This feeling was extremely familiar to Arthur. He didn't know when it started, but he gradually got used to facing this kind of unkind gaze... Although, it was not like this at the beginning.
He smiled nonchalantly. The extended limbs on the capital planet's Benoshi Sea saw more and more armed forces approaching the dark sea in the distance. The flames illuminated the world, dispersing the dark clouds in the sky, allowing the bright moon to shine above everyone's heads.
But this was not too bad news for Arthur.
Because what fights against the steel behemoths built by humans is never these insignificant larval insect eggs that only serve as transportation, but other things that are born from this rotten skeleton.
Soon, people on the sea surface noticed that the deep sea, which had gradually calmed down, suddenly began to surge again.
The corpses of the larvae floating in the water slowly sank into the water, creating one whirlpool after another, as if something below was greedily sucking on the pieces of meat, intending to feed on them.
In fact, if you ignore the raw materials, this scene feels a bit like stewing bone soup.
But no one present thought so. An undeniable premonition told them that something was about to emerge from the center of the vortex.
An old man, who was still wearing a thick crimson cloak embroidered with gold patterns in this not-too-cold weather, was standing in front of the open door of the helicopter with the help of his companions. He had gray and dry hair, and a pair of bright golden eyes that were not cloudy at all, which was inconsistent with his age.
The young man who was supporting the old man also looked down at the sea below him and asked with fear, "What does he want to do?"
"It should be said that he has done something."
The old man said calmly, "There must be a Zerg insider in the Federation or the Church."
The young man looked stunned.
"The divine remains beneath the Benoshi Sea are a secret known only to a select few. But now it seems that Arthur not only knows of its existence, but is even better than us in utilizing that body."
After saying this, the old man turned his head and looked towards the rear of the human army. "That woman Sabrina is here too. I didn't expect that she would still be sitting in the position of Archon after I slept for five whole years."
This topic was not easy to continue, and the young man smiled awkwardly.
"Is she here just to pretend? Or is she..."
After a moment's silence, the old man stopped commenting on Sabrina and just lifted his clothes and knelt on the dirty bottom of the helicopter.
The young man who was supporting him subconsciously took a step back and knelt down in confusion.
The old man ignored his actions, closed his eyes and began to pray to the unknown existence.
As his whispers echoed above the howling night wind, the speed at which underwater creatures emerged from the water suddenly slowed down. The moon in the sky seemed to have grown even larger, like a shiny plate, upside down on the deep blue dome.
The young man, kneeling behind the old man, was so close, yet he could neither hear nor understand the words he uttered. He only saw the dark clouds, dispersed by the wind, descend again, yet they failed to obscure the bright moon. Silvery lightning flashed through the clouds, crackling with noise. In an instant, the pitch-black night was shattered by lightning, transforming it into daylight. Even the very front seemed to be filled with white light, swallowing up everything in the darkness.
Python-like thunder crashed onto the increasingly turbulent sea surface, like a white seabird diving headfirst into the water. The underwater creatures sensed the threat and suddenly struggled violently, but the pale skeleton, guarded by larvae, remained motionless under the tyranny of nature, as if it had been pierced by an iron nail.
The young man opened his mouth wide and unconsciously let out a cry of surprise. His voice was so insignificant amid the thunder that even the sounds of the flamethrowers and engines around him seemed silent.
At some point, another helicopter landed nearby, with Sabrina Guevera standing on it, watching the scene calmly.
No one could hear Antonio's voice: "Is this the power he gained at the price of his inability to wake up..."
Arthur found a bench on the edge of the river in Keminting Town and sat down, his eyes full of pure excitement and anticipation.
"What are you thinking about?" A voice came from not far away from him.
"You're here." The bug said with a smile, "I thought you would stay on the capital planet to protect those humans."
"What do you think?" Azathoth raised his eyebrows. Although he looked unfriendly, he was not very angry.
"I thought I knew you well," Arthur stood up and bowed. "But it seems that after you changed your body, even your behavior has changed... Or perhaps the you I knew back then wasn't your true self? Perhaps my attempt to guess what you are is unrealistic."
"But let me ask you, are you really not worried about them at all?"
Azathoth felt that he had not misunderstood Arthur's meaning.
The Zerg ruler seems to think that he will treat all humans equally?
What had he done in the past to leave such a philanthropic impression on this intelligent creature who didn't look stupid?
He said honestly: "No, that has nothing to do with me."
"...If I haven't offended you, then why did you come to see me today?"
