Chapter 259: The Alien God
In this timeline where Rowe had always been active, Anastasia existed as well.
She was the daughter of the last Tsar, caught in flames during an era of upheaval, and she died there.
Lives diverge across different worldlines. That was a given. Yet at this moment, Anastasia, merged into this world together with the Lostbelt that Ivan the Terrible had devoured, received the memories of her other self from this world.
Along with them came the panic.
The fear.
When Tsarist Russia collapsed, she had still been young. She watched the empire fall. She watched her parents die. The last Tsar was brutal and terrifying, yet to the child he was simply strict, and he was simply family.
Anastasia was not innocent. She had realized that long before the flames, when she overheard her three older sisters speaking in low voices.
Feudal emperors were always alienated from the people. Oppressors, even when they never dirtied their hands directly. Even if they smiled and spoke of duty, the luxury of royalty was built on exploitation.
Understanding that as an idea was one thing.
Feeling the pressure of popular resistance.
Feeling death draw close.
That was different.
The Anastasia of this world had been afraid.
And what about her other self?
The Grand Duchess of the Lostbelt had lived no better.
Ivan the Terrible had transformed everyone into beasts, ruling the snow covered world for centuries. The first Tsar became the last Tsar. Anastasia, who should never have been born, was born anyway, on the eve of the world's final collapse.
She was the last crystallization of humanity in that Lostbelt.
A seed raised in wind and snow.
The only one meant to bloom when spring arrived.
Yet even with the Tsar's absolute protection, she had been born only to witness desolation.
Lonely.
Isolated.
Ivan would protect her, but the Beast God never spoke. Countless beasts guarded her, but their roars could not become language. No conversation. No comfort. No warmth that could answer back.
Solitude became pain that never ended.
She was born waiting for the end.
All things would perish.
Everything would collapse.
After the Gluttonous Tsar devoured the world with his majestic body, Anastasia fell into sleep that felt eternal.
Until now.
Until this moment.
"Is this… spring?"
The snow beneath her feet melted. Anastasia lifted her eyes, and what met her was an azure sky she had never seen, and green mountains and rivers that seemed impossible.
Snow white hair cascaded down her back. In her arms she held a doll formed from a blizzard fairy. Strands drifted across her forehead, half hiding a delicate face. A magnificent court gown wrapped her slender figure, its open neckline revealing fair skin. On tiptoe, her long legs showed briefly beneath the swaying skirt as she raised her hands, as if she could catch sunlight itself.
Warmth.
Something she had never touched.
Something she had never owned.
She had it now.
And yet, the moment joy rose, she felt lost.
This was Russia.
But it was modern.
There was no Tsarist Russia here.
And there was no Ivan the Terrible.
Whether it was the Anastasia of this world, or the Anastasia of the Lostbelt, it felt the same.
Here, she had no home.
Spring had arrived.
Where was the princess of the winter empire supposed to go?
She stared at the lush land. After the first burst of happiness, hesitation followed like a shadow.
Should she step forward?
Should she truly integrate into this world?
But there was nowhere to return if she turned back.
Where could she go?
The bewildered princess stood still, facing the sun.
Then her eyes widened.
Within that sunlight, she saw a figure woven from endless radiance.
She saw the Lord.
The Russian imperial family were devout believers.
The Lord asked her, calmly, as if it were the most natural question in the world.
"Are you yearning for protection?"
"Protection…"
Anastasia could not deny it.
She was yearning for it.
No matter how much suffering she had endured, no matter how lonely she had been, she had always been protected by someone.
The daughter of the last Tsar had only truly stepped outside her ivory tower at the moment she died.
The princess protected by Ivan the Terrible had never stood alone.
And yet she was still the Tsar's daughter.
"No one in this world can protect anyone forever. The only one who can truly protect you is yourself."
"Come."
In a haze, Anastasia took a step forward, following her own yearning.
Her eyes widened again.
In that haze, she returned to the past.
To a very, very long time ago.
She was the last princess standing at the crossroads of an era. She stood at a court ball, magnificent in her gown, bathing in envy, longing, admiration.
