Chapter 188

Chapter 188
## Chapter 188: Union VS Isera

—

‘Something is definitely off.’

The moment Union scanned his personal storage, the weight of a horrific reality crashed down on him.

It wasn’t a minor glitch; it was a total, ruinous disaster.

‘Every single one of my EXP potions has vanished!’

A wave of vertigo hit him, making his head spin.

Those weren’t just simple consumables. They were the distilled essence of the immense power he had painstakingly gathered over countless years. The very precaution he had taken to preserve his strength during the volatile transition between dimensions had turned into a blade pressed against his own throat.

‘Who could have possibly done this?’

The logic escaped him. An inventory was a sanctuary accessible to his consciousness alone. In all his time as the mage of the Golden Rule, no one had ever managed to breach that private space. It was a sovereign right granted only to him.

‘Only the experience draughts are gone. This was a surgical, intentional theft.’

The most unsettling part was the selectivity; the rest of his hoard remained untouched. Only the potions had been plucked away. Union rubbed his jaw, deep in thought. Could it have been Isera? After all, she held his very soul as insurance.

But he quickly dismissed the notion. If Isera had intended to strip him of his power through their soul-bond, bringing him to Earth would have been a waste of effort. There would have been no point in granting him a fourteen-day window of freedom.

‘To infiltrate my personal dimension, someone would have to be standing right next to me. And the only entity that’s been lingering in my shadow lately…’

He paused. He hadn’t been traveling with the demonic host. He had been operating as a lone agent, fulfilling Isera’s directives on his own terms.

No, there was one exception. A single creature. The entity that had bypassed space to appear directly in his path.

‘Jeongtong.’

…The small reaper that no longer answered to its former master.

—Kyahahaha!

The diminutive spirit stood before him now, its laughter as wild and boisterous as ever. Union looked down at it, his voice tight with suspicion.

“Was it you? Did you raid my inventory for the EXP potions?”

—Kyahahaha!

The answer was clear. Jeongtong gave an enthusiastic, bobbing nod.

Good grief. Union pressed a hand to his face, feeling a headache brewing.

“Why? Who gave you the order to do that?”

—Kya?

The creature shook its head side to side. It hadn’t been ordered by anyone. Union sensed no deception; the nature of a Jeongtong was fundamentally simple. They lacked the complex intellect required for elaborate lies. Yet, the fact remained: it had accessed his private vault at will.

‘Jeongtong are masters of spatial manipulation. But this specific one… its grasp of spatial law must be bordering on the miraculous.’

It was a complete outlier. This wasn’t just another spirit of its kind; it was on an entirely different plane of existence. An inventory wasn’t a mere pocket of folded space; it was a hard-locked, isolated dimension. To bypass those barriers without consent implied a divine-level mastery of the void. And if it acted of its own volition…

“Listen to me. I won’t be angry,” Union said, his voice dropping into a coaxing, gentle tone. “Just give them back, all right? No one else can utilize that power anyway.”

He hated having to plead, but he was backed into a corner. He hadn’t even felt the potions being lifted; he had no way of tracking where the creature had stashed them. They hadn’t been destroyed—his experience was soul-locked and sealed—but without the physical vials, that power was out of reach.

“Be a good little reaper. If you return them, I’ll see to it that whatever you desire is yours.”

—Kyahaha!

“That’s right. What do you want? Is there a specific treat you’d like?”

—Kyahahaha!

“What’s that? A soul? Of course, your kind craves souls. But I don’t happen to have any… Wait a second. That soul in your hand… why does it look so familiar? …Hold on, is that *mine*?”

—Kyahahaha!

—

“Unbelievable.”

Union let out a long, weary breath as he looked toward the earth below. Down there, a sea of “sinners” stood, their voices a dull, unintelligible hum in the distance. He couldn’t focus on them.

‘Everything has gone to hell.’

