"Drip..."
The crisp sound echoed through the quiet, cramped Black Room.
A drop of water fell into the tank, sending ripples across its surface.
Bai Zhou approached and examined the Crown of Thorns up close.
This ancient and gorgeous crown.
Quite troublesome.
—Troublesome in the physical sense. Or rather, it was prickly.
What did it feel like to hold thorns? What was it like to hug a cactus with both arms?
Bai Zhou grimaced in pain. He really could not resist complaining.
Did Empress Irene, who wore a crown like this, really have some special masochistic fetish?
What was the difference between this and putting a cactus on his head?
With spikes growing from the top of his head—now that was truly a crown of thorns.
"Vmmm—"
Suddenly.
Bai Zhou's Destiny, that White Sun, began to stir for no reason.
The next instant,
as if responding to Chen's agitation, a sudden change occurred.
The iron thorns on the crown seemed to come alive. They slowly grew and spread, while twenty-four sharp points flashed coldly.
"What...?"
Bai Zhou carefully held up the crown and watched the strange change with uncertainty, ready to throw it back into the water at any moment.
Could people with Destinies other than Chen's cause the crown to react like this when they approached...?
The next second, bright scarlet blood slowly flowed from the tips of the twenty-four spikes.
The blood, whose source was unknown, slowly streamed along the ancient, intricate, gorgeous patterns.
The winding blood trails blossomed with light, and the patterns glimmered faintly wherever they passed.
It was as if the crown were weeping blood.
Scarlet tears dripped onto Bai Zhou's fingertips, creating a shocking sight.
In the dim Black Room, it was a bizarre scene that made one's skin crawl.
Yet Bai Zhou inexplicably felt a solemnity and desolation, an epic-like... sense of Ritual.
Blood-Soaked Coronation...
He suddenly understood something in his heart.
The answer was right there in the riddle itself.
Now, the blood was ready.
All that remained was "the coronation."
Should he put it on?
Bai Zhou hesitated.
Mainly because he was afraid it would hurt.
But in the end, he gritted his teeth.
So what if it was a cactus? He would wear it! If he did not want to be eaten, he had to endure hardship!
The Last Will had made it perfectly clear: Blood-Soaked Coronation.
He believed the Last Will, and he had no choice but to believe it... Wasn't that why he had come here?
No matter how bad things got, it could not be worse than being trapped in the base with no way out and no power to do anything!
—Of course, the main reason was that he had already come all this way!
"..."
Thinking this, Bai Zhou looked around.
After confirming that no one was nearby, he slowly raised the weeping crown toward his head...
Bai Zhou moved slowly—especially slowly.
He lowered his head, but his muscles were tense and his eyes were raised, watching the crown's movements at all times in case anything went wrong.
Although he was willing to believe the Last Will, instinct made him wary of every mysterious item.
...When the ancient crown was still a hand's breadth away from Bai Zhou's head, another change occurred!
The twenty-four spikes on the crown suddenly hummed and vibrated in unison, as if resisting Bai Zhou's movement.
Within the twelve empty spaces cupped by the curves at the tips of the twenty-four spikes, a golden light faintly blossomed.
"?"
The next instant, before Bai Zhou could react, his heart felt as though it had been struck by lightning.
The clear world before him vanished. In a daze, Bai Zhou passed beyond the cramped Black Room and the underground base, seeing a sky that did not belong here.
Twelve dazzling stars appeared. They revolved, intertwined, and overlapped. Above them, a sleeping Golden Giant awoke, then lowered its gaze.
Across a starry sky, across a distance so vast he could not comprehend it,
they—or rather, They—were watching him.
—This was way beyond the scope of the question!
The alarm in Bai Zhou's heart rang wildly. Where had these Golden Giants come from?
How had the Special Management Department dared to rate something like this as a mere F-Class Black Box?
He now even had reason to suspect that not only did the organization lack a sufficient understanding of this crown—even Ya did too!
The enormous pressure made it impossible for him to breathe.
Just as Bai Zhou's back turned cold and his heart was compressed until its beating nearly stopped...
twelve grand and solemn declarations sounded in succession beside his ears—
"This is not the one who inherits the Throne—not acknowledged."
"This is not the one who resists injustice—not acknowledged."
"This is not the one who once saved the world—not acknowledged."
"..."
