At that moment, Iver's eyes were incredibly bright.
By now, Iver had finally realized clearly—why Ring Angel wanted to seize multiple Source Rivers.
This should have been a very simple question. But because of Iver's overly humble nature, he had been unable to understand why another version of himself was so greedy—why he would abandon this world completely just to return home, and disregard the fate of the world itself for the sake of his own strength.
Now, he finally understood—
In other words, Ring Angel believed that the force preventing the Source Rivers from merging was connected to the world itself. It was precisely the constraints of zero and ten that made it impossible for the Sacred Number to become eleven. If one could reach eleven, that would mean transcending the limit of "ten."
The Path of Love and the Path of Twilight had both undergone severe distortions, gradually tending toward nothingness as time passed. The central Equilibrium Path had been inherited most successfully, followed by the Path of Wisdom from the Fourth Source River and the Path of Adaptation from the Sixth Source River. Dedication and power—or rather, authority—were already somewhat diseased. Beauty and transcendence were even worse...
By the laws of it, the closer a path was to either extreme, the earlier and more severely it became distorted.
—This might be because of the influence of nothingness on the Source Rivers.
If this continued, the Source Rivers at both ends would probably be devoured first, and the powers of Love and Twilight would dissolve here.
...What would happen then? Perhaps people would no longer possess love or desire, and all things would lose their day of ending. Or perhaps people would no longer be born, nor would they die. It was also possible that all Transcendents and