Chapter 818: The Void
“If you can’t find the answer inside, then you’ll have no choice but to go [outside].”
Sergeant Park Taejun’s class was [Astronomer].
Interpreted narrowly, that class was one that looked at the flow of the stars, interpreted it, and divined fate.
But...... if interpreted a little more broadly.
‘A class that literally looks at the stars.’
To observe the stars, study them, and seek to understand them.
Beyond the world...... the planet where one remained.
It was a class that sought to understand the beings there, so impossibly far away that they were difficult even to comprehend.
“If that is what must be done.”
A realm we had yet to reach.
“I’ll make that path for you.”
Someone capable of reaching.......
‘Outside.’
He was the only person capable of doing it.
FWAAAAASH!!!
A black hole opened in midair.
A tremendous wind raged from the thing that looked like a small black hole, sucking in the surrounding leaves.
I stared blankly at the hole and muttered.
“......Outside, huh.”
“I’ll tell you this beforehand, but I can’t directly put you inside another world. The barriers around the worlds are thick.”
Right.
In the first place, this hole was one that had been used when the ‘refugees’ were swept into this world.
It was a path created as those insects gnawed away at the barrier of this world.
Those who entered through this path were beings who did not even possess destroyed worlds like those [Gates].
Beings who had lost their homeland and had merely been wandering through that empty universe.
Even if I went outside through this path, the place I arrived at would not be somewhere like the homeland of those lizards.
‘The Empty Universe.’
I would simply be thrown directly into that place.
“That’s why I said it’s only at the experimental stage and that I’ve never properly used it. Even I still don’t know exactly what will happen when you go outside this hole...... There was no proper way to find out either, and you came to me while I was still researching that method.”
Then, if I were thrown into that empty universe like that.
What would happen to me?
Would I keep drifting while floating through that universe?
‘Probably not.’
The lizards that had entered through that hole were beings that had been wandering through that empty universe.
I had never spoken with those lizards.
But.
I had met the ‘Green Mane tribe,’ who had probably entered through a similar hole.
And.
‘They felt as though they had fallen here immediately after fleeing their homeland.’
It would probably be similar for me.
At first, I would be thrown into that universe.
But probably soon.......
‘I’d be pulled by the gravity of another world and sucked into it.’
I had no idea which world I would be drawn into.
I might be pulled in by the [N O V E L I G H T] pressure difference of a world with a hole in it like ours.
Or perhaps there might be some other world pulling me toward it, and I would be thrown into that world.
“So it’s certain I’ll end up somewhere...... but you don’t know where, huh.”
“This is the limit of what I can do right now. To be honest, I’m not even confident I’ll be able to do more even if more time passes.”
“......Let’s say I do end up somewhere. Can I come back?”
“I can keep the hole open. Even if you’re thrown into the universe and then fall into another world...... if you somehow escape from that world again, you should be able to return through this hole.”
In the end, that meant I would have to escape from that world on my own.
Once I escaped, returning from that empty universe through this hole would be possible.
But escaping itself would not be easy.”
“I’m sorry to say this after bringing you all the way here. But you don’t necessarily have to go inside.”
As I stood there lost in thought while looking at the hole that was still sucking in all sorts of things.
He cautiously opened his mouth.
“If you want to go outside, I can make a path for you like this...... but there’s no rule saying you absolutely have to use that path.”
“......Hmm.”
“Personally, I think it might be better not to go inside if you don’t have to.”
At Taejun’s words.
I gave a small laugh and thought.
‘Whenever something important happened to the unit, I listened to this guy’s advice.’
In the early days of the apocalypse, there had been more than one or two times when we survived thanks to him.
His foresight had never once failed to be useful until now.
Thinking about that, perhaps it would be right to listen to his suggestion this time as well.
But.
“You said your foresight can’t match mine anymore, right?”
I shrugged my shoulders for a moment.
Then moved my feet and said.
“I think so too.”
Rather than his personal opinion.
Trusting my intuition more.
SPOT!
I threw myself into the black hole.
***
SPOT!
The moment I threw myself inside the black hole.
My body was flung from the inner world to ‘outside.’
[Warning! Warning! Warning!]
In an instant, the view before my eyes completely changed.
The mountain scenery where I had been vanished without a trace, and an endless dark landscape filled my entire vision.
[You have departed from the System’s domain.]
[If you do not return quickly, your connection to the System may be severed.......]
SPOT!
Even the System message that appeared as if blocking my vision quickly disappeared.
At that moment.
‘......Just now, something.’
I could tell that a great change had occurred within my soul.
‘The connection...... was severed.’
From the moment I awakened...... no.
From the moment I was born on that land, my soul had been connected to something.
The moment I grew distant from that something, it felt as though the connection to it had been completely severed.
The last thing that had appeared before my eyes was a System message.
But what had just been severed...... was not only my connection to the System.
Something greater than that.
A higher concept that encompassed even that System.
‘My connection to the world...... was severed.’
The moment I left the world to which I belonged.
The connection to that world that had existed since I was born disappeared.
And.
The moment that connection was severed, what struck my soul was.......
‘I’m lonely.’
Extreme solitude.
I blankly looked around.
What I saw before me was an endlessly spreading void.
A space with nothing in it, merely dark.
There were small dots visible here and there.
I had indirectly seen this scenery outside several times before, so I knew what those things were.
