Am I going to be controlled by the players too?

It was sunset again, and the afterglow of the setting sun painted the Cemetery of Gods and Demons with a solemn yet somewhat eerie atmosphere.

Just then, in front of a low grave in the towering tomb complex of gods and demons, a pale hand reached out from the grave, followed by another. The two hands gripped the edge of the grave tightly, and a bewildered blonde girl slowly climbed out of the grave.

"Where am I? How did I get here?"

The girl murmured to herself, suddenly drawn to the inscription on a nearby tombstone inscribed with the words of a god or demon. The moment she finished reading it, her expression changed drastically, and she exclaimed in shock, "This...is this real? Is this really the legendary War Goddess of the Elven Empire, who once dominated the world and commanded the winds of war? Could it be...that even gods cannot escape death?"

"But why is His Majesty Ji Yushen's epitaph blank, with only the four large characters 'I am not Qu' visible?"

Then, another sacred tomb nearby shocked her once again: "Freya, the Goddess of Memory of the Kingdom of Konoma? Could it be Her Majesty the Queen who controls history and the past?"

As if struck by a thought, she turned to look around. Towering tombs of gods and demons stood in the cemetery: "The Tomb of Sylvia, Goddess of Order; The Tomb of Cuckoo, Goddess of the Moon; The Tomb of Felix, Messenger of Lovers; The Tomb of Malphite, Sage of the Tower; The Tomb of Clement, Pope; The Tomb of Peng Longteng, Chariot..."

"My God! What has happened to this world? Could it be... that all the gods of the past have died and are... buried here?"

Suddenly, the girl noticed the small grave at her feet, and she was startled: "Oh, I... crawled out of the grave..."

"My name is Chen Nan... oh no, my name is Li Xianyu. I was dead, but... I've been resurrected..."

"Heavens! What's going on?! Since I'm already dead, why am I being made to crawl out of my grave?! Does God want this useless person like me to continue living a mediocre life?!"

Looking around again, Li Xianyu continued to exclaim loudly, "Even the hardest diamond-hard tombstones are clearly etched with the vicissitudes of time. It must have taken ten thousand years. The world changes, and ten thousand years have passed by in the blink of an eye. Hehe... what a dream of the ages!"

Li Xianyu: "..."

Li Xianyu: "Hmm, I still remember the lines from the novel I read in the Empire. It seems that my humanity and memory are still intact."

But... why did I wake up dead in a cemetery?

The tombstones of Sylvia, Freya, and Himegami are...

"Ah, Li Xianyu, you're alive!"

Freya arrived with a bouquet of flowers and was pleasantly surprised to see Li Xianyu crawling out of the grave.

"So Freya, you're still alive." Li Xianyu was stunned. "How many years?"

Freya raised her head and thought carefully: "If we count from when I fell into the abyss... today is the 57,000th year."

"It's been so long..."

Li Xianyu rubbed his head, then looked at the group of tombstones and asked with slight curiosity, "Isn't this the abyss? Why is there a sun and earth here? And what are these tombstones...?"

“Fifty thousand years ago, we learned that Seraphine had disappeared while searching for the remains of the Amber Goddess.” Freya knelt down and offered the flowers in her arms to Felix’s grave. “So Sylvia and I thought we should build one for ourselves, and that’s how this place came to be.”

“I named it 'Paradise on Earth'.”

"Strange name."

Li Xianyu frowned: "For us necromancers, tombstones are for the living, but there are no living people in this abyss who will see them, so there is no point in doing them."

“How could it be meaningless?” Freya smiled. “To me, it’s a storybook, a history I pulled from my memory, a tombstone dedicated to the old world. It records a beautiful fairy tale, about an era, a journey, and the entirety of every hero’s life.”

As she spoke, she picked up a kettle and a rag, and this deity with supreme power gently wiped her teacher's grave in the simplest of ways:

"Li Xianyu, if the people of the next reincarnation knew the story of our generation's human civilization fighting against the abyss, what would they subconsciously think of?"

Li Xianyu paused, thought for a moment, and finally shook her head: "I don't know."

“I saw it in Sylvia’s memories, a story about the ‘Boundless City’ on the eighth level of the Silvershine City dungeon,” Freya murmured, recalling the past. “It was once a civilization that fought against the abyss and demons, and the chicken, tiger, bear, wolf, and dog were five heroes who fought with all their might to protect the world…”

"But in the end, they were all buried in history, buried in the abyss."

