Civilization's Past

"I was scared to death! I almost lost my life!"

"Damn, we actually have a real mage here!"

After passing through a huge, dark, damp drainage pipe, they arrived at a hidden stretch of coast on the other side of Scrap Iron Avenue. Having survived the ordeal, the boys and girls let out long breaths, then turned their shocked, complicated gazes toward Rosaline, who walked at the front.

They were all Elite students of Black Tower Middle School, so they naturally understood how unbelievable spellcasting of that level was. Even third-year upperclassmen would never have been able to lead them through a direct escape under those circumstances.

"Keep it secret, okay?" Rosaline winked at them and made a shushing gesture.

Hans, Mary, and Briel all nodded frantically. They had been frightened badly enough today. Right now, their only thought was to get the hell back to their safehouses immediately.

"Those damn Vicious Dog Gang bastards! They even got my magic puppet destroyed. When I get home, I'll tell my parents. I'll make them pay..." Briel muttered bitterly.

"What do we do next?" one of the lackeys asked timidly, anxiously scanning the dim coastline.

"Let's keep moving. We're still too close. We should hide somewhere first," Hans said.

Rosaline's group had discovered this route during one of their recent explorations. It led to an old seaside village. Hardly any gangsters or tourists went there; only a scattered few elderly people lived there, waiting for the end of their lives.

To escape the gangs' pressure, the six of them headed deeper in. Before long, they spotted a wooden house by the sea. An elderly man with graying hair was fishing nearby. When he saw them, he smiled and nodded.

"Grandpa Watt!" Rosaline waved, her movement and shout startling several seagulls into flight.

When they drew closer, the old man named Watt narrowed his eyes and smiled. "Oh, you brought new friends this time. Here to catch fish again? Or do you want some Crispy Grubs?"

"No, no... no need." Rosaline hurriedly refused. The "Crispy Grubs" Grandpa Watt mentioned were actually a local kind of plump white worm, as thick as two fingers. Once roasted, they shrank into a crisp, salty-tasting snack.

Other than the elderly residents of Scrap Iron Avenue, few young people in Blackwater District ate something that looked so terrifying. They did not even have the courage to try it.

"Crispy Grubs? Poor... old man, are you indigenous?" Briel asked in surprise.

Two hundred years ago, Ish Island had once been home to an island regime known as the Ish Kingdom, where local natives lived. Their most obvious trait was that their skin was somewhat darker than that of mainlanders. They had developed local foods like Crispy Grubs, along with their own unique culture and beliefs.

But later, with the colonization of the Great Eden Empire, the natives suffered widespread slaughter. Fewer than one in ten survived. Much of the history and culture that had once existed vanished in the process, reduced to dust beneath the wheels of history.

Of course, as civilization developed, the Great Eden Empire's regime was overthrown. The current government was the New Eden Commonwealth, at least a democratic country on the surface.

Grandpa Watt smiled and nodded, unbothered by Briel's rude form of address. "The descendants of the kingdom should all be here, around Scrap Iron Avenue. Some moved to Grayport City, and some to Luya City beyond Mount Ish. I don't know much about those places."

Just then, one of Briel's lackeys suddenly pointed in a direction. "What's that?"

Everyone looked over and discovered what appeared to be an entrance to a building beneath a cliff.

"That? It's the Tidal Church," Grandpa Watt said.

"The Tidal Church?" Rosaline, Hans, and Mary looked surprised. They had come here two or three times before, yet this was the first time they had seen it.

"It was once a place for worshipping gods. It's hidden at high tide and can only be entered at low tide. Now it's become ruins. Aside from archaeology enthusiasts, hardly anyone comes here anymore." Grandpa Watt chuckled.

"What god?" Mary asked. Most residents of Ish Island had no particular religious beliefs, but Origin Civilization had quite a few well-known religious powers, such as the Mind Temple on Silver Mirror Continent and the Tree God Church on Emerald Continent.

"He was called the God of Twilight. In the current mythological system, he would probably be considered a Demon God. But the islanders back then saw him as the embodiment of death and rebirth, so they had worshipped him since the tribal era. Its history probably went back several thousand years," Grandpa Watt said. "But I don't know the exact details. I only saw it in documentaries. That was a long, long time ago."

