Chapter 514. Legends Never Die (4)

“━━━━━━━━━━━━━━!”

A tremendous and deafening roar broke out; it felt as if one’s eardrums would explode just by listening to it. A terrible cry shook and echoed far, far across the battlefield.

Flassssh! At the same time, clusters of light burst out from Chi-Woo and enveloped the entire area with tremendous radiance, covering not only the few remaining humanity and the League members, but also the Sernitas, who had furiously attacked them. Those who had been watching could do nothing about it. As soon as the sound was heard, light burst out suddenly, and their vision went blank in an instant. They couldn’t see anything besides the light as if a nuclear explosion had happened right in front of their eyes.

Among them, only one person—a woman wearing a long robe—cautiously lifted her body. The woman holding a pipe in one hand was none other than Byeok Ran-Eum. She had also participated in the war and was still alive. She had stood at the center of the protective formation around Chi-Woo, and Flora had struggled desperately to protect her and didn’t move away from her for even a second. Thanks to all that, she was able to survive so far, but what was the use of it all now that every single one of them was about to die?

Humanity? The League? The Sernitas? The danger they were facing now was far greater than that. Liber, the Celestial Realm—no, it wasn’t just that. The current trajectory was leading to the certain extinction of every being that existed in this entire universe. This meant that the outcome would certainly arrive without fail, and even the slightest sliver of hope had disappeared. It was not an illusion or an unfounded worry. Byeok felt it as soon as she saw what happened. The light flowing around them was dazzling in brilliance, but it was not beautiful at all. Like a tsunami rising with a powerful, ruthless, and destructive momentum, like a time bomb that might explode at any moment, the light invoked an unknown sense of fear and anxiety.

This raging and wild flow only indicated one thing—Chi-Woo had failed to properly awaken his power. Whether he was consumed by it or unable to control it, or it was something else entirely, in the end, the future that Chi-Hyun had been so cautious about and repeatedly warned against had come to reality.

Byeok was right in every way. Aida also clearly felt it too. All the stars that she had read with her senses until a moment ago had disappeared.

‘I see.’ Aida instantly understood and accepted the situation. ‘Since there’s nothing to read, I can’t read anything. Since there’s nothing to find, I can’t find the stars.’ It was impossible to read or find something that didn’t even exist. In other words, Aida understood that soon, nothing would exist.

The same went for Shersha. In her case, she now saw the future that would soon arrive—it was white. It was all white as it was right now. The light that originated from Liber would go beyond the planet to the star system, to the star cluster, to the galaxy, and it wouldn’t even fade beyond the supercluster of galaxies. Only once this light encompassed the entire universe would it finally die down, and then there would be nothing left. There would be nothing, not even a heap of ashes. Even emptiness and futility would become meaningless.

Shersha quietly closed her eyes. Things weren’t shaping up to be like her prophecy, but rather the future was already set in stone. It wasn’t ‘it’s going to be dangerous at this rate,’ but the danger was already here. Nothing would change even if they desperately struggled now, so she accepted the situation quietly.

‘Chi-Hyun.’ In the endless cluster of light, Byeok sighed quietly. ‘It seems like…you were wrong.’ While feeling her body gradually being swept away by the light in real time, the most overpowering emotion that Byeok felt was her lament of the tragedy between the two brothers rather than the fear of extinguishment. Although the Choi’s system was the main cause, she felt the tragedy of it way more because she had taught them both. Chi-Hyun had thrown away even the freedom he had so desperately strived to grasp for the sake of his brother and returned to the eternal cycle of being a hero, and Chi-Woo, who had grown up knowing nothing, entered Liber and overcame countless hardships for the sole purpose of returning to Earth with his brother.

In the end, neither of their wishes came true. For one, the path he had so struggled to walk and the future path he would walk have all been erased. For the other, he would erase everything remaining, and when there was nothing left to erase, he would destroy himself. It was a tragic ending where no one was happy. With deeper contemplation, Byeok then thought, ‘even if one of their wishes came true, would the other be happy?’ The thought that maybe it was better that things ended up this way crossed her mind—if she considered only the situation of the brothers, that was. Anyway, everything was now over. No amount of regret or lingering feelings from her would change anything.

“Come into my arms, Flora,” Byeok called out to Flora with a much more light-hearted voice. “It’s alright, it’s all right. Don’t think about anything and keep your eyes closed. If you count to a hundred, it will be all over.” Although nothing was visible but light, Byeok waved her hand from side to side. Byeok was sure Flora must be near her. Soon, a girl’s slender wrist was caught in her hand, and Byeok gently pulled her in. Since the situation turned out like this, Byeok intended to meet her end with the last disciple she had taken in so that neither her or Flora would be lonely.

Before Byeok could pull Flora closer and hold her, however, she faltered, feeling Flora brush off her hand and move away like flowing water.

“Flora?” Calling out to her was pointless. Flora was already out of her grasp. Then Byeok’s gaze slowly rose. The only thing she could see was light, but another light was rising through it. Compared to this vast flow, it was very small and insignificant, but it was another light, and this miniscule light was unimpeded by the rough and ferocious torrent. It moved in reverse of the flow and slowly climbed up as if the rest of the light recognized it as part of them.

