Just a few days ago, the battlefield where a war for the fate of the world had unfolded—Beijing.
In the aftermath of that fierce war... especially in the aftermath of the destructive Breath that had annihilated the city in a single blow, a massive altar was erected in the center of the ruins where only miserable wreckage remained.
An altar of tremendous scale, built up in tiered steps like a ziggurat.
A structure with each side spanning hundreds of meters; its scale was impossible to believe it had been built in mere days, but to the being currently displaying its presence at the summit of the altar, this much was hardly a difficult task.
‘Hmm, this is sturdy enough. We’ll only use it once this time anyway, but it wouldn’t be bad to remain forever as a landmark of symbolic significance.’
The golden lifeform, Horus, confirming the durability by stepping upon the structure with his massive, heavy body, nodded in satisfaction.
This altar was precisely the place where the Dragon Heart Reconstruction ritual would take place.
Naturally, this would become a very historic building in Ganghwangye as a whole and be preserved for a long time, and that would return to him, the creator, as ample karma.
‘Well, compared to what I’ve done so far, and the points I’ll earn in the future, it’s nothing much.’
Just as the sunlight, beginning to rise slowly over Horus’s golden form wearing such a pleased smile, struck and scattered—
[All preparations on this side are complete.]
A weighty voice of the White Dragon flowed into his mind.
[Will it really be alright? Of course, it is not that I doubt Horus’s abilities, but this is our first time doing something like this.]
[Well, that boy will do fine on his own. He’s already mastered Dao techniques beyond most, hasn’t he? And if you add on top of that the magic he used in his original world... Ugh, I couldn’t understand any of it even after seeing it.]
The voices of the Blue Dragon and the Red Dragon followed, but the only being present at this spot right now was Horus alone.
The thoughts being transmitted to him now were a kind of telepathy.
The remaining personnel were preparing a separate ritual at the Dragon God Palace in the Spirit Realm.
[This wasn’t something that needed to be handled in such a complicated manner... But since it has come to this, it cannot be helped. I’ve set up safety measures anyway, so even if something goes wrong, we can just proceed the way we originally planned.]
At the Black Dragon’s grumbling voice that followed, Horus let out a bitter smile.
At first, she had been opposed to the method Horus proposed.
If there was a certain method, why take a detour and risk an adventure?
It was only natural, as the safety of the human Dragon Children was not very important to her.
‘Well, it wasn’t that hard to persuade her, though.’
The Dragon Children were not merely ordinary humans.
They were a kind of apostle sent down to the world by the Dragon God himself.
Come to think of it, could they not be said to be not entirely unrelated to the Five Dragons who claimed to be the direct descendants of the Dragon God?
When Horus emphasized that point, the Black Dragon also conceded and backed down.
For as much as she was hostile to humans, she was more generous than anyone to family who had entered the same fold.
[We’re all finished on this side too. We just need to start when the sun reaches its peak a few hours from now.]
Horus, gauging the position of the sun gradually rising above the mountain ridge, turned his gaze elsewhere.
To the southwest, not very far from here.
A group was slowly approaching from there toward this place.
‘They’re here.’
The Dragon Children absolutely necessary for the ritual, and the experts of the Martial Alliance who had escorted them here.
And a barbarian of large build, and the pitch-black, ominous coffin he carried on his back.
All the necessary materials had gathered in one place.
***
The sunlight blazing down dazzlingly upon the earth.
The sun had risen to the zenith.
“Huu.”
While climbing the steps one by one under the sunlight, Zhuge Huimei let out a deep sigh.
From the moment she entered the altar, it felt as if she had stepped into a completely different world, and breathing was much easier now that she had escaped the influence of the Demonic Realm, but her heart trembled uncontrollably at the situation where a miracle she had hardly dared hope for was approaching right before her eyes.
‘I thought there was absolutely no possibility, but to think things would really turn out like this. Perhaps, this might really...’
A future she had not dared to dream of was approaching as if within reach.
She had thought happiness was a luxury for someone like herself, who would soon perish and disappear from this world.
Could she really continue dreaming in this world?
In a world where the Dragon Heart was restored, strife disappeared, and peace reigned, together with her loved ones in a healthy body.
‘...getting married and having children like everyone else...’
As her thoughts reached that point, Zhuge Huimei’s pale face flushed red.
‘No, no! That is too soon! Ah, we are not even in that kind of relationship yet...!’
As if erasing someone’s face that had surfaced in her mind, she took another deep breath and shook her head roughly.
Her usually cool reason had gone somewhere; her thoughts were running wild, repeatedly going off track.
It was an unusual reaction that anyone could see.
But despite such behavior, no one there was paying particular attention to her.
“Kkhuhum! Khum!”
“Haah, haah.”
