Chapter 195
Chapter 195
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 195
Chapter Title: The Fake (1)
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“The highest synchronization rate?”
Jamie asked Gav with a face that showed he had no idea what that meant.
“Why is the synchronization rate so high?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Gav replied with an utterly shameless look of confidence.
“The important thing is that our synchronization rate is incomparably higher than that of anyone who’s ever come to me before.”
“So, how do you know that?”
Jamie looked at the First King with an incredulous expression.
For now, the memories that had roughly settled in his mind were definitely this guy’s.
He didn’t know why these memories had suddenly come to him, but it was probably because he had put on the Crown of Omniscience.
Who would’ve thought it wasn’t just a record-storage artifact...
He had long known it was an artifact with its own ego, but he never imagined it would orchestrate something like this on its own initiative.
And this guy’s true identity kept nagging at him.
The memories that had wormed their way in called him the “First King.”
In other words, he might know the history from before all records were erased—over ten thousand years ago.
“As I said, I don’t know. I just felt it. Your presence! Don’t you feel it too?”
“Not at all.”
“Hah! Why not?”
“Even if you ask why, I don’t have an answer for you.”
It was the same right now.
Gav seemed to keep sensing something, but Jamie felt nothing from him.
Just sorting through the flood of this guy’s memories in his head was overwhelming enough.
“That’s a shame. But the high synchronization rate remains unchanged, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe it’s good for you, but not for me. So, what’s the benefit of a high synchronization rate? Does it mean you can share more knowledge with me?”
“Such trivialities aren’t important.”
“What nonsense is that? Why do you think I came all the way here?”
He had marched to this place to glimpse even a fraction of the knowledge promised by its omniscience.
“And what are you, exactly? I get that you’re the First King, Gav Illidan, more or less. But why are you sealed inside the Crown of Omniscience?”
“There were all sorts of complicated circumstances~”
“How did you end up here? You, who lived ten thousand years ago.”
“Hey~ I’m kind of a great man who laid the foundations of the current world. Can’t you be a little nicer with your words? You’re a descendant of mine, in a way?”
“Don’t try to slyly change the subject. Answer my question. Did the mages who used you before know your true identity?”
At that question, Gav grinned.
“No way.”
“Then you’re only telling me?”
“Because you’re special.”
Gav circled around Jamie as he spoke.
“You’re special. I don’t know why our synchronization rate is so high, but who cares about that. So, I can tell you things.”
“So, why? What makes you trust me?”
“Hey~ Don’t be such a buzzkill~”
Jamie shot a displeased look at Gav, who had even thrown an arm around his shoulder.
Gav, with his brazen personality, just grinned cheekily in response.
“Besides, aren’t you curious? About how the world truly began.”
“Suddenly?”
“Not curious? Most of the mages who came to me asked about the beginning of the world first thing.”
“And you can answer that?”
“Of course. I’m omniscient, after all.”
At the word “omniscient,” Jamie smirked and said,
“Then show me. The beginning of the world.”
“I knew you’d be interested.”
Gav snapped his fingers, and the vast plain rippled dramatically, beginning to transform into a barren wasteland.
It was land devoid of anything.
No beasts, no trees, no grass.
Nothing that could be called life existed.
Except for one person.
“That person...”
On this dead land, where not even a puddle could be found, a man draped in tattered cloth walked.
He trudged aimlessly across the cracked, parched earth, staining his wounded bare feet with blood.
But there was something odd about the man’s skin.
Caked in dust, it was hard to see clearly, but he wasn’t ordinary. He had blue skin.
Jamie turned to look at Gav, who was smiling.
“It’s me.”
“Why were you wandering alone in a place like that?”
“I’d lost my way, you could say?”
“You...”
“Questions later. Keep watching.”
Gav snapped his fingers again.
The scene shifted once more.
This time, there were a few more people, and crude buildings made of hardened sand clustered together to form a small tribe.
Gav was the ruler there.
In an ignorant era where people were discriminated against and persecuted for minor differences, this sight was astonishing.
The reason was simple.
“I was the only one who could use magic.”
Magic allowed them to skip several early stages of civilization.
There were many other tribes besides this one, but none could compare to Gav’s.
Time accelerated, and the scenes from that era began to flow by rapidly.
Gav’s tribe absorbed the surrounding tribes in an instant.
Many people gathered under him, and a small city-state was born in the blink of an eye.
Gav did not age.
Just like his skin, he was different from ordinary humans.
Thus, he was extraordinary, and people began to revere him as a god.
Jamie furrowed his brow but continued watching for now.
The city-state grew larger and larger.
It absorbed surrounding tribes and even other city-states.
This was the dawn of civilization, the birth of a great empire that would span a thousand years across the entire continent.
“Changing my appearance as needed, I ruled as king and governed the nation continuously.”
Gav was a being who had long escaped the shackles of lifespan.
No one noticed.
To begin with, Gav was the greatest mage, and the mages of that time lacked the skill to discern it.
But even the Thousand-Year Empire was not eternal.
Unlike the previous emperors, who were mostly wise rulers, the ones who ruled the final hundred years were utterly incompetent.
Gradually, the nobles gained influence, and problems erupted everywhere.
Countless corrupt officials arose, and the people suffered terribly. Revolutions broke out in various places, but the puppet emperors were mere dolls of the nobles.
