Chapter 337
Chapter 337
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 337
Chapter Title: Bankruptcy (3)
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Coins that she had painstakingly gathered to prepare for emergencies were leaking away like water pouring into a bottomless jar.
Enormous amounts were being consumed just to block the divine beasts gnawing at the realm of night and to maintain the realm itself.
And now, from a completely unexpected source—no, forced by the system itself—resources were outflowing.
'What the hell are you doing, Dragon God Sepiro?'
The Black Witch roared inwardly.
If the system simply lacked the ability to collect the debt from Sepiro and was dumping it on her, she could at least understand that.
But this didn't seem to be on that level.
No matter how she thought about it, it was nothing more than the system's stupid, arrogant way of mechanically shifting responsibility to the easiest and most convenient target.
"B-Black Witch!"
"At this rate!"
"E-Everything's being devoured!"
The witches suddenly screamed.
The witches moved in perfect unison, spreading the curtain of curses even thicker.
The ominous curtain slowed the greedy divine beasts' advance, but it was still steadily draining the Black Witch's coins.
The Abyss.
That territory was like a monster that devoured coins.
To build and maintain the world, and to defend against divine beast invasions, an unimaginable amount of coins was required.
'I can't just sit still.'
The Black Witch gritted her teeth.
Over ten thousand coins had already vanished because of that damned 'Lord of Arrogance's' debt.
Adding the costs for divine beast defense, the losses were far greater.
If this continued just a little longer, she would go bankrupt.
She would lose all authority over the night and vanish along with this realm of night.
But she couldn't abandon the 'realm of night'.
It was the one sanctuary she had built over countless ages.
A world infused with her will, her very dream itself.
The final domain she could never relinquish.
She had no choice but to convert everything she owned into coins and hold out.
'I need to sell the most valuable things first.'
She closed her eyes.
Ancient relics stored in the deepest part of the abyssal domain, essences of condensed magic power, rare magical materials collected over tens of thousands of years.
Especially treasures listed in the 'Mystic Codex' that mystery hunters would salivate over.
Disposing of those would at least solve the immediate coin shortage.
But...
Would filling the coins really solve the problem?
'No. I have to make that damned Sepiro stop.'
Strictly speaking, this absurd coin outflow had to be resolved first.
Divine beast defense was important, but with resources leaking from behind, she couldn't even fight properly.
Was it a system glitch? Or Sepiro's negligence, or intentional responsibility-shifting?
Either way, this unfair forced collection had to stop.
The problem was that she couldn't leave the realm of night right now.
The divine beasts' assault never let up for a moment.
The moment she, the supreme commander and strongest defender, stepped away, the night would crumble in an instant.
'I have to find a way somehow. A way to solve everything while staying here and holding this situation.'
The Black Witch racked her brain rapidly.
What about creating a clone to send?
But making a powerful clone would consume a huge amount of coins and time, and it might still fall short against Sepiro.
She bit her lip.
One thing was certain: none of this was coincidental.
'Is all of this your scheme?'
The scattered dots in the Black Witch's mind connected into a single line.
The simultaneous invasion of divine beasts on the realm of night, and at the exact same timing, the system's exploitation of a loophole to plunder resources.
This was a trap woven with exquisite precision.
How could she dismiss it as coincidence?
Yes, it was Sepiro.
That arrogant and cunning Dragon God.
Taking her heart fragment, brazenly claiming the title of Lord of Arrogance and forcing debt repayment, and now inciting divine beasts to pressure the realm of night from all sides at this precise moment.
All of it painted a single picture.
The racial war.
Perhaps Sepiro didn't want to go as far as that tiresome and annoying great war.
That's why he was resorting to such tactics.
Instead of clashing head-on, he was simultaneously unleashing external threats and internal depletion to mentally and physically crush her, forcing her to collapse on her own.
It felt like an unpleasant, arrogant pressure whispering mockingly in her ear: 'You, a mere witch of the night, dare to stand against me, the Dragon God? Know your place and surrender quietly—that's the wise choice.'
...Come to think of it.
'Everything started the moment I tried to attack Valhalla.'
Perfectly timed, the divine beasts began breaching the realm of night's borders right then.
At the same time, the system seized her coins under some ridiculous pretext.
