
Vestilan didn’t have a happy childhood. Her parents were cold and distant, and her older brother was twisted in character.
From a young age, she was forced to eat the flesh of her own kind, under the pretense that this would prepare her for the life of a follower of the Faceless God.
Vestilan despised eating the bloody raw Zerg meat. Whenever she refused, her hypocritical brother, Ivil, would lock her in a livestock cage, leaving her there until she tearfully begged for mercy and consumed the flesh.
Growing up in this oppressive environment, Vestilan fell in love with Jack, the gardener's son. She planned to elope with him, to escape this disgusting family, even if it meant living in poverty.
But on the day of their escape, she didn’t find her lover. Instead, she saw the cruel smile of Ivil, holding the decapitated, pale and terrified head of Jack.
Ivil imprisoned Vestilan in the livestock cage again and, before her eyes, dismembered Jack, forcing her to eat his flesh. He also took advantage of her vulnerability and violated her.
From that day, Vestilan lost her sanity.
Old Maemble, who knew everything, told others that Vestilan’s madness stemmed from her unwillingness to marry Dell, and the truth was buried.
Mad Vestilan wandered the manor. No one but Dell cared whether she lived or died. Though she had lost her sanity, she was aware of the family's horrors and did not want her younger brother Dell to share her fate. She tried desperately to drive him away, even to kill him.
Death seemed better than remaining in this hellish manor.
Even now, Vestilan’s determination hadn’t changed.
As she stood still, she saw her brother rush into the hall.
Her bloodshot eyes trembled slightly as she looked at Dell’s current state.
The boy, once handsome, was now covered in crimson flesh. Pale skin writhed and grew, seemingly trying to cover the hard carapace on the exterior of his body. His face was grotesque—his lower face remained normal, but the upper half was already covered by that pale skin, with only his eyes exposed.
Vestilan realized that she might look the same. She froze in place, her expression growing darker.
Dell, who had just awakened, didn’t notice his sister’s gloom. He took a step forward and embraced her.
Though she had killed him many times before, she was still his sister. Seeing her alive made Dell incredibly emotional.
He thought he was going to die forever, but to his surprise, he was resurrected. Even his sister had come back to life. Though he didn’t understand why the Faceless God spared them, it was the best news for him.
However, he had a strange feeling—his ability to resurrect infinitely had disappeared. If he died again, it would be for real.
“Sister, I’m so glad you’re okay. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you!”
Dell knew that both he and his sister had undergone grotesque transformations. He wasn’t sure if this was due to the terrifying Faceless God or a hereditary mutation in their family, but he knew that his once beauty-loving sister needed comfort. He would protect her forever.
“Thank you for your concern, Dell, but I don’t need your protection.”
Vestilan pushed Dell away and displayed her powerful magic, a twisted smile blooming on her face. As her magic surged, her mind was flooded with knowledge about how to wield it, clearly a gift from the Faceless God.
Looking at her beloved brother, Vestilan knew that he also had magic. She began to tempt Dell into cooperating with her to kill everyone in the manor.
“Sister? What are you saying?” Dell looked at his now lucid sister, barely having time to rejoice before he was frightened by the murderous intent in her words.
Vestilan smiled and told Dell the reasons for her madness. She revealed the hundred-year-old sins of the Maemble family: the kidnapping of civilians, the imprisonment of Zerg for consumption, all in the belief that this would bring their souls closer to the Faceless God.
Even without her newfound power, she had already planned her revenge. She would cleanse the manor of its sins with fire.
Dell listened with a heavy heart and discomfort. He couldn’t agree with his sister’s plan. Their father and Ivil were evil and deserved punishment, but many of the servants were innocent. They didn’t deserve to die, even if they had once mocked his sister.
Vestilan coldly regarded Dell in the hall, and the two parted on bad terms.
A few days later, the Maemble family manor was consumed by a great fire.
Vestilan, shrouded in a black robe, silently untied the ropes binding Dell and left without a word.
Her revenge was complete. She had killed everyone in the family except Dell. The servants, drenched in Zerg blood, screamed for help in the fire, but everything in the manor was reduced to ashes.
Now, Vestilan felt her magic power waning. She needed to find a way to maintain it. Having grown accustomed to strength, she could no longer tolerate her former weakness.
