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 same 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 become 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 moment, 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 messages meant 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 me… What has to come 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 overcome Choi Hyuk’s Denial in the end. Her long-time 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, seemed to have now given up as she writhed, submerged in the lake. The red eyes on her back looked exhausted as they closed like those of someone dying of old age.

She slowly submerged into the lake when, at the last moment, she suddenly raised her head and stared at Choi Hyuk. Even as her chin, nose, and the top of her head submerged in the lake, she ridiculed him in her pitiful appearance.

{My end… Ha! Poor fellow. Your brilliantly shining soul is going to die with me… 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 some reason.

{…}

Thuud!

The moment the monster queen ceased to exist, the universe became frenzied. The various fates she had devoured from other dimensions 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 some 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 mediated 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 come 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, meaning 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 came 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 consumed 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, memories flashed through his mind like a kaleidoscope.

His childhood and the first time 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 time 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 something, she felt even more tormented than him.

Yes, his dream was to be an architect then. Influenced by his mother, who was a designer, he wanted to become someone 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 consumed 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 someone…

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 nickname 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 me 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 became a single egg, and the fates inside it mixed together and became 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 fundamental difference from his previous state.

He would soon forget his memories and even the fact that he was Choi Hyuk and would melt 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 moment 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 moment when Choi Hyuk’s rage, which surged without a target, decided on the 13 Exalted Wings. The moment he hoped for the regeneration of the rest of the world after the demise rather than mutual destruction. The moment a crack opened up wide enough for him to open his heart to Flame-Rain. Although he didn’t know about the Exalted Wings or Flame-Rain, it was that day. It was all thanks to the strange funeral on that day.

Thank you.

Choi Hyuk mumbled then forgot that memory.

Everything was being swept away and disappearing into the darkness.

While he couldn’t remember it well, he thought that he had lived a not-so-bad life.

He was happy to have met everyone.

If there was another life, he hoped to meet them again.

While mumbling this, he forgot about who he wanted to meet. He didn’t even have time to think about whether they wanted to meet him again or not.

…

He could no longer remember anything.

Only thoughts like ‘I did it’ and ‘I did enough’ floated in his mind.

No, that was what he thought, but for some reason, he clearly recalled a girl as though she had been engraved into his cornea. The girl’s hair would sometimes be long and, at other times, short. She had flames blazing splendidly in the air. She overcame all misfortunes and had stars in her eyes. A ‘glory’ that brilliantly bloomed within the ‘denial’ that had wiped everything to nothingness.

Though he forgot her name, 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 fragments? 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 moment.

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 became peaceful.

Etching a new life.

Waking up the next day, people realized…

That there was no longer an alliance or monsters.

None.

-Sovereign of Judgment 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 me?

Of course, there was no reply.

Was it not time yet…?

I’ll come back. Stay well.