Chapter 340

Chapter 340
## Chapter 340

A specific four-word proverb was frequently cited in the homeland of Park Hyunmyeong.

Hudson had been dedicating his spare moments to mastering the Korean language.

Among the various expressions he had encountered, his personal favorite was *Nakjangbulip*.

It signified that once a move is made, there is no turning back.

Drawing a heavy breath, Hudson carefully set the necklace made of bone upon the balance.

In that very heartbeat.

*Creeeak.*

…The scale finally shifted.

《The offering placed upon the balance has reached a total value of ‘100,000’.》

《The ‘God of Merchants’ bestows a blessing equivalent to this worth.》

《The ‘Poring’ begins its transition into an ‘Angel Poring’!》

“Ah…!”

A sudden chill ran through him.

Hudson’s frame shook with a slight tremor.

Simultaneously, delicate wings emerged from the sides of the Poring.

The newly birthed ‘Angel Poring’ ascended into the air, instantly repositioning itself behind the harpy.

And then.

*Kiaaaaaak!*

The harpy let out a piercing shriek.

However, that was the extent of its resistance.

The Angel Poring expanded its form and consumed the harpy in a single, swift gulp.

【Hudson (Angel Poring) is the victor!】

He had succeeded.

…Victory was his!

【The concluding match of the round of 20 has finished.】

【The contests for the round of 10 are now commencing.】

【Hudson (Angel Poring) VS White King (Mok, the King of Ruin)】

Yet, there was no window for celebration.

Of all the possible rivals, he had to face the White King.

With unsteady eyes, Hudson gazed at the White King as he materialized.

But the White King, the moment he arrived.

*Thud!*

He simply took a seat.

Mok, the King of Ruin, mirrored the action.

It appeared he had no immediate desire for combat.

“You should sit as well.”

“…?”

“Let us observe. The clash between the Druid of the Golden Rule and the Forgotten God.”

Rather than engaging in battle, he proposed they spectate the other duel.

It was a suggestion Hudson found impossible to decline.

Primarily because Hudson’s own curiosity was piqued.

‘This works out for the best.’

The Angel Poring required a moment to replenish its energy reserves.

A figure of the White King’s status would likely not resort to deception.

Hudson lowered himself to the ground.

He began to watch the confrontation between Park Hyunmyeong and the Forgotten God.

“Hmm… this is proving to be more fascinating than I anticipated.”

The White King, observing the scene, rubbed his jaw and spoke with genuine interest.

Hudson, however, was speechless.

‘What… what on earth is that?’

…He was completely stunned.

The battle unfolding before him existed on an entirely different plane than the one he had just concluded.

The Monster Soul summoned by the Forgotten God following the ‘Primeval Dragon’ was the ‘Primeval Necromancer’.

It was unleashing a barrage of curses and calling forth ‘Death Knights’ to strike at the Angel Behemoth.

Dozens of these Death Knights were surrounding the Angel Behemoth, systematically hunting it down like a group of predators.

“Oh-ho. Are those Death Knights composed of the ‘souls of the forgotten knights’?”

Furthermore, these were no typical undead soldiers.

They were formidable.

Every single one of them possessed terrifying strength.

They had been forged from the spirits of legendary knights who had been lost to time.

“It appears the Druid of the Golden Rule is finally cornered. At this pace… hmm?”

But in that precise moment.

Just as the Angel Behemoth’s downfall seemed inevitable.

“It has transformed again?”

…It had reached a new stage.

Dianax, the Angel Behemoth.

And now.

“A fox possessing ten tails…”

“A Ten-Tailed Fox!”

A Ten-Tailed Fox.

In an age where even a Nine-Tailed Fox was treated as a myth.

The appearance of a Ten-Tailed Fox was naturally regarded as the manifestation of a fox deity.

It was undergoing a ceaseless evolution.

It was upwardly shifting its very existence.

Much like a supreme raid boss.

“Now, this is a spectacle worth watching.”

The White King’s gaze, previously passive, began to spark with true intrigue.

…Yet, he assumed that would be the final transformation.

—

I had neutralized the self-destructive explosion of the Primeval Dragon by shifting into the ‘Angel Behemoth’.

