Chapter 348

Chapter 348
Chapter 348

—

【The ‘Ruler’ of the Secret Chamber reveals itself.】

【Endure the Ruler, ‘Alternative Ruin’.】

A brief notification materialized without warning.

But to endure?

What kind of peculiar requirement was this?

The Forsaken Deities were thrown into a state of agitation.

They sensed a presence had arrived, but they were learning for the first time that its designation was ‘Alternative Ruin’.

—Ruin?

—What is Ruin doing inside the Labyrinth of the World Tree?

—How did a weapon of the firmament end up here…?

Even if it was called Alternative Ruin, the essence of Ruin remained.

And they were intimately acquainted with ‘Ruin’.

Its scale of destruction was a force that even those of divine status dared not overlook.

Thud.

As the physical manifestation of ‘Alternative Ruin’ finally took shape, the Forsaken Deities…

—That entity… is Ruin?

—But what is the source of that ink-black void?

—It surpasses even the Four Great Calamity Gods.

—Yet, regardless of how vast its shadow is, it cannot touch those of us who have already faded from memory, can it?

They were collectively bewildered.

This entity bore no resemblance to the Ruin they remembered from the past.

Furthermore, they were fallen spirits who had already faced ruin, been erased from history, and sought refuge in this place.

What more could a force of Ruin achieve in this graveyard?

The purpose of Ruin was strictly the demolition of worlds.

It could strip a deity of their domain and their influence, but it lacked the authority to extinguish the existence of a god itself.

Only the highest heavens held that prerogative.

However, their skepticism was short-lived.

The moment Alternative Ruin began its advance.

As the icons that defined their very existence were shattered and wiped out one by one.

…The Forsaken Deities understood.

—You, you are not Ruin!

—The harbinger who signals the finale of all existence…!

—The Conclusion. It is The Conclusion!

—F-flee!

The realization dawned that there was no longer any path for escape.

The Fiend of Avarice.

One after another, the practitioners of the martial orders began to regain consciousness.

“What on earth just took place…?”

“The amphitheater has vanished?”

“The Forsaken Deity? The Shaman of the Gilded Law? No, what has occurred?”

The confusion was shared equally by the Order of the Gilded Law and the Order of the Pale Sovereign.

They found themselves unable to recall the events they had just lived through.

It felt as though they had blinked, and in that heartbeat, the entire landscape had been transformed.

‘…Was I bested?’

The Pale Sovereign allowed a bitter, mocking grin to surface.

Ultimately, he had met with failure.

Based on the hazy impressions returning to him, he hadn’t managed to land a single blow.

He was powerless against the Shaman of the Gilded Law.

Worse still, he had been submerged in the Forsaken Deity’s gloom and manipulated like a puppet.

‘Disgraceful.’

The recollection of being a thrall was far more stinging than the reality of the loss itself.

Moreover, there was a specific detail that eluded his memory no matter how hard he reached for it.

He was certain he had encountered Wilhelm, witnessed the Five Great Sovereignties, and looked upon something entirely different.

“Guh…!!!”

The Pale Sovereign’s frame gave a slight shudder.

It felt as if his mind was being obstructed by an external force.

Yet, the lingering intensity of that moment remained etched in his nerves.

At this juncture, only a single inquiry dominated his thoughts.

…What exactly was that person?

The depth of darkness radiating from the Shaman of the Gilded Law was beyond any rational scale.

It was a concentrated essence of dread he had never encountered, even from the Five Great Sovereignties.

That must have been the source of the utterly repulsive scent he had smelled—an aroma he had never before come across.

However.

‘It was undeniably the aura and scent of the Five Great Sovereignties.’

That fact remained clear.

The individual carried the fragrance of the Five Great Sovereignties, and he had even sensed their resonance within the man’s very spirit.

‘He definitely consumed them.’

He had attempted to settle that score, but he had fallen short.

The man was too much of a mathematical unknown to overcome.

Now that his first attempt had failed, Albino and Lyca would be maintaining a vigilant watch over him.

A second opening would not present itself.

‘My apologies, Five Great Sovereignties.’

The Pale Sovereign was a man who lived by the code of settling all accounts and vendettas.

And he still felt he owed a debt to the Five Great Sovereignties.

The Pale Sovereign felt a pang of regret that he had been unable to pay it back.

But the most pressing issue was.

“Where has the Lead Officer gone?”