The other Dragon Children were likewise out of their minds with the surging tension.
Soon, reaching the summit of the altar, they looked up with trembling gazes at the massive golden lifeform filling their vision—the Yellow Dragon they had only heard of in stories as children.
[There is no need to be so nervous. It will not take that long.]
A voice laden with heavy pressure flowed into their minds.
A strange voice that felt like an arrogant absolute being, yet also like an innocent child.
Its content seemed intended to ease their stiffened tension, but...
Gulp—
There was no one present who could relax just from hearing those words.
And for good reason—they were eyewitnesses who had clearly seen with their own eyes what that Yellow Dragon was.
The golden light that had descended from the sky to the earth like heavenly punishment, the enormous explosion and massive mushroom cloud that followed.
And now, having ascended the high altar, the result was clearly visible to their eyes.
‘The place where buildings and walls once stood...’
The desolate wasteland surrounding the altar.
They remembered clearly, having flown through the sky to escape Beijing.
That this vicinity had originally been densely packed with ruins.
Yet here they were, face-to-face on the altar with a being that had displayed such might; it felt as though they were sacrificial offerings being offered up to a monster.
Of course, the reality was the exact opposite.
[Now, sit in your respective seats. I will handle the rest, so take a good nap.]
The central platform where the black coffin was placed.
Rock chairs that seemed to have sprouted directly from the floor surrounded it.
At a glance, they were clearly uncomfortable chairs that took no consideration whatsoever for the user’s convenience, but they dared not complain.
Not long after they all sat down awkwardly—
[It is about time. Then, I shall begin.]
With Horus’s declaration as he quietly looked up at the sky.
The ritual began.
***
It began at the Dragon God Palace.
Goooooh—
As the ritual led by the other dragons activated there, the atmosphere of Beijing began to churn violently.
A violent reaction unlike anything before.
Since not all of the Five Dragons had gathered at the Dragon God Palace, and the Dragon Children had not been offered as sacrifices, the phenomenon was extremely unstable.
If left as is, the situation would likely worsen before long.
Oooooong—!
But that situation was drastically reversed as Horus, stationed in Beijing, took over the ritual.
The strange characters engraved all over the altar began to glow, drawing the swirling ambient energy toward the center.
‘Then shall we get serious?’
Golden light burst from Horus’s eyes.
The vast knowledge he had accumulated was unleashed and intertwined, constructing a massive system.
A composite formula combining the mysteries of countless worlds—shamanism, magic, and more—into one.
A giant magic circle floating in the sky connected with the altar on the ground.
Whooooosh—
Kurururung—
Storms swept in all directions and earthquakes shook the ground.
“The Ruler of All Things” controlled the energy whirling around them, “The Seeker of Mysteries” refined and processed it, and “The Resistor of Providence” blocked minor variables in advance.
The massive energy moved, passing through the bodies of those seated in the chairs and connecting to the Karma Jiangshi—the body of the Heavenly Demon—placed in the center of the altar.
The Heavenly Demon, sucking in karma from all directions through a connection like a straw.
All the Dragon Children except Zhuge Huimei fainted instantly at that tremendous flow of energy, but even she was barely holding on, with no mental capacity for other thoughts.
‘Most of the ritual’s burden has been dispersed elsewhere, so it should not strain their bodies too much. That is what this altar is for.’
Crack!
Thin cracks began to form in the sturdily built altar.
Horus, overseeing the ritual, slightly furrowed his brow at the crushing pressure weighing down on his body, and examined the condition of the Heavenly Demon acting as the medium absorbing the karma.
And the moment he judged that the time had come.
He shot all that karma downward through a prepared passage.
Toward the offering directly beneath this altar—the remains of Tam.
Squirm, squirm—
The massive body absorbed the injected karma while convulsing repeatedly.
[Kkukkuk—as expected of a greedy one, he devours it well indeed. An excellent selection.]
Hans, assisting with the ritual underground, nodded in satisfaction at that.
From the beginning, Tam was a monster specialized in consuming things by its very nature.
Even as a dead body, in nothing more than storing energy within itself, it was the greatest offering, surpassing all else.
[Excellent. Having come this far, it is practically finished.]
The Annihilation Demon Dragon ‘Tam,’ who had set foot in divinity.
And even the arrangements of the Lord packed inside it through the ritual.
The joint work of the scholarly Gold Dragon and the otherworld-invasion-specialist Demon King was reaching its final stage.
Paaaaah—
Tam’s massive flesh was enveloped in light and disintegrated into pieces.
Soon after, a giant pillar of light soared up from underground, through the altar, to the sky.
An overwhelming and majestic spectacle observable even from the ends of the continent, regardless of distance.
Everyone gazed at it with entranced eyes.
