By Zephyria 
My mouth fell open on its own. At the same time, my breath caught in my throat.
It felt as if someone had shoved a giant ball into my mouth. My tongue stiffened and dried out. My chest felt tight and aching. My unblinking eyes stung. My hands and feet stiffened like a mouse that had seen a snake, and I couldn’t move them at all.
I had seen many strange and bizarre things before.
In my past life, the dead and those who were meant to die ran rampant. In this life, monsters with horns and wings ran and flew across vast mountains and open fields. I had seen gods, as tall as ordinary buildings, walk, talk, and laugh up close.
Even to me, this was the first time I had seen something so disgusting.
In this black world, a single eyeball floated. Black veins writhed all around. Each time the giant eyeball’s pupil narrowed, the little light in the space seemed to fade. When the pupil swelled, it brightened again.
Each time, thick, dirty Mana, like mire, crawled and clumped together like vermin.
The Ninth God is the god of despair. The god of rage. The god of sorrow.
The despair, rage, and sorrow he had gathered over the past thousand years were present here.
The cacophony of screams filling the surroundings was so loud it deafened me. I could hear every sound, yet hear nothing at all.
Darkness within darkness surged, pushing me. It shrieked at me to hurry and hide in that white hole. A searing wind, hot enough to burn flesh, pushed me from behind, and the ground beneath my feet tilted.
Instead of being pushed along passively, I bit my useless tongue.
A crisp crunch echoed.
Only when the metallic scent of blood filled my mouth did I finally regain my senses.
“Hah, huff…”
I gasped, filling my chest with air. As I gulped down the ragged breaths, thick, viscous Mana seeped in, making my head spin. The Mana in the air no longer mattered.
This place did not welcome me.
The eyeball continued to stare at Ikyun without blinking. It was natural. Without eyelids, how could it blink?
I took another step back. To shake off the flesh clinging to my ankle, I drew my sword reflexively.
And then I thought desperately.
That cannot possibly be a living thing.
Once I thought that, I saw it again.
A trap. A formation. I had fallen into the center of a Magic Circle.
The ceaselessly writhing flesh from another dimension crawled towards me. Regardless of whether it was the ceiling, the floor, or the walls, black things tried to drive me into the white hole. It was a great fortune that I hadn’t been mesmerized and leaped in without thinking.
The eye socket burned hot. Both my eyes felt like they were on fire.
I slashed at the leaping mass. The amorphous lump, impossible to define as anything specific, was easily cut away, but it immediately merged with another and became a giant wall. No matter how many times I slashed, there was no path forward.
Painful screams urged me on. They whispered that the white was righteous and the black was evil, urging me to jump in and find peace, tickling the back of my neck. But I knew better now. The righteous path was bound to be difficult. The path of being pushed along was not my path.
As I stubbornly refused to comply, the writhing things became even more ferocious.
My mouth still tasted of blood, and the ground beneath me grew steadily smaller.
The white hole gaped open like a beast’s maw, waiting for me. What did it intend to gain by driving me in there? Regardless, I had no intention of complying with its will.
I gritted my teeth and poured all my internal energy into my sword. Fortunately, the Qi within my body obeyed me well, even within the suffocating formation.
Without hesitation, I split the world in half.
Like parting waves, like cleaving a mountain. After a streak of blue light shot from the highest heavens to the lowest depths.
Doors opened in all eight directions, emitting light.
…Thud.
Cold sweat trickled down my temple, pooled at my jaw, and dripped off.
I had almost vanished without a trace, like a handful of dust, in an instant.
I couldn’t help but laugh at the sheer absurdity. The eight Sword Energies shot at me were exactly the same as the Qi I had unleashed. I had survived by twisting my body by a fraction of a fraction of a breath, but the area below my left knee, which I couldn’t retract in time, was completely lost.
I propped myself up with my sword in place of my severed leg. A chill I hadn’t felt in a while slithered down my spine. I pondered the powerful Qi that could tear flesh and shatter bone with just a graze.
