The Key to Heaven
Yet the cycle of reincarnation was a providence that even the God of Creation dared not touch.
Providence stood above truth itself—an inviolable concept no one could interfere with. Thus no one could know when or where the soul of Greed would reincarnate again.
But Fina had found him.
The man standing before her eyes.
The karma the Demon of Greed carried was nothing but death itself.
Demons could not reincarnate by nature. The moment they died, they were destined to vanish completely. And yet the Demon of Greed had been able to reincarnate thanks to the blessings of the twin goddesses.
The problem was… the karma itself could never be erased.
It must have been a fate of certain death. He would have faced death countless times. He was supposed to die at least once—yet if he still lived, that meant only one thing.
Death had been disguised through Fina’s sacrifice.
Fina must have severed the karma by staking her own soul. No—calling it “severed” was inaccurate. She had swapped it.
Only then did Hypnos finally understand the true nature of the colossal soul cradled in the goddesses’ arms.
A being who carried karma of roughly the same magnitude as the Demon of Greed’s mortal fate. That being had died in his place, and the man before him—the End—had taken the karma upon himself instead.
How was something like this even possible?
Who… who in the world designed this?
Everyone had been deceived. Kind, gentle Fina could never have devised such a scheme on her own. Perhaps even she had not fully understood it. Even the designer himself might never have been certain of the exact ending.
And so Hypnos was curious.
About the End.
About the story of the very first time he had died.
As Hypnos said, I had died once.
When I faced Baal, I had been consumed by a Fragment of Ruin. I had revived afterward, but—
“That is not the time I mean. You must have died earlier, when Fina expended her soul. That was when true death came for you.”
…Could he be talking about Wilhelm?
At the end of the Great Expedition. I had slain the Demon King, yet a bug had forced Wilhelm into a game over. The Demon King had seized Wilhelm’s body, but he had never managed to take the soul.
“Ah! Wilhelm. That vast will I sense far away belongs to the one called Wilhelm. Yes. At that moment, the End… Park Hyunmyung as well… must have died.”
“I died then? That’s absurd.”
Back then it had still been nothing more than a game. I had watched Wilhelm die on a computer monitor.
“Please tell me everything about that situation. In detail.”
It was a direction I had never even considered. So I recounted every detail of what had happened then.
Hypnos stroked his chin.
“…I see. The Fragment of Ruin the Demon King possessed was the closest thing to Ruin itself. If that fragment recognized the soul of Greed, then its true target was never Wilhelm.”
“It was after me?”
“Yes. It must have coveted the soul and body of Greed—the vessel capable of infinite growth.”
“…But Fina stopped it.”
“Correct. The Goddess of the Sky, Fina, would have wanted to prevent that catastrophe at all costs. Yet she could not stop it completely.”
“Wilhelm…”
Wilhelm had died. Because of the bug created by the Fragment of Ruin. But the one who should have died from that bug was not Wilhelm—it was me.
“When Fina blocked it with her sacrifice, the Fragment of Ruin turned its sights on Wilhelm instead. The stature forged by Wilhelm’s body and soul was no less than Greed’s own.”
“He died in my place?”
“…I cannot deny it. But do not worry. Wilhelm’s soul surely knows as well. The fact that his will still stands with you means he does not hate you.”
Wilhelm’s will was with me—together with the wills of the twin goddesses. Even knowing that his death had been because of me.
“The problem… is the Demon King.”
“He would have grown even stronger after taking Wilhelm’s body.”
“Yes. And once he claimed Wilhelm’s flesh, the true invasion must have begun.”
“That’s right.”
“Lord of Demise, he is after you.”
“…The reason for the invasion is me?”
The claim that the Demon King had suddenly invaded Earth because of me. Looking back, everything had changed after Wilhelm’s death. Not because Wilhelm died—but more precisely, because of me.
“Once he realized that the being connected to Wilhelm was Greed, he would never have sat still.”
“How does the Demon King even know about Greed? Greed was a demon from the Age of Ruin. The Demon King didn’t exist back then.”
The Demon King had been born after the Age of Ruin—after Pangenia rose into the sky.
