Chapter 187 : Mind Sword
Chapter 187: Mind Sword
The Leader of Pandemonium frowned.
‘He escaped Oblivion already?’
Oblivion was an endless prison that stripped away the senses one by one until, eventually, it reduced existence itself to Void.
Yet he had escaped that prison this quickly.
The Leader knew that the Sword Emperor’s realm had reached its pinnacle, but even then, escaping Oblivion—one of his own Ultimate Techniques—this soon made no sense.
Oblivion had originally been created to imprison powerhouses who had reached the absolute peak.
The higher the realm of a powerhouse, the more vast the senses they perceived became.
But Oblivion was a technique that robbed them of those very senses.
Thus, powerhouses trapped within that endless prison and deprived of their senses experienced something akin to their entire world collapsing.
The fact that only three people throughout the Leader’s thousands of years of life had ever escaped it proved that much.
Baek Hyun-joong, the Devil Knight, and the Heavenly Demon.
In Baek Hyun-joong’s case, his power was the natural opposite of the Leader’s, so Oblivion itself had no effect on him.
And the Devil Knight had escaped it not through his own strength, but with the Heavenly Demon’s help.
The only one who had escaped through sheer personal strength was the Heavenly Demon.
That inevitably raised a single question.
‘Has the Sword Emperor reached the same realm as her?’
He knew the Heavenly Demon’s strength extremely well.
An irregular powerhouse who, even against four Pandemonium executives including himself, had not only refused to be pushed back but had even overwhelmed them for a moment.
The appearance of another existence like the Heavenly Demon, who had once been the greatest variable in his grand plan, was hardly something the Leader of Pandemonium could welcome.
At that moment, the End, whose upper body had been blown away by the Sword Emperor, recovered and rose.
It was astonishing.
That an insect called a human could cultivate his own strength and reach such a realm.
Even with the End standing before him, the Sword Emperor’s expression remained calm.
He looked as though he had attained enlightenment.
In truth, the Sword Emperor had indeed gained enlightenment within the Leader’s Oblivion.
A state where every sense had been taken away, leaving him unable even to question whether he himself still existed.
Within a space where he could not even perceive the passage of time, the only thing proving his existence had been uninterrupted thought.
If he stopped thinking, the prison of Void would swallow him and he would lose himself.
There, the Sword Emperor realized something.
Beyond Sword and Body as One, where the self itself became the sword, lay a sword formed purely from will.
He had reached the realm of the Mind Sword (心儉).
The Sword Emperor looked at the End before him.
‘So that was the source of the incongruity I felt from that child.’
Even after reaching a new realm, he still could not measure the existence standing before him.
To think such a being had been sealed inside the body of a mere human.
He truly deserved to be called the King of the Demons.
But there was still hope.
The existence before him had not completely revived.
Although no one had explained the situation to him, the Sword Emperor could tell.
Compared to the power contained within him, the strength the End could actually release failed to exceed a certain threshold.
That meant now, while he was unable to fully exert his power, was their opportunity.
The Sword Emperor drew his sword, and his aura sharpened.
Seeing that, the End began creating a new Authority on the spot.
The Authority of Slashing combined with 【Dark Relic】, giving birth to a new Authority.
A weapon forged from darkness absorbed the Authority of Slashing and transformed.
Before long, a battle axe as tall as a person formed in his hand.
Leviathan, Axe of Slashing.
The two figures vanished.
Leviathan collided with the Sword Emperor’s Mind Sword.
A sword forged from will and slashes created through Authority clashed.
The Sword Emperor shattered the endless barrage of Formless Slashes with his Mind Sword.
Enormous power gathered within the End’s Leviathan.
Sky Cleaving.
An Authority created by combining 【Mighty Strength】 with the Authority of Slashing was further amplified through Leviathan.
Kwagagaga!
The instant Leviathan struck the ground, the earth shattered and overturned.
Using the flying fragments of earth as footholds, the Sword Emperor unleashed his sword toward openings in the End’s defense.
The End could not properly respond to the endlessly varied swordsmanship.
His arms and legs were repeatedly carved into countless pieces before regenerating again and again.
Watching this, the Sword Emperor realized the End’s weakness.
No, perhaps it was a fundamental flaw of the Demon species itself.
The End did not understand effort.
Polishing and training oneself.
They possessed no aspiration to reach greater heights.
Because what humans could barely accomplish after decades of training, Demons could perform as naturally as breathing from the moment they were born.
And the End stood at the very pinnacle of that unreasonable species.
The Sword Emperor clearly remembered his duel with Yoo Seongwoo.
A powerful strike produced by exploiting the rejection reaction created when Anti-Demonic Power collided with Demonic Energy.
The young man named Yoo Seongwoo whom he had dueled was a martial artist.
A true martial artist who refused to remain satisfied with the power he had been given and instead sought to elevate himself through his own efforts.
But the End before him was different.
He did not know how to properly use the body.
He did not block attacks he could easily stop.
Instead, he chose to take them head-on, burrow deeper into his opponent’s guard, and take their life.
Anyone encountering such a fighting style for the first time could easily be caught off guard and defeated.
But once its pattern was understood, stopping him was not difficult.
The evenly matched battle gradually began tilting to one side.
The flames of Levatein were split apart by the Sword Emperor’s Mind Sword.
The immense mass of the Giant’s Sword was sliced into countless pieces and scattered.
Before the End could attempt anything, the Sword Emperor’s blade cut him and interrupted his movement.
The End’s attacks no longer worked against the Sword Emperor.
Before the pinnacle of technique displayed by the Sword Emperor, there was nothing the End could do.