The grand declarations seemed to come from the distant depths of primordial antiquity, falling from some unknown world beyond the heavens. They echoed beside Bai Zhou's ears in different tones twelve times in all.
Bai Zhou had already been struck senseless and left dazed after hearing only the specific contents of the first three declarations. His head rang loudly.
He could no longer make out what followed. Even after exerting all his strength, he heard only the endings of nine declarations: "not acknowledged."
The next instant,
Bai Zhou felt the heavy gazes that had fallen upon him and nearly suffocated him withdraw.
The starry sky he had glimpsed in his daze also dimmed.
The twelve stars sank back into slumber.
They—or rather, They—seemed to have remained forever in that night sky since an era so long ago that no one could say when.
Solemn and silent.
Waiting as they always had.
—What was that?!
As if shocked by electricity, Bai Zhou hurriedly pulled the crown away.
Only after confirming that no more sounds came from beside his ears did he finally let out a long breath.
Acknowledged for what? Did he need to be acknowledged by "Them" before he could wear the crown?
Would wearing it make him a god or something? Did he have to undergo the Twelve Trials before he could even put it on?
The Golden King...
Perhaps it was far more mysterious than Bai Zhou had imagined.
"This crown..."
Bai Zhou cautiously stared at the quiet and unfamiliar crown before him.
The ancient, indistinct Last Will floated in the air, silent and still, as if it had existed eternally.
But looking at it now gave him a completely different feeling.
The sensation of having survived a disaster welled up in Bai Zhou's heart.
Never before had Bai Zhou felt his own life to be so small and powerless as he had just now.
He even had the feeling that if Ya, who had once cleaved stars and moons, stood here, he would not fare any better.
—Because that had clearly surpassed the limits of human understanding. It was a transcendent existence that could neither be understood nor defined.
It seemed that even that suffocating pressure was merely a strand of Their gaze, devoid of any subjective malice, cast across an infinitely distant space.
Resist injustice? Once saved the world?
What kind of requirements were those?
When Irina put on the crown, had she also received "Their" acknowledgment?
It was not that Bai Zhou looked down on that older sister who operated a spinning wheel... but he remained skeptical.
"Clack..."
"Rumble..."
Something rolled from the crown onto the ground.
Bai Zhou lowered his head and was surprised to find that it was blood dripping from the top of the Crown of Thorns.
The blood changed shape when it hit the ground, congealing into several smooth Gold Beads that rolled everywhere.
Bai Zhou carefully placed the crown into the distilled-water tank, then bent down and picked up the Gold Beads one by one.
The cold Gold Beads felt heavy in his hand.
No matter how Bai Zhou examined them, the Gold Beads seemed to be nothing more than ordinary Golden Beans. Apart from being somewhat rounder, he could not see anything unusual about them.
9999-purity gold. They were genuine!
No one would have expected them to have congealed from the crown's blood.
"What is this...?"
Bai Zhou, who was crouched on the ground examining the Gold Beads, suddenly blinked.
His fingertip touched an unusual indentation on a Gold Bead. The sensation was extremely faint, but it definitely existed.
His heart stirred. Bai Zhou raised his head and lifted the Gold Bead before his eyes, bringing it so close that it nearly touched his eyelashes.
He activated a spiritual power located near his glabella, greatly stimulating his eyesight.
Even in the lightless Black Room, everything before him became perfectly clear.
Even if a mosquito flew past him then, Bai Zhou could distinguish whether it was male or female.
—This was, of course, also the result of Ya's special training.
Using spiritual power to stimulate and greatly enhance a particular part of the body was the most common application of spiritual power.
Even this was already something ordinary people could not imagine...
With the help of his enhanced extreme vision, Bai Zhou finally made out, somewhat indistinctly, the pattern on the Gold Bead—a pattern that nearly surpassed the limits of human eyesight.
It was an exquisite micro-carving, with incredibly tiny engraved lines—
A clearly outlined shield occupied the center, while two Longswords of different shapes and a War Blade crossed in front of it.
It was a pattern filled with strength and warning.
It was a mark.
"It's—"
Bai Zhou's heart gave a heavy thump. His heartbeat lagged by half a beat, and the fingers holding the Gold Bead tightened instinctively.
He recognized this mark. He was intimately familiar with it.
—It represented the Adventurer path!
Before you continue