Goddess Kaleidoscope

Before entering the realm of the gods, these handsome male sacrifices would wear uniform white robes, the same kind that Karius was wearing now.

This thin white robe may look quite respectable at first glance, but ancient books recording this "evil ritual" clearly state that when the sacrificial offering wears this robe, the offering must go commando and then dance before the water god, stripping naked as they dance.

So when Ludwig saw that Karius was wearing the same robe as in the ancient book illustration, he began to regret ever having seen that thing!

"They're playing pretty big!"

"What did you say?"

"Uh...it's nothing."

After thinking for less than a second, Ludwig wisely chose to ignore Karius's clothing issue and instead asked about serious matters with a serious expression.

Because the projection was replaced, Karius appeared directly in Melchiorda's bedchamber upon entering the dream. He then followed Ludwig's instructions to everyone, searching the dream for anything that might be connected to the "secret."

However, by the time Lud and the others arrived, Karius had not found the entrance to the secret chamber or any noteworthy items in Melchiorda's bedchamber. Instead, he found something in the bedside table that would shock Karius for ten thousand years.

This made Karius, who had once hoped to reform Melchiorda, feel for the first time that the girl was beyond saving.

“I suspect that the secrets of the Land of Fire are not recorded on paper, but hidden in Melchiorda’s heart.”

"Master, I remember you said before that secrets hidden in the heart will manifest in dreams as physical objects, right?"

"This is a matter of probability. Just like how Lord Karius and the others replaced their own projections after entering the dream, if we do it again, the situation might be different. In short, don't expect to get it done in one go; it might take several more tries."

Lu De thought to himself that this was just like playing a game. When you team up for the first time to enter a completely unfamiliar dungeon, it's not surprising if the whole team wipes out.

They had experienced two earthquakes without warning on their way to the palace, which meant that Melchiorda had already sensed something was wrong. Once she realized she was dreaming, she would wake up soon.

Lude estimated that the chances of success on the first try were less than 30%. He was just coming in to get a feel for things and understand the true thoughts Melchiorda had shown in the dream.

As the group was discussing whether to split up, Hume, who was on guard at the door, suddenly gestured to them that Melchiorda was coming.

Seeing this, everyone quickly hid in a corner of the room. Those who hadn't yet come into contact with Melchiada remained "observers," unnoticed by her for the time being. But Karius, who had replaced the projection, was a different story. The Holy Lord of Light frowned, took a deep breath, and a determined expression crossed his face.

Soon, Melchiorda entered the palace surrounded by a group of male favorites and servants. The moment she looked up, she saw Karius standing by the window, pretending to look at the scenery outside. The water goddess's eyes lit up instantly, and she gave Karius a thorough once-over, even unconsciously licking her lips.

"You, all of you, get out!"

With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the servants, and soon only Melchiorda and Carius remained in the bedchamber. As for Lud and the others, they were now huddled in a corner like a nest of owls, watching intently as Melchiorda rapidly approached Carius.

While a global crisis is certainly imminent, we can't miss out on the juicy gossip right in front of us!

Faced with Melchiorda's obvious attempt to do something to him, Karius could only try to maintain a smile. However, when Melchiorda touched his cheeks with both hands and tried to peel his robes open, even with Karius's determination to sacrifice himself to save the world, he instinctively grabbed Melchiorda's wrists tightly.

"My lord, Lord Water God! Please, please..."

"What's wrong? My little Karius, you've suddenly become shy. But this looks pretty good too, it makes me so eager to devour you!"

"..."

Upon hearing Melchiorda's affectionate nickname for him and the tone of her voice, Karius instantly broke out in goosebumps, feeling so embarrassed that he could practically conjure up a three-bedroom apartment out of thin air without even using his toes.

He glanced at the corner of his eye and saw that, apart from Lud, who had received professional training and was able to barely maintain a serious expression, everyone else was laughing so hard that they had lost their fighting spirit.

At that moment, Karius suddenly felt a surge of relief. Thankfully, over three hundred years ago they had heeded Kumirad's advice and won that war of the gods. Otherwise, this scene wouldn't just be a dream!

In that brief moment of distraction, Karius suddenly felt a tightness between his groin as Melchiorda pressed her entire body against him and took the opportunity to pull out a hand and penetrate him.

With things having developed to this point, Karius was stunned! His intuition was frantically warning him that if he really let Melchiada push him down onto the bed behind him, he was finished!

Carius then shoved Melchiorda aside, and immediately unleashed the full power of the God of Light.

Seeing Karius, who was radiating light and whose expression was full of resistance, Melchiorda was immediately taken aback, as if she couldn't understand why her favorite male concubine would treat her this way.

