Chapter 527
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 527
Chapter Title: Bankruptcy (1)
Park Chan-woo caught his breath.
Just one more to go.
If he shattered that final moon, this interminable night would finally end.
It was right then, as he launched himself toward the last moon once more.
The moon's surface melted and flowed like wax, and that pitch-black liquid poured down to the ground as black rain.
"……!"
Park Chan-woo's movements halted.
The black rain mocked his absolute barrier, seeping into every corner of the city.
A curse for the "fairy tale."
Wherever the black rain touched, reality warped.
The familiar streets of Seoul twisted into grotesque labyrinths straight out of nightmares, while sturdy skyscrapers writhed like living things, crawling toward the sky.
The entire city was transforming into one massive Abyss.
He instantly grasped the brutality of this trial.
All the previous nights had been challenges he could tackle alone, focused on conquering a single "point."
But this final night was different.
It demanded simultaneous assaults on scattered "lines" and "planes" across the entire city—no, the whole world—an overwhelming scale of trial.
"Six hours... 12 fragments."
Just over six hours remained until dawn.
Within that time, he had to scour this vast, nightmare-twisted labyrinth for all 12 fragments.
It was impossible alone.
No matter that Park Chan-woo was a god who transcended space and time—the physical limits of time were undeniable.
Searching this immense labyrinth and battling the sentinels guarding the fragments would demand an insurmountable amount of time.
Six hours was woefully insufficient.
It was at that precise moment, as Park Chan-woo's expression hardened for the first time.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
Countless notifications exploded across his system window like mad.
Entrants surged explosively.
But that flow quickly swelled into an uncontrollable tsunami.
To protect their homeland.
They could no longer let Park Chan-woo shoulder every burden alone.
Through twelve nights.
They had only watched.
Gazing up at the sky, powerless to do anything but cheer as he fought solo.
While their god bled and faded, they had prayed safely from afar.
That helplessness, guilt, and debt had been building in humanity's hearts.
But no more.
The final night.
Our collective last war.
Everyone poured out into the streets.
Not just high-level Awakeners.
Rookies freshly awakened, ordinary citizens with zero combat experience.
Regardless of age or gender, all joined this gleeful act of suicide.
[Citizens! Head to the underground shelters immediately...!]
The government's frantic disaster alerts no longer reached them.
They were terrified.
They knew from experience how horrifying the night could be.
They knew dangers lurked in the labyrinth, that entering might mean never returning alive.
But something stronger than that fear pushed them forward.
"Let's go!"
"How long are we going to hide behind our god?!"
"This is our home! Our world! We have to protect it—who else will?!"
One young man's shout became the spark.
They united as one.
Terror vanished from their eyes.
Noble resolve filled the void.
Entrants topped 100,000, then 1 million, soon shattering 10 million.
The labyrinth-city's borders drowned in waves of humanity.
They wielded no proper weapons.
Housewives with kitchen knives, students with baseball bats, factory workers clutching steel pipes.
They grabbed the sharpest things from daily life and charged into their home-turned-battlefield.
"...Foolish."
Someone murmured softly.
Even tens of millions of untrained civilians pouring in would be mere prey before Lilith's sentinels.
This wasn't courage—it was recklessness. Not sacrifice, but meaningless death.
But.
Everyone witnessed it.
Those feeble sparks merging into a massive torch.
The numbers surpassed 100,000,000.
Under the name of humanity, they became one colossal will.
"Search!"
"Don't miss a single fragment! Until our god clears the path!"
Humanity scattered.
Into every nook of the vast labyrinth.
They were weak.
But numerous.
Dozens, hundreds sacrificed per sentinel.
Yet as they fell, others advanced a step further.
Their sacrifices were never in vain.
Stepping over comrades' corpses, they tenaciously, obsessively burrowed toward the labyrinth's heart.
Billions of earnest prayers directed at him.
This sublime sacrifice from those who trusted and staked their lives on him.
Something hot surged in his chest.
"Found it! Over there!"
"Three o'clock! On the building rooftop!"
A miracle occurred.
The first fragment was discovered.
That signal ignited cheers across the labyrinth.
Second, third, fourth...
The hidden tears of Lilith revealed themselves in sequence, as if by prior agreement.
30 minutes.
In a mere 30 minutes.
All twelve fragments found.
Not by one hero, but by 100 million humans together—a miracle achieved.
The moment every fragment ascended, fusing into a massive teardrop gem.
The skyborne teardrop gem stained blood-red.
Within it, something dormant writhed and stretched.
Kraaaaaaaaah!
The world screamed.
The blood-red teardrop shattered, birthing a pure embodiment of chaos.
A formless mass of endless darkness.
A living cataclysm that gnawed at surrounding space and laws merely by existing!
Billions of years of malice and grudges amassed in her subconscious had finally taken physical form.
The true trial of the final night.
Levels and ranks meant nothing.
Gazing upon it shattered minds.
Touching it erased existence.
The nightmare extended tentacles toward the nearest lives upon awakening.
But Park Chan-woo moved swiftly too.
From the labyrinth's highest point, he raised the Staff of the Transcended Star's Guide.
And toward the nightmare, calmly yet heavier than any worldly verdict,
he pronounced.
"Heavenly Retribution."
In that instant.
The world filled with light.
The thirteenth moon in the sky, the Abyss Moon, crumbled.
Its shards rained down as countless meteors.
Kuwaaaaaaaaah!
Genesis light engulfed the nightmare.
The chaos lump dubbed primordial darkness melted away like spring snow before primal light, vanishing into utter nothingness.
Not even a scream.
A complete erasure, as if it had never existed.
Silence fell.
The grotesque darkness shrouding the labyrinth lifted, and dawn's light began to break over Seoul's sky.
The nightmare was gone.
The final night had ended.
And a system message shook all of humanity—no, the entire Abyss.
Messages as if the system itself couldn't hide its astonishment.
But humanity knew.
This miracle wasn't his alone.
One will named Park Chan-woo, backed by 100 million humans staking everything—that made it possible.
The greatest symphony, where god and man perfectly united.
Soon, the final message everyone awaited appeared.
The rightful reward for this grand victory.
This was exactly what Park Chan-woo had aimed for.
Protecting his homeland.
Seizing victory through humanity's power.
And using that victory to drag the final culprit behind this tragedy to the judgment stand.
The host of 'The Thirteen Nights,' 'Lilith,' goes bankrupt.
...He had turned the night system against itself.
Hosting a Creative Abyss is akin to a massive gamble, wagering enormous coins and part of one's existence.
The harder the trials, the grander the scale, the exponentially larger the rewards upon clearing.
Lilith had staged an unprecedented game across the entire Abyss.
Park Chan-woo exploited that hubris.
A record so short it transcended "overwhelming."
An achievement the system dubbed "incomprehensible"—proportional to the night's scale, it inflated rewards to astronomical heights.
Beyond what she could possibly bear.
The perfect counterstrike that left Lilith no choice but bankruptcy.
The thrones of the six overlords shook once more with shock.
The demons who had cheered Lilith's descent now wailed in despair.
Bankruptcy?
The master of the nights, the first demon.
How could the being who blanketed the entire Abyss in darkness go "bankrupt"?