It had survived thanks to a health pool that matched its titanic proportions.

Consequently, the ‘Forgotten God’ had formulated a counter-strategy.

It had initiated a fight by deploying a creature that the Angel Behemoth could never hope to defeat.

‘…Exactly how many times will it change?’

As I suspected.

The Forgotten God had nearly managed to take down the Angel Behemoth using the ‘Primeval Necromancer’.

The kill should have been finalized.

However, when pushed to the brink, it altered its shape once more.

‘A Ten-Tailed Fox…!’

Though forgotten by history, it was a celestial fox that had once graced the world.

That legendary creature had returned to the realm of the living.

Two evolutions in rapid succession.

Because of this, every eye in the arena was fixed upon it.

“Simply stunning.”

“Gasp!”

“I can feel my heart racing!”

The onlookers watched the Ten-Tailed Fox and shouted out in wonder.

It possessed a magnetic charm that bypassed logical defenses.

Merely looking at it caused one’s pulse to quicken.

This effect extended even to the ‘undead’.

The Primeval Necromancer and the Death Knights had halted their onslaught.

‘Even though six of my offspring have combined.’

The creature formed from the fusion of six of the 13 beasts was the Primeval Necromancer.

Representing nearly half of their total number, it was born from ‘darkness’, the polar opposite of the divine.

The ‘Primeval Necromancer’ was a monstrosity that rivaled a minor deity.

And yet, to be rendered helpless by a simple aura of charm.

-Focus. Regain your senses.

She spoke, lacing her command with a potent curse.

Only then did the Necromancer and the Death Knights resume their advance.

However, the celestial energy radiating from the Ten-Tailed Fox’s tails was a force of absolute opposition.

As the tide of the battle turned once more, the ‘Forgotten God’ scowled.

Irritation bubbled up at the repetitive nature of the struggle.

-Dark Lord. The bearer of the blighted crown.

The Forgotten God unleashed an even more intense hex.

She targeted not the Ten-Tailed Fox, but her own Primeval Necromancer.

Then.

*Rumble! Ruuumble!*

A localized black hole materialized.

The Death Knights and the Primeval Necromancer were dragged into its depths.

*Riiiiip!*

Shortly after, a colossal skeleton warrior emerged, physically tearing through the void.

It wore a crown of sorrow.

That was the authentic manifestation of the ‘Primeval Necromancer’.

A permanent undead, a unique horror against which charms and status effects were entirely futile!

-Let us conclude this affair, you offspring of those two loathsome goddesses.

The Forgotten God was certain of her victory.

No matter how sacred the Ten-Tailed Fox might be, it could not surpass the Dark Lord.

This was a sorcerer whispered to be the mightiest in the ancient past.

A true demon who had bartered its own flesh to forge a pact with a malevolent deity.

‘My child.’

Since she was the very deity who had accepted that pact.

She understood the Dark Lord’s capabilities better than any other being.

There would be no further evolutions.

In fact, any further change would be pointless.

With the Dark Lord on the field, whatever form the opponent took would be irrelevant.

-Can you find a way out of this trap as well?

The Forgotten God smirked.

In that instant, the Dark Lord drove the Ten-Tailed Fox into a corner.

None of the fox’s strikes could penetrate its defenses.

Just as the Dark Lord prepared to sever its neck.

“…W-what am I seeing?”

“Incredible. Another evolution?”

“This makes three!”

“Is that… a white dragon?”

“T-that… those can’t possibly all be wish beads, can they?”

…Against all expectations, a third evolution occurred.

This time, the creature took the shape of a white dragon.

What truly terrified the crowd, however, was the count of the wish beads the dragon held.

A total of eleven.

-Eleven Holy Heavens…!

But the shock felt by the ‘Forgotten God’ was far more profound.

It was only natural.

Compared to this, Dianax, the Angel Behemoth, and even the Ten-Tailed Fox.

…They were insignificant in the presence of this entity.

The being known as ‘Holy Heaven’.

This dated back to an era long lost.

…Before the ‘heavens’ were merged into a single entity.

‘In the dawn of time, the heavens were fragmented into many parts, and the ruler of eleven of those pieces was the Eleven Holy Heavens.’

