Chapter 123: Thanatos's Confession — The Truth That Shocks Everyone!
The fierce godly game finally came to a complete end. Shirou emerged as the ultimate victor. With Thanatos's last chess piece destroyed, the atmosphere on the board finally settled, and the souls of the deceased returned to their rest. It was as if nothing had happened.
However, the silence at the scene was so profound that you could hear a pin drop, proving that everyone was deeply shocked.
"Congratulations, Emiya, you won." Thanatos was the most nonchalant one present; he calmly accepted his defeat and even applauded Shirou's victory.
In contrast, the Loki faction members hadn't fully grasped the situation until this moment. Whether those who participated in the godly game or those who only watched, all of them fell silent.
Only after witnessing Riveria's complete return and Thanatos handing back the elven royal family he held hostage did they finally realize the fact that they had won.
However, in their eyes, this was not a victory for the Loki faction.
Therefore, if it weren't for Shirou's intervention, for his repeated rescues and efforts to prevent disaster, they would have died hundreds of times over in this artificial labyrinth.
Now, it was not the Loki faction that defeated Thanatos's faction — it was a man named Emiya Shirou.
Seeing the Loki faction's attitude, Shirou immediately understood what they were thinking. Including Ais and Lefiya, no one present could openly express joy; instead, their emotions were far more complicated than mere happiness.
Shirou didn't bother trying to comfort them, since ultimately the Loki faction's affairs had nothing to do with him, and he wouldn't overly concern himself with their factional matters.
Of course, Shirou wasn't indifferent enough to do nothing either. He patted Lefiya's head, who was closest to him, then looked at everyone before him: "This time, thanks to all of you. If it weren't for the efforts of every single one of you, the outcome of this godly game would have been uncertain. So, hold your heads high. This is a victory for all of us."
At Shirou's words, even Riveria couldn't help but show a complex expression, recognizing the man before her. By now, no one bore any prejudice against him.
Many members of the Loki faction regarded Shirou as possessing influence comparable to their leader Finn, perhaps even greater. After all, even Finn would probably have failed to win under such harsh conditions against the
god of death Thanatos. Everything Shirou did could be called miraculous; he truly achieved what mortals couldn't reach.
While the Loki faction was full of mixed feelings, the Thanatos faction also shared similarly complicated emotions. Despite Thanatos's cunning strategies, they still lost the godly game, leaving members of his faction deeply disappointed.
Notably, after the masked person's soul body was restored, they vanished without a trace.
Only the Tenkaily bull remained standing nearby, seemingly unwilling to take any action without orders from Thanatos himself.
"Now, it's time to reveal the truth you know." After tidying things up, Shirou looked at Thanatos: "Everything you know about Orario, and the reason why you formed the dark faction — don't hide anything from me. Tell me everything."
"Are you sure you want to know the truth?" Thanatos seemed to want to give one last warning: "That's not a topic worth listening to. You might not even believe me after hearing it. But no matter what, once you hear my story, you'll be walking down a road of no return, and this city will no longer be able to tolerate your existence."
"I don't care." Shirou replied calmly. From the start, he came for the truth and would not give up when it was within reach.
The Loki faction members appeared deeply conflicted. Many were small fry within the faction and had no desire to involve themselves in matters potentially concerning gods.
Therefore, in the end, Riveria, the deputy leader of the Loki faction, dispersed most of the faction members present, leaving only those above level 5 and Lefiya. After preserving the absolute core, Riveria silently nodded, indicating their readiness to hear the truth.
"Looks like you have all made up your minds." Seeing their reactions, Thanatos gave a bitter smile: "In that case, where should I begin? Regarding the truth about this city, perhaps I should start with the highest deity of Orario — Ouranos."
"Ouranos?" At Thanatos's straightforward words, the Loki faction members showed horrified expressions. Only now did they realize how outrageous the insider story might be, possibly affecting the entire fate of the Loki faction.
But no matter what they thought, there was no turning back now.
Because Thanatos soon began to tell everything.
"First, everyone in this city should know the legend of the gods descending to Genkai, right?" Thanatos began quietly.
"About three thousand years ago, large numbers of dungeons suddenly appeared on the surface, and from those dungeons emerged many monsters.
These monsters mindlessly attacked humans and other races on the surface, causing unprecedented destruction and making people believe the world was doomed.
This situation lasted for over a thousand years until a thousand years ago, when humanity was on the brink of annihilation, the god Ouranos led a group of deities to descend to Genkai and created this labyrinth city Orario, finally curbing the further outbreak of dungeon disasters."
