Beyond the Ancient Limit

Twenty-five days had passed since they entered the Ancient-grade ruin, the Wall of Void.

Jeon Jaewoo was currently holding a blade, scraping away at the thick scruff of his beard.

—How dare you use this noble body to scrape away foul stubble…!

The Ego Sword shuddered in what it clearly considered profound humiliation. It had already been nearly a month; was this thing never going to tire of throwing fits? Lingering in this desolate ruin for almost thirty days had left Jaewoo noticeably haggard, yet even at this very moment, monsters continued to charge relentlessly across the plains.

A crackling roar tore through the air as Myeolgeop roasted an encroaching Sea Serpent into a charred husk with a concentrated arc of lightning. Around Jaewoo stood four Skeleton Knights and hundreds of skeletal soldiers forming an impenetrable perimeter. Though beasts swarmed from every direction, he was never in any real danger thanks to his summons.

Surviving over a month in a ruin naturally posed logistical challenges for a human, particularly food and water, but Jaewoo had packed ample provisions inside Novum’s body before venturing in. Possessing potent regenerative abilities, Novum essentially doubled as a living spatial inventory and interdimensional pocket. Unlike Myeolgeop, who was a ruthless specialist built purely for war, the little spirit proved astonishingly versatile in practical everyday matters.

As a result, Jaewoo’s routine had settled into an ordinary rhythm: eat, sleep, and swing his blade in solitary practice.

During the early days of the conquest, he had hunted monsters directly alongside Myeolgeop, enduring grueling combat drills. Practical combat, rest, and more training. True to its nature as a supreme martial construct, Myeolgeop excelled at imparting martial prowess, orchestrating rest and exertion with uncanny precision. By now, however, the tier of encroaching monsters had scaled far too high for Jaewoo to face directly, leaving the trio of summons to handle the fighting while he focused on refining the basics.

Myeolgeop had engaged in non-stop combat for nearly thirty days, but with Novum continuously channeling planetary mana into its core, exhaustion was a non-factor. And whenever Jaewoo rested from his forms, he handed the Ego Sword over to the golem.

The moment Myeolgeop swung the blade, a brilliant flash blinded the horizon. The monsters nearby were obliterated instantly, and the resulting shockwave cleaved a distant mountain peak clean in two.

Jaewoo’s jaw dropped in awe.

Wow. That’s absurd.

A masterwork blade truly revealed its caliber depending on who wielded it. He wondered if he would ever be able to swing a sword with such overwhelming devastation.

When Myeolgeop took hold of the Ego Sword, even the Transcendent-grade trait Sword Spirit unlocked. Yet the final trait, Mind Sword, remained stubbornly sealed. To think there was a technique that even Myeolgeop, a construct boasting two inherent Transcendent-grade traits, could not awaken.

—To surrender my supreme self to a mere lump of earth and stone! Do you dare call yourself my master?!

“…”

Jaewoo wished he could stitch the obnoxious sword’s mouth shut, but lamentably, blades had no lips to sew. Still, the sparring and instruction alongside Myeolgeop had yielded undeniable results. Within a matter of days, Jaewoo felt his foundation as a hunter solidify dramatically. Having thoroughly purged impurities, built elemental resistances, and expanded his mana reserves by consuming the World Tree’s elixirs beforehand, his body absorbed the martial training like parched soil drinking rain.

A faint hum resonated through the air. Now, even with an ordinary sword in hand, channeling and projecting pure Sword Ki came to him effortlessly.

Time trickled forward until very little remained before the Wall of Void reached its final deadline. It was around this time that the ruin’s equivalent of a final boss was expected to materialize.

The ground writhed and split open. A monstrous entity, rivaling the sheer presence of the World Tree they had vanquished in the past, surfaced before Jaewoo’s group.

The instant Jaewoo’s eyes locked onto it, a primal chill seized his spine, forcing him to step back instinctively.

“…What in the world is that?”

“I’m scared, Master!” Novum cried, trembling as it flattened ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠itself tightly against Jaewoo’s shoulder.

The creature was a grotesque, gargantuan mass composed of countless churning tentacles. It was an abhorrent spectacle reminiscent of cosmic horror straight out of the Cthulhu Mythos, like some forgotten outer god crawling out from the abyss. Yet while Jaewoo recoiled, the Elder Lich’s skeletal jaw clattered in a mixture of dread and morbid fascination.

“My, what a magnificent specimen has emerged! If only I could drag the entirety of this glorious creature back to my laboratory…”

“There isn’t a laboratory on Earth that could hold that thing,” Jaewoo muttered under his breath.

The only one who remained completely unfazed was Myeolgeop, who stood on equal footing with such cataclysmic entities. And in truth, as long as the Elder Lich, Novum, and Myeolgeop fought as one, the abomination posed little threat. Wielding the Ego Sword while fueled by Novum’s boundless mana reserves and supported by the Elder Lich’s disruptive sorcery, Myeolgeop drove the tentacled monstrosity into a one-sided slaughter.

With a deafening cleave, Myeolgeop sliced effortlessly through the sea of writhing limbs, piercing the core concealed deep within the beast’s center. Roughly a day after the clash began, the aberrant titan collapsed and dissolved into silence.

Is that it? Is the raid finally over?

Feeling the stifling tension drain away, Jaewoo exhaled a weary breath. “Great work, everyone.”

Novum absorbed and tucked away the leftover severed tentacles into its slime body for safekeeping. By all accounts, a monster of this magnitude should have been the ultimate culmination of an Ancient-grade ruin. Yet the thirty-day time limit outlined by the Ruin System had not quite lapsed.

