Chapter 262: Chaldea Connecting All Worlds
At this point, the only beings who would try to stop Rowe from ending his own life and reaching the summit of the Throne of Heroes were the Great Old Ones that existed beyond the cosmic rift.
"Is it because of the power of the chaos core I seized earlier?"
"Exactly." The Horned God replied. "The Great Old Ones dwell in the deepest abyss on the dark side of the cosmos. They appear chaotic, but that is only because beings on the surface cannot directly perceive their existence or touch their consciousness."
"In truth, wherever existence is found, consciousness and spirituality are found as well."
The voice of the dead Celtic supreme god carried none of the mad despair Rowe had once imagined. Instead, it was filled with a severe and radiant rationality.
He paused, then continued.
"The Great Old Ones also know fear."
"They fear your death, because once you die, it will alarm their source, the true chaos core, the origin of Azathoth."
"Because you may take Azathoth's place. If that happens, how could he continue sleeping?"
"So they would never allow it. Even if I died here, they would seize the chance to intercept my consciousness into the dark side of the cosmos, even if it meant turning me into one of them?" Rowe immediately understood what the Great Old Ones would do.
All Great Old Ones were conceived and born from the chaos core called Azathoth. He was the source of the Gods of Chaos, the aggregate of the cosmic dark side. His awakening would use all Great Old Ones as vessels.
All Great Old Ones would die.
Worlds were like dreams. When the dream ended, the world collapsed.
That was Azathoth's true power.
"To think the self destruction path I was so obsessed with has now become a restriction. Those Great Old Ones are absurd." Rowe felt a headache, and at the same time, relief.
Relief that the Horned God had come.
Relief that the Horned God had stopped his death.
Otherwise, by now, he might really have become a member of the cosmic dark side, one of the Great Old Ones.
And then dying would have become even harder.
"I truly owe you thanks, Horned God Cernunnos."
"There is no need." The colossal figure of the dead supreme god stood within the Sea of Stars, his voice reverberating outward. "I only hope you can save us."
"Save dead worlds? That is not a simple thing."
"But for you, it is possible, is it not?" Cernunnos lowered his gaze. His eyes flickered in the Sea of Stars like burning starlight, yet they were gradually dimming and turning insubstantial.
His eyes were fading.
His body was fading.
All of him was like that.
The power that had just allowed Rowe a single moment of reversal had clearly come from him.
That one blow had exhausted the Horned God's remaining energy. He was now on the verge of vanishing.
And yet he still smiled.
"You possess the spark that can make worlds burn again."
Rowe did not deny it.
He lowered the Sword of Rupture so that it no longer pointed toward the Extraterrestrial God, then looked up at the disappearing figure of Horned God Cernunnos, watching the embodiment of a dead supreme god dissolve.
The colossal body collapsed and scattered apart, like the giants of ancient myth who became all things and founded the world with their own remains.
"Perhaps we were wrong from the very beginning, Gaia, Alaya."
"Hm. Wrong, were we?"
"Do not start now. I already know."
Listening to the two Counter Forces answer in their own utterly different manners, Rowe smiled.
Yes, they had been wrong.
Their initial judgment that Horned God Cernunnos was a god of resentment carrying the death of a world had been mistaken.
Cernunnos did bear the death of a world.
But he carried no resentment.
Only hope.
A spark of hope.
A sliver of salvation.
A heart worthy of a supreme god of a pantheon.
"Cernunnos, this request of yours."
"I accept it."
Rowe closed his eyes, then opened them again.
Lava colored gold burned in his pupils. Even amid countless parallel worlds and the scattered stars of the Sea of Stars, his gaze shone with a fierce brilliance.
He had not died.
But he had found a new path.
Saving Lostbelts.
As a Heroic Spirit, no matter where he died, no matter in which Lostbelt he died, he could still reach the same destination.
"This can also be counted as the final journey."
His ascent in this world was complete.
This time, nothing could stop him.
The Counter Force could not, and would not.
The Great Old Ones could not either, now that the situation was clear.
He was not without a method to counter their interception.
He only needed to prepare in advance.