Arthur looked genuinely confused, and Azathoth kindly explained to him, "You shouldn't have hit Igor's friend. Although he didn't say it, I know he was upset. This is your fault, so I came to you to resolve this matter."
Arthur was stunned.
He didn't seem to have considered the reason at all. "You thought that human would be sad about this, so you came here?"
The bug's tone was so unbelievable that Azathoth felt a little unhappy, as if his little habit of liking sweets was being slighted. "This is very important. If your death can solve the problem, then it's better to solve it once and for all."
The insect standing opposite him, who looked like an ordinary human, opened and closed its mouth for a long moment before speaking, "My death cannot stop the war. The next Insect King will take my place and my thoughts. The instinct of predation is in our souls. Unless the last of my people is annihilated in the universe, the outcome will never be changed."
As soon as he finished speaking, a trace of confusion flashed in Arthur's eyes. He felt as if this was not the first time he had said such words.
At the same time, a certain fear of 'genocide' that should never have happened made his body tremble slightly, as if in the next moment, the seemingly taciturn and calm god a few meters away from him would tear off his easy-going mask and expose the naked and cold truth to all living things.
how so?
He shuddered as scenes etched with indelible blood flashed through his memory, scenes more horrific than anything he could imagine. He had never experienced these scenes before, yet they were vividly and truly terrifying. The Azathoth in Arthur's own memory, while not exactly merciful, was certainly forgiving and magnanimous. He rarely got angry, rarely expressed his likes or dislikes. Only when he spoke with Arthur did he sense a slight difference, a constant feeling that he was favored by the god. He had made many mistakes, some harmless, others profoundly offensive, and yet Azathoth had never once rebuked him.
Rather than a living creature, He is more like a physical, worshipped statue, or the embodiment of a certain concept.
It was also because of this that Arthur felt that Azathoth should not have gone to the town of Keminting for such an absurd reason.
It was precisely because of this that he couldn't understand why he was so frightened at this moment, and why so many cruel scenes that seemed to have already happened and that he absolutely could not accept appeared in his mind.
Compared to eternal sleep, for living creatures, fate is controlled, memories are tampered with, time is deprived, and self-awareness is erased... In the moment when you realize that everything you rely on for survival is so false, even if the reshaped life seems so beautiful, it is still more terrifying than death.
Arthur didn't understand what had happened in the past, but he understood at this moment that death was not the end.
There will be no end until Azathoth lets them go.
**
What did I do then?
Azathoth asked himself silently in his mind.
The insect in front of him was pale and trembling, looking like it was about to collapse in fear, but Azathoth himself had no time to do anything.
"Ask yourself this question," a voice in his head said meaningfully, "If Igor betrayed you one day, what would you do?"
"That's impossible."
"Yes, yes, of course I know it's impossible." The voice said impatiently, "I'm just giving an example. Can't you put it in your own shoes?"
So the gods imagined this scene.
One day, the human he loved drifted away from him, and then they suddenly parted ways at a fork in the road.
Perhaps the end of the road will end in blood.
There was a coffin or a tomb next to him.
Just thinking about it made Azathoth feel uncomfortable all over, as if he was spewing bitterness from his heart: "I don't know. Unless it really happens, I don't know what I will do."
Kill him with your own hands?
Or would you forever break the wings on which the bird depends for survival and imprison it beside you?
or……
The voice in the god's head chuckled, "Let's change the subject. One day you bought a durian cake, and at the end you discovered that it was filled with lemon, which you hate the most. You feel cheated by the cake, but the durian was still quite delicious before. What should you do now?"
"That's a terrible example," Azathoth said. "And I don't hate lemons."
"...It's just an analogy. Don't you have any brains?"
"Don't you know whether we have brains or not?" Azathoth responded nonchalantly, "I understand what you mean, but I wouldn't make the same choice now as I did in the past."
"But I did remember our previous conversation."
"In the consciousness of other creatures in the universe, time is a straight line."
"But for us, time can overlap or rewind."
"I'm so relieved."
Azathoth didn't care about his own sarcasm and continued, "If that's the case, then the current Arthur shouldn't be the same one we used to be with, right?"
Perhaps at some point, He had already killed him.
Or, the universe itself has ceased to exist.
But the end of time reversed again, Azathoth's past became their future, the universe was reshaped, memory was changed, and the world returned to the time before the end of the world.
Arthur's mind only held the image before the destruction. He couldn't understand why Azathoth had suddenly abandoned the Zerg and left, nor could he understand the god's fickle attitude towards him, because the events that led to the apocalypse could never happen again. He was just one of the countless beings who had lost part of their future and embarked on another path.
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