As he spoke, a trace of reminiscence appeared in the old man's eyes. It was as though he could see scenes from countless years ago: people entering and leaving the Tidal Church, attending orderly masses. Back then, the Magic Revolution led by magitech had not yet begun, Ish Island had not been invaded, and their ancestors lived peacefully on the island generation after generation, free from conflict, like a paradise beyond the world.

Rosaline and the others remained with Grandpa Watt until evening. At one point, they nearly got discovered by the gangsters, but thanks to Grandpa Watt's deliberate misdirection, the gangsters failed to find the boys and girls hiding in the woods and soon left.

That evening, after returning home with Hans and Mary, Rosaline went back to Room 1809 and told her teacher every detail of what had happened that day. At the end, she asked expectantly, "...So, Teacher, how did I do today?"

"Arrogant, reckless, and thoughtless," Ivette said bluntly. "Also, notify me immediately next time. Even if this is a dream, if something goes wrong, I can't guarantee that you'll be safe in reality."

"But! But I think I did perfectly, Teacher." Rosaline was unconvinced. She truly did not believe anyone else could have done better in that situation.

"But if you had informed me, I could have used you as a bridge and hacked the chips in their bodies through the network port. I could have caused all kinds of interference, or controlled nearby vehicles to ram them... Wouldn't that have been safer than riding a skateboard to dodge bullets?" Ivette asked. Her tone carried far more sternness than usual.

Rosaline fell silent at once. Her mouth opened, but she could not refute her teacher—without a doubt, Ivette was right. She knew her teacher had that ability, but at the time, she had only felt that her moment to shine had arrived. She had never realized the risks and stupidity lurking behind it.

What embarrassed and ashamed her even more was that, ever since the journey back, she had been looking forward to her teacher's reaction. She had imagined Ivette being astonished, shocked by her student's growth. She had not expected it all to be nothing more than her own self-importance.

After a long while, she finally recovered and said awkwardly, "I'm sorry, Teacher... I was wrong..."

Ivette gave a quiet hum and said nothing more. As someone with a cold and aloof persona, she had already said quite a lot. She believed it was enough to rein in this twelve-year-old girl and stop her from rushing into a rebellious phase.

After dinner, thinking about the history of the Tidal Church Rosaline had told her, Ivette opened the holographic screen again and began gathering information.

Since her search for information on the Silent War had yielded nothing, she shifted her train of thought. Perhaps the apocalypse had not necessarily been caused by Origin Civilization itself. In a world with magic, gods might not necessarily be nonexistent.

What if a god had simply been in a bad mood and insisted on bringing down the apocalypse?

After researching mainstream religions and mythology, Ivette suddenly made a discovery.

It was a free academic paper that explained how gods like the God of Twilight had similar counterparts across cultures throughout Origin Star.

For example, the world-ending Demon God Twilight's End Lord from mainstream mythology, as well as the Source of Destruction, God of the End, Doomsday Elegy, and others translated from myths of foreign continents, all shared similar settings.

And the striking similarity was this—each of these Demon Gods had, through their own power, destroyed God's heavenly kingdom, the Garden of Eden, in their respective myths, forcing newly born humanity to hide in the harsh world below and struggle for survival.

Of course, not every account described it exactly that way, but the plot was more or less the same.

As for why such highly similar patterns emerged, experts in history and mythology largely agreed that these legends were all closely related to the Ancient Civilization Era of thirty thousand years ago.

Origin Civilization knew very little about that prehistoric civilization from thirty thousand years ago. It could only find faint clues in a few fossils, believing it to have been an era with an abundance of magical elements, when enormous Giant Dragons roamed the skies and terrifying monsters walked the earth.

Humans of that time could become powerful mages through the Meditation Method alone, using their individual strength to protect their people and establish tribes and even kingdoms.

But later, for unknown reasons, just like Earth's age of dinosaurs, all life from that era died out at some point, and the world entered an age devoid of magic.

Such a massive, mysterious, and bizarre historical turning point gave rise to the Deus ex machina-like image of Demon Gods such as Twilight's End Lord.

And the so-called heavenly kingdom, the Garden of Eden, was the most cherished and beautiful spiritual refuge imagined by people of the age devoid of magic, who longed for that High-Magic Era overflowing with elements.

"A turning point... Could the Ancient Civilization Era thirty thousand years ago have been destroyed because it encountered a mysterious apocalypse as well?" Ivette murmured. It sounded like an entire cycle of fate.