Pasha was astonished at Roland's question for a moment and then said, "Phyllis is right. You do know lots about us. As for the Divine Will, we didn't know much about it until the fall of Taquila, so it's impossible for you to get this information from Agatha."

Roland put on some airs by propping his chin with interlaced fingers and said, "Don't forget it, the church was defeated by me. All the Pure Witches who held management positions in the Holy City of Hermes now are imprisoned in Neverwinter."

"I see."

With these words, Pasha became silent, as if she were looking at Roland carefully. Even though she had no eyes, he could still felt her gaze. After a long time, Pasha's voice appeared in his head again. "I can tell you what the Divine Will is, but you have to promise you'll keep this secret forever and so do the others in this meeting. If people are running after or protecting something intangible, they won't easily fall into despair, but when this something becomes tangible, they'll probably get stressed out. I mean if this information is leaked out, it'll do no good to human beings."

Roland made an eye contact with all his witches to confirm that they would keep this secret and then asked in a deep voice, "So that's to say, the Divine Will is something tangible?"

Pasha slowed down, as if she was talking while recalling. "Yes, it looks like a transparent G.o.d's Stone of Retaliation, shaped like a spindle apparatus, but it can't affect the use of magic power or has any other special function. As long as you open your heart near it, you'll truly feel the call of the deities and see something incredible."

"Like what?"

"You'll see an infinitely s.p.a.cious hall with the b.l.o.o.d.y Moon high above your head and four giant paintings around you. The paintings seem to be alive and change all the time..." The ancient witch described the illusion created by the Divine Will in detail.

Tilly could not help asking, "What do those paintings stand for?"

Hearing this question, all of them held their breath waiting for the answer.

Pasha's tentacles stood up at once. "This question baffled the people for nearly 1,000 years. The Quest Society kept on looking for the answer but failed. We had no idea about it either until we decoded the contents in the doc.u.mented records in the ruins of ruins. The four paintings the deities showed us respectively represent the mankind, the demons, some unknown enemy and the underground civilization. The shape of the Divine Will corroborates this speculation, as it's not a complete spindle apparatus but a quarter of a sphere which we called the relic of the deities."

Roland knitted his eyebrows. "Four Giant Paintings and a quarter of the relic of deities... Do you mean every civilization pictured in the paintings has a relic like this?"

"Not everyone. The underground civilization lost its part of the Divine Will. As a result, one of the paintings showed by the deities is always black. It turned black right after the end of the first Battle of Divine Will. According to the doc.u.mented records in the ruin of the maze and those in the ancient doc.u.ments of the Union, we surmise that the underground civilization is already removed from the Battle of Divine Will forever." Goosep.r.i.c.kles crawled up everyone's arms when they heard Pasha's answer.

They were shocked to learn that all the civilizations had fought for hundreds of years just for some relic, and more importantly, for each civilization, losing its part of relic would mean losing everything.

Hearing such a shocking news, Roland knitted his eyebrows even more tightly together. As compared to some unknown enemy in this war, what he cared more about was who had set up the whole thing. He wondered, "is it merely an accident or carefully arranged. Did it happen randomly or due to human being's doomed fate? What's the purpose of leaving behind this relic? Does it have anything to do with the b.l.o.o.d.y Moon which emerges periodically? More importantly, did the Taquila survivors understand these things correctly?" He was lost in thought and meanwhile felt he caught a vague clue...

He thought,"What if I replace the word 'deities' in this story with something else?"

When he was absorbed in thought, Tilly asked, "If we collect all of the four parts of the relic, what will happen? Didn't the deities give you any guidance?"

Pasha calmly replied, "No one knows the answer, and the deities have never responded to our calls. The deities don't love people. They only favor the winner."

Wendy exclaimed in disbelief, "How come... we've fought for hundreds of years just because of a useless stone? The Divine Will is... so cruel."

The ancient witch tried to comfort her. "So it appears. I hope these words in the doc.u.mented records in the ruins of the maze will solve your question, although they are quite hard to understand. 'All of us are the deities' children, but only a few of us will be able to see the dawn. Since we sensed magic power, we've been destined to lead a life uncommon. This compet.i.tion has lasted for a long period of time. We are already one-in-a-thousand elite. Birds weren't birds, and we weren't us. Fighting makes things thrive, and compet.i.tion makes living beings eternal.'"

Something flashed across Roland's mind like a bolt of lightning.

He abruptly interrupted, 'What did you say?"

"All of us are the deities' children?"

"No, something after this."

Scroll replied, "'this compet.i.tion has lasted for a long period of time. We are already one-in-a-thousand elite.' Your Majesty, I've memorized all of it."

What does that sound like?

This thing described by the underground civilization resembles the process of evolution! From barbaric period to civilized age, every civilization that exists now has defeated numerous opponents during its development course.

And all the four different civilizations we know have a thing in common, which is they all know how to use magic power.

Among human beings, witches are the ones who can use this kind of power, and demons and the underground civilization seem to be even better at controlling it. Given that, the other unknown enemy must also be able to use it.

If that's true, everything will be consistent with the underground civilization's description. The "children" in the sentence "All of us are the deities' children" probably refers to the species who were gifted to manipulate magic power.

In this way, the Battles of Divine Will aren't caused by the deities' relic. Instead, they are just a means of accelerating evolution or the basic rules of this magic world. This also corroborates the underground civilization's conclusion that elevating magic power is the way to get closer to the deities.

Pasha's voice reverberated across Roland's head. "Your Majesty, are you all right? I feel your mind is a little out of order."

"Oh? Are you able to see what I'm thinking?"

"No, I can only know what you are thinking when you are ready to communicate with me through your mind. For example, now I'm willing to talk with you through my mind, so you are able to hear what I'm thinking." Pasha paused for a while and asked, "It'll be more efficient to communicate that way. Do you want to give it try?"

Roland shook his head, smiling. "No, I prefer to express myself using my throat and my tongue. As for the confusion... I just thought of something interesting. But relax, it won't affect our communication."

Thinking that sometimes rules were just rules and there might not be a reason for them, he felt it was acceptable to consider them as something created by the deities. As far as he knew, the origin of life and the Cambrian explosion on earth were also puzzling things. Life is said to form out of lightning and boiling water where organic molecules constantly collided, merged and split and then formed a molecular chain which could reproduce itself. The chance of that is as slim as that of a hurricane a.s.sembling a Benz sports car by whirling lots of metal parts into the air.

As for the Cambrian explosion, it was even more mysterious. A sea which only had had some simple creatures such as algae and mollusc for several hundred million years seemed to be filled with various kinds of animals overnight. In a short span of time in the Cambrian period, most major animal phyla of the earth appeared in a sudden. No matter how living beings on the earth evolved in the following years, they can all be traced back to their origins that formed in this period of time.

As these two great changes which gave a strong impetus to the species evolution on the earth are both events of extremely low probability, some people attribute them to some mysterious power beyond description. They believe that it's an invisible hand that pushed the world on the earth to develop into what it's like today. What about this strange magic world? Does such power really exist in here?