Episode 12: Final Episode / Chapter 205: Closing (End)
TL: emptycube / ED: Obelisk
The fog was dyed black, and even this black fog was devoured by his sword and disappeared.
The world kept getting smaller and smaller following the path of ‘Choi Hyuk’s Denial’ which devoured even space itself.
Soon, the blade was devoured by denial and the perceivable world disappeared.
This world where one’s sacrifice was ‘inevitable’. Yet, this sa damn world repeatedly asked, ‘Why are you doing this?’ after doing so. Directed at this world, Choi Hyuk’s Denial completely extracted his soul and shot it out as though he was ascending into the heavens.
Killing everyone. Devouring everything.
Only ‘denial’ was left as it pointed at the remaining universe and roared.
“Yeah, yeah, eat that.”
Choi Hyuk said as if he was coaxing a beast as he continued to swing his sword, of which only a handle remained.
The monster queen’s desire for life, which had beco a universe onto itself after consuming countless of others, was devoured like a slender deer as it was denied.
Splash!
Choi Hyuk fell into the lake.
{...Ahh!}
{Heuu... How...}
{Kuaaah!}
...
...
When he woke up after fainting for a mont, the still living monster queen was going insane. Its divine appearance had disappeared without a trace, and instead, a wrinkly, furless beast was rolling in the lake shrieking.
{Aahhhh.... How can this be! Ridiculous. For a regular lifeform that isn’t even a demise-ranked monster to possess such power... So this is my fate... No! What am I saying! I’m not dead! I won’t dieeee!!}
This was what its telepathic ssages ant if he were to translate it.
The monster queen, who had waited for an intense battle against Choi Hyuk, found it unfair that it had fallen from one sword strike. No, was this retribution?
{It’s fair... For what I stole to be stolen from ... What has to co to end must end for new life to be born... I know that but...
{I was aware of it! Your sickening fate! I refuse! Forever! I’ll... probably never be able to steal it from you, right? Euaahhh! What am I saying?}
The monster queen resisted and resisted but couldn’t overco Choi Hyuk’s Denial in the end. Her long-ti desire for life disappeared after being denied, and having lost that desire, she began to die as predicted on her birth.
“Really... You suffered a lot. Now rest.”
Exhausted, Choi Hyuk lay down in the middle of the lake as he saw the entire process.
{I don’t know. I don’t know... But for this to be the end, I’ll accept it. Yeah, so you were my end.}
The monster queen, who had revealed her fiendish obsession with her hideous body, seed to have now given up as she writhed, subrged in the lake. The red eyes on her back looked exhausted as they closed like those of soone dying of old age.
She slowly subrged into the lake when, at the last mont, she suddenly raised her head and stared at Choi Hyuk. Even as her chin, nose, and the top of her head subrged in the lake, she ridiculed him in her pitiful appearance.
{My end... Ha! Poor fellow. Your brilliantly shining soul is going to die with ... Still, since my life was long and yours was short... I win...}
“What’s this dead person saying?”
Choi Hyuk clicked his tongue. Though, after he said that, his mouth felt bitter for so reason.
{...}
Thuud!
The mont the monster queen ceased to exist, the universe beca frenzied. The various fates she had devoured from other dinsions began to explode. The universe was collapsing.
Choi Hyuk barely managed to open his eyes and look to where Bae Jinman and Baek Seoin were before dropping his head.
Although he knew they had yet to escape, he wasn’t worried. For so reason, he instinctively understood what was going on right now.
From the beginning, the fates that filled this universe were all from different worlds and were different in kind. When the monster queen, who diated these fates, disappeared, the universe lost its laws and order. The released fates crashed into each other, attempting to assert their own nature, but none of the fates gave up on this universe. Although they had co from different worlds, they now wanted to acknowledge this one as their own.
“They are fighting on such a grand scale.”
The shaking would continue until these fates acknowledged each other’s existence and found their place, aning until new laws and order gained control over this universe. Also, it would spit out the fates from other worlds that had no intention of participating in this struggle. The warriors would return to where they ca from.
That was why Choi Hyuk relaxed as he watched the battle of titans. He didn’t even have the strength to lift a single finger anyways.
The karma of denial had completely consud him now. His body was disappearing from the inside. He no longer had the strength or will to sustain himself.
Watching the collapsing universe as he died was more emotional than he thought.
Becoming teary, mories flashed through his mind like a kaleidoscope.
His childhood and the first ti he killed a person. The searing pain he felt when he saw his mother’s tears. Also, the days he spent acting like a fool. Still, the ti he spent with his mother was his hearth. Even as a child, his mother looked unfortunate and weak to him. She smiled and told him it was okay and cried alone at night. When he pestered his mother to buy him sothing, she felt even more tornted than him.
Yes, his dream was to be an architect then. Influenced by his mother, who was a designer, he wanted to beco soone who created. Though he was now the best destroyer in the universe.
However, in the end, all he truly wanted was to protect his mother, who had lived honorably without any sins like Superman. Despite only being a normal person, she had always bought Choi Hyuk the items he pestered her for after a month of asking and cried the next night, and had suffered through a lot of hardship as a single mother.