Could it be... that Sepiro was protecting Valhalla?
Did a mere witch like Adora catch his eye or something?
The Dragon God of all people?
The only important thing was one.
If this continued, she would go bankrupt—the harsh reality.
Along with the realm of night, her entire existence would be reduced to nothing by the system—a horrific end.
Bankruptcy...
Those two words bound her soul like a curse.
It would be a hundred times better to be gloriously obliterated by those ferocious divine beasts' claws.
As a being who had ruled the abyss since ancient times, she could accept a death in battle, no matter how resentful.
But to have her very existence deleted and erased due to insufficient coins, by the system's mechanical judgment.
All the history and meaning she had built as a creator denied in an instant...
That ending alone... she absolutely could not endure.
She could never accept it.
The answer had come.
The one way to resolve all these problems.
'You want me to surrender?'
The only path to avoid bankruptcy and at least preserve her existence.
It was... surrender.
The Black Witch felt a profound helplessness draining her strength, accompanied by a bitter defeat that twisted her guts.
She, called the Black Witch since ancient times and reigning in terror, had to bow to the cowardly schemes of that arrogant Dragon God and declare surrender!
Was there greater humiliation than this?
Rumble...!
While she agonized, the realm of night continued to be encroached upon by the divine beasts.
The ominous aura blanketing the sky only spread wider.
At this rate, the 'night' would fade, and even this abyss would soon perish.
Even if she surrendered, Sepiro had no reason to restore the already ruined domain.
In the end, only humiliation and ruin remained?
However.
A final spark ignited in her eyes.
"...I'll show you. Why I'm called the 'Black Witch'."
It was not resignation. Nor submission to avoid bankruptcy.
It was her final desperate struggle, staking everything—the last pride of the Black Witch.
Slash!
A chillingly decisive motion without hesitation.
The Black Witch severed her own neck.
Without spilling a drop of blood, her head detached from her body and floated into the air.
The remaining body did not collapse.
Instead, it became enveloped in an aura darker than black flames, as if embodying the abyss's darkness itself, and began to burn fiercely.
It was a forbidden ritual where she, who had accumulated the night’s authority for tens of thousands of years, offered her entire flesh as sacrifice.
The unimaginable torrent of curses flowing from the sacrificed body poured like a waterfall toward her floating head.
Her hair writhed like venomous serpents, her eyes turned into voids devouring all light.
A grotesque smile hung on her lips, and beneath the remaining head, condensed darkness twisted and squirmed, forging a new form.
It was no longer the Black Witch in the full sense.
A fragment of a grotesque evil god descended by sacrificing everything she had, existing solely for destruction, curses, and the most primal terror of the night.
Instead of annihilation by bankruptcy, she chose to transmute herself into a twisted god.
The evil god, now only a head in grotesque transformation, cast its cursed gaze toward the divine beasts ravaging the realm of night and the culprit behind this destruction, its eyes flashing with madness.
The declaration from the evil god's mouth was not mere sound.
It was a pure wave of curses that twisted and corrupted existence itself.
The essence of the Black Witch, once called the darling of curses, had explosively manifested as she transformed into an evil god.
She became the evil god said to be the most powerful in ancient tales.
The one known as the Destroyer, standing above all evil and demons.
She had forged that evil god's qualification by offering her flesh as sacrifice.
At the same time, the divine beasts had no choice but to halt their predation.
The realm of night itself had been tainted by the evil god's curse, transforming into a form they could no longer consume.
Watching the divine beasts retreat in terror, the Black Witch—no, the Black Evil God—thought coldly.
'If you value Valhalla and Adora that much.'
A chilling lust for destruction gleamed in her void-black eyes.
'I'll smash them all.'
Turning her back on her own domain, the Black Evil God tore through space, heading solely toward Valhalla.
It was around the time Valhalla came into view.
When the massive blue barrier erected by the ants began to faintly shimmer like starlight in the distance, the Black Evil God sensed another colossal presence besides itself moving in the same direction.
Something emitting chaos and destruction akin to—or greater than—her own.
An ancient entity that appeared as a mass of gray mist or a form intertwined with countless screams and despair!
It was the master of the cradle, heading straight for Valhalla.