Hio rested as much as possible during the cooldown period for Dimension Transfer.
He could have flown toward the Empire immediately, but his priority was recovering his magic power and physical strength before performing a Dimension Transfer back to the outside world.
Although he was in relatively good shape compared to how he felt during the infinite Night of Aberrations at the World’s End, he had still been fighting for an incredibly long time without a single break.
While the level of his body and soul had risen significantly through his enlightenment, he had gone from the Night of Aberrations to meeting Kreutzvalt, and then immediately back to the Continent via Dimension Transfer for another round of combat.
He needed rest.
Of course, the moment of respite was brief, and the time to leave had finally come. No special farewells were necessary. He would be back soon anyway.
He had vowed that he would never again be swept away by someone like Kreutzvalt and disappear.
[**Transcendental Skill — Dimension Transfer is being activated.**]
Space split apart, and purple lines emerged. The dimensional wall, which an ordinary person could never comprehend even if they stared directly at it, revealed itself.
His body slowly floated upward. His wings spread wide. And then.
[**Target: Continent: Asia — Country: South Korea — City: Seoul**]
[**Dimension Transfer is beginning.**]
Hio’s figure vanished into that massive rift in dimensions. It was an unrealistic sight, difficult to believe even when witnessed firsthand. Both Hamelot and Claire stood dazed for a moment.
However, that silence didn’t last long.
“Haha…”
Claire began to laugh. How long had it been since she last laughed like that? Only now did it truly feel real — that her hero had returned.
[**Subject: Hio Pavlenko**]
[**Dimension Transfer has been completed.**]
The transfer was instantaneous.
When he regained his senses, what he saw beneath his feet was pure chaos. It was a shambles filled with screams and despair. The Abyssal Depths covered the city, and all sorts of wretched deaths surged below.
There was no time to hesitate.
[**Skill — Celestial is being activated.**]
Drawing upon his Holy Power, Hio deployed Celestial to its maximum range. It was the goddess’s golden touch, enveloping the entire city. It was the light that drove back the darkness.
The noise began to die down at the sudden phenomenon. Celestial and the Abyssal Depths clashed, but from the start, this was an unfair fight. It was the natural right of light to dispel darkness.
As long as they were on equal footing, the darkness would naturally be swallowed by the light. Unless a Master of the Abyss was present, the Abyssal Depths could not stand against the Celestial power.
— “Screeeech!”
Of course, because it was a fairly dense concentration of the Abyssal Depths and these were Aberrations born from the Abyss, they resisted quite tenaciously, even if they were lower-tier entities.
[**Skill — Azure Flame is being activated.**]
[**Skill — Thunder Emperor is being activated.**]
What would happen if the two powers he had spent the most time with appeared at Hio’s sides? If white lightning and blue flames joined the domain of the Celestial light, an ownerless Abyss and its Strange Entities stood no chance of enduring.
*Boom!*
*Cra-crack!*
Thunderbolts of wrath fell across the city like divine punishment. The Strange Entities couldn’t even react before being struck directly. They dissolved, convulsing as they were filled with the warm divinity.
*Whoosh!*
The Azure Flame tore through the city like a river. It flowed deep into every alleyway. Under Hio’s will, it provided warm heat to the humans while granting the Strange Entities a quiet death amidst hellish flames, dyeing the world blue.
In the places where they passed, red calendulas bloomed briefly before scattering. They were the calendulas of sorrow, grief, and endurance. He hadn’t intended to imbue them with endurance specifically, but his Ideation had naturally seeped into his power.
Just as a person’s life colors their speech or mannerisms, the scent of his Ideation had naturally been applied.
Not even a few minutes had passed before the city was shrouded in complete silence. There was no one who hadn’t been touched by the sprinkling Celestial light, no one who hadn’t heard the divine punishment of the thunderbolts, and no one who hadn’t seen the miraculous Azure Flame.
‘How could they possibly doubt?’
[**Skill — Azure Flame is being deactivated.**]
[**Skill — Thunder Emperor is being deactivated.**]
As he withdrew the lightning and recalled the flames, Hio stood right beneath the majestic goddess’s touch with his back to the Celestial light. Seeing him looking down at the earth with his wings spread wide, how could anyone harbor any other thought?
*Fwoosh.*
The Abyssal Depths vanished. The energy of the Abyss that had seeped into their hearts and marrow was washed away cleanly. People knew even without an explanation. The warm light touching them was the hand of a god. The death that had risen to their chins was receding.
If this wasn’t called a miracle, then what could be? How could anyone but a god do such a thing? Even those who had lived their entire lives denying the existence of gods had no choice this time. They couldn’t endure without believing. Without faith, they wouldn’t be able to bear this terrible disaster and reality.
[**Skill — Celestial is being deactivated.**]
The Celestial light gradually faded. The people remained silent, simply staring up at the sky. They wondered if he would leave a word, or perhaps a revelation on how to act and how to live from now on.
Contrary to those expectations…
“Ah…”
***
After a quick glance at the ground, he vanished with a powerful flap of his wings.
Meanwhile, aside from those who simply regarded him as a god, there were those who were closer to the truth.
“Was that… Jijoncheonma?”
The representative figures among them were Yoon Seulah and Nam Tae-min. Of course, that didn’t mean they felt any differently from the others. The more they knew, the more they were horrified and awestruck.
Yoon Seulah felt it in her own way. From the first moment she met him, there were no past records of him, as if someone had erased them. No one knew the name Hyunseung Lee.
From the sight of him collapsing a floating island in the sky to the scene just now — if those events were connected, all her thoughts eventually converged into one conclusion.
It was the same for Nam Tae-min.
