Gollei, capital of the Antigone Empire.

There's too much white here.

I noted to myself as I looked at the quaint room where I had been kept for more than one year.

I don’t remember exactly when, maybe a couple, or maybe five years ago, that man named Ripun, whom I considered a false prophet, kidnapped me and since then I’ve been here, in the very heart of the Antigone Empire. He provoked an uprising and lured me to the temple, and there he activated some kind of magical device and transported me here. Here I first met our first enemy, whom Boris spoke about: Saint Yasmi.

"You're lost in your stupid thoughts again."

Said an attractive white-haired girl sitting on a chair at the table on the opposite side and sipping a sweet drink from a porcelain mug.

Conversations with her are sometimes interesting, but more often she tries to change my way of thinking to hers, so that I abandon the materialistic view of the world in favor of an idealistic one. I, in turn, could not accept this so easily, because for me the world in which we all live is too chaotic to be someone’s man-made creation.

I believe that matter arose before consciousness and it was the chaotic nature of matter that determined the laws of nature and physics of our universe. And although many answers to questions remain inaccessible to us, I can say with confidence that we can get them if we explore the universe in which we all live.

Because of this, my reaction to her words was skeptical and, one might say, carried a share of condemnation. How easily it throws aside the basic functions of human thinking, as if our consciousness does not depend on matter, but depends on another consciousness that we ourselves are unable to comprehend.

“What you call “stupid thoughts” I call logical thinking. It’s only thanks to this that I haven’t gone crazy yet.”

The upper part of the girl’s face was covered with a thick veil, behind which it was impossible to see her eyes shining with white light, but I could clearly see her radiant smile. She was clearly amused by my answer. She knew that I would resist and, having illuminated herself with a pillar of light with the help of her power or maybe a kind of magic, whatever it was, she became like the most sacred creature in this world, which carries within itself goodness, righteousness, love, humility, hope and, most importantly, peace.

Even though this picture looked divine in its own way, and carried a passionate splendor, as if I was really looking at a real messenger of higher powers, but at the same time, she warned me with a smile. And this warning did not carry any hope, love or peace.

She uttered these words so calmly, but a threatening tone slipped through the thin veil, as if she were simultaneously calming me and destroying all my hopes in the world. This is difficult to explain in simple words, but imagine that you see someone who carries light within you and hear these words from this person:

"You can't escape."

It is difficult to express in words the trembling I felt at that moment. It seemed that I looked too insignificant and too black against her background, wrapped in my usual dark blue uniform. It was as if I was the only dirt in this room that needed cleansing.

I knew what she was trying to do: convince me that I was weak, that I was too insignificant before her “God,” but even so she barely succeeded. I was too adamant to give up so easily.

"Am I trying?"

I answered and drank a little sweet drink, the only thing they serve me here so that I don’t die of thirst and hunger.

"I'm just waiting."

My attempt to avoid the topic of conversation was unsuccessful, and she immediately decided to move on to the main dish, namely the reason why she was here in the first place and was trying to win me over to her side. This didn't suit me at all. This was the first stage of torture, and even if her words had no effect on me, the imprint of them gnawed into my memory and carried so much pain that an ordinary person had never experienced in his life.

"Sod will not let you leave the true world. You are here forever, just like the dark ones, like the demons, like the red angels, like the elves, beastmen, gnomes, dragons, sea peoples and many, many other peoples that gave birth to false worlds, whose dark seeds grew these wicked lands. Everything is the will of Sod. All sinful souls will be purified, such is His will and we will fulfill it."

I still don’t understand why the rest of the universe is fake for them. Is it because magic doesn't exist in the rest of the universe? This is a rather strange concept of the world order, a denial of the existence of the entire universe, as if we are all fictions, fantasies of someone’s dark forces, and they are real, true, those whose desires are much more important than the desires of some fakes.

Only these inconsistencies stop me from making the wrong decision. To me, this is a very obvious form of manipulation and propaganda, but it was quite strange to watch how easily they themselves succumbed to it. As if this "Sod", whoever he was, could prove the truth of his teachings. Either this energetic entity has brainwashed people or their foundations have an incredibly strong foundation. It may even be that their teachings have real foundations.