Zhuge Huimei, barely holding onto her consciousness; the experts waiting anxiously outside the altar; the organizations busily reorganizing their forces in various regions; and the common people worried about their next meal due to the long turmoil.
They stared blankly up at the sky with mouths agape.
Tears dripping down for reasons they could not fathom.
After a brief while.
When the light that had begun to fade completely disappeared.
All the Avatars in Ganghwangye could instinctively feel it.
The fate that had enveloped this world, the causality tangled like thread, the future that had been rushing toward its end.
That right now, in an instant, they had faced a cataclysmic upheaval.
[Horus! It is a success! The balance...!]
[Waaah! We really did it! Right now...!]
[Does this really work? I had my doubts...]
[Good work...]
At the same time, the noisy voices of the dragons were transmitted to Horus.
They too, at the Dragon God Palace, grasped the situation immediately.
‘It is done.’
He did not even worry that this might be a temporary phenomenon or that there might be side effects.
Because definitive proof that the ritual had been properly completed was floating before his eyes right now.
《Grand Achievement Accomplished! You have restored a world losing its balance and collapsing.》
《As a reward for successfully normalizing a single dimension, the special privilege [Savior] is granted. All restrictions occurring in this dimension are ignored.》
《By accomplishing a grand feat, you have greatly influenced the world. Karma increases significantly.》
This was not an ‘achievement’ he had accomplished quite often until now.
It was a ‘grand feat’ achieved for the first time, besides crossing dimensions.
***
Inside the reverse world adjacent to Earth.
Twitch—
The body of a figure, hardened like a stone statue while seated in meditation, twitched.
Once, twice... the convulsions gradually grew stronger as time passed.
After such continuous stimulation for a while, his eyelids, which had shown no reaction as if dead, slowly began to open.
“This is...”
The Lord of the Beoncheon Society, who had been sunk deep within himself, refining his divinity without noticing the passage of time, grasped the situation the instant he opened his eyes.
If there had been a reaction of this magnitude, it could not possibly be a trivial matter.
It was not particularly difficult to determine the cause.
“Is it the Ganghwan Realm again?”
The dimension where the Heavenly Demon, one of the apostles who had acted as proxy for his divinity, had died not long ago.
Even then, when the person in overall charge of supplying divinity from the colony had suddenly died, it had been quite irritating. This time, however, a problem had arisen that bothered him in a somewhat different sense.
“…How?”
A great change was occurring in the flow of causality connected to him.
The dimension he had ruined so thoroughly that it should never have been able to recover was slowly being restored to its original state.
This was not a matter that ended simply with the death of the person in charge.
‘Did the chief god intervene? No, there should be limits to what a chief god can do. Besides, the Ganghwan Realm was a hands-off type.’
Because the chief god of a dimension was such an immense existence, it was, if anything, nearly impossible for them to finely adjust the problems occurring within it.
Destroying everything and creating it anew would be one thing, but normalizing and restoring a dimension riddled with problems in every corner was not something that could be achieved through ordinary luck…
‘I thought I had ruined it thoroughly. It seems I must have missed something.’
All a chief god could do was throw out a small possibility and wait for their creations to resolve matters on their own.
He had accounted for even that and made arrangements in advance, but looking at things now, it seemed even that had not been enough.
‘I knew something felt off ever since the Heavenly Demon died.’
It appeared that somewhere in that dimension, a great hero had been born.
One possessing such powerful potential that they could even twist causality that had already been all but fixed.
“Tch. What’s done is done.”
It was unexpected, but there was nothing he could do about it immediately.
The Ganghwan Realm was already a place he had plundered for all it was worth, so forcing his way back there would amount to nothing more than venting his anger.
Rather than revisiting a place where he could not even recover his costs, it would be far more profitable to pioneer a new dimension.
“…Yes, I suppose it is about time I moved again.”
Within a silent space severed from the world.
The giant who had been sleeping quietly for some time began to raise himself once more.
To devour another world that would sate his hunger.
***
“Good. Very good.”
With a beer in one hand and a chicken drumstick in the other, I nodded in satisfaction.
By rights, labor ought to be accompanied by fair compensation.
And was the moment of confirming that not the very thing every worker looked forward to most?
Especially when it was the settlement right after finishing a large-scale project like this one.
“Then let’s just take a look…”
The last time I checked was after swallowing up the main headquarters of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult and spending six million points to strengthen 『Dimensional Barrier Mitigation』.
Back then, I had emptied it all the way to the bottom, so for a while, it had even been a struggle to buy 『Elixir of Growth (7 Days)』…
『Karma Held - 9,510,657』
“…The karma’s multiplying…”
What I saw before my eyes now was a feast of numbers overflowing as if it had never hit rock bottom at all.