Episode 246
A colossal shadow titan rose to meet the enormous dragon that seemed to tear the heavens apart.
It was a clash straight out of myth, rendering all other battles meaningless in comparison.
The golden dragon roared, its tail crashing down with a force that shook the earth.
The Shadow Lord, wrapped in endless tendrils of darkness, extended his arm. The shadows surrounding him surged like a storm.
This was power beyond anything Dale had ever wielded—an absurd, world-shattering might befitting a Shadow Lord.
At the same time, the world around them was engulfed in an endless light.
It was the dawn that banished the darkness of night. The golden lord’s realm spread, swallowing everything in its radiant glow.
“What do you know of the golden dawn?” the dragon bellowed.
“Dawn, you say,” Dale replied calmly.
“Is it so hard to accept the cycle of the sun rising and setting, only to rise again?”
“We all know this world will end in darkness.”
“That’s none of my concern,” Dale retorted coldly.
“Just as you fought desperately to protect your world, I did the same for mine. They all did.”
He wasn’t speaking of a single past world. Innocent lives sacrificed to imperial ambitions and experiments seeking the truth. Each had their own world.
The continent was built on a bloody history that consumed their worlds.
“Do you remember how many worlds were sacrificed for the sake of this one, fearing an uncertain end?”
“How many worlds must be sacrificed to protect one?” the golden dragon laughed incredulously.
“All of them,” it declared without hesitation.
“I would sacrifice every world in this universe to bring endless gold to this one.”
Dale laughed in response.
“The experiments to reach the world of truth and find answers won’t end with unifying the continent. No, my empire will stop at nothing to fend off the ice and darkness that threaten this world.”
“How unfortunate,” Dale sneered.
“Your lies are neither beautiful nor true. They’re filled with nothing but ugly, selfish greed.”
Mocking the falsehoods of the golden lord, the Shadow Lord moved.
The swirling shadows surged toward the gold, and the scattered light sank into the darkness.
The inevitable truth, now wielded with malice, struck down.
He remembered the vanishing bubbles shown by the immortal Frederick. Not all his words were wrong.
Nothing in this world can escape the ‘end.’
The shadow’s darkness swept over the dragon’s golden scales, corroding them into a dark, blackened gold. The golden dragon roared again.
Its claws slashed, its jaws snapped.
The tendrils forming the shadow titan around Dale were torn apart, only to rise again, claiming their place as part of his body.
The golden dragon continued its relentless assault, and each time, the tendrils rose to meet its blows.
And as Dale spread his darkness, tainting the gold, the corroded scales fell away, replaced by new golden ones.
Gold and shadow clashed.
The greed-twisted gold began to emit a light more beautiful than anything in the world.
The truth-twisted darkness became darker than anything in existence.
Gold was swallowed by shadow, only for the golden light to drive back the darkness.
Light and shadow intertwined, the golden dragon and shadow titan endlessly entangled.
Beings that seemed to emerge from the end of myth finally clashed.
“Behold this beautiful light, child of shadow! Witness the splendor of this light! I will not let truth and shadow take it away! I will not give the gold to anyone!”
The golden dragon cried out, and Dale sneered.
This was it.
There was no grand cause to prevent the world’s end. Truth and lies were never important.
It was greed.
The refusal to give the gold to anyone, not even the shadow and ice at the world’s end.
“So you spouted grandiose nonsense about protecting your empire and this world?”
Thus, the Shadow Lord spoke. He couldn’t even muster a laugh.
Finally understanding the meaning of this tiresome conflict.
From the start, it was a petty squabble over possessions, a childish refusal to share one’s gold.
The true name of gold was greed.
The refusal to give up what one possessed. Even after gaining immortality and an empire, the golden lord’s desire remained insatiable.
Thus, the shadow was born. To claim what rightfully belonged to it.
“I’ll show you the real truth.”
The Shadow Lord spoke coldly.
“I stand here to take everything you have.”
“You dare…!”
