Chapter 113 Epilogue: Sanctuary

"Welcome, Pope."

In front of the Pope, the brilliant core of the sanctuary opened its core, and countless particles rotated in front of him.

A gentle female voice came from it.

Their sanctuary is also the real core of the holy city.

Tens of thousands of meters underground, there are no stars or sky, only walls made of unknown materials, and holy boxes containing information about the extinct city-states, as quiet and cold as a silent world.

Their sanctuary, their cemetery.

'Number A-71, level: 7, extinct'

'Number A-91, level: 7, extinct'

'Number A-128, level 6, extinct'

The code and level of the holy box are engraved on the holy box with laser, and behind the metal engravings are fallen cities one after another, struggling to improve the times. The last note of extinction means that they did not survive the struggle.

The holy box that stores the knowledge crystallization of an entire city will be recycled after the city disappears and preserved in the sanctuary.

These small holy boxes store the embers left after the souls that want to impact the stars are burned out.

The holy boxes that can be recycled have already filled nearly half of the hall, because the holy boxes that cannot be recycled due to various accidents are several times more than what is recorded.

Not all souls can return home.

This is also the most important duty of the Pope, neither preaching nor expanding this structure, but guarding the tomb of this civilization.

There is no need to recycle holy boxes. If holy boxes are produced again, this world will gradually die and stagnate in the decline.

The Pope took off the crown and placed it in front of the core of the sanctuary, watching its structure rotate in front of him, swinging like a living thing.

"Good evening, core."

The Holy City is not a city in the first place, but it happened to gather a lot of people here, and then they built this city above the sanctuary, generation after generation, and developed.

A sanctuary without people, a holy city without people, is it still their holy city?

The Holy City should not exist as a tombstone.

They gradually learned to manage the city, using commandments to regulate the words and deeds of residents, and with the help of the core of the sanctuary, they obtained some technologies from other routes from the holy box, and then put those technologies that did not surpass the times into the commandment code and books.

The souls that burn themselves do not fear the gods, even if they are also priests and members of the church.

Their efforts should also be seen, instead of being buried under the ten thousand meters of the stratum as they are now.

Each guard carefully prevents the technology owned by the holy city from crossing the border of the fifth-level city and reaching the sixth level.

In this way, the holy city can never be conscripted and will last as a cemetery.

Keep everything unchanged in eternity.

The sanctuary is the remains of the original guards, an eighth-level building, which lives in peace under the fifth-level city without triggering any response mechanism.

Perhaps it is His only remaining mercy that allows them to preserve everything they have, at least...

It is the homecoming of all wandering souls.

"I have only seen it in your records. I didn't expect it to be this kind of scene... I didn't expect it to be really me..."

The old pope leaned against the wall. The coldness made people feel at ease. When immersed in this chill, his brain was clearer than ever before.

As a caretaker, he can freely access the information stored in all holy boxes.

Every time these outsiders arrive, it is the peak period of holy box production.

"The core of the Skitarii has been produced... According to the algorithm/evolutionary branch, the probability of the hatching season starting during your term is 10%, which is a very high probability."

I have completed the notification when you took office.

Human loyalty is unreliable, greedy, desire, only half-soul and half-mechanical creations are always loyal to their command. Always watch over the sanctuary, from one thousand years to the next thousand years.

Under the armor of the Skitarii, it is not necessarily human.

The core of the sanctuary continued to state.

"Your remaining life span is between 20 and 25 years. According to calculations, you are only 10 years away from ruling/working."

"That much time left..." The old pope smiled: "Before you were so anxious to ask me to choose one of the heirs you provided, I thought you would think that I would soon return to the sanctuary."

This is the privilege of the pope. Their ashes after death can be kept in the sanctuary as a reward for their contribution to the eternal guardian.

"The opening of the hatching season represents the intensification of instability/entropy. The sanctuary is launching protective measures for the risks/uncertainties that may be faced in the future."

The core of the sanctuary still responded coldly based on logical reasoning.

"Your remaining working time is 10 years. The handover to the next guardian may cause inconsistency/chaos and lead to accidents. According to calculations, you should hand over power before the first outsider arrives, which will increase the probability of stable continuation by 50% on the basis of 99%."

This is a reasonable plan.

Someone must guard the sanctuary.

The old pope leaned against the wall, said nothing, and did not respond to the core of the sanctuary.

The highest calculation probability of the core of the sanctuary is 99%, and the remaining 1%.

The maker wrote it into its underlying logic.

