Chapter 711 – At the End of Romance (1)

Entry into the Demon Realm.

Lorenzik clicked his tongue.
He had approached the Demon Realm through the underwater city of Heshiyashi, so reaching the realm’s threshold was all he had achieved so far—
but even from here, he could already tell.

“Good grief… the Demon Realm is a mess.”

If it was going to turn out like this, why did it ever dare eye the Arcana Continent?

Once upon a time, when he first set foot in the Demon Realm, the place had possessed something—a kind of allure that stirred an explorer’s pride.
As he walked, Lorenzik examined the condition of the trees and the grasses.

“There’s no rule that only beautiful things exist in this world. Everything is relative. In that sense, the Demon Realm’s landscape wasn’t half bad.”

Ugly, venomous, dangerous—
but still alive.
And anything alive could stir Lorenzik’s curiosity.

But what about the Demon Realm before his eyes now?

“This… I can’t even guess how many things got mashed together.”

It must be the result of a violent inversion after the Great Collapse.

Worlds devoured by the Demon Realm had been scrambled together without distinction.
And only someone like Lorenzik, who had once walked these lands, could recognize it.

Fwap.

Lorenzik narrowed his eyes at a bird taking off into the dark-violet sky.
Let’s see—its beak resembles a bird from Arcana, but its wings belong to a demon.
And on top of that, the damned thing has five mismatched legs…

He came to a conclusion.

“At this rate, I might not even leave behind a corpse.”

The legendary explorer who never aged, forever chasing romance.

Because he had accumulated experience equal to a lifetime and beyond, Lorenzik was unlike any ordinary explorer.
Unlike the typical non-combat explorers, he was more battle-hardened than most players.

Yet even Lorenzik felt tension in the Demon Realm of today.

“Well… at least I brought some magic tools.”

Tools he had… liberally borrowed from the Explorer Federation’s storage.

“Bah, I’ll pay them back with something better.”

Fabian, the President of the Federation, would definitely throw a fit.
Lorenzik shrugged.
He gripped a different magic tool in each hand—just in case—
and stepped forward into the true depths of the Demon Realm.

“I, Lorenzik, always keep my prom—”

But his words halted.
Of course they did.
Because he saw it.

“Well now.”

The silver Evil Eye illuminating the Demon Realm.

Lorenzik had a vague idea of what it meant, thanks to all he’d seen and heard while traveling through hell with Hoyeol.

He knew it couldn’t hear him, but he still spoke toward the eye.

“Is this… the Demon Realm you hoped for?”

A solitary, hovering, dignified eye.

“I must have misunderstood you.”

The ever-neat attire.
The always-orderly office of the Supreme Commander.
The posture of the Magic Tower’s Chief Mage.

Naturally, Lorenzik assumed that someone like him would enforce discipline and order even here.
So upon seeing the Demon Realm in ruins, he assumed the war was still raging.

But a single, lone Evil Eye?

‘The closer I get to the Demon Realm, the more things stop making sense.’

But Lorenzik wasn’t mistaken.

‘No doubt… he wants to convey something.’

Through this devastated Demon Realm—
they must be trying to send a message.

And with that thought, a realization dawned on him.

“!”

He froze and hurriedly dug through his subspace bag.
Out tumbled dusty, ancient tomes—so old that merely looking at them made him cough.

No—calling them tomes was generous.

Lorenzik’s hands moved busily.

‘Chaotic and inconsistent… just like the old tales.’

The forgotten histories of the Arcana continent: the Old Chronicles.

Their covers were all different.
Their topics were all different.
Yet they all had one thing in common:

They each featured the same figure.

‘Even the diaries recording the Sage’s prophecies were like that.’

Why had no one realized this until now?
Lorenzik could answer that.
Even someone like him—who cared more about old tales than anyone—

“If I hadn’t gathered them all here, I never would’ve noticed.”

Of course.

That ‘figure’ was ever-changing.

Their actions and abilities differed so wildly that no one could possibly believe the records referred to the same being.
In one region, the figure was described as a creator god;
in another, as an apostle of destruction.

He laughed dryly just remembering it.

“I wouldn’t have believed it either.”

Not if he hadn’t seen the rings of the World Tree.

Call it luck—
the World Tree had rotted, collapsed under its own weight, and exposed its rings.
From those rings, Lorenzik had discovered proof that this world was repeating.

And thanks to that, he understood:

“All these old tales… were your stories.”

Suddenly, Lorenzik muttered:

“Wait. Then the Scripture I wrote…?”

The Scripture After the Cataclysm, stored in the Magic Tower.

If the world repeated again, would that Scripture also become an old tale?
The thought made Lorenzik stare more seriously at the scattered books.

Hold on—
among these, might there be something I wrote in a previous world?

He shook his head vigorously.

“Ugh… my brain hurts.”

Enough pointless thoughts.

“It’s not like I’ll ever collect royalties off these books anyway.”

No one but him would ever bother digging up such junk.

Lorenzik finally looked back out at the Demon Realm.
Just like the tales—
the Demon Realm too had a common theme.

Chaos.

“The message may differ in form… but the meaning must be the same.”

So then—
what is it that they desire?

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. //read only on pindang
// tl/n: Demon World  => Demon Realm, Bible => Scripture

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What is purity?

Someone once said that the most frightening thing in the world might be a child—
a being untouched by the concepts of good and evil.
In that sense, Lorenzik might well be the most terrifying of all.