Noticing the change in Melchiorda's expression, Lud, who had been so engrossed in the gossip that he had almost forgotten his original purpose, realized that something was wrong.

But before he could do anything to remedy the situation, Melchiorda suddenly clutched her hair and screamed, and the surrounding scenery, like the beautiful girls beloved by players in many "healing games," instantly turned into shattered ashes.

In the blink of an eye, everyone was back in the real world, looking dazed and clearly still recovering from the illusory dream.

Lude glanced down at the hourglass he had placed beside him beforehand. Less than a third of the sand had fallen, meaning that less than ten minutes had passed in the real world.

"Why did you come out? Did you fail?"

"Holy crap! Does that mean I've been a dog for nothing?"

The first time he entered the dream, unsurprisingly, something went wrong, and the reason the dream collapsed can be simply attributed to Karius's failure to hold on!

After everyone came out, Kumirard saw Karius's embarrassed expression and roughly guessed what had happened in the palace. Asking someone as serious and upright as him to play the role of a gigolo and fawn over Melchiorda was indeed a bit much.

"Hmm...we need to find someone else for this job."

"Wait a minute, so it's possible to change it? I don't want to be a dog!"

"If you don't want to be a dog, what do you want to be? A maid like us?"

"...Never mind, I'll just stay lying down then."

Yekaterina glared at Feigolei, equally annoyed by her treatment in the dream. If Kumirad hadn't been constantly giving her meaningful glances, she probably would have smashed the bottle in Melchiada's face long ago.

Good heavens! How would I, a goddess of winter, possibly know how to make "seaweed wine"?! What exactly is that anyway?

In short, the first attempt to enter the dream not only failed but also left everyone quite annoyed. Only Melchiorda, still possessed, lay peacefully asleep in the middle. From her perspective, she had indeed just had a wonderful "dream."

After a short rest, Lu De did not rush to start the second round. Instead, he took out paper and pen and began to summarize the information that everyone had gathered.

The basic framework of a dream constructed using necromancy skills can remain unchanged; what changes are mainly some details. Therefore, although the first attempt to enter the dream ended in failure, it can still serve as a reference.

At least it lets everyone clearly understand Melchiorda's truest ambitions... and XP.

"Luckily, she lost back then. If she had won the war of gods, who knows what kind of mess she would have made of this world?"

"In terms of sheer perversion, I admit you're not as bad as her."

"What do you mean by this stinky popsicle?!"

"Alright, alright, stop arguing, let's get ready for the second round."

At Kumirad's urging, everyone sat in a circle again, but their expressions were no longer as relaxed as before. For the victors to actively seek out and experience the misery of defeat was definitely not a pleasurable experience.

Entering Melchiorda's dream again, everyone managed to get off to a pretty good start this time. The dream was still the same dream, but no one replaced the projection in the dream; everyone was in a relatively comfortable viewing position.

Then the experts witnessed firsthand just how disgusting and grotesque Melchiorda's imagined self really was.

"You son of a bitch, you actually let me lick her..."

"I really don't know how to provide this kind of service..."

"So this is seaweed wine!?"

Seeing their own image completely obliterated in the dream, the three gods watching from the sidelines let out bursts of wails. Even with his vast experience, Rudd was at a loss for how to smoothly steer this terrible atmosphere toward saving the world.

However, just as Ludl was pondering a solution, Melchiorda, who was enjoying the pampering and being covered in rouge, seemed to suddenly sense something. She pushed away the whimpering "Lord of Light" in her arms and looked into the distance with an unusually serious expression.

"Huh! What's wrong with her?"

Under the curious gaze of the crowd, a familiar figure stumbled in from outside—it was Lake God Ladi. This opportunistic god, skilled at changing his mind, hadn't been mistreated too badly in the dream, showing that Melchiorda still recognized this "adopted son."

Ladi rushed into the hall in a panic and knelt down before Melchiorda's throne with a thud.

"Something terrible has happened, Mother!"

"What's the panic! Get to the point. I told you to guard the underground entrance, why did you run away? Is there something wrong there?"

"The door...the door is open!"

Hearing Melchiorda and Rady's conversation, Lud's eyes lit up. He had been thinking about how to guide the conversation, but the plot was actually going in the direction he expected, saving him a lot of trouble.

After a moment's thought, Kumirad whispered to his companions.

"It seems that Melchiorda knows quite a lot, and the situation in the Land of Fire Seed may be even more severe than we previously estimated."

"How to say?"

"As the saying goes, what you think about during the day, you dream about at night. Melgiada even dreams about accidents happening. This means the situation must have become quite serious, to the point that she can't eat or sleep. But this saves us a lot of trouble. Now we just need to see what she does."