In doing so, I gained something.
If I applied a strong shock to this Magic Circle, it seemed to violently return the shock it received. Whether it returned exactly what it absorbed or doubled it, I would have to investigate further. By cleaving it a few more times, I would know with what intensity the doors opened.
Now, I was curious about the eight directions that had shot light at me. The gaps I saw during the attack would be their weak points.
❖ ❖ ❖
I had wandered for so long. I had navigated through endless darkness.
The doors in the eight directions resembled the nostrils of some amphibian. They opened briefly before closing again.
Each time I drew my sword, I moved as close as possible to the door in each direction. I examined every door, starting from the north and moving clockwise.
If I drew my sword weakly, the interior would constrict significantly, let alone counterattack. If I slashed strongly, eight doors would open, just as before, to attack me.
Most of them merely mimicked my Sword Energy, returning it like a mirror, but occasionally, they shot out strangely shaped pieces of scrap metal.
Clang!
I spun my sword widely in front of me, deflecting most of the charging metal fragments with a roar. Some embedded themselves in me, and some lodged in the walls. The space struck by the fragments, shot wildly in all directions, writhed and groaned as if alive.
I didn’t know what would happen if I planted my feet on this bizarre floor. I stood balanced on one leg. I kept slipping and fell several times. I had no time to tend to the wounds that kept accumulating. It was fortunate that my proficiency in Pressure Point Striking prevented the torn wounds from bleeding continuously.
Strange, unexpected monsters also poured out in droves.
Some I recognized, others I didn’t. Some crawled, others flew. I thought they might be illusions, but they didn’t disappear even after being cut, becoming a significant hindrance to my movement. After using Sword Energy to push them far away, I forgot about them.
None of the things that attacked me were strong enough to be the true body of a god. However, they were sufficient to wear me down.
I coughed dryly at times. The thought of lying down for a nap gnawed at my weakened resolve. Meanwhile, the back of my eyes remained hot.
I endured, and endured again. I endured with stubborn persistence.
I decided not to act rashly. Though I might not be exceptionally brilliant, my patience was second to none. I had cut down those I needed to cut, and I endured because I had to. I swung my sword again and again, as if squeezing out every last drop of internal energy stored within me.
I drew my sword in the most righteous direction. It contained the sky I had drawn and the petals I had observed. It was a sword that cut through a night sky filled with starlight and a tranquil lake. My Sword Art, Righteous Sword, created by combining over a dozen Sword Arts, including the Changcheon Muae Sword Art and the Imperial Swordsmanship, protected me.
On the boundary between life and death, all the knowledge I had gained rapidly intertwined and mixed.
The voices of a strict master, of beloved family, of a pained child, the sound of the wind, the rumble of thunder—those many lovely voices pushed the screams of the vermin far away.
At some point, as if possessed, the answer became clear.
After cutting down hundreds of monsters, leaping over lines of Sword Energy many times its number, and slashing, tearing, and smashing this space, I had also deeply gouged the ceiling, walls, and floor.
From a 1st Circle Wizard to the god of 10th Circle Magic, everyone who wielded magic on this land used the same Formula. My gaze followed the final knot of all magic, the core of magic that could not be completed if left unfinished.
Below the white eyeball, in the southwest of the eight directions.
The Alpha Formula, the Life Gate.
I plunged in without hesitation. I drove my sword in with all my might.
Crunch.
Crack.
The resistance felt at the tip of my sword was immense. It felt like cutting through the chest of a very thick, heavy beast. I clearly felt the sensation of breaking bones and tearing flesh. Simultaneously, black masses enveloped my entire body.
The writhing black things began to crumble.
Breathing was no longer difficult. The fragments of the Ninth God I had swallowed met their new companions and danced joyfully. I opened my entire body to receive and swallow the pouring energy. Something sizzled and boiled on my outer shell, emitting murky smoke. It felt like bathing in the Elixir of a monster.