"Are your enemies them?"
A clear voice reached him.
Rowe opened his eyes fully and looked ahead.
The Phantasmal Tree had stopped swaying. After hearing the words Great Old Ones, the Extraterrestrial God had paused, and only now did she react.
Clearly, as a supreme lifeform from an alien cosmic civilization, she also knew the Great Old Ones existed.
She watched Rowe retract Ea, take two steps back, and exhale.
Her body was already damaged.
After that, there was no power left for further combat.
No matter what, reality was built on matter. Once the Spirit Origin that anchored the spirit into material form was damaged, it became difficult to draw out one's power.
That was why she had stopped resisting.
She had lost.
If one must lose, then lose with dignity.
More than that, Rowe's true enemy shocked her.
And his words shocked her even more.
"They are not worthy."
His opponent had never truly been the Great Old Ones.
The only one who might be worthy.
Perhaps only Azathoth.
"I see. This time I lost, and yes, I underestimated humanity."
The Extraterrestrial God spoke slowly. Like Cernunnos before her, the body she possessed was becoming translucent as its damaged Spirit Origin gave way.
Yet she still smiled.
"But just like you, I do not fight alone."
"Soon, an existence no weaker than my complete main body will descend and manifest."
Supreme lifeforms of alien civilizations also had companions.
She also possessed emotions.
Perhaps not as rich as human emotions, perhaps not as tangled, but emotions nonetheless.
"Then I will look forward to it." Rowe spun Ea, and the spreading red storm completely crushed the Extraterrestrial God before him.
Around them, countless Heroes who had already stepped into the Sea of Stars stopped and looked over.
They were Heroes.
But now they were Heroes of the universe.
The Throne itself was a record of the universe.
However, the end of the Throne that Rowe had drawn down before contained only the record of Earth on that Throne, only Heroes born from Earth.
That had only been true before.
Now that they had broken free of planetary limits and extended into the cosmos, the Earth records and the power they manifested would become tightly linked to the scale of the world itself.
The stronger the world.
The more prosperous the civilization.
The stronger they became.
It was a path where civilization and the individual reinforced each other.
A path where glory illuminated the galaxy.
To ride through the Sea of Stars and cross the universe.
That was only the beginning.
The Sea of Stars was infinite and boundless within a domain of bounded infinity.
They were still far from truly encompassing it all.
And that was precisely one of the major reasons Rowe accepted Horned God Cernunnos's commission.
There was one unavoidable obstacle in the Sea of Stars.
Lostbelts.
The remnants of dead worlds.
They drifted like dead stars at the edges of the Sea of Stars. Only by illuminating them all could the road that lit the galaxies truly be completed.
Rowe stepped forward slowly.
Infinite Heroic Spirit radiance circled the surroundings, covering all the Sea of Stars the eye could reach.
But before him, the branches and roots of the towering giant tree still stretched endlessly into deeper regions of the Sea of Stars, into territories they still could not touch.
"Extraterrestrial God."
"It seems I must thank you again."
The Extraterrestrial God was gone, but the Phantasmal Tree remained.
She had only been the planter. The tree had long since taken root in the Sea of Stars and spread through nearly the whole of it. It had not fully influenced the entire Sea of Stars, but as a passage, it was enough.
That was why Rowe had to thank her.
Because next, he would use it as a staircase.
A staircase that connected all realms and encompassed all Earths across the entire Type Moon universe.
"Manifest, the final Greater Grail."
The seven deadly sins, formed by the convergence and manifestation of seven layers of radiance, encircled the edge of the world woven from the brilliance of Heroic Spirits. The extended threads all flowed toward the Phantasmal Tree at the center.
Those threads were the outflow of the seven deadly sins.
The discharge of human order.
And even more than that, the manifested main body of the Throne.
Infinite records.
Infinite information.
"Can even that be done?"
At the sudden question, Rowe paused. He only turned his eyes toward the figure now beside him, and smiled.
"Why not?"
"In theory, the Phantasmal Tree is already an empty vessel. An empty vessel that draws infinite energy, plus the information records of the Throne. Is that not a Holy Grail?"