Dell, weak, stood up and watched his sister’s distant figure. In the end, he hadn’t been able to stop her vengeance, watching helplessly as the family fell to the same fate as before.
He had now completely transformed into a half-human, half-monster. Half of his body resembled the Zerg, while the other half was monstrous, hideous, and terrifying.
Through these events, Dell seemed to have matured. Numbly, he draped a black robe over himself and left, never returning for decades. During those decades, great changes occurred in the Misty Continent.
The heretic wizards, once struggling to survive under the purging of the Church of the God of Light and scamming people with non-existent magic, now had a powerful leader—a witch who had never shown her true face.
Her magic was so strong that she could topple a nation at will. The people of the Misty Continent first witnessed real magic when Vestilan effortlessly destroyed a vast kingdom.
Since then, the terrifying reputation of wizards spread across the continent. The Misty Continent’s technological development stalled, turning instead to a reverence for gods and spirits.
During Vestilan’s reign, no country dared provoke a single wizard. She was incredibly knowledgeable and developed countless evil curses, elevating the wizards' power to unprecedented heights. The Zerg were forced to live under the shadow of the wizards.
The evil wizards used living Zerg as experimental subjects to study magic, building towering wizard towers. The only force capable of opposing them was the Holy Tribunal, led by Dell and the priests he trained from the Church of Light.
Dell’s life was glorious and filled with light. The only strange thing was that, like the renowned witch Vestilan, he never showed his face, always wearing a white priest’s robe.
The god he hated most also happened to be the god that the wizards fanatically worshipped—the Faceless God.
In the century of the wizard's glory, the Faceless God was an unshakable terror across the continent, a true God of all gods.
The game was completed, and Ke Su opened the video. This time, the video was quite long—it took him a full hour to finish watching.
The plot was mostly similar to the game he played, except for the character endings: the sister sought revenge, while the brother tried to stop her.
Additionally, there was a sudden introduction of magic powers, which wasn't too far-fetched. Perhaps wizards existed before, but since the plot didn't develop in that direction, he hadn't known. After all, if zombies could exist, then wizards wouldn't be that strange.
In the end, the sister became a ruling witch over the wizards, and the protagonist, Dell, turned into the High Priest of the God of Light. The spectacle was quite stunning, but the only problem was Dell’s appearance: the top half of his face was human, but the bottom half resembled an ant. The more Ke Su looked at it, the more uncomfortable he felt—it was quite an eyesore.
And then there was the sister, Vestilan, a figure cloaked in black robes who was a mature beauty, with a curvy figure. Except for the few extra arms, she was practically perfect. But her face? It was even worse than Dell’s.
The top half of her face was covered in a pale carapace, while the lower half had the normal mandibles of an ant.
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Ke Su paused the screen, studied it for a while, and concluded that Vestilan had peeled the skin off her face, along with the flesh, exposing the pale facial bones, which she had then adorned with a carapace-like structure to pretend she was still an ant beauty.
"…"
Ke Su was silent, admiring her courage. For the sake of adhering to the aesthetic of the ant world, she really went all out.
He closed the video and exhaled, feeling that nothing in this Zerg world could surprise him anymore. Even if the Misty Continent were turned into a fairy tale world with ant versions of fairy godmothers and witches battling each other, he'd remain indifferent.
After completing this dungeon, Ke Su moved on to the Mechanical Era: Endless Ferry instance, where he spent some time feeding the passengers, only to find that there were only Biotic Humans left.
Ke Su glanced at them casually and continued feeding, before logging out. As long as there were still living beings, and he could continue feeding them, he didn’t care what species they were.
Just after logging out, Ke Su noticed the game issuing an update notice. He connected online and agreed to the update. While waiting, he made himself a cup of instant noodles. It was already Saturday night, and his plan was to update the game, eat, then go to sleep. Tomorrow, he would visit the hospital and not miss his Monday interview.
[Game Update Complete! Praise be to His Majesty Forever! The all-knowing, all-powerful, all-seeing You may manipulate the timeline at any moment to observe any point in time you wish.]
Ke Su set the noodles aside, seeing that the game update was finished. He opened the game and found that the interface had become much smoother, clearly showing that the developers had put effort into optimizing the game’s art style.