This realization only deepened her confusion.

Because the Eleven Holy Heavens was a being that should be impossible to reach through the evolution of a ‘Monster Soul’.

Was it because it was favored by the goddess?

Nonsense.

Even with such favor, this was an impossibility.

This was something from the outside.

A being that had been erased, one that could no longer exist.

-You… what are you, how can you… a presence beyond the ‘Truth’!!

…It had been struck from existence by ‘Truth’.

The Proposal.

The most critical element in the development of a ‘Monster Soul’ was the person who summoned it.

The summoner’s vocation and their very spirit would merge with the ‘Monster Soul’, guiding it toward its most fundamental and essential form.

Essentially, the 3rd floor was a gauntlet designed to reveal the ‘core of the soul’.

It was meant to evolve the creature into a reflection of one’s self, or to bring forth a hidden aspect for a battle of identities.

But a creature ‘beyond Truth’ should not be able to manifest here.

The deleted.

How could a thing that had been expunged and lost forever be called forth!

For such a thing to be possible, the vessel who summoned it must also be a person who exists ‘beyond Truth’.

In other words, the ‘Druid of the Golden Rule’ standing before her was such an anomaly.

‘Truth deletes or overwrites anything that does not align with its laws.’

The Forgotten God understood.

The sheer dread of ‘Truth’.

Truth had consolidated the many Holy Heavens into one ‘heaven’, wielding a power so absolute that even the ‘gods’ lived in fear of it.

‘Truth’ possessed the authority to delete beings that fell outside its established parameters, or to overwrite them, turning them into something entirely different.

If a being was deleted or overwritten, the original was thoroughly destroyed.

Total annihilation.

It meant being physically and conceptually wiped out.

No one would even remember what had been there.

The world would simply assume things had always been the way they were. Since such a being existed outside the awareness of all life, it was called ‘beyond Truth’.

Under normal circumstances, even she shouldn’t have known of its existence.

But because she was a ‘Forgotten God’, she grasped the concept through pure instinct.

To be forgotten was effectively the same as being deleted.

‘Not deleted, and not overwritten…?’

But this individual was different.

If the Druid of the Golden Rule were truly a being ‘beyond Truth’, he shouldn’t be standing in front of her.

The fact that he was present and had shown himself meant…

‘The one who severed the Gate of Truth…!’

The Forgotten God was seized by a sudden chill.

…He had cut it.

The Gate of Truth.

This would only be possible if he had cleaved and shattered the absolute Gate of Truth, the repository of all cosmic laws.

But such a feat was impossible unless one held the power to create the world itself.

He had severed what was meant to be indivisible.

He had achieved the impossible.

Then this man was not merely the ‘Druid of the Golden Rule’.

He was something far greater.

A being with a special power that defied imagination.

‘How is such a thing possible?’

The Forgotten God shook her head in disbelief.

For a mere human to cut the Gate of Truth—something she herself could not damage, something she wouldn’t even dream of attempting.

It was a reality she struggled to accept.

*Guaaaaaaaah!*

In a sudden burst, the Dark Lord shrieked.

Following that, the Dark Lord’s skeletal structure began to turn to dust.

The Dark Lord turned its gaze toward her, the Forgotten God.

-…

The Forgotten God remained silent.

In its final cry, she read the silent plea in the Dark Lord’s eyes: ‘save me’.

It was already far beyond her power to intervene.

Eleven Holy Heavens.

As the name implied, the eleven ‘wish beads’ flared with light, accelerating the demise of the Dark Lord—a death that she, the Forgotten God, had tried to delay.

‘I understand now why the Eleven Holy Heavens was deleted.’

It was because it held dominion over time.

Truth could never have permitted its existence.

Everything that was deleted and lost were entities that controlled absolute concepts.

Even if their raw power wasn’t immense, Truth would never tolerate them simply ‘possessing’ such authority.

It would delete them, or overwrite them into a different state.

So that the specific power could never be wielded again.

【The ‘Druid of the Golden Rule (Eleven Holy Heavens)’ is the victor!】

He had triumphed, and she had suffered a loss.

Yet, something else was stirring within her—a curiosity that outweighed the sting of her failure.