Chapter 455
Chapter 455
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 455
Chapter Title: Realm of the Reapers (2)
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Reaper King.
He was an observer.
He merely watched as the Abyss crumbled into ruin.
The cycle of reincarnation had ground to a halt.
With the Creator absent, that colossal system had broken down.
The total number of souls continued to dwindle.
The world was collapsing from within.
The Reapers were no different.
They had once possessed a degree of self-awareness.
But amid the endless slaughters, they had abandoned thought itself.
Thinking brought pain, and selfhood was a luxury.
They chose to become part of the system.
Emotionless enforcers.
The demons who uncovered the truth of this terminus devised their own answer.
The Racial War.
A brutal act of prolongation to secure new souls.
The Abyss had bloated itself by devouring other worlds, barely clinging to survival with the souls scavenged from them.
It was a precarious tightrope walk.
One that could snap at any moment.
But there was another danger.
The higher Reapers still clung to faint traces of self.
Yet when even those faded, the next to go would be him.
The instant he lost awareness in this endless punishment, the Reaper Realm would collapse.
The Abyss's final order would shatter completely.
He thought to himself.
This world was fated to end.
All he could do was endure until that final moment.
'No new souls will come.'
No one even imagined someone new could enter this place.
Achieving the conditions to enter was impossible in the first place.
The demons who learned the truth had twisted the reverse path to make it even more labyrinthine than when they themselves had arrived.
They had effectively sealed every road leading to the Reaper Realm.
Ensuring no one else could reach this truth.
Originally, the Reaper Realm granted special opportunities to souls who gathered all the tickets.
It allowed them to reincarnate as extraordinary beings, illuminating the world.
But the demons had blocked every such possibility.
Light had vanished, gods had fallen, and no heroes were born.
Then.
Park Chan-woo appeared.
As if all barriers were nonexistent, he casually opened the door to this terminus and stepped inside.
'...What a peculiar being.'
The Reaper King's eyes scanned Park Chan-woo.
Park Chan-woo was cloaked in radiant divinity.
Not from a single race, but a bizarre and potent divinity woven from countless faiths.
More than that.
The Reaper King instantly recognized the presence dwelling within Park Chan-woo.
'Chronos.'
An ambiguous existence, neither Reaper nor spirit.
The greatest error born from the darkest shadow cast by the Great Soul Reaper—his own true body.
The Reaper King knew of Chronos.
An incomplete being, lurking in shadows, denied its own existence and wandering aimlessly.
But this Chronos was different.
Its presence was distinct.
Its stature established as a complete god.
'Through that human, it proved itself.'
The Reaper King treated Park Chan-woo with a measure of courtesy.
A gesture of respect for the final guest, and honor for the one Chronos followed.
But he held no real expectations.
Ruin was inevitable.
No new rules could reverse this colossal tide.
It was merely a flickering flame on the verge of extinction.
Yet.
Something within Park Chan-woo began reacting to the Primordial Light.
He couldn't comprehend it.
The Primordial Light was the Creator's authority incarnate.
The pure crystallized wish left by the Creator in this Reaper Realm.
How could the Creator's wish react to that mortal—or something that mortal possessed?
......It was the Wish Park Chan-woo held.
The God of Offerings, manifested by sacrificing everyone's faith.
Park Chan-woo's Wish began merging with the Primordial Light.
At that moment.
A word, never once conceived in eons within the Reaper King's empty circuits of thought, etched itself there.
'...Possibility?'
Could it be creating a possibility he had never considered?
One he couldn't even imagine?
He was different.
The Reaper King merely awaited ruin.
But that being was forcibly carving a new path in the face of doom.
Was that the Creator's will?
Had this salvation been prepared at the end of this cruel punishment?
Just as a faint spark of expectation flickered in the Reaper King's hollow existence.
-Kraaaah!
A horrific rupture tore through the Reaper Realm.
The Reaper King's gaze turned toward the source of the sound.
Soon, an unbelievable sight filled his vision.
Several Reapers were rampaging.
The massive scythes in their hands were no longer tools to guide souls.
They gleamed like the fangs of starved beasts craving only destruction and annihilation.
The Reaper King commanded.
His will was the absolute law of this Reaper Realm.
A decree no Reaper could defy.
But.
The rampaging Reapers did not stop.
They grew even more ferocious, indiscriminately tearing apart the lost souls drifting nearby.
No, it wasn't merely tearing.
