Chapter 483
Chapter 483
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 483
Chapter Title: Salvation
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Relying solely on past experiences and knowledge would never allow him to reach that fathomless abyss.
Park Chan-woo closed his eyes.
He began consciously erasing everything that made up his being.
Emptying himself.
Like a blank canvas.
His existence seemed to revert to the primordial purity of 'possibility'.
"...What a foolish endeavor."
Balmun scoffed.
"Abandoning everything to become nothingness? That's not strength—it's self-destruction."
His observation was spot on.
As he said, simply wiping everything away and returning to nothingness wasn't the way to advance to the next stage.
Park Chan-woo had already repeated such failures countless times.
He had sacrificed everything about himself, returned to the past, and sought new paths, only to crash into the same wall every time.
Starting from nothingness only led to repeating the same mistakes.
What was truly needed to move forward was a new 'perspective'.
Not denying and erasing the past.
But using every fragment of failure, frustration, hope, and miracle as materials.
To forge a completely new 'self' that had never existed in this world before.
In one word.
'Creation.'
Climbing the Tower of the Gods, he had encountered countless 'forgotten tales'.
It was time to weave them all into one.
And become the 'protagonist' of a new story that encompassed everything.
Hwaaaaa—
Within his emptied existence, a new light began to ignite.
It resembled the light of the nameless heroes from the 'Plaza of Memories' and the primordial glow held by the 'Dawn Star of Origins'.
Yet it was the same, yet different.
A unique hue of light that only Park Chan-woo himself could create.
Around him, fragments of every journey he had walked began to appear like illusions.
The terror and thrill of the day he first awakened.
The memory of fighting alongside Lee Hyuk-soo in the Abyss on the 'first night'.
The moment he took Adora's hand in the Tower of Arrogance.
The promise to save Arcana's soul in the Tower of the Gods.
And even the warm dinner table at Lee Hyuk-soo's house.
All the joys and sorrows formed a grand mosaic, shaping Park Chan-woo.
To Balmun before him, these were memories that did not exist.
He too must have repeated lives of failure countless times.
But his path lacked such warm fragments of memory.
He had probably forgotten them himself to survive.
"You forgot, but I did not."
The reassuring solidity of a comrade's back you must protect.
The warmth when grasping someone's cold hand.
The weight of the promise to throw yourself into the fray for those who believe in you.
And the irreplaceable comfort of a single warm meal prepared with care by someone.
Balmun had forgotten what he must never forget.
The warmth of ordinary yet radiant life—the very reason for all the battles. Kindness, bonds, love, and the like.
Park Chan-woo realized.
That power could never be perfected by power alone.
True strength did not lie in the sharpness of a blade's edge or the destructive force of magic.
It stemmed from a heart that never forgot the values it sought to protect.
Hwaaaaa!
The light enveloping Park Chan-woo's existence finally converged into a perfect form.
It was far from the resplendent divinity that flaunted the majesty of a god.
Rather, it was a transparent, pure light devoid of any color.
Like the soul of a newborn infant.
The world came back into view through his eyes.
In a way utterly different from before.
He no longer saw the flows of mana or the trajectories of causality.
Instead, he beheld the unique 'stories' embedded in every being and phenomenon.
He saw Balmun's story as well.
A profoundly sorrowful tale of a soul lost amid countless failures, forever locked in solitary confinement.
Park Chan-woo quietly extended his hand toward that story.
And created a new magic.
It was not magic for destruction.
Magic for healing and salvation.
"In the end, every story."
Park Chan-woo's voice gently resonated through the empty space.
"Is a saga of life's wisdom and courage, temperance and justice, faith and hope, and love."
Transparent light bloomed from his fingertips.
And that light began to softly embrace Balmun's crimson-black aura of despair, melting it like spring snow.
"...What is this?"
For the first time in eons, bewilderment colored Balmun's voice.
This incomprehensible warmth that neither attacked nor destroyed him—what could it be?
He instinctively tried to resist, but he couldn't.
Because his soul was not rejecting this light.
On the contrary, like parched earth craving rain, it yearned for that warmth.
Within Park Chan-woo's light, Balmun saw.
The fragments of his past he had forgotten or erased himself.
That he too had once known such tender moments.
Those memories began to thaw his frozen heart, bit by bit.
This was the one path Park Chan-woo had found to surpass himself.
Not conquering power with power, but saving heart with heart.
Park Chan-woo spoke quietly to that lonely soul, who was another possibility of himself.
