Chapter 249
Chapter 249
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 249
Chapter Title: The Heavens Tear Open
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10
There is no epilogue for this episode.
However, I could describe the scenery after the world's destruction at quite some length.
What follows is a tale of annihilation in place of an epilogue.
11
The sky tore open.
This was no metaphor, no exaggeration, no distortion. The sky literally ripped apart like plastic, with a long, drawn-out tear. Without a single sound.
-Ahahahaha.
Beyond the rift in the universe, peering through the crack, was a pair of crimson eyes.
Cheon Yo-hwa. The eyes of the Infinite Void.
The scarlet irises were larger than any existence imaginable.
The muscles of the irises writhed like jagged earthquakes. With every twitch of a single muscle fiber, galaxies contracted and expanded repeatedly.
-Small!
The Infinite Void's eye tore open wide. Its pupil, dark as a black hole, gazed down upon this world.
-Smallsmallsmallsmallsmallsmallygygygygyg.
Soon, a hand emerged from the rift in the sky.
The hand approached this world.
The right hand. The bare hand that had just shattered the hourglass was embedded with shards of glass, blood pouring from it in streams.
The right hand emerging from the rift was larger than a continent. In an instant, the ground was engulfed in its shadow. The Tower of Babel, Haeundae, Busan, the entire flattened Earth. Everything.
The droplets of blood dripping from the Infinite Void's right hand formed massive waterfalls in themselves.
Kwarrrrr!
Each drop became an ocean, crashing down upon the world.
-………!
-……! ……!
The surface world was swept away by a great flood in the blink of an eye.
Even the anomalies scrambling up the Tower of Babel couldn't escape the blood. The SG Net escapees, who had just broken through the ice and were spreading their wings, were struck by the deluge and sank.
-Kygygygygygy.
The Infinite Void's laughter echoed through heaven and earth.
The Infinite Void extended its thumb and forefinger, plucking the Tower of Babel. Aslak! The tower's midsection snapped like a child clumsily tearing into a Choco Heim.
-Sunbae.
The Infinite Void laughed. This voice was also bizarre. To express it more realistically,
-Sunbaesunbaesunbaesunbaesunbaesunbae.
-Suuuunnnbaaaaay.
It was as if Cheon Yo-hwa's vocalizations and the Infinite Void's mechanical tone overlapped and pronounced simultaneously.
Yes. The Infinite Void's voice didn't come solely from the rift in the sky.
It was repeating and playing from the now-destroyed radios, from smartphones bobbing in the blood flood, from all sorts of electronic devices.
The voices of the alien god overlapped endlessly, resounding all at once.
-I'll let you live especially, Sunbae?
-Suuuunnnbaaaaayyy.
-Kygygygygygygygygyg!
The Infinite Void lifted the entire Tower of Babel—with me on it.
Forced ascension.
It seemed the alien god intended to invite me beyond that rift.
The gesture of the anomaly was far from gentle.
As the altitude rose rapidly, I clung desperately to the terrace railing to avoid falling.
That was when it happened.
--Grooooaaarrr!
Chwaaaaa!
In the midst of the world, now completely submerged in red blood from the endless flood, a colossal dragon surged upward.
I instantly pierced its identity.
'Leviathan!'
The ocean-scale anomaly that caused the great deluge in the 664th regression.
It might not match the Infinite Void's finger in size, but Leviathan was enormous. In myths, wasn't it described as larger than the Earth itself?
'No wonder. [Great Deluge] and [Great Flood] are the same term. And with the world sunk into a sea of blood, it's perfect for Leviathan. While other anomalies are helplessly swept away, this is an opportunity for it!'
We had struggled endlessly to subjugate it in the 664th regression, but this dragon was on another level. Its body was long enough to wrap around the Earth nine times over.
And size wasn't the only change.
In truth, Go Yo-ri deserved credit for the final blow against Leviathan in the 664th.
No matter how fiercely the 'Ark' fleet pressed, Leviathan still had one last burst of defiance left.
-Grooooaaarrr.
The countless scales covering the dragon's body flipped all at once.
Reverse scales.
The scales transformed entirely into eyes. From hundreds of millions of pupils, wriggling tentacles sprouted forth.