At such an important moment, I simply could not leave this young beauty without an answer. She thinks we won't leave this damn planet. Well, she is obviously wrong. This planet has all the necessary resources to build a ship, and no matter how many years it takes, we will fly away from here.

“We will try. A person is a creature who will step over any obstacles and achieve his goal, no matter how crazy and unattainable they may seem.”

And it was true. Maybe an individual person is too insignificant and insignificant, but human civilization as a whole is a huge force. People who, once in the past, chiseled stone and sculpted clay and did not suspect that their descendants would gain the power to change the landscape of entire planets and travel to places that the human mind could not even imagine.

And although this fact awakened in me a feeling of human patriotism, for some reason my words made Yasmi laugh. She giggled as if she had heard childish stupidity, which is why she lightly covered her mouth with her palm, barely maintaining a calm expression on her face. To her, my words seemed not just stupid and implausible, but simply insignificant, as if I was obviously wrong.

She seemed to think that a person would never be able to achieve unprecedented heights through his own efforts alone. And to be honest it annoyed me because I am living proof of this. I ended up here thanks to the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people, the work of the entire human civilization, who learned to travel through space and subspace, but she throws it into the trash and simply does not believe that people are capable of this.

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"How naive. Are you so stupid that you don't realize your situation?"

The saint spoke boldly after a few laughs.

"An insignificant pig who desecrated his body with poisons in order to prolong his life. You know nothing about the world in which you find yourself. What you called Eusberia is the true world where the great Sod works real miracles and looks after his faithful children. He sees me, he sees you, sees everyone, he watches, he protects, hears and I am the one who hears his voice from the sky. I am the one who looks after his children. I know... He... hates you."

Now it was my turn to grin. It was impossible to listen to such fanatical speeches without a grin on your face. Does she seriously believe that their energetic essence, calling themselves God, is capable of competing with the interstellar civilization of humanity? It just sounds hilarious.

Because of this, one can inevitably remember the Goddess Elarasia, who also raised loyal followers from people. The first colonists of Elarasia discovered Her and tried to study her, but then they began to worship Her, and this despite the fact that those people were materialists.

Now I should seriously fear that I will be brainwashed for real.

I thought and continued to grin at Yasmi’s words.

"Heh... I've heard this many times already. Come up with something better to brighten up my time with such conversations. You already know everything about me. You know everything about the world where I come from and the capabilities of the 127th Army. I told everything, but you are still trying to get something out of me. Not even like that... you are trying to win me over to your side, but you don’t know how to do it, because we have too different principles by which we live. You prefer to believe, but I prefer to think."

Yasmi seemed to have not digested my words and immediately replied:

“I’ve heard this too many times. You pretend to be righteous, you see the world in your own way, but you don’t know the real truth. For you, our world is just a series of chaos, a continuous changeable rainbow that has formed grayness. For you there is neither good nor evil and you don’t believe in the existence of fate. Is it really so difficult to realize that there are people who bring good into the world, and there are those who do evil? Don’t you really realize how much evil you have brought into this world and how zealously you poison it with your destructive grayness? Even when Sod himself touched you, you saw his divine face, you saw his garden, you comprehended what not every saint could see, but you continue to not believe. Open your eyes, Zeo.

"Zeonid."

I said and at the same time adjusted my cap.

"Zeonid Kudrinash, General of the 127th Army of the Republican Armed Forces of Humanity, home planet Earth. I am no-name Zeo. And no, I am not running away from the truth, I accept it as it is. It is you who should open your eyes and see the world around you, and not live by the postulates of this fictitious religion. What kind of childish naivety is it to divide the world into white and black? Only fools do this, they always want be right."

"It doesn't matter, you keep running away from the truth."

“The truth is only what I see with my own eyes, everything else is nothing more than words, the truth of which still needs to be confirmed. And you invite me to believe that the face that I saw belongs to your god? This is nonsense! You pray to an ancient holographic monster and call It a god! Are you okay with all this?”

My words did not convince Yasmi at all; she put on rose-colored glasses and saw only what she wanted to see.