"You did not fail."
At those words, Balmun's existence shook violently.
"...I failed. I lost everything, was betrayed by all, and became a specter of this tower, trapped in an eternal curse of repeating the past. If this isn't failure, what is?"
"No."
Park Chan-woo shook his head firmly.
"You merely ran too far, too long, staring only ahead."
His gaze caressed the deepest depths of Balmun's weary soul.
"You are simply tired."
Tired.
That single word dismantled all the defenses Balmun had built over eons.
Yes.
He was tired.
Of the endless battles, the betrayals, the hopeless future.
When had it started?
Moving on mere inertia, unable to find the strength or reason to press forward.
At some point, his struggle had become not a pursuit of salvation, but an extension of unending torment.
Park Chan-woo invoked his new magic upon that weary soul.
It was something that had never existed before and would never again—a supremely warm and magnificent absolute magic that only he could create.
Its name was 'Rest'.
Hwaaaaa—
The transparent light flowing from Park Chan-woo filled the entire pristine white space of the 99th floor.
Within that light, the barren arena vanished, replaced by a cozy cabin in a small forest bathed in gentle sunlight.
The crackle of firewood in the hearth echoed, and the chirping of nameless birds drifted in from outside the window.
And before he knew it, Balmun sat in the cabin's old rocking chair.
In his hand was a steaming cup of tea.
[...This is.]
He looked around in bewilderment.
This peace felt utterly foreign.
"Rest."
Park Chan-woo's voice wrapped around him like the hearth's warmth.
"You've fought enough. Now it's time to set everything down and reflect on yourself."
Reflect on himself.
Balmun mulled over the words.
He had never once looked back at himself.
Always whipping and driving himself toward the enemy before him, the next threat.
No time to consider how worn his soul had become, how exhausted his heart.
But here, in this quiet space, for the first time in eons, he faced his whole self.
And thus regained the drive to move forward.
That was the true meaning of the 'Rest' magic.
This was fundamentally different from 'Lucid Dream'.
'Dreams' were a means to an end.
A compressed space of intense, painful training to maximize growth within limited time.
Everything there rushed toward a single goal: 'strength'.
But 'Rest' was different.
There were no goals, no trials here.
Time simply flowed like a river—naturally, peacefully.
It was true 'respite'.
A absolute sanctuary free of competition, struggle, or desperate flailing for survival, where one could wholly confront oneself.
Balmun sat in the old rocking chair, gazing vacantly at the sunset outside the window.
'How long has it been since I felt like this?'
How long since he had simply sat doing nothing?
He couldn't even remember.
His life had been an endless chain of 'musts'.
He had to grow stronger, had to win, had to survive.
Not a single moment of pause allowed—a horrific yoke.
But now, it was okay to do nothing.
That fact alone began to unlock the tightly shut bolt of his heart, sealed for eons.
He thought.
What had he been fighting for?
At first, to save humanity.
But humanity perished, and he failed.
Then, for revenge.
Hating Sepiro, the demons, the absurd world itself, he swung his sword to destroy everything.
But revenge was hollow.
The more enemies he cut down, the emptier his heart became.
And finally, he even forgot why he fought.
He simply continued because he had always fought.
Like a broken machine that had forgotten how to stop.
Unaware his soul was turning to empty ashes.
"......"
Hot something trickled from Balmun's vacant eyes.
Tears.
The first and last he shed for himself.
For everything he had lost.
For the comrades he couldn't protect.
And for himself, who had suffered alone for so long.
His sobs echoed long in that quiet forest cabin.
The sorrows of an era washed away like that.
How much time had passed?
Balmun slowly raised his head.
No trace of past hatred or despair remained on his face.
Instead, a deep, serene smile of one who had let everything go.
He spoke softly to Park Chan-woo, his past self and new possibility, who had prepared all this for him.
"With who you are now, you can walk a path different from the me of now. For granting me rest, another peace... thank you. Truly. For reminding me of what I'd forgotten, for showing me that I am not worthless."
Balmun conveyed long words.
The sincerity he had never shared with anyone over eons.
And.
"You... have won."
A heartfelt acknowledgment and blessing for the being who had opened a new path he could never reach.
The moment Balmun admitted defeat.
The space of 'Rest' enveloping them began to dissipate like morning mist in sunlight.
The forest cabin faded, revealing once more the pristine white expanse of the 99th floor.
And at the end of that space appeared a new door that hadn't been there before.
The final path to the summit.
The door to the tower's end, the 100th floor.