Chapter 762 If There Was No Try (1/2)
Another silence lasted briefly, pierced by Joshua himself.
He sighed beneath the white illumination of the Archives hall, shaking his head. ”It's fine. Who cares what they do? There would always be warmongers and pacifists.”
It would be inhuman to have neither contradiction nor conflict in thought.
With that soliloquy, he promptly rose and looked around the Data Storage hall. ”Everyone's opinions are different in the first place.” He laughed as he looked at the dense rows of the data storage devices. ”It's a waste of effort to be bothered by such matters.
”… Eh?”
Zero-Three, who had been lingering behind Joshua and thinking hard about how she should console Joshua blinked and paused for a moment. ”Wait… Wait,” she stammered after some time, ”weren't you looking very… very angry just a while ago?”
'Lost and bewildered as well?' Zero-Three left the latter part unsaid since those two words appeared to be unrelated to Joshua, who was now calm, composed and did not appear dispirited at all. The Artificial Intelligence girl even suspected that something was wrong with her observation system that she was seeing illusions.
”Angry? Of course I am. That bunch haven't even seen the true face of an Evil God, and yet just encountering the main body of the Black Fog already pushed them to the idea for an early retreat—I understand that they are being prudent, to prepare for the worst even in case of triumphs, but I am still the only one amongst them who had seen an Evil God, and I still have no intention to run. What are they even being nervous about?”
Joshua waved his hand, and a silver halo appeared behind him. It released mana translucent crystal shards that flowed with substantial luminous data points, just like how Zero-Three connected herself to the data storage devices across the hall. ”But that's just it,” Joshua said, helping Zero-Three transfer the Archives data while leisurely strolling around the hall. ”If I have to put it in words, I'm not angry over their prudence, just simply annoyed.”
”Annoyed?” Zero-Three repeated reflexively, her voice heavy with bewilderment.
”Annoyed. Annoyed at why they won't believe I can't reach the Sage's level.”
Joshua pursed his lips. ”I have risen from Silver to Legend in a few years, and probably would be an equal of the gods in a dozen. And there's still at least more than twenty years before the Evil Gods' invasion, perhaps decades more.”
”When that time comes, I would definitely be more powerful than the main body of the Black Fog, even most Evil Gods—there might even be a chance of finding the Sage as well if we're lucky. Look, weren't you just telling me about the 'Evil God Wither'? That's a very precious clue… if I could really find some hint as to what the Sage's level had been, everything in the future would not be set in stone.
”Most importantly.”
Joshua turned and patted Zero-Three's head, who had been following behind him all along and drawing a blank at Joshua's words. ”I'm a knowledgeable warrior,” he grinned and continued, ”who had witnessed the true face of the Evil God and the aftershadow of the Sage, a warrior who speaks and laughs with the gods—there's no need for you to console me.”
”I've saved worlds, destroyed worlds and aided a galactic civilization to defeat a Void aberration that devoured planets. I've even righted a world which time was distorted—I could change fate during my morning push-ups. It's just an Evil God invasion, it's not me to scream panickily 'we're finished'.”
As he spoke, the translucent crystals that Joshua spread wherein countless data flow promptly stopped. ”Alright,” Joshua said effortlessly when he noticed that, ”the data for this hall is fully transferred, we can move on to the next one.”
Zero-Three was left even more bewildered. She scanned the data storage in shock, only to realize that Joshua had indeed finished transferring all data in that hall in a matter of minutes. ”My transfer speed is a hundred and forty times of most Supreme mages,” she muttered, staring at the transfer progress bar that was displaying '100%', ”how could this be…”
”Everyone is an AI, it's just that one is nurtured by parents while the other was made by engineers and researchers. In my opinion, you're an ordinary human who cannot be replaced like me.”
Joshua had already started for the exit of the hall while waving at Zero-Three behind him. ”I still have things to do at the Winter Fort, I won't be keeping you company for the moment… but you can call me anytime if there's more information about the Sage.”
”Alright.”
