Super Righteous Player
Chapter 687 - 228: The Person Not in the Dream (Third Update)_1

Chapter 687: Chapter 228: The Person Not in the Dream (Third Update)_1

"This is the Burial..."

Annan realized something.

If he hadn’t guessed wrong,

this Otherworld-level nightmare... perhaps wasn’t naturally occurring. The Skeleton Lord wouldn’t create a nightmare that would also trap himself inside.

Considering the moment when the Skeleton Lord’s remains collapsed, the last rib bone sank into the land of the Dirgesinger Principality.

This must be a "Burial" ritual.

It was at the moment He was about to seize Elle and become the true God of Betrayal that Grandmother Buried Bones made her move... she turned the Skeleton Lord’s remains into this nightmare, to seal the Skeleton Lord away.

Just as the Skeleton Lord said.

—Burial is for forgetting.

And to forget is to betray.

To leave this eternal, unending cycle of nightmares... the simplest method is to continuously stab one’s teammates in the back—ensuring that one survives till the end in each cycle.

Then gather everyone’s power and wisdom in the next cycle to find the answer to the riddle... and stab your partners in the back once more.

Until the riddle is completely solved, whether or not anyone has died in this cycle, one simply chooses to leave—thus the nightmare ends.

No matter whether he wants to escape or not, his surviving companions without memories will urge him to leave. Because they do not know how many times they have been killed by this person in the past cycles... this in itself is a form of pure "betrayal."

It is a betrayal about dreams, life and death, companions, sacrifice, and destiny.

The person capable of this could never be the Skeleton Lord. Because in this nightmare, the Skeleton Lord is just an NPC. He doesn’t have the right to retain memories.

This means that the grand ritual unfolded at the cost of the "death of the Skeleton Lord" would allow another to gain a portion of the true essence of betrayal.

As such,

even if the seal fails and the Skeleton Lord escapes, another will have already taken a substantial amount of the "betrayal" truth from him.

Then the real, complete God of Betrayal will still not be born. The Ascension ritual might fail or perhaps give rise to a god even weaker than the Skeleton Lord.

The ritual of Grandmother Buried Bones is very clear.

Although the Skeleton Lord gave up his "skeleton" half of godhood, returning it to the earth,

it doesn’t mean that the now-vacant half will attain the complete truth of betrayal.

—This is probably because Grandmother Buried Bones didn’t dare, or rather, didn’t want to hand over the complete godhood of betrayal to the Skeleton Lord. After all, the purity of a godhood is still very important... it has to do with the "adjacency" of the divine realm.

The Silver Baron and the Red Knight specifically maintained the purity of their own realms.

The essence of the Silver Baron’s domain of "trade and trade" is "unequal exchange"; because if it were completely equal, that would just be an "exchange." With this godhood, he can extend his control over multiple fields such as currency, freight, transportation, speculation, and more.

And the Red Knight is simply the "God of War"—that is, "purposeful violence involving multiple participants." Based on the purity of this domain, her subordinate gods range from "weapons" to "tactics," from "knights" to "conspiracies," and even "protection" and "plunder" are within her reach.

Like the Mysterious Lady, who is the god of secrets and rituals. There are many kinds of secrets, and many kinds of rituals... but when these two come together, "secrets" tend to be interpreted more as "arcane knowledge."

However, the Mysterious Lady is also an exception because when she ascended, it wasn’t the two pages she picked from the Book of Truth herself... but rather the two adjacent pages chosen automatically.

Most deities opt for a multi-godhood approach to broaden their control across completely different fields—such as Grandmother and Grandmother Buried Bones. But some deities attempt to purify their own domain and seek more adjacent control.

Once the Skeleton Lord obtains a purified godhood of "betrayal," his abilities in this area would greatly increase.

The greatest difference would be that the interference in rituals could deepen further— what was originally a medium-level ritual might only grant him a cursed object (which the Skeleton Lord would have to create himself); but after the purification of his godhood, he could directly bestow the power of this cursed object as a Curse Binding to someone else.

Without relying on the Book of Truth, through repeatedly optimized rituals, one reaches the divine. One could even optimize one’s own godhood...