Everyone looked smaller in her presence.
But one person did not belong there.
A figure in a grey brown military uniform extended a hand.
He did not carry aristocratic affectation.
He did not pretend at elegance.
He was not inviting the noble princess to dance.
He was inviting her to step out of the splendid ivory tower.
He was not a noble.
He was a revolutionary who had infiltrated the court.
Anastasia learned that later.
Yet she never regretted taking his hand, because after she left the ball, she saw the real world. She learned the suffering of the lower classes. And as the last princess, she stepped into the revolution.
Not waiting to be consumed by flames.
Leaping into fire by her own will.
She walked through battlefields.
She remained delicate, still beautiful, still the object of envy, and yet the last princess had taken up a sword.
She revolutionized herself.
She was the first to tear down her own tower.
Tsarist Russia collapsed completely.
What rose afterward was a nation that belonged to the people.
The Anastasia recorded in history died.
But within the glow of war, a revolutionary named Anastasia was born.
The Tsar's blood still ran in her veins.
That blood was never glory.
It was sin.
Only she could cleanse herself.
Even if the one who first led her out of the tower had long since died.
In the new world, she wore a crown again.
Not a royal crown.
The crown of a reformer.
Anastasia opened her eyes.
The gown was still magnificent.
The girl holding the doll was still beautiful.
But the timeline had changed.
Beneath the fragile appearance, a heart that could surge had already been forged.
…
In the vast starry sky, Rowe withdrew the Sword of Gluttony.
Beside him, Ying Zheng stood beneath the Epang Palace in his human form, stroking his chin with a smile.
"What a good story. A fusion and correction of history."
"But it seems you have acquired another ill fated romance."
"Me?" Rowe raised a brow, amused. "Accusations require evidence."
"He truly is a heartless man…"
"Not heartless. I am merely a guide." Rowe replied evenly. "Most of the decisions were hers, weren't they?"
The Russian Lostbelt beneath their feet had vanished completely, assimilated into the world.
Anastasia was the seed Ivan left behind. She carried his last hope, the last lingering spring of that dead world. With her assimilation, the worldline's correction was inevitable.
And because Rowe guided her into the world in the name of the Lord, the corrected timeline inevitably contained Rowe's shadow.
The revolutionary who extended a hand to the princess.
But those details were, in truth, secondary.
The fusion was complete.
And it was Anastasia's chosen life.
The correction merely gave her the chance to make the choices she most desired, within a single continuity of experience.
A princess born from royalty could still carry kindness.
The Tsar's blood could still grant the courage to act decisively when it mattered.
The Anastasia who appeared in Russia still looked fragile, still dressed like a relic of a vanished court.
Yet she had found her footing.
And now.
Rowe raised his hand.
The Sword of Gluttony felt sharper, more responsive, as if it had grown a will.
Gluttony was amplified.
Activated.
It had been the same with Wrath when Surtr fell. Only by slaying the corresponding calamity with the corresponding sword could the power be integrated into the world.
The world grew.
And the sword awakened.
The activation was shared across the seven blades. Wrath strengthened Gluttony. Gluttony strengthened the others.
The same principle would hold for the remaining five.
So next.
"Is it my turn?" Ying Zheng's pearl curtain swayed as he smiled, unrestrained and bright.
The Great Wall around the Epang Palace trembled with his voice.
He, too, was meant to be one of the calamities.
One of the seven principles of destruction emerging from the Sea of Stars.
Ying Zheng, the eternal emperor who ruled Earth for over two thousand years, judging the world with his own justice.
His corresponding principle was Arrogance.
Rowe drew a long, narrow ancient sword.
But against this insider, he did not need to fight at all.
The moment the blade cleared its sheath, Ying Zheng released his power willingly.
The Eternal Great Qin Lostbelt integrated instantly.
"If not for helping you deal with Ivan the Terrible and Surtr, I would have done this long ago."
Ying Zheng smiled.
"I am an Emperor, surpassing the Three Sovereigns. A hegemon transcending the Five Emperors."
"I swore to protect this world from decline for ten thousand years."
