CHAPTER 201
Without giving Asheria Eve a chance to resist, I shoved her into the hole.
Asheria Eve let out a short sigh and tilted her head back.

"Goodness, you better come quick, okay?"

Stop spouting disgusting nonsense.
I kicked Asheria Eve straight down, and her body tipped over and fell into the abyss.
Asheria Eve plummeted endlessly.
The hole was unimaginably deep, to the point where I couldn't even tell how far she had fallen.

"Harua, what if she goes in first and tries something..."

"It's fine."

I had already attached a micro-command to Asheria Eve just in case.
If I just gave the order, I could blow her body to pieces.
Asheria Eve, who had long since reached her limit, was in no condition to counter my micro-command.

Even though I couldn't see it with my eyes, I could feel her rapidly distancing from us.
As expected, the pit was bottomless.
After waiting for a short while...

Stop—

I felt Asheria Eve suddenly halt.
There was no impact.
She just purely, abruptly stopped.

Was it the Transcendent?
I couldn't tell.
For some reason, I couldn't feel anything through the micro-command anymore.

Ruuuumble!

At that moment, another tremor echoed from the sky.
There was no more time to delay.

"Let's go."

"Yeah."

"Phew, let's hurry!"

I threw myself into the pit alongside the two of them.
A feeling of weightlessness enveloped my body.
The further we fell, the more our acceleration increased.

Babiyen was trembling all over while gripping her staff.
Regardless of her resolve, not knowing what would happen made it natural to feel afraid.
On the other hand, Aranseol was silently staring down into the pit.
Was it because she had gone through the trials of Danmyung multiple times?
I felt that the look in Aranseol's eyes had changed a lot from before.

Even so, the way her eyes crinkled into a gentle smile when she met my gaze remained the same.
It was a smile meant only for me, one she never showed anyone else.
So I reached out and grabbed each of their hands.
Our eyes met.
As I did, I could clearly feel the warmth of both of them in my grasp.

For the three of us, this was enough.
With this, we wouldn't be afraid no matter where we went.
The endless sensation of falling.
The moment I thought that weightlessness would eventually end...

Thud—

My body suddenly hit something, and I rolled across the ground.
I lifted my head with a dumbfounded expression, only to find a grassy plain stretching out before me.

"What is this?"

The sudden appearance of a meadow.
Seeing this, I couldn't help but look blank.
I was definitely falling down a pit just a second ago, so what the hell was going on?

As I stood there with a bewildered expression, I saw butterflies fluttering in the distance.
It was as if this place was incredibly peaceful.
It felt designed to make me think it was okay to forget everything and just rest.
At that moment, I felt a sensation that I had forgotten something.
What did I forget?
Did I even have anything worth forgetting?
Why did I come in here in the first place? Oh, I've been here from the start.

How long was I staring blankly at that space, completely out of it?
Suddenly, goosebumps erupted down my spine, and I raised my hand.
It was unconscious.
Instinctively, I concentrated my holy magic into my fist and ruthlessly swung it at my own face.

KABOOOOM!

My head violently snapped back.
I felt my skull shatter and my brain blow to pieces.
Then, in the moment my consciousness faded into the abyss...
In that split second, my eyes snapped open.

What loomed before me was pitch-black darkness.
An endless abyss where nothing could be seen.
In that darkness, I forced out a breath and slowly touched my face.
My head wasn't broken.
That meant I hadn't actually carried out the action.

Because I had absorbed so much holy power, it was practically a gamble whether I would revive or not.
However, if I hadn't made that split-second decision just now, I could guarantee I would have been trapped in that place forever.
It was an action driven strictly by instinct, but somehow, I survived.
I could find relief in just that.

Wiping the cold sweat gathered on my forehead, I focused my vision.
I still couldn't see anyone around.
Neither Aranseol nor Babiyen were anywhere to be found.
Instead, a faint sound reached my ears.
I strained my ears to figure out what it was.
Soon, the moment I barely caught the sound that was right on the edge of hearing...

Kikik—

A chilling laugh followed.
A laugh that would make goosebumps break out all over your body.
It sounded like an awkward imitation of a human laugh.

The moment I heard that laugh, I blindly swung my fist.
Naturally, it didn't hit anything.
I felt my blood run cold and my lips go completely dry.
Darkness is humanity's most primal fear.
In the dark, a person endlessly hallucinates and succumbs to the dread that something lurking in the shadows might harm them.
There was no way to overcome the source of that terror.
If I couldn't overcome it...
I just had to accept it.

I let my arms drop limply to my sides and quietly closed my eyes.
Then, I focused on the holy power within my body.
Where was this place?
It was the endless abyss I had entered after sensing the presence of the Transcendent that birthed this earth.
Having come in here fully prepared for everything, what was there to fear?

Kik kikik—

That unpleasant laugh echoed in my ears once again.
But I didn't pay it any mind.
Instead, I concentrated even harder on my holy power.
I was focusing on only one holy power right now.
The very first holy power I had absorbed into this body.
The holy power of some nameless Transcendent.
But right now, in this moment, I could feel more clearly whose holy power it was.

