Chapter 1405: Paradise Lost (16)
Crack, crack…!!!
The bizarre sky of Paradise Lost, steadily dyed in purple. Through it, countless black lines spread, a scene of the sky shattering as if it were cracking.
Krrrrrack—
The Black Lines spreading from the man’s fingertips shattered and collapsed the surrounding space, causing the very existence of Paradise Lost to crumble.
The Spell-Words touched by the tips of the Black Lines couldn’t maintain their form for even a moment, losing their meaning and crumbling from all directions.
KWWWWAAAAAAA!!!!!
The death of language. The collapse of spacetime. The death of concepts.
An eeriness that far surpassed the death Jinwa had engraved into this space, as if everything was hurtling toward annihilation.
It seemed as if everything existing around the man was rushing toward its end in an instant.
As if the man’s very existence was a [Gate] leading to a predetermined conclusion.
As if an emissary leading the world to its fated ruin stood there.
“…How can this be.”
Everywhere the eye could see, Spell-Words, Authorities, the world itself—all were shattering.
The Ideological Domain, manifested based on the Ascendant’s answer and altering reality, was cracking to pieces and being obliterated.
The moment the Lightning Emperor realized this, momentarily forgetting the current situation and unconsciously murmuring aloud.
At the edge of the purple sky, shattering like glass, the black-haired man raised his gaze with an expressionless face.
“…”
A face from which no emotion could be read.
A bizarre form, hollowly distorted as if its very presence was empty.
Even light and sound lost their meaning and vanished, blanketing the surroundings in a void.
The fatal line of annihilation, where everything distorted like noise and refused to exist.
Fzzt, fzzzt…!!!
The man’s form flickered like an old film, unnaturally stuttering, refusing to connect.
Even the basic causality of cause and effect failed to link properly, snapping and breaking, leaving him in place.
Like watching a very old tape, he merely stood there, shimmering faintly.
[Master…?]
“…”
Davi, who had been curled up in his arms, called to her master with a trembling voice, but the man did not answer.
He only glanced down at Davi with a hollow, cold gaze, as if looking at a creature he’d never seen before.
The moment Davi shuddered violently, as if heartbroken by that stern, contemptuous expression she had never seen before from the spirit.
Pajik-
With a faint crack, a black fissure appeared on the man’s nape.
A distinct crack that spread up his neck to his face in an instant, like a fissure in porcelain.
The gruesome sight of his physical body seemingly shattering, as if it could not bear the man’s existence.
[…Master!!]
Ignoring Davi’s startled cry, the man expressionlessly touched his neck.
After slowly, almost caressingly, checking the cracks etched on his neck and face, the man turned his gaze.
Thud.
He began to walk without a single word of observation.
“…You are.”
Kigik, kigigigigik-
With every step he took alone through Paradise Lost, the sound of matter rupturing and particles collapsing echoed all around.
The axis of time crumbled, space shattered, gravity and attraction lost their meaning, and causality was severed.
The Black Lines spreading from his fingertips billowed behind him, shimmering like a butterfly’s wings.
The sight of the man approaching on his own two feet, without using any spellcraft or authority.
[Im-possible]
Jinwa, looking down at the man from the distant sky, spoke in stuttering Spell-Words.
[? Is it real-ly you ?]
“Spell-Word caster.”
The Ascendant’s thought-transmission, faint as a whisper, yet echoing clearly throughout Paradise Lost.
The Lightning Emperor called out to Jinwa with a grim expression, but she paid him no mind.
Instead, she simply began to mutter incomprehensible words to herself nonstop.
Within that wavering telepathy, one could read an unconcealable sense of bewilderment.
[That can’t be]
[There’s no way you’ve returned-]
[You, are still-]
Simultaneously, unassembled characters poured down from beneath Jinwa’s feet like a tidal wave.
A brutish response, revealing her confusion as she simply amassed Spell-Words and unleashed her power recklessly.
[Begone]
[Withdraw]
[Return]
[To the place where you belong-]
KWAAAAAAA!!!!
“…”
But the man did not even glance at the violet tidal wave that covered half of Paradise Lost.
He simply stared intently at the sky, which was constantly cracking and crumbling even at this very moment.
A strange phenomenon where, as soon as he awoke, the world’s time axis collapsed and its spatial coordinates disintegrated.
As if confirming the ‘gazes’ from beyond the shattering world, from beyond the distant sea, trying to peer at him.
