Chapter 438: Prelude to The Final Act – Epilogue
Chapter 438: Prelude to The Final Act – Epilogue
“Hyeon, In, Ji, Mong, Geuk, and Si have appeared on the front lines!”
Screams echoed through the bridge.
Six Avatars. Adding them to the twenty-four currently rampaging across the front lines brought the total to thirty.
It was clear that this was a record-breaking number in the long, bloody history of this world’s wars.
Not that the screaming mattered.
The number thirty was meaningless.
Geuk was a name that signified the destruction of the front lines—a being that meant everything should be abandoned.
As for Si, it was a name I had never heard once in all my years of defying heaven.
Perhaps its power was so immense that it had only now managed to descend, but that seemed unlikely. It was more probable that Si was the type of entity that had simply joined in on a whim, driven by a sudden spark of interest.
What truly mattered was that Hyeon, In, Ji, and Mong had joined the fray.
The fact that the neutral and existence-aligned factions, who had previously been mere observers, were now intervening meant only one thing: they saw no more hope for us and were moving to exercise their rights as creditors.
They were not our allies, but they were beings we thought would at least refrain from attacking. Now, at the moment of the finale, they had manifested, opening their mouths and licking their lips.
Now, there truly were only enemies.
With a bitter smile, I thought of Hyeon, whom I had once shared words with.
Even the one I believed would support us in the early stages of all this had betrayed us, baring his fangs.
No, perhaps it wasn't betrayal.
That is simply the nature of the Entities at The End.
They merely saw us as useful tools, and the moment that utility vanished, they moved in whatever direction benefited them.
Even so.
To us, mere insects in their eyes, it felt like betrayal.
And that was why.
【The mortal shall reach the heavens】
【And thereby, the immortal shall fall to the earth】
I wove my will within my heart, overlaying it upon the world.
The newly crafted laws hungered for reality.
By this decree, man shall never die.
Even if the body crumbles, the soul shall return to its immortality.
Those whose souls remain shall be granted new bodies and sent back to the front lines.
They would infinitely repeat the sin of striking the Avatars—who had now entered the mortal realm—once before dying again.
One of the six hells overlaid upon reality.
Avici Hell.
The pinnacle of necromancy, which had never been lifted since the war began.
Having unleashed that Otherworld Erosion, I sat on the bridge of my flagship and listened to the status of the front.
“Dam has been defeated! Front line loss rate at 95%! Estimated recovery time: 5 hours Absolute Time, 10 minutes Relative Time!”
Hearing this, I waved my hand.
I felt the Necromantic Legion, bolstered by my power, being summoned in the distance.
I pulled one of the old commanders directly from hell, breathed them into the legion's leader, and severed the connection.
They would be able to hold for ten minutes.
I repeated this process as the reports continued to flood in.
I drew out the souls of those who no longer had bodies but still possessed the will to fight, bestowing them upon the front lines.
In exchange, their souls were worn away.
Living souls breathed into the cold bodies of necromancy.
The only thing they could feel was the heat of war.
As The Cycle repeated, the souls forgot the memories of their flesh, containing nothing but the war itself.
Those who had sacrificed their souls knowing this would happen—those who had forgotten even why they fought—maintained the empty front lines.
Within a battlefield where everything repeated infinitely.
“Star-Eater Class Monster detected! High Command requests a sortie!”
“Sent.”
I replied calmly, weaving my will.
A Summoned Guardian, connected to my senses, showed me the local situation.
A colossal monster covered the entire sky of the planet where the guardian had been summoned.
It bared its sharp teeth at the world, intent on fulfilling its role.
Wuuuuuuuuu.
With a sound like a massive foghorn, a guardian rose from The Sea.
A gargantuan being with aquamarine scales that harmonized with the blue ocean.
It manifested draped in The Sea, soaring into the air.
The creature of the deep, rising into the void along with the ocean's waters, wrapped The Sea around its body and lunged at the monster that was far vaster than itself.
To any observer, it looked like a literal suicide mission—an egg striking a rock.
But the result was vastly different.
The dragon, boasting its aquamarine scales as it rose from the depths, pierced straight through the monster that sought to swallow the planet.
The monster, whose existence had once been negated by the god of a former world, vanished instantly without leaving even a corpse behind.
The god and ruler of a marine world made entirely of water.
The one who had become the first to be dominated by the existence-consuming tentacles.
Having been liberated from that domination through death.
The god who had lost its own world to external entities answered my call to protect another.
And, having fulfilled its duty, it returned to The Afterlife.
Severing the connection at that moment, I spoke.
“Target neutralized.”
“Confirmed!”
The maintenance of the front lines resumed its cycle.
An endless deluge of humans and Otherworldly beings.
The front lines ebbed and flowed, and the war stretched on for an eternity.
Whenever humanity developed some new power, they would repel the Otherworldly beings and push the front back, but The Enemy would soon return with equal force.
A war for survival that seemed destined to last forever.
We endured Avici Hell, believing that liberation would come someday.
But today, the words that fell from the operator’s lips...
...announced the end of the war.
“...Ma and Rupture have appeared on the front lines.”
“...Not as Avatars, but their main bodies.”
Simultaneously, reports flooded in.
Countless front lines had collapsed in an instant.
Numerous star systems held for their resources had vanished; observations had failed.
Before long, even those reports began to dwindle in number.
Without damage reports or information transfers, they simply flickered out.
The descent of the main bodies.
This wasn't the first time.
We had survived back then, too.
We had endured by throwing away so many things.
We had discarded everything represented by diversity, change, and openness.
We had cast them aside to flee from a single failure.
Culture, society, play, thought, politics.
And finally, even death—the rest from all things.
We had endured this far by throwing everything away.
But this was the end.
The judgment, akin to foresight, born from long years of contact with war, told me it was over.