"Of course, this was not my original intention."
"But now that things have reached this point, I can only adapt, can I not?"
"Adapt? Is that what you call repeatedly ruining my plans?" the person beside him sighed.
Her crimson lips parted slightly. Her breath was fragrant. Silver white hair rose in the wind, revealing a body of overwhelming beauty beneath her robe.
"In this world, plans always change. The ability to adapt, and to use every accident to shape an inevitable outcome, is necessary." Rowe answered carefully.
She did not respond at once.
She only lifted her crimson eyes and surveyed the vast Sea of Stars and the radiance of countless manifested Heroes.
Then she smiled.
"Hm. This is not bad at all."
"I am once again conquered by your wisdom, Mister Rowe?"
A familiar smiling voice sounded.
"All right, Miss Einzbern."
Rowe clapped his hands.
Einzbern.
Or rather, Athena.
The so called Greater Grail had been her work from the beginning, and the magical inheritance left behind near the start of the Common Era had also been for this purpose.
The so called Third Magic family had always been under her control.
Those homunculi had imitated the original pseudo Third Magician and created one magical puppet after another.
They continued the family line.
They continued building Holy Grail Wars.
But Athena's original intent had only been to find a method for Rowe to fulfill his long cherished wish, then leap out at the end of the Holy Grail War and claim the final victory.
What happened later had gone far beyond her expectations.
The Holy Grail War itself could no longer proceed. Once Heroes began manifesting openly in the world, naturally very few people still cared about the countless Holy Grails.
Athena had been helpless.
Surprised.
And also delighted.
Perspective.
That was the difference.
That was the distance between ways of thinking.
And it was exactly what the Goddess of Wisdom admired.
"So what do you intend to do next?" Athena looked at Rowe, tilted her head, and filled her crimson eyes with anticipation.
Plans changed.
She was genuinely looking forward to whatever greater change Rowe would bring next.
Rowe did not answer immediately. He first looked ahead.
As power swelled, Gilgamesh in the distance looked ever more overbearing while arguing with Ramses the Second. Artoria led the Storm Legion in a charge across the Sea of Stars. Artemis rode the Moon Boat and surfed through the star sea.
They were all becoming stronger.
Their overall scale was rising.
And as homologous selves from different worlds converged, they would continue to grow stronger.
Naturally, their strength would also make Rowe stronger.
They were part of the world.
And Rowe, as the holder of the seven deadly sins, held the whole world in his grasp.
It was expanding to an extreme.
But it still had not reached its peak.
It was still nowhere near Rowe's fundamental power.
It had not even touched the true boundary of the universe.
"Next, I will use the Phantasmal Tree as the source of the Greater Grail for all worlds and place it at the outflow gate of the Throne."
Rowe spoke slowly.
"From now on, the manifestation of Heroes from any other world and any time and space must pass through this Greater Grail."
"And we, all our Heroic Servants, will also be able to descend into every world through this Greater Grail."
Compared to searching for worlds one by one, it was better to let worlds come to them.
That would be the superior method.
"So I will also use this Greater Grail to establish an organization."
"An organization that links the Earths of all worlds."
Its name would be.
"Chaldea."
The original Chaldea.
A Chaldea that connected all realms and saved the remnants of worlds in the Lostbelts.
A new staircase.
And it would begin here.
...
"So this is the situation in your universe?"
"That is right. This is my origin, the beginning of the glorious galactic universe."
Inside a facility built atop a towering mountain several thousand meters high, surrounded on all sides by cold silver white steel, a blonde girl beamed at the question from the person in front of her.
"I am the strongest Saber in the galactic universe."
The red haired girl with the high ponytail and the pink haired girl whose short hair nearly covered one eye exchanged a glance, both wearing expressions that were hard to describe.
"In other words, you are also a Servant, but your origin is different from ours. Is that correct?"
Another figure approached, a young woman in a medieval court dress holding a porcelain cup, with the aroma of coffee drifting around her.
Her black hair curled slightly, and surprise showed openly on her face.
"It is not completely accurate to say different. That universe has now become the source of all universes, Miss Da Vinci."