His purpose was nothing but the fulfillment of his own desires.

To satisfy his curiosity, Lorenzik would disregard any and all means.
One didn’t have to look far—this very journey, undertaken just to collect obscure tales from the Arcana continent, was the perfect example.

Illegal trespassing, theft, threats, grave robbing……

Lorenzik felt no guilt whatsoever.
Naturally, negative emotions were foreign to him.
If something looked fun, even if malicious at its core,
Lorenzik was always ready to follow it gladly.

But then—

“—Huff.”

Lorenzik’s face went completely pale.

“T-this, this is…!!”

For the first time, a feeble sound slipped out of his lips.

Grrr—

A sound echoed from nearby.

Lorenzik’s knowledge spoke:
That was no ordinary beast’s cry.
It was the shriek of a monster born in the ravaged Demon Realm,
a creature stitched together from countless mixed breeds.

“Ngh.”

If it were the usual Lorenzik, he would have disposed of it without hesitation.
With the magical tool in his hand—the Machete That Cleaves the Abyss—
even the most vicious beast could be driven away.

But now, Lorenzik couldn’t do it.

His feet stepped back on their own.
An observer might have said:
Perhaps he, like the Holy War Alliance, witnessed the curse…
Perhaps he realized the brutal truth hidden within it…

No—
Anyone saying that simply didn’t understand Lorenzik.

“Haa… haa…”

Lorenzik was clever.

The reason he’d survived so long as an explorer
was because his sense for danger was extraordinarily sharp.
It was the reason he’d always stopped at the threshold of Hell or the Demon Realm.

The Curse, they called it?
Lorenzik had encountered it before—
The Dimensional Rifts.

-“I’m curious, but now’s not the time.”

He had experienced curses many times,
and thus he understood how dangerous they were.
So he never stepped into a curse lightly.

-“Unless I had a companion, maybe.”

Carrying the aftereffects of a curse,
the current Demon Realm was far too dangerous to explore.
So Lorenzik changed course.

Thus, there should have been no reason for him to be horrified.

Crack—!

But that was before the dimensional rift—
the curse itself—
began to collapse.

The collapse of a curse.

Yes, that was why Lorenzik was terrified.

‘This is bad. Danger beyond madness. That… that is insane.’

A curse.

Both President Fabian of the Explorer’s Federation
and the senior mages of the Magic Tower had asked me questions before.
And every time, before answering, I warned them clearly:

-“A curse? Don’t even think about approaching one.”

A curse, metaphorically, was the demon’s palm.

Shaped, twisted, and toyed with according to the demon’s will—
that was the ritual called a “curse.”
And the beings one encountered inside a curse?

‘They were nothing but incarnations of fear.’

Exactly.

For a curse to collapse
meant the demon’s malice was being released into the world exactly as it was.

So Lorenzik had no choice but to flee.

“If it were just one or two, I could manage, but…!!”

Crack—

Even as he ran, curses were collapsing all around him.
Suppressing his rising panic, he forced himself to think.

There was only one being capable of unleashing curses of this magnitude—

‘You, of course.’

The silver Evil Eye hovered high above, dignified and aloof.

All these curses—
Lorenzik was certain you had manifested them.
And because he knew how terrifying curses were,
he could not help but cry out to that staring eye:

“What in the world do you want!?”

The Demon Realm was more unstable than ever.

The Supreme Commander had supposedly prevented total collapse
with his reversal magic,
but as anyone could see, everything remained twisted—
it could all begin collapsing again at any moment.

Just look at Behemoth.

Even minor accumulated damage might cause Behemoth to shut its jaws.
And if Behemoth died,
Heshiyashi’s escape tunnel would close as well.

For curses to collapse right now, in this state—?

Lorenzik truly could not understand.

Because he lacked the concept of good and evil.
Because his innocence remained intact.
Because, in some ways, he understood “the incurable disease” better than anyone.

So he suspected—

“This isn’t what you want… is it?”

Lee Hoyeol and Claudi.

He did not know precisely why the world was repeating,
but he at least understood this much:
that it was the will of those two.

That was why he came to the Demon Realm—
pure curiosity, and a desire to help if he could.

But this—
this wasn’t right.

“Does this mean the Sage’s Prophecy was true?”

A massive wheel does not require a reason to turn.
And once that great wheel begins to move,
everything beneath it can only be crushed.

“…!”

As if in answer,
beings appeared through the collapsing curses.

Being Lorenzik could never fail to recognize—
not after reading so many obscure tales.

──────
The continent lost its sight.
For it saw what it should never have seen.
──────

The Arcana continent, blinded overnight.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry……”

And the mysterious monsters who roamed the Arcana Continent, begging forgiveness—

The very beings connected to you,
now spilling out of the collapsing curses.

Lorenzik felt his mind go blank.
The moment he imagined the consequences,
his thoughts went distant and numb.

‘If these things are released into the Demon Realm—!’

Everything ends.

“Ah…”

As Lorenzik sank helplessly into despair—

“It has been a while.”

A voice spoke.

Not the voice of the silver Evil Eye—
but your voice, from behind him.

He turned his head—
and there stood Hoyeol.

With a tone heavy with emotion, Hoyeol continued:

“You as well.”

And then, in a voice steeped in quiet loneliness:

“As well as my original sins.”

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[Your ‘Original Sins’ overflow.]
[Your Original Sins ask you.]
[Are you prepared to pay the price?]

[Current Karma: 4,282,933,780,666]