Its form was closer to a grima than a dragon now. Utterly grotesque, no longer resembling a sacred spirit.
Yet its presence was chilling enough to make one's spine tingle. Had this final form appeared in the 664th regression, humanity—including me—would have perished without a fight.
-Ahahahaha.
The Infinite Void laughed. Another hand—the left—burst from the rift in the sky.
-Small.
Kwazik!
The right hand casually crushed Leviathan.
The beast struggled for a moment, but it was futile.
The Infinite Void clenched its fist.
Pshjik—With a playful squish, Leviathan was pulverized.
The dragon's head, gaping wide toward the alien god, plummeted frozen in place.
Its body shattered into tiny pieces like poorly transported Pepero sticks.
Hudududu. The fragmented corpse rained into the sea—now a borderless Panthalassa where the five oceans had merged into one.
"……."
From the dizzying heights, witnessing the entire scene, I was speechless.
The 664th regression had happened just recently. Whether aura quantity or proficiency, there was no real difference from now.
'The ocean-scale anomaly that cornered me then was destroyed so simply, so pathetically.'
Regardless of my sentiments still bound to the mortal world, the altitude kept rising.
Stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere—.
In a flash, the Tower of Babel and I had ascended to what could truly be called space. Had I been an ordinary Awakener, my mind would have shattered from this alone.
"Ah."
It might be thanks to this, but reaching here allowed me a clear view of the Earth's flattened state under the Flat Earth theory.
The overwhelming, bizarre sight drew an involuntary murmur from me.
"The sun… there are two of them."
If drawn as a picture, it looked like this.
○
〓〓〓
●
The Earth had become completely flat (〓〓〓).
The original sun (○) was on one side, and an identical sun (●) on the opposite.
'...The original sun has shrunk almost to the moon's size. The influence of geocentrism, no doubt. And that sun on the opposite side… the Hollow Earth theory's doing.'
In that instant, realization dawned.
As the cosmic truth of heliocentrism shifted to geocentrism, the sun shrank.
So where had the "excess" sun gone, the portion that diminished?
'Ah! Of course! The spare material from the shrunken sun created a new one underground, via the Hollow Earth theory!'
It was astonishing.
If this hypothesis held, then 'geocentrism' and 'Hollow Earth'—seemingly unrelated anomalies—were actually one and the same.
Realizations came one after another.
'And that's not all.'
Behold. How did the flattened Earth maintain equilibrium in space without capsizing?
Precisely because one sun (○) and the opposite sun (●) balanced perfectly, pulling the Earth from both sides.
An act bordering on the impossible.
But that was merely from a human perspective. To the anomaly—geocentrism = Hollow Earth = Flat Earth—it was a flawless interpretation.
The universe had devolved into a mere playground.
'Which anomaly did this?'
My mouth fell open.
'Definitely alien god-scale. Nyarlathotep? The power of Nyarlathotep that the Saintess has sealed? Or the alien god behind Black Curtain Syndrome that Mugan just devoured? Or…'
-Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
At that moment, something massive brushed past the Tower of Babel.
It was so enormous that identifying it took over a second. Even then, only because it was familiar to my eyes.
'Yo-hwa's shoe?'
An Air Jordan sneaker in black-and-red.
The very shoes that had kicked at me in the Baekhwa Girls' High hallway when we first met.
Cheon Yo-hwa's prized possession, cherished by the former basketball ace, worn every time we met.
Naturally, she had them on during this Final Defense War too.
That sneaker burst from the cosmic rift and slammed into the Flat Earth.
-Uuuuuuuh.
Kwaaaaaang!
The sneaker stomped the Flat Earth.
Not just the flattened Earth. The two suns collided with the sole and shattered easily.
The Flat Earth, already soaked in blood, crumbled like a Daiize cracker.
The world, overrun by countless humans and even more anomalies, collapsed under one kick from the alien god.
"……."
-IkyaI'mtheonlyonekyaI'mtheonlyonenowI'mtheonlyoneI'mtheonlyoneI'mtheonlyoneI'mtheonlyone.
-IIIIIamtheonllyyyoneeeee.
In geocentrism, Earth was the center of the world.