Perhaps they had simply wiped out the trial’s final guardian too quickly.

“Just to be safe, let’s not exit right away. We’ll wait out the remainder of the thirty days…”

The earth began to shudder violently before he could finish his sentence.

Jaewoo stiffened. This tremor was entirely different from before—it felt as though the very bedrock of the extradimensional space was cracking under an unbearable weight.

Don’t tell me there’s still something left?

They had just destroyed the apex predator an Ancient ruin could possibly manifest. But the ruin’s roster of foes was designated as infinite. If the count was limitless, then regardless of whether this was an Ancient-grade ruin, the scale of threats could theoretically climb without an ceiling.

A cataclysmic roar shook the firmament as an unfathomable volume of mana coalesced into a single point, giving rise to an entity that hovered before the party.

Jaewoo swallowed dryly.

[…This is exceptionally dangerous, Creator. Do not step forward under any circumstances.]

Even Myeolgeop, who had never once lost its composed precision, lowered its stance with palpable wariness.

What manifested before them was a colossal sphere of pure energy. Radiating from its smooth, iridescent surface was a terrifying chasm in power that defied description—a pressure so sublime and absolute that it felt as though a mortal priest were bearing witness to the divine resurrection itself.

Is that… a real god?

The Elder Lich trembled, his hollow eye sockets flickering with manic glee and stark terror as his teeth rattled violently. “…If a Mythic-grade ruin were designed to pit us against a singular sovereign, it would look precisely like that entity.”

Humanity had attempted to conquer only a single Mythic-grade ruin in its entire history. During that ill-fated crusade, the sheer volume of high-tier monsters had overwhelmed the allied forces, yet no single entity had possessed absolute, peerless omnipotence over all creation. But this entity hovering before them was different. That sphere of condensed energy felt like the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠culmination of an entire Mythic ruin’s ambient power refined into a single, conscious core—a supreme entity that mortal minds could only conceptualize as a true deity.

A low, piercing hum resonated as intense mana gathered across the sphere’s exterior. Viewed from below, the focal point resembled a colossal, unblinking celestial eye looking down upon insects.

Myeolgeop’s core flared as it barked an urgent command.

[Elder Lich! Novum! Protect the Creator!]

“Master! Forgive me!” Novum squeaked.

Before Jaewoo could react, Novum expanded its gelatinous form and swallowed him whole, sheltering him within its buoyant, shock-absorbent body. Simultaneously, Myeolgeop activated its Transcendent trait, Absolute Defense, erecting an enormous, golden hexagonal barrier across the vanguard. Novum routed its boundless planetary mana directly into the golem to sustain the construct, while the Elder Lich stacked his own sorcerous barrier on top of it, frail though it was in comparison.

A blinding flash engulfed the plains.

The dense mass of celestial mana detonated from the sphere, discharging a beam of apocalyptic energy straight toward them. The ray struck the barrier head-on with a roar that threatened to tear reality apart. The deflected energy sheared outward in wild prismatic torrents, and merely brushing against a stray dispersion wave caused a distant mountain range to vaporize into thin air.

“…Facing it directly makes its absurdity all the more appalling,” the Elder Lich muttered, clattering his jaw as his own layered barrier vanished the instant the beam brushed past it. It was far wiser to funnel every scrap of his mana into reinforcing Myeolgeop’s defense.

“Can you endure this, Golem?!” the lich shouted over the tempest.

[…It is within tolerable parameters.]

The sphere showed no sign of relenting, bathing Myeolgeop in a sustained deluge of blinding power. Even after an entire hour of continuous bombardment, the onslaught never ceased. Just like Novum, the energy sphere was actively siphoning mana directly from the ambient fabric of the ruin. It was obvious that it would not halt ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠its purge until every intruder was reduced to cosmic dust.

Though Myeolgeop received an unending supply of Natural Realm mana from Novum to maintain the shield, the sheer baseline output of the divine sphere was so overwhelmingly superior that fractures began webbed across the golden aegis.

“Listen to me, Golem!” the Elder Lich called out, his robes whipping violently in the shockwaves. “Your structural specifications are fundamentally outmatched! Even if you receive infinite mana, your internal threshold for processing that energy is completely different! Wouldn’t it be far wiser to convince the Maker to abandon the raid and flee?!”

Myeolgeop did not waver. It turned its mechanical gaze slightly toward the spirit.

[Spirit. Can you maintain the mana supply without interruption?]

“What? Yes! Of course, Senior!” Novum answered from around Jaewoo. As long as the ruin persisted, Novum’s synthesis with nature provided infinite mana to relay to Myeolgeop.

The energy sphere would never cease its assault until they were exterminated. However, their objective had never been to defeat this cosmic anomaly.

[We only need to endure until the allotted raid time reaches its conclusion.]

“Are you mad?!” the Elder Lich cried in utter disbelief. “If you persist, your physical chassis will be utterly obliterated!”

[With Novum’s regenerative support, my core structure will not dissolve entirely. And with the Creator’s Heaven’s Box, I can be restored anew.]

For Myeolgeop and the other summons, enduring every hardship to maximize the benefits reaped by their Creator was their sole purpose for existing. Very little time remained before the Wall of Void reached its final deadline—a day at most, perhaps merely hours. As long as Novum fed it continuous planetary mana, Myeolgeop would brace the threshold to its dying breath.

[Attend to the Creator diligently until I reactivate.]

“…”

Planting its limbs deep into the shattered earth, Myeolgeop bore the full, merciless brunt of the celestial beam without yielding ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a single inch. And beneath that blinding, cataclysmic light, the final moments of the month-long trial in the Wall of Void ticked down to their absolute end.