Chapter 515
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 515
Chapter Title: Awakened Abyss (5)
Park Chan-woo.
He wasn't fighting.
Instead, he was savoring it.
[That bastard...!]
Pure astonishment rippled through the will of one of the monarchs.
Park Chan-woo wasn't dodging or blocking the billions of layers of curses spewing from the Abyss.
On the contrary, he willingly stepped into the storm of that vicious malice, closing his eyes and relishing every single sensation.
The pain that gnawed at the soul, the emptiness that denied existence itself, the curse of decay that withered life.
In the midst of that horrific energy—which would have turned any ordinary being to dust amid screams the instant it touched them—Park Chan-woo was utterly serene.
Like a traveler returning home.
Or like parched earth finally receiving rain after a long drought.
He was accepting the Abyss's curses, understanding them, and finally making them a part of himself.
[...He's absorbing them.]
Yes.
He was absorbing the Abyss's power.
As if consuming nutrients.
The world of yin.
A realm of absolute negativity where all light had faded, and only endless descent existed.
It was no stranger to Park Chan-woo.
In fact, it was like the familiar homeland where all his stories had begun.
Minus 99 levels.
In that extreme void where his very existence had been denied, he had learned to endure alone.
How to find his way in the darkness, how to forge hope from despair, and how to control the yin energy rooted deepest within him.
He knew the world of yin better than anyone.
That was why the Abyss's curses posed no threat to him.
Park Chan-woo was the one who had risen through the strongest curses.
Rather, the Abyss's curses only tempered him further, making him stronger.
Like the final puzzle piece filling the long-empty half of himself.
Hwaaaaaah!
A darkness far denser and deeper than before began to rise from Park Chan-woo's body—impossible to compare to anything prior.
This was pure void, on a level entirely different from the "manufactured darkness" wielded by the Monarch of Pitch Black. It was primordial, akin to the Abyss itself.
The harmony of yin and yang.
If he had completed the perfect "vessel (yang)" through the five stigmata in the Tower of God...
Now, he was accepting the purest "darkness (yin)" from the Abyss, filling that vessel completely.
The Abyss panicked.
This contradictory situation—where the curses it had unleashed with everything it had not only failed to harm him but were making him stronger.
Its instincts screamed.
The being before it was no "prey."
It was a "predator," kindred or even superior.
Sruruk...
Wracked by instinctive fear, the Abyss took its first step back.
Fleeing into the darkness it had created, from the creature it had created.
But Park Chan-woo had no intention of letting the Abyss—or Adora—go.
Slash.
The sword of Baal in his hand moved.
No mana, no flashy techniques.
Just the purest, most primal act.
'Cut.'
Kwaaaaaang!
The perfect world of darkness crafted by the Monarch of Pitch Black split in two, like torn silk.
What should not have been cut... was cut.
The authority of the Monarch of Pitch Black, the absolute laws of this world themselves, crumbled powerless before his sword.
[...He cut the darkness?]
Astonishment filled the consciousnesses of the watching six monarchs.
Darkness has no form.
It isn't something that can be cut.
Yet Park Chan-woo ignored even that fundamental law.
With a single step he took, the entire universe trembled.
A path opened.
Through the gap in the cleaved darkness, far in the distance, the Abyss—being consumed by chaos—came into view.
Kurururung!
Each of Park Chan-woo's footsteps shook not just the land, but the cosmos itself.
All things seemed to kneel at his feet.
Mountains bowed their heads, storms held their breath, and even the laws themselves submitted to his majesty.
Terrified, the Abyss began thrashing madly.
Behind her, the "Gate of the Abyss" swung wide open, and infinite chaos from beyond poured into this world.
Fragments of torn space coalesced into massive rocks, which gathered into a single pitch-black planetoid.
A projectile of despair, born from devouring an entire world.
The Abyss hurled it at Park Chan-woo as lightly as a newborn tossing a toy.
A planetary collision.
An inescapable trajectory of doom.
But Park Chan-woo did not stop.
He advanced, advanced, and kept advancing.
His movements had already transcended human cognition.
The planetoid vanished into the void behind him without even grazing his cheek.
There was only one thing he desired.
The core of the Abyss.
The sole truth called "Adora," slumbering in its deepest darkness.
[......]
The monarchs couldn't hide their shock.
Park Chan-woo's actions transcended all common sense.
It was a display of overwhelming power—and more.
It was utter madness, like charging toward self-annihilation.
The Abyss fled, and Park Chan-woo pursued.
Finally, his sword reached the Abyss.
Srash!
The pitch-black armor—the toughest shell of darkness enveloping her existence—sliced away like tofu.
But it didn't end there.
Darkness cannot be cut.
The severed darkness immediately sought to reform, the wounds vanishing without a trace.
An immortal being.
The void itself.
Park Chan-woo already knew this.
A single attack couldn't kill the darkness.
Then...
'I'll cut endlessly.'
Yin and yang energies exploded from his eyes.
In an instant, thousands—no, tens of thousands—of sword afterimages manifested around him.
Each blade bore the power of the five stigmata, infused with the ferocity of the ferocious god Baal and the will of creation.
The Infinite Sword Emperor.
The ultimate technique inherited from the Sword Emperor of the Cultivator Mountain.
But the sword Park Chan-woo wielded now was no longer that of the Sword Emperor.
Cut, cut, and cut again.
Faster. Even faster.
Each strike cleaved space, time, and even concepts themselves.
Swords faster than light outpaced the darkness's regeneration.
Kwajajajajajak!
Like cracks spiderwebbing a glass cup, fissures spread through the Abyss's perfect void.
