Chapter 194: The End of Ouranos's Research, Sacrificing Thousands of Souls to Create a God!
"Even the Three Great Quests were your doing?"
Faced with the continuous shocking truths revealed by the Heavenly God Ouranos, the gods in Babel were completely stunned and speechless for a moment.
Ouranos himself spoke quietly:
"Yes, it is nothing that needs to be concealed, because it was also an unexpected development for me, the only special turn of events among the many experiments I conducted in Genkai.
Thanks to the Three Great Quests, countless experimental facilities I had originally set up in Genkai were destroyed, and a large number of research projects turned into ruins.
Among them was the Orsa Archipelago, which was also a product of my experiments on the gods. It was my attempt to artificially create belief in gods on an island without divine worship, in order to see if a god could be born purely through the power of faith.
But unfortunately, the experiment ultimately failed.
From this, I completely realized that the birth of gods has nothing to do with the sentient beings of Genkai, and not the slightest connection with the faith of mortals. The birth of the gods must be traced back to a more distant past, perhaps even before the mortals of Genkai were born!"
Ouranos's words silenced the gods.
They clearly had no idea that Ouranos had done so many unimaginable things in the past.
As fellow gods, they only treated Genkai as a playground for the gods, and none of them had tried to figure out the many hidden truths of Genkai, let alone try to understand the origin of the gods and Divine Power, like the Heavenly God Ouranos.
Facing the reactions of the gods, Ouranos spoke calmly:
"In short, my research reached a bottleneck after the appearance of the Three Great Quests, because the Three Great Quests, as monsters, harbored an unprecedented hatred for the mortal race that gave birth to them. That hatred even surpassed the Dungeon's malice towards the gods.
The reason this happened, I later found out when examining the experimental records, was that the souls of the Three Great Quests were extremely special existences.
They suffered all kinds of torment during their infancy as mortals. Having no place in mortal society, they became my experimental subjects.
This was especially true for the one-eyed Black Dragon.
Its soul came from an ordinary little girl from the period of human slavery.
Having been bought and sold and passed around since childhood, she suffered the most tragic pain. When I took her in, she had already lost her hands and feet, and even had only one eye left, turning into an Icharus while on the verge of death.
However, perhaps it was precisely because of her overly tragic experience that the Icharus she transformed into continuously grew from a weak Dragon Girl, all the way to becoming one of the Three Great Quests that shrouded the entire world, and even transformed into the one-eyed Black Dragon that completely destroyed the entire world.
Its hatred for the mortal race far exceeded my expectations, and it even once brought the entire Genkai to complete destruction.
Fortunately, at the critical moment, the Xenos race sacrificed themselves and, together with the strongest human of that era, Albert, successfully sealed the one-eyed Black Dragon in the Dragon Valley, preventing the fate of total destruction."
Ouranos spoke quietly about the truth of the past, and then continued: "In short, those past events led to my previous failure. In the years after the birth of the Three Great Quests, my research on Divine Power was never smooth, because the destruction caused by the Three Great Quests to the human world was too severe, resulting in enormous consequences.
I realized that if I wanted to continue my research, I had to find a way to resolve the Three Great Quests.
So I created Orario, and in the process gradually realized that the soul is the source of Divine Power's birth.
Only by creating a sufficiently resilient soul could an individual close to a god be born.
However, a soul with strength alone but not enough will is also insufficient. The Three Great Quests possessed god-level power but could not use Divine Power or give birth to Authorities, and this is the reason.
Therefore, I realized that if I used the city of Orario to temper the souls of a portion of mortals again and again, continuously improving them, it might be possible for mortals to gradually approach the realm of the gods, until they reached the place I desired—the moment when mortals could also grasp Divine Power.
In fact, I was almost successful with this goal a few years ago.
During the peak of the Zeus Familia and the Hera Familia, when all the adventurers in Orario had continuously become stronger through countless cycles of reincarnation, until individuals who were almost at the pinnacle of mortals were born.
At that instant, I realized that I was incredibly close to success.
So, I took advantage of the situation and launched the campaign to subjugate the Three Great Quests.
Not only could those three world-destroying calamities be eradicated at the source, but I could also use this opportunity to conduct an experiment, to see if mortals could truly reach the limit of an individual as I had envisioned.
Unfortunately, I failed.
The Zeus Familia and the Hera Familia were indeed almost invincible Familia, but their strength had its limits.
Just defeating one of the calamities was enough to almost cause them to fall apart, and when facing the second calamity, they had already sacrificed half of their members.
By the time they challenged the final calamity, the one-eyed Black Dragon, the Zeus Familia and the Hera Familia were almost completely defeated, simply no match for the one-eyed Black Dragon.
At the same time, it was also during those battles that I gradually realized that mere tempering through combat could not give birth to a truly ultimate individual. Defeating monsters through combat and completing great feats was not enough for the Falna to reach an individual capable of creating Divine Power.
However, it was also during the confrontation with the calamities that I discovered that human souls are attracted to and aggregate with each other during moments of extreme confrontation."
"Human souls are attracted to and aggregate with each other during confrontation?"
Hearing Ouranos's words, Astraea frowned.
She vaguely sensed something, but for a moment, she dared not believe her own conjecture.
Ouranos, however, described it calmly:
"Yes, when dying in battle, or when going through a life-and-death struggle with countless comrades, souls will coalesce in an extreme frenzy.
This is something that is not affected by human will.
