Chapter 418
Chapter 418
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 418
Chapter Title: Racial War (57)
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“……”
The fallen Giant warrior lay there blankly for a moment, unable to comprehend what had just dropped onto his head.
He waited.
For the great power beyond the skies to lift him back to his feet.
Clearly, it had reached him.
In response to his desperate call, the great sovereign had answered.
From the deepest depths of his heart, he felt an unforgettable primordial pulse.
But nothing happened.
Instead, mocking voices began to rise from those around him.
“What’s that? Hail?”
One Demon King snorted derisively.
“Hail in this dingy station? That idiot giant just tripped over his own feet.”
“No way it’s hail. Probably some debris from the station ceiling. Place looks like it’s falling apart.”
A pragmatic Dwarf warrior glanced up at the platform ceiling and chimed in.
“Stones falling from the sky?”
“Maybe the giant crashed down so hard it shook dust loose from the ceiling? Can’t even match his own bulk.”
The great aid from the Giant sovereign Hecate—a sacred fragment infused with divine power—appeared to the other races as nothing more than a trivial mishap.
They couldn’t even dream it was Hecate’s aid.
Giggles broke out here and there at the ridiculous sight of the toppled Giant warrior.
But the one who had fallen couldn’t laugh.
No sound from his surroundings reached his ears.
“……”
The Giant warrior tremblingly scooped up the small stone that had landed on his forehead with feeble hands.
He rubbed his eyes and checked over and over, but the result never changed.
It was just.
‘A rock.’
A rock.
‘…No. That can’t be. I definitely felt it.’
He shook his head desperately.
No way he had mistaken it.
The mighty pulse etched into his bloodline over tens of thousands of years.
Undoubtedly, it contained powerful earthly energy—the primordial power to restart his heart, restore his mountain-like muscles, and crush that arrogant human.
But what lay in his hand now was merely a cold, hard ordinary stone, utterly devoid of power.
He clenched the stone as if to pulverize it.
Squeezed out his mana, poured in his will, and cried out the sovereign’s name in his mind once more.
Awaken. Respond. Grant me power!
Yet the stone remained utterly silent.
As if it had never held any power at all, it cooled coldly in his grasp.
In that instant, a horrifying hypothesis flashed through the Giant warrior’s mind.
‘It’s not that no aid came.’
‘Lord Hecate’s aid reached this place for certain.’
‘But…….’
‘It vanished along the way.’
Did that even make sense?
That the law erected by that human—that arrogant “sovereign” power—had degraded his god’s transdimensional might into a mere pebble?
Their god, Hecate, had undoubtedly responded.
But the King’s Authority rejected even that response.
This place was that human’s absolute divine domain alone—a realm untouched even by a god’s hand.
‘This… such a thing…….’
His heart felt as if it had frozen solid.
Him collapsing, losing his power—that was nothing.
But the great sovereign, the living world that was Hecate, having her power blocked by a mere human’s law? That was an earth-shattering cataclysm that uprooted the Giant warrior’s entire worldview.
This truth could not be revealed to the other races.
No—before that.
‘…I can’t admit it. Not with my own mouth.’
To acknowledge with his own words that the great divinity hadn’t reached here was humiliation worse than death.
It was an insult to his entire race, tantamount to betraying their god.
The Giant warrior gripped the stone—now ice-cold in his hand—as if to crush it to dust.
He had to hide the evidence.
And stand.
As if nothing had happened. Calmly.
He poured desperate strength into his legs.
The body that once rose effortlessly now weighed a thousand tons.
His powerless muscles screamed in protest.
But teeth gritted, staggering, he barely hoisted his massive frame upright.
Mocking snickers still echoed from around him.
“Look at that. Takes him half a day just to stand.”
“How’d a lumbering slug like that become a racial war rep?”
Paradoxically, their ridicule aided him.
No one had yet grasped the true nature of what had just occurred.
They still believed he’d simply tripped over his own feet.
‘Yes. That’s all it was. Just a fall.’
This much humiliation, he could endure.
The Giant warrior desperately hypnotized himself.
He brushed the dust from his clothes with feigned composure, as if utterly unbothered.
Then he cleared his throat and let out a deliberately loud cough.
“Ahem! Damn fog made the floor slick as hell! Now that I’m loosened up, let’s get back to it!”
Pure bluff.
Inside, despair had already charred him pitch-black, but outwardly he played the part of recaptured majesty.
Yet one gaze pierced straight through the act.
Park Chan-woo stared at the Giant warrior silently, face impassive.
His eyes seemed to declare: ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking.’
The instant their gazes met, the Giant warrior felt a chill like his heart had stopped.
That human knew.
That his god had been defeated. That he was frantically concealing it.
That all his bluster and lies held no meaning before those eyes.
Park Chan-woo spoke quietly.
“Feel free to keep the rock as a souvenir.”
The warrior’s final shred of pride shattered.
Ancient Giant warriors faced ridicule, but.
Did only they beseech their sovereign’s aid?
The Dragonkin lines, especially, were frozen in indecision.
Darcan quietly rested a hand on his heart.
Sepiro had promised.
If needed, he would ring the Echo of the Dragon Soul directly in the dragon heart, awakening a fragment of primordial power.
All awaited it.
The heart-thumping pulsation, the electric thrill of scales bristling across the body.
But his heart merely raced in terrified anxiety.
The connection… was severed.
The path to Sepiro, completely blocked by that single human.
‘……Ataraxia. Your choice might have been the right one.’
Darcan, leader of the Sloth clan, closed his eyes softly.
His mind echoed with the other dragons’ voices, mocking the Giants’ folly just moments before.
But he realized those arrows of scorn were turning on them.
