Chapter 196

Final Battle (7)

– How?! What illusion is this?!

A scream echoed in the dark as the Administrator looked at me with disbelief in her eyes. She shouted again.

– I have surely shot you out into the Void!

The Void…

It was a realm where even the Administrator would’ve become a lost child if exposed to without the black shield. One would lose their sense of direction and time as soon as they touched the bloody hue.

Such a world was created by determination infested with anger and hostility. She looked as if she couldn’t accept the fact that I returned intact from such a place.

I faced her in return.

The Holy Sword pierced through her blue skin. The crack, starting from the point where the sword had penetrated, began to spread. I wasn’t planning to destroy her entire existence with that attack. My sword had a well-coordinated intention.

– Ahhhhhhh!

The red nucleus was penetrated. I looked at the wriggling of blood-hued energy– the divine power that brainwashed her.

It moved much more ferociously than the Mercadius on Earth. It also indwelled stronger holiness than the ones suppressing magic, war, life, and luck’s fragments. Rather than the energy that contaminated their lost pieces that had no free will and intellect in the first place, more power was consumed for the Administrator who maintained a distinctive ego during the time of eternity.

– Kyaaaargh!

The scream that followed didn’t belong to the Administrator.

I stared at the red divine power struggling in her. Unable to hide its disgust in its eyes as my blade penetrated it, I could tell that it was being tormented. The figure repeatedly melted down and was sculpted again, and not even a single overlapping form was made while doing so. All of its features were unpleasant and appalling.

Terrible despair painted the mental wave.

– No, not when it was almost done… It was almost done!

Plo-plop!

Blood-like divine power flowed out of the hole in the Administrator’s body.

That was the same entity that brainwashed and seized her mind for almost an eternity. It was one of those that wandered around the Void and material world even before the Mercadius species’ arrival– a being in the level of their predecessor.

Fragments left by the “god of the mind.”

They leaked out and disintegrated. I knew what I had to do next.

“I’ll devour it from existence.”

The blood seethed as my body began to suck up the sloshing energy.

The Mercadius on Earth attempted to take control of my body when I tried the same thing, but the one before me, which was being absorbed, didn’t even seem to dare to do so.

That was because my state had grown incomparably to that time.

The soul, which other gods already acknowledged as having entered the state of a half-god, showed no signs of wavering.

– No! Please! I… I can’t! Not like this-!

What I performed next was an absorption technique different from Mana drain. I mobilized all the non-elemental divine power to crush the red energy that came into my body. Meanwhile, the traces left by the god of the mind busied itself with futile attempts to escape.

I leisurely led the way, driving it to a corner and blocking its retreat. I smote down as if to pound the fragile creature and tore it up as if to rip off its flesh with my sharp weapon.

“Do you want to destroy everything? I’ll make your wish come true. If I get rid of you, from your perspective as an observer, this world would just be like as if it has been destroyed!”

The entity wished for a perfect extinction as it couldn’t bear imperfections.

It had the will to bring about the material world’s complete collapse to end its own circumstances of fleeting around as a fragment.

The pieces left by it vainly dissipated in me.

– No, this is not what I wanted. This is not what we want…!

The sentience absorbed into me screamed desperately.

The moment the violently struggling resistance gradually diminished-

With the last eerie scream cried out, the mental wave that was flowing from me finally stopped.

And I…

Boosh!

I felt a powerful divine power rising inside my body, incomparable to what I had absorbed before.

‘What is it? Why does it differ so much?’

It was a different level of force than when I absorbed Mercadius.

And the other crucial difference was…

‘This power, is this the power of the god of the mind?’

If what had been absorbed before had only strengthened the non-elemental divine power, that time it remained in my body with unique properties.

Deciding to take a closer look later, I looked at the Administrator who had finished “purification.”

-…

The look that lingered on her face was completely gone. Looking at her, the memories of the ancestral successors and I simultaneously felt a certain emotion.

To find the most appropriate word, it would be close to guilt.

I opened my lips… And spilled the words I had been putting aside for a long time.

“I’m sorry.”

– …

The time we left her unattended was too long. The successors created the Administrator and made her handle a lot of work alone– for too many years.

Of course, it was for a good reason, but ultimately, there was no denying that it had a negative impact on the System and the Administrator.

While it was the fault of the future generations that sent the successor to the past, it was also the successors’ actions that worsened the situation through generations.

I spoke to the Administrator, simultaneously feeling the guilt and responsibility of the past reincarnates.

“Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

The most fundamental reason why the Administrator was neglected was that the successor continuously reincarnated.

There was a limit to the length of life that the mortal’s soul could endure, and there was a limit to the amount of memory that one could carry.

“Every time that I regressed, at least hundreds of years of a gap was created. It was inevitable.”

In the meantime, of course, the Administrator couldn’t contact the successor at all.

Furthermore, she was restricted from direct contact with the mortals as well. The successor intended to prevent her from reigning over them like a “god,” but as a result, it became a constraint that had no effect.

“It should be considered as rather counterproductive.”

It had led to the very situation that the successors of the previous life feared, after all.

Perhaps the results would’ve differed if it was a mechanical device without emotion, but for the Administrator that bloomed emotions even without a soul, it was too harsh of a job.

Furthermore, I had already tasted the eternal solitude that she had to feel.

The reason why emotions and reason were eventually contaminated when the fragments dropped by the god of the mind approached her might’ve been that it aimed for such a gap.

“Now, there is no need for me to reincarnate again.”

