The moment Fu Zhu heard Lygus's voice from behind, he felt a headache coming on. He rubbed his temples and turned to face him.
"I say, doesn't the number one seat of the Genius Society have any manners? Can't you see I'm in the middle of a conversation? You just have to interrupt."
Although Fu Zhu's tone was filled with menace, Lygus's demeanor remained placid.
"If necessary, I would naturally wish to prevent your actions by any means possible, Mr. Fu Zhu."
Fu Zhu, however, read a different meaning into his words.
"You mean to say, I'm getting very close to the truth, aren't I?"
Lygus didn't answer directly. Instead, in front of Fu Zhu and Thanatos, he walked over to a Wither Rose, crouched down, and began to inspect it.
"If I weren't pressed for time, I might have actually wanted to study this strange flower."
Seeing him dodge the question, Fu Zhu silently took out his Yamato from his inventory.
"I'll ask you one last time. Should I ask you to leave, or will you tell me the truth, after which I'll finish you off? I'm actually quite interested in that head of yours."
Can collecting three heads summon the complete version of Zandar?
Before Fu Zhu could get an answer from Lygus, Thanatos, who was beside him, suddenly reached out and placed a hand on the back of Fu Zhu's hand that was holding the Yamato. Her small hand was trembling.
Hm?
Fu Zhu turned his head towards Thanatos in confusion. "What are you stopping me for?"
Thanatos, however, was staring intently at Lygus, who was still examining the Wither Rose. She gulped nervously, and her voice became sharp.
"I recognize him! The Antikytheran who calls himself a spectator of the divine ritual, Lygus Lycurgus! I clearly saw you in the last cycle, so why are you here?!"
Fu Zhu just raised an eyebrow. He wasn't surprised that Thanatos had seen Lygus in the previous cycle. He knew Lygus was the creator of the entire world of Amphoreus; being able to exist across multiple cycles was a simple matter for him.
Seeing that Thanatos had revealed his identity, Lygus slowly stood up and turned towards her, raising a finger to his lips.
"Quiet, Thanatos. Under normal circumstances, I might have answered your questions before your departure. But now…"
Lygus shifted his gaze to Fu Zhu. He slowly spread his arms, and the mechanical parts of his body began to reassemble and reconstruct. Finally, he stood before Fu Zhu and Thanatos in a new, four-armed form.
"Interference in the process must be eliminated!"
The next second, a completely different head tumbled from Lygus's shoulders and fell to the ground. His body, drained of its vitality, collapsed limply beside it.
Thanatos froze, so shocked she couldn't even speak. It was only then that she noticed that Fu Zhu, who had been beside her, was now standing behind Lygus, slowly sheathing his Yamato.
After sheathing his blade, Fu Zhu turned around, picked up Lygus's different-looking head, and met its gaze.
"What was all that gibberish? I thought your second phase would be tough, but you still went down in one hit. Get good, scrub!"
The eyes on Lygus's head flickered rapidly a few times before going completely dark. Only then did Fu Zhu stow it in his inventory.
He wondered if the next time he saw Lygus, he would have a third form and a third, different head to collect.
After one-shotting Lygus, Fu Zhu walked back to the stunned Thanatos and gestured with his chin.
"Alright, young lady, let's continue our previous conversation. What's this about the last cycle and becoming a Titan? Did you guys have a Re-Creation event in the last cycle too?"
Thanatos watched Fu Zhu approach. Despite his casual tone, the scene she had just witnessed filled her with an immense sense of pressure. Her speech became noticeably more strained, and she even began using honorifics.
"You guessed correctly, sir. I also participated in the Re-Creation in the last cycle. At that time, I had not yet become a Titan. I received a prophecy from the Titan of the last cycle. The twelve of us Chrysos Heirs followed the prophecy, obtained the Coreflames, returned them, and completed the Re-Creation. As the previous Titan foretold, the entire world entered the cycle anew.
However, in the last cycle, it was twelve demigods. In this cycle, we became the twelve Titans."
As she spoke, Thanatos paused, giving Fu Zhu some time to digest the information. She herself glanced over at Lygus's corpse.
Fu Zhu stroked his chin, pondering Thanatos's words. The amount of information was substantial.
From the looks of it, the entire world of Amphoreus was likely in a constant loop of cycles. This time, once Tribbie and the others completed the Re-Creation, they would probably end up just like Thanatos and her group, causing the world to enter a new cycle, only the Titans would be replaced by Tribbie's group.
This raised a question. The so-called Re-Creation was definitely designed by Lygus. Why did he want the twelve Chrysos Heirs to go through endless cycles?
Fu Zhu could only think of one answer right now—data.
Amphoreus was a data world. Making the twelve Chrysos Heirs loop endlessly was very similar to how scientists in his previous life would have an AI iterate on its own, gathering big data to make the AI stronger until it could accomplish a certain task.
As for Lygus's goal, he had revealed it himself before: to kill Nous, to break its anchor on the entire universe, and to grant the cosmos infinite possibilities once more.
Although Fu Zhu didn't understand how this alone could kill an Aeon.
But then again, Fu Zhu mused, Nous was Zandar's own creation. He surely had a way to kill his own "child."
"Interesting…"
Fu Zhu chuckled. If Lygus's "graduation thesis," which he had worked on for who knows how many years, ended up getting snatched by him at the very end, he wondered just how furious Lygus would be.
"Thanatos, let me see the Coreflame."
Thanatos didn't dare refuse. She immediately took out the Coreflame and respectfully handed it to Fu Zhu. Then, she looked at him pitifully and asked in a small voice, "Sir, could you please let me see my sister in my final moments? She is in the living world, also a Chrysos Heir."
Once the Coreflame was taken, the Titan would die.
Thanatos didn't mind dying, but she wanted to see her sister one last time, to see if she was doing well.
Fu Zhu took the [Death] Coreflame and touched it. The construction progress of his Amphoreus mod increased by a fair bit.
"Here, you can have it back."
Fu Zhu casually tossed the Coreflame back to Thanatos, who stared at him with a bewildered expression.
"You're… not taking it?"
Fu Zhu rolled his eyes at her. "I said I just wanted to look at it."
"You went through all this trouble… just to look at it?!"