Unholy Player-Chapter 550: Revealing the Secrets (Part 1)

"I’m going to check. Are you coming?" Kaelor said as two streams of red jet flames burst from beneath his feet, pushing him upward in a steady lift.

This ability was not a function of his mecha body; rather, it was a Spark skill from the Blood Path.

Though his Path had also changed from Blood to AXION, the unique feature of this Path let him use his Blood Path Sparks without any issue.

Arvyn hesitated whether she should follow because the sight and power of those two beings were still etched into her mind like a nightmare.

She looked around and saw that some of the Practitioners with the strongest builds, like Zephan, Throgar, and Liora, were starting to wake as well, pushing themselves up with slow, strained movements. Then she looked back at Kaelor and answered, "Yes."

Then she summoned her red wings, and the two of them rose into the sky toward the mountain peak.

When they arrived, a strange scene greeted them. Broken metal devices littered the ground, twisted and cracked as if they had been thrown aside, and humans lay scattered around, unconscious, some face-down, others on their backs.

Though it was the very place where the two Gods had landed, it was strangely not so bloody. All the unconscious humans still looked alive, their chests rising faintly, with only their awareness snuffed out.

Then, in the middle of that chaos, the biggest anomaly caught their eyes.

There was one man, still conscious, standing in the center of it all, upright and unmoving while everything around him looked abandoned.

"Who are you?" Arvyn asked on instinct. But the moment the man lifted his head and looked at her, she felt in her bones that drawing his attention was a mistake.

His eyes were a deep crimson.

It was almost the same crimson color that marked Blood Path Practitioners, but the man in front of them held something more, something heavier in that gaze.

It was like an endless sea of blood sat within those 2 eyes, opening into a boundless crimson dimension so vast it made her feel small just by meeting it.

The Owner of the Scarlet Sea. The honorific title rose in their minds as they stared into that gaze.

What they felt was the same presence they had always sensed from the Blood God they were trying to resurrect.

They even started to think that their sect had finally succeeded and that the man standing before them was Him, returned in a body that could walk and speak.

But the man’s next words made them realize they were mistaken.

"It should be me asking who you are and what you’re doing in my territory."

The understanding hit the two immediately.

"So it was you. The ruler of this place," Kaelor murmured, voicing his thoughts, his gaze staying fixed as if he didn’t want to blink and miss something.

He wanted to ask what those 2 Gods from before were and why this man resembled the Blood God so much, but the newcomers interrupted, their presence arriving like a second wave.

First, Zephan arrived in a flash of silver lightning, the air snapping with a brief crack, his expression shaken as his gaze landed on Adyr with wide, shocked eyes.

The fact that Adyr looked like a Blood Path Practitioner didn’t even concern him. It was the least important among the questions spinning through his mind. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Then, after him, Liora and Throgar arrived, and more and more Practitioners kept reaching the scene, landing, rushing in, or descending from the sky, all with the same purpose: to find the answer to their only question.

What kind of power was it, exactly, that had wiped out every Path they carried and believed in until now and replaced it with a new one called AXION?

—-

A day quickly passed after the 2 Gods descended and shook the beliefs of all beings living in the Outer Region in a single day, leaving behind fear, rumors, and a silence that felt too tense to be natural.

There were too many questions everyone wanted answered. But before they could answer any of them, Humans first had to understand what had just happened themselves.

In Beyond, in the headquarters of the Human City, many high-authority figures were gathered around a round table in the meeting hall.

Not just senior officials and researchers, but even the 12 City Managers, despite their age and health conditions, had come to Beyond to join the meeting. Seated in their places, all of them watched patiently the one person sitting at the head of the round table, waiting for him to speak first.

Adyr sat there calmly, a cup of steaming tea in his hand. He took a sip, then slowly set it down on the table, the faint sound of porcelain hitting wood breaking the quiet. "So that’s what happened."

For a while now, he had been listening to Henry and Selina’s report about what had happened during his sleep, without interrupting even once.

Researchers trying to awaken him using the Dark Radiation of the sun, the 2 gates opening during their experiment, and then suddenly a power was released that changed every Practitioner’s Path to AXION in the Outer Region.

Even Adyr was shaken when he heard it, the shock showing only in the slight pause before his next breath.

It wasn’t only that; the Paths of those within a close perimeter changed. The entire Outer Region, which included Human Players, changed all in one day. There was no Path left from the 4 main ones. Everything had been replaced with his AXION Path all at once, as if the world itself had been rewritten overnight.

And it wasn’t the only change. Selina stood up and added to the report. "Apart from our Paths, our races also changed from Human to Nephilim in the system panels."

Upon hearing the term ’Nephilim’ aloud, the 12 City Managers and all the head researchers uncomfortably shifted in their seats.

So far, it had been a lost or forgotten race they had only heard of in archaeological excavations, but now the name had returned in a strange way, as something defining their Players, stamped directly onto their system identity.

"That’s interesting," Adyr said as he opened his character panel and checked the changes there as well.

[Name]: Adyr Hellcraft

[Title]: Monarch of the Black and White

[Race]: Sanguine Nephilim → Sanguine Arbiter

[Path]: Primora, AXION → AXION

—

There were two main changes to his character panel. The first change was that his race had shifted from Nephilim to Arbiter.

The second was that the Path ’Primora’ was completely erased from it, leaving only AXION behind.

With too many questions piling up to be answered, Adyr decided to speak openly now. "My race seems to have changed from Nephilim to Arbiter as well. Does anyone here know what it means?"

Adyr could remember, during his dream, his conversation with the creator of Primora and the moment he addressed him by the name Arbiter.

At the time, he hadn’t dwelled on it for many reasons, but now, seeing the same term in his character panel, he had to understand what it meant.

"Arbiter?" The researchers and the 12 City Managers looked like they had heard the term before, as they started exchanging glances, searching each other’s faces for confirmation.

Then one of the researchers began to speak, taking responsibility for explaining what they knew.

"It’s a term we also heard from findings in archaeological excavations on Earth," she said as she tapped a few times on her wrist device.

A 3-dimensional holographic screen appeared above the center of the round table, large enough for everyone to see clearly.

It showed a stone tablet. Strange symbols were carved into its surface. The grooves were dark with age. Even Adyr was seeing the symbols for the first time. It was something he had never seen even in his previous life.

"So far, this is the only finding in which the term Arbiter appears, based on our decoded language."

She then started to read the translation of the symbols, her eyes flicking between the display and the faces around the table.

"It basically says only one sentence. An Arbiter is the High Judge who pronounces the final, unalterable sentence."

One of the City Managers added, "When we first found it, we thought it was a title given to high-ranking individuals in the civilizations that existed when this tablet was written. But now you’re saying your race changed to this, which means we were mistaken. It wasn’t a title at all, but the name of a completely different race."

Suddenly, the history of humans gained a deeper direction they had to discuss.

"So the Human race is also a hybrid race? Our ancestors were Nephilim, and if we go even further back, we trace to another ancient race called Arbiter?" As the idea began to take shape, one of the researchers attempted to make connections, swiftly synthesizing everything they had previously learned.