Thanatos slowly recounted the well-known legend of the gods descending to Genkai.
"After Orario was established, dungeons across the world were gradually eliminated. Unknowingly, only this last dungeon remained. At the same time, aside from the dungeons disappearing, the batch of gods who descended with Ouranos had mostly returned to Tenkai, except for Ouranos himself, who continued to suppress the dungeon, and myself, the god of death."
"What?" Riveria looked at Thanatos in surprise. "Thanatos, you are also one of the gods who descended a thousand years ago? You have been in Genkai for a whole millennium?"
"That's right." Thanatos said calmly. "Due to the initial rules set by the gods, once they descended to Genkai, they could no longer use divine power. This meant most gods couldn't adapt to life in Genkai.
They either grew tired of it and chose to return to Tenkai or couldn't survive and thus returned. In the end, all the gods who came down a thousand years ago have returned to Tenkai except for me and Ouranos."
Thanatos smiled as he spoke this shocking fact: "So your next question might be why I have stayed in Genkai for a thousand years. Before answering that, I must first talk about what I've done since I descended.
First, every god who comes to Genkai has their own purpose, mostly related to their divine duties.
For example, the god of wine pursues brewing, the goddess of beauty pursues beauty… As for me, as the god of death, I found no meaning in Genkai, because my task can only be done in Tenkai — that is, managing all the souls in this world and maintaining the reincarnation system."
"The god responsible for reincarnation?" Thanatos's divine role stunned everyone.
This responsibility was extremely special; to most mortals who live only about a hundred years, reincarnation is an incredibly attractive matter.
But Thanatos seemed unbothered by his duty and quietly continued:
"The reincarnation system, as the name suggests, is to return dead souls back to the world, to 'cleanse' the souls and let them be reborn… I enjoyed my work very much, loved cleansing those souls who returned to Tenkai filthy and muddy and turning them into newborns again.
But no matter how interesting the job is, doing it for thousands or millions of years can be tiresome. So, following Ouranos's suggestion, I became one of the first gods to descend to Genkai."
"After arriving here, because I no longer had to guide the dead, I started studying the essence of souls.
After all, my usual work is guiding souls to the afterlife, so researching souls naturally became my hobby.
I extensively researched all the souls in this world, and I became unsatisfied with just studying human souls.
I even began investigating monsters, wanting to find out whether monsters also have souls.
Then I discovered a shocking fact: the monsters emerging from the dungeons also have souls. They are not demons of slaughter, but beings just like humans, dwarves, elves, and other life forms!"
"What did you say!?"
Thanatos's words shook the worldview of everyone present.
Except for Shirou, who barely managed to keep calm, the Loki faction members were completely stunned by Thanatos's almost insane statements.
Ais even uncontrollably showed a hateful glare, glaring at Thanatos.
But Thanatos himself didn't care about others' attitudes and quietly spoke:
"Regarding this fact, I was even more shocked than you all at the time, and I raised a question — if monsters also have souls, and are no different from mortals and beasts, then why do they exhibit such strong aggression?
Why do monsters attack every human they see with desperate fury from the moment they are born?"
"To understand this question, I began studying the structure of monsters, exploring their souls.
So obsessed was I that I ventured into forbidden territory and conducted mad experiments, merging monster souls with human souls, creating some even stranger beings."
Thanatos's words made everyone frown again.
When Shirou heard this, he instinctively thought of "Weine" from the Hestia faction, suspecting she might be the result of such experiments.
But he did not ask directly and instead waited for Thanatos to continue.
"In any case, I spent a long time on all sorts of research — it was truly a joyful time. But because it was too joyful, I completely ignored the horrors that come from meddling in forbidden matters, and forgot the consequences of seeking the truth.
So, without any preparation, I discovered why monsters crawling out of the dungeons have such strong aggression, why they madly attack every mortal they see — it is because their souls have been given a similar command, or rather, a curse!"
"Monsters were given a curse?"
The Loki faction members all widened their eyes in disbelief. They found it hard to believe Thanatos's words, even thinking he had gone mad.
Shirou also found it hard to believe, but was willing to continue listening to Thanatos's account of the truth about this world.
"Generally speaking, it's hard to believe such a thing, right?" Thanatos smiled at the crowd. "At first, I didn't believe it either.
After all, how could someone place a curse on all newly born monsters? Even gods probably couldn't easily do that.
So I continued my research, hoping to overturn my own conclusion. But unfortunately, no matter how I thought about it, the conclusion was clear: the dungeon monsters are cursed!
