Chapter 511
Chapter 511
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 511
Chapter Title: The Awakened Abyss (1)
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“How in the world!”
The Pitch-Black Lord cried out in shock.
He had no idea.
All his attention had been fixed solely on one person: Park Chan-woo.
How to corrupt him. How to shatter his legend.
That arrogant, obsessive fixation had ultimately tripped him up.
In his focus on the most obvious threat, he had completely overlooked another danger quietly growing in the shadows.
But no matter how he thought about it, he couldn't make sense of it.
Even if he had missed Adora's presence, it was physically impossible for her to overcome his trials so quickly.
The "Primeval Darkness" was a perfect labyrinth composed of six stages of despair.
Stage 1, "Emotional Reversal," was merely the beginning.
Survivors then faced Stage 2, the "Fountain of Oblivion," where they had to sacrifice their most precious memories.
Most wandered eternally at that crossroads, losing their sense of self and descending into madness.
Even if they passed that trial, Stage 3, the "Mirror of Doubt," awaited.
A trial that created dissonance between the memories they discarded and the self they retained, leading to self-denial.
And Stage 4, the "Abyss of Solitude."
A soul-devouring test where one had to wander alone forever in pitch-black darkness, completely cut off from companions.
Stage 5, "Assimilation."
The point where all hope was lost, and one yearned to become part of the darkness itself.
And finally, Stage 6.
The endpoint of total submission to him—the Pitch-Black Lord, master and creator of that darkness—becoming a soulless minion.
There had never been any escape to begin with.
Kill Park Chan-woo, or wander this darkness eternally.
A flawless world designed with only those two outcomes.
Yet Adora had somehow transcended all six stages of despair.
“Impossible!”
He had tested countless worlds, trapping them in his darkness.
Mighty overlords, heroes nearing transcendence, even fellow demon lords of his own kind—all had knelt before his trials.
And now, a mere witch had leaped through them all and seized the light?
Even as the new Witch Queen, her stature couldn't match his.
“What trick did you use...!”
The Pitch-Black Lord rose from his throne.
To comprehend this incomprehensible variable.
He unleashed all his authority, spreading a net of perception across the entire Abyss.
Like rewinding time, every action Adora had taken since the Racial War ended flooded into his mind.
‘New Witch Queen. Sovereign of the Night Realm.’
The Pitch-Black Lord had known Adora inherited the throne from the Black Witch.
But he dismissed it as insignificant.
With the Black Witch bankrupt and powerless, it was just an obvious ploy to pass the seat to one of his loyal puppets and manipulate from the shadows.
However, the information revealed a completely different truth.
Adora was no puppet of the Black Witch.
On the contrary, she had outright rejected the Black Witch's curse and ascended to the throne by her own will.
‘Followed Park Chan-woo during the Racial War, with ties dating back even further. Owner of Valhalla in name only—its true master is Park Chan-woo.’
Thus, the hypothesis stood.
Adora's feelings for Park Chan-woo must have been deeper and more absolute than any other being's.
‘...That should have broken her even more.’
The Pitch-Black Lord was certain.
Such profound bonds were the deadliest poison before the curse of Emotional Reversal.
At Stage 1, Adora should have been consumed by searing hatred for Park Chan-woo and lost her mind.
Even if she overcame that, at Stage 2 in the Fountain of Oblivion, losing all memories of him should have collapsed her world.
The sense of loss from the most vital presence vanishing.
And the emptiness of not even remembering who it was.
That was the perfect chink for Stage 3, the Mirror of Doubt, to exploit.
—Who are you? What do you exist for?
Before that primal question from her reflection, the amnesiac Adora should have shattered, unable to find her purpose.
‘Yet she passed through like flowing water?’
The Pitch-Black Lord's cunning intellect finally arrived at the one horrific hypothesis that explained every contradiction.
‘What if all those chains of emotion and memory... unlocked the "seal" she had suppressed?’
If so.
If all those emotions and memories toward Park Chan-woo.
Were shackles binding her true essence?
“...!”
The Black Witch.
The most cunning and greedy being of all.
A paranoid tyrant who had ruled the Night Realm for eons, tolerating no sprouts of threat to her throne.
Would someone like her ever yield her seat willingly?
‘No way.’
The Pitch-Black Lord knew the Black Witch all too well.
From the moment she named Adora her successor, she would have layered dozens, hundreds of safeguards.
To keep Adora from escaping control.
To ensure she never surpassed her authority.
And the strongest of those safeguards was...
‘The witch's love.’
The Black Witch knew better than anyone that love was the deadliest poison for a witch.
All of Adora's consciousness was fixed on Park Chan-woo.
All her potential bound to that single being.
Yet.
Within his "Primeval Darkness," it had unintentionally shattered.
The Fountain of Oblivion erased Adora's memories of Park Chan-woo.
