Alan had no idea that the slight fluttering of his wings had already stirred up a massive storm.
Right now, he was sitting in the interrogation room of the Inquisition Tribunal, as cold as a morgue, thoroughly engrossed in reading a novel.
Oh, wait, no. It was the Holy Scripture.
A suspect suspected of being a heretic, who was voraciously studying the core religious text of the Tribunal on their own turf?
Even the seasoned guard knight couldn’t help but twitch his eyes at this move.
The Church was undoubtedly the deepest hidden core of the Star Love Song world. It was like a giant tree whose roots spread across the continent and whose branches touched the starry sky, and the Holy Scripture was its innermost growth rings.
Between its lines, there was a high possibility that it unconsciously alluded to truths buried by time, truths capable of subverting cognition.
In previous playthroughs, Alan had heard his academy teacher mention in history class that the Holy Scripture had been passed down from the age of ancient myths, its contents rich and revised multiple times, the time of its completion long lost to history.
In a sense, the Holy Scripture was less a religious text and more a living history book.
Perhaps due to concerns about sensitive elements, the Star Love Song production team had not provided the specific contents of the Holy Scripture or the relevant settings of the Church within the game.
The same situation also existed in the real world.
In past playthroughs, Alan had been unable to find any books related to the Church in the academy library.
It was clearly a deliberate act by the academy.
He had only seen the origin of the Church in a book titled History of the Founding of the Kingdom of Lorraine.
The History of the Founding of the Kingdom of Lorraine was a historical text written by court historians, not an unofficial folk history. The historical records in this book were quite credible.
The book recorded that the history of the Kingdom of Lorraine began with a cataclysmic disaster that almost instantly destroyed all the prosperous human nations on the continent, leaving only ruins and scars upon the land.
Human civilization seemed to possess an ingrained collective subconscious about some kind of great disaster.
It was not uncommon for myths or histories to begin with disasters, though Alan had no way of knowing how much of this was true.
***
Over a thousand years ago, the founder of the Kingdom of Lorraine, Camille Durand, believed a madman’s prophecy that the end of the world was imminent while human civilization was still flourishing.
He began building an ark to escape the apocalypse, heedless of everything, pouring almost all his energy and fortune into it, becoming a clown mocked by the world.
The day of prophecy arrived as scheduled, but the apocalypse showed no sign.
Camille Durand’s deeds became a complete joke, and everyone ridiculed his stupidity.
But just as Camille Durand’s resolve began to waver, that madman found him and said, “The wicked shall surely be punished, but the descendants of the righteous shall be saved.”
“The deviation in the prophecy was an opportunity God gave humanity, but humanity did not cherish it.”
As the madman had prophesied, after the ark was built, humanity’s depravity reached new heights.
Humanity lost its forward momentum and focused its limited energy on infighting.
As resources continued to deplete, in order to survive, humans began a brutal struggle for the remaining resources.
Alan didn’t know that the slight fluttering of his wings had already stirred up a massive storm.
Right now, he was sitting in the interrogation room of the Inquisition Tribunal, as cold as a morgue, thoroughly engrossed in reading a novel.
Oh, wait, no. It was the Holy Scripture.
A suspect suspected of being a heretic, who was voraciously studying the core religious text of the Tribunal on their own turf?
Even the seasoned guard knight couldn’t help but twitch his eyes at this move.
The Church was undoubtedly the deepest hidden core of the Star Love Song world.
It was like a giant tree whose roots spread across the continent and whose branches touched the starry sky, and the Holy Scripture was its innermost growth rings.
Between its lines, there was a high possibility that it unconsciously alluded to truths buried by time, truths capable of subverting cognition.
In previous playthroughs, Alan had heard his academy teacher mention in history class that the Holy Scripture had been passed down from the age of ancient myths, its contents rich and revised multiple times, the time of its completion long lost to history.
In a sense, the Holy Scripture was less a religious text and more a living history book.
Perhaps due to concerns about sensitive elements, the Star Love Song production team had not provided the specific contents of the Holy Scripture or the relevant settings of the Church within the game.
Dull and boring!
This was three thousand times more thrilling than reading a power fantasy!
Brimming with immense doubt and faint excitement, Alan took a deep breath and opened the heavy cover. The ancient script and yellowed parchment pages quickly swallowed him up.
He was immersed in it, sometimes frowning in thought, sometimes unconsciously tapping his fingertips on the edge of the page, radiating a focused aura completely at odds with this cold interrogation room.
The creation myth at the beginning of the Holy Scripture hit Alan like a thunderbolt!
“In the beginning, there was nothing but the void. God awoke from a long slumber, felt lonely, and thus conceived the thought of creation.”
