Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 276 The Dawn of the Void God
Not everyone who emerges from the darkness...
They are all still willing to look back at the name of that dark night.

Fate is sometimes light, sometimes fog.
But some people will create their own light even in the fog.

The night was deep and the campsite was quiet.

The wind had long since stopped.

Only starlight sparsely falls among the dusty ruins, unable to illuminate the shadows repeatedly covered by weariness and anxiety.

Hermann sat quietly on the edge of the dilapidated platform, his left hand resting on his knee, his right hand holding a pocket watch that swayed gently, the hands stopped at 4:25 a.m.

That was the last time he "recorded himself".

At this moment, in the Destiny Pocket Watch, which was already one-third open, Herman had separated his "self" from his "player identity" in the City of Remains system.

The Forgotten Man's Table made him forget his mission, name, number, and background.

Leave only one anchor point —

"Guardian of Fate".

He remembered that, and that was all.

But in my heart, I have not been able to completely forget.

He looked down at the silent, god-like barrier sealing off the domain ahead—

[Empty corridor].

It was a solidified chaos, its surface like a frozen deep sea, or a mirror that had never breathed, quiet and solemn, yet filled with an indescribable "oppression of existence".

Hermann's throat moved slightly, and his fingertips brushed against the surface of the pocket watch.

He remembered that incident.

—The Eternal Night Blood Alliance Incident.

At that time, Si Ming was just a novice mystery master who had only mastered the Thousand Faces Card for less than a month.
His words carried a sharp edge, yet his actions still retained a certain youthful naiveté and idealism.

The main character is the blonde-red girl sitting to his side with her knees drawn up, yawning casually.

Celian.

The vampire princess.

The remnant of the Eternal Night Blood Alliance, the inheritor of the true blood of the vampires.

Herman was merely an outsider assisting in the investigation, tasked with keeping abreast of information with the upper echelons of the Wanderers' Club, especially Sebato.

The silent, mirror-like "Faceless Master" contractor.

A true "planetary disaster".

He still remembered that night, the scene of Sebato speaking in the darkness—

That voice, like a monologue from behind the curtain in a theater, doesn't belong to any particular face, yet it resonates deep within the bones:

"Keep a close eye on that man named Si Ming. He will hold the true master card of destiny."

Now, everything has come true.

Si Ming is already a ten-star mystery master, wielding the Mirror of Destiny and the Star Diamond, and challenging the sub-mystery [King of Illusion - Irostia].

Hermann was not jealous of him.

Because he knows too much and sees too far ahead.

Regarding the echoes following the failure of the Destiny Seed Project, regarding Madman Thirteen being merely a fragmented branch of the "Chain of the End," regarding the fact that some will still distorts the boundaries of reality beyond the "Star Calamity"—

That is the unspeakable future.

He chuckled softly, his voice like the gentle trembling of some rusty copper part in the wind:
If it were him, knowing such a future—a future of utter despair, a future where even hope cannot be legitimized—he would probably have stopped long ago and refused to take another step forward.

But the God of Fate—

He walked into the empty corridor.

Enter the King of Delusion's Questions and Answers.

They walked into an abyss they could never have imagined.

Hermann's gaze fell on the gray and white chessboard that formed the area of ​​control.

Unlike any other mysterious realm he had ever seen, this place had no clear starting point for its construction, nor even an "entrance".

It is more like a "conceptual entity"—

A domain entity that transforms, changes, and negates itself in space.

From the outside, it appears as a twisted cylinder composed of gray and white, with fine light patterns and shadows constantly appearing on its surface—like a fogged mirror or flowing star trails.

At first, Herman thought it was residual energy.

But he soon realized that it wasn't energy.

Rather, it is people.

It's a face.

It's the face of the God of Fate.

One by one, scene by scene.

Some are calm, some are crazy, some are silent, some are weathered; some are young and sharp, some are old and tired; some wear masks, some are full of cracks.

They emerge, rotate, peel off, and re-emerge on the inner wall of the field.

An endless loop.

“Personality backlash?” Herman murmured.

