Chapter 160

Get In Line (4)

Igras-Sho spoke threateningly.

[You are shameless. I’m just trying to get the kid I reached out to before you did to get him cleaned and return him to normal.]

The blood drops intertwined in the air to form an answer.

– Did the mortal accept your hand? To worship the god and be part of it has to be a choice of free will. That man hasn’t chosen anyone yet.

[Then it shall be solved by giving him a reason to choose.]

– Oppression that leads to bias in choice? I will protect him from such oppression, ‘Magic.’

The gods were exiled.

No one knew where they were exactly exiled, but there was a place where many assumed.

There was a world that’s full of monsters beyond the Red Gate.

That space, often referred to as the ‘vacant lot,’ was like hell where the meaning of existence could not be found.

It was the manifestation of chaos wherein it was only inhabited by monsters, scattered fragments, and materials intertwined in a mess.

The trapped gods continuously attempted to extend their influence to the material world.

The reason behind it that they became those who could not exist by themselves, unlike before the establishment of the material world.

Dissimilar to the past when matter and ideology couldn’t be distinguished, the deities in the current era required a mortal.

It meant that the more the inferior ones worshipped them and the ones that borrowed their powers spread in the world, the stronger their influences became.

That was all I knew about the theological concepts around them.

‘That’s why they want to make an incarnation!’

One meant to spread one’s color more intensely.

And a vessel that exerted much more divine power than an ordinary priest was an incarnation.

‘But why does that have to be me, out of all the beings out there?!’

For some reason, they seemed to have judged that I was the best candidate to become their incarnation.

Blood droplets formed a sentence that seemed to aim to mock.

– Do you think that the mortal will be able to find your lost leg, the most powerful magic, again? Can he succeed with the imperfect help from a lame god? It’s a vain wish.

Igras-Sho didn’t assume inferiority either.

[Yes, the magic of now has lost its completeness. However, it’s better than ‘life,’ which has lost its offsprings and lost its ability to reproduce. At least the chances are available for me!]

As I watched the conversation, something in my head went spat, then murmured.

‘What a tragic sight. Is that really a conversation between great beings? Where has the beings that once served as pillars that supported everything gone off to? Why do only shadows remain now?’

“?!”

The moment that thought painted my head.

I felt a dizzying sense of incompatibility.

Was that also the memories of the sealed reincarnates?

Perhaps it was similar to the unconsciously recovered sword movements while receiving the god’s ordeal?

I soon denied the speculation myself.

‘No!’

There was a fundamentally different part in my current thoughts.

A sense of alienation that can’t be seen as mine.

I could tell by the natural intuition.

The moment I focused more on it and tried to find out its identity…

“!”

All of a sudden, everything stopped.

The growling faceless doppelganger, the darkness that crept around, the crimson fog, and I were the only ones capable of moving just a moment ago that time-bound space.

But at that moment, everything but me had been frozen.

‘Don’t behave disgracefully and step back for a while.’

Then everything began to flow backward.

The blood fog that intervened and the darkness that flowed next to it all receded away.

It was like someone had hit the rewind button.

After the surrounding area had completely emptied…

The time that was reversed began to flow in the normal direction again.

[What?!]

The darkness expressed its reaction as if it was very baffled.

Then, the god of life, ‘Rom,’ made a mysterious sentence using the blood fog.

– Have you finally awakened, ‘Time?’

The next moment, I lost consciousness.

***

When the occurrences reached past the standard of the soul dwelling inside Seo Jin-Wook that was from the far future perceived by all other material existences apart from him…

The ‘god of Time’ lent its strength in response to the prayers of the last surviving mortals at the time.

It had given the designated soul the power to go back in time and repeat it several times.

Just as the god of space existed in all spaces, the god of time also existed in the past, present, and future simultaneously, but it wasn’t easy to forcibly twist a normal flow.

It was even harder for the deity who had already been weakened to its limits.

Therefore, the god sealed a portion of its existence in the soul.

Even after being sealed, it still continued to exist at all times, all at once. However, it couldn’t actively intervene in the material world as it did in the past. That was because the religious body’s power that served the god of time was as weak as the god of sword’s worshippers.

‘Originally, I’m not supposed to intervene this way.’

In recent regression, the god of time had once again spent another powerful force.

It was because the soul exited from the cycle’s designed shackles and possessed the cycle as another being for the first time.

So, the god couldn’t be sure at the moment.

If Seo Jin-Wook died without achieving his destiny again, would he be able to repeat his reincarnation once more?

The problem was, its strength was unlikely to recover sufficiently until the moment of death came.

In other words, if Seo Jin-Wook died again, instead of being reborn as Seo Jin-Wook or Choi Seung-Hyun the next time, he would enter a cycle wherein he would be born as another entity.

They would be moving to the next step without his current destiny being achieved.

That would cause the disconnection of the butterfly effects designed by the god with future mortals.

‘In this life, I must help this mortal to fulfill his destiny no matter what.’

The god of time had given up saving up power for the next repetition.

