Unlike his shock, his attack continued.
Fal Garaz smashed into yet another stone in the air.
Another baptism of shrapnel came flying towards the Wooden Doll and Bertelgia types.
The Bertelgia types managed to activate defensive barriers, but a few of them couldn’t withstand the attack and were torn apart to pieces and fell to the ground.
The Transcendent Senses let Sungchul hear the dying voices of these girls.
[It hurts, it hurts so much!]
[I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you.]
They all shared the same exact voice as Bertelgia.
And with this, it became clear.
These Combat type Bertelgias was not too different from the Bertelgia that he knew.
But Sungchul did not stop his attack despite knowing this.
Because if he were to stop, he would be killed by them instead.
The moment Sungchul is defeated, the world was doomed to end.
Sungchul had no choice but to fight to prevent the end of the world.
Tzzzt!
Chain Lightning came bursting forth from his hands to the Bertelgias in the rear.
Unlike before, they weren’t protected by their sisters
The bolts of lightning jumped from book to book like a fierce predator as it inflicted terrible damage upon the Bertelgias.
One Bertelgia was thoroughly cooked black and fell to the ground.
And in the next moment, Sungchul saw something enough to shock even he.
Something crawled out of the wide open book.
It was a golden blonde girl.
She had the same appearance as Bertelgia from the world of Dreams.
But she was swallowed up by the flames of the book and melted away.
What was hidden inside her white skin and blonde hair was a wooden doll with clacking jaws.
[H…Hot! Unnie! Help me!]
The wooden doll tried to reach out towards the others before turning into ash.
‘W…what kind of…’
Bitter guilt settled over his heart.
But the battle was not yet over.
The Wooden Doll playing Eckhart’s role backed off and clacked its jaws.
[Vestiare! Vestiare! I only desired thee, why is it that I got nothing to the end!]
A spine-crawling light glistened in the Wooden Doll’s eyes.
Sungchul sensed something above him.
He looked up.
His eyebrows twitched.
The sky was falling.
No, a giant mass of something worthy of being called a fragment of the sky was falling from above.
Eckhart’s wooden doll had changed the sky into a solid mass of some kind.
Sungchul ran at full speed towards safety.
Five or so Bertelgias came chasing after him.
Swish!
Spears from within the Bertelgia’s pages came stabbing towards Sungchul’s back.
The Hand of the Ascendent grabbed the spear and the god-like strength was used to throw the spear and the book to the ground.
The fallen book hit the ground and was broken into pieces.
[Father.]
With the death of each one, he could hear their voices without fail.
A dark shadow extended in front of Sungchul.
The falling sky had already almost reached him.
Sungchul pressed every last bit of strength to rush forward.
Boom!
The sky made landfall.
Sungchul was able to just barely escape from the sky.
But the Bertelgias that had been chasing right behind him were crushed under it and were destroyed.
[Good bye… everyone.]
[I want to visit the world below again.]
Bitter voices echoed in his mind.
Sungchul’s eyes looked down, filled with complicated feelings.
He looked over to the Wooden Doll in command of the few remaining Bertelgias.
The Wooden Doll was no longer looking at Sungchul.
He had extended his twisted and disfigured hands towards the silhouette of Vestiare he had made, making gestures of courtship, dancing some incomprehensible dance as he sang and danced like a mad man.
[I am the genius Alchemist Eckhart. Even that Sword master Dragoman had his ass cheeks beat by me and begged for his life~]
The Wooden Doll had long since lost its mind.
So, it was pointless trying to understand his behavior.
“…”
Sungchul walked towards the wooden doll with Fal Garaz in hand.
The surviving Bertelgias orbited around the Wooden Doll as if to protect it.
But unlike before, it didn’t come proactively attacking him.
Sungchul recognized that something changed and continued to walk forward.
Step.
.
Sungchul was close enough to reach the Wooden Doll with Fal Garaz.
Bertelgias finally got in the way of Sungchul.
Creak.
The wooden doll’s neck turned 180 degrees.
The eyes filled with madness had just one droplet of oil leaking from it.