Jijoncheonma, Hio Pavlenko, had clearly died. While no one had witnessed the death personally, there was more than enough evidence. Once a Gate closed, there was no way to escape other than death.
Then what was it they were seeing now? Did it mean Jijoncheonma had returned from the dead?
Nam Tae-min had agonized and struggled for years, yet things had still reached this point. But for Jijoncheonma, it was a problem that could be solved in just a few minutes.
In the end, only one thought came to mind.
“Is he… really trying to become a god?”
The name of Jijoncheonma began to spread like wildfire.
***
“I expected it, but this really is the worst.”
There was no answer to the words I muttered out of habit. It was because Furnel wasn’t by my side and Theodore had been unsummoned.
‘…I should resolve this quickly and go find Furnel first.’
When Furnel first entered my body, I had struggled with the situation of having to be together even when going to the bathroom. Now, his absence made me feel more than just empty; I was almost lonely.
“Anyway, it looks like I’ve put out the immediate fire…!”
The most urgent fire had been extinguished for now. The problem was that Seoul wasn’t the only place with an urgent fire. The accumulated damage from the five previous failures — excluding this 70th floor — was beyond imagination.
The major cities seemed to be maintaining some level of power, but it was obvious what kind of wretched state the smaller and medium-sized cities would be in. Moreover, even in a major city, if an Abyss Gate from the 70th floor appeared nearby like it did in Seoul, the problem became severe.
Starting from the 70th floor, the concentration of the Abyss was different, and Strange Entities appeared instead of Abyss Monsters.
“Whew…”
I had only one body, but the problems that needed solving were spread across the entire world.
“Well, what can I do? I have to move fast.”
What was the point of complaining? I should use that time to move a bit faster and save even one more person.
[**Skill — Summon Phantom Steed is being activated.**]
[**Trait — Spirit Body is being activated.**]
Mounted on the Phantom Steed, Hio flew at high speed toward the Abyssal Depths that were spreading thickly in the distance.
***
It was useless even though he wore a mask and wrapped his entire body in cloth. Even if he covered his nose and mouth and tried not to breathe, he eventually had to inhale air to survive.
“Gasp!”
In that moment, the black energy ruthlessly invaded his body.
“Blegh! *Cough*!”
He stuck his fingers down his throat and tried to force himself to vomit, but there was no way the energy that had already entered would come back out. Several people around him were already hovering between life and death. They were the ones infected by the Abyss.
After laughing and crying repeatedly like madmen while seeing hallucinations, three people had lost consciousness along with a boiling fever. They were none other than his family.
— Screeeech!
The terrible screams and bizarre noises coming from outside grew closer. The ground shook as if an earthquake were happening, and screams echoed from all directions. It seemed the defensive line consisting of military units and Awakened had collapsed.
The sound of shells exploding and buildings collapsing. The screams of people buried under the rubble. The despair of those being torn apart and eaten by something.
“Ha…”
He felt like he was going to go crazy. It was nauseating just to take a single breath in the black energy spreading everywhere. It was overwhelming to keep his senses amidst the noise and the shaking buildings.
All he could do was feel resentment and anger. The bastards who kept the truth hidden even though they knew it. The ones who let it burst out only when they were on the verge of death. It would have been better not to know.
If they were going to hide it, they should have hidden it until the end. If they were going to let it out, they should have offered a solution first. Now, didn’t he have to die while feeling an even more horrific sensation and despair?
Those were the only thoughts the man could muster. That was all he could do while facing death.
So, he forced himself up and headed toward the window. ‘Let’s just die quickly. Instead of suffering for a few more hours, let’s just end it.’
That was the thought that drove him to stand up and reach the window. And what the man saw was…
*Boom!*
A falling thunderbolt. Golden divinity stretching out.
— Screeeech!
Strange Entities convulsing and dissolving. The receding darkness. And a being watching over all of it from above.
“What in the world…!”
The man unconsciously pulled out his phone and pressed the camera button. Before he could even press it a few more times, the being in the sky vanished without a trace. Along with the screams and the sounds of despair.
***
I had been moving around so frantically that my magic power and Holy Power were almost depleted. After gaining enlightenment and training at the World’s End, I thought I would rarely run out of magic power, but that belief was shattered immediately.
“Where am I…?”
I simply flew wherever the Abyss was detected, cast Celestial, cleared out the Abyss Monsters and Strange Entities, and repeated the process of leaving after purifying as much energy as possible.
Since I had already visited dozens of cities, I couldn’t even estimate how much time had passed or where I was.
“China? Or Taiwan?”
Well, it was probably somewhere around there. The important thing was that the world was still vast and there was much to do. Since this was likely to be a long ordeal, I had to manage my physical strength, magic power, and Holy Power well. Immediate rest was absolutely necessary.
The moment Hio landed on the roof of an anonymous building, he sprawled out. When it came to resting, lying down comfortably was the best. He needed to rest for about 30 minutes before heading out again. He had to rest in the most comfortable posture possible, even if only for that short time.
‘I should read the detailed effects of Dimension Transfer.’
I had been so busy that I hadn’t even read the proper explanation of the transcendental skill yet. As it was the first transcendental skill situated above the highest-tier skills, I needed to check its detailed effects.
With that thought, I opened the Status Window. A stream of messages poured out.
[**The story of ‘Jijoncheonma’ is spreading rapidly.**]
[**The story of the ‘Savior of Humanity’ is spreading rapidly.**]
[**Stories of a ‘God’ are spreading rapidly.**]
[**Many people sense divinity in the user’s actions.**]
[**Signs of faith have been detected.**]
[**Authority — ??? is throbbing.**]
Some massive change was about to occur.
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