Somewhere in the darkness.
The Transcendent who was silently watching me.
The Transcendent who had perhaps been watching us for a very long time.
I made my existence known to it.

Woooong—

At that moment, I felt a massive presence.
I extended my holy power, chasing after that inscrutable presence.
Eventually, where my holy power reached was the darkness.
However, another problem followed.
No matter which direction my holy power went, the darkness reacted as if it were the correct answer.
As if all the darkness in this place was the original owner of the holy power.

"It's not 'as if'..."

Realizing something I didn't want to realize, I slowly opened my eyes.
Soon after, the darkness moved.
What I thought was darkness...
It was simply a single pupil.
It was just so absurdly massive that I couldn't even comprehend it.
That entity had been staring at me from the very beginning.

My lips wouldn't part.
How should I put this...
Isn't the difference in scale a bit too much?
All of Asheria Eve's talk about creating an Artificial Transcendent felt completely futile.
A being so impossibly gargantuan that I couldn't even properly perceive a single one of its eyes.
The fact that such an entity had been casually coiled up beneath the world gave me an indescribable feeling.
A Transcendent.
I realized once again exactly what kind of existence it was.

Before long, that eye slowly moved.

[Poor child.]

A voice echoed directly into my mind.
It felt like the Transcendent was showing consideration so that I could comprehend it.

[For what purpose have you come this far?]

For what purpose?

"I have a favor to ask of you."

I infused my words with the Transcendent's holy power to convey them.
It was to ensure my message was delivered clearly, no matter what.

"A crazy bitch tore a hole in the sky. Through it, the Transcendents are pushing their way in out of sheer curiosity. And we have no power to stop them."

I had definitively realized that a Transcendent was an entity that couldn't be dealt with unless you were another Transcendent.
Therefore, I desperately pleaded with this Transcendent.
I begged it to seal that sky once again.

[Poor child.]

Soon, the Transcendent's voice returned.

[For whose sake is this?]

For whose sake?

"For the sake of the world I've lived in, the people living there... and for my own sake."

The 1st World, Astrape.
I hated this world to death.
But what could I do?
Ultimately, this was the world I had to live in.
No matter how much I despised it, hated it, and pushed it away.
I couldn't spend my entire life hating the world I had to live in.
Humans are creatures of adaptation.
And eventually, the day would come when I, too, would adapt.
So, for that day, I wanted this world to be protected safely.

Did my desperation reach it?
The Transcendent remained silent for a while before continuing.

[Poor child.]

It spoke once more.

[You are the only one left in this world now.]

Those next words made me instantly fail to understand what it was saying.
I stared at the Transcendent with a blank expression.
I'm the only one left in this world?
What kind of batshit insane nonsense was that?

"W-wait a minute. What do you mean I'm the only one? There are people up above. And my friends who came in here with me..."

My voice, which had been trailing on, slowly began to halt.
At the same time, my pupils began to shake violently.

Right now, in this place, I was the only one.
It wasn't that everyone had been scattered—it was just me.
Wait.
Hold on.
How much time had passed?
The time I spent in that meadow, which I thought was just a brief moment.
Was it really just a brief moment?
The oblivion I felt... was it only a fleeting sensation to me, while in reality...

The moment my thoughts reached that point.
I couldn't force another sound out of my throat.

[Poor child, seeds cannot maintain their complete form in my presence.]

A Transcendent was like a massive star.
An entity that sucked in and obliterated everything around it simply by existing.
Whether it was intentional or not, nothing could exist near them.

[But poor child, you are different. Pitifully, you have been obliterated before me countless times, only to return again and again.]

Resurrection Magic.
The sole ability granted to me.
By the time I reached the Transcendent, I had already repeated countless, immeasurable deaths.
Divine Apostle Transformation was meaningless.
Since the Transcendent was already right in front of me anyway.
The holy power would have been sucked into the Transcendent like a black hole.

[Normally, you would have just continued to repeat the cycle, but it seems the seed planted within you was different.]

The Seed.
The source of all magic and the origin of life.
The endless, infinite deaths caused simply by the Transcendent's presence.
Yet, even within that cycle of death, the Seed of Light was continuously exposed to the Transcendent's power.
Like mutating into a grotesque monster from radiation exposure.
The Seed received the Transcendent's power, constantly altering its form as it grew.
And in the end.
The Seed finally grew into a massive Tree.

I could finally feel it.
The colossal tree that had bloomed from deep inside my body.
Whatever form it took, the tree had definitely bloomed.
And that tree was what was keeping me intact before the Transcendent right now.

"...What happened to the surface?"

I asked about the world I had lived in.

[There is nothing left.]

The answer that returned was nothingness.
The statement that there was nothing.
In the wake of the Transcendents sweeping through, absolutely nothing could remain.
The Transcendents would no longer pay any attention to this place.
Because looking at an empty, barren land held no entertainment value for them.

"I see."

The Transcendent answering me right now was also purely out of its own amusement.
The Transcendent didn't take any action.
To them, our everything must have been nothing but a fleeting moment.
But I was a human who lived within those fleeting moments.
If I was left entirely alone in a world with nothing...
Then what I had to do was set in stone.

"Then, I will rebuild everything."

Resurrection Magic.
I would bring everything back to life.