Dense Forest Borderland

"The second time, I defected to the Native camp with Guy." Alex narrated in a low voice.

"This time I was encouraged by Guy to learn about this group of natives and their belief in evil gods, and I used to think they were very ignorant, but that time, for the first time, I thought ignorance was a good thing."

Alex laughed lowly twice, "Their beliefs come from the land and the Evil God, they will never leave the territory given to them by the Evil God to invade other places, in other words, they will not follow up by launching large-scale wars to continue to invade other places like the armies on my side."

"I was foolish enough to think that if I just let the natives win this war peacefully, it would all be over."

"I've learned that hiding this potion is useless because those I saved my life from would have told their side of the camp about the potion's effects no matter what, so this time around I chose to tell the natives directly what the potion did."

Alex lowered his head unable to read his expression, "After resurrecting two more dead natives, this group of natives easily trusted me, I created a large army of native undead, formulated a plan and attacked the enemy in a methodical manner, and soon I was able to achieve a stage victory."

"When the other side was desperate and ready to use artillery in large numbers, I ambushed them with an army of undead and transferred this huge number of artillery pieces to the side of the natives."

"On the evening of the sixth day, under the combined intimidation of the undead army and the large volume of artillery, they finally backed down and chose to negotiate peace with the natives, abandoning further attacks."

Alex's voice was hoarse: "I didn't know how long such a false peace could last, but still I got relief in that moment, after signing the peace agreement, and the war stopped, I thought for sure I could win the game this time, but I never expected ...... "

He closed his eyes and took two hard breaths before continuing with difficulty, "...... When I returned to the natives' camp, they aimed their artillery at the army of undead that had been fully resurrected."

"Those natives say that these undead are evil, a being cursed by the gods, and they have tolerated the existence of this group of undead until the end of the war, and it is only now that they have finally decided to judge them."

Alex said hoarsely, "No matter how much I explained that there was no difference between this group of undead and normal people after they were fully resurrected, they still didn't believe me, and every single one of them had unspeakable fear pervading their faces, screaming loudly that this group of undead wouldn't die easily, and that they would have to be repeatedly blasted with cannons and bludgeoned to pieces in order to not be able to be resurrected again. "

"...... That group of undead were once their parents, friends, lovers, and even children, who knelt before me, hugged their corpses and cried, begging me to resurrect them, but now, after using this group of undead to gain victory, they are cowed by the other's power, and in turn, pronounce the other as a heretic and to cast the other into hell."

Alex snorted, "How ironic, I had been glad that their foolishness in not hurting others had become a sharp tool to hurt themselves this very moment."

"I screamed at the top of my lungs for the undead to run away, but they stayed put without moving."

"Because they gradually return to their memories of seven days ago during the process of resurrection, they don't realize what has happened during those seven days, they just dumbly open their arms and smiles to their friends and family who come near, and then allow them to set themselves up on the artillery."

Alex clenched his teeth, "Until the end when they were aimed by the holes in the artillery, they still didn't understand what was happening, and I watched as they screamed out the names of those closest to them and were blown to bits by those closest to them the moment they came fully alive."

"...... second game, I lost again, and once again I chose to read the file and start over."

"In the third game, I didn't join any of the camps, I went crazy and kept creating my own army of undead to attack and control the other two camps, and the more they resisted, the more people died, and the more my army of undead grew in number."

Alex took two deep breaths, "That was it, soon I took over and the other two sides had to stop the war in order to clamp down on me and chose to work together, one side transporting artillery in large quantities and one side using the terrain to work with each other to attack me."

"But the artillery was intercepted by me again, and having gone through the first two times, I was not only proficient in rationing fire, but I also knew the terrain incredibly well, and I thought I just had to make it through this until seven days later."

Alex paused, "On the night of the sixth day, I went and asked the Evil God, and I said that as long as no war broke out in those seven days I'd win, right?"

"He said yes, but the world line you are in will continue to run as this world line you won."

Alex shed a tear as he choked on his tone, "...... That means that if I win in this worldline, I'll have to keep making undead people non-stop to keep my camp strong, clamping down on the other two camps cooperating so they may not go to war. "

"But these undead will become living by the end of seven days, they are no longer undead, they are also normal living beings of flesh and blood, and if I am going to continue to create undead, I will have to keep killing people, and if I stop killing people, the Great War will continue to break out, and everything I want to change will remain essentially unchanged."

