‘I’m sorry. I have no face left to show you.’

The soul of Landriol that had taken root in Go Byeonggap’s body was fading fast. The long black hair, the muscular frame — that body, at once savage and noble — collapsed like a melting glacier.

From within his own inner world, Go Byeonggap watched the sight and screamed.

<The fuck do you mean, where are you going? You think you can just vanish like this and call it done!?>

A storm of emotions raged through him. Rage. Grief. Resentment. Agony. Tears streamed down Go Byeonggap’s face.

With every passing instant, Landriol faded further. Because Go Geonryong was forcibly extracting his soul.

Go Byeonggap grabbed hold of Landriol’s crumbling shoulder.

<No, I’m not letting you go like this! Either bring back all my men who died because of you, or rip that Madmut fucker apart! Don’t you dare disappear until you do!>

Landriol instinctively tried to argue.

The soldiers hadn’t died because of him. It was the result of their own judgment and choices, made to protect their Emperor. And from the beginning, it had always been a subject’s duty to live and die for their king.

‘Heh…’

But Landriol said nothing. In the end, it was he who had driven his subjects into their deaths. Arguing over it now would be nothing but belated noise.

‘I’m sorry.’

There had been a second battle against Madmut. And a second defeat. That was all that remained. A king who had lost twice had no right to speak; he’d only sound ridiculous. So he simply apologized.

‘I’m sorry.’

<Goddammit! Shove your sor— Ah! Aaah…>

Even the shoulder Go Byeonggap had been gripping crumbled to dust. Now only Landriol’s neck and face remained. Both of them sensed the end.

Before his mouth, too, vanished, Landriol forced out his final words.

<Neither endless prosperity nor revenge in a single moment—how could I be anything but a failed king? I’m past even the shame of haggling over favors with you now. Still, I have one last thing I’d like to say. If you survive, take whatever people still follow you and live quietly. Feel a cool breeze on your face, drink clean water, treasure those small things, and live a life of humble contentment. I failed… no, because I failed, I understand the fleetingness of existence. Please, don’t follow the same path I—>

Landriol didn’t finish. He dissolved, his words cut short, his presence erased from every corner of the dark inner world.

Gone. Truly, utterly gone.

Go Byeonggap felt like a hole had been punched through his chest.

It wasn’t just because of Landriol’s absence. The fact that when he woke, he’d never see his beloved twelve lieutenants again hit him with a crushing weight of loss.

<Alone… I’m alone…>

Dorma, Doran, Kiriyan, Turka… Gobungi.

They were all dead. Vanished forever, just like Landriol. The humans were all dead too. What meaning was there in waking up alone?

Go Byeonggap deliberately refused to rise to the surface of consciousness. He curled up and sank deeper into the depths of his inner world.

Then it came. Agonizing pain seared through his brain, like it was burning alive. His real body must have been enduring something brutal.

Normally, he would have snapped awake and handled it. But Go Byeonggap had no will left. So he stayed still.

Death closed in on him. Neither his body nor his heart could escape the shadow of it.

The next moment. Go Byeonggap died.

* * *

“How peculiar.”

Go Geonryong had ripped Landriol’s soul out. Torn it to shreds.

He didn’t know how the ghost of the past had chased him across time and space to this point, but now, no matter what, that thing could never revive.

Yet even after extracting the soul, the flesh refused to die. Uncommon, but possible. Another soul must be lingering in the body. Much like himself.

So he crushed the heart. Go Geonryong watched intently as the man before him died.

“Hu-ah.”

Go Geonryong withdrew the karma field he had spread across the area. He also suppressed Madmut’s presence back down. He returned to being the human Go Geonryong.

In that instant, the sweat he’d been holding back poured out and his legs gave way. He couldn’t hold himself up, collapsing to the ground, clutching his bursting heart. Blood streamed from the wound.

“What… a goddamn pain. Everything under the sun just keeps getting in the way.”

He patched the wound roughly with karma. It was serious enough to be dangerous if left alone, but he didn’t pay it much mind. This human body would soon be meaningless anyway.

“Kkeuuuugh.”