He recalled the teasing writing on the gymnasium window he had kicked while frightened and concerned for his mother.
Yes, get angry.
And angrier.
Kill.
Only then can you kill.
Even thinking about it now...
“Ah, fucking bastards. Yeah, and that’s how I killed all of you.”
Choi Hyuk laughed manically.
He had killed everyone. The Exalted bastards and the monster bastards. He had killed every last one of them and inflicted unforgettable wounds.
He felt refreshed and then sorrowful. He felt sorrowful now.
He recalled Jung Minji. She was the only woman who shined in his grey world besides his mother. He recalled the emotions squirming in his stomach when he heard she died like trash.
He didn’t know he was sad then since rage consud him. He felt sorrowful only now. He had only been a high schooler.
He recalled Chu Youngjin, Richard, Zero, Alexei, and the mountain of corpses he had killed. When he thought about how his mother, Jung Minji, Chu Youngjin and the others precious to him might be pitifully thrown in that pile, he felt sorrowful again.
He felt sad about the potential that they and perhaps he himself might have had.
Choi Hyuk would now lie in the mountain of corpses he had piled up.
He felt vexed as he recalled how the monster queen had said, ‘I win....’
Damn it, those damn bastards.
One person’s life could be more important than the entire universe to soone...
Whether it was a human or an alien, why couldn’t they understand this through words...?
That was why Choi Hyuk made them understand.
While setting himself on fire in the process.
“Alexei... Was his nickna Lyosha? Now that I think about it, he was quite an amiable guy.”
He had always followed Lee Jinhee around.
“Well, you’re better than since you protected the person you wanted to protect. That’s better than revenge.”
If you were going to set yourself on fire anyways.
The universe was now shrinking. Spitting out all the different fates, it gathered only those that it would include. The world which couldn’t exist without laws stopped functioning and closed down. The endlessly shrinking universe beca a single egg, and the fates inside it mixed together and beca one.
The fates shaking inside the egg couldn’t decide on a criterion. They drifted before burrowing into Choi Hyuk’s body. Under the waterfall of fates, even his fate of denial was swept away and dispersed. While he stopped ceasing to exist for now, there wasn’t a fundantal difference from his previous state.
He would soon forget his mories and even the fact that he was Choi Hyuk and would lt and disappear in this universe.
Sensing his impending death, Choi Hyuk lay down and thought about the funeral.
How Lee Jinhee firmly said that they had to do it when he found out about his mother’s death in Marronier Park. The magical mont when awakenees who had lost hope and ostracized each other began comforting each other.
The warmth of Lee Jinhee’s hand when she held his.
It might have been then.
The mont when Choi Hyuk’s rage, which surged without a target, decided on the 13 Exalted Wings. The mont he hoped for the regeneration of the rest of the world after the demise rather than mutual destruction. The mont a crack opened up wide enough for him to open his heart to Fla-Rain. Although he didn’t know about the Exalted Wings or Fla-Rain, it was that day. It was all thanks to the strange funeral on that day.
Thank you.
Choi Hyuk mumbled then forgot that mory.
Everything was being swept away and disappearing into the darkness.
While he couldn’t rember it well, he thought that he had lived a not-so-bad life.
He was happy to have t everyone.
If there was another life, he hoped to et them again.
While mumbling this, he forgot about who he wanted to et. He didn’t even have ti to think about whether they wanted to et him again or not.
...
He could no longer rember anything.
Only thoughts like ‘I did it’ and ‘I did enough’ floated in his mind.
No, that was what he thought, but for so reason, he clearly recalled a girl as though she had been engraved into his cornea. The girl’s hair would sotis be long and, at other tis, short. She had flas blazing splendidly in the air. She overca all misfortunes and had stars in her eyes. A ‘glory’ that brilliantly blood within the ‘denial’ that had wiped everything to nothingness.
Though he forgot her na, he could be at ease because of her.
It was because he knew she would be able to regenerate the shattered world.
With a glory that would never extinguish.
When he thought about her, rather than feeling sad or being filled with regret...
He felt at peace.
Perhaps, his endlessly burning rage was now looking for a place to rest while recalling a certain glory.
Sensing the swirling fates sweeping his last remaining bit of consciousness away, he closed his eyes.
He turned his body to the side and curled up. He fell asleep.
And didn’t wake up.
As expected, was life a mosaic of mismatched fragnts? One where you didn’t know what would be added next.
Even Choi Hyuk, who felt sorrowful as he lay atop a mountain of corpses, curled up peacefully like a child in the next mont.
Even the monsters’ universe, which devoured worlds, reverted into an egg and prepared for a new beginning.
As though all the desperation was an illusion, the entire universe suddenly beca peaceful.
Etching a new life.
Waking up the next day, people realized...
That there was no longer an alliance or monsters.
None.
-Sovereign of Judgnt End-
**
An emptiness without a sky or ground.
In a place with nothing, a woman’s voice rang out.
Choi Hyuk, Choi Hyuk, can you hear ?
Of course, there was no reply.
Was it not ti yet...?
I’ll co back. Stay well.
{TL/N: 4 Epilogues Afterword will be released tmw!}
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