Chapter 436
Chapter 436
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 436
Chapter Title: Racial War (75)
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The moment that name slipped from Park Chan-woo's lips.
The entire world ground to a halt.
The rampaging magical power of Dragon God Sepiro, the remnants of the twelve suns that had sought to devour him, even the screams and explosions of this mad battlefield—all of it froze in an instant.
For the first time, a look of sheer astonishment appeared on Sepiro's face.
It was utterly different from arrogance or rage.
It was the primal shock of witnessing the denial of every law and common sense he knew, the very foundation of his existence itself.
"You... how do you know that name...?"
【O humans, disap...pear...】
The Demon-Sealing God's chalice began to wail madly.
What erupted from the chalice was neither light nor darkness.
It was an indescribable hue, impossible geometric patterns that should not exist, the screams of things yet to be born mingled with the silence of the departed—a pure embodiment of chaos itself!
The chaos poured through Park Chan-woo's body into this world.
Noise began to corrupt the absolute law uttered by Sepiro, his Dragon Word.
【Hu...mans......vanish......】
The transcendent dragon's absolute decree.
Its very language was shattering.
The law he had established was losing all meaning before a greater, more primal chaos.
Park Chan-woo sensed it instinctively.
This was the death knell of the Dragon Word.
The voice of the primordial Dragon God Azathoth was overwriting the voice of Dragon God Sepiro.
The fragments of the broken Dragon Word scattered into the void.
The crushing pressure that had been erasing Park Chan-woo vanished like a lie, and the fading divinity of dawn reignited.
Sepiro beheld it.
The moment his perfect order crumbled before an even greater chaos.
And at the heart of that chaos stood Park Chan-woo, smiling directly at him.
'Impossible.'
Sepiro's thought circuits were spawning errors he'd never encountered in eons of existence.
It was inconceivable.
The primordial Dragon God Azathoth.
The instant that name, that presence manifested, his own Dragon Word was fading away.
His absolute command, the great language that rewrote the world's laws, was fracturing into meaningless noise.
In the world as Sepiro understood it, this was impossible.
The transcendent dragon's Dragon Word stood above any authority in the Abyss.
Even the mighty Nine Great Lords had to yield before its absoluteness; it reigned at the pinnacle of destruction, capable of erasing worlds in a single breath.
Yet this human, this mortal, had nullified his law with a single incomprehensible scream.
'How.'
Amid the chaos, Sepiro desperately sought answers.
'How does he know that name? The father of all dragons, revered and forbidden—how did it emerge from the mouth of that lowly human?'
Azathoth.
That name was the ultimate taboo, sealed in the deepest recesses of dragonkind's history.
Only Dragon Gods vaguely sensed its existence; no other dragons even knew it.
The primordial chaos that rejected all order, blurring even the line between creation and destruction.
The progenitor of the current dragon race—and the foolish father rejected first and foremost.
Park Chan-woo had uttered that being's name.
Beyond mere knowledge, he had manifested its power, its chaos, as his own.
Sepiro looked upon Park Chan-woo once more.
The fading divinity blazed anew, radiating a golden light even more intense than before.
But behind that light lurked a deep abyssal shadow that hadn't been there previously.
Order and chaos.
Light and darkness.
Two opposing forces teetered in precarious balance within that small human body.
Sepiro finally realized it.
What he faced was no longer human.
He had opened the forbidden Pandora's box.
From the depths of the Demon-Sealing God's chalice, he had unleashed primordial chaos too vast for even the Abyss to contain onto this battlefield.
'How in the world...!'
And that chaos was mocking his order.
Dragon God Temple.
In that silent space where eons seemed frozen, a cracking sound erupted for the first time.
Kiririk.
A clear fracture spiderwebbed across the armrest of the jade throne.
For the Dragon God Sepiro, master of the temple, had bolted upright from his seat for the first time.
In tens of thousands of years, he had never risen like this.
Whether great rifts tore open in the Abyss or a Great Lord perished, he had always lounged on his throne, observing all with languid eyes.
To him, the world was merely a tedious play, and he its sole audience.
But now, that audience was on the verge of leaping onto the stage, reacting with unprecedented fervor.
His eyes blazed with profound intrigue and astonishment unlike any before.
'Azathoth.'
The name erased from history, the one not even to be whispered, echoed in Sepiro's mind.
'Park Chan-woo, that grand mage, harbors Azathoth?'
