Chapter 196 : Void Space
Chapter 196: Void Space
The trip, which had felt both long and short, came to an end.
And just like that, we returned to our daily lives.
Beep beep beep- Beep beep beep-
I opened my eyes at the familiar notification sound.
Normally, my eyes would have opened exactly at six in the morning, but today they opened at eight.
When I checked my phone, I saw that I had received a message.
It was from Seo Da-hee.
[Are you awake?]
It was only a short message, but seeing it made it sink in that I had started dating her.
My first girlfriend across both my previous life and my current one.
It felt strangely surreal.
After replying to her message, I went outside.
Wol-ah, who had woken up before me, was preparing to go to her play academy as usual.
Something about her appearance looked different today.
Noticing that I was awake, Wol-ah gave me a bright smile.
“You’re awake? You seemed like you still hadn’t recovered from the fatigue of the trip, so I didn’t wake you.”
“Thanks. But I haven’t seen those clothes before.”
Today, Wol-ah looked like the young lady of some noble family.
Her hair, tied into twin tails, looked cute, and the white dress she wore looked like something that would appear in a fashion magazine.
Apparently delighted that I had noticed the change, Wol-ah showed off her clothes.
“Lady Yehwa bought them for me while you were on your trip!”
“The Sword Empress did?”
“Yes! We also ate lots of delicious food together, and I watched something called a movie.”
Wol-ah’s voice was extremely excited as she spoke.
The Sword Empress absolutely adored Wol-ah.
Whenever she had the chance, she would barge into the house, take Wol-ah out to play, bring her food, or send her home carrying armfuls of clothes and gifts.
For reference, when I looked up the price of the clothes Wol-ah had received as gifts, I couldn’t hide my shock.
So many zeroes filled the screen.
If it were up to me, I would’ve politely refused, but I couldn’t.
The Sword Empress’s determination was simply too strong.
‘Seongwoo, listen carefully. I don’t think you understand this, but that child is an Angel! An Angel descended upon the mortal world. And you want to dress an Angel in rags?’
She probably had no idea how shocked I had been by the words she had casually thrown out.
It wasn’t as though I had intended to hide it, but no one knew Wol-ah’s true identity.
In any case, when she insisted that strongly, it became difficult for me to refuse.
More than anything, I also wanted Wol-ah to eat good food and wear nice things.
Then Wol-ah spoke to me.
“I set breakfast on the table, so please eat it while it’s still warm.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay if I don’t take you all the way to the academy?”
“I’ll be fine!”
Wol-ah answered confidently, grabbed her bag, and headed outside.
Watching her leave brought a satisfied smile to my lips.
So this was why fathers with daughters became fools for them.
Of course, there probably wasn’t another child like Wol-ah anywhere in the world.
Where else would you find a baby this cute, kind, and mature?
I couldn’t exactly blame the Sword Empress for being completely smitten with Wol-ah.
She really was far too good a child for someone like me.
As I continued thinking about Wol-ah, my thoughts naturally drifted toward the Heavenly Demon.
She would probably be delighted if she could see Wol-ah like this now.
I took out my phone and called someone.
After a few rings, a familiar voice answered.
“Oh, Seongwoo?”
“Mr. 7th Smith. How’s the thing I commissioned coming along?”
“That? I was actually thinking about contacting you. We’re almost finished making what you requested.”
“Really?”
Not long after I returned from death, I had commissioned something from Master Gu Ryun and his disciples.
An Artifact to aid in the search for the Heavenly Demon.
When the End had completely revived using my body as his Vessel,
I had briefly assimilated with him.
And during that process, I glimpsed the memories of the Leader of Pandemonium and the High-ranking Executives.
Among them was the Heavenly Demon’s final fate.
She had remained the Heavenly Demon until the very end.
Above Heaven and Earth, I Alone Am Supreme.
The Heavenly Demon had not died at the hands of the Leader of Pandemonium or the High-ranking Executives.
Even while fighting them until the very end, she had no intention of allowing people weaker than herself to kill her.
Instead, she threw herself into the Void Space between Pandemonium’s Hidden Stronghold and the real world.
Void Space.
It was the gap between dimensions and could be called chaos itself.
Mana did not exist there, and it was governed by laws entirely different from those of reality.
In other words, Void Space was an unknown realm that humanity still had no right to reach.
And what did that mean?
The Heavenly Demon might still be alive.
I had spent the past month living like a completely unemployed bum, but that didn’t mean I had truly done nothing.
Even while waiting hand and foot on Park Siwoo and the others, I continuously researched Void Space and methods of entering it.
As long as there was even the slightest hope, I couldn’t simply ignore it.
She was my benefactor.
After cleanly finishing the breakfast Wol-ah had prepared, I got ready to go out.
If the commissioned item was almost complete, there should be no problem with showing my face there.
I took a taxi toward Gangnam, where Chiwoo Workshop was located.
Chiwoo Workshop was still enormous despite how long it had been since my last visit.
The extravagant atmosphere of the building naturally drew the eye, but as expected, it lacked romance.
When I entered, the Employees who recognized me led me toward the workshop where Master Gu Ryun and the Smiths were.
I had felt this before too, but the service here really was incredible.
The elevator doors opened, and I entered the workshop I had visited before.
It was a state-of-the-art workshop without even a trace of flame, heat, or the scent of iron.