KUGWAGWAGWAGWA!!!!
He raises his hand without even looking back at the violet Spell-Words pouring down, blanketing the horizon.
The storm of authority and Spell-Words that alters Paradise Lost. The moment his fingertips touched the flow of pouring, monstrous characters.
The explosively erupting Black Lines split the tidal wave of Spell-Words that stretched to the horizon in half and annihilated it.
Spat-
There was no thunderous roar that blew everything away, nor was there any corresponding rupture or recoil.
Like a dry leaf falling to the ground, like a withered flower petal bowing its head. Like twilight descending and a supernova flaring.
Only a silent death agony was there, something gently swept away to its predetermined end.
[…Ah]
Silently, with a single gesture, half of the authority Jinwa had poured out vanished as if splitting the sea.
The shattered and annihilated Spell-Words, Jinwa’s authority that was like an absolute law in this Ideological Domain.
Turned into dust and powder worth less than a handful of fragments, they mixed with the branching Black Lines and returned to the void.
The moment Jinwa’s faintly trembling Spell-Word was cut off and an eerie silence descended.
No one dared to speak while looking at the man who wielded the world-shattering Black Lines.
“…”
As if by an unspoken agreement, everyone realized it at the same time.
This was an Ideological Domain where an Ascendant reigned like a god.
And yet, he had erased the transcendent Spell-Word cast from its very center without any incantation or hand seals.
That power, which erased it with but a single gesture, was proof of who he was.
The greatest Manipulation Spellcaster in the continent’s history.
The worst Seeker of his time, and the strongest Ascendant in history.
The apostate who trampled the Northern Continent and slew an Outer God, using its corpse to permanently alter the climate.
The master of Heavenly Abasement Spellcraft, a fallen power that only he in this world could wield.
That chilling epithet, the one known as the Betrayer of Heaven—
[!!!!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!]
At that moment, in the frozen silence, the Ascendant began to burst into mad laughter.
KWAAAAANG!!!
“Hk…!!!”
The Lightning Emperor grimaced, but the giant snail cackled as if she had already forgotten her existence.
Forgetting even where she was contained, she spewed intense resentment and emotion toward the approaching man.
Each time, her body in the bathtub ruptured and disintegrated, turning into mere slime that oozed outside.
[Fine]
[I’ve decided]
After bursting into manic laughter, the Ascendant’s will-thought shimmered bizarrely, as if she had made a decision.
KWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Unformed Spell-Words exploded, scattering immense heat, and mushroom clouds bloomed throughout Paradise Lost.
A massive solar orb manifested as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped on the collapsing Paradise Lost, casting a crimson glow like the arrival of twilight.
But amidst it all, Jinwa, as if realizing something on her own, ceaselessly spat out Spell-Words as if in a monologue, beginning to re-evaluate their meaning.
[I don’t care if I give up everything]
[After all, if it’s not you-]
Hwook!!
Rendering all that resistance meaningless, the man’s next step stopped atop Jinwa’s bathtub.
The moment the man, who had crossed thousands of meters in a single stride, looked at the Ascendant with an expressionless face.
Pajik!!
With just that ‘gaze’, a Black Line was carved into the tub containing the Ascendant, and it shattered to pieces.
[!!!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!]
CHWAAAAAAA!!!!!
A terrible scream, a mixture of despair and ecstasy. The Ascendant’s body, which had been in the tub, splattered onto the ground like liquid.
Jinwa’s colossal form, which she had dissolved in the tub and encased in slime to be reborn.
The moment it left the tub, it failed to maintain its form and seeped into the soil of Paradise Lost like water.
KWAAANG!!!
Amidst the falling fragments of the tub, the Lightning Emperor, who had been bound by Spell-Words, instantly broke her chains and moved.
As if she had never been bound in the first place, she landed lightly on the ground and turned her gaze with a complicated expression.
The shattering, falling bathtub. Jinwa’s body, scattering across Paradise Lost like rain.
The man, walking down from the sky with the fragments falling like tears behind him.
Crack, craaack…!!!
Every time the man took a step, Black Lines spread through the empty air, and space shattered.
The man’s figure, stepping on the fragments of shattering space as if they were footholds, walking down to the ground.
The Lightning Emperor watched the black-haired man looking down on Paradise Lost in silence and opened her mouth, a look of bitterness on her face.