In fact, similar things are not uncommon. The simplest example is when adventurers kill adventurers of the same level, they often absorb the experience points of the opposing adventurers, gathering the great feats that condensed the opponent's Falna onto themselves.
If you know a god named Kali, and the nation called the Battle Nation Telskyura, you will understand that adventurers can gain experience points and great feats not only by killing monsters but also by killing other adventurers.
The reason this idea came to me has to go back to the Three Great Quests.
I suddenly realized that since the Three Great Quests could almost become god-like beings by killing a large number of monsters and adventurers, through large-scale slaughter of humans, could mortals similarly become transcendent individuals through similar actions?
After forming this idea, I almost immediately conducted an experiment.
Regarding the content of the experiment, I believe the gods of the previous era should all know about it, which was the incident called the Evil Gods' Return.
About a few years ago, a large number of evil gods in Orario were forcibly returned to Tenkai, and at the same time, most of the adventurers from the Familia under the evil gods were executed in the process.
I think most people only know that the adventurers of the evil god Familia died, but they do not know that after the death of those adventurers, almost all the surviving orderly-faction adventurers in Orario leveled up, including the Loki Familia and the Freya Familia.
Almost all adventurers gained a level during that process. And this was the development that happened exactly as I had anticipated."
Ouranos's words completely stunned the gods.
Astraea immediately questioned: "The Evil Gods' Return incident was your doing? Impossible! That should have been Erebus's plan!"
The Erebus that Astraea referred to was a god most familiar to the gods and adventurers of the previous era in Orario.
He was once the core of Evilus, the leading figure in the era of the Dark Familia after Orario was established.
However, only a very small number of gods and adventurers knew that Erebus was never an evil god; he was essentially a benevolent god.
The reason he became the leader of Evilus was to realize the so-called 'necessary evil'.
Simply put, his philosophy was that instead of waiting for Evilus to regroup and make a comeback, it would be better for him to proactively become the new leader of Evilus, directly leading the insane Evilus to a major confrontation with the Orderly Faction of Orario.
He became a 'necessary evil' to inspire the adventurers of Orario and nurture the heroes of the next generation, pretending to cooperate with the Dark Familia, opposing the various Familia of Orario as a dark villain, giving trials to the adventurers of Orario, and becoming a stepping stone for the new era.
For this, he didn't even mind being treated as an evil god.
For this, he even invited the only two surviving top Lv.8 adventurers from the Zeus Familia and the Hera Familia, Alfia and Zald, to cooperate, allowing them to perform an unprecedented baptism for Orario through a grand war.
The final result was the collective return of almost all the evil gods of Evilus.
Although the Orderly Faction adventurers suffered heavy casualties, the strength of all the surviving adventurers increased.
Ottar and Leon became Lv.7 existences during that period.
In a sense, that was a glorious past, and it was also the time when the Astraea Familia went from being a mediocre Familia to becoming a top Orderly Faction Familia in Orario. So Astraea naturally cared very much about this.
"Erebus... Indeed, that incident was the work of that god who loved to play the 'Ally of Justice'. His methods were extremely decisive and ruthless, a rare existence even in Orario over a thousand years. But precisely because of this, he was very smoothly utilized by me.
As I had envisioned, he conducted a rare experiment in Orario and yielded the experimental result I desired."
Ouranos spoke quietly, recounting the truth that astonished the gods.
"Erebus's actions proved an important point to me: that the fanaticism and sacrifice of a group of adventurers can allow the surviving adventurers to rise to the next level.
Almost all the Orderly Faction who won at that time gained one level, and some particularly special and excellent individuals even showed signs of gaining two levels.
As a result, I naturally began to consider a possibility: what would happen if I recreated a similar environment and this time forced the adventurers to continuously fight until only one was left?
Or even more directly, if an external force were to cause most of the adventurers to die, could the sole surviving adventurer, having absorbed the enormous great feats and experience points, break through all limitations in one fell swoop and reach a realm mortals have never reached?!"
"..."
When Ouranos's words fell, all the gods in Babel couldn't help but gasp for air for a moment.
The gods never imagined that Ouranos would be so insane.
He actually wanted to use thousands of adventurers as sacrifices to create the only adventurer who might break through the limitations of mortals and achieve Divine Power.
"Wait... that means, Ouranos, the reason you ignited the volcano on Orsa Island with Hestia's Authority is..."
Loki immediately connected everything happening on Orsa Island and looked at Ouranos in shock.
Ouranos, however, nodded frankly:
"That's right. I prepared it precisely so that all the adventurers on that island would become sacrifices, gathering the great feats and experience points that had been tempered to the extreme, and channeling them into a single individual, allowing that individual to break through the limits of Divine Power!
After thousands of years, countless research and failures, and watching hope slip away time and time again, I have now finally reached the forefront of all that research.
That will be a realm that all mortals and gods in the world have never set foot in, the theoretical limit designed to explore the birth of Divine Power, the source of the gods, and the origin of all things.
Yes, this is my sole goal, the effort I have made as the Heavenly God to pursue the truth of the world.
For this, even if I am scorned by the world, or accused by all of you, my plan will not stop.
It will burn everything, turning it into the seedbed to ignite the first light of Divine Power in Genkai!
That will be the birth of the world's first new god, after a long history and countless ages!"
Ouranos quietly completed his narrative in a calm and indifferent voice.
Hearing the words of the Heavenly God, all the gods in Babel fell silent.
By now, no god could understand Ouranos's thinking, and no one could accept his overly advanced and insane ideology!
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