In terms of talent, the Skeleton Lord indeed was a Transcendent genius.

In history, there have only been three Transcendents who successfully ascended to godhood without relying on the Book of Truth. These were the Skeleton Lord, the Rotting Husband, and the One in the Mirror—aside from the Rotting Husband, the other two were unmatched geniuses, the kind that might not appear even once in several hundred years.

And the greater the genius, the greater the harm to the world when they harbor sinister thoughts and fall into corruption.

It was only logical for Grandmother Buried Bones to want to seal away the Skeleton Lord.

—Moreover, the Skeleton Lord destroyed Grandmother Buried Bones’ idol on the spot.

Even with the best temperament, one could not simply turn a blind eye.

Just as Grandmother oversees the element of "frost," and her divine realm is in every snow-covered land; Grandmother Buried Bones controls two of the strongest domains in this world... and one of them is the [Earth].

If Annan hadn’t guessed wrong, Grandmother Buried Bones might be the "Earth" from the beginning of Genesis.

With the godhood of [Earth], she could appear anywhere and shake the very ground of any location. The place they were in before, an underground chamber enveloped by the earth—naturally, that was also within Grandmother Buried Bones’ divine realm.

Without showing himself at all, he directly used the remains of Skeleton Lord to come up with an absolute seal for the Skeleton Lord and instantly create an Otherworld-level nightmare...

...it’s still a bit hard to believe.

"In any case, the core elements of this nightmare are Elle and the Skeleton Lord."

Annan murmured.

His right hand’s four fingers tapped the armrest like waves, tapping repeatedly, while his left hand was propped on his forehead, his eyes slightly closed as he fell into deep thought.

In the previous moment, the Skeleton Lord had discarded his own divine status—at least in the moment when he abandoned his divine body but had not succeeded in possessing Elle, he was not a deity.

Granny of Buried Bones’ grand Otherworld ritual was probably designed to seal both Elle and the Skeleton Lord.

But with only Elle alone, she might not be able to seal the Skeleton Lord. In the repeated cycle of one-day reincarnations, she would eventually break down completely.

The presence of the others was Elle’s "safety lock."

Their purpose was to help Elle bear this "memory."

"...But they are my people. Tsk.

"They sought them out on my orders, and it was because of me that Elle was not bound in Frostwater Harbor."

Annan gritted his teeth, smacked his lips, and thought hard: "This is my responsibility... It is my responsibility. Tsk...

"...Even if it’s an eternal cycle of reincarnations, I have to get them back."

What else can be done...

How can I communicate with them? How can I break this cycle of nightmares?

What does it mean for Elle to be at the core of the nightmare? Does she have memories? No, she shouldn’t. The others are brought directly into the nightmare by Granny to dilute the pressure of Elle’s memories.

And because Elle doesn’t have a strong desire to survive, she won’t become the last survivor on her own initiative. However, if she does become the last survivor, then that would be the best outcome—according to Granny of Buried Bones’ design, the person who finally breaks the nightmare as captain can at least obtain half of the truth of "betrayal." If it’s Elle...

...The last survivor?

Elle?

"...Wait a minute."

Annan’s fingers suddenly stopped.

He thought of something and abruptly opened his eyes.

He immediately jumped off the chair and walked over to the mirror that he had used to communicate with Salvatore, taking two steps at a time.

—His hands on the mirror’s surface, he gazed at his own left eye.

It shimmered with the luster of emerald, the Angel’s left eye.

It was the left eye Elle had given him.

The moment he saw that eye, a thought he had once had echoed in Annan’s mind.

It was after hearing Elle’s sacred pledge:

["...You are much stronger than the Skeleton Lord. If only you were the God of Betrayal—"]

That’s what Annan had exclaimed at the time.

["...As ’the betrayed,’ she will watch the actions of the betrayer; and as ’the betrayer,’ I will listen to the wails of the betrayed."]

That’s what the Skeleton Lord had said at the time.

"If only you were the God of Betrayal..."

Annan repeated.

He realized something and slowly reached for his own left eye.

With his index finger, he touched the eyeball.

No sensation of pain.

The texture felt like jade.

"This is..."

Annan whispered.

"Am I... watching?"