Tower of Wish stood as a jagged needle of probability piercing the Demon Realm skyline, a relic of a time when the three worlds were still separate.
For Kim Hajin, stepping back inside felt like reopening a diary he had written in a fever dream.
He simply teleported through, the familiar weight of the Tower's internal gravity settling over him.
[Welcome back, Player 'Extra7'.]
His high-level system greeted him as he appeared inside his waiting room. He overcame his desire to relax in his hot spring brought from the 6F and asked the system(not forgetting to give a good pet to his horse Sannuri before that) to create a portal.
Hajin bypassed the lower floors.
As he ascended, nostalgia hit him with the force of a bullet.
He thought of the early days—Prestiege, the cold nights, Crevon, and many of the other challenges.
Hajin also didn't forget about recent past. About impossible meeting with the people who could truly understand him. With his two companions.
One face surfaced at the back of his mind.
Evandel.
He remembered how she called him.
'Dad'.
No one had ever called him like that. And probably Hajin can be considered one.
Then who's the mother? Rachel?
Hajin decided to leave the matter with Evandel for later and wished her to be fine. With the beginning of 'Great War of the HeavenlyWorlds'(Main Scenario #96) there was no way for him, even if he was one of the Sun Wukong's Story bodies now, to interfere with the Scenario(of course he can choose the path of Mother Goddess of Depravity of sacrificing his own probability to enter, but that was too risky.)
She was currently with Yoo Sangah in the
"I hope she's eating her vegetables," he thought with a dry sigh. "Though with Sangah-ssi there, she's probably okay. Dokja told me she's a good person."
When he passed the 3F his intuition of King of Angels of Wheel of Fortune pathway tingled. He suddenly came across Medea who was exiting her castle.
"Extra-nim, long time no see, I've already reached transcendental realm. I'm really greatful for your gift," she waved her ceremonial robe, which Hajin made, "Your work is truly outstanding!"
"Um... G-good afternoon, why are you here?"
Hajin blinked.
"Oh, I just forgot my wand."
"She's lying."
Out of the corner carrying a basket with corn appeared Athena, Administrator of 23F.
"A-Athena, what are you doing here?"
Athena rolled her eyes.
"We came here to eat [Lv.4 Corn with the Meat Flavor]."
Hajin couldn't help but supress a scoff.
"What?! I just... j-just..! UGH! We gotta go!"
Medea used high-level magic to teleport her and Athena away.
Hajin scratched his head. For some reason tingle of his Spiritual Intuition didn't disappear.
He instinctively peeked into the River of Fate.
It was unusual: the destined was concealed.
It meant that the Destined included either High-Sequence Wheel of Fortune pathway powers user or some other Pathway, which Hajin didn't know about, that could influence River of Fate(or both).
Hajin muttered:
"May Athena and Medea be blessed with my luck."
He yawned and disappeared, Spartan happily chirping on his shoulder.
He reached the final floor: the Castle of the Demon King.
In the original script—the one he had written before he became a character—this place was a den of sulfur and screaming souls. That was the place specifically designed only for one thing—finding worthy that will be able to finally kill the Demon King.
As he pushed open the familiar mahogany doors, he was met with a silence so profound it felt heavy.
The Demon King had been defeated by Kim Suho before the Convergence. His secretary had been taken to the real world. The "Demon Arena" floors he had passed through earlier were bustling with echoes, but this castle was an abandoned stage.
Hajin walked toward the main hall, his boots echoing on the obsidian floor.
He stopped.
Sitting on the throne wasn't a ghost or a memory.
It was a corpse.
The Demon King's body should have dissolved upon death, his power absorbed by Suho's Misteltein. Yet here he sat, slumped in his armor, his flesh turned to a strange, crystalline black stone.
'[Player Encyclopedia].' Hajin thought.
[Target: Remnant of the Demon King]
Hajin narrowed his eyes.
He didn't waste time questioning the impossibility. He raised his hand, the blue glow of his Stigma flaring.
The massive, ominous corpse vanished into his inventory. He would need this. Materials of "Highly Concentrated Evil" were rarer than stardust. He could forge a weapon that even a Great Old One would fear—or perhaps a shield for a certain suicidal Reader.
Hajin walked past the throne, heading toward a staircase that shouldn't have existed. As he climbed, the darkness of the castle was devoured by a blinding, white radiance.
The air turned sweet, smelling of myrrh and ancient light. At the end of the hall stood a lonely figure, silhouetted against a sea of clouds.
[Reward 'Audience with the Chief Administrator' is active.]
Jesus Christ.
The Chief Administrator.