"Once again, I chose to read the file and start over."

Alex was quiet for a long, long time, his eyes staring vacantly at the idol of the old evil god, "...... I started over ten times, and I used everything I had to try to stop the Great War from breaking out, to try to stop everyone from dying."

"But even if I had an unlimited amount of immortality potions and used ten do-overs, there would still be a large number of people who would die in this war."

"I realized that neither the potion nor I could save anyone, and that the only way for the war to stop was for there to be no initiator of the war, so that the damage of the war would not be furthered."

Alex numbly wept, "So on my last read-through, I chose to use all the paint the evil gods gave me to pour on the arsenal and kill everyone myself on the eve of the Great War."

"Eventually the real world just ran with the ending of me killing everyone one last time, and the world's time continued to flow forward."

"And I lost the game with the Evil God, so he combined my experience of cycling through ten times to create this nightmarish world of war in a constant loop, fixing me as a character in his game for all eternity, viewing my suffering as intentional fun."

Alex hung his head, tears dripping from his jaw, "...... Every cycle in this world of war I exist in begins with a new batch of soldiers I've never seen before moving in, and then ends with those soldiers playfully sinking these undead I've created into the bottom of the lake to count them. "

"I've lost count of how many times Guy has been sunk to the bottom of the lake and reappeared in the tent, lying on my side, because the rest of the living dead come back to life forgetting what happened seven days ago; they don't remember anything."

"But I remember."

Alex ripped his heart out and laughed nervously at the wooden statue of the evil god, tears rolling down his face in big drops, "--Every cycle, I remember them all!"

"Because I'm not the living dead, I'm the only living person in this world of the living dead, and God won't allow me to die, so I can't forget, I remember it all."

Alex's voice is hoarse to the point of being almost breathy:

"At first I was stuck here and tried to change what was happening here, tried to save them in this virtual world, but then I grew desperate - I couldn't change anything."

He smiled with a blank expression:

"Nobody understood what I was doing, except Guy, and he trusted me completely, so I confided in him what might happen, and Guy said, well, let's run away."

"We found a foggy blank area that's supposed to be the border of this virtual war world, and we couldn't get out of it with a lot of methods, but Guy and I didn't give up, and after each loop I talked to Guy again and we came back here to find a way out."

"Until one day." Alex murmured softly, "I was on my knees at the border, my trapped desires were driving me crazy, and I heard the voice of the evil god once again, and he asked me, "Do you want to get out?"

"I said yes, and he said he could devise an avenue for me to get out, but that only one of me and Guy could escape from here, and let me choose."

Alex's eyes reddened, "I chose to let Guy out."

"Guy didn't know anything, he couldn't hear the Evil One, and I watched as he disappeared into the mist, and a surprised voice came through from the other end, saying Alex, I'm out!"

"The mist disappeared before my eyes in a flash and I saw Guy standing on the other side of the knot, he smiled and beckoned me to get out soon too, I said I had to study this going out routine a little more and that it might have just been a mistake and that I might have to wait for the next seven days before I could get out."

Alex blinked slightly, "Guy is the living dead, I know he'll come back to life completely in the next seven days and forget I'm stuck in this world, he'll probably think I'm dead in that real world."

"But at least, one person, the love of my life, was saved by me."

"Guy comes to me every day at the edge of the knot, he can't get in, and every day he shares with me what he sees out there, and he surprises me by telling me that he found my grave and his grave with Elena's letter and wedding dress on it, and he says that the little girl grew up and actually made him a wedding dress."

Alex's voice choked, "He held up his wedding dress and smiled so happily that for a moment I felt like all my pain had meaning."

"But seven days later, I was at that border again, ready to see Guy one last time before the cycle restarted ......"

Alex shuddered throughout, "I found Guy on the other side of the knot, he held up his wedding dress and turned into an unconscious corpse, he turned into a green and white zombie."

"I almost went mad, wrestling the wooden statue of the evil god over and over again, questioning him as to why."

"The Evil God told me that Guy was originally a living dead man, and when he left this virtual world and entered reality, the time in his body was out of the virtual world's time and synchronized with real time."