He could only curse the hand fate had dealt him. How had his grand design unraveled so quickly? It was undeniable: his streak of misfortune had begun the moment that creature appeared.

‘I’ve been stripped of every leverage I had.’

He didn’t have the full picture, but it was clear that Jeongtong hadn’t just stolen his growth potions—it had somehow intercepted the very soul Isera had been using to keep him on a leash. Since that moment, he had found himself playing errand boy to the reaper, performing the most absurd tasks.

Stopping a carriage from crushing an old man, protecting a child from a stray animal, intercepting a common crook… it was a relentless marathon of “good deeds.”

‘Is the goal to turn me against the legions?’

The reason Jeongtong had warped him to this specific coordinates was likely the same. It wanted him to shield the humans and oppose the demons. Yet, Union had come here with the express intent of purging this world. He viewed this realm of sinners as a cancer that required excision.

‘My power, my soul, and then there’s…’

Union shifted his gaze. There was a third factor, perhaps even more significant than his stolen assets.

‘Magnificent.’

Jeongtong. The creature had shifted into the majestic, evolved form of a true reaper, and Union found himself utterly captivated. It had single-handedly collapsed multiple dimensional warps. He had never witnessed a Jeongtong possessing such raw, regal authority. It was a sight so brilliant it was almost blinding.

‘The Sovereign of Jeongtong.’

That was the true prize. He wanted it more than anything. He craved the chance to possess such a singular, peerless being. Isera and her demonic hordes had never truly mattered to him; he had only offered his service to further his own ends. If turning on the demons meant he could claim this Jeongtong for himself, he would do it without hesitation. Once he was free of his contracts, he could always return to the task of cleansing the Earth later.

—

With a sudden flurry of motion, Isera began her advance, flanked by an army of 200,000 demons. Under normal circumstances, she would have stayed in the rear, but the tide of battle had turned in a way she couldn’t ignore.

‘The gate was shut by force. Someone with a high-level spatial affinity I haven’t accounted for.’

The vanguard she had sent through first had been utterly annihilated. Not a single report had come back. She couldn’t get a clear read on the battlefield, only the certainty that the portal had been sealed against her will. It was a catastrophic variable.

‘Thirty thousand soldiers, snuffed out like candles. Such a pointless waste.’

Isera’s expression soured. If this continued, she would be no better than Ahram, that pathetic corpse king she had always looked down upon—the fool who was deleted before the war even started. She decided to personally oversee the destruction of whatever obstacle stood in her way.

It didn’t take long for her to find the source.

“Inventory: Penance Rain.”

A sudden downpour of amber droplets hissed through the air. It was a deluge of sanctified energy designed to sap the strength of demonic beings. Someone was attempting a preemptive strike before they could even reach the world’s energy veins.

Isera squinted through the golden mist at the figure maintaining the holy field.

“…Union.”

It was him. Exactly as predicted. Basara had been right—the humans of the Empire were inherently treacherous. He had turned his back on them.

“Have you lost your mind? Have you forgotten the terms of our pact?”

Isera lifted her left hand. Above her palm, a sphere of radiant energy flickered. It was Union’s soul—the core of his existence.

“With a simple thought, I can…”

She intended to snuff the light, ending his life in a heartbeat. But then, something impossible happened.

*Fwoosh!*

Abruptly, the soul-orb was engulfed in a burst of phantom flames, vanishing into nothingness in an instant.

‘What just…?’

Isera’s eyes darted to Union. He remained suspended in the air, looking perfectly composed. His soul had been destroyed, yet he showed no signs of agony or death. Which meant only one thing.

‘It was a decoy? A fake soul?’

A dummy. If the essence she held was a counterfeit, the result made sense. But that was impossible. The laws of the contract were absolute; a fake soul couldn’t have anchored the agreement.

“You treacherous worm… what trick is this?”

“It seems you’ve been deceived as well,” Union replied, his voice carrying a cryptic edge.