Hypnos spoke.
“The Demon King is… a child of Ruin, yet a failed creation. He will want to prove he is no failure by dominating the body and soul of Greed. And without question, he will want to surpass Ruin itself…”
Hypnos closed his eyes.
The Demon King who had stolen Wilhelm’s body would have grown powerful. Judging by the will Wilhelm left behind, that body too must have possessed an essence similar to Greed’s—an infinite desire for strength given physical form.
Hypnos reconstructed the sequence of events. And he found something strange.
“…Why did you launch the Great Expedition?”
“From the beginning, the game’s goal was to kill the Demon King.”
The game Pangenia had been designed so that players would kill the final boss, the Demon King. They had even advertised that whoever slew the Demon King would have a wish granted.
But something felt off.
“Why did the Demon King have to die? Killing him would not have ended anything.”
Pangenia’s salvation did not come from killing the Demon King. How much harm had the Demon King actually inflicted on Pangenia in the first place? There were minor incidents tied to the Demon Realm, yet the greatest threat to Pangenia was never the Demon King.
…Listening to him, it truly was strange.
Hypnos continued.
“Perhaps every possibility, every outcome, was designed to lead to the Demon King.”
“You’re saying every gamer was meant to reach the Demon King in the end?”
“Not everyone. It was designed so that you would reach him.”
It had been arranged so that I would inevitably arrive there.
I pondered for a moment before speaking. In other words, what Hypnos was saying was—
“…That the Demon King is the designer?”
The Hidden Trait, Heaven.
It felt as though I had been struck over the head with a hammer. A possibility I had never once considered.
The one and only king who ruled the Demon Realm, called the Sovereign of Demons. The Demon King had designed and created the game Pangenia?
That the game’s objective—“slay the Demon King”—had actually been a means to force the soul of Greed to reach him?
The Demon King… coding…?
The moment the thought formed, I shook my head inwardly. Regardless, on Earth Pangenia had appeared as a game. Someone had interpreted it as a game and released it.
Until now I had pointed to an entirely different person as the one connected to that.
MintChocoIsDelicious.
I had always suspected he was the one who created and released the game. He constantly dominated the top ranks of the Hall of Fame, yet never once revealed himself. No one knew his identity, yet he remained active without fail.
That was why I had guessed he was the one who coded and built Pangenia. He knew information no one else did and used it to stay at the top, yet even that felt more like a “test” he was running. In short, the producer.
And if the designer was the Demon King—
“Then who is Bluebird?”
Bluebird. A being I had only recently learned of through Isabella. I had thought Bluebird was the designer. He seemed to know the core of the game, after all. I had privately guessed that he had created the framework of Pangenia and handed it over to MintChocoIsDelicious.
That guess had been wrong.
Hypnos tilted his head.
“‘Bluebird’?”
“A bastard who calls himself an operator. He made contracts with people of Pangenia so that gamers on the brink of death could possess them.”
“…The more I hear about this ‘game,’ the more it resembles the Dream World I created.”
The Dream World. Inside the World Tree, Hypnos had built a world of dreams so that every evil god would dream endlessly and be forgotten.
And now he said the game Pangenia resembled that Dream World.
“Similar?”
“There are many kinds of dreams. Lucid dreams, dreams one does not realize are dreams, dreams of becoming imaginary beings, dreams that feel as though they could happen in reality…”
“But this isn’t a dream.”
“Yes. It is reality. More precisely, a dream made into reality. Lord of Demise, do you know why I built the Dream World inside the World Tree and made it my domain?”
“No idea.”
“Because of the Golden Rule.”
“……!”
Ah! Only after hearing those words did everything click into place.
Through Broken Fragments of the Golden Rule, players awakened and transformed. I was no different. Even now, transforming into Randolph still consumed an enormous quantity of Golden Rule fragments.
Yet they clearly existed. And the power that allowed them to exist was, ultimately, the Golden Rule.
“The Golden Rule is a powerful medium that turns dreams into reality. Even though the primordial world contained only the World Tree, countless species could appear—all thanks to the Golden Rule.”