He braced his aching knees, then lifted himself upright, craning his neck to look upward.

The Divine Warrior Eraksen looked down at him through a body shredded to ruin. The other three beasts lay dead.

Tch. Pathetic things, the lot of them.

“Bring her out.”

Go Geonryong’s words were a command, and from Eraksen’s chest a translucent sphere burst forth, containing a woman within. Her name was Sujin—the engine that had driven him to plan and execute every single piece of this madness.

Wistfulness twisted his face. Longing, joy, all of it rioted through his eyes and lips and the seams of his weathered skin. The heart he’d thought desiccated long ago began to thunder in its cage at the thought of soon meeting the living Sujin.

“Come live with me there,” he murmured. “In a place where only rest exists, dwelling endlessly.”

Go Geonryong cradled Sujin in his arms and shifted position, seeking ground that had weathered less of the battle’s shock wave. Finding a sunlit patch, he laid his beloved down and spoke.

“Your wish will be fulfilled soon. Now keep your promise and grant mine.”

Only one being listened. Inside him, Madmut sent a signal of assent.

A mysterious energy radiated from Go Geonryong’s body. It was something other than karma. His mouth moved of its own accord, spitting out words.

«Raising the dead is chaos—an act that defies the order I pursue. But a promise is a promise. I shall grant what you desire.»

Then, an unbelievable scene unfolded. Something began to rise from the ground, shimmering and swelling. It looked like will-o’-the-wisps at first, or giant fireflies.

Each was the size of a fist, their luminescence varying in hue. Some were dark and murky, others shone blue and clear.

There were easily hundreds of thousands of them. Perhaps even more. What was certain was that they filled the entire field of vision.

“This is… all of them…….”

«Yes. These are the souls of the dead who ended their lives here. If Sujin truly died nearby, her soul must be among them. The spirits seem dazed for now, but soon they’ll swarm toward any living body like a hive of bees. The only living bodies here are us and Sujin — so no need to worry about her soul slipping into the wrong vessel. All we have to guard against is a foreign soul entering hers.»

“How do we tell Sujin’s soul from someone else’s?”

«Leave that to me. Don’t trouble yourself. Hmph — they’re already beginning to surge in.»

Madmut was right. An immense host of souls, floating aloft in the sky, streamed toward them — like a meteor shower pouring down.

Go Geonryong watched the scene, hollowed out. Among those souls must be the members of the Last Eighteen.

A pang of guilt flickered through him.

The truth? He’d been lying to them all along. The Ark—that vessel meant to ascend to heaven—had never existed. It was a story he’d invented, a lie to bring Sujin back.

The members of the Last Eighteen had been sacrificed for nothing but his private obsession.

Not that the guilt cut deep enough to bleed. They’d been his comrades, but what he felt was closer to mild regret—a shame they’d died so cheaply after all those years fighting at his side.

He was about to ask if they could be saved, too. But Madmut had already fused with him, mind and soul, and answered before Geonryong could form the words.

«Impossible. Sujin may be empty, but she clearly possesses a living body. That means a soul can be placed inside her. If anything, she’s in the optimal state for soul-settlement. But the ones you’re thinking of—their bodies died, and their souls have already departed. Forcing a soul into a dead body won’t bring it back to life.»

“Is that so…”

«Are you worried she might be lonely after ascending to the heavens? That’s no concern. There is no loneliness or boredom there—only pleasure and repose. You and Sujin will live there with me, forever.»

“Understood. Hurry up and revive Sujin, then.”

Madmut fell silent and concentrated. More and more souls rushed toward them, and Madmut casually swatted away the ones that didn’t fit.

Some souls gave up on merging with Sujin and tried to force their way directly into Go Geonryong. But the soul of a mere mortal sinking into a vessel holding a god—that was impossible.

It happened when things were already well underway. A portion of the souls jolted sideways. Go Geonryong thought little of it—but Madmut did not.

Madmut suddenly roared.

«A living human! What is the meaning of this? I commanded you to kill them all!»

“What?”

His head whipped around by reflex. And then his eyes caught something discordant.