The doll then turned its body to align with its head before making a horrifying grin.
“Oh my, please excuse my manners. It seems I’ve shown you an unsightly part of me. Anyways, let’s continue where we left off.”
The wooden doll said with Eckhart’s voice.
A text made of light appeared before Sungchul.
[1. Who are you?] – Complete
[2. How did you become an Overseer?]
[3. What kind of work did you do as an Overseer?]
[4. What’s your goal as an Overseer?]
[5. Eckheart’s secret ♥ hobbies]
“…”
This time, Sungchul did not make any choice.
Instead, he lifted Fal Garaz up in the air.
Crack!
His immense strike landed straight on top of the wooden doll, separating the head from its body.
The head was split in half and bounced on the ground like a ball before rolling towards Sungchul’s legs.
The head stopped rolling in such a way that the doll looked up at Sungchul.
One eye was missing due to the socket itself being destroyed, and the other was dangling outside the socket, hanging by a spring.
The eyeball dangling by the spring looked towards Sungchul.
A bizarre voice echoed in this empty space.
“Since things have turned out this way, as the…Overseer acting… on behalf of god… for you the One King…I shall grant you the… opportunity to ask a few questions about me, Eckhart, the Scroll of Calamity.”
The Wooden Doll was trying to return to the previous subject again.
Sungchul stared at the head for a moment before crushing the head with his boots.
The head that was just barely functional was now destroyed beyond recognition.
“…”
Bertelgias scattered into the void now that their master was gone.
The situation was over.
The wooden doll calling itself Eckhart was destroyed and only Sungchul remained in this strange place.
An intense sense of futility overwhelmed him.
Sungchul took out a bottle of alcohol from the Soul Storage and immediately drank it all at once.
Sungchul felt the intense burn of the high proof alcohol flow down his stomach as he put down the bottle.
Another book appeared before Sungchul.
It, too, looked like Bertelgia.
As Sungchul glared at the book, the book spoke first.
“Don’t misunderstand. I’m Unit 55.”
“Unit 55?”
It was the one he met in the Tower of Recluse.
For Sungchul, his Bertelgia was now more important to him than his own life. But this one had treated her like a consumable item.
“I shall open the doorway to father.”
A dimensional gate opened up as soon as Unit 55 was done speaking.
Sungchul did not hesitate to walk into the gate.
He didn’t care if it was a trap or not.
He just wanted to break something right now.
Beyond the dimensional gate was a cramped and dark workspace.
There was one desk.
It was the same desk as the one the wooden doll Eckhart had initially stood behind.
“Father is over there.”
Unit 55 had said.
But he couldn’t see anything.
No, but in fact there was something.
Sungchul discovered something faint and vaguely existing in this worn-out workspace.
It was neither a human nor a wooden doll.
It looked like a half-sketched line art on paper.
“I apologize. It seems my doll went out of control.”
The being that was so faded and fuzzy said with an equally formless voice.
Sungchul recognized that this must be the man called Eckhart.
‘This man. He’s just about to expire.’
How long would he even last in this state?
It seemed like even speaking was a great amount of strain for him.
His one sentence was enough to shake his nearly depleted form like a candle flame before wind.
“There’s no time. We have to move quickly. You have completed all the Calamities as the One King.”
Eckhart had said.
Sungchul recognized just how rushed everything was.
But then Eckhart’s form vanished.
‘What?’
While Sungchul was surprised, Unit 55 who was next to him continued to conversation on behalf of her creator.
“It seems he temporarily lost his form. It’s quite common nowadays. He’ll be back so don’t worry.”
“… What was that doll earlier?”
Sungchul asked calmly.
“That was a clone of father he had created for when the One King is crowned. But by the time father created it, father was already in the process of losing himself, so only the darkest part of father’s mind became a part of it, and eventually grew into a monster not even father can contain.”
“…”
“Anyways, it is now back to slumbering once more, and you have resolved the immediate Calamity. So, on behalf of my father, I shall inform you about your rewards.”
Unit 55 opened her pages.
Golden letters wrote themselves on empty pages.