"Or... a multifaceted self-origination of fate?"

He had never seen such a structure before.

This is not only a mysterious realm of the World System.

This is a concrete manifestation of a philosophical structure within a conscious field.

It is stripping away the identity of the God of Fate—

The possibility of reconstructing "who he is".

He wasn't fighting.

He is being dismantled.

It was repeatedly arranged, cut, and revised along each line of fate until he was able to utter those three most important answers:
"who am I?"

"What do I want to do?"

"Why should I think this makes sense?"

Herman leaned against the stone pillar, closed his eyes, and kept his hand on his pocket watch.

The pocket watch remained still, and time stood still.

But he knew that deep within that enclosed corridor, someone was fighting for their life.

They are trying to find their truest "self" among the countless fictional answers that fate has given them.

That's not a star upgrade.

It was a battle for existence itself.

Suddenly, the domain trembled slightly.

Hermann jerked his head up, his fingertips instinctively landing on the pocket watch on his chest, but abruptly withdrew them the next second—

He almost forgot that his current memory state was locked, making it impossible to actively invoke the fate analysis.

This is the price set by the [Table of the Forgotten]: to guard an anchor point, one must forget the rest.

The air became strange, as if a wind had suddenly risen, or as if the wind had never existed.

He thought it was the sound of the wind.

But no.

A series of low-frequency murmurs began to appear in his ear, as if someone was talking incessantly behind his ear.

Soft, indistinct, yet repeating the same phrase over and over:

Who are you? What gives you the right to exist? Do you even have the right to weave destinies for others?

There are more and more voices.

It's getting more and more complicated.

It was as if countless blurry figures were slowly crawling out from the very bottom of the realm, pushing doors, knocking on walls, and muttering the incantation, "Who are you?"

Herman closed his eyes, using the last vestiges of his self-awareness to lock in mental protection and shield himself from emotional fluctuations.

He knew this was a resonance feedback—the empty self-structure was beginning to leak out.

This realm is not only a trial for star advancement.

It is itself a "cage" constructed from spiritual dimensions, a process of weaving and deconstructing the "definition of existence".

At this moment, Si Ming is inside, confronting that thing.

Hermann spoke softly, as if talking to the wind, or perhaps conveying a message to the soul of the God of Fate:
"You need to win, not just win against your opponent..."

"It's about winning against yourself."

The wind suddenly stopped.

The clouds have also quieted down.

Herman suddenly opened his eyes, his pupils contracting sharply.

He saw a figure shaking violently deep within the gray-white domain, in the sea of ​​fog, as if the light was being torn apart and the shadow was being peeled off from the mirror.

The field began to tremble—no longer with evenly spreading ripples, but with a surge like a heartbeat.

More accurately, it is a spasm during the gestation of a certain organism.

"...Something is taking shape."

Herman muttered to himself, his brow furrowed.

He had never seen the core of a field release such a strong, suppressed, almost childbirth-like tremor.

He had witnessed the hatching of the Starfall Beast in the face of the Star Calamity, and he had also witnessed the reverse influx of rules when things went out of control and became chaotic.

But this is different.

This is a “dissection” of consciousness.

Fate is dissecting the God of Destiny, like a skeleton, analyzing his essential self structure section by section.

Hermann asked the air in a low voice:
"Irostia... what exactly are you testing him for?"

Before he finished speaking, Celian, who had been sleeping soundly to the side, suddenly opened her eyes!
She sat up abruptly, her face deathly pale, beads of cold sweat forming between her brows, and her breathing rapid.

Her pupils glowed with a familiar yet dangerous blood-red light—like the instinctive echo of a lifeline being severed.

“Selene!” Herman turned around quickly.

"What’s wrong with you?"

Selene did not answer.

She just stared intently into the depths of the empty corridor, her pupils slightly constricted and her lips trembling.

Her whole being seemed to be sensing some indescribable, intense fluctuation.

Her life was bound to the God of Fate.

She was his attendant, maintaining the shared passageway between their souls.

Her violent fluctuations meant that the essence of the Fate Master was experiencing some kind of uncontrollable shock.

