The Silver Moon of Origin
The silver moon, shining with a brilliance rivaling the sun itself, emerged through the Survival Magic Tower’s spatial transfer and rose into the sky above the Great Forest. The spirit gods of the Otherworld gazed up at the new silver moon as if admiring its beauty. Whoosh— Whoosh— It radiated vitality just like any ordinary moon, yet its surface was not rough stone but smooth, lustrous silver—utterly breathtaking. And now this moon floated beside the sun in the tower’s sky, both shining together.
The Earth Spirit God, who was also the Moon Spirit God, felt her silver eyes sparkle at the sight. She sensed something familiar yet distinctly different from her own moon. The Magic God of Dimensions paused his work upon seeing the Moon of the Origin, glanced at himself, and began adjusting its position by firing beams of mana, just as he had done with the small sun earlier. Once the silver moon settled beside the sun, his mana emission finally ceased, and vitality spread through the tower’s air with such force that it shook the space itself. Hum— Hum—
The former Moon Goddess, now a spirit god, examined the newly created small moon. It belonged to the Magic God of Dimensions’ authority and carried his mana, yet it was unmistakably a moon. A simple conclusion followed.
“Give me that. Or if you don’t want to die, hand it over.”
“Kuh—!”
The utterly absurd demand made the Magic God of Dimensions choke on the mana he was absorbing, his body trembling violently as though he might die. Naturally, he refused and looked up at the sky. With the Moon of the Origin and the Sun of the Origin now floating above, they illuminated the interior of the Survival Magic Tower. Their pure light and mana, devoid of hostility, stirred something deep within him.
‘Because of karma’s negative influence, the light and vitality I felt after escaping the dimensional barrier were nothing but poison. The only thing that helped was the demonic energy of the Great Cavity.’
Light had tried to burn him, and even the moon’s vitality had turned away. ‘All of this stems from karma’s negative effects. No—from my own foolishness in signing that contract so carelessly.’
When he obtained divinity through the authority of dimensions, Granzoa, the strongest among the goddesses, had summoned him with the intent to erase him. After the fierce battle, a mistaken contract with the Divine Realm had branded him the leader of black mages and marked him as “evil.”
‘To turn evil into good, I had to repeat countless unfair contracts. If I became extremely evil, every god would descend to hunt me without any restrictions on their power.’
What he found most unjust was that the divine faction had tried to kill him first. ‘After that, I could never feel at ease.’
Killing him—the pinnacle of black mages who had accumulated the greatest negative karma in the Middle World—would grant positive karma. ‘Slaying me would be more profitable than saving over a billion lives.’
He recalled protesting this unfair treatment in the past. ‘What wrong have I committed that you all try to kill me? I could be useful to you. Let’s make a deal—if you give me a little food, I’ll share my magic with you.’
When he was a 7th-circle mage, he had been trapped by the High Elf queens, stabbed repeatedly, and cried out countless times, but no answer ever came. Only fiercer attacks followed. After that, he survived by eating moss and the corpses of dead animals, never leaving the Great Cavity. Then, with the help of the Supreme One, he became a god.
‘I completely severed all ties with the world. Master refined and developed all his magic before passing it on to me, and only after seeing me engrave the 8th circle into my brain could he finally smile. After that, both Master and I devoted ourselves solely to magic, exploring the uncharted 8th circle and realizing the legendary realms of magic.’
Because it was the Great Forest, magical materials were abundant, and he secured them while fighting the High Elves. Now, even when he saw beautiful women or the High Elf queens, his heart no longer wavered or felt drawn to them. Only the lingering residue of his first love remained, an emotion he simply avoided.
‘In the Great Forest, where magic was ineffective, the Root School’s healing power and speed—once I reached the 8th circle—surpassed even the High Elf queens, so I managed to survive. But once branded as the leader of black mages, light shunned me and the moon’s vitality began to reject me.’
Karma’s negative side effects began manifesting in earnest, and he was shocked by their reality. The Middle World rejected him, a High God burdened by karma’s backlash. ‘I had become the enemy of the world. Even Master hadn’t anticipated this side effect, but I had no choice but to grow brighter. After all, Master didn’t have much time left.’
Even if karma was inevitable, he refused to lose his only family. The mage who had charged forward like a madman received a hollow answer from the one who reached the 10th circle just before Master’s death. ‘Granting immortality to a sentient being is impossible at the 10th circle. Only a Main God of the 11th circle or higher can do it.’
In an era when even the 8th circle was legendary among humans, the proud disciple who had reached the 10th circle tearfully begged his dying Master to become a lich, but soon gave up. ‘Master was a black mage too. He couldn’t deepen the negative effects of his own karma.’