I closed my eyes and opened them again.
A man was impaled on my sword.
The Ninth God must have originally looked like this man. He had a surprisingly plain face. His long hair trailed past his ankles, covering the floor. His hair, the robes he wore, and even the blood flowing from his lips were all a black hue darker than the night sky.
Only his eyes shone with a pure white light, all the way to the pupils.
He was crying. Seeing his tears fall, I felt a strange urge to laugh. The back of my eyes still burned. My burning Upper Dantian told me that the god before me was dying.
He and I looked at each other. He placed his hand on my sword, which was lodged in his chest.
My current Qi Force was not blue. As he placed his hand on the black, gleaming Qi Force, as dark as his own, several of his fingers were severed. He looked down at his severed fingers lying at his feet, but I remained unmoved.
He opened his mouth.
“…You don’t know. You will be lonely like me now. You will have to endure your entire life alone in someone else’s world, a world you couldn’t interfere with. In this world where no one recognizes you, and no one walks with you…”
“Blind men touching an elephant. How can you speak of the world?”
I let his baseless curse wash over me without listening.
Now it is mine.
The Origin that would have bound me to this land, and his immense power that overflows within me.
The function of the Upper Dantian is the function of faith. Until now, I had no certainty in my life. Swayed by colossal beings, I lived ready to let go of what I possessed. I always lived one step back, preparing for my empty space.
But now I know.
This is my place.
As the power of the Ninth God, who sat with a sorrowful face, transferred into my grasp through the sword, a gentle, affectionate gaze overlaid my shadow from above. She whispered as if to soothe me. It was a voice that bloomed not in my ears but in my heart.
Have you found it now?
“Yes, I have found it.”
Found what?
“The place where I belong.”
Whom?
“A child, so wonderfully cute and lovely.”
Then, a clear laugh echoed from above.
I, too, had spoken in jest, so I smiled faintly. I vaguely recalled a memory of hearing the same question once.
The First God of this land, embedded in the sky, asked again, urging me to give the right answer.
Who are you?
Who am I?
I am Namgung Jeong-yeon, and Michael Ernhardt, and something else. There are over a dozen names I’ve forgotten, a hundred discarded names, and a thousand forgotten lives. Those thousands of lives forged the me of today.
I pulled the sword from the kneeling figure’s body and flicked it away.
“I am the tenth god of this continent… and…”
I raised my head. Something faint flickered far above in the collapsing sky. The beautiful, radiant robes of a woman fluttered, mimicking veils of hundreds of colors.
I was the First God’s arrangement. A tree rooted in the soil she had carefully chosen.
“Michael Ernhardt. The eldest son of House Ernhardt. Know that I have decided to live this life here.”
Yes. The long journey that had continued until now was a process for me to believe in myself.
A god of one world is born in another world after an experienced soul has lived and gained enlightenment there. It is extremely rare for a god of a stable continent to die and disappear.
However, two gods of this continent had already died. Because of that, the continent’s balance was broken, leading many people to harbor evil intentions. Love began to torment people more and more. Forced love and belated love brought hundreds and thousands of tears.
The First God could not stand idly by and watch.
Needing a new god, she surveyed various worlds and chose a figure she favored. I caught her eye because my Internal energy cultivation method resembled the function of Purification, and my disposition suited her taste.
The Ninth God seized that opportunity to scheme.
Having used much of her strength to bring me here, she pinned the First Goddess, whose body was weakened, in the sky, rendering her immobile. From the opened world, she brought over the Demonic Cult members who would cause chaos at her will to this continent. Using me and them, she twisted the continent’s Mana flow and attempted a regression.
Because of that, neither I nor the other gods received any explanation from the First Goddess, but
Nourished by the affection of countless beings, I was able to save this world in time.
Not as a newborn god, but as someone who cherished and loved this continent.