Hermann realized something extremely serious:
—The God of Fate is collapsing.

The wind seemed to freeze once more.

The air seemed to be enveloped by a layer of frozen water. In the darkness, the inner walls of the domain showed irregular bumps and cracks, like the heartbeat of a slumbering monster.

Herman looked up at the sky.

It was 5:30 a.m. The dark moon hung high in the sky, its shadows swallowing the last rays of light.

It will be dawn in half an hour.

He looked down at his pocket watch.

The minute hand seems to be dragged along by the world itself, each movement like experiencing a long life.

He suddenly started counting down.

ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

It wasn't because of orders, and it wasn't for combat.

It was more of a subconscious prayer.

A plea for the light that has not yet been shattered.

Wait till dawn.

If it gets light, he is still not dead.

That was the God of Fate; he won.

It was 5:59 a.m.

In sixty seconds, dawn will break.

Herman sat quietly on a cold, hard rock, his pocket watch clutched tightly in his palm.

His gaze remained fixed on the almost deathly quiet "Empty Corridor" before him.

Beside her, Selene sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, her body curled up, her head buried in her arms, her long, golden-red hair falling down, obscuring most of the expression on her face.

She did not speak.

But the subtle tremors throughout her body betrayed the truth—

She is in pain.

Her lips were almost pale, and the faint blood vessels seeping from under her skin looked like cracks overflowing from the star-shaped system.

Herman understood that it wasn't the cold.

That was a sign that the soul resonance system was experiencing a feedback breakdown.

The God of Fate has not yet returned.

He is still deep within the empty corridor, waging an unknown war of atonement with the world-system mystery known as Irostia.

"You bastard," Celian cursed under her breath, her voice hoarse and trembling, like a sob after suppressing some emotion to the extreme.

Her shoulders twitched, and a thin layer of tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.

"You knew I would empathize with you, yet you didn't even bother to say hello."

Herman did not interrupt.

He couldn't say anything either.

Language at this moment can no longer reach the sea of ​​silence they are both enduring.

The wind swirled around the edge of the corridor, as if trapped in some inescapable dilemma, endlessly spinning in circles.

The shadows on the ground were stretched into long, twisted strips by the gray light, like old threads stretched by fate.

The enclosed area—the [Empty Corridor]—still stands silently like an ice-bound pillar amidst the ruins and shadows.

The black mist inside it was no longer ordinary and still.

It was a darkness that continuously devoured "observation," as if someone was tearing away definitions and erasing structures repeatedly, causing everything to lose its boundaries of understanding.

Herman had never seen any Mysterious Card backfire to this extent when challenging its bound party.

He stared at the pocket watch, the ticking of the second hand ringing too clearly in his ears, like an amplified heartbeat.

5:59, 45 seconds—

Forty-six seconds.

He clenched his fists, his breathing becoming slightly rapid.

He was a senior member of the Wanderers' Club and was once given the title "The Forgotten One of Fate" by Lord Sebato.

He participated in three End Plan cleanups, fought against the Star Calamity monsters, and faced countless End Frontiers.

But now, he suddenly became nervous.

I was as nervous as a newcomer who had never experienced the first night of the Black Moon.

He didn't know what he was afraid of—

I just felt that all the silence was wrong.

The world seemed to be "suspended" for a second.

The air seemed to have turned into a lake, and he and Celian were standing on the last remaining piece of ice that had not yet melted. Any slight break could send them plunging into the abyss.

Herman opened his mouth, as if to say something.

But my throat felt like it was blocked by something.

Not a single word was uttered.

Just as the hands of his pocket watch jumped toward the "hour"—

Its daybreak.

It wasn't a sudden burst of golden sunlight from the sunrise.

Instead, it was like some kind of divine light, slowly tearing through the night from the zenith.

Rays of light fell through the gaps in the thick clouds, as if a deity were lifting a corner of a curtain in the fog, making the dawn no longer just a distant sight.

Golden light slanted, piercing through the dark clouds, through the ruins, and even through the cold, monument-like "Corridor of Emptiness" before Herman.

