For Lucian, the 'DING' sound was all too familiar.
It meant that the script had finally finished cooling down and was ready to be activated once again.
At that instant, the corners of his lips curled upward as he immediately formed a plan.
'First, I'll go to the script world and grab some benefits, then I'll deal with the Scepter. Nice and steady.'
With that settled, Lucian turned around and looked at the group of people gathered inside the car, all of whom were waiting for his next words.
"Everyone."
Lucian's voice was not particularly loud, yet it instantly brought the entire car to silence, causing everyone to turn toward him in unison.
"I've got something urgent to take care of, so I'm gonna leave for a little while. Until I get back, do not, absolutely do not, go anywhere near Amphoreus. I'm not there, so whoever goes in is gonna get themselves killed. Especially you, Stelle. Don't even think about sneaking in, or I'll beat your butt until it's swollen."
He glanced at the little gremlin, who was already looking eager to give it a try, as though she were just waiting for an opportunity to sneak away.
"Ehe~"
Stelle tried to get away with it by acting cute, putting on an innocent expression as though she had done nothing wrong.
Lucian paid her no attention and instead turned toward Black Swan.
"Remember, don't make a move. Just wait until I get back."
"I understand." Black Swan hurriedly nodded like a chick pecking at grain. "I absolutely will wait for you."
At this moment, she was genuinely frightened.
Knowing that there were so many powerful people aboard this train, and that compared to them, she was little more than a small fry, obediently following Lucian's orders was clearly the safest choice.
For now, there was no reason for her to provoke trouble when the difference in strength between them was so obvious.
"Go and come back quickly."
Evernight held her umbrella and simply gave a gentle nod.
"Don't hold up the important stuff, hmph."
Herta crossed her arms and snorted.
"Understood." Screwllum nodded as well. "We will wait here for your return."
Welt, however, could not shake the feeling that Lucian's 'leave for a little while' was probably not as simple as it sounded.
'Could he be about to activate another cheat ability?'
Welt pondered the matter seriously.
Given Lucian's usual behavior, there was almost certainly something more behind his sudden departure.
"Go ahead. I'll keep an eye on them."
Himeko spoke with a smile and gave a gentle nod.
Only then did Lucian nod in satisfaction.
"Alright, then it's settled."
As soon as he finished speaking, his figure flickered and vanished from the carriage without leaving a trace, leaving the others behind before anyone could say anything else.
As for his destination, he had gone back to his room to activate the script.
===
'Activate the script.'
Inside his room, Lucian sat down on the edge of the bed and activated the script with a thought.
In an instant, the familiar System immediately responded to his command.
He had no idea which script he would obtain this time, nor what kind of world it would lead him to.
Even though he already possessed more than enough abilities to deal with almost any trouble he might encounter, there was no such thing as having too many abilities. Any additional ability could potentially become useful at some point, especially when he was constantly encountering increasingly dangerous enemies.
[Random character script starting...]
[Cerydra]
[Randomly drawing a conceptual ability...]
[Absolute Initiative: In combat, you will have a 100% chance of gaining the initiative. Before you finish your action, your target cannot act. Do note that the duration of your initiative depends on your power.]
"Cerydra? I'm just about to head to Amphoreus, and I actually got the Imperator's script..." Lucian muttered, looking a little speechless. "Well, perfect. I'll have her manage Amphoreus for me, so I can keep wandering around wherever I want without having to worry about anything."
He had already begun planning everything before he had even finished obtaining the script and had essentially decided on Amphoreus's administrator on the spot.
From his understanding, when it came to politics, Cerydra could be said to be the greatest in all of Amphoreus, and there was simply no one more suitable for the position, not even Aglaea.
And then there was the conceptual ability called Absolute Initiative.
'Hmm, the name alone tells me what it does. It's basically the ability to get the first turn in a turn-based game.'
'It seems to come with a control effect, too, huh... In other words, my target can't act until I finish my turn?'
'So, they basically have to take my ultimate head-on, right? I can charge it for as long as I want.'
Lucian's eyes couldn't help but brighten at the thought alone, and the more he thought about how the ability worked, the more useful he found it.
'Next time I see an Aeon, I'll use this trick right away and make the Aeon stand there helplessly, watching me charge my ultimate.'
He was already impatient to obtain this ability and put it to use.
As he sat on the bed, a strange light flashed through his eyes, and the scenery before him immediately distorted and changed.
In the next instant, his entire body disappeared without a trace.
===
Scepter δ-me13 was a planetary-scale astronomical computer.
To the civilizations of the universe, it was remembered as a superweapon that had once caused a massive upheaval throughout the cosmos.
In reality, however, it was merely a neuron abandoned by Nous.
At present, the Scepter was occupied by Lygus. Around its outer perimeter, he had constructed a firewall formed from chaotic interweavings of time and space, along with layer upon layer of encryption. The entire structure was practically impenetrable from the outside.