A power that turned imagination into reality. Of course the Golden Rule had been involved in the birth of species. In that case, the Golden Rule itself was the power and authority of Creation.
Hypnos continued.
“And as you already experienced while climbing the floors, my domain inside the World Tree became both dream and reality. That ‘game’ is the same. Still… something feels strange.”
“What feels strange?”
“In Pangenia they create puppets through contracts, and on Earth they create accessors who control those puppets through a game. In between, it seems there are multiple ‘operators’ each assigned their own roles. In that case… even the Demon King may not be the true designer in the fullest sense.”
Designer. Producer. And operators.
Perhaps they had looked at the Dream World Hypnos created and conceived the game Pangenia from it.
At the same time, genuine curiosity rose in me.
“They must have some ultimate goal, right?”
“Yes. Their purposes all seem different… yet the fact that they continue to fulfill their assigned roles means the picture they are painting is ultimately similar. It is merely a contest over who will claim the finished painting.”
They moved separately for their own ends. Yet they never forgot their roles. They were racing toward the completion of the painting. Who would place the final stroke and become the painting’s master remained unknown.
I stroked my chin.
What they were aiming for—
Hypnos murmured softly.
“To connect two worlds would require an unimaginable amount of Golden Rule… where in the world did they… In Pangenia they supply bodies, on Earth they supply souls… By amplifying chaos and confusion, what they can obtain is… hmm. Could it be…!”
His expression turned utterly grave. I roughly understood as well.
The picture they were painting. In the end, it was—
“‘Heaven’?”
The moment I spoke, Hypnos nodded heavily.
“…Correct. It seems they are trying to forge a key and force open the Heavenly Realm. Wait… ah! Now I understand. The Demon King intended to become the key himself! If by any chance the Demon of Greed wounded Ruin and thereby gained the authority to reach Heaven…!”
Hypnos’s body trembled.
By making himself the final boss, the Demon King had tried to become the key that would open Heaven. But the Demon King’s purpose had failed. He had never succeeded in seizing me—the soul and body of Greed.
Yet something still nagged at me.
“…The Hidden Trait, Heaven.”
“Yes, that is precisely the key. But… wait a moment.”
“I have it.”
“……!!!”
Hypnos’s eyes went wide. Well. I was just as stunned. Who would have thought the purpose of the Hidden Trait “Heaven” was to serve as the key that opens the Heavenly Realm? Of course that could not be its only function, but—
Gulp.
“There is a high chance the Demon King already knows that the End possesses the ‘key.’ The other parties involved are still moving to create keys of their own, so they may not know… but that is exactly why the Demon King keeps invading Earth!”
The Demon King who inherited the bloodline of Ruin. He alone had known. That the soul carried by the Demon of Greed was the key to Heaven. It was never simply about coveting Greed’s infinite growth potential.
…The reason the Demon King began invading Earth was to find me—the soul of Greed.
Why does the Demon King invade Earth? At last I had the answer.
“Hypnos. Do you know anything about ‘Heaven’?”
The word had appeared countless times, yet I still did not truly understand the place. After a moment of hesitation, Hypnos spoke with difficulty, as though even uttering the words required caution.
“That place… is the ideal of the gods. The seat that holds the rise and fall of every world. The throne of the Absolute God, capable of creating worlds and destroying them.”
“…Absolute God.”
“But even if one forcibly forges a key, it can only be used if a ‘door’ exists. Unless a door leading to Heaven suddenly drops out of the sky…”
At that very moment—
Shiiing!
The air began to split open.
“Hm?”
Hypnos’s eyes flew wide. Something that should have been absolutely impossible was happening. No one could force their way into the World Tree’s dungeon, the Dream World.
Moments later the crack widened further, and—
—Kyahahahahaha!
…Hell appeared.
And the moment Hypnos saw Hell—
“Th-the Guardian of the Gate…!”
—he cried out in pure terror.
Seeing that reaction, I tilted my head.
“Guardian of the Gate?”
“Why is the guardian who protects the gate of Heaven here?”
“He’s my pet.”
“……?”
“Hell. What were you doing that you’re only showing up now?”