‘The world only gives us 99% of the possibility, and the remaining 1% is left to fate and the unknown. ’

So it has never been able to calculate everything, nor does it have the ability to calculate everything.

The pope was a little tired. He wanted to take a good rest. Reorganizing the political situation had already consumed too much of his energy.

The people on the list of successors provided by the core of the sanctuary were all too young. One wanted to leave, the other was in a period of confusion, and the rest were far behind them.

He became the pope when he was sixty years old... and became a caretaker.

Let a child who has not yet reached the age of thirty, or even a child who has just reached the age of eighteen, inherit this responsibility...

Once crowned as the pope, he will be bound by the responsibility of the caretaker for life.

The pope still remembered the first time he met Alicia. She was sitting in the center of the orphanage, and could see the clear blue sky through the broken dome.

He asked, what are you looking at.

She said, she was looking at the birds in the sky.

The old pope's eyes fell on the grids along the wall where the holy boxes were stored. Some grids did not have holy boxes, but left their numbers and levels, which were the residual echoes of these cities left in the world.

‘A-21, level 8, arrived, unknown’

‘A-371, level 8, arrived, unknown’

Let an old man like him do the job of guarding the cemetery for now.

He still has ten years, maybe twenty years.

Before he dies, the children can grow up and mature under his protection.

The core of the sanctuary looked at the tired old man, rotated, opened his core, and gathered the warm and sunny light on the caretaker. The Pope felt the chill on his body was instantly dispelled, and the whole person was as comfortable as soaking in a warm water stream.

Then he said to the Pope.

“The caretaker who continues between the incubation seasons cannot be replaced. There must be a person who can continue to work for more than 150 years/two substitutes.”

“I must remind you that any system will accumulate errors/produce losses over time. When the risk value exceeds expectations, I will activate the emergency response procedure.”

He did not answer the core of the sanctuary, but just stared at the flickering light in the core of the sanctuary, and vaguely saw the amorphous fragments in it.

“God...”

The core of the sanctuary responded.

"Imitation/extraction and reconstruction, false creation."

"Does the Goddess of Light really exist?"

The Pope asked this question again. He had lost count of how many times he had asked this question before. Between them, this question was as common as greeting each other every day.

"I can't answer your question about whether the Goddess of Light/Transcendent Structure exists. My creator did not leave any information about this, and searching all the holy boxes cannot prove this."

The core of the sanctuary still responded to him.

The core of the sanctuary reconstructed the structure into a condenser, allowing the light to cover the old man as much as possible, so that his spirit can be relaxed.

"Don't be like this, you should be able to detect my physical condition, I'm not that bad yet."

The Pope smiled and waved at it.

"This can effectively boost your mental state."

The core gave its own answer.

The old Pope looked down on the white glow.

Sometimes he thought that if the Goddess of Light really existed, the god might emit such a glow.

Very warm.

"So, the people who made you...they succeeded after all?"

A long silence.

The old pope was used to the silence of the core of the sanctuary, which meant that it could not answer him. He changed the subject and thanked this machine that had been running for tens of thousands of years.

"Thank you for the plan of the symbiotic plan."

He said.

"This is what I should do. My bottom-level instructions let me take the caretaker as the standard. I can't understand why we should do these unnecessary things when our responsibility is to guard the sanctuary?"

This will also increase the risk.

Survive or move forward.

The core of the sanctuary rotated to express his confusion.

The pope did not answer the question of the core of the sanctuary. He was just fulfilling his duty as the pope. They would not watch the world they govern decay.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time, just like what the predecessors have done.

Mistakes will accumulate, the church will collapse, and there is no point in keeping the sanctuary.

Whether to survive or move forward...

He wants to have both.

"I have done all the preliminary work... It's up to them next..."

The core of the sanctuary rotated, which proved that it had started working.

"According to the information provided by all the holy boxes, for those who have lost their faith/ability, He will downgrade the target/deprive them of their qualifications, and then promote the secondary rulers to the main body. The goal of this project is to eliminate those who are incapable/wrong, but the secondary rulers must prove their ability to be promoted."

"The inertia/extinguished part of civilization is universal. We just need to accurately judge and intervene in the inertia/extinguished part to ensure the success of the plan."

"End."

"Sanctuary, is this a comfort?"

The old man smiled and continued without waiting for the reply from the core of the sanctuary.

"I'm a little tired, Sanctuary, let me sleep for a while, don't wake me up."

As the old man fell asleep leaning against the wall, only the sound of the core rotating and the old man's breathing echoed in the empty hall.

I have walked the road I should walk, kept the way I should keep, and promised the Golden Dawn to future generations.