“You are…”
Outwardly, the black-haired man maintained the exact same appearance as Lennok.
However, the moment the Lightning Emperor faced him, she instinctively knew what kind of being he was.
The Black Lines spreading from his fingertips. The sky shattering like glass around him.
Even the emptiness and indifference in his gaze were so different from the wizard she remembered.
How could he feel so much like a stranger, despite having the same face, using the same body?
“…Now I finally understand why that fellow hesitated at this moment.”
The Lightning Emperor, who had been silent, spoke.
“You are a being who has already reached the end. A future line that none of the successive Ascendants have ever reached…”
“…”
“Across three worlds, there has never been a being who met an end like yours. You look back at this place from a ruined future eon; your very existence is the same as the end itself.”
A Transcendent who has made a failed, destroyed future line, a future where everything perishes, his Root Mindscape.
Therefore, his existence is the [Gate] to the end itself, an emissary leading all of creation to ruin.
A being who has chosen a ‘wrong future’ that not even the gods of that sea can yet fathom, among all beings living in the past and present.
The Lightning Emperor understood in an instant, with her unique transcendent intuition, that the strongest Ascendant in history stood before her eyes.
At the same time, she also understood why Lennok had gone to such lengths, taking the gamble of summoning her from the Hall of the Thunder God.
“My, what an impudent fellow… For your first time summoning me to the mortal world, isn’t this an excessively heavy task you’ve entrusted me with?”
Lennok had faintly guessed that once he summoned the memories of ‘him’, he would no longer be able to control himself.
And so, as insurance in case everything went wrong, he had summoned the strongest ally he could request cooperation from at that moment.
Craaaack…!!!!
The Lightning Emperor’s bitter smile vanished, her expression sinking as she saw the cracks spreading from his fingertips.
The Black Line extending from the black ring was consuming the man’s body, spreading like fissures in porcelain.
“…Right. It seems neither of us has much time left.”
The Lightning Emperor muttered softly and, without hesitation, turned to face the man.
As she moved with an elegant grace, pure white lightning flashed ceaselessly.
“I shall save you before it becomes irreversible.”
Fzzt, fzzt…!!
The Ascendant of the First World, taking a step while dragging blindingly white lightning.
The Annihilator of the Third World, casting his gaze while holding the cracking, splitting Black Lines.
Black and white intertwined and mingled in the air, flashing ominously as if heralding an irreversible end.
The Lightning Emperor, who had taken a step as if to gauge her opponent’s level, gauged her remaining mana with a coldly sunken expression.
The moment she was about to instantly drive her spellcraft into the man who was slowly raising his hand across from her.
“…Again.”
She stopped dead in her tracks at the voice that echoed like gloomy noise.
“What did you say?”
He was unmistakably speaking with Lennok’s voice, yet the tone was hollow, empty.
An alien voice, as if he were forcing vocal cords that shouldn’t be able to move to produce sound.
But the man didn’t answer the Lightning Emperor, instead slowly raising his gaze.
His hollow and eerie eyes turned toward the shattering sky, meeting the ‘gazes’ that seemed ready to pour down upon this world at any moment.
Beyond the breaking sky, the Sea of Darkness faintly revealed itself.
Transcendent beings from the other side, about to descend from beyond the world the moment they noticed his existence.
“…”
For a long while, the man remained silent, watching the gazes approaching from beyond the sea.
The moment he looked down at the black cracks spreading from his hand across his entire body.
“I’ll have to start again.”
The man said in a faint voice.
“By now, you should have understood.”
“…I do not know what you speak of. No, more importantly, you were able to speak?”
“I’m not talking to you.”
A voice so cold it made the Lightning Emperor flinch for a moment.
The man ignored her and turned his vacant eyes.
The corpse of the boy, lying collapsed on the other side of the utterly crushed plains.
“…”
The man stared blankly at the motionless boy, then brought a hand to his face.
Crack, crack…!!!!
The man’s form, standing still with one hand covering his face so his expression was hidden.
Each time, Black Lines spread from the back of his hand and nape, and the cracks widened.
A sense of unease, as if his entire body would crack and crumble at any moment, and something would awaken.
KUGUGUGU!!!!
In the escalating atmosphere, the Lightning Emperor steeled her resolve and drew upon her mana with a grim face.
The moment the flashing white lightning and the black-stained lines were on the verge of intersecting and colliding.
