Chapter 409
Chapter 409
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 409
Chapter Title: Racial War (48)
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When humans first appeared, invoking the name of 'gods'.
When Ataraxia knelt and wielded her radiant golden divine power.
All the races watching deemed Park Chan-woo an 'enigma,' but it was still just wariness within the bounds of 'common sense.'
They couldn't understand it, but they could accept that it might be possible.
It wasn't in the realm of utter impossibility.
But now...
The sight of him calling the names of forgotten gods and saving them...
This was in the realm of the 'impossible'—something no one had ever seen or even imagined.
"What... what am I seeing right now?"
"Can the divinity of a forgotten and lost god truly be reborn like this?"
"That's resurrection in the truest sense."
"Ahh. It's no different from bringing the dead back to life."
It was a miracle.
The higher the race, the longer their history in the Abyss, the better they understood just how absurd the act Park Chan-woo was performing truly was.
"Ha!"
Eldest of the Celestial Race, Elahim, shed the rigid expression hardened over eons and rose from his seat.
His eyes fixed on the sky, trembling faintly in disbelief.
"Restoring divinity by calling a name? It's an act that shakes the very foundations of the Abyss. Reclaiming a forgotten god is billions of times harder than creating a new one...!"
The surrounding elders nodded in agreement.
The Celestial Race wielded and divined the power of the stars.
They had recorded and observed countless laws and phenomena of the Abyss.
But what this human was doing now lay beyond all their records, knowledge, and comprehension.
It wasn't something that could be explained by mere strength.
It was akin to the authority of a creator—directly touching, writing, and erasing the world's fundamental 'settings.'
And the 'star' he had just created...
"...He created a new 'star.' Could he have perfected the magic of the Transcendent Lil, which existed only in theory?"
Elahim knew of Transcendent Lil.
He knew what magic she pursued.
And how utterly unrealistic it was.
Yes. The magic Transcendent Lil sought was a noble ideal—to purify the Abyss's primal sorrow, its every curse, and open a new beginning.
But it was just an ideal.
An act defying the Abyss's laws, a dreamlike spell she herself couldn't complete before vanishing.
Yet now, this human...
Standing at the endpoint Lil couldn't reach even after tens of thousands of years, he was perfectly manifesting her ideal into reality.
"How... how on earth...?"
A sigh escaped Elahim's lips.
In his mind, the Celestial Race's knowledge and database, accumulated over tens of millions of years, clashed furiously, screaming in chaos.
He couldn't comprehend it.
Couldn't calculate it.
This human, Park Chan-woo, was a being absent from all their stellar trajectories, from every prophecy.
He was not a predictable variable.
He was an 'error' incarnate—a catastrophe that shattered all constants and rewrote laws, yet also a miracle.
The other elders were the same.
Unable to tear their eyes from the sky's screen, they learned the laws of a new world like children encountering writing for the first time, amid awe and terror.
One human saves gods.
One human creates a new star.
One human heralds the end of old myths and the dawn of new ones simultaneously.
"A being beyond our 'prophecies'..."
"If he completed Transcendent Lil's magic, then this being qualifies as a Transcendent too."
"Ahh. We can't dismiss him as a mere error."
Elahim gave a wry smile.
His gaze shifted no longer to the sky's screen, but to the ancient astrolabe far away, where their fates had been recorded.
"...So that's why our stars have fallen silent. With a new heaven arisen, the old stars can hardly light the way."
His words pierced the hearts of the entire Celestial Race like a chilling truth.
Their prophetic abilities, which had read the Abyss's currents and divined the future for so long, were rendered powerless before the single variable named Park Chan-woo.
"The Abyss now enters an era of upheaval. The old order crumbles, and new chaos will begin centered on that human."
One elder spoke in a voice of despair.
For a race that relied on prophecy, an unforeseeable catastrophe had appeared.
That one catastrophe could spawn countless variables, leading them to ruin.
If it were merely an error, they could correct it—but if not, they had to accept it.
This turmoil. This cataclysm.
Elahim resolved himself.
"From this moment, halt all prophecies. Our astronomy will henceforth focus solely on one star: that human, Park Chan-woo. Record and analyze his every deed, every word."
They had to understand.
The direction this new star sought, what it proclaimed.
Only then could true 'prophecy' resume.
As the stars lost their way in the Celestial Race's sky, beneath the eternal twilight heavens of the Dusk Race, a new faith was budding.
Elias the elder, watching the miracle unfold in the sky, nodded.
'He's a mirage.'
He knew it the instant he saw.
This was the being the warriors had reported from the Tower of Gods, wielding unfathomable methods.
Elias's ash-gray eyes burned the sky's screen into his mind.
Chanting a name forgotten beyond recall, the vanished divinity reborn from the ashes.
The curses piling up to form the Abyss's foundations now submitted as if meeting a new master.
'A mirage.'
Elias murmured the word softly.
Young warriors might take it as merely 'an incomprehensible powerhouse,' but to the Dusk Race, 'mirage' was the highest praise—and the direst warning.
A mirage wasn't nonexistent.
It existed plainly, yet untouchable, immeasurable by the laws of the world they stood upon.
