Custodian? Roland p.r.i.c.ked up his brows and said, “A guardian to ensure that every civilization will walk towards destruction?”

“I knew you would ask that… but that is a solution that cannot be helped.” The ent.i.ty stood up from the throne and dragged its right hand lightly. Following that, a sphere of light appeared in its hands before peeling away, layer by layer, to reveal the complicated structure within. This continued until Roland recognized what it was.

Although he had antic.i.p.ated it, only when he saw the scene before him did his heart skip a beat.

Floating in the ent.i.ty's hand was the world they were from.

He saw the Land of Dawn, the Fertile Plains, as well as the Kingdom of Graycastle. Beyond this continent, there were the Blackstone region and the Sky-sea Realm. But those weren't important. What was important was that the entire world was enveloped in a honeycombed sh.e.l.l, just like the barrier that isolated a planet from the outside.

And beneath the continent and oceans hid an extremely complicated core. It wasn't like a planet's core which formed a spherical shape due to the pressure placed on it. Instead, it was an irregular geometric body. The protruded Sky-sea Realm was located on the boundary of a geometric solid, and Roland could even see that the Swirling Sea's bottom was connected to the Sky-sea Realm. The path resembled a Klein bottle.

Without a doubt, this world appeared so unharmonized solely because it wasn't naturally formed.

The artificial planet he saw In the second scene was just like the present real world.

The clouds and celestial bodies observed by people were simply projections formed by the barrier.

And in the real s.p.a.ce beyond that, all Roland saw was dead silence.

“You were the ‘pair of eyes.'” Instantly, he suddenly understood the answers to many questions.

G.o.d sighed slightly. “I'm not sure of what information you have collected, but that doesn't matter. Time is a measure that can be as long and short as required. I will satisfy your curiosity… before destroying you.”

“As expected of what a Custodian will say—it's like a student not needing to go to cla.s.ses, or a pharmaceutical company not needing to produce drugs,” Roland said sarcastically as he spread his hands. Regardless, he was now representing humanity, or perhaps all living beings in reality. Even if the ent.i.ty across him was G.o.d, he could not cower in fear. “What I wish to ask is why is there a Battle of Divine Will? What do you plan to achieve?”

“I thought you would ask from the trivial questions. Fine.” It retracted the sphere of light in its hand and waved one hand. Countless ‘screens' soon appeared behind it, and in the spartan s.p.a.ce, they formed a stunning wall.

Roland discovered that the contents depicted by the screen were… all sorts of living beings.

“Project Gateway was a success. Its results were almost identical to the calculated outcome. With the help of many civilizations, this universe's gravity was pulled apart eventually, producing an extremely tiny rift,” G.o.d said slowly. “But Project Gateway was also a failure. The energy which surged in from another territory destroyed most of the sentient lifeforms, including the creator of Project Gateway.”

Was that the final scene of the third act…

Roland recalled the extreme grief, as though he was connected to all the civilizations which had partic.i.p.ated in the plan.

“That's right. This energy is what you call magic power.”

“It's not light, nor does it have temperature. It's neither made up of particles or waves. To be simple, it comes from a s.p.a.ce that has completely different laws from the universe we come from. Physics and math become meaningless in the face of such energy. In almost an instant, it influenced and changed the entire world.”

“What's… on the other side of the rift?” Roland couldn't help but ask.

“An accurate description isn't available because no one has pa.s.sed through that distorted membrane, but according to an a.n.a.lysis, there are basically two possibilities. One of them being a universe that includes our universe. This is the easiest theory to understand.” Having said that, the ent.i.ty's voice turned ethereal and hollow. “A new singularity can be born within the universe to produce an explosion to form a new universe, and thus, creating a set of completely independent laws and physical constants. Therefore, even if our world stems from a universe beyond the membrane, it doesn't mean that life or matter can easily proceed without obstruction.

“The second possibility is that our world is in the empty gap within the multiverse. You can think of it as a pot of thick soup, and we are just rising bubbles with their appearance, inflation, fusion, and bursting happening… Of course, reality is a lot more complicated, but that has already exceeded the limits of your comprehension.”

“Fine… let's turn back to magic power.” Roland curled his lips and said, “You previously mentioned that you would destroy a large majority of life, but you were the one who created the normality of the real world. Isn't that a contradiction?”

If humans were said to be the chosen ones of the universe, it would have been too incredulous.

“Magic power possesses a very unique set of laws. One of them is that it would change via will. Meanwhile, it will also change the mind of the possessor.”

Roland was suddenly surprised. “What?”

“The first batch who had their lives change were the partic.i.p.ants of Project Gateway. Their forms were warped and reconstructed, and after ten million years of evolution, they finally became a special crystalline body, which is the magic stones you use,” G.o.d said calmly. “As I'm not considered a lifeform, I was lucky to survive, but similarly, I suffered tremendous damage which took me tens of thousands of years to recover from. And from that moment forth, gravity was no longer the force which is most deserving of reverence.”

Upon hearing this answer, Roland was momentarily unsure how to continue.

However, Roland wasn't surprised by the notion that the Custodian wasn't that of a lifeform. Project Gateway was a humongous program that spanned over trillions of galaxies, with more than 170,000 civilizations partic.i.p.ating in it. To ultimately take the correct path over such long periods of time, the coordinator definitely could not be a particular lifeform or race.

The ent.i.ty had appeared because of the project.

“After that, the Cradle was created. It uses magic power to construct a world; however, the amount of energy suffers a particular limit. From an incomplete data bank, I chose life and began to foster them, allowing these creatures to live again under new rules. As compet.i.tion can increase a race's development speed, the Cradle will deliberately choose lifeforms who lived in similar environments to foster. But the calculations soon discovered that this process would take an inestimable amount of time. With limited resources, it limits free growth. As such, the choice of involving external forces became inevitable.

“… Legacy shards,” Roland said in a deep voice.

“That's only a part of it.” The ent.i.ty nodded. “As for what I ultimately want, it's not that complicated. The creator of Project Gateway, which is the civilization that created me, doesn't only want the universe to ‘live on.' It had never had the intention of stopping progress, even so at the moment of destruction. Opening the rift was only the first step. Its true goal is to see that territory which no one has ever stepped in.”

“It handed me this mission, and my final duty is to create a civilization that can adapt to the laws of the two worlds.” The ent.i.ty paused for a moment. “And this compet.i.tion and its development is what you call the Battle of Divine Will.”