The man suddenly covered his face with his hand and coughed up a mouthful of blood.
“Cough…!!!”
CHWAAAAK!!!
This time, the sound was so loud that even the Lightning Emperor was startled, losing her will to fight.
But the man didn’t stop there, bowing his head deeply while covering his face.
“Cough, ugh…!!!!”
The moment ragged breaths escaped, his presence faltered, and dark red blood began to drip from between his fingers.
The Lightning Emperor, sensing that the man’s presence had become unmistakably familiar, quickly subdued her mana.
“Wizard!!!”
“Hah, hah…!!!”
“Don’t tell me, you’ve returned…!!!”
Lennok’s form, unable to even answer, collapsed to the ground, blood streaming from his mouth.
Finally certain that Lennok had returned, the Lightning Emperor rushed to him and helped him up.
“Breathe slowly. Hurry and lean on me…!”
Not caring that her splendid dragon robe was being soiled, she wiped the blood with her sleeve and asked.
“I can’t believe it. How did you, by yourself…!!”
“I set up… some insurance…”
From the moment he called upon the memories of the past through the Mandala ring, it was self-evident that he would be unable to control ‘him’.
Yet even after projecting his past self onto his body, Lennok regained himself not long after.
For the Lightning Emperor, who had realized the level of his achievements and strength, it was utterly incomprehensible.
She had been prepared to risk her own annihilation to bring Lennok back, but to think he would regain his ego on his own.
The answer, as always, lay with Lennok himself.
“Targeted Resistance…”
Lennok, having coughed up a mouthful of blood, said with difficulty.
“That one thing… is a talent my past self didn’t have.”
“Don’t tell me…”
A privilege gained only after his past self had thrown everything away once.
Lennok knew what Targeted Resistance meant to his past and present selves.
That’s why, at the same time he summoned his past self, he had placed a Geas on it, setting conditions for Targeted Resistance to activate again.
An absolute privilege that even the strongest Ascendant in history did not possess in his lifetime.
He knew that applying this would break the synchronization, allowing him to return.
Of course, the backlash from that price was a burden Lennok would have to bear entirely—
“From the start… I had no intention of letting his manifestation end here.”
If ‘he’ hadn’t retreated on his own, things wouldn’t have gone so smoothly.
The moment he superimposed the memories of the past onto his body, Lennok was keenly aware of that fact.
“To start… again.”
Lennok muttered, gasping for breath.
“He retreated on his own, to wait for the next time…”
“Wizard… I do not know what you speak of.”
The Lightning Emperor frowned.
“If you were permitted a one-time ‘second coming’, that chance should be over. Just because you didn’t use all the allotted time, can you use that power again?”
“…”
The Lightning Emperor’s words were not wrong.
The memory of Ban-gung contained in the black ring was a miracle granted only once.
Having used it now, even if he had put himself to sleep, it couldn’t be used again.
But, knowing this, Lennok still coughed up blood and laboriously raised his gaze.
The moment he turned his head toward what lay beyond Paradise Lost, which was collapsing and crumbling even now.
[!!!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!]
With an eerily desperate cackle, a sinister violet radiance exploded, dyeing the entire world.
The violet radiance pierced through Paradise Lost, shooting up diagonally, spinning like a massive pillar, and flooding everything.
And from beyond the endless expanse of ruins, a massive palace shrouded in desolate silence revealed itself.
KWHAAAAK!!!
Yeongheo Palace.
The Ars Nova Emperor’s detached palace, and the secret place that was supposed to have been used for the transaction between the Three Grand Dukes and Jinwa.
The moment the Lightning Emperor, following Lennok’s gaze, confirmed the palace’s appearance and momentarily frowned.
The gloomy purple shadow that had soared to the horizon began to scream as it swallowed Yeongheo Palace whole.
[!!!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!]
“Hk?!”
KWAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
A shock so intense that the Lightning Emperor had to instantly raise her mana to protect the ground.
The intense and vicious resentment that erupted from the end of the horizon whispered with chilling clarity in her ears.
[? Did you think I would let it be stolen ?]
[After all, it must be you]
[Even if it means abandoning everything-]
The chilling resentment of the Ascendant, who had scattered like liquid when the tub shattered.
The moment the Lightning Emperor realized that the remnants of Jinwa, who should have been annihilated upon losing her body, were echoing from beyond Yeongheo Palace.
