Chapter 214
Chapter 214
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 214
Chapter Title: Tower of the Gods (15)
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Chronos.
The shadow spirit. A reaper.
Something that never existed.
Something that could not possibly come into being.
An 'error' bearing both those qualities.
Chronos had dubbed Park Chan-woo a 'major error'.
But strictly speaking, Chronos himself was a 'flaw' capable of tearing a great rift through the world.
Thus, from the moment of his birth, he had never revealed himself to the world.
He lived in utter concealment.
For eons, he had only ever sent forth evil spirits. That too stemmed from the same reason.
If no one ever recognized it, the 'error' would never arise.
'I am an imbalance that bloomed from within balance.'
Spirits and reapers alike formed the Abyss's equilibrium.
Spirits maintained the world's balance through the five attributes.
They were the world's vital organs.
One could liken them to the torso.
Reapers, by contrast, were the very rules propping up the Abyss to prevent its collapse.
The hands and feet.
Chronos had been born amid those two forms of balance.
Yet he belonged to no part of the world.
Not even a finger or a toe.
Instead, he was a malignant growth that ravaged it.
Just like a virus birthing horrific imbalance.
A contradiction.
It made no sense.
'I spent long ages observing the world. I took in countless tales with my own eyes, yet I was never once recognized.'
Hiding behind evil spirits had proven more amusing than expected.
But endless concealment bred even greater frustration.
As time wore on, and encounters with other beings mounted...
...Chronos felt a thirst.
He yearned to reveal himself.
Wishing not to be recognized, yet subconsciously craving that very 'recognition'.
Arcana of Despair was a dragonkin he met in that process.
The cataclysmic war that erupted in the Abyss.
The era when every demon and race tangled in savage combat.
The sky was shrouded entirely in ash.
The ashes of the dead blanketed it.
—...When the hell is this damned war going to end?
Arcana asked the evil spirit.
He had contracted with Chronos's evil spirit in hopes of victory.
—What meaning does this war even have? Dragon God Sepiro, our god—how long does he intend to stand by and watch? Our clan has already suffered losses bordering on annihilation...!
Arcana gazed up at the ash-choked sky.
Doubt filled his voice.
Countless dragons had perished. Few of Despair's brood remained.
Yet Dragon God Sepiro refused to stir.
As ever, he merely lounged upon his throne in boredom.
The deaths of myriad dragons merited no more than his listless stare.
Sepiro cared nothing for the war.
And so, Arcana declared,
—...Sepiro is not our master.
Words he never should have uttered.
He harbored doubt.
Toward the dragonkin's absolute faith.
Perhaps the evil spirit's contract was to blame. Such pacts amplified the contractor's emotions.
Yet it was unprecedented.
All dragonkin idolized Sepiro. From birth to death, they revered him as their sole god. The slightest glance from him left them at a loss.
Even bound to an evil spirit, Arcana voiced resentment toward that very Sepiro.
'Splendid.'
Chronos thought.
Arcana might well be the finest of all dragonkin.
—I am no puppet of Sepiro. No slave of his, no mount for him to ride.
Arcana thrust his hand skyward.
Then clenched the heavens tight.
...Radiant.
His defiance of fate.
The will to forge a new path atop contradiction.
It mirrored Chronos himself.
Yet unlike Chronos, Arcana pressed even further.
He rejected absolute fate. The karma thrust upon him.
—I am Arcana. The dragon who craves revolution.
Arcana looked to the sky.
The ash veil had lifted.
A clear expanse, unseen in ages.
He smiled.
—Ah, isn't it truly beautiful? Yes. When the war ends, that sky will shine even brighter. I will bring this meaningless slaughter to a close. From despair, I will coax a single ray of hope to bloom.
With those words, Arcana dissolved the pact with the evil spirit.
His radiant soul. His unyielding spirit. His magic power, elevated beyond former barriers.
Chronos accepted the severance.
A typical dissolution invited a deathlike curse, but Chronos desired no such thing.
He wished for Arcana—so like him, yet superior—to succeed without fail.
'A ray of hope blooming from despair.'
The words struck deep.
But after that, no tidings of Arcana came.
Not even after the war's end and the 'Racial Great War's' revision.
Not after the dragonkin returned to their lairs.
Arcana had vanished.
Only whispers of his death.
Chronos believed them.
Eons passed once more.
Then Chronos encountered Park Chan-woo, who had 'recognized' him.
The one who rooted him from hiding and dragged him forth.
A monster bearing a 'major error' dwarfing Chronos's own.
His 'error' seemed paltry by comparison.
Thus, for the first time, he offered himself in contract, not as an evil spirit.