With the center gone, only the solar system's planets and constellations remained in the universe.
Kwarrr! Boom! Kwaaaang!
The Infinite Void used its right hand and foot to mercilessly destroy the remaining celestial bodies.
The centerless universe began contracting rapidly.
Or perhaps it was "receding."
The Infinite Void's left hand still gripped the Tower of Babel and me, steadily pulling us toward the rift.
The universe had already shrunk to a single black point, and I was being dragged "beyond the universe."
'Ah.'
Even amid this, the regressor Undertaker ceaselessly gathered, classified information.
The world had ended.
Annihilated by Mugan, empowered beyond measure by contact with the "black curtain" alien god.
What happened beyond the rift was unknowable now. Mugan might have devoured the "black curtain," or perhaps a horrific fusion of the two alien gods had occurred.
One certainty: that alien god had become immensely powerful, leading to the world's destruction.
The alien god commanding the Monster Wave, the one controlling Leviathan—all had been subordinated by Mugan.
In short, Mugan's ultimate victory ending.
Freed from Cheon Yo-hwa's body, Mugan could reach such heights if the conditions were met.
This regression was a failure. As always.
'...I heard a sound.'
But only the Undertaker of the 687th regression had failed.
My experiment—to crash "Mugan" against the "black curtain" and uncover a way to tackle alien gods—had succeeded.
At least the early stages had.
As evident, Mugan had entered "beyond the rift" and was dragging me along.
Saintess, Yoo Ji-won, Dang Seo-rin, O Dok-seo, No Do-ha, Sim A-ryeon… .
The sacrifices of my comrades and countless lives were not in vain.
No, I wouldn't let them be.
The regressor Undertaker scanned his surroundings ceaselessly, seeking even a bit more information, even a slightly stronger clue.
'Even if Earth is destroyed, sound can't propagate in this distant space.'
Clearly, thunderous roars had accompanied each celestial destruction.
I had licked my finger, checked for air currents. Perhaps Mugan's breath from beyond the rift filled the vacuum.
But no air. My own breathing wasn't functioning properly.
Yet sounds reached me—which meant—.
'A medium in space. Ether, the hypothetical element scholars of the geocentric era presumed filled the cosmos.'
Ether.
The imaginary element conjectured to exist everywhere, like air, throughout Earth and the universe.
With my Perfect Memory, confirming ether's existence led straight to the next deduction.
Because.
"Brothers and sisters! Since ancient times, fire has been the sacred ether! It purifies earthly defilements, drawing us closer to the heavens—that is fire's essence!"
Long ago.
When "Mok Gwang-seo Christ" was still just "Mok Gwang-seo," I recalled the speech he gave before his followers.
Mok Gwang-seo had said.
"Yet cleansing turbid energies is no easy task. As the soul that first pierced the six great spirits, I will carve the wind path to lead you all to that high heavenly kingdom."
"You must all pierce the wind path I opened, one by one, with all your strength, so the souls still on Earth can ascend easily."
"Everyone! I will carve the wind path to help you ascend. You must help others too."
Ether.
Wind path.
Heavenly kingdom.
"……."
A thunderous tremor shook my mind.
'Mok Gwang-seo wasn't just a conman, a demagogue?'
Ether existed in the void of Flat Earth. The wind path extended to the cosmic rift beyond, and I was personally traversing it, gripped by Mugan's finger.
Then what lay beyond that rift? The heavenly kingdom?
Impossible to deduce without seeing it myself.
However.
"Enter through the narrow gate."
The prophecy recited to me by Mok Gwang-seo Christ, who always remained doll-like and silent, suddenly resurfaced.
I thought Lee Ha-yul had pranked me, but Ha-yul herself flatly denied ever manipulating him to say such things.
"The gate that leads to destruction is wide and its road broad, so many enter through it."
"The gate that leads to life is narrow and its road constricted, so few find it."
I was on the Tower of Babel's terrace.
Clinging to the tower humanity built to reach godhood, I turned back.
The cosmic scenery had vanished. Only the "rift"—filled with Mugan's colossal eye—drew near.
The gap torn in the world.
"Scribe."
"Enter through the narrow gate."
And so.
I entered through the narrow gate.
-Experimenter. End.