Checkmate.
The battle that had lasted for thousands, no—since spacetime had long been broken—perhaps tens of thousands of years, was ending in the defeat of those of us who were once human.
If it was going to crumble so hollowly, would it not have been better to fall sooner?
Because we reached this point by discarding everything, we had nothing left.
Learning war the moment we were born, and ending life alongside it.
The only values remaining to us were war and survival.
Though human elements like love and anguish were tucked in between.
They were but a fraction of life.
A life born in a total war for survival and dying for the sake of survival—was it truly worth continuing?
Had we not merely postponed the promised end through our own pointless stubbornness?
If the result of enduring through the suffering of people in an eternal Avici Hell that forbade even death was the end of all things...
Then what meaning was there in their pain?
I slowly rose from my chair and looked at the scenery beyond the bridge’s glass window.
the end of this world.
the end of the universe.
Originally, it was thought that the universe had a lifespan nearly a hundred thousand times a nayuta years remaining.
But this world, contaminated by Otherworldly Power to the point where even basic physical laws were broken, was facing its end without even using one percent of that lifespan.
All that remained in the space once thought infinite was a black void.
The stars that once shone no longer existed, and even the gluttonous black holes had been consumed as energy sources and vanished.
In the distance, all that could be seen was a Violet Cloud and the laughing Star of The End shining within it.
For us, who had used even our own home as a weapon, nothing remained.
What appeared before us in place of the entire universe was a massive mouth.
The gargantuan maw of the Entity of The End, U.
It looked like a black hole that swallowed everything, yet it was a void that could be seen with the eyes and did not pull things in.
Simply because the universe had shrunk to a size it could swallow in one bite.
The foolish, arrogant, and greedy U had manifested a portion of its Main Body to swallow the world.
This, too, was our fault.
Because we had permitted their intrusion for far too long.
Because we had done nothing but negate them.
We had distorted the world enough for the main bodies, not just Avatars, to descend.
From the very start of the war, we knew such a day would come.
We thought we could repel them before that day arrived.
But without any precursor, that day had begun.
U’s mouth swallowed everything.
As if even the void where everything had vanished was a piece of prey.
From far below the bridge window, everything disappeared.
Then, from far above.
Though the direction of 'up' does not exist in outer space, I speak in relation to this battleship we stand upon.
I looked up.
I saw a Blue Sea.
The Sea That Will Come Someday.
The Sea we had resisted so it would never come.
As if refusing to let U have everything.
To divide our already dead corpses, The Sea was coming.
To overlay a world that had neither surrendered nor been conquered.
Because we resisted until the very end, we did not even reach the conclusion of surviving as their pawns.
Is this truly the end, then?
Was all that effort merely a hollow void?
The bridge, always so noisy, was now silent.
There were no communications.
They, too, must have realized that this was truly the end.
To them, I spoke.
“Flee to the Otherworld.”
This message would be delivered to everyone who remained.
Though I did not know their number.
“Survive, survive, and survive. Resist until the very end.”
“the end of the world does not mean the end of the individual.”
The Avici Hell that bound them was released, and a new door opened.
“It is fine to surrender to The End. It is fine to meet a meaningless death while resisting.”
“But please, do not die along with us, who made such vain judgments.”
We failed.
Our actions to protect the world were nothing more than a meaningless hell.
I—we—failed.
And as everyone prepared to leave, I intended to take responsibility.
I felt countless ships leaving the world.
Abandoning the world, heading for the Otherworld.
The Afterlife, which was in a state of equivalence with me, was also liberated.
The souls released from The Afterlife and from me scattered in countless directions.
Some rose, some sank.
Some crossed the boundaries of the world.
Amidst the finale of a hollow world.
I spoke to the last ones remaining in the world.
“You should leave as well.”
The beings left in the world.
The souls who had been worn down infinitely until they knew nothing but war.
And the crew of the flagship.
They did not answer my words.
They quietly went about their duties.
In a world where even time and space had vanished, turning toward a single point.
In an infinitely expanded world.
At the end of the world, where only one's own will proved the laws of reality.
They performed the most familiar actions they could imagine.
Walking on their own feet, taking up weapons with their own hands.
The flagship raced toward The Enemy.
The soldiers on the battlefield charged forward.
Toward the Faceless Queen, who remained in the vanishing, meaningless world to mock us.
Each according to their own will.
The battle was an instant and an eternity.
The forces were equal and yet overwhelmed.
The battle had a chance of victory and yet had none.
In a battle where the result was fixed as defeat.
In a world where everyone had left.
I faced her.
The Faceless Queen.
A being whose end even I, capable of constructing worlds, could not fathom.
With two Avatars by her side, she questioned me.
“Why didn't you run?”
“You, who have grown your power endlessly to approach our perspective, should know.”
“The result of the war could not be changed.”
“There are no errors.”
“You have the eyes and the perspective, after all.”
To that, I replied.
“Is there meaning in a question when you already know the answer?”
A reply telling her not to mock me when she already knew what I would say.
“Because I know the answer, I ask.”
“Because the question exists, the answer exists.”
“For an answer to be born, a question must be asked.”
“No, because the answer exists, the question was born.”
“And this is that answer.”
After the three besides me finished speaking, she reached out her hand to me.
A hand leading toward death.
“Everything has been decided. the end of this world, your charge, your useless sacrifice, and you taking my hand.”
At that, I struck her hand away.
“Even this. Predestined harmony.”
“This action is not what we seek. Even this is within the result.”
As she laughed.
I gave a bitter smile and sank into the Origin sleeping within me.
And there, sitting in a chair.
I saw another me.
Because I failed.
Praying that someone would succeed.
Waiting forever for someone who would make their future diverge.
It seems this 'someone' this time...
...is quite the fool.