Transcendent Gene-Chapter 298: Final Truth [6]

As Gio guessed, there were five others rushing through the maze alongside him.

Each of them received visions, and each of them had to make choices. Not all of them had the same thoughts, though.

Gio could be considered a neutral party. He was morally good, but he didn’t choose a side between the allied forces and the djinns. Regardless of the path they took, he would use them if they were useful.

Other than him, everyone else had either one allegiance or the other.

One was a rogue djinn from the north. Two worked under the Old Duke, but only one was loyal to him. The final two were from NEXUS and the Federation Army, respectively. They were on the same side in concept, but they were still in competition with each other.

Their allegiances only mattered as they relatively outlined the principles they followed. Their individual choices were, of course, formed by the lives they’d led, even aside from the influences they belonged to.

None of them saw the same things.

The djinn from the north was a man named Vernan. His first visions had to do with the scenes from the north of the world of monsters.

He was asked what he’d do if he were forced to submit, to which he honestly answered that he’d rather take his own life than submit to monsters.

He continued on to see scenes of corruption in the highest parts of society and even saw some faces that were still relevant in the present day.

His choices remained mostly neutral. He was the definition of a fence sitter who only acted for the sake of his own benefit.

And, unfortunately, he was not educated or connected enough to understand what was being told to him through the visions.

Some of them saw visions of the distant past before even the era in which the scenario was based.

They witnessed what looked like dinosaurs, ancient creatures, and the very first signs of human civilization.

Some witnessed scenes that neared the present day. They saw Earth, Venus, and Mars in all their glory and experienced a history they never knew about.

And some others witnessed a history that didn’t seem to belong to the Gehenna Complex whatsoever.

The core structure of the scenario itself had been undone and repurposed for the sake of feeding the six who contributed to Vita’s takeover.

Sadly, only some of them saw the significance of what they were a part of, and even fewer of them cared.

The prospect of a reward was all that was on their minds.

Meanwhile, Gio forgot about the rewards entirely.

For him, the history being unveiled here was the reward in and of itself.

’The timing is a little comedic, though.’

He’d just been thinking about how the Gehenna Army was the force he trusted most out of all the world’s militaries.

However, the moment he entered the next corridor, he was introduced to a past riddled with corruption and conspiracies.

The Gehenna Army, upon its foundation, was made up only of the most selfless humans.

They joined because they wanted to. At that time, there were no benefits and only consequences to becoming a part of the influence.

In those times, the Gehenna Army thrived, doing on the frontlines what Verita’s Nest did from behind.

Everything started to change when the army gained influence.

It became their job to decide what to tell the world and what to hide from it. They had to propagandize the masses into believing that they were safe and cooperate with the corrupt governments and authorities of the world for the sake of their overall peace.

It was only natural for the snake’s tongue to make its way into the army itself.

’For a long time, they had to fight to find the line between protecting humanity and brainwashing them.’

Many people were on the wrong side of that line and wanted to create a humanity that could be used as a pawn; however, the army’s goal was not that.

’But the real reason to spread propaganda is simple. It’s not some massively complicated web that needs everything to be hidden.’

They blocked information that made humans think they were living in an apocalypse.

’Because if they didn’t do that, birth rates would have dropped significantly.’

Why would humans bring their children into a world they believed was unlivable?

More Sequencers were needed on the frontlines. Earth and its sister-worlds needed to look like the epitome of peace so people would keep creating soldiers.

Gio made that choice the same way they did in the past. He knew the public couldn’t know everything.

But when the time came to decide whether the Gehenna Army was going to rule the world like gods or oversee it from the sidelines, he sided with the latter path.

The expansion of the army led to a situation where its original motives simply couldn’t be preserved in totality.

The reason why they were able to make it through those times and come out as a force that Gio felt was absolutely trustworthy wasn’t noble.

They realized that they could only fight the corruption within. They willingly chose to ignore the rest of the world’s issues unless they reached a level that prompted them to act.

Unless such an issue appeared, they did not concern themselves with ordinary human affairs. They instead created the very frontline force that cleared places like the Wasteland and created places like Frontier.

’A lot of these visions are related to the adaptation period spanning the century after the Forthcoming. I feel like there were moments randomly scattered in from even earlier time periods, but they never last more than a minute, so there’s no way to confirm.’

What stood out to him more than those older visions were those more relevant to the current era.

’I think Vita fell in the 2900s at some point. I’m sure at least three of those scenes were from the 2800s, which means there’s a chance some of the people I saw are still alive today.’

If anyone in those visions became strong enough, their lifespan could absolutely be extended past two hundred years.

’It’s said that reaching the Starlight Class gives you hundreds of years of life. Even though I went Beyond Starlight last time, I didn’t really get the chance to think about my own mortality.’

Once again, Gio thanked the world for gifting him with the [Memory Book] and chastised his past self for treating it as a useless Original Gene. Every face and its associated name was stored for later.

On the off chance that he found some of those names in a search on the outside...

’I have to learn more about Vita and their era.’

Vita was clearly much more relevant to the modern day than Gio gave them credit for. His original plan didn’t involve them whatsoever, but all of that changed in this labyrinth.

’It isn’t just about what I can learn from their vestiges. If I can find some of the technology they left behind...the things that weren’t unveiled to the public...’

The capability to create something like this labyrinth was testament enough to what they could have left behind.

Gio made a note of everything he needed to do when he found his way back to the outside world as he chose a new pathway. He was on his third turn already, but not everyone was lucky enough to make it so far.

Gio’s assumptions about Verita’s Nest were correct. They wanted the participants of the trial to answer truthfully to themselves, but they also wanted those answers to align with their own ideals.

The first to go was one of the two djinns serving the Old Duke. He didn’t make it past the first set of trials, as even when he was given a subtle warning to answer truthfully, he continuously made choices that he thought were the correct answers instead.

He broke the very first rule laid out in the red Quest Window; therefore, he was disqualified without seeing a hint of a reward.

The second was the woman affiliated with NEXUS. Her problem was, in fact, the opposite of the man’s. While she did answer according to her own thoughts, those thoughts did not align with what the trial sought.

She was not shown a second set of illusions, but unlike the first man, she was given some small rewards before she was banished from the blackness.

The three who remained made it through their first and second trials and reached their third.

When they came out of the third, only two were able to continue to the fourth.

And even though he was the only person to continue to the fifth trial, Gio showed no signs of stopping.

From the sixth to the seventh to the eighth, there were almost no pauses in his steps, and the distance to the end of the labyrinth didn’t seem to get any shorter.

However, everything was bound to eventually come to an end.

As he chose his path for the ninth time, a feeling like that found its way into Gio’s mind.

The end was approaching.