Chapter 454
Chapter 454
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 454
Chapter Title: Reaper Realm (1)
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The Reapers were the very rulers of the Abyss's rules.
Known as emotionless beings who mechanically processed only the tasks assigned by the system.
Around Park Chan-woo, faint figures drifted like heat haze.
'Souls.'
They were souls.
Billions upon billions of lost souls.
And the Reapers were slicing through those souls with massive scythes.
Swish.
Souls reaped by the scythes vanished without even a scream.
It was bizarre.
All the Reapers were repeating the exact same actions.
There were countless souls, but they darted about desperately, as if unable to find an exit or frantically trying to evade the Reapers' scythes.
It was verging on a one-sided massacre.
That was when it happened.
Among the throng of Reapers, a particularly small one—in the form of a child—approached him.
In its hand was a scythe far larger and more ornate than those of the others.
Park Chan-woo asked,
"What does that mean?"
For the first time, the Reaper King revealed emotion.
An unfathomable sorrow filled its hollow eyes.
And it spoke the final truth, hidden in the Abyss's deepest depths.
"……."
The Reaper King's gaze turned toward the hundreds of millions of souls drifting in the void.
Its voice echoed like a prophecy of despair.
Park Chan-woo was bewildered.
The eternal train, the tickets, this Reaper Realm.
If all of it was meant for reincarnating souls, why had it turned into a slaughterhouse?
"Why do you say it will perish?"
The Creator had designed it so the reincarnation system would keep that total constant, allowing the world to cycle eternally.
An endless ring of birth, death, and rebirth.
The decisive event was the 'Great War'.
That horrific conflict that engulfed the entire Abyss had hurled far too many souls into death all at once.
Hundreds of millions, billions of souls had flooded into the Reaper Realm.
The reincarnation system buckled under the overload and ground to a halt.
For the first time, torment laced the Reaper King's voice.
It gazed down at the massive scythe gripped in its own hand.
That was the conclusion they had reached.
To avert the Abyss's collapse, they annihilated the lost souls.
Without the Creator, they lacked the authority to grant souls new lives through reincarnation or eternal rest through annihilation.
They could only mechanically delete souls to preserve the world's balance.
There was no turning back from the path they had chosen.
The Reaper King's gaze pierced straight through Park Chan-woo.
And so, they created the 'Racial War'.
A controlled war.
A cruel and desperate final safeguard to slow—even if just a little—the locomotive barreling toward endless ruin.
That was the ultimate truth of the path Park Chan-woo had walked.
Every station visible from outside the eternal train had been a soul stop.
And now, the entire system lay broken.
"So the train was showing something like a lantern slide show, then."
Park Chan-woo looked up, meeting the gaze of the towering Reaper King looming over him.
"Then what does it mean that I can fulfill my wish at this world's end? And why would that grant you rest?"
The Reaper King explained.
A feat the system had never foreseen—forbidden.
The Reaper King's massive scythe gestured toward the hundreds of millions of souls adrift in the void.
Eons of weariness and grief weighted its voice.
The Reaper King's explanation pressed on.
The great Nine Lords.
Having grasped this world's truth—the law of soul capacity—they devised their own solution to stave off destruction.
It was the 'Racial War'.
Park Chan-woo realized.
The Racial War was no mere game or contest of strength.
It was a ruthless, frantic thrashing to keep the dying world's final ember alight, fueled by the sacrifices of others.
A foundation stone for the demons' dominion over the Abyss, as well.
A world with its conclusion already set.
Park Chan-woo pondered the weight of the truth the Reaper King had revealed.
From the standpoint of preserving the Abyss, the Nine Lords' 'Racial War' rule could not be dismissed as simply wrong.
The Reaper King intoned.
No emotion colored its voice.
It merely offered one option.
Park Chan-woo surveyed his surroundings.
Souls wandering without end.
Reapers mechanically reaping them.
This was a hell where the same nightmare repeated eternally—for both sides.
'I cannot save them all.'
It was a truth etched into his bones, known even before his regression.
Yet he could not simply look away.
"Where did the Creator go?"
Park Chan-woo asked.
The Reaper King did not know either.
Why.
Why had the Creator forsaken the Abyss and His creations?
Leaving only faint traces in Easter Eggs.
Park Chan-woo resolved to reach the end and witness it for himself.
"Let's go."
With the Reaper King at his side, he set off into the empty darkness.
Toward the world's end.
How long had they walked?
In that realm where time and space held no meaning, they finally halted.
Far off, amid the void's heart, something immense floated.
A colossal soul mass, forged from hundreds of millions—billions—fused together.
It brimmed with the lights of every emotion this world had known: sorrow and joy, rage and hope. It shimmered iridescently.
Vaster than anything Park Chan-woo had beheld—like the primordial Wish.
He knew instinctively.
What was possible. What was not.
Every rule of the Abyss raced past his soul.
'Mana wavelength.'
A mana wavelength so intense it dizzied the mind.
Gaze upon it too long, and he would be devoured.
Staring too long would sweep away even Park Chan-woo's sense of self amid that vast surge, reducing him to a single droplet.
A decision was needed.
Park Chan-woo slowly reached out toward the primordial Wish.
In that instant.
Fwoooooosh!
A colossal light engulfed Park Chan-woo.
And.
The immense Wish he embodied.
…The God of Offerings.
Began to resonate with the primordial light.