"Do you know what my impression of them was when I first saw this story?"

Despite it being a question, Freya began to answer it herself: "It was smoke and fire, ruins and scorched earth, destiny and sacrifice... This isn't an answer I like, but it was certainly my first impression."

"I see……"

Li Xianyu seemed to understand Freya's purpose.

Freya raised her head and looked at the setting sun in the west, and continued, "Although our civilization once faced the abyss, and although we have a tragic story and destiny, I do not want future generations to only remember cold death and sacrifice after learning about our story."

"In that dying end times, people will still talk about what to eat for breakfast tomorrow and how to spend their end-of-month allowance. People will still talk about dreams and plans that will take years or even decades to realize."

Even on the day of the apocalypse, some people still hold onto hope for tomorrow. When civilization teeters in the darkness, light continues to emerge. And it is in such a world that there once existed remarkable people like us—

Even knowing that civilization had perished, they still chose to fight to the very end, just so that the proud way they lived would be forever etched in history.

"This ancient paradise records just such a story."

Freya waved her hand, and before each tombstone appeared the "memory" of a hero, smiling brightly as she told visitors her story.

These stories contain pain and failure, betrayal and separation, but also happiness and joy, tenderness and emotion.

Sadness will not disappear into thin air, but warm feelings will be treasured forever in this paradise of the past. If they fail again in the next cycle of reincarnation, the survivors of Earth who fall into the abyss may come here to read their story and learn about all the civilizations of the previous cycle.

Even if the threat from the abyss never ceases, and the tragic fate returns forever.

But what Freya wanted to pass on to future generations should not be just hatred and a mission; only by experiencing the brilliance of this civilization can future generations understand the meaning of their fight for it.

And those who come after will witness the traces of their lives, the destiny of their souls, and find the answers they seek within them.

Finally, we cross the final graves of the departed... to create the future they could not anticipate.

“We chose our own tombstones and memories, but you were still dead at the time, so we only built a small grave.”

Freya said, extending her hand to Li Xianyu: "Give me your memories, and I'll create a memory cell for you and put it here... As for the tombstone, I believe you have your own unique aesthetic sense in this regard."

Li Xianyu nodded, but her gaze was drawn to the largest, glittering imperial tomb.

A memory of Himeko appeared before the tomb, shouting, "All eyes are on me! I declare one thing—I am the District! I am the District!!!"

Li Xianyu: "...You really didn't tamper with these memory cells?"

Freya looked away, slightly embarrassed. "Well, I didn't do anything entirely... Please keep this a secret from Himegami."

“Okay…” Just as he was agreeing, Li Xianyu’s eyes suddenly lit up, and he took the opportunity to extort money from me, “But you have to pull the corpse that was killed by the plague demon from your memory and give it to me… I’ve never had a true god-level corpse before!”

"……it is good."

…………

End of 1999, Earth.

Federal, Newcastle, headquarters.

Inside the grand and solemn combat hall, a holographic star map floated in mid-air as an old man stepped onto the stage.

That was G1, the highest-ranking leader of the Council of Organisations. He tossed aside his speech, his voice steady and resonant, carrying a determination to crush despair, piercing the entire hall, echoing throughout the headquarters building, and reaching every battlefield communications channel—

"Fellow Earthlings and soldiers of the Interstellar Alliance:"

"The demons of the abyss have torn apart the outer space defenses. The lunar orbit has fallen, and all the space stations in near-Earth orbit have been reduced to burning wreckage. The demons' malice is aimed at every continent and every city of ours. Some ask, how long must we hold out in this interstellar war to defend our nation?"

"My answer is: as long as human civilization survives, the battle will never end."

"We will fight in near-Earth orbit, we will fight on the ruins of the moon; we will bleed at the edge of the atmosphere, we will hold our ground in the deep sea fortresses; we will fight to the death on every inch of human land, in plains, mountains, and town streets."

Even if demons blockade the entire starry sky, even if demons flatten every continent, even if all the cities on the surface fall—we will never surrender!

"Because this war is not just a border dispute, but a war for the survival of civilization. If we are defeated, all of human civilization will cease to exist, and the history, art, life, and hope that have multiplied for thousands of years will turn into cosmic dust."