I couldn't bear such a terrifying phenomenon alone, so I immediately handed over all the research materials I had to the god Ouranos, hoping he would trust me and find the source of the curse placed on all the dungeon monsters.
After hearing my report, Ouranos said he would seriously investigate, then sent me away.
I thought the matter would end there, but after some time, Ouranos came to me again.
He not only confiscated all my research materials on souls but also ordered me to stop related research. Furthermore, he didn't handle the curse within the monsters' souls at all and even forbade any gods from investigating this matter.
Since my research was stopped, the little enjoyment I had disappeared, and I lost my reason to stay in Genkai. I planned to return immediately to Tenkai, but when I tried, I found the path back to the Tenkais was gone."
"The path back to Tenkai disappeared?" Even Shirou was shocked.
"Gods return to Tenkai via special heaven ladders, and each god needs to take their respective ladder path to return," Thanatos quietly explained. "No way to return to Tenkai means the ladder is cut off. So no matter what, I can't return to Tenkai.
Even if I die, I would only resurrect after a long time, not leave the space-time of this lower realm. So I was forced to stay here, helplessly watching time pass and enduring loneliness.
I also tried to find out why I couldn't return to Tenkai but found no clues until one day, I heard that monsters with human consciousness had appeared in the dungeons — a very rare few who could speak human language, known as 'Xenos'."
Thanatos's words immediately drew Shirou's attention. He didn't expect to hear about the Xenos here and grew more serious.
Thanatos continued:
"As for those Xenos, I felt they were very similar to my past monster research. After investigation, I found they were hybrids created by using the results of my soul research — combinations of humans and monsters.
At that moment, I immediately realized the Xenos were created by Ouranos, because besides me, only Ouranos had seen my research materials.
My first reaction was confusion — I didn't understand why Ouranos would do this.
Then suspicion grew in my heart towards Ouranos.
That so-called god Ouranos, who led the gods to descend to save Genkai — was he really here to save mortals? Or could it be that Ouranos's descent had other purposes?"
Thanatos gradually guided everyone's thoughts. This was also the result of his thousand-year-long pondering in Genkai.
"I began to suspect Ouranos, and I discovered many abnormal actions by him.
First, there were many dungeons in Genkai a thousand years ago. When the gods descended, most dungeons were sealed, but only the dungeon in Orario was left intact. Why?
Second, Ouranos's guild has been collecting the magic stones from the dungeons, but only a very few high-ranking guild members know what they are for.
Outsiders like us have no idea where such a huge amount of magic stones has gone. What are these vast quantities of magic stones used for?
Third, the existence of the Xenos is clearly Ouranos's creation.
Only he has seen my research, so it must be closely related to him. But for a thousand years, Ouranos has hidden the existence of the Xenos. Why?"
Thanatos asked three questions about Ouranos, and it seemed he already had answers.
"Now, here is my speculation.
I believe Ouranos came to Genkai to extract the energy of the earth.
Although Tenkai has abundant energy, due to the gods' extravagance, it's already in deficit.
Even Ouranos, the supreme god, cannot get more energy from the Tenkai.
Only Genkai, where no gods recklessly waste energy and mortals barely use the earth's energy, holds vast energy that even a god finds tempting.
To extract the earth's power, Ouranos specially created Orario. He harvests the earth's energy indirectly by collecting magic stones from the dungeons.
That's why he left only Orario's dungeon intact, to serve as the magic stone source.
Finally, I suspect that Ouranos himself implanted the curse on all the dungeon monsters!
He came secretly earlier and cursed the monsters, causing them to rampage across the earth and bring crisis to the mortal world.
This gave him a legitimate reason to lead the gods to descend, create the maze city Orario, establish the beneficent system, and 'save' mortals from disaster.
But all of this is just a scheme for his own selfish purpose.
Ouranos must have deeper motives, which is why he restricted my actions, sealed the truth about monsters having souls, and why the Xenos exist.
The Xenos likely carry some of Ouranos's objectives and are part of his method to harvest the earth's energy."
Thanatos poured out all his suspicions in one breath.
These shocking words plunged the entire scene into complete silence.
Including Shirou, everyone was stunned by these exaggerated 'truths.'
For a while, no one could tell if Thanatos's words were true or just a deception designed to trick them.
The only thing most people were sure of was that everything Thanatos said must not be spread.
Daring to discuss the god Ouranos or suspecting him as the source of all evil was, even for the Loki faction, tantamount to courting death.
Just hearing Thanatos's words sent chills down the spines of the Loki faction members, and their hearts were engulfed by extreme coldness!
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