“God’s act was a ‘gentle push’—this was the primal motion, the foundation upon which the universe began. The sun, moon, and stars thus turned; the vast galaxy thus flowed…”
Translated, this passage meant:
The universe was not born from chaos or an explosion, but originated from the first awakening of “God’s” consciousness.
In absolute nothingness and silence, God felt lonely. So, He decided to create all things.
The first action He took was “to give a gentle push.”
It was this primal, incomprehensible “push” that endowed the silent void with its initial momentum. The sun, moon, and stars were thus born and set into motion; the vast universe was thus formed!
“The Prime Mover…”
Alan muttered to himself, his voice laced with barely contained shock.
The knowledge he had stored up before his transmigration clearly told him that even in the highly technologically advanced 21st century, the “Prime Mover” regarding the birth of the universe remained a front-line, fundamental unsolved mystery in physics and philosophy!
Old man Newton, in his later years, attributed the ultimate cause of the universe’s motion to “God’s first push,” and modern cosmology’s Big Bang theory was also stuck on the fundamental problem of “what came before the singularity?!”
And this Holy Scripture, held as the absolute truth by medieval believers, precisely hit the ultimate question of human cognition of the universe right from the start?!
The information density of this opening was ridiculously off the charts!
Alan suppressed the turmoil in his heart and continued reading.
God created the universe but still found it too quiet. So “He scattered the seeds of life across the boundless stars, wishing to fill the silent cosmos with vitality.”
Alan almost spit out a mouthful of blood.
Scattering life between stars? Filling the universe with vitality?
This cognition… was way too advanced!
This wasn’t just cognitive advancement anymore; this was a rocket launch, taking the worldview straight into the era of interstellar colonization!
The Church was implying that humanity wasn’t even remotely unique in the universe?
Life was God’s “standard decoration package” for the cosmos?
This was a completely different style from those twaddling local faiths that declared “God only favors us and the land beneath our feet!”
Cold sweat trickled down Alan’s temple.
To the people of this era, they would only find this creation story incredibly grand and mysterious, completely unaware of the subversive information it contained.
God wasn’t done yet. He found that these lives seemed to be missing a soul.
“God divided His own will, wrapped it around an existence outside the material realm, and placed it within life. Thus, humans were made.”
“An existence outside the material realm? Will wrapped it?” Alan’s brow furrowed into a knot, his brain CPU running wild. “This flavor… why does it sound so much like Gnosticism?”
Fragments of knowledge he’d skimmed while slacking off in an elective philosophy class in his past life now glittered brightly.
Gnostics believed the material world was an evil prison built by a malevolent creator god, and that humanity’s true essence (the divine spark) originated from a sacred realm outside the material world.
Only by obtaining “gnosis” (true knowledge) could one escape the prison and return to the source.
This passage from the Holy Scripture was practically putting an officially certified shell around Gnosticism!
No wonder those maniacs from the Crimson Spiral Order were always screaming “The world is a prison, death is liberation” and conducting human experiments like performance art. They were practicing the inverse of the Church’s orthodox scripture!
This was why the Church branded them heretics, not heathens.
Alan suppressed his surging thoughts and kept reading.
The next part of the Holy Scripture entered territory Alan was familiar with.
After humans were born, God created a perfect paradise for them—a gift He left for His creations.
God was satisfied with His creation. He needed to rest.
Before falling asleep, God earnestly warned humanity: Do not listen to the whispers from the depths of the stars!
Those were voices full of malice, excluded by His will, which would lure humanity towards corruption and destruction.
Initially, the naive humans heeded God’s teachings, multiplied and thrived in paradise, and their civilization grew increasingly prosperous. However, comfort and the passage of time gradually made them forget God’s warning.
Finally, a “big brain” was seduced by the tempting murmurs from the depths of the stars. He betrayed God’s teachings and guided the way for the evil beings hidden in the starry depths to enter the human paradise…
Thus, disaster struck.
Paradise was razed into a wasteland under the invasion of evil forces.
The surviving humans were forced to flee their homeland, drifting through the dark universe.
Eventually, they arrived at this planet and began an arduous and eternal struggle against the “Star Demons from Beyond.”
The latter half of the Holy Scripture recorded how, through the long flight and struggle, generation after generation of “Saints” led the remaining humans to struggle for survival on this new homeland, resisting the threats from the stars.
However, the evil forces were too powerful. Human civilization would repeatedly reach a certain glorious peak, only to be destroyed again by cataclysmic disasters.
Human civilization was trapped in an eternal cycle of struggle between light and darkness, justice and evil.
The Saints firmly believed that one day, the sleeping God would awaken again.
His supreme will would drive away the darkness within the stars, bring final salvation to the long-suffering humans, and guide them back to the lost Paradise of God.