They were 'devouring' them.
This was bizarre.
No Reaper in the Reaper Realm could ignore his authority.
This signified the system's collapse.
Or perhaps not collapse.
'Corruption.'
The Reaper King realized.
These Reapers had been corrupted at their very core by something, twisted into entirely different entities.
The aura of annihilation emanating from the Reapers now charging toward Park Chan-woo.
'Destroyer!'
A forbidden name surfaced in the Reaper King's mind.
The being standing in utter opposition to the Creator, seeking to return this world to nothingness.
The primal evil of the Abyss, pursuing chaos over order, annihilation over life.
The Destroyer's Easter Egg had taken root in this Reaper Realm unbeknownst to them.
During those long eons when they despaired, gave up, and ceased thinking.
The Destroyer had fed on their despair, planting its seed in the world's deepest recesses.
Stealthily preparing to seize the Primordial Light.
And as Park Chan-woo reacted with the Primordial Light, the dormant seed finally sprouted and stirred.
The Reaper King did not hesitate.
For the first time in tens of thousands of years, by his own volition.
Slash!
The Reaper King's swung scythe cleaved the air.
The heads of the two Reapers lunging first at Park Chan-woo were silently severed.
But from the severed necks erupted a terrifying aura of annihilation.
That aura spread like a living plague, instantly infecting the other nearby Reapers.
-Kieeeek!
-Kraaaah!
It was contagion.
Cut down one, and two more corrupted; cut down two, and four corrupted.
Unless he felled every last Reaper, there seemed no way to halt this spread.
The Reaper King realized.
This was no issue brute force could resolve.
'It's already too late.'
While he observed ruin in helpless impotence, the Destroyer had turned the entire Reaper Realm into its garden.
Even now, at his feet, in every place his eyes couldn't reach, the seeds of annihilation quietly grew.
'I, too...'
The moment that thought struck, the Reaper King looked down at his hand.
The tips of his fingers gripping the scythe were faintly darkening.
The aura of annihilation had eroded his existence without his knowledge.
How?
'Ah.'
While I despaired.
While everyone despaired and gave up.
The Destroyer's seed had taken root so deeply.
Our despair had become its fertilizer.
The Reaper King understood everything.
And resigned to it all.
That was when.
Fwaaaaaaaa!
The world filled with light.
The Primordial Light—that light which had lingered in place for eons—finally stirred.
The light spread like a tsunami across the entire Reaper Realm.
The aura of annihilation staining the Reaper King's fingertips vanished upon touching the light.
As if awakening from a nightmare, the Reapers halted, looking around in confusion.
The corruption stopped.
It was purified.
The Reaper King stared blankly at where the light had begun.
The center where the Primordial Light had resided, right where Park Chan-woo stood.
'What is that...?'
There, someone was.
The Creator?
Had the vanished one finally returned?
The figure at the light's heart shone brilliantly, as if containing all the Primordial Light.
But its form was smaller and younger than any god the Reaper King remembered.
Like a little girl just beginning to explore the world.
The girl lifted her head.
And.
"Kekeke!"
She laughed like a mischievous imp.
Soon, the child spread her arms wide and shouted to the entire world.
"I have revived!"
The Primordial Light was compelling him.
To erase the old rules and forge new ones.
To establish a new order in this decaying world.
But Park Chan-woo did not want that.
New orders would only breed further chaos.
He didn't want this world to lose its unique hue.
The Racial War had already lost its meaning.
The demons' dominance had weakened, and their justifications had evaporated.
What Park Chan-woo truly desired was not a new rule.
It was the 'power' to create rules.
The 'authority' to turn wishes into reality.
The authority itself.
And so Park Chan-woo offered it all.
To the 'God of Offerings'.
The greatest offering in the Abyss: the Primordial Light.
Then, a miraculous event unfolded.
The Primordial Light resonated with the God of Offerings and began merging into one.
Not the imperfect Wish Park Chan-woo had vaguely manifested, but the true 'God of Offerings'.
It finally regained its complete form and revived.
The being at the center of the light shone brilliantly, as if containing all the Primordial Light.
But its appearance.
'...A child?'
It was utterly unlike what he had imagined.
Like Park Chan-woo, the Reaper King was stunned.
The Reaper King's voice trembled.
More than before.
He was utterly bewildered.
Shing.
The Reaper King raised his scythe.
Then, as if realizing something, he shuddered and spoke.