Regardless, if Seo Jin-Wook followed the supposed flow and moved on to the next reincarnation, that was, if he started another cycle, the god would be able to gather strength again.

‘There is no repetition at the end of this life. There is only the cycle.’

The deity borrowed Seo Jin-Wook’s mouth and spoke.

“I can see your nervousnesses. You all must have lost a lot of memories at this point. And your power must have slowly dissipated.”

Growl!

As if the sacred beast of ‘Aden’ was afraid, it growled in a lower voice than before.

[Time? Is it Time?… Is that true? Have you been hiding there all this time? Is that why I was interested? I see. That’s why so many gods were attracted to this boy!]

Igras-Sho couldn’t hide its bafflement as well.

The god of time looked straight at them and said that it couldn’t leave the current situation unattended anymore. It attracted the deities because the possession caused the balance of power to collapse.

If it went on like that, all kinds of gods would gather and try to own Seo Jin-Wook’s soul.

Therefore, the god of time felt the need to finally sort things out at that point.

It was a form of traffic control.

“You must not want to lose more of yourself. And you must want to leave a strong footprint on the material world. But to do so, we must not enslave this soul.”

The darkness protested.

[Why is that so? I’ve never seen such a perfect vessel before!]

There was a limit to increasing the believers.

A faster and more direct way was to have an agent who commanded powerful divine power in the material world.

They would act as an antenna that received divine power.

Though it still protested, the darkness wasn’t as rough as it was before.

That was because space and time were the sources of all beings.

The two gods were higher in rank than other great beings.

That remained true even at that moment when it had already lost almost all of its original power.

“The reason is…”

‘Time’ answered the question of ‘magic.’

“If we remain this way, all beings in the material world will be destroyed by those who defeated us in the old days.”

[?!]

The darkness trembled, the blood fog frantically created a vortex, and the sacred beast shrank.

Looking at the reaction, the god of time once again felt bitter.

How did they end up at the bottom?

Why couldn’t they predict such a natural outcome in advance?

Rather than of a god, it was like the mortal’s way of thinking, with holes in the brains.

“The door that connects between where our bodies are exiled and the material world. Its frequency of occurrence is gradually increasing.”

It talked about the Red Gate’s occurrence frequency that the Union had recognized as well.

“It’s similar to what we’ve been through, but things have gotten worse. Some are doomed by monsters that pop out of the vacant lot. However, some are destroyed by themselves even if there are no monsters. There are parasites that control their minds, leading them to self-destruction. Therefore, two kinds of offensive target the material world now. Material assaults and mental assaults.”

It continued in a rather low voice.

“This mortal, the soul that dwells within this vessel, holds the key to winning the upcoming war.”

[…!]

The god of the time spoke as if it was making a declaration.

“Even for us great beings, this mortal must remain as free as he has ever been. Do not attempt to incarnate this body. Do not dream of enslaving this soul by subordination. It will rather mess up the results we desire.”

[But… Think about how hard I’ve been working on it!]

The god of time laughed bitterly.

It wasn’t easy to talk and persuade the remains that lost most of their memories.

Furthermore, even if ‘magic’ had worked hard, would it be comparable to what it had done?

“Then…”

The god of time decided to arbitrate on the appropriate lines.

It decided to put up a solution to satisfy the basic desire of debris that lost their praise and reputation while letting the mortal achieve destiny, hitting two birds with one stone.

“I understand your desire to slow down the process of losing yourselves. Hence, I will propose this.”

[What is it?]

“This being cannot be a servant or an animal that serves you. But you are allowed to lend him your powers.”

A recommendation that even if they could bless down their powers for Seo Jin-Wook, they were not to chip off his soul.

The magic god immediately protested.

[No! There is a limit to the divine power bestowed upon those who do not serve us by sacrificing their souls!]

The holy wound Igras-Sho engraved on Seo Jin-Wook was a form of ‘loaned trade,’ and the payment it wanted was the soul’s perfect submission.

On the other hand, the god of time was forcing it to give up the promised collection of debt in the future.

Then, ‘Time’ calmly answered the question of ‘magic.’

“What if the mortal won’t have to accept the divine power directly from you?”

[… What is that supposed to mean?]

It seemed to have lost so much memory that it felt disabled in expanding its thinking and imagining range.

The god of the time lamented but slowly explained its thoughts.

“Shall we compare it? ‘Magic,’ you want to turn the world black. ‘Life’ wants to paint it red, so instead of pouring black waves and red waterfalls to this mortal, you will only give a few drops of paint to this mortal. The mortal will fetch the water on his own, mix the paint that matches your colors, and release the waves of color you all want into the material world.”

[And where is that water supposed to come from?]

“Isn’t the material world already full of raw energy? The energy of the source that you know best, god of magic.”

The god of time was talking about the concept of converting Mana into divine power. However, Igras-Sho pointed out a missing part of the explanation.

[Turning the Mana into a divine power? But for that mortal, such ability is…]

The god of the time spoke with certainty.

“Not now, there isn’t. Soon, there will be.”