“Don’t tell me, that’s…!!!”
“Jinwa has absorbed and swallowed whole the ‘secret’ and ‘legacy’ within Yeongheo Palace…”
Lennok said softly.
Immediately after projecting his past self, ‘he’ had gained an understanding by observing this broken garden.
Even after he had retreated of his own will, that knowledge itself remained within Lennok.
“Jinwa’s soul and body are now completely assimilated with this Paradise Lost… Unless we annihilate this Ideological Domain entirely, it will be difficult to kill her as she is.”
“…That’s.”
The battle between Lennok, who projected his past self, and Jinwa, who revealed her true form.
A single clash of their respective spellcraft and authority. And one side’s overwhelming defeat was decided.
After confirming the existence and spellcraft of ‘him’ within Lennok, Jinwa no longer had any intention of confronting Lennok.
Instead, she had split and dissolved her spirit into Paradise Lost, making it impossible to kill her in one go, and then devoured all the legacy and secrets existing in Yeongheo Palace.
“She decided there was no reason to hold back now that things have gotten this twisted. She’ll ignore the deal with the Three Grand Dukes and absorb everything left in Paradise Lost to be reborn as a god.”
“…”
“There’s no way to recover the legacy like this. From the start, she intended to devour everything and self-destruct if things went awry-”
[If I cannot have it, then I’d rather]
[!!!!!!! DEVOUR IT ALL!!!!!!!]
OOOOOOOH!!!!!
Jinwa’s colossal form, having swallowed something within Yeongheo Palace, cast itself over the entire world like a gloomy, violet shadow.
As if the concept of her no longer existed as matter, but was beginning to sublimate into a phenomenon and concept itself.
KWAGWAGWAGWAGWAGWAGWA!!!!!!!!!!
The violet wave that erupted from the end of the horizon swallowed everything that existed in Paradise Lost whole.
Lennok, collapsed outside the utterly ruined Cradle, and the Lightning Emperor, kneeling as if to support him.
“She intends to devour and absorb everything to forcibly reach the great Upper Heavens…”
The Lightning Emperor muttered.
“She thinks the transcendence gathered here is enough. What on earth is in Yeongheo Palace…?”
[!!!! INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT !!!!]
“Ah, ahh…!!!!”
The presence of those caught in the Ascendant’s rampage throughout Paradise Lost could be felt with a tangible clarity.
Sarin’s screaming voice, Hylaea pulling down her eyepatch with a trembling hand.
Maiya shouting something to the other members, and the Conjunction Spell Master closing his eyes and preparing for something.
Agneta, trying to open the un-openable Imaginary Dimension, her spider legs trembling as she wove her spellcraft.
And even Ermont, watching the approaching end with a strangely empty yet refreshed expression.
But, amidst it all, Lennok’s gaze remained fixed on the boy collapsed in the distance.
“…Again.”
The moment he had superimposed the memories of the past onto his own body through the black ring.
Lennok hadn’t been able to perceive all the emotions or memories ‘he’ held, but he remembered what ‘he’ had seen when he had decided to wait for the next time.
Being devoured by the endless shadow and the wave of Spell-Words that covered Paradise Lost, being absorbed by Jinwa.
That young guide, who had led Lennok to the end of this whole situation, who looked so strangely like Myeong.
He believed.
That Myeong had never intended for this moment to turn into an uncontrollable catastrophe.
That Myeong had not left the boy here to grant Lennok such an ending.
If that’s the case—
KUUOOOOOOOH!!!!
Far away, the moment the consciousness of an immensely vast Transcendent from beyond the darkened sky swallowed everything.
“…Yes, benefactor.”
Absorbed by Jinwa in his battered state, the boy opened his eyes with a pained smile.
“I, too, have been waiting for this moment.”
Hwook!!!
The darkness that erupted from the boy’s body spread like ink into the wildly rampaging waves of Spell-Words.
A bizarre phenomenon, as if black ink were spreading thickly and dyeing the insides of the snail that had become like a shadow.
[A pathetic act]
But Jinwa merely tilted her slimy, colossal body with an annoyed expression, neither rejecting nor stopping it.
From the moment she had sent down her Incarnation Body to find Lennok, she had already confirmed the existence of the boy and Freya.
He had a peculiar talent, but he was a trifle whose total power and spellcraft characteristics couldn’t compare to hers.
