The Advent of the End
The ‘Master’ of the Hidden Room has appeared.
Master, survive from ‘Another Ruin’.
A simple message floated up in that instant.
Survive? What bizarre rule was this now?
Yet the Forgotten Gods were thrown into confusion. They had sensed something’s arrival, but only now did they learn its name was Another Ruin.
—Ruin?
—Why is Ruin inside the World Tree’s dungeon?
—How can a weapon of the Heavenly Realm…?
Even if it was called Another Ruin, Ruin was still Ruin. And they knew Ruin all too well. That power was something even the gods themselves could never dare to look upon.
Thud.
The moment the Forgotten Gods beheld the form of the newly appeared Another Ruin—
—That thing… is Ruin?
—But what is that darkness?
—Beyond even the Four Great Evil Gods.
—Still, no matter how vast the darkness it carries, it cannot touch us who have already been forgotten, can it?
Every one of them was bewildered. This was nothing like the Ruin they knew. Moreover, these were gods who had already been defeated and forgotten, cast into this place. What more could Ruin possibly do here?
Ruin’s sole duty was the annihilation of the world. It could seize a god’s land and power, yet it could never extinguish the god itself. Only the Heavenly Realm was capable of that.
But such doubts did not last long.
The instant Another Ruin began to move, one by one their symbolic relics were shattered and erased.
…Then the Forgotten Gods understood.
—You—you were never Ruin!
—The one who proclaims the end of all things…!
—The End. It is the End!
—R-run!
They realized far too late that flight was already impossible.
The Demon of Greed.
One by one, the knights began to open their eyes.
“What in the world just happened…?”
“The Colosseum is gone?”
“Where’s the Forgotten God? The Druid of the Golden Rule? What the hell is going on?”
The Knights of the Golden Rule and the White King’s knights alike remembered nothing of what they had endured. They had simply closed their eyes and opened them again to find everything changed.
…So we lost.
The White King wore a self-mocking smile. In the end, they had been defeated. From the hazy scraps of memory that remained, he had been able to do nothing against the Druid of the Golden Rule. Worse, he had been swallowed by the Forgotten God’s darkness and controlled like a puppet.
Humiliating.
Yet the memory of being controlled stung far more than the defeat itself. And there was something else he simply could not recall no matter how hard he tried. He had clearly seen Wilhelm, had seen Ojuryeok, and had faced something else besides—
“Ugh…!!!”
The White King trembled finely, as though something were forcibly barring the way. Yet the sheer thrill of that moment still lingered in his bones. At this point only one thought remained.
…Just what had that thing been?
The volume of darkness the Druid of the Golden Rule carried had defied imagination—an aggregation of foreboding he had never once sensed even from Ojuryeok. That utterly foul stench he had never smelled before must have come from it.
And yet—
It was unmistakably Ojuryeok’s presence and scent.
That much he remembered. The creature had reeked of Ojuryeok, and even its soul had carried Ojuryeok’s aura.
It must have devoured him.
He had meant to avenge that grudge, yet he had failed. The being had been far too unidentifiable for success. Having failed once already, Albino and Raiga would now be watching carefully. A second attempt would never work.
Forgive me, Ojuryeok.
The White King was one who kept every debt of gratitude and grudge with absolute fidelity. He still owed Ojuryeok a debt, and the fact that he had been unable to repay it filled him with regret.
But the greatest problem of all was—
“Where did the Commander go?”
“C-could he have… against the Forgotten God…?”
…that the Druid of the Golden Rule had vanished.
The Knights of the Golden Rule were all in an uproar. Everyone shared the same fear: that he had died fighting the Forgotten God, and that the complete disappearance of the Colosseum was the result.
The White King wore an ambiguous expression. It was a pity he had not been able to kill the man himself, yet—
“The Druid of the Golden Rule still lives.”
Albino spoke then. Nowhere to be seen, and yet alive? Albino surveyed the surroundings and continued.
“Had anything befallen the Druid of the Golden Rule, the World Tree of Honor itself would have withered and died.”
“…The World Tree doesn’t look entirely fine either, though.”
Rumble!
Kuuuuung!
Hudson was right. The World Tree was shaking violently from its very roots. The remnants of the World Tree scattered around them had all withered and dried.
Raiga spoke.
“…We continue advancing through the floors.”
“Finding the Commander should come first—”
“There is no need to search. The bastard left us behind and went on ahead.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Divinity has been granted to every one of us. It means that after defeating the Forgotten God, he bestowed the ‘Soul of the Forgotten Knight’ upon us all.”
“Ah…!”
Hudson’s eyes went wide. He opened his status window and confirmed that divinity had indeed been granted. In his panic he had failed to notice even so basic a fact.
The dignity required to obtain divinity was five hundred points—a score reachable only by victory over a Forgotten God. In other words, Park Hyunmyung had won, raised his dignity score, and departed alone ahead of them.
“Why would he go first?”
“He must have his reasons. Regardless, we must move on our own.”
They still had to complete the Unfathomable Achievement. It was a trial that required competing with other knight orders and reaching the roots before it could end. In the end, the only way to finish everything was to keep advancing.
Raiga then turned his gaze upon the White King.
“Will you continue, White King?”
“….”
“The Druid of the Golden Rule spared you—for the honor of all.”
“…He spared me?”
The White King’s eyes grew complicated. He had tried to kill the man, yet that same man had spared him.
“Correct. White King, the one who saved you was the Druid of the Golden Rule.”
