Chapter 61
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 61
Chapter Title: Little God
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One minute.
The time it took me to wipe out humanity on Earth.
To be precise, it wasn't total annihilation. They'd still be alive inside my soul.
Like some kind of ark, I suppose.
...
No signs of life, even when I focused my senses.
Earth had become a ghost town straight out of an apocalypse tale.
I teleported to Mangul in Korea. Crossing to the other side of the planet took me just one second now.
Whirr.
The automatic doors slid open, so the power was still running even without people around.
I walked through the lobby, my shoes echoing loudly—the only sound there was.
I strolled down the street.
Cars littered the roads, but no people. A cool breeze still blew across Earth, and I spotted half-finished bird nests in the roadside trees.
I saw a street vendor selling fish-shaped buns, and there were some left.
My first theft in life was a fish-shaped bun. Still warm, so I blew on it before taking a bite.
At a convenience store, I tried a soda I'd never seen before. The fizzy tang was nice, but it couldn't beat cola.
Personally, I think all sodas are just downgraded versions of cola.
After wandering for about thirty minutes, I got bored.
Because there was no one around.
Reality started feeling like something out of a grimoire. If I'd been diligently shaping a world inside my grimoire, it'd probably feel just like this.
I activated teleportation magic once more.
This time, though, it targeted Earth itself—not any living creature.
I'd made a storage star, but couldn't teleport the intact Earth into it.
Later, if needed, I could rummage through it like a trash bin for remnants of civilization.
Vortices swirled across the world.
Street trees were uprooted, buildings torn whole from the ground and flung into the sky.
It felt just like a nuke dropping.
Civilization's traces scattered like dust, sending Earth back to the Stone Age in an instant.
I cast the spell and entered the Tower.
The Tower was still operating normally.
"And I'm the only Climber left."
It had become a Tower just for me.
"Grrr."
I slaughtered the monsters approaching me, just like when I was conquering the Tower.
I had no intention of clearing it, but some pruning around me was necessary.
I twisted my right arm with my left hand, smashing the dummy to pieces.
In its place appeared a rippling, darkly glowing hand.
In the now-cleared plains, I reached my hand toward the sky.
The ceiling mimicking the heavens.
I slowly closed my eyes. To focus.
For the first time in the Tower, I concentrated with all my power.
To shatter that ceiling and reach the true end.
"Rage Ard, open."
⟨ Rage Ard ⟩
A spell I'd created in my Grimoire.
Designed to pierce and destroy, invented to break through the Tower.
Star Force gathered at my fingertips, firing a slender laser.
No sound.
Pop.
Just the clean sensation of the laser hitting the ceiling reached my ears.
I could feel the impact.
One, two—continuously striking the ceiling above.
After about three seconds, nothing blocked the laser's end anymore.
If seen from outside, a thin beam of light was probably piercing the Tower and shooting toward the sky.
I slowly lowered my outstretched hand forward.
Rotated it half a turn, then raised it high to the sky again.
With nothing left to hit at the beam's tip, I released the spell.
It consumed more mana than teleportation. Compression required far more energy than I'd imagined.
...
I stood there for a moment. Normally, ignoring and destroying the Tower's ceiling would spam messages, but nothing appeared.
Rumble.
Like thunder, I felt space warp.
Through the distortions, beams of light poured in. Sunlight.
Rooooar!
The thunder grew fiercer, the ground shaking like an earthquake.
Looking up, I saw clouds in a blue sky.
The real sky—not the Tower's ceiling.
"Did it work?"
I said it to Lena, in case she was listening.
The Tower split in two, one half slowly tilting.
Space tangled and twisted until the Tower was just a useless stone heap.
The falling half beside me revealed only empty space inside.
This act probably stripped Lena of her administrator privileges.
For failing to protect the Korean branch Tower.
I remembered our conversation when I borrowed the system.
"What happens if you're stripped of qualifications?"
"I'd get fired."
"What comes after that?"
"I don't know exactly..., but they'd probably pick a new administrator to replace the discarded me. Deleted like data, maybe."
The price for lending me the system was her peace.
——Boom!!
The Tower crashed to the ground with a massive explosion.
The land beneath me began to tilt slowly.
I closed my eyes and let my body go.
When I opened my eyes again, I was at the center of a massive crater left by the Tower's collapse.
The impact had devastated the surrounding area.
Dust clouds still swirled, obscuring the view.
"Feels a bit more comfortable than usual?"
Checking my body, the dummy on my legs and side was completely shattered.
That's why it felt so freeing—shedding that dummy shell.