Isera couldn’t grasp his meaning, but she didn’t have time to ponder it. Union was already moving into a combat stance.

“Inventory: Crusader Set.”
“Inventory: Sacred Mindset.”
“Inventory: Candle of Purification.”
“Inventory…”

A relentless stream of legendary relics and enchanted tools began to manifest around him. But that wasn’t the end of it.

*Viiiing!*
*Viiiiing!*

Below them, ripples in space began to tear open as human reinforcements started warping onto the field. It appeared Union’s betrayal had been meticulously orchestrated from the start. All his talk of hating the sinners must have been a choreographed performance.

Isera shut her eyes for a fleeting second, feeling a cold fury she hadn’t experienced in eons. She was less angry at the betrayal and more at the fact that she had been played for a fool.

‘Even with a second chance at life, I’m making the same mistakes.’

Basara’s warnings echoed in her mind. She still lacked the intuition to see through the hearts of others. She thought she had evolved, but this proved she was still the same naive commander.

‘No matter.’

Unlike her previous failures, she had the power to rectify this mistake immediately. And since her opponent was merely Union, the situation was almost comical.

‘Did you find a relic capable of mass-sealing portals?’

It was a surprise, certainly. But it didn’t matter what gear he pulled from his sleeves or what gadgets he deployed. The conclusion would remain unchanged. As long as she wasn’t facing some hidden, god-tier powerhouse, Union was nothing more than a nuisance.

“…Very well. If you are so eager to rot, I will oblige you.”

Isera slowly opened her eyes, her gaze locking onto her target.

—

Union felt a surge of grim confidence.

‘The demonic host is at its absolute breaking point. We can actually win this.’

He had observed them closely. The demons were in a far more fragile state than even he had been with his powers locked. They struggled to maintain flight, their movements clumsy and uncoordinated as if the very atmosphere of this world was rejecting them.

‘Isera is nearly drained.’

Furthermore, Isera had poured the bulk of her reserves into the “Mass Teleport” spell. There was no way she could have replenished her mana in such a short window. This wasn’t the mana-rich environment of Pangeniar; on Earth, recovery was a grueling, slow process. She was likely operating at thirty percent capacity at best.

And Union wasn’t fighting this war alone.

“Follow the Guardian of the Black Egg!”
“The Guardian will lead us to victory!”

For reasons Union couldn’t fathom, the “sinners” had branded Jeongtong with a grand title and were rallying behind the creature. Their combat potential wasn’t half-bad either.

‘A collection of 3-star transcendents. It’s enough.’

They would be sufficient to mop up the rank-and-file demons. Though the enemy held the advantage in sheer numbers, their weakened state leveled the playing field. With the specialized anti-demon weaponry he had distributed, the odds were firmly in their favor.

‘Isera. Once you peel back the layers, she’s manageable.’

Among the demon lords, Isera was the most predictable. Any other lord would have sensed the trap and retreated, but her pride made her vulnerable. She lacked the overwhelming physical dominance of Basara or any reality-bending authorities. She relied on specific mechanics—mechanics that could be countered.

‘Crusader Set: Reveal the hidden vulnerabilities of the damned.’

Union was a virtuoso when it came to exploiting a foe’s weak points. He simply had to tailor his strategy to the target’s flaws. By activating the hidden properties of his armor, he could see right through the demonic defenses. Even in his diminished state, Union was certain he could exert the pressure of a top-tier 3-star transcendent. His inventory was his true strength.

‘Sacred Mindset, Candle of Purification, and Grace of Water… combined, they will put a total lock on Isera’s abilities.’

Every item was a direct hard-counter to her repertoire. From the moment he had first bowed to her, Union had been secretly dissecting her every move, waiting for this exact moment.

‘There it is.’

A thin, cold smile touched Union’s lips. It was all going according to plan. His eyes finally zeroed in on the fatal flaw in Isera’s defense.