Paladin of the Dead God
Chapter 448: Forest of Forgetfulness (3)

As Isaac fell silent, a notification suddenly appeared.

[Nameless Chaos is watching you.]

Startled by the sudden notification, Isaac looked up. The White Owl was staring intently at him.

"Is this notification also you?"

"Sometimes. Most of the time, it’s the Nameless Chaos."

The White Owl pointed a finger at the ceiling.

"The Nameless Chaos is the Chaos that appeared after I drove out the Mother of All Gods. The Lighthouse Keeper was greedy, but no matter what he did, there was no way to drive out Chaos itself. I thought it was better to tame Chaos than to do something useless."

"You drove out the Mother of All Gods? How?"

Isaac, who might have to fight the Mother of All Gods soon, asked urgently. But the White Owl only smiled.

"Let’s talk about that slowly. It’s not a very pleasant story."

Isaac felt a shadow fall over the White Owl’s face for the first time. It was clear that it wasn’t a pleasant method. If so, Isaac would have to prepare himself for it as a last resort.

"Then how are you going to destroy the Millennium Kingdom? No. In the first place, why did you make a plan assuming that the Millennium Kingdom would descend?"

To end the Millennium Kingdom, he had to defeat the Mother of All Gods, who might be covering the entire continent by now. Isaac asked earnestly, but the White Owl put a fork she had never used in her mouth, tilted the chair halfway, and swayed her body.

Isaac wanted to smack his head at his mother’s bad table manners, but the White Owl continued to stare at the ceiling. After a long time, the White Owl opened her mouth.

"It’s better to show you directly than to explain it in words."

"Huh?"

"Come on. You need to know what kind of world you have to fight against."

Isaac brushed off the White Owl’s tentacles in rising irritation and said, "Stop being vague and answer properly. I have no intention of being used by anyone anymore. If all of this was according to your script, does that mean it will continue to be according to your script? To be swept up in something I don’t even know?"

However, the White Owl grabbed Isaac’s hand and pulled him. With a powerful force that didn’t match Camille’s appearance, Isaac inadvertently bent down and met the White Owl’s eyes closely. She stared intently at Isaac and whispered, "You’re just not fully prepared yet. I’m ready to tell you everything without hiding anything. You don’t know what that means yet."

Isaac suddenly recalled that the White Owl was an angel recognized by the Codex of Light but gave birth to a Nephilim and Fell. And that the process was unusually extreme.

"Let me make one thing clear. If you’re asking if I’m going to use you and throw you away, it’s the opposite, Isaac."

In the White Owl’s glowing eyes, there was an unexplainable bizarre longing, earnestness, and sadness. But the most significant of those complex emotions was none other than madness.

"Rather, I’m ready to abandon the world for you. I just hope you’re not too surprised when you realize that."

***

Isaac followed the White Owl. Followed? Isaac didn’t know if the expression "followed" was correct. The terrain of the Outer Boundary was different from reality and difficult to explain, especially when he was with the White Owl. The scenery changed rapidly: valleys, deserts, plains, and sometimes cities. Unique-style cities that Isaac had never seen before.

Among them, the most spectacular was the city that floated haphazardly in the air without any distinction between sky and land. The river flowed backwards and soared upwards, and huge buildings with no sense of weight were entangled in a form difficult to understand. Isaac thought it was another city created by Chaos, but the White Owl opened her mouth.

"Buildings from the era of the Seven Elven Dynasties."

Isaac was reminded of what the Immortal Emperor had said a similar thing.

"If it’s this style, it must be from the time of King Ellerlui the Head Chopper. The elves first brought a civilization-like civilization to this land. They created a system, power, and magic, increasing their lifespan and creating authority. Along with achievements that are hard to imagine now."

"...Why did they perish even though they were so powerful?"

The White Owl grinned at Isaac’s question.

"The most powerful weapon they created was none other than ’faith’. In the end, the Age of Turbulence of the God of Myriad soon came."

Isaac imagined a huge civilization collapsing on its own with the rampant faiths all over the world. The elves wouldn’t have known they were perishing. They just thought that the god they believed in was the most powerful and would overwhelm their opponents. The elves’ reason would have slowly collapsed amid the rampant gods.

"And when that Age of Turbulence of the God of Myriad reached its peak, the Lighthouse Keeper appeared."

The White Owl suddenly stopped. Isaac was standing in the desert. The strange aerial city that had been floating in the air was no longer visible. No, only some of its fragments were buried and broken in the desert soil. The traces of glory engraved on the city were dismantled at the hands of the local residents who knew nothing about magic and had been reduced to a single brick. And in front of Isaac, he discovered a man sitting in front of a small campfire. He had a white beard, but he didn’t look that old. It seemed that his hair was white from the beginning. He was glaring at the sea, no, the world, from the edge of the cliff with boiling hatred and disgust.

"Hasmir."

As the White Owl opened her mouth, Isaac heard a ringing sound in his ears. Isaac realized that the white-haired man in front of him was the Lighthouse Keeper and that his real name was ’Hasmir’. The Lighthouse Keeper didn’t even look back at the White Owl and replied, "I told you not to come, White Owl."

