Chapter 445: Interlude: Shuna Meets the Goddess
That’s right.
Just as Shuna had guessed…
The Daisianwei before her was precisely the first Dungeon Emperor she had killed back then. Moreover… if her words were anything to go by, she… she might have been the one who personally created individuals like Shuna.
That’s why she understood the secrets within Shuna so well.
That’s why she revealed herself so openly now!
But…
She was alive?
The one she personally killed, the one who set her entire life in motion… why was she alive?
“Surprised? Hmm, indeed. Even if you guessed that the personalities integrated into the Dungeons circulated, and that all types of Dungeon Emperors came from the same batch of personalities, you probably still find it hard to accept that I retained these memories, don’t you?”
Perhaps she…
Perhaps she had known Shuna’s identity completely from the moment Shuna entered?
Disgusting.
Shuna’s life’s greatest secret, even her deepest scar, had been so easily exposed by this person. All she felt was wave after wave of nausea.
“Perhaps you should call me ‘Mother’? No, no, that title is too disgusting. Even I can’t stand to hear it.”
Daisianwei said, and snapped her fingers again.
“I… I… *gasp*… *gasp*…”
Shuna calmed her emotions.
She couldn’t reveal herself here. At the very least, she had to make Daisianwei believe her.
She had to make Daisianwei feel like they were on the same side, and make Daisianwei say more and more.
Because…
She was about to get closer and closer to the truth.
Closer to the truth of her own birth.
And also…
Closer to the truth of the birth of the entire Dungeon.
As “God-Attuned” individuals, their lifelong pursuit, besides exploring Dungeons, was to constantly understand the meaning of the Dungeon’s existence.
Therefore, she took big gulps of air, and finally returned to her normal state, a state that Daisianwei would definitely not see through.
“I… I’ve finally found you. For me, I… the predicament of my entire life, and the beginning of my existence here, all originated from the death at that moment of birth…”
The best lies are those where every word spoken is the truth, but they successfully make others believe what is not real.
“So, it’s wonderful to finally meet you.”
“Oh my, you’re speaking to me like this? That’s good. I’m surprised too…”
Daisianwei tilted her head. The tilt was so extreme it was as if her neck had broken, and her entire head rested on her shoulder at a 90-degree angle.
“After all, it was precisely to ensure you wouldn’t exist in this world that I bestowed upon every child I needed to kill, the gaze of the gods…”
Shuna felt that something was off about Daisianwei from the start.
It was as if, after she said, “You’re a bit too foolish,” that marked a turning point. If the Daisianwei before this had the distinct label of the “Vampire Empress of the Death Hall,” then the Daisianwei now…
Was like…
A goddess.
The divinity radiating from her surpassed the terrifying “scent of death” associated with the Empress of the Death Hall.
“I didn’t expect someone to cross ‘death’ with their own consciousness… This is truly surprising—however, I succeeded the first time, and with the example of Miss Fire Dragon, it’s not such a rare exception.”
“…It was you who bestowed upon me… the gaze of the gods? And made me… God-Attuned?”
Shuna was stunned by the sheer amount of information in that statement.
Everyone knew… everyone knew that in this world, only the goddess named Reviers could grant the ability to become God-Attuned.
“Yes. Because…”
Daisianwei paused here. The chair behind her sank into the ground along with the last drop of blood from the wilting Lycoris flowers flowing into the spring behind her.
And then…
Shuna could see what was slowly rising from beneath the spring—
“I am the Goddess, Reviers.”
At this, Daisianwei’s voice was no longer just “Daisianwei.”
Shuna heard it. Her voice emanated from this entire space, carrying countless other voices of various ages, genders, and races in its depths—
It was as if all the BOSSes she had ever been were speaking at once, uttering the same line at this very moment.
“Reviers…”
Shuna’s eyes widened.
Before her, behind Daisianwei, who had turned around and was clad in pure white, stood a “statue.”
Under the holy light reflected by the sacred spring, it was bathed in a shimmering radiance, yet Shuna felt no divinity from it at all.
Because…
It was an utterly “disgusting” statue.
The flesh and blood of various “monsters,” incomprehensible even to Shuna, an experienced Dungeon explorer, were molded like clay, soft and sticky, on this statue.
Of course, under the white light, they were not blood-red, but truly pure white, even holy white, like a divine statue.
This caused the statue to continuously grow, becoming a colossus over ten meters tall.
These adhesions lacked any “aesthetics” or “design,” seemingly attached solely based on the passage of time, utterly asymmetrical, with all sorts of organs and faces crudely pasted together.
Yet, where “faces” and “expressions” could be seen, Shuna clearly saw a “benevolent” smile…
A smile benevolent enough, like a goddess embracing all things.
But they were all alive. The hands and feet of this statue could move, and even the expressions were not entirely static, with visible movements of the lips.
This statue was “alive” and “dead”;
This statue was “sacred” and “profane”;
This statue was “Reviers” and “Daisianwei.”
“That’s right. This is Reviers herself, just that for now, the ‘consciousness’ of the Empress of the Death Hall has taken the lead.”
“The Dungeons I became the Emperor of each time did not disappear upon their deaths, but instead ‘existed’ in another form.”
“That is… becoming a part of the Goddess ‘Reviers’.”
“This is something ‘I’ didn’t anticipate back then. Of course, now, a thousand years later, having become this… it doesn’t feel bad, does it?”
Shuna listened to countless voices speaking the same words, the sounds pouring into her ears. For the first time in a long while, she felt her heart race.
Everything…
Everything seemed to connect.
Why was the Goddess Reviers revered as a goddess?
Why did Shuna kill the Emperor she saw at the moment of her birth?
And why… as the Empress of the Death Hall, did Daisianwei wield such dominance?
Although she didn’t know that God-Attuned individuals would be reborn as BOSSes in the Dungeon after being killed.
But, having reached this point, as intelligent as she was, Shuna had basically figured out…
What kind of beings the “Emperors” of the Dungeon truly were.
And…
How the entire Dungeon, which provided infinite resources and infinite possibilities to outer humanity, drawing countless Adventurers, actually operated—
