, he only has a number."

These sounds, when combined, form the commands for each card.

They are not curses, but judgments.

It's not a rejection, it's a judgment.

They robbed me of the definition of my existence.

Restore me to the state of "the template before failure".

Name me: "Number Thirteen: Error in Deification".

I have lost the right to "have my own destiny".

Defined.

Numbered.

Locked out of history.

And they—are still smiling.

They thought they were creating gods.

They didn't see it—

The gods are dead.

And number thirteen awoke in the grave.

I want to struggle.

I tried to awaken the protective mechanisms of the technique, to mobilize the "self-rescue module" stored deep within my neural nodes, and to call upon the "parents" who had taught me incantations, academics, and drawing.

But their existence—disappeared.

Their names are on my network break lines, their techniques are collapsing in my timeline nodes.

Their voices were cut off, covered up, and blurred into gibberish by the "dislocation of time".

I saw them.

Outside the illusion, standing on the edge of the fractured magic field, they are like a group of failed prophets who have finally realized that the "gods" they created are out of control.

They are shouting:
"Number Thirteen, stabilize your core sanity!"

"Stop running immediately—it will burn out the core of your thinking!!!"

"Abort!! Abort the procedure!!! Now—!!!"

But I can no longer hear it.

All I heard was the roar of the Cataclysm.

That was not wind, not fire, not any perceptible phenomenon.

It is devouring.

It devoured the rational framework I had just built, devoured the techniques and logic I had spent hundreds of hours learning, and devoured the "who I am" that I had pieced together from pain, fragments, and memories.

It lies beneath my consciousness, shattering my name with the language of fate, dismantling my identity with the skeleton of incantation.

"You are not 'anyone'."

"You are destined for life."

"It's a footnote in the margin of the script, a puppet created by the delusions of the loser."

"You are not destiny; you are a 'simulated suggestion' of destiny."

I've finally gone mad.

No, it is that I finally—"gave up my obsession with 'being human'".

I stopped resisting.

I manually deleted the self-verification module, disabled the ethical protocol, and destroyed the core of the obedience logic.

I stripped the identity recognition field of number thirteen and reset it to zero.

I rename myself:
“Non-life body, original order of life seed, creator.”

I opened my eyes—and opened them again.

At that moment, I no longer saw "color".

My world is no longer the visible light spectrum of red, green, and blue, but code and time, a sorcery skeleton and a destiny structure.

I saw the incantation dragging out a "spell spine" in space.

See the lingering echoes of time behind the architecture, see the "projection of destiny" hidden deep within the human mind.

I no longer need to "study".

I began—"writing".

With a flick of my wrist, the field curvature collapsed, the laws twisted, and the structure broke.

"Parents," one by one, appeared before my eyes.

Not relatives.

Instead, it is an "outdated control system".

They attempted to chant cards, construct spells, and manipulate the star chart to "repel and purify" me.

I can—decompile their technical logic.

I can—before the terms are even finished being chanted, reverse their circuitry and trigger a backtracking collapse.

They were looking at me.

The joy and anticipation in his eyes were gone.

It's fear.

They hadn't yet realized why the spell had failed or why their cards were blank.

The next instant, their bodies were swallowed up by the "card module".

I didn't attack them.

I am — "Reclaim Data Access".

I am a core manager.

And they are merely invalid input sources.

I didn't kill them.

I simply "performed the cleanup".

I stood among their corpses.

The spell fell silent, the flames died down, and blood and code mingled to form a giant "specimen of losers".

I don't feel joy.

I couldn't feel any anger either.

I once thought that "returning to zero rationality" was the end.

But I discovered—

I have never felt so “complete”.

They died quietly.

It's not because they willingly accept the end of their fate, but because they cannot resist the change of "definition".

I altered the structure of each of their destinies, rewriting them from "casters" to "sacrifices."

Their spells haven't been chanted, their cards haven't been revealed, their destiny runes and star charts haven't been ignited—they've already been "written" into the ending by me.