He extracted Master’s soul from the cycle of reincarnation to protect it from karma’s negative influence and sent it to begin anew in the Sea of Souls. ‘I erased all information about him from the world so he could make a fresh start.’
The Magic God of Dimensions had ensured Master could begin again as a completely new existence. After that, his life alone was brutal. ‘Now, having lost myself in the realization that I would be alone forever, the light that shone upon me when I emerged from the Great Cavity burned me according to the Sun God’s will. As the enemy of the world, I finally came to my senses.’
The light of the sun that cared for all life and the vitality of the moon turned away from him alone. ‘Even the highest divine rank could not restore the blessing of life that even the lowliest insect enjoyed. It only reduced the damage by one stage. In the end, I had to mobilize every dimensional authority to create another world around my body and escape the harm.’
The despair of that time had been overwhelming. ‘Please, forget it. This isn’t the time for that, is it? Don’t I now have my own sun and moon warmly illuminating and filling the tower?’
It was the first time since becoming a god that he felt the full blessing of life from both sun and moon. Now that the vitality was stable, darkness was needed because living beings required sleep. ‘The Survival Magic Tower is a regular hexagon, so it can’t rotate like a normal planet.’
He had considered shaping it like a planet, but the lack of expandability made him abandon the idea immediately and seek an alternative. ‘The solution is to periodically wrap the Sun of the Origin in darkness. But the sun has the property of repelling darkness, so ordinary darkness won’t work. I need a Dark God with a divine rank at least equal to the Sun God’s.’
He couldn’t summon a supergravity body called a “black hole” in the Otherworld into this tiny magic tower. Ultimately, the only hope lay in the Dark Spirit God, whose pitch-black hair could absorb even the sun. ‘Her extremely black hair, slightly wavy, wraps around her naked body in several layers. She does this because no substance can withstand her divinity of “absorption.”’
The Dark Spirit God was an extremely rare demonic god lineage among spirit gods, and even the Sun God found her difficult to deal with. ‘When I first summoned her in the past, hundreds of thousands of strands of hair extended at tremendous speed and struck my dimensional barrier. A few of them pierced through the barrier, which even a Main God’s divine power and authority couldn’t overcome. I nearly got absorbed by her, but because the Root School specialized in survival through recovery and evasion, I survived.’
Safely absorbing the sun through darkness was something his current knowledge couldn’t replicate. And the Dark Spirit God wouldn’t willingly share her authority, so he had to use this method.
Meanwhile, the Dark Spirit God was utterly astonished. The completely transformed interior of the Survival Magic Tower was filled with such pure vitality and life force that it could be mistaken for a high divine realm. ‘I can’t believe someone can create an environment like this in the material world.’
Even in the mythic era of the Otherworld where she had lived, an environment overflowing with this level of mana and vitality had never existed. It was also impossible with her magical knowledge. ‘I thought he was just a traitor seduced by the goddesses of light and a womanizer.’
A mere traitor could never have accumulated this level of mana and knowledge. Without others’ help, she would only become like her former husband, a half-being who couldn’t survive on his own. ‘For such a man, I used every magic I possessed, transcending the realm of demigods to reach godhood, to help him.’
Although the light gods had incited her, manipulating a human’s heart was difficult even for a Main God. In the end, it had been her own choice, swayed by his handsome face and sweet whispers. ‘I gave him the treasure that protected my father’s royal authority and the kingdom. Knowing my father would never give up, I threatened him with my younger brother to stop the pursuit.’
Tragedy struck. ‘It was an accident.’
When the pursuing mages’ spells collided with her younger brother, who had been bound and hung at the stern of the ship, shattering him and scattering his remains into the sea, she fell into eternal darkness. Watching her father dive into the sea, wailing as he gathered her brother’s broken remains, she realized there was no longer any place for her to return to.
Yet the man for whom she had risked everything proved truly pathetic. ‘He couldn’t even receive the throne that should have been his reward for the great feat. Instead, he was threatened with assassination by his uncle, the king, and didn’t know what to do.’
There was no mercy in power, even for blood relatives. Fearing her own children would be endangered, she used youth magic to seduce her husband’s elderly uncle and sisters-in-law. ‘I deliberately failed the youth magic to eliminate them all and placed that man on the throne.’
She thought happiness had returned, but he refused to make her queen and instead tried to marry the princess of a neighboring kingdom. He denounced her as a “witch” who had betrayed the country, killed her own brother, and cruelly murdered her family, declaring he could never make such a woman his noble queen. At that moment, she went mad.
‘For whom did I, a demigod, abandon the kingdom I was to become queen of? I became a “witch” who lost her brother and killed her relatives. Yet the one denouncing me is none other than my husband—you. I can never forgive you.’