But why was it so quiet?
When I came here with Park Siwoo and the others in the past, the place had been lively and busy.
Today, the workshop was nothing but silent.
It was quiet enough to make me wonder whether anyone was even here.
Then I sensed suspicious Mana coming from somewhere.
At the same time came an unpleasant sensation that clung to me.
Creepy, viscous Mana covered my body.
“What the hell!”
An ambush?
The Infernal Flame that rose reflexively burned away the sticky Mana covering me and traced it back toward its source.
Bang!
Not long afterward, one wall of the workshop exploded with a tremendous roar.
“Guuuuuhhh.”
A familiar voice came from inside the collapsed wall.
Someone emerged from the rubble.
It was the enormous Orc 7th Smith, wearing a white coat covered in soot.
“Good grief…. Kid, wasn’t that reaction a little excessive?”
“Why the hell are you coming out of there?”
Don’t tell me?
Had the unpleasant sensation I felt come from something the 7th Smith had created?
I looked through the hole in the wall he had emerged from.
Several unconscious people were lying inside.
Every single face was familiar.
“Master Gu Ryun? And the other disciples?”
“We were testing the performance of the item you commissioned.”
He casually brushed away the soot from the explosion as he spoke.
Seeing Master Gu Ryun and the others unconscious made me feel unnecessarily guilty.
“Are the others all right?”
“They passed out from the impact, but they’ll be fine. They all value their bodies quite a lot.”
Sure enough, I sensed peculiar flows of Mana around the unconscious Smiths.
They were Protective Barriers created by Artifacts.
But I couldn’t sense any Mana around the 7th Smith.
Noticing my gaze, he tightened one arm and showed off muscles that looked ready to burst.
“I don’t enjoy using Artifacts like that. Especially while working. They get in the way.”
“With physical abilities like that, shouldn’t you be a Hero instead of a blacksmith?”
“Gwahaha!”
After laughing heartily, he asked,
“So, how was it? I activated the Artifact with you as the target for the test.”
“It felt incredibly unpleasant.”
When I first felt the Mana, I had mistaken it for an enemy attack.
The sensation of Mana crawling across my entire body was awful.
“That can’t be helped. You know what kind of place Void Space is. Neither Mana nor proper laws exist there. If you want to search a place like that, there’s no choice but to increase the output.”
“Will this definitely be enough to find her?”
“Honestly, I can’t guarantee it. We increased the output and expanded the search range as much as possible, but Void Space is far too vast and contains too many variables.”
I had never thought finding the Heavenly Demon would be easy in the first place.
Even so, what mattered was holding onto hope and trying.
“But there’s one important problem.”
“A problem?”
“What you commissioned us to make was, strictly speaking, an Artifact that tracks a target within Void Space.”
“Right?”
“Then how do you plan to enter Void Space?”
His question was obvious.
No matter how excellent the tracking device was, it would be useless if I couldn’t enter Void Space.
Then did I have a way to enter Void Space?
Unfortunately, not at the moment.
If I still possessed Malphas’s Authority, then simply locating the Heavenly Demon would have been enough to rescue her.
But with the End’s death, every Demonic Authority I possessed had disappeared.
So how was I planning to save the Heavenly Demon?
Of course, I had already prepared an answer for that too.
“I’m going to use the ‘Gate.’”
“The Gate? You mean that monstrosity that appeared where the Academy used to stand?”
“I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a monstrosity, but yes.”
The Gate was both an intersection and a passage between dimensions.
Then what would happen if I opened a small hole in that passage?
As I had said, Void Space referred to the empty space existing between one dimension and another.
In other words, if I pierced a small hole into the Gate’s passage, I would be able to enter Void Space.
The only problem was how to open the Gate.
But that wasn’t actually a problem.
Back in the distant primordial era, how had Demons and Angels reached Earth in the first place?
The End had left far more behind for me with his death than I had expected.
“But can you even approach the Gate?”
The Gate towering where the Academy once stood was currently being strictly managed as a World Heritage Site.
In other words, it wasn’t somewhere I could simply walk up to whenever I wanted.
“I specifically asked the Sword Emperor for help with that.”
“With so many countries involved, even the Sword Emperor’s influence shouldn’t be enough.”
“Who do you think I am? I’m one of the Heroes who saved the world. They agreed to let me access the Gate on the condition that I share information about it.”
“Well, everyone who needs to know already knows that you’re one of the Heroes who saved the world.”
Every preparation necessary to rescue the Heavenly Demon was complete.
All that remained was to go find her.
“Then come back in a few days. The Artifact itself is finished, but we need to run a few final checks.”
“Can’t you just give it to me now?”
“Normally, I wouldn’t mind, but didn’t you just make your Mana explode? It’s not something that would break from just that much, but there’s no harm in checking.”
Accepting his point, I nodded.
I had already waited a month.
Another day or two wouldn’t change anything.
The most important thing was bringing the Heavenly Demon back into this world.
And if she returned, fulfilling her lifelong wish might no longer be impossible either.
She had given up not only her own life for me and Wol-ah, but also the path back to the homeland she had longed for her entire life.
But things were different now that the End was dead and the Gate had appeared.
If she wanted it, I intended to send the Heavenly Demon back to her homeland.
And a few days later, I stood before the Gate.