Well... this was so Herta.
The moment she became completely absorbed in her research, her entire demeanor changed. Her attitude grew noticeably sharper, and she didn't show the slightest bit of courtesy—not even toward Evan.
"The rest is up to you. I need to analyze these data streams."
"So next, you'll be entering this unknown region."
"Well?" Herta shot him a glance. "You're not scared, are you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Just stay here, Shorty. Wait for me to come back."
No one truly knew what lay hidden within this uncharted domain. There was only one way to find out.
Without another word, Evan pushed open the massive door.
A brilliant light instantly swallowed him whole.
When his vision cleared, he found himself standing on a planet he had never seen before.
Sophia—the Planet of Justice and Debate.
"The Congress of Futuristics..."
Evan quietly repeated the name as he looked at the countless banners and slogans raised by scholarly factions from across the galaxy. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
Interesting.
So this Unknown Domain had been anchored to this point in history.
At this time, Rupert II had only just been killed by the infamous "surgical knife." The galaxy was still feasting upon the remains of his legacy, while scholars from every corner of the universe packed the conference hall like swarming insects, gathering at the Congress of Futuristics to decide how Rupert's Scepter System should be divided.
Soon, Evan noticed a scholar walking onto the stage.
"Who is that?"
The hall around him was filled with scholars. Aside from the members of the Genius Society, nearly every genuine academic genius in the galaxy had gathered here.
Though none of them had been acknowledged by Nous, they had each made tremendous contributions to the advancement of civilization.
As the man stepped onto the stage, the noisy crowd immediately fell silent.
"You don't even know him?" someone beside Evan whispered. "That's Standecardel, Chief Scholar of the Stellar Ecology School."
Standecardel...
Evan's eyes widened slightly.
Damn... isn't he the one who first proposed the Perfect Scholar Project?
As Standecardel took center stage, his appearance alone was enough to unsettle anyone present.
His sharp compound eyes made him resemble an insect more than a human.
He cleared his throat twice.
The entire venue fell completely silent.
"The Perfect Scholar—the ultimate ideal of every seeker of knowledge. Even before the Path of Erudition came into existence, the concept already possessed immeasurable value."
"Infinite lifespan. Infinite vision. Infinite thought."
"Only then shall knowledge itself bow before its master."
"Gather all computational power into a single individual."
"Lay the foundation for one genius to question the gods."
"Create the Intelligentsia Guild's Perfect Scholar."
As he spoke, Standecardel's eyes became increasingly fanatical, and his voice grew more impassioned.
"One million mediocrities struggling over a difficult problem... or a single flash of inspiration from a genius."
"Which has greater value?"
"The answer is self-evident."
Silence filled the hall.
Then, one after another, contemptuous gazes turned toward him.
His theory of the Perfect Scholar had indeed been groundbreaking.
But concentrating the Scepter System's computational power into a single individual was an idea that almost everyone found impossible to accept.
As expected...
He was immediately drowned beneath a wave of ridicule.
Amid the deafening chorus of boos, Standecardel left the stage in disgrace.
The Congress of Futuristics itself was almost laughable.
Ninety-five percent of the Scepter System's computational power was allocated to four categories of inquiry.
The remaining five percent was handed over to the Scepter Administrative Committee.
Scholars could submit research proposals and receive computational resources according to the value of their projects.
And then...
A pivotal figure appeared.
Patavia.
She submitted a proposal, hoping to use the Scepter System to solve a mystery she had pursued for years.
Her request was approved.
She received one ten-thousandth of the Scepter's computational power.
But on the very day her experiment began, Morite, Chief Scholar of the Pure Creation School, forcibly requisitioned the Scepters and attempted to relocate every one of them.
The instant the warp jump began, the images on every monitor trembled like vibrating strings.
The meticulously constructed experimental environment collapsed amid the spatial distortion.
Years of Patavia's painstaking work...
Were obliterated within the violently flickering sea of data.
"As expected of the Intelligentsia Guild."
"As expected of the IPC..."
A surge of anger welled up inside Evan, but he forcibly suppressed it.
The Simulated Universe was merely reconstructing history through data.
Everything before him had already happened.
Unlike the Elysian Realm—which preserved the memories of its true inhabitants—history inside the Simulated Universe could never be changed.
No matter what he did, the past would remain the past.
As the historical reconstruction continued, Evan witnessed even more.
The fragile peace established by the Congress of Futuristics collapsed almost immediately.
Although every school publicly mocked the Perfect Scholar Project, in secret each of them desperately sought to seize more computational power to create their own Perfect Scholar.
With assistance from the IPC, the Intelligentsia Guild eventually discovered the existence of a core hidden within the Scepter System.
The problem was...
No one knew where it was.
What followed was an endless Scholastic War, with academic factions tearing each other apart in pursuit of that prize.
Eventually, the Intelligentsia Guild was forced to unite.
Their common enemy became a faction known as the School of Relative Cognition.
But in truth...
As long as the Scepter System continued to exist, the Scholastic War would never truly end.
Then came the event that changed everything.
Patavia successfully reverse-traced the origin of a solitary wave.
Alone, she piloted her spacecraft into the ruins of Rupert II's former Mechanical Empire.
There...
She found the source of the ripples.
The core of the Scepter System.
Rupert II's Star—an invisible celestial body completely wrapped in Imaginary energy.
"The Candleflame Scholars actually failed to record something this important."
"Are they blind?!"
The woman beside Evan sounded genuinely furious.
Something so obvious had gone completely undocumented.
As a researcher herself, she simply couldn't accept such an oversight.
Following the flow of history, Evan suddenly sensed a familiar ripple of consciousness.
It felt almost identical to the presence he had encountered when gazing upon Nous, the Erudition.
It was a lingering resonance left behind by Nous's own act of calculation.
"I see..."
"It was never meant to be discovered."
"But its existence overlapped with the moment Nous performed Its calculations."
"The standing waves produced by an Aeon's thoughts spread outward from this very place..."
"And years later..."
"They guided Patavia here."
Watching the woman before him—no longer young—Evan finally understood everything.
In the distance stood the true core.
The Iron Throne.
The ultimate goal pursued by countless members of the Intelligentsia Guild.
The seat of the Perfect Scholar.
Whoever sat upon that throne...
Would become the Perfect Scholar.
Would be crowned as King.
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