Chapter 193: The Manipulated Hestia, Divine Fire Ignites the Volcano!
Ouranos's impassioned speech revealed all the truth. His words clearly recounted the Heavenly God's thousand years of research and exploration, seeking the essence and truth of the world.
He seemed so pure and rational, firm and unyielding, as if he were seeking a certain truth that was utterly defined and would never be shaken.
And the gods were undoubtedly shaken by Ouranos's attitude.
Even as fellow gods, the obsession and thousand-year quest of the Heavenly God Ouranos still made the other gods feel genuinely complex emotions, and even an unprecedented sense of heaviness.
They were ultimately forced into silence.
The only one present who could speak was Astraea.
She looked at Ouranos and slowly said: "Ouranos, I have understood your will, and I understand the effort you have put into investigating the essence of Divine Power.
But ultimately, what exactly do you want to do? What is the final destination you are trying to reach with all your research into Divine Power, the construction of Orario, and the creation of Divine Power monsters?"
Astraea questioned Ouranos. Her eyes looked seriously in his direction, awaiting a specific answer.
The gods also looked towards Ouranos, wanting the final answer to appear.
"The final destination... Astraea, it seems you still haven't grasped my idea."
Ouranos shook his head.
He did not appear flustered and was completely unfazed by the reactions of the surrounding gods. He simply looked frankly at the gods present and quietly turned his gaze towards the Divine Mirror next to him.
In the Divine Mirror, the war taking place on the entire Orsa Island was almost completely over.
Many Familia had been defeated, and countless adventurers lay on the ground.
The unprecedented great battle could almost be called an unprecedented world war.
And by the end of the great battle, the only two people still standing were Emiya Shirou and Leon Vardenberg.
They were the only surviving adventurers in this war, inheriting the respective will and aspirations of the two major factions, and were about to engage in the final duel under everyone's gaze.
However, Ouranos's gaze was clearly not focused on this final battle. He was just looking at the battle that was about to determine the winner and spoke quietly:
"It's about to arrive. The beginning of the end, and the end of the beginning. My thousand-year-old aspiration, the final destination, is finally about to begin."
"Ouranos, what on earth..."
Astraea looked at Ouranos with suspicion.
But she couldn't utter any more challenging words for a moment.
Because by now, it was clear that no one could stop Ouranos's plan, and they could only watch as everything he desired to happen finally reached its conclusion.
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Orsa Island.
The unprecedented great battle had almost completely ended. Countless adventurers lay on the ground, and a large amount of broken walls and ruins described the unprecedented fierce battle that had taken place here earlier.
Even so, due to the evenly matched strength of the two factions, the final forces of both sides were still intact in front of their respective bases.
It would be basically impossible for the remaining forces on the ground to break through the guard of the defending team, and even less likely to destroy the opponent's base crystal.
Therefore, the outcome of this war would only be decided by one battle.
That was the battle between Emiya Shirou, who had just finished sending the two gods, the Sea God Poseidon and the Moon Goddess Artemis, back to Heaven, and Leon Vardenberg, who had personally defeated Ryuu and the coalition army and had now reached Lv.9 with a special magical enhancement.
When Shirou descended from the sky and saw Leon appear before him, he couldn't help but feel a strange sense of destiny.
Of course, rather than destiny, it was more like a kind of manipulated fate.
Someone had forcibly woven all the scripts and guided the story to this point.
However, with the strength Shirou now possessed, even a god could not affect his fate, and Hermes's Authority of the script could not affect him at all.
Therefore, what caused all this was not fate, but simply a combination of chance and inevitability.
Chance was the different results that appeared after countless dice rolls, and inevitability was the act of repeatedly rolling the dice once a wrong result appeared.
The current inevitability was created within the chance.
For a moment, Shirou had this feeling in his heart.
But he could not fully understand why this feeling arose, and it was hard to believe that there was such an eerie power in this world.
As he hesitated, Leon's gaze was fixed on him, and he spoke with great emotion: "Although I fantasized about the current scene before I came, and even thought that I might be able to take advantage of your weakened state to defeat you in one go, it wasn't until this moment, until the instant I truly stood before you, that I realized the fact that I am completely no match for you. Even if you are weakened, it would be impossible for me to defeat you."
"That's not necessarily true..."
Shirou looked at Leon and showed a calm expression.
"Heh, there's no need for comforting words." Leon said quietly, while raising the two-handed greatsword made of light in his hand. "Come on, let me witness the true strength of a powerhouse who can defeat a god!"
With that, Leon rushed towards Shirou without the slightest hesitation, wielding the two-handed sword made of light in his hand.
Facing Leon's momentum, Shirou also did not hesitate, quietly raising the longsword he had projected in his hand—
"Crack!"
However, just as their swords were about to touch.
A strange cracking sound suddenly came from the surrounding air.
It was as if space itself was being torn apart by some exaggerated force, or rather, the pure world was being contaminated by an impure force.
"Bang!"
An extremely exaggerated surge of energy suddenly rushed out from beneath their feet, from directly below Orsa Island, and shot straight into the sky, as if to pierce the clouds!
"That is..."
Shirou and Leon were stunned almost simultaneously.
They were not the only ones frozen in place.
Everyone on Orsa Island, whether they were adventurers from Shirou's faction or Ouranos's faction, was now focused on the light shooting up into the sky, attracted by the overly exaggerated brightness.
Immediately after, everyone suddenly felt an unprecedented heat attacking from all directions. The scorching temperature seemed to be burning everything, and even space itself was gradually dissolving into broken particles within that excessive heat.
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On a certain high mountain on Orsa Island.