Even if he struggled now, he would be utterly unable to resist and simply be swallowed up by her spirit.
The moment Jinwa, so convinced, was about to annihilate the boy’s final act of resistance without a trace.
[Return]
Thump!!
Feeling an uneasy sense that ‘some Spell-Word’ was being assembled within her, Jinwa abruptly stopped moving.
[Wait]
“I knew from the start that you would pay no mind to my existence.”
[Return]
Watching that scene, the boy who had been absorbed into Jinwa smiled.
“A trifle not even worth a single glance. An insect to be swallowed to silence its resistance. That was the extent of your thoughts about me, wasn’t it?”
[Return]
“And so, perhaps my role was always meant to be something like this.”
[Were you the bait, you bastard]
The Ascendant slowly turned her gaze and unleashed her Spell-Word, as if in a rage.
[Don’t tell me, from the very beginning-!!!!]
“You are correct. How could a trifle like me ever defy a fallen demigod like you?”
The boy smiled.
“My role was to be eaten by you, to use your authority to forcibly activate a single [Spell-Word].”
[Return]
“It is the one and only salvation that child, Myeong, left behind for a later day.”
KWAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!!!!!
At that moment, an indescribably enormous torrent began to rage within Jinwa.
The uneasy feeling that the Incarnation Body itself was using its full power to directly manipulate spacetime.
[Return]
[Return]
[Return]
The shattered and collapsed form of the Cradle rapidly regained its original shape.
The forms of the mangled corpses scattered about neatly returned to their former state.
The uneasy feeling of the slime from the tub that had spilled out shooting back up to fill the restored vessel.
[Return]
[Restore]
[Rewind]
Time reversal.
The Incarnation Body that had swallowed the boy was using its own Spell-Word to rewind time for this entire space.
The moment Lennok realized this and shot his gaze up.
[Return]
[No no no no no no no-]
[!!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!]
The Ascendant’s scream, echoing with an eerie desperation and grief.
As the horrifying thought-transmission exploded, everything before his eyes turned white.
……
……
……
In the endless silence.
How much time had passed?
He felt the sensation of slowly blinking eyelids, and his bleached vision regained its color.
A dry wind brushing against his cheek. The gloomy whisper of Paradise Lost, constantly in his ears.
The awkward sense of regaining lost senses and a quiet silence followed one after another.
And a voice was heard.
“Benefactor. You must remember this place well.”
WHOOOSH!!!
The sight of the massive Cradle, rising tall at the end of the horizon.
Its hideous form, built by felling and stacking trees, covered by hanging corpses.
As if what had just happened was a lie, at this moment, standing as if just about to enter the intact Cradle.
Lennok realized that the black-haired boy was standing before him with his hands behind his back, smiling, and he sucked in a breath.
“Once we finish our business in the Cradle…”
“…”
A brief hesitation. The boy’s voice, clearing his throat and continuing to speak.
Was it just his imagination that even the act of speaking seemed difficult for him?
“Once we finish our business in the Cradle, we will return to this place once more.”
“…That’s.”
He felt like he had heard those words somewhere before.
No, that moment definitely existed in Lennok’s memory.
The incomprehensible advice he had heard from the boy just before entering the Cradle.
That moment when he had certainly felt a sense of unease, but couldn’t identify its source and had stored it in his memory.
But the words that followed from the boy were completely different from Lennok’s memory.
“Because I used the Ascendant’s Spell-Word to turn back time in Paradise Lost, there will be no trace of what just happened…”
The boy said in a faint, fading voice.
“Since it was done with her own authority, even Jinwa herself won’t be able to read the causality of what happened there.”
“Don’t tell me, you…”
“Fortunately, since you can resist time reversal and the erasure of causality, benefactor, you should be able to deceive the Ascendant’s eyes, just this once…”
Paaaaat…!
At that moment, the boy’s body began to slowly disappear from his feet up.
The boy, who hadn’t vanished even after his breath was cut by Jinwa’s Spell-Word, nor during the bombardment that rained down on the Cradle.
As if he had finally completed his role and lost his meaning, he muttered in a faint voice.
“Jinwa’s secret and objective… the identity of Paradise Lost… the secret of Yeongheo Palace…”
“…”
“As promised… I am glad I could tell you in advance.”
While Lennok watched with a grim expression, the boy smiled and spoke.
“It seems there is just enough time left to answer your final questions, benefactor.”