"And now, I have fulfilled that promise."
"Next, it is up to you."
"My friend."
Rowe gripped the Sword of Arrogance. A dragon coiled along the blade, and the phantom of the Ancestral Dragon surged past.
The Great Wall around the planet vanished.
At the same time, the shadow of the Epang Palace fell across the land.
Arrogance activated.
All incoming enemies would become nourishment.
The world would grow stronger.
More stable.
Able to welcome even harsher invaders.
"I thought you could be a little more patient." Rowe said, looking toward the distance.
The Sea of Stars gleamed. Seven sword shadows circled him, swaying like a crown.
And there, a new presence appeared.
It was not the fourth calamity he expected, Arjuna, the God of Eternal Destruction.
Instead, a pale phantom rose.
Like a tree.
Yet its roots were embedded directly into the Imaginary Number Space, connecting to infinite worldlines, drinking energy from countless branches to grow.
It was alive.
It was a living existence.
And more than that.
"You, the instigator of this disaster, came in a hurry." Rowe was not surprised. "Are you worried I have absorbed too much?"
This calamity had felt foretold from the start. The Horned God's arrival had seemed natural. The rest did not.
To claim they were merely coveting the energy of this world was strained. The future was still the future. Even now, Rowe's world had not yet surpassed all others in a way that would justify such desperation.
And yet Chaos had come, an existence whose true nature surpassed stellar class.
Only one thing could pull a stellar class entity.
Not this world.
But the thing in front of him.
Rooted in the Sea of Stars.
Stealing the energy of countless planets.
Compressing what should have been infinite into something finite.
"The true reason pruning exists."
Rowe spoke softly.
"An Alien God from beyond this domain."
At the instant his words fell, the pale tree shuddered. An invisible eye opened within it, slow and deliberate.
"When did you discover me?" it asked.
"Guess." Rowe grinned, genuinely pleased.
When had he discovered it?
He had suspected it for a long time.
When he stepped into the Sea of Stars, something had felt wrong.
In theory, the Sea of Stars, the origin connecting all Earths across parallel possibilities, should be infinite.
An infinite Earth should mean infinite energy.
Yet that contradicted the pruning mechanism.
If there was infinity, why would worlds be pruned for lacking energy?
There was only one answer.
The energy had been stolen.
And Rowe's actions, making this world shine, influencing the Sea of Stars, attempting to establish this Earth as the main world among all branches, was a direct threat to the thief.
Between them, it was a struggle over the Sea of Stars itself.
"It seems I underestimated you." The tree's eye gleamed.
"You weave human order and the world's order into a seven layered ring, outline it as a sword, and with the sword as a mouth you devour calamity."
"Three layers in, you already wield the power of a top tier planetary class."
Top tier planetary.
The pinnacle of a planet.
The extreme expression of a Star Creating God.
A height even above the Rowe who began this war.
And if Rowe devoured the fourth layer, absorbing Arjuna, the principle of Sloth, he would complete the leap from planetary to stellar system class.
Then, layered with Mooncell authority, he might truly be able to resist Chaos.
After all, Chaos was only three percent.
The tree recognized it instantly.
It saw the method.
It saw the purpose.
"You know your goal will not succeed." it said. "Because I will not allow it."
"So you were forced to appear." Rowe's voice was calm.
Reality was not a game. There was no law that said a hero must grind step by step while an enemy politely waited.
As the true instigator, it would never allow Rowe to devour seven calamities and complete the world's advancement.
From the start, Rowe had not been fighting the seven.
He had been forcing the eighth onto the field.
Because if Rowe was allowed to grow, the day would come when the thief would be devoured by the sword.
Seven radiances gathered.
Seven glories merged into one.
A hazy, chaotic light and shadow fell into Rowe's hand.
The eighth.
Vanity.
Rowe grinned.
"Even unfinished, it is close."
"A full power Alien God."
"You hold stellar class energy, but your output is capped at top tier planetary, isn't it?"
He lifted the light in his hand.
A sword still taking shape.
A world still growing.
And a predator finally showing its eye.