To me, the dummy felt like heavy armor.
"The shock was beyond imagination."
My absorption spell on humanity's traces had ended, and the Korean Tower was gone.
The impact was so intense it didn't just crack my dummy—it pulverized it.
I walked slowly on my true black legs.
No sensation underfoot. Not with this body.
I opened my Grimoire and floated into the air.
From the sky, Seoul had vanished from the map. Destruction had already reached the edges of Gyeonggi Province.
A few more blasts like that, and it truly would be annihilation for any lifeforms.
"Hoo..."
I took a deep breath and extended my hand toward the ground—no, toward Earth.
To absorb Earth's Star Force.
It was routine, nothing difficult. Except the star this time was larger than any I'd consumed before.
"Farewell, Earth."
It stung a little, knowing it was my home.
No turning back now, anyway. I just believed this would break the perpetual engine.
Earth's Star Force slowly gathered toward me.
Crackle.
Cracks spiderwebbed across my dummy clothes. Half-naked in jokes already.
Bang!
The painstakingly crafted dummy exploded into shards. Fully naked now.
The dummy couldn't withstand my true form's power. It made me look human while chaining my strength.
It couldn't endure the Star Force absorption.
In Seoul's sky, above the deep crater from the Korean Tower's fall.
There floated something—a humanoid shadow of darkness.
Me.
Glancing at my body, it was no longer human. The humanoid shape was just what felt familiar and comfortable.
My rippling black true form had no such limits.
No, focus.
Not the time for that. Think about what comes next.
Earth rapidly lost its Star Force.
"Urgh!"
Absorbing such vast energy at once overloaded my body.
My dark form gradually brightened, reacting to the high-quality Star Force after so long.
Before long, it wasn't dark anymore—a glowing human silhouette.
Towers in other countries, powered by Star Force, were probably collapsing one by one.
No sufficient energy left on this planet.
Sinkholes cracked the ground, and far-off oceans began receding.
Earth's core weakened, its rotation halting as it funneled energy to me.
An immense amount!
In my Grimoire, gathering Star Force this dense would require devouring countless stars—I couldn't even fathom it.
Crumble. The cracked crust scattered slowly.
"Aaaargh!"
It hurt.
No pain receptors, but the process inflicted agony.
Like forcing overflowing water into a tiny cup.
I scooped the excess with a small spoon into a larger vessel.
The Grimoire of the Universe.
I understood why Akasic called it an unauthorized grimoire, something that shouldn't exist.
My Grimoire came from beyond repeating universes.
No doubt, the universe inside it was vaster and deeper than reality's.
Was Akasic planning to send it beyond the universe? Unknowable now, but I got what worried her.
Annihilation like this.
With Earth's Star Force filling me, realization dawned.
The Wanderer, master of my Grimoire, was leagues beyond this universe's architect.
For reasons unknown, he despised this cycle and entrusted the solution to me.
By leaving a fragment of his cosmos-shattering power!
How trivial my imprisonment in the Grimoire must've been to him.
"Haa... haa..."
Was this me panting? Or mimicking what humans do after hard work?
Finally, all of Earth's Star Force dwelled within me.
An unprecedented sense of omnipotence. Without meeting the Wanderer, I might've lost my humanity entirely and reigned as a god.
Ignorant of my 'superior' existence..., I'd be a true god now.
Beholding true divinity taught me 'humility.' Even omnipotent me was mere dust.
What happens to a planet stripped of Star Force?
It explodes.
I watched my homeworld's end from afar.
Like a snow globe shattering, dust enveloped Earth, collapsing into a point.
Earth became a tiny black hole. Celestial balance shattered; the moon, satellites, everything sucked in.
The solar system's perfect jewel—the blue star of life—met its end.
And far off, a solar storm engulfed the system, shattering even the sun.
"Groooar!"
A massive, gurgling cry echoed from the sun, like something from ocean depths.
Could you call that thing alive? From within the sun, it extended what looked like a hand toward the black hole Earth.
To me, it sounded like mournful weeping.
Past me would've frozen at such a divine being, mind breaking from the sight.
One reason the Wanderer of the Vast Deep Sea appeared in my dreams was to build my mental resistance.
I'd conversed with a universe above universes.
Exchanged thoughts with the Wanderer's radiant star using this puny brain.
Only as he left did I realize his form was but a fingertip joint of what I could handle.
After that epiphany, this universe's god looked pathetically shabby.
Translating it into ruined Earthling tongue:
"You look like total shit."
A bit like a giant squid.