It broke the strongest shackle.
Liberated from all emotions and memories, what was she now with only her pure "essence" remaining?
“No, it's not over yet!”
The Pitch-Black Lord couldn't accept defeat just like this.
His world hadn't collapsed.
Adora had merely seized the light—control of this Abyss remained his.
He still had one final move to overturn the board.
He rose from his throne.
And without hesitation, opened the door to the darkness.
Into his stage, his mental realm, the Primeval Darkness.
To descend as the final boss himself.
It was a familiar air.
This space, shaped by his own will, should have felt as cozy and comfortable as the palm of his hand.
But the moment he set foot in his kingdom, a chilling sense of wrongness gripped his entire body.
‘It's different.’
The density of the air had changed.
A far more primal chill, closer to the origin than his created pitch-black darkness, dominated the space.
His gaze turned to one spot.
Toward the sole light in the darkness: the "Primeval Light."
A single woman stood there.
Adora.
But the moment the Pitch-Black Lord laid eyes on her, he couldn't suppress the shiver running down his spine.
‘No.’
That wasn't Adora.
Not the unstable witch swayed by emotions that he knew.
Her appearance was the same.
But the aura enveloping her, the depth in her eyes belonged to an entirely different existence.
She merely stood there.
Yet her presence alone made his perfectly designed world of darkness feel utterly "dwarfed."
Like a massive whale appearing in a tiny pond—an overwhelming sense of incongruity.
He was the Lord of Darkness.
In handling all shadows and despair of the Abyss, no one surpassed him.
Even the arrogant Dragon God Sepiro dared not flaunt power in the Night Realm.
For he was the king of night, the emperor of darkness.
Yet the being before him now.
Made the authority of darkness he had built over a lifetime look like a child's playful mischief.
Because her very existence was the Abyss.
That name was an object of terror and awe to all beings in the Abyss.
The deepest recesses of the Abyss, untouched by laws or causality—a primal chaos.
The ultimate landfill and cradle where all curses were born and all evils flowed.
The Abyss.
Even the mighty Nine Great Lords hesitated to approach its boundary.
Because it was filthy and impure?
Half right, half wrong.
A single misstep could swallow their very existence into that infinite chaos, erasing them without a trace.
Sepiro.
Even the arrogant Dragon God coveted that forbidden power.
But the Abyss wasn't something to wield.
Not even comprehensible.
It was an absolute taboo to be avoided.
At best, only witches could survive there.
Just as rifts admitted only divine beasts.
The Abyss was a realm only witches could enter.
And now, before his eyes, the Abyss stood in human form.
‘The pure essence of a witch freed from all shackles.’
The Pitch-Black Lord finally realized.
The true nature of the "shackle" he had unwittingly broken.
He saw it.
Beyond the being called "Adora" before him, in the deepest depths of her soul, writhing infinite chaos.
Yes.
The Abyss wasn't merely a place or concept.
It was a being with will.
Existing before the Abyss's creation—the beginning and end of all things.
That was the Abyss's true nature.
Only witches could dwell in the Abyss.
They grew their power feeding on its curse.
Thus, witches were objects of fear.
Their power stemmed from incomprehensible chaos, their actions transcending logic and reason.
But even they weren't the Abyss's "masters."
For witches too longed to escape it.
They were mere parasites, unable to fully command that vast will.
On the other hand...
...Death Witch Adora.
Now he understood.
Why, among countless witches, she alone was special.
Why the Black Witch obsessed over her, naming her successor.
Because Adora originated from the Abyss.
She was a witch born from the Abyss itself—the "Child of the Abyss."
Not a witch created by the Black Witch.
But the Abyss incarnated in witch form.
A bitter laugh escaped him.
His six-stage trials.
Emotional Reversal? Her essence was chaos transcending emotions.
Fountain of Oblivion? She moved by instinct, not memory.
Doubt, solitude, assimilation into darkness?
All of it must have felt not like trials, but like returning home.
The game never stood a chance.
The Abyss had already awakened.
And now, with will, it gazed upon him—the Pitch-Black Lord.
Her eyes held no emotion whatsoever.
The Pitch-Black Lord ground his teeth.
He was one of the mighty Nine Great Lords, the Pitch-Black Lord.
The entire Primeval Darkness vibrated in response to his will.
He gathered all remaining authority, his very existence, forging it into a single massive spear of darkness.
A condensed crystallization of pure malice and destruction capable of piercing the entire Abyss.
The Pitch-Black Lord hurled the spear of darkness.
And.
In that instant.
Swish.
A strange sensation at his throat.
Like the gentlest brush of icy silk thread—so soft, so subtle.
No pain.
He couldn't even comprehend what had happened.
But he saw it.
His field of vision spinning.
His own body slowly tumbling downward, and the impassive face of the Abyss Witch looking down at him.
...And his flesh sinking into the darkness.