Self-Positioning

A Sefirah coming to life? That was one possibility.

Under the pressure of the Ancient Gods, the Book of Dreams had suddenly erupted, allowing Truman to see more deeply—and see more.

By now, he and the Book of Dreams were practically one and the same. Even the fundamental structure of his body was made of Dream Phosphor!

"Now that I think about it..." Truman ran his fingers over the fourth page of the Book of Dreams. Half of the symbol on it had already taken shape.

It was an authority of change, symbolizing the endless possibilities and transformations of Dream.

Dream had emerged from countless people's hopes and desires for a better life. Among them were countless individuals' definitions of themselves. Even their thoughts were ever-changing, unconstrained and wildly imaginative.

This was the third branch of Dream's authority. Because it was impossible to predict and had no fixed form, Truman found it difficult to explore on his own.

The half-formed symbol on the page seemed illusory. Yet it looked different to every person. It had no physical form; only when someone looked at it would it become whatever that person imagined.

Truman suddenly shook his head, no longer dwelling on philosophical questions like "Who am I?" "Once this page is complete, everything will have an answer."

He put away the Book of Dreams and entered the city-state he had saved from the Catastrophe.

"Mr. Angel." Hermes bowed to Truman.

"It's over. Let's go." Truman shook his head slightly. Taking Hermes with him, he prepared to begin their journey. Their destination would be the Kingdom of the Creator.

Thanks to the Elves' swift response, the Ancient Sun God's side could no longer maintain any open dealings with the Giants. Otherwise, today's Catastrophe would not have been an isolated incident.

The Elves, now aware of the threat, might even unleash a horrific disaster across the world, one powerful enough to destroy the surface ecosystem.

"Wait, Mr. Angel!" It wasn't Hermes who called out, but the boy Truman had saved.

"You..." Truman could see the yearning and admiration in the boy's eyes.

He yearned for great power and admired Truman for standing against that terrifying Catastrophe.

He was no different from the other believers in that regard.

"If you want to become a Beyonder, you should speak to the person in charge of this city," Truman advised.

Every city that worshiped the Creator had access to Beyonder Potions and a training system that was already beginning to show results. The Kingdom of the Creator had no shortage of Low Sequence materials or Beyonder Characteristics.

"As for that so-called 'sin' of yours, I forgive you on behalf of the Lord!"

"To make up for the ordeal you suffered, once you come of age, you may receive a complete Potion from the person in charge of this city."

Truman pointed, stealing a ray of sunlight and pressing it to the boy's forehead. It turned into a Little Sun.

Then Truman said no more. He simply took Hermes and left the city.

The boy stood there, stunned. Only after a long while did he come to his senses. He turned to look, and sure enough, the people's gazes had changed.

Their hatred was gone. In its place was awe for the sun mark on his forehead.

The Angel had forgiven him on the Lord's behalf!

"..." The boy fell silent, then ran to the person in charge of the city. No one dared stop him, because everyone had seen the Angel absolve him of all blame.

"I want a Potion!" The boy looked at the city's overseer.

He was a very tall priest, broad-shouldered and muscular, a Sequence 7 Weapon Master on the Warrior Pathway.

"You're too young. You can come back when you're an adult." The priest looked at the boy's slight frame and slowly shook his head.

"Once I'm an adult, the Potion won't be mine anymore!" The boy was adamant, and the Little Sun on his forehead shone brightly.

"No one would dare take what the Angel promised you!" The priest was devout in his faith in the Creator.

"But I want it now!" The boy brushed the hair away from his forehead, revealing the Little Sun and pressing the priest to comply.

"You'll die!" The priest warned him again, explaining the truth about Potions: they came hand in hand with madness.

"Give it to me!" The boy remained stubborn.

"...It's your choice." The priest stopped trying to dissuade him. "I don't have a real Potion on hand. I'll need to prepare one, and I can only prepare one kind in a short time."

"What kind?"

"Assassin. After drinking it, you'll become skilled at assassination and concealment."

"Fine. That's what I want!"

Truman returned directly to his territory and flatly refused the Giants' request to meet.

At this point, he couldn't have any open dealings with the Giant Race, or he would provoke the Dragons and the Elves.

The Giants were one of the twins, so they could afford to disregard them. Humanity couldn't.

"Lilith?" Truman looked up and happened to see the beautiful, radiant girl sitting on the shoulder of his statue, gazing down at the believers praying to Dream.

In Truman's eyes, however, Lilith was secretly responding to the Sanguine.

Those responses were drowned out by the prayers of the Dream Believers, hidden so perfectly among them that even the Ancient Gods would struggle to spot the truth.

"They're so stupid!" Lilith's pretty face turned chilly. "Why not go to Alnia?"

Lilith crushed a single point of light from a Sanguine's prayer to the Book of Dreams.

It was hard to imagine an Ancient God having such a strong emotional reaction.

"You're too slow." Lilith spotted Truman and looked at him with displeasure.

Compared to hundreds of years ago, her expressions were much livelier. She had truly gained humanity.

It had been a process of staggering length.

Through the Sanguines' secret worship and Lilith's tireless search, an Ancient God who had been cold for nearly a thousand years had, by a twist of fate, finally developed something that could be called "humanity."

It was just that the way this supposed humanity had come about was rather dramatic.

For the first three hundred years, Lilith had desperately searched for the existence of "humanity," but found nothing.

Yet over that long process, she had found peace in her divine existence through her own efforts.

She was Lilith, the Ancestor of Vampires, a Sanguine who had spent hundreds of years searching in vain for humanity—and, at last, who she was now.

At first, humanity had simply meant knowing who she was. Only later, after she repeatedly bestowed blessings upon the Sanguines struggling to survive, had humanity begun to take root.

It was a strange state, almost impossible to detect. If you said you were human, then you were.

After that, Lilith began acting out the key roles of the different Sequences on the Moon and Mother Pathways in the Dream Territory.

She had already made some progress. She had advanced from the Moon Pathway to the Mother Pathway and reached Sequence Two, becoming the Mother of Abundance.

It wasn't that she couldn't become a Nature Walker; she was waiting for the right moment.

That was why she had been so dissatisfied with how slowly Truman and Sasrir were acting.

"We can't rush this." Truman shook his head slightly. They were pushing history forward and plotting against the Ancient Gods. One small misstep could bring every Ancient God down on them, and that would be disastrous.

"Let's hold the meeting first. We can talk about everything else once we're inside." Truman opened the Book of Dreams.