"The Evil One said in a voice of pity, Alex, have you forgotten? In the real world, in that ending you chose, Guy would have been blown up by you long ago, he would have been a corpse."

"Guy can only live for seven days, and after that, he'll be what he should be in the real world."

"I'm not happy, I've tried time and time again to get Guy out of here and I've failed, but it's just added an unknown number of more zombie brides to the border."

Alex's voice faded, "I finally gave up and numbly took the wedding dress and letter that the zombie Guy had retrieved and waited until the next cycle to take it to the other Guy so that he could marry me in Elena's wedding dress before he died, which probably would have made him the happiest."

"...... anything else, I can't do anything else."

The Adversary God gazed at him, "You should hate the Evil God, I don't understand why you're helping the Evil God this time to complete the sacrificial ceremony for this new Evil God heir?"

Alex's eyes rolled for a moment as if looking at the Adversary, then turned back to the statue of the new evil god, "--Do you know how to escape a god's grasp?"

The Adversary was quiet for a moment, "Going to make a new god, are we?"

"How can you be sure that this new god is a good person and won't continue to design games to torture you?"

Alex, his voice is so soft you can barely hear him:

"I don't know, but I've never seen the Evil God have such a strong obsession with some new soldier, and the moment that soldier, Bai Liu, entered this world of war, I heard the Evil God pleasurably speaking to me about how the new Evil God, his long-chosen successor, had finally arrived."

"I could barely contain my feelings of disgust towards Bai Liu in that moment, and I also hated those subordinates he brought in extremely much, and I hated them for touching Guy."

The Reverse God recalled in his heart - so Bai Liu said to him before, he just entered the game the first time he met Alex's goodwill fell below the safe value, while those of them who chose to be in the hostile camp with Alex's goodwill was stable at 60 or above.

It turns out that there is this layer of this reason behind it.

Alex continues, "But soon I was less disgusted with Bai Liu, because the evil god told me that once the new god was formed, he would fall and his control over me would be lifted - this Bai Liu was here to destroy him and then inherit his godhood. "

"The rotation between gods is also so brutal, it's not that different from humans." Alex couldn't suppress the mocking smile on his face, "--Maybe it's because gods, by their very nature, are also humans filled with desire."

"Have you ever wondered why the Evil God would tell you this information that is harmful to him?" The Reverse God spoke, "In case he was trying to get ...... killed."

The Inverse God stopped abruptly when he said this.

Alex inclined his head to look at the Reverse God, his brow bones pressed down, his eyes somber, his laugh maniacal, "- Death to me or who? The last thing I'm afraid of right now, is death."

"I don't want to save anyone anymore, and I don't have anything to fear, and whatever it takes to end this, I'm willing to do it."

Alex gasped, his eyes red:

"That fellow, that evil god, when he told me these things, that Bai Liu would destroy him, he did so with a heartfelt smile."

"He was fully expecting Bai Liu to kill him and become the new Evil God."

Alex sneered morbidly, "-probably he's as tired of living as I am, waiting to die in a world filled with ugly human desires until he's going insane, that's why he's so looking forward to someone to end to his own life."

Alex looked straight at the wooden carving of the old evil god:

"You know, New Soldier, I had a conversation with this evil god after I lost the game, and he condescendingly grilled me, asking me if I knew why I lost the game."

"I said I didn't know, I did my best and it still didn't change anything, so why can't everyone just survive."

"So he laughed, and he said that most of the time human desires are based on killing each other, and that the unhappier a person is, the more he wants to hurt others or the stronger his own desires are, the more his existence makes sense."

"He is the insight, the repository and the listener of all the evil desires of this world, and as long as there is a single person in this world whose desires are tinged with blood, the games of the evil gods will never cease."

Alex's eyes gradually moved from the old wooden carving to the new one's face, "--and Bai Liu, the player he found, the most compatible with the game related to desire, his desire was too strong, so strong that it could go beyond this game and touch the existence of God. "

"Bai Liu is a player born for the game of the Evil One, where everything the Evil One has so carefully prepared, the wars, the destruction, the deaths, the souls, are all in celebration of his coming."

"God favored him and was willing to die for him." Alex paused, "Both the last one who fell long ago, and this one who is full of expectation."

The smile on the old wooden carving of the evil god grew more and more eerily gentle and sweet, and less than a third of the new evil god's wooden carving was about to be perfectly born from the log.

