Chapter 459
Chapter 459
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 459
Chapter Title: Result Announcement (1)
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After Park Chan-woo vanished through the door to the Terminus,
a heavy silence settled over the battlefield.
The war was over.
Winner and loser were crystal clear.
Park Chan-woo's comrades and the warriors of the five allied races gathered in one spot, silently awaiting his return.
Exhaustion was plain in their eyes, but so was the thrill and anticipation of those who had witnessed the dawn of a new era.
On the opposite side, amid the ashen ruins of the battlefield, the defeated stood in dazed stupor.
Demons, and the races who had joined hands with them.
They couldn't bring themselves to approach the victors, nor could they bring themselves to leave this cursed station. They simply eyed one another warily, killing time.
Now, their fates hung entirely in the hands of one man: Park Chan-woo.
Humanity claiming first place in the inaugural Racial War was already a foregone conclusion.
They had monopolized every station's tickets and passed the final gateway to reach the Terminus.
There could be no more perfect victory than this.
The issue lay in what came next.
This was an unprecedented event in the history of the Abyss, something that had never happened before.
No one could predict how the system would handle this outcome.
"Damn it...! At this rate, our race is finished."
A giant warrior, leaning on his massive axe, muttered a curse.
Thick unease laced his voice.
"Not only will we drop a rank from our previous standings, we might even suffer a fatal penalty that leaves us unable to recover."
The warriors of other races nearby nodded gravely in agreement.
A race's ranking in the Racial War was absolute.
The rewards and penalties that came with it were immense enough to determine a race's very destiny.
But this war defied all ranking logic.
Every race except humanity had failed to secure even a single ticket.
In other words, from second place to last, everyone scored 'zero points.'
The question was how the system would handle this collective zero.
Would it fairly assign rankings from second place onward?
Or would it treat them all as tied for last, imposing unprecedented mass penalties?
Worst of all, it might deem every race besides humanity as 'eliminated,' erasing their participation records entirely.
Every possibility hinged on one man alone.
On what choice Park Chan-woo made in the Terminus, and what new rule he brought back with him.
"That damned human...! What the hell is he doing at the Terminus?!"
A demon king couldn't hold back and roared into the void.
His impatience spoke for every loser left behind.
They could do nothing but wait helplessly as their fates were decided.
It felt just like being a condemned prisoner.
In the midst of this tense standoff, the human camp was, naturally, the calmest.
Lee Hyuk-soo had his eyes closed, reflecting on the insights gained from 'Lucid Dream.'
Adora appeared to be asleep, but her aura of death enveloped their allies more quietly and profoundly than ever, shielding them.
There was no anxiety or impatience in their hearts.
Only an unshakable faith that their god, their comrade, would return after ending it all.
And finally.
Woooong—
In the center of the battlefield, right where the Altar of Annihilation had stood, a pitch-black door of darkness began to open once more.
Every eye turned there.
Would it usher in a new era, or drag everything to ruin?
Park Chan-woo was returning.
With the answer.
The deepest depths of the Abyss.
The masters of the nine thrones awaited the final act.
The will of the Giant Evil's master echoed through the void.
Boredom mingled with the faintest trace of impatience in his voice.
The Terminus.
The place where the Abyss's deepest truth, sealed away for eons by them, lay dormant.
They were certain.
The moment this arrogant human, Park Chan-woo, reached it, everything would end.
Another monarch sent a mocking sneer.
They had expected Park Chan-woo to turn back at the entrance to the Death Realm.
To despair before the weight of truth and return to accept their offer.
But he hadn't.
The nine monarchs already knew everything.
The truth of the Death Realm. The halted cycle of reincarnation.
And the fate of this world, slowly dying under the law of fixed soul totals.
Whoever learned that truth had few choices left.
That was their most likely conclusion.
Having learned everything, Park Chan-woo would despair at this irredeemable world and seek to end it all with a new rule.
Their logic was ironclad.
With soul totals at their limit, any change was just punching another hole in the dam.
The most merciful rule would bring swift extinction; the cruelest, agonizing extinction. The end was set.
That was why they chose the brutal 'Racial War' as a stopgap.
It was the only way to slow the demise.
One monarch sent a will laced with scorn.
The Giant Evil's master declared.
To them, Park Chan-woo was a foolish child launching a paper boat into a raging storm.
All awaited Park Chan-woo's failure.
When his noble rule crumbled before harsh reality, unchanged.
The profound despair he would feel.
Wouldn't that be entertaining?
Divinity built on billions of faiths turns to lethal poison the moment those faiths are betrayed.
A god who fails as savior is first stoned by his own followers.
Strike then.
If he begged for life, taking his hand wouldn't be amiss.
Everything was within their calculations.
Park Chan-woo was just another pawn to dance and perish in their palm.
......At last, the door fully opened.
From the pitch-black darkness, Park Chan-woo emerged.
No expression crossed his face.
No victor's glee, no despair of one facing truth—only the profound calm of one who had ended it all.
The nine monarchs held their breath, watching.
Soon, the system would proclaim it.
The foolish yet noble new rule he had created.
And what fresh despair it would bring to the world.
But.
Nothing happened.
The system remained silent.
Park Chan-woo said nothing, simply walking toward his waiting comrades.
Confusion.
An unexpected gap in their perfect scenario.
Then, not through their consciousness but via the Abyss-wide system, a new announcement rang out.
It was no harbinger of doom.
The nine thrones quaked in shock for the first time since their birth.
They couldn't comprehend it.
This wasn't merely rewriting rules.
He had repaired the broken system.
Restarted the heart of a stalled world.
They desperately peered into the Death Realm, but it was shielded by an even stronger veil of laws.
The new king, Chronos's authority rejected their arrogant gaze.
They could only see what the system revealed.
Reincarnation.
The halted cycle had begun anew.
A problem demons hadn't solved in tens of thousands of years—no, hadn't even tried to solve—that human had fixed in one visit.
This miracle denied all their justifications, their very reason for existence.
They looked at Park Chan-woo again.
He stood silently before his welcoming comrades, saying nothing.
Behind him, the pitch-black Terminus door faded into a handful of light, dissolving quietly.
As if its duty were fulfilled.
Park Chan-woo hadn't written new rules.
He had simply.
Taken what was worn, forgotten, and broken...
And returned it to its rightful place.
In one stroke, he toppled all the lies and deceptions piled up by the great nine monarchs over eons.
What they deemed 'impossible,' that human treated as 'only natural.'
With this, the Racial War lost its very premise.
Their claim of it being the final safeguard against the Abyss's end was now an empty excuse.
For the world had been saved not by them, but by the very being they labeled an 'error' and sought to erase.
The nine thrones fell silent.
They had nothing left to say.
And in that moment.
Breaking the long silence, a new message appeared across the entire Abyss.
The nine monarchs' gazes locked onto the massive system window floating in the void.
Every warrior from the battlefield ruins, every being holding their breath in their territories awaiting the outcome, even the conductors overseeing it all from the Eternal Train.
All life in the Abyss watched wide-eyed as a new page of history was written.
Everyone knew.
This result would decide the Abyss's future, their fates.
Here, the losers of the old era and winners of the new would be clearly divided.
The rankings soon appeared.
The expected result.
But seeing the rankings that followed.
"Wh-what?!"
"Why are the rankings... like this?"
The entire Abyss erupted in shock.