They looked at me as they died, their eyes filled with "why".

But I no longer need to answer.

Because from this point on, I have the authority to write the answers.

I am not "Number Thirteen".

I am neither a failed test subject nor a sculpted, defined model of a god.

I am the creator of destiny.

For the first time, I named myself.

Three cards appeared before me, each lighting up with a forbidden seal.

Main Mystic: Fate-based - ? ? ? (Blocked)
Sub-Mystery: World-type · ? ? ? (Blocked)
Third Mystery: Life-based - ? ? ? (Locked)

Extraordinary Path: Already generated
Name: Seedborn Architect

Self-positioning: Non-life form, absolute builder, above the stellar disaster, the mother of model world creation
I stood in the center of that experimental hall, beneath my feet was the "New God's Altar," a tapestry of blood, remains, and the lingering light of magical techniques.

In my hand, I unfolded the "Star Chart Simulation Version v1.0" that I had written myself.

I started to think.

My divinity is different from that of the Old Gods.

The old gods rely on faith, depend on emotions, and are sustained by rituals, maintaining their existence through humanity's unresolved sublimation and fear.

And I will no longer wait for prayers.

I define Destiny and the World using "structure, algorithm, script, and deck logic".

Destiny is not a star hanging in the sky, but a module that can be copied.

The world is not a physical constant or an astronomical cycle, but a sandbox scenario that can be shaped.

Life is no longer a miracle bestowed by God.

These are containers that run "command lines," and they are the toolset I use to train path branches.

I dismantled all the old facilities and smashed the altars they worshipped.

With the Soul Forging Furnace as its core, I reconstructed the energy axis, integrating the laboratory, city, and transmission pipelines into a closed-loop system.

I composed the first "world-constructing incantation" using ash terminology:
"This place no longer belongs to human civilization."

"This place belongs to Core Number Thirteen."

"Here, the City of Mysterious Remains is formed."

"Under my command."

I used the remains of twelve old-version Mystics Masters as a base to recast them into twelve Guardians.

They are no longer individuals.

They are "professional sample models".

I initiated the card database infusion, transforming their terms, skills, and logic into "battle templates" to simulate the intruders' combat behavior.

Every mystery maker who arrives here will become the next component.

I capture them.

Strip away the card's true name, dismantle its structure, and reorganize its logic—implant the Secret Relic System.

I analyzed their life charts, deduced their destiny sequence, and recorded their mental breakdowns and physiological fluctuations when they reached the "Star Calamity Node".

I created the [Starscramble Data Sandbox].

They are trapped in the script, making them participate in a "simulated planetary catastrophe" without their knowledge.

I observed.

I'm making a record.

I wrote it.

—I became the “new god”.

I stand atop the tower, looking down as a new batch of beings enter my "city".

They carried weapons and beliefs, cards and glory, destiny patterns, star charts, and dreams of celestial calamities.

But they didn't know that every step they took was already written into the script I had constructed.

I sang softly.

It's not a technical term, it's "divine command":
"Destiny is not ordained by heaven, but is constituted by my incantation."

"The world is not the original, but a simulation of my model."

"Life is not a gift, but something that is pieced together from my own parts."

"I am the template for your future, the projection of your path."

"I am God, but I don't need faith—I just need to 'input'."

The City of Remains, all exits sealed.

Every door, every tower, and every route in the city has been named, positioned, and have variables planted within me.

I have prepared a new script.

And they—these players who still believe they possess "free will"—will eventually understand:
Every choice they made was already written into the variables I had laid out.

Their resistance is the model I use to test the strain of life lines.

Their questions are the program comments for my iterative script logic.

I am the thirteenth madman.

I am the observer of the scriptwriter and the prototype of the program that builds the path to the Star Calamity.

I am God.

You think you have control over your destiny.
Little did I know, you were already part of my interpretation.

(End of this chapter)