The golden dragon roared, charging at the Shadow Lord. The Shadow Lord silently spread his arms.
As if to embrace its existence.
The shadow titan reached out, enveloping the golden dragon. The dragon’s golden breath and jaws tore at the Shadow Lord’s body, yet he remained unfazed.
The dragon’s roar echoed.
Yet even before that roar, the Shadow Lord stood firm.
His darkness simply consumed the gold.
The shadow titan’s body crumbled.
The darkness melted, flooding the land like a deluge, and the golden dragon screamed within the shadow’s flood.
“As the Shadow Lord, I will take everything you have.”
The shadow was indifferent. It simply became the end that consumed the golden lord’s dawn-lit world, declaring it with calm finality.
The radiant light and dawn faded, and darkness descended.
The light was as fleeting as a candle in the wind, and soon the last light flickered out.
When Dale lifted his head, it was a white, dark winter night.
In the endless silence, Dale lowered his gaze.
A man clad in golden armor lay fallen.
“And with this…”
Having ended the battle, Dale quietly turned his head.
The winter night was filled with countless corpses, a sea of blood, and the living.
Further fighting was meaningless.
The two lords had clashed, and the battle was finally over.
It was all over. Here, the golden lord symbolizing the empire had fallen, leaving only their standard-bearers. Dealing with the remnants wouldn’t be easy, but that was all.
It was all over. So fleetingly? Truly?
Thinking this, Dale turned his head.
Nothing had changed.
In the freezing silence, Dale walked on, unperturbed.
In the Demon King’s domain, there stands an ancient structure whose creator is unknown.
Some call the great labyrinth the work of ancient demons, but the ancient demons did not build it. The immortal Frederick and the Saxon clan quietly awaited their time beyond the shadow tower.
Yet Dale remembered the familiarity he felt in the deepest part of the labyrinth.
The hero from another world was no exception.
At the moment of the golden and shadow clash.
The hero from another world stood on Saxon’s frozen land.
Where Dale’s mother Elena and sister Lize had fled before the great battle, in the deepest part of the labyrinth city where Saxon Viscount’s castle lay.
In the depths of the great labyrinth.
In that deepest place, the hero reached out.
“An ancient relic, is it? So that’s why.”
Muttering as if it were someone else’s business, he began to laugh quietly.
In the deepest part of the great labyrinth, there lay an ancient relic.
Familiar titanium metal, shattered glass shards, non-functioning electronic devices. These were just a part of it. Walking a bit further, there were tombstones large enough for a person to lie on.
A vast underground chamber. There lay the truth.
“What’s so funny?” asked the divine sword Vadel beside the hero.
Having left behind past misdeeds, now comrades fighting to the labyrinth’s depths.
“Have you seen the movie ‘Planet of the Apes’?”
”…What’s that?”
“No, it’s fine. You probably wouldn’t understand even if I explained.”
The hero from another world said this with a bitter smile.
─ Initiating system startup.
An unfamiliar voice echoed through the chamber, and at the same moment, light returned to the darkness-filled cavern.
“Light…”
Murmured the sacred sword, Vadel, as the hero from another world caught his breath.
“The Noah’s Ark system…”
“Noah’s Ark? Do you know about this labyrinth?”
“I know it very well.”
The hero replied, a bitter smile playing on his lips.
“Never thought it would end up like this, even if it was doomed.”
”…Are you not interested in the war outside?”
“I wasn’t.”
The hero answered coldly.
“But now, I am.”
Vadel tilted his head in confusion, and the hero continued.
”…Noah, can you recognize my voice?”
─ You are registered in the database as a commander.
The mechanical voice responded again, and the hero smiled wryly.
“After I disappeared that day, what happened?”
He asked, still smiling.
─ Would you like to access the log records?
The hero nodded silently.
A blue hologram appeared before them, and with a voice that seemed to recognize a long-lost friend, it spoke.
─ I’ve been waiting for you, Hanseong.