“S-surely, against the Forsaken Deity…”

…The Shaman of the Gilded Law had vanished.

This realization threw the members of the Order of the Gilded Law into a state of alarm.

A single thought circulated through everyone’s mind.

Had he perished in the struggle against the Forsaken Deity?

Was the erasure of the entire colosseum the fallout of his death?

The Pale Sovereign’s expression turned grim.

While it was a disappointment that he wouldn’t be the one to end him…

“The Shaman of the Gilded Law is still among the living.”

It was Albino who broke the silence.

He was gone from sight, yet still alive?

Albino scanned the surroundings and continued.

“If the Shaman of the Gilded Law had fallen, the World Tree of Integrity itself would have shriveled to nothing.”

“…Though it doesn’t seem like the World Tree is in peak condition, either.”

Grind!

Boom!

Hudson was correct.

The World Tree was vibrating violently from its very core.

The offshoots of the World Tree in the immediate area had all turned brittle and passed away.

Lyca spoke up.

“…We shall persist in our ascent through the levels.”

“Locating the Lead Officer should be our first concern…”

“There is no requirement to search for him. He is the one who separated from us and pressed forward.”

“Excuse me? What are you implying by that?”

“Sacred Essence has been granted to us all. It signifies that after he overcame the ‘Forsaken Deity’, he distributed the ‘Spirits of Forsaken Paladins’ to everyone here.”

“Ah…!”

Hudson’s eyes went wide.

He immediately accessed his interface and confirmed that the ‘Sacred Essence’ had indeed been bestowed.

He had been so rattled that he hadn’t even noticed such a fundamental change.

The Stateliness required to achieve such divinity was 500 units.

It was a milestone that could only be reached by toppling a Forsaken Deity.

In other words, it proved that Park Hyunmyeong had triumphed, increased the Stateliness count, and then departed on his own path.

“Why would he go on without us?”

“He must have his motives. Regardless, we must proceed by our own strength.”

They needed to complete the Miraculous Deed.

It was a trial that would only conclude once they outpaced the other orders and reached the base.

Ultimately, to see this through to the end, they had no choice but to keep moving.

Then, Lyca fixed his gaze on the Pale Sovereign.

“Will you proceed, Pale Sovereign?”

“…”

“The Shaman of the Gilded Law spared you. He did it for the sake of everyone’s prestige.”

“…He spared me?”

A shadow of conflict passed over the Pale Sovereign’s features.

He had sought to take the man’s life, and yet that same individual had protected him?

“That is the truth. Pale Sovereign, the one who rescued you was the Shaman of the Gilded Law.”

The Despot Grizzly Lee corroborated the claim.

And he wasn’t alone.

The expressions on the faces of the others reflected the same sentiment.

“Since he granted you mercy, I also consider any further conflict to be pointlless. If you still desire a fight, I will not hold you back, but…”

Lyca’s voice dropped to a freezing register.

It was an unspoken ultimatum, suggesting that this time, he would show no such mercy.

‘He rescued me?’

To what end?

The Pale Sovereign still couldn’t find a reason.

He was the one who had attempted to erase even the man’s very soul.

Yet, he had been left alive and saved.

Could it be that he wasn’t the one who had consumed the Five Great Sovereignties?

Or did he experience a sudden moment of remorse?

“If no one has further complaints, we are departing.”

Taking the quiet as a sign of consent, Lyca began to lead the way.

His steps were wide and hurried.

He acted as though he was unbothered, but he was likely feeling the pressure internally.

Reaching the base quickly was the only escape from this realm.

‘…But for what reason?’

Putting that aside.

The Pale Sovereign could only stand there motionless, his gaze still reflecting a tangled web of thoughts.

There was a tale that circulated as a bit of dark humor among the Forsaken Deities.

A legend that if every ‘Forsaken Deity’ gathered in this place were to be brought back to life, they could pose a threat even to the heavens themselves.

That they, collectively, could become ‘Ruin’.

But the Forsaken Deities who had actually felt the touch of ‘Ruin’ dismissed such talk as absolute folly.

—Ruin is like the Ultimate Reality, something that can never be bested.

—It is the zenith of the Boundless, something that cannot be perceived even by divine sight, something that cannot be calculated.

They trembled at the thought.

They turned their faces away entirely, as if they wished to strike the memory from their minds.

Naturally, there were other Forsaken Deities who challenged those assertions.

—If Ruin truly held limitless power, then shouldn’t the world of Pangenia have been wiped out?