A goblin. A small goblin—its appearance unknown—was darting away at full speed, with a human man slung over its back.

The man’s face was familiar to Go Geonryong. How could it not be? He was the one Landriol had possessed.

At the far end of the goblin’s escape route, a portal of unknown origin hung open. Beside it, a woman lay sprawled on the ground.

Go Geonryong’s eyes twisted.

“Seo Sihui!”

In an instant, he forged a mass of karma and hurled it toward them.

«Kek!»

The goblin slipped through the portal by a hair’s breadth. The portal snapped shut at once, and the karma mass slammed into Seo Sihui, who lay alone and abandoned.

Already ruined beyond recognition, she couldn’t even manage a groan. From unclosed eyes, a single bead of bloody tears rolled down her cheek.

“That goddamn woman, all the way to the end—” Go Geonryong snarled.

Seo Sihui’s meddling grated on him like shards of glass. How many times had she come back from the dead now? Three? Four? A ghost of a woman, through and through.

What he wanted was to stomp her corpse into paste, grind every trace of her into the dirt until nothing remained. The only reason he hadn’t was a more pressing matter.

He had to revive Sujin, build the Heavenly Realm, and ascend—every second counted. From this moment on, not a single tick of the clock could be wasted.

Geonryong shook off the distractions with effort and fixed his focus back on Sujin. Her soul was gathering, coalescing.

* * *

A wail ripped through Baltadren—raw, keening, animal.

«Hnggh! My Lord! My Lord!»

Baltadren drowned in tears. Every goblin in Asvillam had packed the square, howling their grief into the stone sky.

At their center, Go Byeonggap lay sprawled—his face caved in, limbs reduced to pulp, a ruin of a man.

“Ah… Ahhh…”

«Queen Dowager!» a goblin cried.

«Support the Queen Dowager! Hold her steady!»

The moment Park Yeongok saw her son’s body, she collapsed. The goblins caught her as she crumpled, their guttural cries filling the air, and carried her to a quiet place.

Go Byeonggap’s death rippled outward like a stone dropped into still water. Spirits and the humans still lingering in Asvillam alike gathered before his corpse.

Unlike the goblins, the humans carried a different weight of worry—had the war been lost? Were they now trapped here forever, with Byeonggap dead and the way back to Earth sealed?

«Huuuh… To think you’d end up in such a wretched state.»

Kunta, the chieftain of the spirits, let out a long sigh before Go Byeonggap’s body. His own form, little more than rags, spoke volumes about the ferocity of the battle.

«Did I not tell you! The spirits could have lent our strength, however meager it was! If only—if only we had, you might not have met such a gruesome end!»

«Excuse me! Move aside! Please, let me through! I’m coming through! I said move!»

That was when someone pushed through the crowd filling the square. The clear, desperate voice drew Kunta’s gaze as if by reflex.

It was Ea, the spirit. She loved her work—that must have been why she’d been in the kitchen all this time, slow to catch news.

«Huff!»

Ea gasped when she confirmed Go Byeonggap’s body. She trembled, her whole frame quaking, then collapsed.

Kunta stepped forward to steady her. But before he could, Ea forced herself upright and lunged toward Byeonggap.

«Hey, you! Are you dead? Really dead? Huh! Hnng! Is everyone dead? Doran, Mr. Dorma, Mr. Kiriyan—all of them? Say something! Something!»

«E-Ea. Calm down.»

«Hwaaang! You said you’d come back alive! Why are you dead, why! Hwoooaang!»

Ea wept, tears streaming from her large eyes.

The cries of goblins, spirits, and humans mingled here, turning the place into utter chaos. No one knew when this rain of tears would ever cease.

That was when it happened. Ea, who had been clinging to Go Byeonggap and wailing, suddenly lifted her head. Her eyes were still brimming with grief.

Yet beyond that distant sorrow, a solemn resolve glimmered.

Only Kunta, standing close by, could discern that invisible determination of hers.

«I say, Ea! What are you—!?»

The next moment, before anyone could stop her or even speak, Ea’s body was engulfed in light.