Beyond the shattered fragments of darkness...
Park Chan-woo finally saw it.
The deepest depths of the empty Abyss.
In its center, where nothing should be, a faint silhouette crouched and trembling.
Adora.
"Found you."
The sword halted.
Before the darkness could heal and the pitch-black armor envelop him again.
He had to go deeper.
Park Chan-woo didn't hesitate.
Toward that faint light where Adora waited.
He threw himself into the rift in the darkness.
It was tantamount to suicide.
Cutting darkness from outside was one thing; entering its "interior" was another dimension entirely.
The difference between slashing waves atop the sea and diving into the abyss yourself.
The Abyss was a void that devoured all.
No matter how strong Park Chan-woo was, stepping directly into its origin meant risking erasure of his very existence.
[Insanity!]
[Crawling into that endless darkness, hastening his own demise!]
To them, Park Chan-woo's choice was suicide.
No, perhaps it was the only path he could take.
A battle deemed unwinnable.
A foolish gamble for mutual destruction, to claim the minimal victory.
But mocking all their calculations, Park Chan-woo—who vanished into the darkness—did not perish.
Quite the opposite.
The interior of the Abyss.
In the midst of infinite void, Park Chan-woo had closed his eyes.
Everything around him screamed to erase him.
Countless dark tendrils sprouted from all directions, seizing his flesh and gnawing at his soul.
Yet his mind was strangely serene.
'Familiar.'
The world of minus 99 levels.
He was a being who had already endured and overcome a more vicious void than this.
Park Chan-woo breathed naturally within this vast Abyss.
And focused all his senses on that faint light where Adora slumbered.
He had to become one with it.
To reclaim her, he needed to become like her, if only for a moment.
Understand her pain and fear, breathe in sync with her despair.
Park Chan-woo's soul reached out toward Adora's soul.
It resonated with the Abyss.
The world of the Abyss—Adora's world—was dark.
A perfect space of nothingness.
The polar opposite of the radiant garden of possibilities crafted by the Creator.
There was no light here.
No hope.
A world where the very concept of life was forbidden, existing only for endless dissolution and oblivion.
That was the essence of the Abyss.
And the only thing filling that pitch-black void was "curses."
The dregs of every negative emotion flowing in from across the Abyss.
Resentments of abandoned souls, hatred of the betrayed, loneliness of the unloved, despair of unfulfilled dreams.
All that filth flowed here like a river, rotting eternally.
This was the sewer of the Abyss, the endpoint of all sorrow.
And from that river of filth, the Abyss was born.
Feeding on the ceaseless influx of curses, it grew a will of its own.
No—perhaps the Abyss had never truly "grown."
It had been vast from the moment of birth, and vaster still.
All it possessed was instinct.
The instinct to crave more curses, deeper despair, thicker darkness.
A vicious, pure thirst for everything negative that could fill this hollow self.
Then, one day, the Abyss thought.
To sate this endless hunger more efficiently, it needed a better "mouth."
A greedy "hand" to wander the Abyss in its stead, bringing back fresh curses.
And so, the Abyss shaped itself.
Melding the dregs of curses, infusing its own will.
It created Adora.
Adora had to be its most perfect masterpiece.
A thing for the very end.
Existing solely to shatter and perish.
That was Adora's purpose of birth, her fated destiny.
To become the Abyss.
Park Chan-woo walked through the deepest part of the Abyss, where Adora's birth and fate were etched in primordial memory.
This was Adora's mental world—and the core of the Abyss itself.
To understand her, and this vast chaos, he pressed onward.
But the Abyss did not welcome him.
-Begone.
Hundreds of millions of voices echoed directly in his mind.
All the curses slumbering in the Abyss rejected this alien light, howling in fury.
Their malice surged toward him like waves.
Gnawing his flesh, shattering his mind, seeking to assimilate his very existence into the darkness.
Bit by bit, imperceptibly.
Park Chan-woo felt himself being eroded.
Like clothes soaking in a drizzle, his soul was slowly permeating in this irresistible torrent.
Even his perfected transcendent vessel couldn't fully shield him from this primal chaos.
But he paid it no mind.
He had anticipated this level of corrosion.
No—he welcomed it.
To become one with her, he had to accept part of her.
Share the weight of the curses she bore.
Park Chan-woo walked on silently.
Against the river of curses, over hills of despair, through forests of oblivion.
How much time passed?
New scenery appeared in his vision, things unseen before.
Fragments of Adora's memories.
Shards of faint light, sealed deep in her soul, trapped within the vast darkness of the Abyss.
Park Chan-woo peered into each one.
He saw her world.
Dark. Cold. Lonely.
The Tower of Arrogance.
Born alone in pitch-black darkness, her childhood spent honing only the power of death, without a shred of warmth.
To her, the world was nothing but trials to overcome, enemies to break.
All the small worlds created by the Abyss.
Each one filled solely with foes testing her.
The only thing permitted was blind obedience—nothing more.
The Black Witch gave her everything, but denied her one thing: the freedom to choose.
Thus, Adora's world was colorless.
Everything smeared in ashen gray.
No— the light of all things was fading to muddy brown.
A crumbling world.
A landscape of ruins on the brink of annihilation, devoid of any vitality.
Yet, in the midst of those ruins, one memory alone stood firm.
Unyielding, unfading—even growing clearer and more radiant with time.
'...It's me.'
Park Chan-woo swallowed hard before that sight.
Adora's most vital, central memory.
The single pillar barely holding up her crumbling world.
That memory was filled entirely with Park Chan-woo.