—It isn’t something that could be halted simply because a goddess gave her life, is it?

Because of the martyrdom of the twin goddess ‘Lea’, Ruin failed to eradicate all of Pangenia.

It was because when Lea perished, Ruin’s path of demolition ground to a halt.

The majority of the land tumbled into the chasm, but thanks to that act, the other twin goddess ‘Pina’ managed to keep the surviving continent suspended in the sky.

But if the strength of ‘Ruin’ was truly without end, stopping it would be an impossibility.

Lea’s death by itself would have been insufficient.

It was a logical inquiry, but a different counter-argument followed immediately.

—Because not all Ruin is created equal.

—There are various classifications of Ruin dispatched by the ‘firmament’.

—Nullification, Obliteration, and Ruin.

—They are forms of retribution delivered by the heavens.

—Furthermore, while they are all grouped as ‘Ruin’, their functions differ.

—They all share the goal of world destruction, but they vary in the aftermath.

—For instance, Nullification shatters the spirit, Obliteration leaves no trace behind, and Ruin causes a descent into the void.

—Among these, the most horrifying sentence is, without question, the sentence of ‘Ruin’.

—It should have been the most gruesome, but the ‘Ruin’ that afflicted Pangenia was somehow altered.

—…It gave rise to the Archdemon.

—Then, who was the one who sired the Archdemon?

—We have come to believe it was the goddess Lea.

It sounded like complete madness.

But some of the darker deities argued that there was no other explanation for why Ruin would suddenly cease its activity.

In the first place, it was unthinkable for a mere instrument like Ruin and a goddess to be intertwined.

—You are suggesting that ‘Ruin’ suddenly shifted its stance and allied with the goddess?

—You are spinning a fantasy. Ruin lacks that kind of autonomy.

—O ancient spirits. Having surrendered your names and shed your memories, it appears your minds have finally fractured. How pitiful.

—I believed only the short-lived could drown in the marsh of forgetfulness.

They mocked the theory.

It was only the oldest among the gods who were speaking such absurdities.

In truth, if one existed for eons while being forgotten, the process of fading would sometimes cause mental decay.

Fading causes warping, and warping leads to bizarre delusions and fixations.

Their conduct was a textbook example of that.

If their claims held any water, the Archdemon should have also carried the sanctity of a goddess.

Perhaps that was why.

No further arguments were presented.

The matter seemed settled after that, but.

The most ancient ‘Forsaken Deity’, who had remained silent, finally spoke.

—…’Ruin’ desired to produce something.

—It sought to merge the power of birth and the power of decay to bring forth ‘The Conclusion’.

—However, it met with failure.

—As a consequence, Ruin committed the ultimate transgression of failing its objective.

—But the firmament does not leave such a failure unaddressed.

—A new Ruin will emerge.

—Perhaps, it has already arrived.

The notion that ‘Ruin’ had intended to manifest ‘The Conclusion’.

No one gave it any weight.

Even the ancient malevolent gods who had been retelling the chronicles of Ruin didn’t believe it.

It was a theory held only by the most ancient Forsaken Deity.

And with good reason, as The Conclusion was a concept treated like a myth or a fable even among the divine.

The Conclusion literally signified the finale of all things and was viewed as the solitary method to snuff out immortality.

A force that makes the unattainable a reality.

A different layer of truth that exists beyond the Ultimate Reality.

That is exactly what ‘The Conclusion’ represents.

They could only ‘speculate’ that The Conclusion would be kept within the highest heavens.

If Ruin was a deity that demolished worlds.

Then The Conclusion was a deity that demolished deities.

It was the only instrument capable of opposing the heavens.

Therefore, they assumed the heavens had no choice but to keep it locked away.

And yet.

—The Conclusion…

…It had manifested.

The Conclusion.

The solitary force that could defy the firmament!

The most ancient ‘Forsaken Deity’ silently dropped to his knees.

Because his deductions had not been flawed.

Nullification, Obliteration, and Ruin—not one of them could directly shatter the icon of a god.

Thus, they strip away the titles of gods and force them into the shadows of memory.

After an age passes in this state, the icon of the Forsaken Deity withers and dissolves, and only then is the god truly gone.

That was the only known path to extinguish a deity.

And yet.

—N-no!

—Cease this!

—I-I am not ready to…!

—How infuriating!

CRACK!

With a sharp, splintering noise, the icons of the deities were being reduced to dust.