Following Melchiorda from their dream, the group passed through a long corridor and arrived at a dark dungeon. Upon seeing the prisoners strapped to metal crosses, the gods couldn't help but look on in astonishment, for these prisoners were gods from the previous era, many of whom were opponents they had personally defeated in the war of the gods.

Melchiada arrived at the dungeon and ordered his divine messengers to carry out the imprisoned gods, along with their frames. These gods were listless and dispirited, clearly drained of their life force by Melchiada.

As you leave the dungeon with Melchiorda, the scene at the end of the corridor changes from a luxurious hall to a giant underground cavern.

When Lud looked at the place, he immediately felt that it looked familiar. He thought to himself, "Isn't this the entrance to the Land of Fire?" But unlike the situation in reality, the giant wall that originally had only a crack had been completely split open, allowing Melchiorda and his party to pass through without any hindrance and directly enter the interior of the Land of Fire.

“Interesting! This means that when the situation inside the Land of Fire becomes serious enough, the restrictions on faith will be lifted. And judging from this, this shouldn't be Melchiorda's first time here.”

As if to confirm Kumirad's conjecture, the group following Melchiorda soon saw the Fire Tree, but the entire tree was about to wither, all the golden leaves had fallen off, and there were only a few flame flowers left. The originally white trunk had turned a sickly gray, as if it had completely rotted inside.

At this moment, Lud saw that, in addition to a group of prisoners being brought over by Melchiorda's messenger, there was also a clearly human child among the crowd.

Melchiorda observed the withered giant tree for a while, seemingly having made up her mind. She nodded to the divine messenger beside her, who immediately understood and began to act. First, she led people to break off some branches from the giant tree, and then used these branches to fiercely stab into the bodies of the imprisoned gods. Pale golden blood flowed out along the branches, gathering in a depression as if it were alive, forming a golden blood pool.

Melchiorda smiled, took the child's hand, and pushed her into the pool of blood.

The boy who was pushed into the pool of blood was clearly not an ordinary person. The moment he fell into the pool, it was like a spark falling on gasoline, instantly igniting a raging golden flame. A tender sprout appeared out of thin air in the flames, and then grew at a speed visible to the naked eye, soon becoming a sapling.

Looking at the sprouting saplings, Melchiorda smiled with satisfaction. Then she called over a little girl and had her hold the saplings and wait aside. The other divine messengers used the branches that had been used to pierce the captured gods and draw their blood to start a fire and set the withered giant tree ablaze.

Seeing this, Lud felt some of his DNA stirring, thinking to himself, "Your real name, Melchiorda, isn't it Sylvanas?"

Having witnessed this scene in his dream, the gods present clearly understood the method for stimulating the seedlings of the fire tree, and Kumirad made a very bold conjecture based on it.

When the war of the gods broke out, Kumirard always suspected that Melchiorda was behind it.

At first, she thought the Water God's faction wanted to take the opportunity to eliminate dissidents, but while she launched a fierce attack on the gods who did not support her, she turned a blind eye to the rat people's little tricks and even took the initiative to stop those gods who tried to strike first against the rat people.

It's no exaggeration to say that Melchiorda played at least half the role of a biological mother in ensuring Ikavin's successful birth.

Now the truth is out: Melchiorda had clearly been planning this all along, preparing for the renewal of the Tree of Fire. Those alien gods and the Ikaven created by the Skaven were all sacrifices she prepared for this ritual. If Kumirad hadn't delivered that final, righteous backstab, she might have actually succeeded!

Having seen this much of the dream, the impatient God of War felt that it was enough. They already knew how to urge new trees to grow, they had the seeds (referring to Lud), and the offerings were readily available. Melchiorda and the twin Ikaven were both high-ranking gods of the seventh rank or above, so it should be enough.

However, Kumirard told Figor to calm down. Since the dream hadn't collapsed yet, they should try to see it through to the end. Maybe they could discover some other secrets.

So everyone patiently continued watching. The burning process of the giant tree seemed to be accelerated in the dream. The enormous trunk turned into ashes in less than half an hour.

During this time, everyone also noticed that the boy who had been pushed into the blood pool by Melchiorda did not come out of the blood pool again. It was unknown whether he had drowned in the blood or disappeared inside.

As for the girl holding the sapling, she also looked pained. Several times she tried to throw the sapling away, but the water god's messenger shouted at her fiercely, forcing her to hold the sapling.

At this moment, the giant tree in the flames was finally burned to ashes. When the last flame died down, the entire dream world, after a brief silence, suddenly began to shake violently.

At first, everyone thought Melchiorda was waking up, because it was very similar to the collapse at the end of the last dream. But they soon realized that this was not the case! Because Melchiorda suddenly let out a maniacal laugh amidst the violent tremors, exuding the aura of a complete villain.