Chapter Ninety-Five: Apotheosis

When the light faded, everyone opened their eyes to find themselves in a place much like a laboratory.

Seeing this familiar scene, Qin Fei recognized it at a glance.

This must be where the final boss of the island, the Overseer, resided.

Along the walls of the laboratory were three floor-to-ceiling windows. Through the glass, Qin Fei and the others could see three different scenes beyond them: a snowy plain, a volcano, and a spider nest.

These three places were, of course, the three great bosses they had already challenged earlier.

In front of each window were also three-dimensional holograms of those bosses, along with various records and data related to them.

The three continued forward.

At a corner ahead sat a square wooden box of a very classical design.

After Qin Fei opened it, he found a rolled sheet of tanned hide inside.

Several lines of text had been written on it in traditional Chinese characters.

The characters were arranged in the old style, read from right to left and from top to bottom. It looked like the work of someone from a distant age.

[Item discovered: Li Meiying's Notebook]

Qin Fei picked up the notebook and read it carefully.

Li Meiying had also been one of the figures who once cleared the Ark Island world.

But she did not come from Qin Fei's era. She was from the Three Kingdoms period.

She had served as a deputy general under Guan Yu.

The notebook was simple in content, mainly recording her battles with the other survivors on the island, the Nerva team.

The story recorded there was astonishing.

Li Meiying was terrifyingly powerful. In a one-on-one duel, she had even relied purely on her physical strength to defeat a Giganotosaurus head-on.

She had then tamed it and made it her mount.

Not only that, in the end she had led her teammates Helena, Rockwell, and the others to annihilate the Nerva team and successfully defeat the Overseer.

At the end of the notebook, she had written: "This place is where the island's core is controlled."

"Now I depart. I leave these words behind for those who come after."

A thoughtful look appeared in Qin Fei's eyes.

From the notebook's contents, it was clear that the place where the Overseer resided was the island's control room.

Continuing onward, the group came to a suspended glass catwalk.

Below it, the full expanse of the island was visible. A massive energy shield covered the entire landmass.

Beyond that shield lay the endless depths of space.

Only now did they understand: this so-called island was not on Earth at all. It was nothing more than a colossal space station built in outer space.

What was more, the supply drops that landed on the core island had all been deployed from this very control room down to the surface.

After crossing the glass catwalk, the three arrived at a vast hall.

Its walls were all made of glass.

Beyond the glass was the void of space, cold and dark.

Drifting there were space stations, some long since destroyed and others still miraculously intact.

These stations were also covered by a huge energy shield, and within each shield existed worlds much like the core island.

At the center of the hall sat a portable tablet computer.

Qin Fei stepped forward, and after carefully confirming that no mechanism or trap had been set in it, he picked it up.

[Special item discovered: The Godmaking Project!]

The Godmaking Project?

Qin Fei's eyes widened in shock.

There should not have been anything like this in the game...

He lightly touched the screen. A few seconds later, the tablet in his hands activated, and images concerning the future began to appear.

The first scene showed Earth being struck by a meteor shower.

That sudden catastrophe left the planet devastated beyond recognition.

Yet misfortune and blessing often came together. While the meteors brought disaster to Earth, they also brought with them a transcendent element: Tek energy.

Tek energy had an extremely wide range of applications.

Once it appeared, society quickly entered an era of explosive technological advancement.

Using Tek energy, humanity even began building space stations in outer space.

But the good times did not last.

Though Tek energy brought countless benefits to humankind, it also concealed a tremendous side effect.

People gradually discovered that this element could corrode living beings.

These corrupted beings retained individual consciousness. Even more terrifyingly, those consciousnesses could merge together.

The combined entity of those consciousnesses came to be known by future humanity as the Titans.

As time passed, the corruption on Earth became more and more severe.

To resist the erosion of Titan consciousness, future humans built countless Ark Towers and used the towers' evolutionary functions to fight back against the corruption spreading across the planet.

But it was already too late.

By then, Titan consciousness had already grown to a point where even the combined power of all humanity could not hope to contend with it.

After completely seizing Earth, that Titan consciousness had begun to seep into other planes as well.

Helpless, future humanity preserved the spark of life within the Ark Towers and launched those towers to the space stations they had built in orbit.

In order to defeat the Titan consciousness on Earth and protect both Earth and other civilized planes, future humans used Tek technology to develop two items: the sample implant and the substitute doll.

These two items were the vessels of the Godmaking Project.

The sample implant could randomly select certain people from different worlds and cast them into doomed apocalyptic realms for tempering.

Those doomed apocalyptic realms were worlds like the Seven Days to Die and Long Dark worlds Qin Fei had traveled to before.

If a traveler could survive in such worlds by using their own wits...

then they could obtain formal status as a Player.

Those who gained Player status could then enter the next stage: the elimination rounds.

The Ark would take the survivors who had entered the elimination rounds and send them into space stations containing Ark Towers, where they would be made to slaughter one another.

The space station Qin Fei had entered for the elimination rounds was the Ark Island world.

Only the last group of survivors to remain alive in the elimination rounds would be eligible to formally take part in the Godmaking Project.

The space station was controlled by an artificial intelligence known as the Overseer.

For the survivors granted entry into the Godmaking Project, their first task was to defeat the Overseer. Only then could they truly gain control of the space station.

Through that space station, they could then teleport to even stronger planes and obtain even greater power...

The images on the tablet ended there.

After reading the introduction on the screen, Qin Fei and the others all fell silent.

The Godmaking Project...

Qin Fei thought it over carefully.

The tablet had already explained everything in great detail.

Qin Fei and the others had been selected through the layers of the sample implant's screening process, like a cruel culling, until only the survivors remained.

The purpose was to choose the most promising humans and bring them into the Godmaking Project.

Those who participated in the project would continue growing stronger.

In the end, they would return to Earth, defeat the Titan consciousness, and halt its corruption of other planes.

In doing so, they would save every plane across all dimensions.

As for the second vessel of the Godmaking Project, the substitute doll, the tablet did not offer much explanation.

Godmaking... making gods...

A stir of excitement rose in Qin Fei's heart.

Could it be that after completing this so-called Godmaking Project, he would truly be able to become a god?