Chapter 141: "Land of Sin"

[Detection that the current survivor's progress has met the requirements....]

[The global phased task "Land of Sin" will be issued soon: Step onto that birthplace of the source of all suffering.]

[This task has been added to the "Parchment - Task List". Detailed information can be viewed at your discretion.]

Colin was not particularly surprised by the appearance of the new task.

After all, the last time Colin achieved the world's first kill of a "Lord-tier Abberation", a global task had also been issued.

However, a global phased task was...

truly the first time he had seen one.

Counting this one, Colin currently had about three phased tasks: one was "The Witch's Skull", and the other was "The Withered Olive Tree"....

"However, the birthplace of the source of all suffering—is this asking us to go fight the final boss? We just barely escaped death, and we don't even know how to survive now that the territory has opened up, yet you're already pointing us to the big boss? Damn it, you really think highly of us..."

Colin muttered to himself. If he was not mistaken, this task should also be appearing for the first time...

At least back when Russell and his group were around, they also only had two global tasks. Nowadays, they had progressed much further than that group, so having multiple global tasks was not surprising...

Without hesitation, he quickly opened the parchment right at hand and pulled up the task list.

["Land of Sin"]

[Task Description: The source of all suffering, the land where the First Miracle, the "Distorted Father", manifested its "miracle". That place is the center of the entire Era of Suffering, as well as the era's most prosperous, splendid, darkest, and most distorted region—the ultimate destination of thousands of "miracles". Go, for there you will find everything you wish to know, and all the truths of this era lie right there...]

[Task Time: 176.54.36...]

[Task Requirement: Step onto the "Continent of Sin". There, witness the true form of the "Miracle" incarnated by the First Miracle, the "Distorted Father"!]

[Task Reward: Hardened black bread *999, Mist Points *1000, Recovery Card *1]

"Witness the true form of the 'Miracle' incarnated by the First Miracle, the 'Distorted Father'?"

Skimming past the descriptions, Colin saw this requirement, and a thought immediately popped into his head...

Wasn't this blatantly asking them to go die?

The survivors alive today couldn't even look directly at a Lord-tier Abberation, let alone a "Grand Miracle"?

And furthermore, the true form of a "Grand Miracle"?

Not even mentioning the first, take the seventh, the "Pain Bearer"—it merely bestowed a blessing, and it created an entire order of Undead Pointy-Hat Knights...

Just how powerful must its true form be?

"If I have to deal with the true form of such an entity, even when I activate my cheats it'll probably be a fifty-fifty match at best. And now you want me to go see its true form?"

For a moment, Colin wondered if the system's CPU was malfunctioning. How could it issue such a task? Was this a task they could possibly complete?

You really think very highly of a bunch of losers like us...

"Besides, what I want to know most right now is whether anything is actually wrong with your era! What I want to know is how to go home, how to bring everyone back to Earth, back indoors to drink cola, play video games, eat french fries, and eat junk food every day. That is what I want to know most. Does the so-called 'everything' include this?"

To be honest, if during those very first few days he had been somewhat curious about how this world had become this way, right now, Colin genuinely did not care at all about what secrets this so-called "World of Suffering" held.

Having been through so much, all he wanted now was to go home and bring the remaining people back to their homeland...

Never to set foot in such a place again...

However, the content of the hint made Colin pause. Right there on it...

[Perhaps, you will find what you want to know there.]

"It really is there?"

Colin was stunned. Could they really find out how they had arrived here in the first place?

And then how to return to Earth?

Suddenly, he regained a new objective: to step onto that so-called "Land of Sin"...

And bring all the survivors back!

"I hope you aren't lying to me."

Colin said silently in his heart.

The hint did not provide any more substantive details.

Although "Hints" were the things he came into contact with most frequently nowadays, this mysterious entity still remained deeply enigmatic to him.

Even more mysterious than the system!

[Perhaps the answer will not be as you imagine, but at least, you believe that you will obtain an answer there.]

Dismissing the hint from his mind, Colin carefully examined the task, his brain thinking at high speed.

"The place where the First Miracle, the 'Distorted Father', manifested its 'miracle', the world center of the Era of Suffering..."

Colin murmured to himself. He did not know much about what this "World of Suffering" was actually like, but he felt that...

in that era, the population must have been exceptionally large...

The citizens of "Gondor" had descended for over forty days and had killed at least several billion Abberations by now...

The people of their Earth civilization, although all young adults, roughly calculated, must still number around one to two billion, right?

Not counting the Abberations conjured out of thin air by the "Night" through "Nightmares", just looking at the Abberations transformed from ordinary people, the monsters killed by their two civilizations combined probably numbered in the tens of billions...

One Abberation per person...

With so many people, the number of Abberations still seemed endless and unreduced...

Just how many people must this "Era of Suffering" have had?

How could a population that massive be so backward?

Under such a massive demographic base, a qualitative change was bound to happen sooner or later, but right now it looked just like a well-fed Middle Ages.

These were things Colin could not figure out no matter how hard he wracked his brain...

What could be confirmed now was that the population of this "World of Suffering" beneath the gray fog was far greater than that of "Earth".

"How on earth did a church unite such a massive population across the entire world on a foundational level? How did they pull that off? Was it also a miracle?"

A flood of confusion flashed through his mind. Colin shook his head and analyzed the information within the task.

"The gathering place of thousands of 'miracles'... To translate that, it pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin for my hypothesis: the Church of Suffering is artificially creating 'miracles' through distortion and despair..."

Colin's gaze swept across and lingered on the string of numbers under the task time...

"176.54.36... A countdown, a countdown of about five or six months..."

Colin pondered for a moment. He was quite sensitive to countdowns now, because after numerous encounters,

he knew that having no countdown was fine...

If there was a countdown, and it was not completed by the end, something rather bad would most likely happen.

For example, the task countdown for the "Rat in the Wall"...

Whether that countdown ended or not had no great bearing on him personally.

Because the moment the countdown ended would probably be the time the last survivor died.

If he were to enter after the countdown ended...

he reckoned he would only see the remnants of the survivors who had been devoured entirely.

However, as for the countdown on this "Land of Sin", upon careful consideration, he had a very bad feeling.

Without hesitation, Colin gave it deep thought.