Odyssey of the Blind God

Mathias and Nial gathered around Bella, whose expression was sour.

Visualizing her expression told Nial that the situation was grave, which was why he released his mana fluctuations toward the parchment Bella was holding in her hands.

His entire focus was on the parchment, which was why he didn't even notice that the surrounding was so silent that a pin drop would be heard through the entire hallway.

And at that moment, a gust of air swirled through the room, stirring up the papers on the desk.

Mathias flinched the moment he heard the rustling of the papers. However, not long after he turned his head to Bella as goosebumps appeared on his entire body.

"Is…this thesis reliable?"

It was obvious that neither Bella nor Nial could tell whether the information on the paper was reliable or not.

However, it was the first time for them to hear something about the origin of mana on new planets!

[Natural Planetary mana awakening thesis]

While Nial had already told Bella and Mathias about the origin of dungeons, or, to be precise, that the majority of dungeons were artificially created to hasten the mana awakening of a planet, this was not everything.

For a planet to awaken mana, numerous conditions had to be met beforehand. Nial had yet to retrieve more memories of the late Darkness God, which was why he felt helpless in the current situation.

Having no idea whether the information was reliable or not, Nial thought of ways to ensure it.

Nonetheless, he could only keep reading the information written in the thesis. Bella behaved the same way and was oblivious to Mathias' question as she completely focussed on digesting the information she was reading right now.

<The Origin state of a planet's mana awakening is induced by a natural phenomenon called Universe's sanctification. The sanctification allows the sealed planetary core to be freed from the shackles that prevented it from evolving…>

<Every planet has the potential to awaken mana or other types of energy but only a few encounter a natural phenomena that allow the lifeforms and inanimate existences on the said planet to grow stronger, evolve and become existences, which are supposed to aid the Universe in their fight again….something, or someone…>

Nial lifted his eyebrows when he read the last three words. The person who had written the thesis was spouting nonsense.

Some things stated in it may be true but to call the paper a thesis was simply going overboard. The information couldn't even be labeled as facts because there was a complete lack of a single piece of evidence. This was ridiculous.

Nial kept frowning, while Bella continued to read the passages out loud that she found the most interesting, or worrisome.

<In the 1st stage of a planet's mana awakening, the existences living on the planet won't notice anything. After centuries pass, the lifespan of the living will slowly start to increase due to the influence of the planetary core's mana. Once the first mana-awakened existence is created due to the influence of the planet's mana, a new era will begin.

Times will change, and only the existences living on the mana awakened planet can decide on the future of their planet…or so one might think. However, it is the planet itself that chooses the path of development of the existence on it!

After all, the planet will slowly gain sentience!>

The thesis sounded more like a fairytale to Nial than a credible piece of information. He could only shake his head before sighing deeply when he noticed that Mathias and Bella seemed to believe everything written on the piece of paper without actually being suspicious about it.

'Do they believe everything they read? If someone writes that jumping down from a bridge grants you the ability to fly, will you really jump from the bridge? What the hell is wrong with them, right now?'

His friends were acting weirdly, so Nial felt the need to beat some sense into them.

"Well, all of this is great but the information doesn't have much to do with us or Jundra, and that is considering that we label it as proven correct."

It was quite obvious that Nial felt odd about most of the information written on the thesis. Even Bella couldn't help but think that most of it were nonsense after she was able to sort her thoughts.

Despite feeling like this, mankind had yet to find out anything related to the reason why dungeon portals had suddenly begun to emerge on Jundra.

In fact, mankind didn't even know when the first dungeon portals had appeared or how Jundra had been before the dungeons appeared.

This was because it seemed as if mankind's entire history had just begun with the appearance of the dungeons. Everything related to the time before had been destroyed, or it couldn't be found anymore.

As if that was not weird enough, the memories of the first years of the dungeons' emergence had been mentioned without much detail.

There had not even been a proper date written on any kind of parchments to make them guess how old the thesis was.

Nial had always been confused about why nobody seemed to care about the unknown past.

Even if mankind knew what happened in the past, it might not actually be helpful. However, it would be reassuring to at least have some basic information about it, just for the sake of it.

The unknown was the scariest to most people, except when one could already feel that unveiling the hidden would lead to more fear and that was exactly what every single human being was able to sense about the mysterious past.