With free control over the armies, the weaker revolutionary forces were simply crushed.
And that was when the “Church of the Twelve Gods” appeared.
They emerged out of nowhere.
The followers of the Twelve Gods, scattered across different regions, comforted the suffering people and preached their faith.
It was around this time that the empire, corrupt yet still holding firm power, began to crumble.
“It took only a hundred years. The time it took to realize that the great empire I had painstakingly built was nothing more than a sandcastle.”
The empire that had dominated the entire continent splintered into dozens of nations.
From then on, the continent was divided into five.
The Central Continent , the Eastern Continent <cariren>, the Western Continent <arisha>, the Northern Continent <olbia>, and the Southern Continent <brion>.
The Twelve Churches, which divided these five continents among themselves, effectively seized hegemony over the continent.
There, time stopped.
Jamie’s mind was filled with thoughts.
Should I take all this at face value?
Honestly, it wasn’t the picture he had expected.
He had half-jokingly thought that the “beginning of the world” might show the era when Diablo Volpir was alive.
Even that wasn’t truly the beginning.
There had been history before it.
But what Gav showed was the time when he first pioneered civilization on this land.
It made sense, he supposed.
The Crown of Omniscience was just called that by people of the current era. He hadn’t expected much.
He had only hoped it might reveal something about the era before the current civilization.
But...
The Twelve Gods didn’t exist from the very beginning.
He knew about the Thousand-Year Empire from history books.
But records from that time were scarce.
It was unavoidable.
Ten thousand years was an unimaginably long time. It wasn’t that long for Jamie, who had lived a previous life, but he was special.
In ten thousand years, most records could easily vanish.
So Jamie had naturally assumed the Twelve Gods had existed since the dawn of the current world.
“Surprised, right? You must have believed they existed since ancient times.”
As Jamie looked at Gav, he continued with a bitter expression.
“I was nothing but a puppet. My entire life was.”
“I’d like to hear the full story.”
“Simple. A messenger of the gods came to kill me, and I barely survived. But I realized I’d be hunted forever, and that it would never end like this, so...”
“You hid inside the crown?”
“The darkest place is under the lamp, after all.”
The empire fell, and dozens of nations rose and fell repeatedly.
“Changing forms repeatedly, I eventually took the shape of a crown. I shut off my consciousness and let the years pass.”
“And that’s how you ended up in the hands of Seldam’s first king?”
“Yeah, something like that. The first king was a pretty skilled mage. He sensed I wasn’t ordinary. Even so, the synchronization rate was too low, so all he got was a glimpse of world history. Still, that shocked him enough to start calling me the ‘Crown of Omniscience’ afterward.”
Gav seemed lost in thought for a moment, then shrugged and continued.
“After that, decent mages appeared in Seldam too. Recently, Siegfried. That guy’s impressive. First mage of that caliber I’ve seen since myself—until you came along. But his synchronization rate was pathetically low.”
So synchronization rate doesn’t scale with magical attainment.
He had no clue how synchronization even worked.
“Anyway, that’s how I hid away until now. The Twelve Gods seem to have lost interest in me; they stopped searching.”
“Why tell me all this?”
Learning such obscure secrets was intriguing.
But revealing something as dangerous as his own closely guarded secret out of the blue didn’t make sense.
And Jamie felt a slight sense of incongruity.
This guy... he’s definitely hiding more.
It seemed like he’d shown everything, but the past records he’d glimpsed earlier had noticeable gaps scattered throughout.
It was natural for parts to be skipped in a rapid overview of nearly a thousand years, but the key elements were all missing.
For example.
“So, how exactly did the Twelve Gods approach you and warn you?”
“Huh?”
“And why warn you? Why pull a king who was doing well off the throne? It would’ve been easier for the Twelve Churches to ally with you and solidify their position.”
“Well, that’s...”
“It’s weird. For them to suddenly approach you and tell you to step down. How about I ask them directly?”
With that, Jamie raised his left hand.
Gav’s eyes widened upon spotting the Pyro emblem engraved on his palm.
“You, why do you have that?!”
Pyro was in an alliance with Jamie.
He didn’t like it much, but verifying facts was possible even here.
It was only borrowing her form, so true saintly powers were out of reach, but receiving her will was no problem.
“I’ve been listening to your stories and piecing things together myself. Want to hear?”
“...What kind of conclusions?”
“First. You know about the previous world—the era ten thousand years ago. Second. You’re not part of current humanity. It’s not just the skin color. You survive by parasitizing others. That’s how you endured ten thousand years. You’re probably a remnant of a race from the previous era.”
“...And?”
“Finally, the reason you could become the First King.”
Jamie’s eyes darkened completely.
“Because you were the Twelve Gods’ puppet from the start.”
Gav closed his eyes, and Jamie continued.
“You were given that mission. To pioneer a new civilization. You were granted much authority. Qualifications to become the master of the new world. But then you made a mistake that defied the Twelve Gods. That’s when you lost their trust and had everything stripped away. That’s my theory. Any part wrong?”
“How could you deduce all that? You...”
“But I still don’t get it. Why the high synchronization rate? Unless...”
Jamie’s eyes turned violet as he asked,
“Do you recognize this color?”
Gav didn’t answer.
Instead.
“Hand over your body.”
Gav’s entire skin turned violet.