Tyrant Grizzly testified. He was not alone; the gazes of the others were much the same.
“Since the bastard spared you, I likewise judge further combat meaningless. Should you still insist on fighting, I will not stop you, yet…”
Raiga’s voice turned razor-sharp—an unspoken pressure that this time he would kill without fail.
He spared me?
Why? The White King still could not understand. He was the one who had sought to annihilate even the man’s soul. And yet the man had shown him mercy and saved him. Did that mean the one who had eaten Ojuryeok was not him after all? Or had he suddenly felt guilt?
“If there are no objections, we depart.”
Taking silence for assent, Raiga began to walk—with long, swift strides. He spoke as though it were nothing, yet inwardly he must have been uneasy. Reaching the roots as quickly as possible was the only way out of this place.
…Why?
Regardless, the White King simply stood there, eyes still clouded with complexity.
Among the Forgotten Gods there circulated a story told half in jest: that if every Forgotten God gathered here were to resurrect, they could threaten even the Heavenly Realm itself. That they themselves could become Ruin.
But those Forgotten Gods who had actually experienced Ruin dismissed the notion as pure nonsense.
—Ruin is an absolute truth that can never be overcome.
—It is the extreme of infinity, invisible even to the eyes of gods, beyond any measure.
They shuddered and turned their heads away, as though they never wished to think of it again.
Of course, there were Forgotten Gods who refuted them.
—If Ruin truly possessed infinite power, should Pangenia not have been destroyed?
—A goddess’s sacrifice alone could not have stopped it, could it?
Because of the twin goddess Rhea’s sacrifice, Ruin had been unable to annihilate all of Pangenia. When Rhea died, Ruin’s acts of destruction had ceased. Most of the land had sunk into the Abyss, yet thanks to that the remaining twin goddess Fina had succeeded in lifting the surviving continents into the sky and preserving them.
Yet if Ruin’s power were truly infinite, stopping it would have been impossible. Rhea’s sacrifice alone would never have been enough. It was a natural question, and another rebuttal came at once.
—Because not all Ruin is the same.
—The Ruin dispatched by the Heavenly Realm has kinds.
—Catastrophe, Extinction, and Ruin.
—They are a form of punishment the Heavenly Realm metes out.
—Though all are called ‘Ruin,’ their purposes differ.
—All share the common point of destroying a world, yet the aftermath is different.
—Catastrophe shatters the soul; Extinction leaves nothing behind; Ruin casts everything down into the Abyss.
—Of these, the most dreadful punishment is of course the punishment of ‘Ruin.’
—It ought to have been the most dreadful, yet the Ruin that faced Pangenia was somehow different.
—…It gave birth to the Demon King.
—Then who was it that gave birth to the Demon King?
—We judge that it was the goddess Rhea.
Absurd nonsense. Yet certain evil gods insisted that nothing else could explain why Ruin had suddenly stopped. The very idea that Ruin—a mere weapon—could act together with a goddess was unimaginable.
—Ruin suddenly changed its attitude and joined the goddess?
—You’re writing a novel. Ruin possesses no such self-awareness.
—O ancient gods. Having forgotten your names and lost your memories, you have finally become distorted. Tsk tsk.
—I thought only mortals could fall into the swamp of oblivion.
They sneered freely. Only the oldest gods were spouting such rubbish. Indeed, after existing for long ages in a forgotten state, the phenomenon of oblivion would set in. Oblivion birthed distortion, and distortion gave rise to strange beliefs and convictions. Their behavior was exactly that.
If their words were true in the first place, the Demon King ought to have possessed the goddess’s holiness as well. Perhaps for that reason, no further rebuttals came.
It seemed the matter had been settled—until the oldest Forgotten God, who had remained silent, opened his mouth.
—…Ruin wished to create.
—It sought to combine the power of Genesis with the power of Ruin and give birth to the ‘End.’
—Yet it failed.
—Because of that, Ruin committed the great sin of failing to fulfill its duty.
—But the Heavenly Realm never leaves failure alone.
—A new Ruin will appear.
—Perhaps it has already appeared.
The claim that Ruin had wished to birth the End. No one believed it. Even the ancient evil gods who had spoken of Ruin did not. It was a claim advanced solely by the oldest Forgotten God.
And little wonder—among the gods themselves, the End was treated as something out of myth or legend. The End meant, quite literally, the end of all things, and was regarded as the sole means of extinguishing immortality. A power that made the impossible possible. Another truth that stood outside truth itself. That was the End.
They could only ‘guess’ that the End existed somewhere within the Heavenly Realm. If Ruin was the god that destroyed worlds, then the End was the god that destroyed gods. It was the sole means of opposing the Heavenly Realm. Therefore they believed the Heavenly Realm had no choice but to keep it sealed away with the utmost secrecy.
And yet—
—O End…
…it had appeared.
The End. The sole existence capable of opposing the Heavenly Realm!
The oldest Forgotten God quietly sank to his knees, for his thought had not been wrong.
Neither Catastrophe, nor Extinction, nor Ruin could directly destroy a god’s symbolic relic. Instead they stole the gods’ names and forced them into oblivion. After eons of such time the Forgotten God’s relic would degenerate and vanish, and only then would the god finally be extinguished. That had been the sole method of a god’s annihilation.
And yet—
—N-no!
—Stop!
—I-I am still…!
—How unjust!
Crunch!
With a crisp sound, the gods’ symbolic relics continued to shatter.