"You’re being prickly again. Honey, why are you being so pathetic again?"

Isaac was paralyzed with shock and horror. A thought swept through his head, but before he could ask, the Lighthouse Keeper turned his head.

"I told you not to talk to me like that. What’s that over there? You’ve picked up something strange again."

Isaac realized from the Lighthouse Keeper’s answer that he wasn’t the "real" Lighthouse Keeper. There was no way the real Lighthouse Keeper wouldn’t recognize him. This Lighthouse Keeper was also a part of the abandoned timeline, and he was also a shadow of Urbansus.

The Lighthouse Keeper approached Isaac and looked him up and down, frowning. "Did another ancient god cover a human? You managed to survive. There must be more than one or two who are trying to eat you."

"Hey, it’s not like that. He’s my child."

This time, the Lighthouse Keeper had a shocked expression. His eyes frantically went back and forth between Isaac and the White Owl. Isaac also had no idea how to interpret the situation of ’confessing that she gave birth to a Nephilim in front of the Lighthouse Keeper and bragging about her child’.

While the Lighthouse Keeper was in shock, Isaac quickly grabbed the White Owl and asked, "Wait a minute, White Owl. Could the Lighthouse Keeper be my dad or something..."

"What?! You’re my son? That can’t be! There was never a situation where that could happen!"

It was the Lighthouse Keeper who answered as if he was having a seizure. Isaac looked at the White Owl with an absurd expression. He was relieved that it wasn’t the soap opera situation he had feared, but a different kind of anger surged. The White Owl walked forward with a mischievous expression. "I never knew that teasing the two most serious men in the world would be so much fun."

"White Owl, what do you mean by your son? Do you know what that means?"

The Lighthouse Keeper was reacting unusually emotionally. It was an unfamiliar sight to Isaac, who remembered the Lighthouse Keeper as treating all beings like NPCs. No, he had treated only one person, Isaac, with emotions. But now he was showing the same attitude to the White Owl, of all people. ’Could it be?’

"I thought of you as a colleague to build the Millennium Kingdom together! How could you give birth to a child in the meantime? Don’t you know how important this time is?"

’Is that what’s important? An angel gave birth to a Nephilim? Are you playing with me?’

One thing was certain. The Lighthouse Keeper had special feelings for the White Owl, but they were feelings as a colleague, not as a lover. Perhaps the White Owl was like Isaac to the Lighthouse Keeper, ’a colleague who could believe in and entrust the Millennium Kingdom to’. Isaac, who knew the ending of this relationship, couldn’t help but feel bitter.

The White Owl said with a bright smile, "You’re going to regret that statement now, Lighthouse Keeper. So, you’re going to erase those words from everyone’s memories and choose to get angry at me, saying ’there are no exceptions’."

"What are you talking about...?"

"It’s true, Lighthouse Keeper. And you’re going to Fall me later, bury me in the deepest abyss in the world, and pile up the corpses of angels like a mountain to block it. After that, you’re going to become the most narrow-minded geezer in the world."

The Lighthouse Keeper had an uncomprehending expression.

"What are you saying? Why would I..."

"You will. You have to."

The White Owl looked back at the two and took a step back.

And the era moved.

***

The Lighthouse Keeper, Hasmir, was dragged to a place where they worshiped a certain god of the desert and stood on the pyre ’in accordance with the natural order’. However, in the burning firewood, the Lighthouse Keeper appeared with a Dawn Stone Tablet inscribed with shining strings of characters. His white hair all turned to ashes, and his eyes, which had been filled with exhaustion as he stared at the world, were now burning with clear anger.

The cliff where he had lit the campfire collapsed, and the buildings of the elven ruins that had been half-buried in the soil melted down. The small village grew into a large city. Several wars broke out, and the statues of the ancient gods were all broken and buried.

The Codex of Light symbols were engraved on the city and flags. Isaac looked at the White Owl in the frantically flowing time.

She looked back on the erased memories of someone or something with a lonely gaze. They were fragments of histories that had no meaning in the world, unselected histories, but because of that, there were even more secrets that could be uncovered.

"Why does the Lighthouse Keeper have to make you Fall?"

"Because I need to see these records and find a way to collapse the Millennium Kingdom."

The White Owl said calmly.

"Just in case you’re wondering, it’s meaningless to argue about the order of time here. I wasn’t even born in the Lighthouse Keeper’s era. I was born later than Elil. You have to see this as a record in the Urbansus of Urbansus."

Isaac didn’t ask anymore because it seemed like it would be too complicated of a concept to argue about. The White Owl was only showing him what was okay for him to understand: her relationship with the Lighthouse Keeper and the reason why she had no choice but to choose the Fall despite that.

In the end, Isaac couldn’t help but ask again, "Why did the Millennium Kingdom have to descend?"

The frantically flowing time stopped abruptly. Isaac was standing in the middle of an old market. Isaac discovered a familiar pyramid between the buildings. This was the Holy Land Lua. It was also the Holy Land Lua from about 300 years ago, when people were still living there. The White Owl was wearing a desert-appropriate outfit with her face half-covered by a veil that covered the sun. She smiled at Isaac.

"Because that’s how I can meet you again, Isaac."