I looked into the Administrator’s eyes.

“I’m going to continue living with this body right now. I won’t overburden you any longer.”

And I would correct many things that had been moving in the wrong direction.

I would return the System to normal.

But before that, I had one more thing to do.

I raised my head and looked up at the Void extending beyond the black curtain.

“There’s still so much in here– the traces left by the god of the mind!”

The place where the god had collapsed in the distant past was all over the place, the Void.

Some of the fragments were reborn as entities like incarnations, confusing the material world, polluting the Administrator’s mind, and mixing with fragments of other deities, serving as chains of seals.

But was that all?

I saw it with my own eyes. That wasn’t the case at all.

In the place where the mind god had collapsed, a lot of fragments still remained. There was also the reason why the broken entity didn’t completely cease to exist.

“It’s living off the Void.”

It was that very space, that world, the Void itself that helped them survive. Like a parasitic creature with its tentacles extended and rooted on the host, it depended on the red realm.

In return, the Void used the stolen power from the god of the mind. It was never a coincidence that Mercadius shared purpose with the Void.

“I’ve got to get rid of them all.”

I already knew the best way to extinguish a cognitive entity.

It was to absorb it away.

“You just wait here for a while. It won’t take long.”

The Administrator just noded, lowering and raising her head silently.

It would take time for her pure emotions to rise again in the emptiness left behind by a corrupted mind.

“And cut off all the Mana you’ve been sending to the Adgon.”

She answered for the first time, resonating her thoughts.

– Alright, Father.

At that moment, the Mana flow toward the red Gate of the Adgon world disappeared instantly.

That would completely change the course of the war.

After taking such measures for the material world, I stared at the Void again, then ran out into it.

Swiiiish!

Tossing my body, I requested aid to the god of time seated in my soul, to those fragments.

‘God of time, I have a favor to ask of you once more.’

As if it was expecting me to talk to it, the answer came simultaneously as I called.

– Are you thinking of absorbing all of them? The fragments of ‘mind’ scattered through the Void.

I nodded with a firm determination.

“Mercadius’ clever strategy was behind the eventual defeat of the future Empire. The reason why the Empire didn’t attain more species and civilizations is simple. It’s because so many species have been induced with co-destruction and self-destruction. And it was the Mercadius species that induced such internal fallout and battles.”

A symbiotic relationship formed between the god of the mind and the Void.

I decided to cut it off at that moment.

“I just have to devour them all.”

However, the Void was a chaotic mess created by a vast amount of space and twisted time intertwining with each other.

No matter how one might be in the state of a half-god, it would take an immeasurable time to find and absorb all the fragments.

The material world, and the Administrator, couldn’t be left unattended for that long.

“I need your help.”

I needed another miracle that accelerated my time at a frightening pace like what happened a moment ago.

“I ask of you!”

At that moment, the god answered my prayers.

Whoooong!

Once more, from the fragments hidden in my soul, enormous power poured out. Simultaneously, time flowed once again in the direction I intended, at the speed I prayed for.

Riding on the power, I penetrated the red space. The Void inhabitants crawled to capture me, but no one broke through the flow of isolated time.

I roamed around the Void without hesitation in that manner.

In the flow that accelerated the material world’s time by millions, the journey to eat up all the remaining debris of ‘mind’ in the red realm began.

*

The moment the Administrator cut off the enormous Mana transmission sent to the Adgons-

They were thrown into uncontrollable chaos.

The species’ command rushed to the highest-ranked Adgon, ‘the Revelator,’ who was the only one authorized to face the Administrator.

“My lord, we’re in trouble! Mana transmission from the Red Gate has been cut off!”

The Revelator, who had just been promised increased transmission by the Administrator a few moments ago, couldn’t understand what nonsense was happening.

“What do you mean? Check it again! The Administrator surely had promised… She even said that I should not worry about the problem and that I should crush those disgusting enemies in the war!”

“My lord, please look at this screen!”

The moment he looked at the hologram floated by the command, the Revelator’s face froze.

As if he was having a seizure, his body trembled, and words of terror flowed out.

“It can’t be… It can’t be like this.”

The Revelator immediately left his seat. He then hurried down to the basement where the Red Gate was located.

The portal leading to the Void was keeping its ground as usual. Without [The Successor’s Eyes], his sight couldn’t show him that the Mana flowing out of it had disappeared.

But he saw something else.

“The cable!”

The light coursing through the cables, which used to absorb Mana flowing from within the Void and sent the energy to all parts of the world, was completely gone. That could only mean that it had been deactivated.

“Oh, my God! What the hell is going on?!”

The Revelator immediately threw himself into the Red Gate. Thinking that, as usual, the black fog that led the way to the Administrator would keep him safe.

However-

“?!”

It wasn’t a black dimension that held the Revelator in its arms when he went through the door.

Rather, it was the sheer Void that bore no stealth energy, a bloody-hued space.

Enough to drive anyone crazy by sight alone, the chaos where time and space melted simultaneously unraveled before him.

The Adgon, oblivious to the fact that the Administrator had taken away the energy that had led him before, became terrified. He turned back in an attempt to return.

Soon after, he lost all sense of direction and time, preventing him from finding where the Red Gate they used to enter and exit from was.

“N-no…”

A scene formed in the Adgon’s downcast eyes. Just like the piranhas that found a piglet in the river, monsters rushed in from the bubble seething in the distance.

The inhabitants of the Void had awoken.

The Adgons gave a silent scream.