Additionally, several new features were added, the most prominent being the timeline feature.
Opening the timeline instructions, Ke Su skimmed through it. The general idea was that through this timeline, he could travel to any point in time in any of the Believer’s Worlds, whether past or future. If there was a believer he wanted to observe, he could set a time anchor at that point. Anytime he wanted to check on that believer's daily life, he could jump straight to that anchor.
[Good day, Your Excellency. A human is attempting to touch your dream. Do you permit this? Yes/No]
Just as Ke Su was getting eager to try the timeline feature, a notification from the Steam Age instance popped up.
"Touch my dream?"
Ke Su didn’t understand what this meant, confused, he clicked into it. It turned out to be a setting in the game where, in a world bathed in the divine glory of gods, those with immense artistic talent and high inspiration could gain the honor of touching a god’s dream and receive extraordinary inspiration and knowledge.
This seemed to align with Cthulhu Mythos from his past life. In Cthulhu-style stories, common elements included fanatical believers, neurotic artists, strange dreams, and ever-present tentacles.
Many artists, due to their overly active minds, accidentally intruded into the dreams of slumbering gods, acquiring infinite forbidden knowledge, only to suffer a mental collapse and become lunatics.
Ke Su wondered what kind of game style this would lead to.
Intrigued, Ke Su clicked "Yes," only to discover that it wasn’t a game anymore but rather an interactive video where he played a third-person god, observing the lives of believers and providing guidance when appropriate.
When the video started, Ke Su stopped in awe.
What appeared before him was a beautifully stylized anime world. The characters’ movements were fluid, natural, and the camera work and editing gave Ke Su the feeling that he was watching an expensive anime film.
The opening scene featured a destitute artist living in a cramped, dimly lit attic, looking dejected.
[Steam Age: The Paintings of Alteres]
Alteres was a down-and-out artist. Despite having painted many works, he hadn't managed to sell any.
Even in poverty, he persisted in his beloved craft of painting. He would paint portraits on the streets, but his earnings were meager, and his skills were often ridiculed.
With these thoughts, Alteres curled up in his attic, looking lost.
To others, his paintings seemed childish and were often mocked as trash. Alteres wanted to change, but he didn’t know how.
He was born into poverty and was self-taught. He had never attended a formal art school, and he honed his skills by studying the works of others.
But this also led to his lack of personal style. His work was repetitive, so naturally, it wasn’t worth much, and no one was interested in buying the works of an unknown, impoverished artist.
Thinking back to the expensive paintings he had seen in the gallery a few days ago, Alteres closed his eyes in bitter frustration. He wished his works could one day be displayed in a gallery for people to admire.
But now, penniless, with no commissions, no income, and not knowing how he’d pay next month’s rent, he feared he’d soon be homeless like the beggars on the street. When winter came, the streets might see the frozen corpse of an artist.
Amid these bleak thoughts, Alteres drifted into sleep, his thin face filled with sorrow, his dreams leading him to a sunless gray realm.
In his dream, he ran with all his might through an endless mist, searching for an exit, but never finding one.
Whoosh!
A violent wind roared. Alteres hazily looked up and saw the gray mist parting, revealing a deep, infinite universe.
The light of distant, mysterious celestial bodies flickered before him. He reached out, as if touching the most unimaginable secrets of the world. Forbidden knowledge and boundless inspiration flooded into his soul, causing him to lose himself in the vastness of space, floating weightlessly.
He watched as brilliant galaxies passed by, countless stars spinning in their orbits according to the fixed laws of the universe, burning stars, blazing bright supernovas, destructive black holes, and shattered, dying celestial bodies. Everything was silent, filled with a beauty and grandeur unimaginable to humanity.
Time lost its meaning here. Alteres felt as though billions of years had passed. In this dream that spanned eons, he continued to drift in space until he floated to the very edge of time and space, to the point where the river of time had dried up—an abyss.
In that abyss of chaos and darkness, just as Alteres was about to approach its edge and glimpse the source of all secrets and the unknown, he woke up.
Opening his eyes, he found himself still in his cramped attic. The grandeur and mystery of the dream felt unreal, but the knowledge and inspiration filling his mind constantly reminded him of how long and wondrous his dream had been.
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