The Holy Scripture ended with a crucial prophecy:
In the final Dark Age, the Messenger of God would awaken within an “empty vessel.” He would end this endless cycle of destruction and re-guide the lost humans onto the path back to God’s Paradise.
When the Messenger’s mission was complete, God would fully awaken. His light would shine upon the universe, eternally expelling those evil beings entrenched in the depths of the stars.
Alan slowly closed the heavy Holy Scripture, the cold sweat on his back having soaked through his hospital gown.
The interrogation room was dead silent, with only the sound of his own pounding heartbeat echoing in his ears.
Absurd? Bizarre? Terrifying to think about!
This wasn’t a religious text at all!
This was clearly a “Report on Human Origins” and “An Account of Leaving Earth” heavily encrypted with religious language!
The amount of information it contained was suffocating: Gnosticism, the universality of life in the cosmos, threats from the stars, the cyclical destruction of civilizations, a sleeping “God,” and a prophecy about a savior messenger…
What made Alan’s scalp tingle the most was that the Holy Scripture didn’t mention specific concepts like “Earth” or “the sun is the center” at all, yet it clearly used words like “planet,” “universe,” and “stars”!
This meant the person who compiled the Holy Scripture, or the source of its knowledge, clearly knew that the world humans lived in was a planet floating in the vast universe!
This was definitely not a worldview a people of an ignorant age could possess!
He suddenly remembered the “Great Disaster” mentioned at the beginning of The History of the Founding of the Kingdom of Lorraine.
Was that the tragedy described in the Holy Scripture, the previous cycle of civilization being destroyed by “Star Demons from Beyond”?
If human civilization experienced cycles… then was the reincarnation he was experiencing also related to this?
Where exactly was the paradise God created for humanity? And why did humanity have to experience this terrible cycle?
Did the “evil beings from the depths of the stars” truly refer to the evil god worshiped by the cultists, or was it a metaphor for cosmic civilizations beyond humanity?
Was the Church truly the ancient organization that had crossed countless cycles of destruction and guarded the flame of humanity, just as the Holy Scripture claimed?
Alan couldn’t help but feel grateful that the deity who granted him the trial experience card seemed somewhat similar to that sleeping God.
It was as if He was half-asleep, vaguely heard Alan’s voice, casually shoved a blessing at Alan to get rid of him, and then went back to snoring, naturally providing no follow-up service.
On the other hand, those Star Demons from Beyond mentioned in the Holy Scripture were quite patient.
They started by slowly corrupting humanity with evil murmurs, and later only destroyed humanity after it had developed a bit.
The former was perfunctory, like dealing with a task; the latter seemed like an annoyingly persistent troll.
Indeed, even if God did exist, it was hardly a good thing for humanity.
To create human happiness, we must rely on ourselves!
The massive influx of information crashed against the dikes of Alan’s mind, but one sharp question surfaced like a reef—
“What about the Crest?!”
The Holy Scripture, from beginning to end, talked about creation, paradise, destruction, saints… but it didn’t say a single word about Crests, the most fundamental and core power system of the Star Love Song world! As if this thing didn’t exist at all!
This was too bizarre! Like a martial arts manual that covered inner energy in full but completely ignored techniques!
Alan’s thoughts connected like lightning:
When did Crests appear?
It wasn’t recorded in the Holy Scripture, which meant it might not be part of God’s original settings, but was a “new thing” born during the long cycles, perhaps even in this very cycle!
Alan immediately thought of Star Love Song’s heroine, Livia.
Why was Livia’s cheat Crest specifically “Stars”?
In the Holy Scripture, “stars” were the source of “evil murmurs”! It was a pejorative term!
Was her power of the stars, which was unmatched throughout the ages and incredibly strong, truly sacred in origin?
Or… was there a terrible conspiracy hidden behind her brilliant starlight?
In the original story, Livia’s path towards becoming the Demon King, the power of destruction she displayed, that posture that seemed connected to some vast and cold will…
Thinking back now, didn’t it perfectly match the “evil beings from the depths of the stars” described in the Holy Scripture?
She wasn’t a Demon King; she was more like a “vessel” or an “apostle of destruction” chosen by the “Star Demons from Beyond”!
The Church possessed “lost legacies” far beyond the era, yet strictly suppressed the development of technology. What was the reason for this?
Alan had initially guessed the Church did this to maintain its rule.
But thinking carefully, the Church so vehemently opposed Crests, even risking offending the sword nobility who possessed them. Wasn’t this undermining its own base of support?
If it wasn’t to maintain rule, what was the point of their actions?
An icy, bone-chilling conclusion solidified in Alan’s mind.
The Church was afraid! They were terrified that human civilization would develop too quickly, drawing the “gaze of the stars” again and triggering another cycle of destruction.
They denied the sanctity of Crests. Was it because they knew the source of this power was nothing but bait thrown by the “evil god”?