The smile on the face of the new new god's wooden sculpture was warm and serene, as if a compassionate god was looking down hypocritically on all beings.

Shrine.

The petrification of the seer sitting on the stone bench had spread to his heart, which made it difficult for him to vocalize, and his voice became hard, "--What did you put down inside this copy?"

The man in the hood wore the same eerie gentle smile as on the old wooden carvings of the Evil God, and as he closed his palms and then opened his hands, a pure black whip and a suspended reverse cross appeared out of thin air in the middle of his hands.

"-his original arms and beliefs."

The whip was covered in bone spikes and was incredibly sharp, and in contrast to the previous Siren Bone Whip and Spades' Lizard Bone Whip, this whip, though similar in appearance, carried a very obvious aura of fury.

The reverse cross was made of some unknown stone, and the color on it seemed to flow as if blood was flowing, containing a soul-capturing light.

The Seer's pupils crinkled for a split second, "You put Bai Liu's weapon and the Reverse Cross into this copy?"

"Bai Liu is the perfect heir out of all the Bai Liu's I've chosen." The man smiled with a kind of indulgence, "I broke his original weapon and reverse cross, I should have gotten him something newer and better, shouldn't I?"

"It's like I killed his old god, and it's always time to give him a new, more perfect god."

The prophet gasped with all his might, "Bai Liu hates you, he will not become your believer, so your argument about giving him a new and more perfect god doesn't hold water, he will not believe in you or want what you give him, the only person Bai Liu will believe in will be-- "

"Taville," the man under the hood lifted his eyes in a smirk, "but Prophet, in the absence of Taville, you've also left out someone Bai Liu would believe in."

The prophet was stunned, his face completely frozen this time.

The man under the hood laughed, "-that's Bai Liu himself."

"By a more perfect new god I do not mean myself, but Bai Liu himself."

"Bai Liu doesn't like me, hates me, hates me all he wants, I need him to feel that emotion towards me." The man's eyes held a smirk that didn't fall from his eyes, "I will keep taking away the things he cherishes so that Bai Liu will have to look me in the eye and kill me to do it."

"-because the only one who has the power to kill a god is a god, Bai Liu should have fully understood this by now, and in order for him to kill me, he would have had to take all the gifts of godly power that I had given to him- "

The man laughed softly, "-and then became the new evil god who killed me, the old god, as I had wished."

The prophet spoke as laboriously as if he couldn't catch his breath, word for word, "Do you really want Bai Liu to become the new god that badly? You are going to be destroyed by him for that."

The man in the hood slowly stood up, his back to the soon to be completely petrified seer, and looked out at the waves rising from the sea outside the temple, a smile on his face and nothing reflecting in his eyes:

"Prophet, you can see the future, then you should know that everything in this world cannot last forever, the rocks, the water, the waves, the sky and the earth, even the gods will perish one day."

"-That's why living things have the instinct to reproduce, and all conscious things are instinctively looking for some way to perpetuate their existence."

The prophet choked, "Are you attempting to seek a continuation of your existence in Bai Liu?"

"No, I find it boring to pursue this continuation of existence." He smirked, "So I want someone, a guy who fits the rules of my game perfectly, a player who can break all my games to come to me breaking all the rules I've set for each world and kill me, the game designer, with his own hands."

His eyes, hidden under his hood, flashed with a strange kind of light, "-don't you think it would be fun to be killed in a playful way by someone like that?"

The prophet hissed, "--Why did you pick Bai Liu to be your heir when so many Bai Liu's could have won your game?"

The man turned his head back slightly and asked rhetorically with amusement, "-Then let me ask you, why did you put all your chips to win me on this one Bai Liu, and why didn't you put them on the other Bai Liu."

The prophet was silent.

The man turned his head, the sea breeze ruffling his long ponytail that peeked out of his hood, and he dropped his eyes and smiled softly, "-because you and I both know that this Bai Liu is just not the same."

"Bai Liu has a completely different soul than the crudely made Bai Liu's; he's the most perfect, the most interesting."

"He possesses a soul full of desire, yet full of restraint."

"If I am to eventually fall in some way." He looked out over the endless vastness of the sea and smiled in full anticipation, "I hope it's Bai Liu, who possesses such a soul, who kills me with his own hands."