It signified a primal dimensional gap, governed by utterly different laws.
In that sense, this human Park Chan-woo was a perfect mirage.
"Urkan and the warriors' choice was impeccable."
At Elias's declaration, everyone around nodded quietly.
Their submission was the wisest judgment in Dusk Race history.
Clinging to petty pride would have left them now as curse-ridden lumps, names forgotten like those wraith gods, unsaved.
Yet he remained cautious.
He couldn't fathom what lay at the end of that merciful hand of salvation.
Why would a being of such overwhelming power act for a human race on the brink of extinction?
What did he gain from saving forgotten gods?
His every action was wondrous, but his intentions were shrouded in thick fog.
Elias intuited it.
The Abyss now stood at the center of a colossal transformation no one could have imagined.
And at the eye of that storm stood this human.
"...The thirteenth race may yet be born."
The Twelve Races.
The reason they reigned as the Abyss's apex predators...
Was thanks to their progenitors, the Transcendents.
Just as the Dragonkin had Sepiro, they too had transcendent lords.
Those absolute monsters secured their thrones.
Yet the 'miracle' Elias witnessed from this human...
...Rivaled any of the Twelve Progenitors, without flaw.
If humans reached the upper ranks in this Racial War...
'A tectonic shift will occur.'
An unprecedented typhoon would ravage the entire Abyss.
The Dusk Race had to choose.
Hostility toward humans, or amity for mutual benefit.
But Elias already knew the answer.
Perhaps it was set the moment Urkan knelt in the temple.
There had only ever been one choice.
This being was akin to the master of curses.
He commanded darkness and shadows—and was fatefully entwined even before that.
Thus.
"Form an alliance with humans and elevate them as the 'thirteenth race.' Any objections?"
The moment Elias asked the other elders.
Above their sky.
As all 'forgotten gods' were called and awakened.
"Th-that's...!"
Another miracle unfolded.
And the elders who beheld it...
"...I agree."
"As do I."
Not one opposed the alliance with humans.
Urkan and the warriors didn't try to analyze the phenomenon unfolding now.
They didn't measure the miracle's scale.
They simply watched.
The being before whom they had knelt now forcing even forgotten gods to their knees.
"......"
Urkan exhaled a trembling breath.
The emotion surging from his lungs' depths transcended fear or awe—it was a shock that shook his very existence.
'I took a curse in the Tower of Gods.'
Back then, he'd thought it mere inscrutable power.
Perfect immunity to curses, or a unique constitution converting them to strength.
'In the Ruins of Forgotten Gods... our shadows submitted to him.'
Then, he'd seen it as overwhelming force crushing their essence—an irresistible dominator.
But the scene now shattering the sky demolished all those shallow understandings.
He didn't devour curses.
He 'saved' them.
He didn't dominate shadows.
He was the 'master' shadows ought to serve.
"The elder was... right."
A warrior beside Urkan whispered.
Elias had called him a 'mirage,' warning he existed beyond the Abyss's laws.
They hadn't grasped it then.
But now they did.
Park Chan-woo wasn't outside the laws.
He was merely the 'starting point' writing new ones.
Urkan realized the immense fortune they'd seized.
In the Tower of Gods, upon first meeting him, they'd tested his power.
In the Ruins of Forgotten Gods, they'd tried to assassinate him.
If, back then, he'd withheld even a sliver of the mercy he now showed these wraith gods...
Gulp!
'We'd have died in an instant.'
Dead without achievement, a stain on the Dusk Race.
Urkan opened his eyes wide.
The other warriors did too.
They were desperate to see how this mythic finale would conclude.
And simultaneously.
Storm God Barak knelt first before Park Chan-woo.
Following him, Earth God Gaion, Wisdom Goddess Sophia, and all the gods bowed their heads.
[Benefactor who restored our names. We know not how to repay this grace.]
Deep gratitude laced Sophia's voice.
[But... our time has already ended. Thanks to you, we can meet our end not as cursed wraiths, but as whole gods. Now, we can finally enter the eternal rest we so desired.]
It was as they said.
Though the curses were lifted, the faith sustaining them had vanished tens of thousands of years ago.
Their divinity, withered to its limit, doomed them to fade anyway.
But now, that fading would be peaceful repose, not agonizing oblivion.
[Before we vanish, we wish to pool our remaining power to grant one wish of yours.]
At the gods' offer, Park Chan-woo closed his eyes briefly.
Opening them, he slowly pointed to the shattered Holy Grail.
"I need a shadow to watch and record all that is mine. I desire a new god to rule shadows."
Understanding his intent, the gods asked no more.
They gladly offered their final moments.
[We dedicate our end to your great deed.]
Barak's lightning, Gaion's earth, Sophia's wisdom.
The last divine power of hundreds of gods flowed as a river of pure light into the Holy Grail fragments.
The Grail blazed with blinding radiance, absorbing every drop.
And at the peak of that light, paradoxically, the deepest, purest darkness bloomed from the Grail.
The darkness took form.
Chronos.
The spirit born from the reapers' shadows.
He who had cast all into Park Chan-woo's revival.
「...It's been a while, my one and only magnificent contractor.」
Reborn as the God of Shadows.