Zero-Three nodded subconsciously and hence watched as Joshua's figure left the hall. It was after she had pause for a long time that she finally realized something amidst her dejection.
”Wait, who's human?!”
***
Outside the hall.
Joshua's expression which had the hint of a smile before quickly turned calm but cold.
”Sage.”
He extended his right hand and stared at his palm, saying that name quietly, as if mulling upon the endlessly profound meaning it embodied.
”Evil God.”
He looked up, clenching his fists and said that word pronoun coldly, the emotion that stirs within his heart unfathomable.
Finally, all emotion was compressed into a single word that was spoken without feeling.
”Interesting.”
With that, his figure disappeared. A spatial rift appeared almost instantly outside the Archives, closing itself as soon as it appeared, just like an illusion.
***
”The progress of human evolution is stagnating.”
It was the year-end speech for the graduating year of Winter Fort Academy in Moldavia. On a stair-shaped chamber, almost a hundred students were sitting at the front rows just as hundreds of juniors sat behind, staring solemnly at the stage that was converted to a speech platform.
A middle-aged mage calmly stood before all students, withstanding their gazes as he used magic to louden his voice and deliver it to everyone's ears, showing neither nervousness nor hesitation.
”As all would know, the bloodlines of every human, elf, dwarf, halfling, pygmy, even the extinct centaur and orc all shared the same origins. In the primal ages dozens of million years ago, the oldest of human tribes had yet to split—there were many alien species then, with many realms yet to be developed. Our ancestors thus dwelled within those warm plains, never leaving the place over a million years.”
Nostradamus and Israel were seated on the highest edge of the chamber, both of them having withdrawn their presence and were watching the middle-aged mage speech calmly. Neither the students or any of the instructors had noticed that the two highest leaders of the Empire were right behind them, and it was in that moment that a figure appeared and sat down without pause beside Israel, drawing looks from both men.
Joshua made a 'quiet, watch the speech' gesture at the pair and then said nothing, which promptly stopped Nostradamus and Israel's inquisitiveness in regards to where he went, and instead returned their attention to the long-prepared speech.
”However, an unusual climate shift—which was what now appeared to have been the First Ice Age had forced our ancestors to migrate away from their home. In that process which lasted over thousands of years, some humans went for the damp thickets of the South, some to the dry mountains to the West, while others stayed where there were… Essentially, there are as many choices as there are races—but for the first time, our ancestors spread themselves across the entire world.”
”The ones who had gone to the south were present-day elves, those who had entered the mountains were the ancestors of the dwarves, while those who stayed were the ancient barbarians of the cold realms. Both halflings and pygmies had evolved after their warm habitats of underground tunnels, and there are those lucky ones who had migrated to plains of optimal temperature, eventually becoming ordinary humans like you and I.”
”The state of life would change along with environments, a truth observed from our countless experiments. The Northern Shark Lizard are of the ice-attribute, but the Southern variants mastered the dual-attribute of water and earth. Fire dragons inhabit volcanos while lightning dragons often live at rainy summits—those are not coincidences.”
The middle-aged mage giving a speech was from the West Mountains. His voice was rich, charismatic, and showed some West Mountain accent. Everyone present, however, did not mind since he had impressed them with his strong scholarly command, which was in turn why he had the opportunity to give the speech.
”Just as we change the world, the world changes us. Life would never cease adapting to different environments and improve generation after generation—the numbers indicated that eight-hundred years ago, the average human was Iron-class. But now, here in Moldavia alone, the ability of our sixteen-year-old youths is Iron-intermediate, which is still rising at an unprecedented speed.”
”But it's all an illusion,” the mage speaker suddenly said earnestly, ”it's not our forms evolving, but simply because everyone is receiving good nutrition such as meat and are granted access to refinement.”
”The progress at which life adapts to the environment now no longer catches up to speed where life alters our environment.”
”Our evolution had long stagnated.”
Those few words quickly stirred an uproar in the chamber. Although the sporadic chatter and surprised gaps were calmed by the instructors who were present, there were distinct shock and incomprehension in the eyes of all students.