The Great Catastrophe

······ Incredible.

I swept through every window as they poured out without end, pure admiration rising in my chest. Who would have thought that fusing the Baal Set would extract only the sweetest options, like honey from the comb? On top of that, every single base stat had broken past one hundred. The Hidden Trait Eternal Randolph had corrected my stats — and the reason Holy Power sat roughly ten points higher than the rest was that the Baal Set’s “Magic Power +10” option had been converted straight into a pure base stat.

No one would believe these are the stats of a Level 8.

I could barely believe it myself. Stats alone put me at nearly the level of a 2-star Transcendent. Gear that raised raw stats was rare to begin with, and the numbers it offered were usually trivial. They didn’t stack, either — so the so-called “gear carry” route to a stat explosion was never an easy path. And I hadn’t even equipped anything yet.

······ Now that the Baal Set has fused, I can wear new equipment all over again.

That was the truly insane part. I had grown this much, and there was still room to grow further. Just putting gear on would make me stronger still.

“Kyaaaaah!”

That was when it happened. Hell began snarling like a threatened cat, staring off into the distance. I turned my head as well.

Countless eyes jutted from the black space above. Among them were some that felt strangely familiar — a colossal eye that looked for all the world like the Divine Skin Chimera’s. And I already knew why they were watching this place.

Baal’s Core. More precisely — the Fragment of Ruin.

They were gazing at the Fragment of Ruin lodged in my heart with an odd, hungry light. They had been from the very beginning.

And more than that—

The Fragment of Ruin is a Star.

The newly revealed truth was this: the Fragment of Ruin was a Star. As a Star Successor, I had originally held two. Then, without warning, the count had risen to three. The Star Successor class had recognized the Fragment of Ruin as a Star.

Stars are the shattered flesh of gods. So does that make the Fragment of Ruin the body of Ruin itself?

I stroked my chin lightly. Then I laughed under my breath.

“You want to see it too?”

The reason the rulers of the Abyss fixed their eyes on the Fragment of Ruin. Perhaps they were curious as well. So I decided to show them. I was curious myself, after all.

Slaaaash—!

My body began to transform.

Into a form utterly unlike the Corpse Crow — something far more complete.

At the same time—

Crack. Craaack.

The rulers of the Abyss dilated their pupils, receiving the One Who Blooms Darkness.

The Hero Union.

For Park Taewoo, the past month and more had been nothing short of a living shackle — sleepless nights ground down by guilt.

The diary Kim Hana brought me. New entries appear in it every single day.

Against a government demanding he pull the troops back as far as Udo, Park Taewoo had been stalling with every excuse he could invent. All because of the book the reporter had delivered after their meeting — the book that wrote itself anew each day.

He opened the volume he had already read more than a thousand times. Thirty days and counting of daily entries. Park Taewoo’s eyes settled on the diary page of the final leaf.

“······.”

Park Taewoo forced his eyes to focus and reviewed the key words. Gracia. Corpses. And the Black Egg. The circumstances were far too specific to dismiss as pure invention.

Just as Reporter Kim Hana said — this diary is being written every day by someone inside the Abyss.

He had been told the nature of the book: that it was linked to a diary being kept by someone within, though the writer currently had no idea of the connection.

··· To write it off as fiction was difficult. The entries were densely detailed, full of things no one could know without living them. But there was no chance the government would trust something that read like a fantasy novel. If anything, they gave more weight to Master’s words.

And so Park Taewoo simply kept digging in his heels.

Master. That bastard and his useless mouth······.

Crunch!

He ground his teeth. Master — the self-styled hero who strutted about — was a sociopath and an opportunist. Most players already knew it. The reason the man had stepped forward to push for “abandoning Jeju Island” was obvious: he meant to take Gracia’s place for himself. His intent was plain as day.

At the very least, the Hero Union and Master had crossed a river that could never be uncrossed. But there was nothing to be done about it.

··· Because I don’t have the power.

All of it had come about because he — because Korea’s Union — was weak. If Park Taewoo had held real strength, would Master have dared speak of Korea’s Jeju Island and tell them to “give it up”? If they had possessed even a single proper city in Pangenia, the Union’s influence would have been several times greater.

Rumble—!

That was when it happened.

“U-Union Chairman! The barrier is collapsing!”

“The black domain is disappearing!”

Ah.

Amid the uproar, Park Taewoo saw it too — the black domain peeling away, Jeju Island reappearing before their eyes.

Zing.

Ziiing.

Splash!

······ Countless ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠warps bloomed in midair. Some of them landed safely within Jeju’s interior. Others plunged straight into the sea.

“Gah! Gah—!”

“S-save me!”

At the sight of them, Park Taewoo snapped out orders at once.

“Bring every ship in close and pull those people out! All Union members — move without delay!”

With that, Park Taewoo threw himself into the sea.

The moment the Abyss vanished and Jeju Island reappeared, the world turned upside down. It was not merely the island that had returned — more than six hundred thousand Jeju residents, believed dead for thirty-eight days, had come back alive. Master’s claim that no one who sank into the Abyss could ever return had been proven a lie.