She carried out a revenge that even the gods feared. She sent a ceremonial robe coated with the sun’s poison that burned everything to the neighboring princess who was to marry him, burning her to death, and also killed the king who had been happily watching their daughter beside her. Then, in front of him, she cruelly slaughtered with a sword the children born between them, and afterward set the entire kingdom ablaze—leaving only him alive. So that he would live the rest of his life in regret and despair.
‘The light gods who provided the catalyst for my cruel acts couldn’t impose any sanctions. My grandfather, the Sun God, sighed repeatedly and turned me into a demonic god. Thus I became the Dark Demonic God, and my divinity was “Betrayal’s Choice.” It was the most vicious power among magics that distorted laws, found gaps, and violated weaknesses.’
After becoming the Dark Demonic God, she could neither eat nor drink anything. Her sins and despair became a massive black hole that sucked in and crushed everything except her body. ‘Using my magic, I poured divinity into my hair, sealed my own body, and came to the Spirit Realm myself.’
She had nearly absorbed even her grandfather, the Sun God, her only remaining family. She also knew that because she, a divine being who had become a demonic god, had further endangered her grandfather’s already precarious position, nearly leading to his impeachment.
In the Spirit Realm, spirit gods occasionally picked fights with her, but once rumors of her past spread, no one approached her. ‘How much time passed as I lived alone in a daze, my mind adrift? That was when this Magic God forcibly summoned me, the Dark Spirit God, with powerful magic.’
She looked at her contractor. He was the unbelievable figure who had succeeded in forcibly contracting with four Otherworld spirit gods renowned for their strength in the Otherworld, one after another. And he boldly declared, arms raised, that he also desired a contract with her. ‘He seemed tired from mana consumption, but his eyes burned with passion, and his lips were stubbornly pressed together.’
The sight of him, overflowing with the qualities of a king who drew others in, shook her heart once more—just like the man who had once been her husband. His qualifications as a contractor were overwhelmingly strong, and she liked him so much that she had intended to form the contract, until she realized that all the forcibly contracted spirit gods around him were beautiful goddesses who surpassed her, and anger surged within her.
‘This man is the same as that one. He’s an incredible womanizer, and once he learns my entire past, he’ll eventually turn away.’
So she resisted even more thoroughly, but she couldn’t overcome the dimensional authority beyond that of a Main God. Afterward, she was summoned alongside the Light Spirit God but neither helped nor attacked; she merely watched the other spirit gods assault him or joined forces with them. ‘This Magic God’s divinity was “dimensions,” a peculiar power that nearly repelled my own divinity that absorbed even the Sun God’s power. And magic beyond even my own understanding protected him and completely blocked everything.’
She had done her best out of magical curiosity as well, but even the combined assault of five spirit gods, which made even the Spirit God Emperor above this level struggle, couldn’t breach his magical defenses. As a black mage who had reached such a truly great realm, her heart as a former mage deepened and grew more uneasy. ‘If he ever learns about me, he’ll hate me. I mustn’t give him my heart like before. Before that happens, I have to be even harsher.’
Time passed like that, and now the Magic God she had summoned had demonstrated the authority to create even a small star and control the sun and moon through magic. ‘What magnificent magic this is!’
Even the magic from her demigod days, when she had reached divine rank, held no value compared to this. Thump! Thump! Her heart began to race uncontrollably, just as it had in the past. The great mage whose entire body was covered by a robe became etched into her eyes like a brand. ‘No—! Am I going to repeat the same mistake again?’
She had barely managed to compose herself when the black mage approached. Heat seemed to rise throughout her body, her heart raced again, and her mind grew hazy. All she could see was him, and her heart, filled with excitement, seemed ready to overflow with joy. ‘Yes, this is the kind of woman I was. One who burns everything in emotion and passion, only to destroy herself and those around her in sin.’
The Magic God of Dimensions took something out from space and held it out to her. Shhhk— A dress shimmering with black luster unfolded before her eyes. Starting from the shoulders raised with abundant white lace, delicate magical patterns that covered the fingertips and neck glowed. The upper garment, with its neckline deeply cut to emphasize the chest, was cinched at the waist by a silver belt. The layered skirt, reaching down to the ankles and intricately embroidered with silver thread in patterns that shone like brilliant stars, was a beautiful dress resembling the night sky glowing with the Milky Way. ‘It looks as though it was prepared for the Queen of the Night.’
The night dress overflowed with dignity and endlessly stimulated the viewer’s desire to possess it. Unconsciously, she reached out to accept the dress, but then remembered that everything that touched her would be absorbed and disappear. ‘No!’