Because he, too, had waited subconsciously.
For their god Sepiro’s response.
For the promised Echo of the Dragon Soul to resound in his heart and shred this absurd law to pieces.
But nothing happened.
Like the other races, their god was impotent before this station’s law.
No—more precisely.
‘How potent must this King’s Authority be……!’
An authority’s effect rivals points.
Meaning it was forged from utterly unimaginable points.
Yet points gained are proportional to level disparity.
This was the being who’d even wagered against Sepiro’s first clone.
And with the Weakest Crown, he’d conjured power of this magnitude?
Incomprehensible.
What was certain.
Park Chan-woo’s authority had perfectly nullified their transcendent sovereign’s might.
Then Ataraxia’s choice might indeed be correct.
The true Dragon God… could be that very existence.
All evidence pointed to Park Chan-woo as Dragon God.
The one conjuring countless inexplicable miracles.
That was.
‘True magic, no?’
A shiver coursed through Darcan’s mind.
The Dragonkin—hailed as magic’s sovereigns—merely wielded power within magic’s laws.
No dragon, however mighty, could defy established causality.
But that human, Park Chan-woo? Different.
He didn’t obey laws. He created them.
Molding this station into a world bending to his will alone.
Then.
Who exactly stood before them now?
The capricious, unpredictable Sepiro—a tyrant toying with worlds for his whims?
Or the enigmatic being turning impossibility to reality, toppling old orders with mere presence, forging a new era’s laws?
Who truly bore the Dragon God’s mantle?
Darcan pondered no longer.
He saw Ataraxia’s choice wasn’t base betrayal or surrender.
It was a sage gamble—abandoning the old era to stake everything on the new’s promise.
Darcan turned quietly.
Ignoring the other dragons seething with shock and fury, he strode away step by step.
“Darcan! You bastard, where do you think you’re going!”
Diar, head of the Light clan, bellowed.
Darcan offered no reply.
He simply walked his path in silence.
The consequences of this choice were plain as day.
His entire clan turning their backs on the other dragons.
Yet his kin would understand.
Slowly, Darcan took position at Park Chan-woo’s side.
His action ignited the spark.
Rumble!
The Dusk clan moved first.
Urkan led his kin without a second’s hesitation, as if he’d foreseen this exact moment.
He’d already commanded via shadow missive to forge amicable ties with Park Chan-woo.
Their steps were awkward, clumsy—unaccustomed to wielding shadows—but more resolute than any other, they closed in on Park Chan-woo.
Every Dusk warrior arrayed at Park Chan-woo’s flank, awkwardly scanning the surroundings like bungling honor guards.
In a flash, the station’s lines cleaved starkly.
Park Chan-woo at center.
Darcan and the Dusk clan at his back.
Opposed: every other race, rage-fueled and denial-clinging.
Foe and friend divided crystal-clear.
But what could they do?
They glared daggers at Park Chan-woo, malice brimming—yet none dared move rashly.
They couldn’t move.
Stripped of their mightiest weapons, impotent beyond impotent rage and despair.
In this bizarre, lethal standoff, every eye locked on Park Chan-woo alone.
The crown’s authority was absolute.
Inscrutable force reducing even sovereign intervention to pebbles.
But that very absoluteness birthed a sliver of hope-doubt in their minds.
‘The crown’s authority bound even its own master.’
Indeed. Laws apply equally to all by nature.
If that human’s law was truly absolute, even he couldn’t claim exemption.
‘You’ve weakened too…’
‘What did you forfeit?’
‘What racial traits do humans even have?’
What did humans possess?
Yet Park Chan-woo’s form remained unchanged.
Amid races reverted to powerless origins, his serene, unaltered poise stood alien, uncanny.
Humans lacked colossal frames, wings, or any standout traits, after all.
That human always warred via summoning and commanding.
Fierce God Baal. Shadow God Chronos. Even Dragon God Sepiro’s avatar.
None his own power—mere inherited might from others!
Then.
‘No more summoning Baal or puppeteering gods.’
‘Now he’s truly bare-handed!’
Now? Pure personal prowess remained.
Hundreds against one.
Victory odds stacked high.
All mustered killing intent anew, awaiting Park Chan-woo’s face of despair.
If right, he was now a hollow shell, powerless.
Through that anticipation and malice, Park Chan-woo sloooowly gripped Baal’s sword.
‘A sword?’
‘Can’t cast spells, so sword it is?’
As puzzled eyes tracked him, Park Chan-woo fully drew the blade.
Then—like nocking a bow—hoisted it to shoulder height.
His gaze skipped the frontline warriors, fixing far off on the massive iron gate at the fog-shrouded station’s terminus.
“Heaven’s Punishment.”
In that instant.
Crackle!
Blue lightning surged from Baal’s sword.
“Pointless! No authority works here…!”
A warrior yelled—but trailed off unfinished.
The lightning coiling at Park Chan-woo’s blade-tip wasn’t sky-forged authority.
Pure mana from his core. Magic lore he’d mastered. Channeling through Baal’s sword into his power.
Kwaaaaaaaa—!
From the swung blade, a azure lance of light lanced forth.
Hundreds of meters distant.
Sloppy strike, no aim, no form.
Yet Heaven’s Punishment struck dead-center the towering iron gate at platform’s edge—flawless.
Kuooooooong—!
Earth-quaking roar. The sealed first gateway erupted, shattering to drifting dust.
“……”
All noise ceased.
The last ember of hope crumbled to ash.
They understood.
That human’s power stemmed neither from racial inheritance nor divine loan.
It was wholly, purely, indelibly his.
In the unfair arena he’d forged, he alone stood fully armed.