Yet mere moments later...
He encountered an old bond.
Of all things.
'So here you were. Arcana, dragon of revolution.'
Arcana of Despair.
The dragon who once gleamed like hope amid despair.
But... what was this wretched form?
Where had that proud bearing fled?
That noble, dauntless gaze. That unbreakable will. That heart brimming with indomitable magic.
All had regressed.
How could anyone deem that abomination Arcana?
A monstrosity.
An eyesore fit only to be discarded.
How had that luminous dragon sunk to such grotesque decay?
How...
A reunion with a past once deemed fated.
Arcana had failed.
Failed at revolution. At enduring, overcoming contradiction.
If this pathetic husk was the outcome...
'That thing...'
Black Dragon Ataraxia.
His pupils quivered fiercely.
He stared, dumbfounded, as it burst from Sepiro's shadow.
An event defying all reason.
No matter Sepiro's mastery of magic.
...Magic had its limits.
'A reaper?'
Unmistakably one.
A skeletal form cloaked in black, a colossal scythe slung across its back.
What else could it be?
Its presence loomed infinite.
How to describe it.
A reflection of Sepiro. The rules he embodied.
Yet reapers existed only to enforce the Abyss's laws.
They bowed to no summons, no command through spellcraft.
Brrr!
'Has Lord Sepiro conquered even the inscrutable? Transcended it...!'
Ataraxia shuddered.
Sepiro now wielded the Abyss's rules themselves!
The other dragons would roar in ecstasy if they knew.
Their absolute sovereign, peerless Dragon God, had shattered every bound.
Sepiro had unveiled new horizons.
Proof the rest could follow.
But pure joy eluded him.
Sepiro now targeted a dragon once leader of the Despair clan.
Arnak...a. Familiar, yet not.
That name graced a tombstone from the clan's great war fallen.
'Our clan stood among the three closest serving Lord Sepiro in ages past.'
The mightiest.
Yet the Great War had nearly annihilated Despair's line.
Doomed decline had set in.
The clan demanded revival.
Past glory reclaimed.
To that end, Ataraxia served the great one with utmost zeal.
But... the old clan's chieftain.
Creak. Creak-creak.
The bone dragon stirred.
Bones clashing with a hair-raising rasp.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoooosh!
Black orbs spawned wildly around it.
Four thousand, four hundred forty-four, brimming with despair's might.
Kuaaaaa!
The bone dragon's shriek unleashed despair beams from every orb, lancing toward Chronos.
...Chilling power.
Far beyond any level 135 dragon's limit.
Frail flesh, compensated by abyssal magic.
Unleashed raw, even elder wyrms would shatter on impact.
'...!'
Slash!
Chronos swung. Four thousand, four hundred forty-four orbs vanished.
No... not vanished.
'Reflected?'
Regenerated before Chronos.
No mere reflection spell.
A flawless mirror, hurling it back unchanged!
Rumble!
Roooar!
Beams erupted in unison.
The bone dragon flared its wings in haste.
To invoke the inscribed defensive wards.
But.
Crack!
Wings refused to spread.
Its own shadow had seized it.
Thus pinned, the bone dragon endured its own cataclysmic blast.
Kiaaaaa!
It wailed.
Even draconic bones crumbled before that tidal magic.
...Overwhelming.
Yet no killing stroke.
Victory assured, but the bone dragon endured.
「I will destroy you.」
Chronos hefted his scythe.
That instant.
"...!!!"
Ataraxia reeled.
Five evil spirits manifested above the blade.
No common shades.
'That aura from the lab... no way...!'
Fallen ancients of evil!
Apex predators of malice, thriving across unimaginable epochs, corrupting legions.
Appalled by their aura alone—and that shadow their source?
Had Sepiro tamed even these fiends?
Hehehe!
Hehehehe!
The five cackled.
Eyes blackened. Grins abyssal voids.
True evil incarnate.
Ataraxia recoiled instinctively.
That malediction, that quintessence of malice, proved unbearable.
The spirits swarmed the bone dragon.
Its bones charred black, festered. Heart pulsed violet poison.
Rotting.
Draconic skeleton.
A sight beyond Ataraxia's ken.
Wyrm bones defied decay eternally.
Reason fracturing.
And worse.
'What is this nightmare...'
Ataraxia balled his fists.
Deeper horrors lay hidden.
Chronos and his spirits had shown mere fractions.
True might, authentic curses, held in reserve.
Too dire.
Unleashed, uncontainable.
Partial force alone crushed the bone dragon.
...How had Sepiro subjugated such entities.
Domination demanded more than will.
Then.
As the bone dragon's frame rotted to ruin...
"Stop."