"It's faster than expected, but it's just right. Let's ignite the entire island in one go."
The figure in the black cloak, Fels, The Fool, spoke quietly.
It was clearly acting under Ouranos's command.
Manipulating the changes of the entire island, and at the same time, where Fels's gaze landed, a black-haired, twin-tailed girl was quietly lying directly above the lava.
Undoubtedly, it was Hestia, who had been missing ever since she was captured by Ouranos.
Now, Hestia, manipulated by the Ouranos Faction, had virtually become the core of the entire Orsa Island, completely integrated with the island.
At the same time, she had also maximally stimulated the giant volcano in the center of Orsa Island.
Yes, igniting the volcano at the very center of Orsa Island.
This was the reason why Ouranos had captured Hestia and placed her here.
Because Hestia's Authority was not just to ignite fire; it was also capable of transforming all fires in the world into Divine Fire.
This meant that under the influence of Hestia's Authority, the volcano beneath Orsa Island was completely transformed and became an existence similar to Divine Fire.
And the sheer magnitude of the volcano beneath Orsa Island was something that even gods dared not imagine.
The only thing that could be known was that the moment the energy of the volcano was about to erupt, the enormous energy was practically going to ignite the firmament and completely set the world on fire.
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Orario.
Thanatos, at the base of the Astraea Familia, instinctively looked up at the sky.
And he was not the only god who did this.
Along with most of the gods in the world, almost all the gods sensed something exaggerated igniting in the direction of Orsa Island.
That overly exaggerated Divine Power fluctuation was meaningless to ordinary people and showed no special features, but in the eyes of the gods, it was like a red aurora shooting up into the sky.
"What on earth is that..."
Thanatos was dumbfounded.
Although he had anticipated that Ouranos's plan would be very terrifying and insane, when he actually witnessed everything happening, he still underestimated the horror of Ouranos's actions.
The red aurora was so eerie, more intense than boundless blood-red, and more magnificent than endless scarlet flames. The life experience of Thanatos, the God of Death, told him that this was undoubtedly a sign of destruction and disaster.
"Must, must do something!"
Thanatos instinctively wanted to take action.
But the moment he truly tried to move, he realized how insignificant his own power was.
Compared to that sky-piercing aurora, even a true god was nothing more than a slightly larger ant.
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On Babel.
All the gods were shocked by the strange change occurring on Orsa Island.
The gods had completely failed to anticipate this kind of change, and even less did they expect the entire island to be completely ignited at this moment.
Flames raged everywhere, as if symbolizing some kind of ultimate power that was germinating and turning into blood-red dust.
"Ouranos, what have you done!"
The gods, led by Astraea, couldn't help but question the Heavenly God.
By now, every god had realized how insane and incomprehensible Ouranos's actions were, completely unable to rationalize the steps he had taken.
Ouranos himself showed no extra emotion and spoke frankly: "Why the panic? I haven't done anything special. I merely used Hestia's Authority to ignite the volcano beneath the entire Orsa Island and transformed the energy of that entire volcano into a domain covered in Divine Fire."
"Turn the entire volcano into Divine Fire? Are you mad?" Loki no longer cared about any pretense and spoke loudly. "Don't you know what kind of consequences this will lead to? Even though that idiot Hestia doesn't know how exaggerated her power is, as the Heavenly God, don't you know? The Divine Fire she transforms is true Divine Power flame. Even a single trace is comparable to a true source of Divine Power. If the flames of the entire volcano are turned into Divine Fire, it is enough to swallow an ocean, a continent!"
"Yes, I know." Ouranos responded to Loki in a calm tone and looked quietly at the gods. "It was precisely to achieve this step that I laid out everything, from capturing Hestia to holding the War Game, and finally, igniting this all-consuming flame when the war reached its climax!"
"Why?!" Astraea questioned him. "Why do this? What is the reason for igniting the volcano with Hestia's Divine Fire, destroying the earth and the ocean? Wasn't your goal to explore the essence of Divine Power, Ouranos!"
Facing Astraea and the gazes of the gods, Ouranos answered quietly:
"I stated my purpose from the beginning, and everything I have done has never deviated from my purpose."
"Your purpose? Are you saying..."
"That's right, I did all of this to create a god of the Genkai." Ouranos said quietly. "However, gods are not so easy to create. I spent thousands of years and couldn't achieve this. The reason is that the soul strength of Genkai creatures is far from sufficient to carry a god-level soul. Even the top powerhouses, like Lv.9 adventurers, cannot do this. While Divine Power monsters can use Divine Power, they are fundamentally different from my goal and are not the same concept."
"It was precisely because of this that I reached a bottleneck and began to ponder how I could create the existence I wanted. It was then that the embodiments of the Three Great Quests gave me inspiration."
"The embodiments of the Three Great Quests?"
"Do you know where the Three Great Quests of the world truly come from?"
Ouranos suddenly brought up a seemingly unrelated topic.
Facing the gazes of the gods, he answered his own question:
"The essence of the Three Great Quests is actually three ordinary Icharus.
In the very beginning, I was just randomly experimenting, fusing human souls with monster souls. But in that experiment, three human souls were extremely special.
It wasn't that their original souls were particularly powerful, but that their soul's capacity to carry was very strong. When they devoured monsters and their own kind, they could not only absorb the energy in the Magic Stones but even the monster souls within the Magic Stones!
Yes, the so-called Three Great Quests are simply the destination reached by three ordinary Icharus after devouring thousands, tens of thousands of monsters. They devoured countless souls, allowing their own souls to continuously break through their original limits, and eventually even reach the realm of the gods!"
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