The Sword Emperor’s sword surged forward like waves, preventing the End from doing anything at all.
While the End and the Sword Emperor fought, the Leader of Pandemonium, who had been pressing Park Siwoo and Helena, frowned.
He had felt uneasy ever since the Sword Emperor escaped Oblivion, but the power that had temporarily seized the Devil Knight’s body was not enough to kill the newly enlightened Sword Emperor.
He glared at Park Siwoo and Helena before him.
He needed to kill them quickly and help the End, yet the two refused to die, clinging to life like cockroaches.
After enduring the attacks of the Leader of Pandemonium and Kobal, Park Siwoo and Helena were already covered in blood.
Though both staggered as if they might collapse at any moment, the hope in their eyes had not vanished.
Somehow, they continued blocking or diverting the attacks coming at them, keeping themselves alive.
Then a broad back appeared before the pair who had endured for so long.
Dan Chun-woo and Wol-ah, who had safely evacuated Master Gu Ryun and Wol-ah, had appeared.
The Leader of Pandemonium frowned.
Every plan was falling apart.
The End had been forced back by the Sword Emperor, while these persistent pests continued standing in his way.
His gaze turned toward Kobal and Tamuz.
The End did not have much time remaining anyway.
At present, the End had only temporarily stolen Yoo Seongwoo’s body.
What if the Devil Knight regained consciousness here and joined the battle?
That would all but guarantee their failure.
‘In that case…….’
Perhaps taking a gamble would be better.
Most of the Academy’s forces had already exhausted a considerable amount of stamina.
The Sword Emperor fighting the End went without saying, while Cheon Ga-eun and Oliver Raiders were also struggling fiercely against Tamuz.
Park Siwoo and Helena were nearly incapable of continuing combat after suffering attacks from Kobal and himself.
The only relatively uninjured ones were Dan Chun-woo and Eunha, but they were no match for him.
Having reached a decision, he looked toward Kobal.
Kobal, sensing his own fate, nodded.
The Leader of Pandemonium slowly began rising into the sky.
Now, all that remained was an all-out battle in which both sides poured out everything they had.
His gaze turned toward the End.
“Father, we return ourselves to you. Please accept everything we possess and bring forth your great will.”
The Leader of Pandemonium emitted radiance, and Tamuz and Kobal began shining as well.
Bottomless darkness swallowed me.
I flailed and struggled desperately to escape, but the darkness dragged me down with even greater force.
Even so, I did not stop struggling.
More accurately, I couldn’t.
I could see the screen before me.
Light radiated from the Leader of Pandemonium.
He was not the only one shining.
Tamuz and Kobal had stopped fighting and were emitting some kind of light as well.
That light did not look sacred in the slightest.
If anything, it was endlessly ominous.
Seeing it, I felt that the end was truly approaching.
In the end, we had prevented Pandemonium’s High-ranking Executives from reaching the Gate and allowing the End to hatch completely.
Yet now, the Leader and the High-ranking Executives themselves were bringing about the incomplete revival of the End they had struggled so hard to avoid.
Once it became clear that they would fail, they were essentially escaping under the pretext of becoming part of the End.
Of course, their actions were not meaningless.
Originally, in the game, the End was supposed to revive incompletely only after every High-ranking Executive of Pandemonium had been killed by the Player.
But this time, they were willingly sacrificing their own lives and offering everything they possessed to the End.
And what did that mean?
It meant the incompletely revived End would be far stronger than he had been in the game.
And it also meant my death was right around the corner.
The bodies of those emitting light gradually oxidized and transformed into dark crimson smoke.
The smoke gathered together and took on a single form.
The form of a Dragon with seven heads.
The shape once possessed by the Fragment of the End in the primordial era had been recreated.
Kwarararara!
The Fragment of the End let out a violent roar and flew toward my body.
Kugugugugu!
The Fragments of the End, now transformed into smoke, began forcing their way into every opening in my body—my eyes, nose, mouth, everywhere.
At the same time, the Mental Realm I occupied began shaking as though it would collapse.
The Ocean of Demonic Energy filling Metatron’s Mental Realm began bubbling as though boiling.
Fueled by the Fragments of the End, the Ocean of Demonic Energy rose higher and higher, beginning to fill the entire Mental Realm.
I could do nothing but thrash helplessly within those massive waves.
Crack.
Cracks began forming across the enormous prison that confined the End.
At the same time came the clattering of metal.
The restraints binding the End began disappearing one after another, and the chains entangling him loosened.
The End appeared before me.
He no longer wore a face resembling mine.
Enormous heads whose size I could not even comprehend filled my vision.
Seven pairs of eyes turned toward me.
When he opened his mouth, a thunderous voice reverberated throughout the space.
There was unmistakable anger in his voice.
Of course there was.
The Leader of Pandemonium’s plan had ultimately failed.
The End had revived incompletely.
And now he stood at a crossroads of fate.
If Park Siwoo and the people of the Academy defeated him, he would die together with me.
It would be a miserable death, one utterly unbefitting the name of the End—the King of the Demons and the end of the world itself.
There had been countless twists and turns, but in the end, my plan had succeeded.
All that remained was to watch his downfall.
Suddenly, I remembered the final line of the prophecy.
Everyone who knew the prophecy of Angels and Demons had feared the revival of the End and the return of Hell.
But ultimately, the prophecy itself would reach its conclusion with the death of the End.
“So in the end, you’re nothing more than another idiot struggling desperately to escape the shackles of Fate.”
With those words, I raised my middle finger straight at him.
One of the enormous Dragon maws swallowed me whole.