‘Worlds.’
Worlds wandering throughout this empty universe.
But this void was absurdly vast.
Those worlds were certainly enormous, but the spaces between those stars felt endlessly long.
‘Cold.’
For convenience, we had been calling it the Empty Universe.
But this Empty Universe was completely different from the universe I had learned about in science class.
The space outside worlds.
A place that was not inside a world, and therefore had nothing in it to begin with.
A place where not even cosmic dust existed...... truly an utterly empty space, and thus a void.
And the moment I blankly looked at that space.
‘Cold and lonely.’
Even though not even one second should have passed since I was thrown into this space.
I felt a coldness and loneliness that seemed to freeze my soul itself.
An extreme solitude, as though I had spent eons completely alone forever.
‘Somewhere.......’
Only then did I realize.
According to what Avaritia had said.
The gazes of the demons that had constantly watched our world should no longer have been looking toward our world.
But...... that only applied to the demons.
The demons had never been the only ones watching our world in the first place.
‘Somewhere warm.’
The demons were beings who had not yet lost their own worlds.
That was why they had gathered together to protect their worlds.
In other words...... they were beings who still had something left to lose.
That was why they had fled after seeing my fate.
Because they feared that if they became entangled in such an enormous fate by mistake, they might lose their own homelands.
However...... there were those who had nothing to lose.
Those who had already lost everything.
‘Inside.’
The beings outside.
Beings whose own worlds had been destroyed for some reason, or who had been expelled from those worlds.
Beings who had no choice but to wander outside the worlds...... through this void.
They would still be looking at our world and coveting it.
Of course they would.
‘Anywhere is fine, just let me inside......!’
This emptiness, this solitude, this cold.
It was impossible to endure a place like this.
No matter how great a transcendent one might be, they could not live outside like this.
Even though the monsters that had invaded our world had clearly passed through this void, I could understand why they had no memories of it.
In the first place, in a space like this...... ordinary souls could not maintain their consciousness even for a single instant.
‘Ghk.’
And just like that.
I too was crushed by the pressure of the void.
Because of that loneliness and solitude, my mind was about to collapse...... right before it did.
FWAAAAASH!!!
Some enormous gravitational force.
Pulled my body toward it.
***
THUD!
I could not have been thrown into the Empty Universe for even a single second.
And yet, while I struggled through suffering that felt like eternity.
My body was pulled by some enormous gravitational force and thrown somewhere.
“Ghk...... Kh.......”
I hurriedly gasped for breath.
My body had already been reforged to a level sufficient to contain divinity.
It had probably been a long time since breathing oxygen had actually been necessary.
And yet.
I drew in harsh breaths purely through a reflex engraved into my soul.
When one experienced overwhelming pain.
The most natural action for surviving that pain.
Was to draw breath.
“Huuuh......!”
After gasping for breath for a while, I moved my hand and felt around my chest.
‘My connection to the world...... is severed.’
Something that had been connected to me for my entire life had suddenly been ripped out by the roots.
A massive wound where those roots had been torn out remained 그대로 in my soul.
Unless I returned to my homeland and restored that connection, this wound would never heal.
The same was true of this emptiness.
‘My connection to the System...... is still severed too.’
At this moment, every trace of the System’s power that had been inside me was gone.
I had experienced something similar during the fight with the Church...... but back then, that power had merely been deactivated.
This was the first time the connection itself had truly been severed like this, so I could not help but feel bewildered.
But.......
‘I’m not lacking in strength.’
Unlike back then, when I had been reduced to the level of an Awakened in the twenties.
Right now, only the emptiness caused by the severed connection was unsettling.
I did not feel the sense of intimidation that came from having become tremendously weaker.
The rank contained within my soul and body.
It had already grown great enough even without the System’s support.
‘And these powers still remaining inside.’
The vast Demon Realm.
The blessings of the demons who ruled that Demon Realm were still inside my body.
“Damn it, this isn’t something I can do twice.”
Muttering that, I got to my feet.
The loneliness caused by the severed connection still remained, but compared to when I had been wandering through that void, it was much better.
Probably because I no longer had to directly face the cold and solitude outside.
Fortunately, the power I possessed did not seem to have weakened all that much either.
I raised my head to observe the world I had fallen into.
And.
“......Huh?”
The moment I saw the scenery spread out before me, I could not help but frown.
The other monsters I had encountered until now.
There had been several times when I had glimpsed their homelands.
A world covered in endless ocean, a world swept by eternal winter, even a world filled with golden radiance.
There had been countless worlds.
But.
“......Ugh.”
Not a single one of them.
Had been as grotesque as this place.
In darkness where not even a single ray of light entered.
What I was standing on there was.
‘Meat.’
A dark reddish substance that felt unpleasantly soft.
It looked like raw meat.
‘......A world filled with it?’
My entire field of vision in that darkness.
Was a hideous space completely filled with that meat.
“What the hell is this.”
The universe was vast, so it would not be strange for any kind of world to exist.
As I blankly stared at the scenery while wondering what kind of divinity with such terrible taste had created a world like this.......
“......Who are you?”
“......!”
At the voice coming from behind me.
I widened my eyes and turned around.
“Answer me.”
What was there.
Looked utterly out of place in a place like this.
“Who are you...... and how in the world did you get in here?”
“......A baby?”
A newborn baby.
Was looking at me and speaking to me.