Under normal circumstances, an ordinary person would not even have been able to locate the Scepter, much less find a way to break into it, yet it had still been damaged not long ago.
Lygus had spent a considerable amount of time bent over and repairing it, carefully inspecting every damaged component, and only today had he finally completed the work.
"At last... the malfunction has been stopped."
He examined the energy circuits before him as they resumed their normal flow, then nodded in satisfaction.
"Good... the anti-cacophony barrier is intact... and the time-space turbulence firewall is intact as well."
Only then did Lygus feel somewhat reassured.
He had poured countless years of painstaking effort into this place, and he absolutely could not allow anything to go wrong now.
"But someone just has to come along and cause trouble..."
Recalling the previous incident, Lygus's expression gradually darkened as he went over what had happened in his mind.
"If they can damage a node of the Scepter today, tomorrow they'll dare to set their sights on Irontomb... I have to find the rat behind all this."
After thinking it over carefully, Lygus became increasingly certain that the problem had to originate from somewhere within Amphoreus.
And those 'factors' that had undergone unknown mutations were undoubtedly the medium through which the problem had occurred.
Previously, for the sake of maintaining the authenticity of the simulated world's autonomous development, he had deliberately refrained from interfering. But now that the other party had already begun damaging the Scepter, he could no longer simply stand by and watch.
To that end, he would have to enter Amphoreus again and investigate those mutated experimental subjects for clues.
With that decision made, Lygus created a clone avatar of himself and sent it into the world of Amphoreus.
He was full of confidence, and he had even begun looking forward to how he would 'elbow strike' that rat once he finally caught it.
===
Amphoreus, Okhema.
Only a few days had passed in the outside world, yet two hundred years had already passed within Amphoreus. In that span of time, the world had undergone enormous changes, with the greatest transformation being the unification of its people's beliefs and ideology.
Two hundred years ago, relying on Lucian's ability, the Chrysos Heirs had driven back the black tide, protected the world, and brought peace to its people.
As a result, faith in the 'Deliverer' had flourished to an unprecedented degree.
'Waiting for the arrival of the Deliverer Lucian' had gradually become the world's sole and most important shared belief.
Okhema, which had once consisted of divided human political city-states, had long since been united under a single faith, and that faith was no longer directed toward the Titans but toward a god from beyond the sky: Lucian.
Today, Lygus's clone, Lycurgus, appeared once again within this transformed world.
At first glance, the overall environment did not seem to have changed very much, but the longer he looked around, the more details he noticed that were different.
For example, Kephale's Dawn Device seemed to have been replaced with a newer one, and then there was the statue inside Dawncloud, which was no longer a statue of Kephale, but of an unfamiliar man.
"Who is that? He never appeared in any of the previous cycles... Is he a variable from two hundred years ago?"
Lygus continued walking through Okhema, intending to locate the first individual to undergo a mutation: Tribios.
Everything unusual had begun after Tribios received the blessing of 'Abundance,' so if he wanted to understand what had happened, she was naturally the most important place to start.
As he continued down the street, however, something unexpected caught his attention. Surprisingly, wanted posters had been plastered across the walls of Dawncloud.
"Wanted poster? Lycurgus... the Blasphemer?"
Sure enough, on the notice board near the entrance to the palace was a yellowed but surprisingly clear wanted poster.
It displayed a rather unflattering depiction of Lycurgus's ugly robotic face, with a warning written beneath it: 'Lycurgus is the source of all evil, a fiend who deceives all living beings and seeks to blaspheme the true god Lucian! Report him on sight and kill without mercy!'
What made it worse, however, was that these wanted posters appeared to have been spread throughout the entire world.
"Interesting... I'm actually being hunted? After becoming Theoros millions of times, this is my first time being branded a wanted criminal..."
Lygus was still marveling at how drastically the world had changed when a passing guard happened to notice his face.
At first, the guard simply stared at him for a moment, but then he reflexively turned his head and looked at the wanted poster on the wall before looking back at Lygus, then at the poster again, repeating the motion several times as his expression gradually changed.
Seeing the guard's reaction, Lygus's heart sank.
"AAAAAAHHH—!!!"
Suddenly, the guard let out a heaven-shaking scream.
"IT'S HIM! IT'S THE BLASPHEMER! LYCURGUS! HE'S APPEARED!"
Just like that, the guard's single shout was like a spark falling into a barrel of explosives, and the previously peaceful surroundings of Dawncloud erupted into chaos almost instantly.
"WHAT? LYCURGUS THE BLASPHEMER?!"
"WHERE?! KILL HIM!"
===
[A bonus chapter for reaching 400 Power Stones]
[Support and get early access to upcoming chapters at: patreon.com/VALRRR]