They could tell that it would ignite even more fear within them, instead of creating a reassuring feeling.

"I guess, sharing this thesis with mankind would be better than revealing the truth behind Jundra's artificially accelerated mana awakening…" Nial mumbled to himself.

However, both Bella and Mathias could hear him which was why they turned their heads to him in unison.

Nial noticed the gazes on him so he explained what was on his mind.

"Let's say that the thesis is correct about the 'fact' that all planets have the potential to be free of their 'shackles' to awaken their mana or whatever type of energy.

In that case, Jundra was one of the said planets, only that we didn't notice anything about that. However, that doesn't mean others didn't notice it.

If I'm not wrong, the moment one of the existences that could be labeled as higher life forms found out about Jundra's mana awakening in the 'Origin stage', the creation of dungeon portals followed suit without a lot of delay."

Nial wanted to end it right here but he chose to add another point.

"If it is true that not many planets are capable of awakening their mana, to free themselves of some sort of shackles, then Jundra is definitely a highly sought after planet…after all, the planet is huge…"

Mankind was currently in possession of merely 9 shelters and a part of a nameless island. However, that was more than enough to shelter more than a billion humans!

That was the average number of mankind's population. It might fluctuate quite a bit because many humans died and were born on a daily basis but the number certainly crossed one billion.

Traveling between the shelters was certainly difficult because of the existence of dungeon beasts. But the distance between each subsequent shelter was what made things truly difficult!

Hundreds, or possibly thousands of cities the size of the biggest shelter would fit in the long distance between two shelters.

This spoke volumes about Jundra's size, which was actually quite frightening.

However, Nial was not worried about Jundra's size. He didn't really care about it if he were to be honest.

He found it more trouble than it was likely for the dungeon portals to have accelerated the planet's natural mana awakening.

This would mean that they would reach the second phase of the planetary mana awakening much sooner than that mentioned in the thesis, which laid in Bella's trembling hands.

"Let's say you're correct with everything you said…will the second phase written here truly happen?"

She asked the question that popped into her head. The facts written about the second mana awakening phase were somewhat troublesome…if they were true that is. But Nial was actually not sure if they were true or false because there were some memories of the late Darkness God, which prevented him from answering directly.

<In the secondary phase of the natural planetary mana awakening, the planet will grow stronger, allowing the lifeforms living on it to reach new heights.

Mutations will occur, all lifeforms will evolve and new types of existences will appear. Intelligent life will be born if it did not yet exist on the evolving planet.>

What Bella had read out loud was not that worrisome. In fact, under normal circumstances, it could be considered great.

However, the moment the planet grew stronger, the dungeon portals on Jundra would reach new realms, bringing forth more terror on mankind.

But that was not everything yet. Rather, it was just the beginning of a nightmare as Bella read the underlined text that had been written in red.

[Warning: Natural channels with other planets, dimensions, and realms may be created in the secondary mana awakening phase of a planet. Existences emerging from these natural channels may have to be dealt with violence…Surviving the wrath of existences that have been blessed with mana longer than a newly awakened planet…good luck with that!]

The red text of warning sounded more like it was written from personal experience and by a biased person. It was almost as if the author of the thesis was unable to keep up his professionalism.

However, that was something Nial had felt when reading through the entire thesis. This was another reason for him to feel like he was reading through some bullshit.

Yet, despite believing that most 'information' written in the thesis was wrong, the Odyssey seed reacted by pulsating continuously even when they had finished reading through the thesis.

Nial was dumbfounded by this, and he didn't even notice that Bella clenched her fists, nearly tearing the thesis as she grit her teeth.

"Doesn't that text mean that…there will be different types of portals that appear out of nowhere, other than dungeons, and that we may have to face even more terrifying existences emerging from these natural channels?!"

Natural channels might be helpful because amiable existences could emerge from it.

However, Bella didn't believe that they would be lucky enough for something like this to happen.

Given mankind's bad luck, it was more likely for one of such natural channels to appear in the center of their shelters with terrifying demons emerging from it.

What Bella didn't know was that her worries were both more than justified, and at the same time, just her being nervous…

Mankind's fortune might have been bad until now but that didn't mean it would always be like that.

After all, things were about to change now and in the future.

The past created the present…thus…the present would create their future.

Nothing had yet been decided and as long as they were still alive, it was possible for them to change the human race's fate!

**

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