Facing the Gods

As Doom walked away, King Norwick entered the throne room. The relaxed smile on his face vanished, gradually revealing a majesty that no one dared to provoke.

The civil and military officials stood on either side, arranged in neat rows, kneeling on one knee before the king.

During the three months King Norwick was away, Queen Daisy had been handling state affairs. Although she performed excellently, some details were not handled with sufficient precision.

After finishing the state affairs, King Norwick removed his armor and sat in the empty study, his fingers tapping incessantly on the stone desk as he fell into deep thought.

A king is destined to see further than ordinary people; he must be as clear as a fire, grasping every suspicious detail to see the dangers lurking beneath the calm surface of the water.

Doom's concerns provided King Norwick with a new line of reasoning. The exchange between father and son brought a warning to the exceptionally wise king.

The son who descended from the sky brought not only hope but also new enemies and strife.

As the King of the Night Watchers, he had to find the enemies; as a father, he needed to figure out who was plotting against his son.

Doom's arrival was by no means an accident; King Norwick believed that he himself was the one who had made it an accident by being the first to pick him up.

The one piece of information that could be confirmed was that humans had created Doom; this was beyond doubt.

Then, who had cast Doom, an extraordinary product created by humans, into the void, only for him to eventually arrive at Nul?

A creation as powerful as Doom had never appeared, even in that glorious past.

King Norwick would not be naive enough to think that humans had regrouped, reclaimed their home scattered in the void, and developed technology far beyond what it once was.

Nor would he believe that a result like Doom was an asset that could be discarded at will, and that his creator did not care whether he was lost.

Everything, seemingly unrelated, had traces to follow. It was as if an inexplicable thread existed, connecting a series of events together.

"Fourth bookshelf, thirteenth column, twenty-first volume." He ordered the attendant to retrieve the book.

King Norwick decided to seek answers from the classics, to find the truth from those sealed, unknown, and hidden pieces of knowledge.

"Get out! Tell the guards that until I come out, no one is allowed to enter!"

When his finger slid across the index and stopped at the knowledge he needed, it was written in bold characters: Warp energy!

The amniotic pod of Doom had descended from the sky, and what the Night Watchers found most incredible was that an object could penetrate the shields of Nul.

The Dimensional Shield enveloping Nul was activated by several giant crystals of the Ring of Nul, pulling the entire planet out of the reality universe and into a state of being "visible but untouchable."

Predecessors used incredible dimensional conversion technology to allow Nul to enjoy starlight while avoiding physical attacks.

Under normal circumstances, even if a planet of equal mass encountered Nul, the two would not collide; they would only pass through each other and drift away.

Normally, Doom should have missed Nul and flown into the deeper void. Yet he had indeed descended upon Nul, defying common sense just like the orcs.

The arrival of the orcs still had traces to follow; when they gathered together, they generated a unique force field that could distort the laws of physics. Perhaps it was the force field carried by that meteorite that allowed the orcs to penetrate the Dimensional Shield.

King Norwick was sharp; he knew that what the reality universe could not do, the Warp could.

Looking at those forbidden pieces of knowledge, the doubts in his heart gradually cleared, and he began to sort out the clues one by one.

He took a quill and wrote "Warp energy" on the paper.

When Doom broke away from the Warp, the intense Warp energy carried by the amniotic pod was enough to support a small object in penetrating the dimension and descending upon Nul.

He then raised his pen and wrote a name at the position opposite to Warp energy: Isaac.

As the High Priest of the City of Truth, how did he know of Doom's arrival? King Norwick would not believe in psychic prophecies or anything of the sort.

Nul was in an independent dimension and had never interacted with the outside world; psychic prophecies required "cause and effect," and Nul was not connected to any timeline.

Recalling everything Isaac had said on the day of the siege, King Norwick's face turned terrifyingly gloomy, and he wrote a single character in the corner of the paper:

God!

As the last stroke was finished, the desktop began to vibrate, blood seeped from the characters, and the word began to twist slowly.

Feeling the temperature around him plummet, King Norwick knew it was a psychic reaction.

His will was too sharp; he raised his arm and struck the paper with his palm. With a loud explosion, the force was so great that it could split stone, cracking the stone table!

"Get out of here!" King Norwick roared, shattering the psychic reaction with his most determined will, while simultaneously shouting away the guards outside the study who had heard the commotion and were preparing to come in to check.

"Hmph! A hypocritical illusion!"

Over the long passage of time, the enemies of the Night Watchers had included many powerful psychics, and he knew exactly how to counter psychic powers.

A disdainful sneer hung on the corner of King Norwick's mouth; he knew his line of reasoning was correct. He did not fear a reaction; he only feared no reaction at all.

He continued to pick up the quill and wrote in the last corner of the paper: Creator.

This creator referred to Doom's creator. Everything on the paper was related to Doom, so he wrote in the middle of the four elements: Doom!

With all five elements written down, King Norwick's vision suddenly cleared; he knew everything, and he was only one step away from the truth.

Suddenly, just as he was about to connect everything, the study began to shake violently!

It was not just the study; the entire building was being pulled, vibrating and flipping in an irregular manner, as if it were spinning rapidly inside a tumbler.

Bookshelves collapsed, countless books were opened, and they flipped rapidly in a space without up, down, left, or right!

"Rustle! Rustle!" The sound of pages gathered together, wave after wave, surging toward King Norwick's ears like a tide.

The covers of the books gradually twisted, growing eyes that stared at him. The opening and closing pages turned into gaping mouths, with white, jagged teeth that were hideous and terrifying, constantly chanting and clamoring, spitting out incomprehensible, noisy knowledge.

The scene before him could not be called terrifying to a warrior, but it was extremely bizarre.

King Norwick sat as steady as before, expressionless, watching the supernatural scenery before him with keen interest.

He was like a reef in a storm, remaining unmoved despite the howling hurricane raging around him.

There was not a hint of panic on his calm face, even as the world spun and bizarre phenomena followed one after another.

"Put away these pathetic illusions; these little tricks cannot shake me!" His deep voice rang out, piercing the essence of the terrifying spectacle. In an instant, the study returned to tranquility, as if nothing had ever happened.

In the infinitely shifting Crystal Labyrinth of the Warp, Tzeentch silently stretched his neck through the veil to observe the man playing a "simple" connect-the-dots game at the stone table.

King Norwick's revelation of the truth echoed throughout the Warp.

The answers he sought were inextricably linked to the existence of the gods; matters concerning the secrets of divinity were naturally extraordinary.

The Lord of Conspiracy, Tzeentch, soon took notice of the man in the material universe who kept lifting the veil of truth.

He casually plucked a thread of fate and saw Norwick's past—a glorious history, a past possessed of profound wisdom.

Yet, he could not see his future, for his destiny was tightly bound to Doom.

"The wisdom of a mortal can also reach the divine!"

A long sigh emanated from the Crystal Labyrinth, carrying both approval and wariness; he decided to have a chat with him.

As the great power of Tzeentch pierced the veil of reality and descended into the material universe, a special ritual concerning him appeared quietly.

Norwick saw the ninth bookshelf standing against the wall, the ninth horizontal row, and the ninth book being drawn out by some mysterious force, suspended in the void.

Though no form was visible, every angle at which the book was pulled radiated elegance, and the sound of the pages turning was soft and harmonious.

When the pages turned to the ninth page, symbolizing the sacred number of Tzeentch, a voice suddenly echoed in the study. He spoke:

"Mortals are always so bold, attempting to unravel the great destiny. Of course, for the thirst for knowledge of a wise soul, I extend a warm welcome~"