"Therefore, let us unite as one, setting aside all barriers and differences. Let all humankind work together to protect this blue planet with our blood and flesh!"

"—All for all mankind!"

The moment the words were spoken, the entire headquarters of the agency shook violently!

The long-suppressed passion and determination finally broke through the despair. Countless agents and soldiers of the Earth Alliance had bloodshot eyes and roared incessantly, causing the dome of the hall to tremble slightly.

Young soldiers gripped their guns tightly, their knuckles turning white; veterans covered in wounds stood tall, their eyes resolute; researchers put down their instruments, stood tall, their eyes filled with a fervent determination to fight to the death.

The flames of war extinguished human cowardice, and adversity forged the courage of the entire nation.

On the streets, civilians clad in simple armor rushed to the assembly point. Even infants sat in fully automatic mechanical strollers, their little hands tightly clutching milk bottles, moving forward with the tide of battle, facing the apocalyptic catastrophe in the purest form.

And all of this began in early 1999.

At that time, spiritual energy revived, magic returned to its rightful place, and the divine age, which had been silent for ten thousand years, descended upon the mortal world once again.

Humanity around the world was immersed in the joy of the new era, believing that civilization was about to leap forward and a golden age was about to begin—but just the following month, evil appeared from the abyss.

People realized with alarm that it was not an invasion for the purpose of domination, control, or plunder; the demons had come solely to hunt.

The brutal barriers of combat power shattered humanity's hopes.

A fully equipped modern mechanized infantry company with infantry fighting vehicles, mortars, and ample ammunition can barely kill a lower-level demon by using all its firepower; while to completely defeat a higher-level demon head-on, it is necessary to deploy an entire heavy combined arms brigade, supplemented by eighteen 155mm self-propelled howitzers, twelve 300mm long-range rocket launchers, hundreds of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and a saturation strike by a cluster of drones covering the entire domain.

However, the places where demons descend are often in the heart of cities, and each siege comes at a terrible cost: a thousand casualties for the enemy and eight million casualties for ourselves.

The once bustling city was reduced to ashes. At this critical juncture, a hidden force that had been lurking in human society for millennia stepped onto the world stage for the first time.

Federal agencies, secret societies, and mixed-race families; Kunlun Mountain and immortal cultivation families in China; the Holy See of Europe; spiritual practitioners from India; magical girl trading companies in Japan; and barbarian warrior legions, the Star Crusade, and the Global Warrior Mutual Aid Association from around the world...

Countless ancient and secretive forces have joined forces to make their divine magic, extraordinary techniques, and cutting-edge technologies freely available to all humankind.

Human productivity and combat capabilities are experiencing a disruptive explosion.

The entire population quickly united to form a United Human Government of Earth, known as the "Human Alliance." In just seven months, they built an interstellar coalition that reached near-Earth orbit, pushing the defensive line against the Abyss to the vast expanse of space beyond Earth.

Humans, with their mortal bodies, fought their way out of the abyss of doomsday and managed to carve out a glimmer of hope.

But the cruelty of fate never stops.

Through global star orbit analysis, Dr. G8 of the Council of the Organization made a despairing prediction: lower-ranking demons and higher-ranking demons are merely cannon fodder; above them are demon lords with power comparable to nuclear bombs, capable of destroying a city, and primordial demons whose existence cannot even be observed, predicted, or described!

And today, December 21, 1999.

The first primordial demon is about to descend from the abyss of the moon!

In its primordial form, it could rewrite the rules of heaven and earth with a mere wave of its hand, and wipe out Earth's civilization in an instant!

Everyone understood that humanity was destined to lose this war.

Just as Hector knew that the kingdom would eventually fall, Achilles understood that he was heading towards death, yet the two of them still resolutely stepped onto the battlefield.

In this story, which was destined to be a tragedy from the very beginning, not a single person hesitated or wavered.

They are like that, and so are we.

Knowing that annihilation lies ahead and that resistance is futile, the millions of interstellar allies are willing to die on the battlefield in the most proud manner, sacrificing themselves for their civilization!

"Everything for all mankind!"

"Everything for all of humanity!!"

A roar like a mountain collapsing and a tsunami crashed throughout the headquarters, penetrating the communication array and echoing across every battlefront.