“They speak the truth when they say that people from false worlds will never see the truth. They are nothing more than children lost in the void. When will you understand that there is no such world in the universe as the Earth. You were created by demons to bring death and destruction to true people. Therefore, you deny the existence of Sod, you were told a lie, and you believed it. All your memories, all your past, all your deeds and life are all lies. You were born just a couple of moons ago, you are not much older than a month-old child, that’s why you are so stupid. The demons staged a performance, and you are just a minor character in it, or rather a sacrificial pawn. You were made to react to everything that happens here as they need, and you don’t realize, you don’t see how you are falling into the abyss of madness.”

"Some kind of nonsense."

I shook my head, tired of listening to her crazy tales.

It cannot be that the Earth does not exist. It’s as if hundreds of thousands of people came out of nowhere, out of thin air, like our whole life, the memory of the Earth and the past. Our feelings, emotions, experiences and memories... cannot be false.

Ashwani.

Thinking about him, I actually started to doubt a little. What if she's telling the truth? What if the Earth is a fiction, like this whole huge, long story? And yet, even if so, the question remains: who are we if not people from Earth? Are we really some kind of homunculi, programmed to suit these unknown creatures? But if so, then why didn’t they immediately instill in us the goal of killing and destroying all people indiscriminately? We have enough nuclear weapons to contaminate the entire planet with radiation. We could have directed the ship to collide with the planet, but we tried to enter orbit until these energy beings interfered with us.

I prefer to think.

I remembered my own words and understood what my “stupidity” that Yasmi was talking about was.

I think the Earth is real, but I don't believe it, I doubt even that.

This is what distinguishes me from her. She accepts the truth as it is, but I need to think before believing, to prove that this or that statement is true. In this vein, it is certainly easier for her to live in her rainbow little world, and I, in turn, am only needlessly throwing an extra burden of thoughts on myself.

As soon as I doubt my own rightness, emotions begin to take over me, drowning out the facts in favor of faith. I have to doubt everything so as not to fall victim to her false words, but how? This is essentially to act the same way, that is, succumbing to emotions to keep oneself in check. Do I really have to do this to avoid going completely crazy?

Emotions alone are not enough.

I came to the necessary conclusion for myself and hastened to give my holy answer:

"You are a native. Your faith is supported by convincing lies that you yourself believe. You will not break me."

Seeing how morally strong I was, she made a boring expression on her face as if she was tired of wasting her precious time on me. She finished the drink to the bottom and sat more comfortably on the chair while the light warmed her snow-white skin.

“You don’t have to try to convince me again, false person, I know perfectly well who I am. I am true, I was born from flesh and blood, and you were created in the void, a pathetic creation of demonic forces. Why do you think you ended up here?”

“I have already answered this question for you: your planetary system is anomalous and we were thrown out of subspace. The ship systems were damaged, it was impossible to restore the flight path towards the outer boundaries of the system and activate the jump engine, so we made a maneuver and flew straight to your planet, where these energy entities met us.”

Yasmi smiled tenderly when she heard about energy beings.

“What a rude phrase you chose for the angels who protect the heavenly limit from the creatures of the void. Sod wanted to protect our world from your demonic presence. Your masters want to rebuild our world, build in its place a new world, a kingdom of chaos and horror. What you call progress and advanced technologies is the same magic that the demons gave you. Soon all your friends, fake people, will understand that their toys do not work here and that it is stupid to consider the Sun a real deity. May the great Sod forgive me for such words."

Her answer confirmed my doubts. This explains why many species did not maintain the level of development at the cosmic level and degraded to the level of this era. Someone clearly tried to make them degrade and this someone is probably Sod. To be honest, her words scared me, and I really found a bit of reason and logic in them.

The thousand-year history of the Earth, the multi-million and multi-billion-year history of the universe, the countless number of space civilizations, their cooperation, alliances, alliances and wars... all of this really could be a lie.

And even though I was trembling with fear, not believing in such a turn of events, I remained just as adamant.

Since we are creatures of emptiness for them, then we will be them.

"We'll look at it."

That was all I could answer, and after a couple of moments the guards took me by the hands and led me outside.

Now it's time for the most unpleasant pastime for me. It's time for torture.