What in the world was suddenly happening, and what was about to happen? Even though her body was already half-consumed, Byeok couldn't move her eyes away from the small and round light that flew up and left a long tail like a comet. Soon after, the small light finally reached the source of the tremendous light that encompassed the whole area, and the flow came to a sudden halt. It was completely out of the blue. The flow that had recklessly moved in all directions, the flow that had flipped the earth, collapsed the sky, and destroyed everything, and the flow that had been speeding up exponentially like a locomotive going rogue after its brakes had broken down—suddenly stopped in its entirety. It was as if by combining with a small part, the damaged brake had been fixed. Time seemed to have stopped.

Soon after, the frozen time began to flow again—and began to change rapidly.

* * *

After confirming Chi-Hyun’s death, Chi-Woo couldn’t think of anything. It would be more accurate to say that rather than blanking out, he had lost the ability to think at all. An impulsive instinct had violently risen inside him to impede his thoughts. He was overcome with a single desire: to quickly destroy and crush everything as fast as possible, including the Sernitas. While he was in this state, Chi-Woo heard a faint voice that grew gradually louder. It felt as if everything flowing around him was shouting something at him. Thanks to that, Chi-Woo came back to his senses and realized the situation with his faint consciousness.

As soon as he opened his eyes, he felt a strange sense of deja vu. It was the future he had had to experience countless times in Future Yoo-Joo’s space, the future he had experienced in the Demon Empire, and the future he never wanted to experience again. That future was on the verge of turning into reality. No, it would be a future that was incomparably worse than that.

‘Ugh…’ Chi-Woo belatedly came to his senses and hurriedly tried to control the flow by suppressing his impulse. However, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t do it. Frankly, he had known it from the moment he vaguely came to his senses. This power, this fate had already far surpassed his control, and it was now impossible to reverse it.

‘No…!’ Chi-Woo cried out inside his mind. ‘Stop. Please stop. Please help me out this once.’ Then the next moment, Chi-Woo gaped because fate answered his will. If it had responded wholly to Chi-Woo’s destructive instinct from the beginning, Liber would have already disappeared without even leaving a speck of dust since Chi-Woo had already gone past the critical point when he went berserk. Nevertheless, there was only one reason the world had not disappeared—it was because the power he had unleashed on impulse had held back on its own.

In Future Yoo-Joo’s space, Chi-Woo had promised to no longer deny his fate but acknowledge and accept it. Furthermore, he had promised to pioneer his own path walking hand in hand with his fate. After communicating with Chi-Woo back then, Chi-Woo’s fate learned what Chi-Woo really wanted. Therefore, it did not respond to Chi-Woo’s impulse while he was overcome with anger. Instead, it tried to control its power as much as possible, and thanks to that, Chi-Woo was able to at least regain his senses belatedly and realize what had been screaming at him to wake up. If his fate had given up and let go, everything would have been swept away by the flow and moved toward a devastating direction. It was all thanks to his fate enduring with all its might that there was a slight delay before his awakening was over. However, even then, it was way too late. The fact that he had reached an irreversible point hadn’t changed.

As Princess Sahee had said, the flow that had started could not be stopped by anyone. There was no exception, not even Chi-Woo or fate itself. Although his fate was holding out somehow, there was no guarantee how long it’d last. This had happened too prematurely. Chi-Woo as a vessel was still too small to fully hold his fate. His fate tried its best to control the flow so it wouldn't overflow from the vessel, but still, the spill was growing exponentially in volume. Even though it tried to put it back by force, the vessel had already reached its limit. It was on the verge of breaking down due to the numerous cracks, and if the vessel shattered, everything that had been stuffed and suppressed inside would burst out. In a devastating situation where there was no answer, fate reached its limit in the end.

“Ah…!” Both Chi-Woo and fate couldn’t hold out any longer, and he felt something deep inside him explode. Then suddenly, something flew like a meteor and clung to Chi-Woo’s side. It was another vessel. A vessel much smaller than Chi-Woo. However, regardless of the size, it was a vessel like Chi-Woo. Soon after, the flow stopped for a fraction of a second. And then, a second later, the flow that had been swirling like crazy began to flow in one direction, toward the vessel that stuck to Chi-Woo’s side. Compared to Chi-Woo, it was miniscule at best. Even though it was the same as Chi-Woo in nature, the amount it could contain was extremely small. Just as no matter how big a lake was, it couldn’t contain the ocean, it was impossible for this vessel to fully contain the infinite flow.

Moreover, as soon as Flora’s Heavenly Vessel began to receive the flow, it quickly reached the point of overflowing. Cracks began to form like a spider web, and the vessel began to rattle. However, just when it was about to break into pieces—the flow reversed. Or to be exact, the flow that had filled the small bowl escaped and returned to the large vessel it came from. Should it be described as a layover? The large vessel sent out the flow, and the small bowl received the flow and sent it back to its original place. Then, it was sent back and returned. The process repeated over and over again. A line starting from one point reached another with a long curve, and then another symmetrical line formed the same parabola and returned to the origin. It wasn’t just one. In an instant, numerous beams of light entered and returned, and what formed was none other than an infinite circle.

An immeasurable spherical ring of light formed around Chi-Woo and Flora. In mathematics, a circle represented infinity. If two points existed, and a perpendicular bisector was drawn across the center of each point, any point drawn on the perpendicular bisector would pass through the center of the circle.

In the end, it could be said that Sernitas's idea was right. In order to contain infinity, the vessel to contain it must also be infinite. In other words, Chi-Woo, his fate, now embodied a vessel that reached infinity to contain the boundless heavens.