Once Alan accepted this setting, the entire story of Star Love Song underwent a massive reversal!
As the protagonist of an otome game, Livia von Stern, this radiant Phoenix Overlord, could theoretically have had a route to becoming a Saint.
Yet in the game’s story, no matter which route she was on, she would end up opposing the Church.
Clearly, she could not be the “Messenger of God” mentioned in the prophecy!
Her unprecedented Star Crest was perhaps not a blessing, but a beacon! The countdown to the next cycle of destruction!
Alan sucked in a breath of cold air, feeling like his soul was freezing over.
All his previous reincarnations, all his struggles, all his “death endings” seemed as insignificant as dust before such a grand, hopeless script.
What made him even more desperate was the ending of the original “Church Route”—
“His gaze eventually fell upon this planet, and thus humanity was destroyed.”
This inexplicable scripted death would trigger at a fixed time in the game, and there was no way to avoid it!
Alan only realized now that its trigger time was after all the routes had ended!
What did this mean?
It meant that this crappy game, Star Love Song, simply didn’t have a so-called “Happy End”!
No matter how the player (and he) chose, no matter how they struggled, they would ultimately arrive at the same destination—the end of humanity!
The only difference between Alan and the other characters was dying early or dying late, dying in one way or another!
Thinking of it this way, the resentment in Alan’s heart instantly vanished.
So everyone dies after all. That’s great! Dying together is a Happy End!
If Alan hadn’t entered the cycle of reincarnation, he could have found a little stool in Hell, cracked open some sunflower seeds, rewatched the original story, and waited for Livia to come down and join him.
By then, he would definitely clap happily for Livia and openly mock her:
“Congratulations, congratulations! Our main heroine has finally wrapped up. We get to meet in Hell. Happy? Surprising?”
Livia would never be able to kill Alan, that annoying villain, again. The two of them could torment each other in Hell until the Path itself faded away.
“Hahaha… hahaha!”
Alan couldn’t help but let out a suppressed, dry laugh, his shoulders trembling slightly.
Such a fantasy was truly pathetic.
What kind of otome game was Star Love Song? This thing was written just to take revenge on society, wasn’t it?
To ensure sales, the production team didn’t dare clearly state the true ending, but for their twisted “artistic pursuit,” they deliberately hid this ending in the Church route.
No wonder the Church route was the hardest hidden route to enter in the original. The production team had buried a huge bomb there!
Alan had naively thought that in this playthrough, he could survive by worming his way into the Church.
Looking at it now, he had just jumped from one small, inescapable death trap into a bigger one—a final slaughterhouse that encompassed the fate of the entire race!
The truth of the world was like an iceberg slowly rising from the dark depths of the sea. Just the glimpse of its tip, with its hideous and desperate outline, was enough to crush any mortal’s mind.
Damn it!
What should I do?
How did humanity survive the apocalypse last time?
The content of The History of the Founding of the Kingdom of Lorraine flashed through his mind like lightning!
It was that Ark of Doom!
The Holy Land of the Church!
Alan immediately grabbed onto this lifeline!
He took a deep breath and regained his composure.
In any other playthrough, he could never have escaped the destruction of the entire world.
But in this playthrough, he had entered the Church route!
Not only had he deduced the truth of the world, but he had also found a way to survive!
There were at least 15 years left before humanity’s destruction!
That was enough!
Ten thousand years was too long. Alan would seize the day.
Never underestimate the human will to survive!
Even if Alan started as the lowliest monk in the Church, he had the confidence to climb all the way to the top!
His past nine hundred and ninety-nine cycles had accumulated a solid, invaluable wealth for him to survive on—
He knew the entire original story and all its events!
Relying on just these memories, he could render great service to the Church. With such contributions, was Alan still afraid he wouldn’t earn a spot on the Ark?
It seemed that the sleeping Creator not only held no grudge against Alan for blaspheming Him but was even willing to give him a way out.
Merciful Lord! I understand now! You are the best God! I won’t blaspheme You anymore!
I love You!
So, uh… could You maybe renew my cheat?
I’m not asking for a permanent card. Isn’t a 15-year-long cheat fair enough?
A man without long-term worries must have immediate concerns.
Alan realized that humanity’s end was still over a decade away, but his own end might come within the next few days.
His mood instantly sank again.
Ah, why was this the case!
As the villain, could he never escape a death ending?
It was all your fault, Livia!
You’re the protagonist, yet you can’t even save the world! What a useless waste!
Just as Alan was contemplating how to handle the Tribunal’s upcoming interrogation, the iron door to the interrogation room clicked open.
The Inquisitor who had interrogated him earlier returned, his face still expressionless as he announced in a businesslike manner:
“Alan de Laval, you are free to go.”
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