Sepiro stared at Park Chan-woo, standing at the chaos's epicenter on the screen.
Until now, he had dismissed him as an "incomprehensible glitch," an "intriguing variable."
A tiny flaw in his perfect order, a toy to toy with and shatter when bored.
But no.
This was no mere glitch.
It was primordial chaos itself, capable of shaking the Abyss to its core.
'The foolish father.'
Rejected by all dragons, erased from history under that name.
But Sepiro knew.
A truth no one else did.
Azathoth was the entity that erased all Divine Words.
Divine Words.
The language of laws by which gods ruled the world.
Sepiro's own Dragon Word belonged to the highest echelon of those Divine Words.
Gods crafted laws with language and dominated the world through those laws.
That was the order of the Abyss.
But Azathoth was different.
His very existence, the chaotic screams he uttered, rendered all language and law meaningless—an antithesis.
Pure disorder standing at the opposite pole of order.
Thus, he was rejected.
All other gods, fearing the one who negated their reason for being, had erased him from history.
Only now did Sepiro feel the puzzle pieces fall into place.
Why his perfect Dragon Word had shattered so helplessly before that meaningless noise.
What Park Chan-woo had uttered was Azathoth's language.
In other words, he had borrowed "silence" and "chaos" to erase his own words.
'How on earth?'
It was a chilling realization.
For the first time, Sepiro faced an unknown realm beyond his control.
And at its center stood Park Chan-woo.
He had thought him an error to erase, to purify.
His antithesis, so he must be removed.
Yet.
Layer after layer... something new emerged.
Each one achieving feats beyond his comprehension.
Sepiro began scouring his memories, every record since Park Chan-woo's appearance as a variable.
At first, he seemed a lucky mortal.
Then, a fortunate inheritor of the transcendent Lilir's legacy.
When he saved the wraith gods in the "Chronicles of the Forgotten Gods," he judged it an odd authority specialized in curses.
But now, he realized every judgment had been wrong.
One thing was certain: he was deeply tied to the "forgotten gods."
Yes.
Every bizarre event centered on "forgotten beings."
He called the names of gods cursed to lose even theirs, granting their souls rest.
In return, he revived the shadow god Chronos.
Arcana, the dragon of despair abandoned and fallen by all.
He named its noble will "hope," saving its soul and turning it into a light to pave his path.
And now, Azathoth.
The first Dragon God, rejected and erased even from dragon history. Known only vaguely to Dragon God successors—the primordial chaos of oblivion.
Such a being's name was invoked by a mere human, Park Chan-woo, who borrowed its power.
This could not be coincidence.
Park Chan-woo.
He could be called the "God of the Forgotten" without issue.
Nay, perhaps he himself was an ancient god of oblivion, manifesting in human flesh.
...Suddenly.
Sepiro's thoughts reached "a certain truth."
He rewound his memories again.
The Great War.
His conversation with the Lord of the Void.
The Lord of the Void had said it clearly.
【The stronger your dominion grows, the more certain it is that a new 'error' to topple you will arise.】
Sepiro had dismissed it as the loser's final curse or philosophical bravado.
A vague threat that might someday appear.
But what if.
What if the "error" he spoke of wasn't some future entity, but Park Chan-woo, right there before him?
He delved deeper into memory.
Just before the Lord of the Void vanished, his final gaze hadn't been on Sepiro.
He had clearly, if briefly, looked toward Park Chan-woo, watching from beyond the veil.
As if designating his successor to carry his will—a gaze laden with meaning.
"...!"
The Lord of the Void had been protecting Park Chan-woo.
No, far beyond mere protection.
He had known of Park Chan-woo's existence and was certain he would dismantle his order.
That's why he vanished of his own accord.
Through his own demise, he opened the era of Sepiro, leaving behind the strongest seed of "chaos" in that arrogant age of order: Park Chan-woo.
All of this was the Lord of the Void's final scheme.
Sepiro had thought himself victorious.
But the true protagonist in the Lord of the Void's design had been Park Chan-woo from the start.
"Kuh... Kuhahahaha!"
The entire Dragon God Temple shook with his mad laughter.
Sepiro's rage pierced the heavens.
Yet deep within that fury burned an irrepressible thrill.
The game had become far more entertaining than imagined.
Moreover.
Now he understood.
"You! So you've been resurrected! Lord of the Void!"
Park Chan-woo was the Lord of the Void.