Sungchul read the letters without showing much interest.
[Reward for he who resolved the Calamities.]
[You can rule the world as the Overseer. This makes you equal to God.]
Sungchul laughed out loud.
“This is the reward for those who resolve the Calamities?”
It was so beyond ridiculous that it was absurd.
The reward for pushing himself to his limit and overcoming death time and time again, was this in the end.
For anyone else, this would be the penultimate achievement and prize. But for Sungchul, this was nothing but another demand for him to sacrifice himself.
An uncomfortable silence went on for a while before another reward appeared on Unit 55’s pages.
[In order to maintain this world, the old Humanity must be exchanged with the new.]
[But, as the one who resolved the Calamity, you have the right to choose 9,999 others to protect and preserve from the old humanity.]
Sungchul was no longer grinning.
A cold rage was building up from within him.
“You speak as if you’re doing me a favor.”
In the next moment, a voice he had forgotten about echoed in his mind.
[This is the work of Enkiadu and Dirgo. They are this kind of people.]
It was the voice of the Chaos God.
Eckhart’s form that had been gone for a moment was back atop the old desk.
Unit 55 looked towards her creator as she opened her mouth.
“Father moved mother and his daughter, as well as the Seven Heroes to a different Realm.”
“What happened to Eckhart’s family?”
Sungchul asked.
Unit 55 shook lightly.
Sungchul who had spent a long time with Bertelgia could guess what Unit 55 was thinking.
She was hesitating.
.
But in the end Unit 55 seemed to come to a conclusion.
“You are the resolver of Calamities. I need to give you a reward of sorts. To begin with the conclusion, the wife had died and the daughter survived.”
“Where is the daughter?”
“She’s in a realm. She’s aslelep in a village that is an exact copy of father’s home village of Kodia.”
“…Is Bertelgia a separate entity from that daughter?”
It was right before Unit 55 was about to answer.
Eckhart who was sitting at the desk interjected in their conversation.
“You have the power to destroy the world. The reason why I sent my daughter to you to protect you and another daughter of mine is to stop the world from destruction.”
Sungchul turned to look at Eckhart.
He had definitely used the term daughter. Sungchul had many things he wanted to ask but Eckhart right now was a very unstable being.
Sungchul could tell that most of Eckhart’s humanity has already been lost and he was just barely hanging in there to converse with Sungchul.
If Eckhart was to disappear again, only god knew when he might be able to return once more.
Eckhart continued to speak as Sungchul kept quiet.
“The God of Order and God of Neutrality seems to wrongly believe that they could contain you forever, but the best they could do is come up with temporary remedies. There is only one way to stop the oncoming destruction.”
As the fuzzy form slowly became clearer, it became possible to see a man’s facial features.
It was an exhausted, elderly man.
It was decades older than the face the Wooden Doll had.
This was the true face of Eckhart.
The elderly Eckhart continued to speak.
“And that is for you to follow in my footsteps and become an Overseer.”
“…”
“I understand you are reluctant, but think of it. The power within you is of divine element.”
“…Divine?”
Eckhart made a bright smile before answering.
“It’s the divinity in the truest sense.”
Eckhart continued to say.
“God has the power of both creation and destruction. Like the two sides of the coin, the divinity endlessly repeats the cycles of creation and destruction of the world. The divine power within you is one of the two sides of the coin, the element of destruction.”
The moment Sungchul heard this, his vision became narrowed into a single point.
Countless memories and scenes passed by until he saw the vision of a black giant standing atop a land covered in skulls.
The moment of hallucination ended with seeing the face of the black giant.
“…Element of destruction you say.”
But it was true.
There was no need for lengthy explanation.
Sungchul had already known this through experience.
It was just that he hadn’t been consciously aware of it.
Eckhart, the man who ascended the stairway to god, continued to speak.
“Only a god can become an overseer, whose fate is to face against the infinity. Element of destruction is but one side of the divine element. You who possess that unlimited power is someone most suited to become Overseer.”
Eckhart’s eyes looked clear for the first time.
“Destroyer.”
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