The moment the light fell—

The region was shaken.

The black fog rolled in.

Hermann saw it the instant the first rays of dawn penetrated the area.

He saw a person—

He emerged slowly from the black mist, his steps light and graceful, without a trace of battle damage.

It didn't feel like he had just gone through a binding battle that could devour his personality and destroy his soul; it felt more like he had just returned from a sunny afternoon outing.

Beneath his feet, the shadow of a gray-white chessboard automatically spread out, following his steps.

He constructed paths leading to reality, as if the entire realm was making way for his return.

Behind him was light.

That kind of light that you can't look directly at.

It is neither the light of the realm nor the illumination of sunlight, but a "light of destiny" reflected through the corridor of illusion.
A dazzling halo reflected behind him illuminated his outline, but obscured the details of his facial features.

Herman held his breath.

"...Was it him?"

That was indeed the figure of Si Ming, but it didn't quite resemble Si Ming.

He left so calmly.

It was as if they were walking on water, calm and undisturbed, their footsteps barely audible.

He was still wearing his original battle robe, but the collar was slightly open, the edges of his shirt were turned up, and his hair was slightly disheveled, glistening with morning dew.

Most importantly—his eyes.

Hermann squinted.

His gaze was too calm.

His eyes were so calm, it seemed, that they were not the eyes of an ordinary person; as if the sharp edges of time had been smoothed out.
It's also like a "still echo" left behind by some higher-dimensional being after briefly observing the human world.

Selene abruptly raised her head, her bloodshot eyes reflecting the figure approaching against the backlight.

Her pupils contracted sharply, and her body instinctively leaned forward.

Her voice trembled slightly, yet it couldn't be suppressed and escaped from her throat:

"How...did you get out?"

The man didn't stop walking; he merely smiled slightly and spoke softly:

"You're asking as if I just went in for a bit and then died."

"I just... went in and took a walk around."

The voice was still familiar, still that of the Fate Master, but it carried a faint, almost imperceptible sense of desolation.

It felt like experiencing a script that wasn't part of the actual script.

He stood at the edge of the barrier, the morning light falling on his face, blurring his features and making them appear gentle. He slowly raised his hand and waved to her.

"What's wrong, Celian? You didn't sleep all night either? You don't look too well."

Selene was stunned for a moment, then realized what was happening and was so angry she almost gritted her teeth.

"You bastard... Why do I suddenly feel like you... you're a little unfamiliar?"

Her eyes welled up with tears, her voice was hoarse, but she still managed to force herself to utter a curse:
"Damn it, you wicked spirit, you scared me again!"

Her eyes were moist, but she didn't let the tears fall.

Si Ming chuckled softly, his laughter clear and crisp, like silver flakes shattering ice, echoing in the morning light.

It belongs neither to suffering nor to victory.

It's more like a response from someone who has broken free from the "structure of fate" and still harbors a touch of gentleness towards the world.

Hermann finally stood up, still covered in dust, but his steps were steady.

He walked towards the God of Fate, and their eyes met.

“Congratulations,” Hermann said calmly. “You have emerged from nothingness.”

Si Ming did not respond, but looked at him indifferently and simply nodded.

Hermann added in a low voice:
"You are one step closer to the 'planetary disaster' again."

At that moment, Hermann looked at him—familiar yet unfamiliar.

He knew that the man hadn't completely "become something else."

But he also knew that the person who walked out of the [Corridor of Emptiness] was no longer just the Si Ming they used to know.

He is now—the one who resonates with Irostia.

He is someone who has mastered the tenth star, possesses the "Secondary Mystery," and has officially entered the level of the Fate Master.

A gentle breeze swept across the barrier, and the morning light, like scattered gold dust, fell upon the ruins.

The [Empty Corridor] slowly closes in the light, as if a dream is carefully folded and locked back into the depths of someone's soul.

Everything is quiet and new.

When the light shines in,

Some people walked towards it.

He is not a god.

It is no longer the same person it once was.

He just—

Those who, having seen the illusion, are still willing to step out.

(End of this chapter)