He didn't look like a king. He looked like a man who had walked a very long road. He turned to Hajin, his eyes reflecting a peace that was almost unsettling.
Hajin came just close enough to reach 'Him' with his own hand.
"Why do you think the Towers appeared, Author-nim?" Jesus began, his voice a gentle resonance that bypassed the ears and spoke directly to the soul.
Hajin leaned against a white marble pillar, checking his smartwatch out of habit.
"In my original plot... they were Baal's preparation. Anchors to thin the wall between the Demon Realm and Earth so he could invade."
Jesus laughed, a soft, musical sound.
"It is funny. Even the Author doesn't fully understand the ink on his own pages."
Hajin stiffened. It was one thing to know he was the author; it was another to have a character recognize him as such while also calling him out for a lack of his story.
"The Towers were not Baal's work," Jesus continued. "They were an immune reaction. Think of the world as a living body. When a virus—the Void—threatens to consume it, the world creates antibodies. Magic powers, Dungeons, Gifts, Authorities... these are the world's ways of arming its white blood cells."
"An immune reaction?" Hajin whispered.
"Then what about Baal, the King of Monsters, the Devils... What are they?"
Hajin fell silent.
In his setting they were just... Villains. Antagonists to develop the story.
Jesus walked toward the edge of the clouds, gesturing toward the horizon where the Astral Barrier used to be.
"We call it the Void. All of them come from it. In another universe, the one your companion Kim Dokja hails from, they call it the [Dark Stratum]. It is the layer of reality that exists beneath the written word. Beneath and between the worlds. It is the graveyard of discarded stories, failed endings, and the 'unwritten' possibilities that the Star Stream could not digest."
Hajin felt a chill. He remembered the plot holes he had left in his novel—the characters he had forgotten, the subplots he had abandoned because he was bored or tired.
"The Void is the manifestation of the Author's Discarded Imagination," Jesus said, his smile turning philosophical. "When you stopped thinking about a character, they didn't disappear. They fell into the Void. They fermented in the silence. Orden was born from the world's inability to digest the chaos of those discarded endings. Baal is simply the predator who learned to swim in that sea of forgotten ink."
"So the convergence..." Hajin started.
"The convergence of these three universes—yours, Dokja's, and Klein's—has turned the Void into a boiling cauldron," Jesus interrupted. "The walls between the written and the unwritten are gone. Demon Realm is the last thing that holds the Void from entering our world. Big Brother have already fixed his gaze on us. Everything is a mess, and all I can do is protect this small sanctuary of the Tower."
He turned back to Hajin, his gaze piercing through the Author's tactical gear.
"So. Why did you come here, Author-nim? What is that you are seeking at the ■■?"
***
Kim Dokja stood for a moment, looking at the trembling form of the man who shared his soul's library.
"Don't die, Klein," Dokja whispered.
He turned and stepped out of the cathedral. The moment he crossed the threshold, he unfurled his Twilight Wings. The [Fourth Wall] groaned.
Inside the cathedral, Klein Moretti felt the world explode.
The status of the Celestial Worthy escalated with the force of a collapsing star. Klein's body, a vessel already strained by the history of two worlds, began to crack. To stabilize his shifting psyche, Klein reached into the void of his own narrative.
[Lv.13 'Cane of the Depraved Monarch' is roaring!]
[Invoking the status of the 9th Demon King Paimon!]
[Constellation 'Monarch of Waning Eternities' has unleashed its Status!]
Klein gripped his cane, two Giant Stories like twin anchors in a storm: 'The Kingdom That Rotted in a Single Night' and 'The Emperor Who Refused to Die'. Using the combined weight of these legends, he gained a moment of balance.
"A moment of clarity," Klein gasped, fulfilling his own wish.
For a heartbeat, the static in his brain cleared. He surged upward, his spirit ascending Above the Gray Fog. Inside Sefirah Castle, he manifested an avatar—not the detective Sherlock or the adventurer Gehrman, but a blank, raw reflection of his current self.
Klein lunged, successfully retrieving the Sequence 9 to 1 Beyonder Characteristics of Zaratul he had absorbed after defeating 'Him'. As the last mental imprint of the ancient Attendant of Mysteries vanished, the Celestial Worthy roared in the back of Klein's mind, a titan waking from a eon-long slumber.
But something else woke up with it.
[Quasi-Giant Story 'Forge of Miracles' is resonating!]
Because Klein had been part of Dokja during the clearing of the Tower of Miracle, the narrative weight of that achievement acted as a conceptual splint, reinforcing Klein's willpower against the invasion of the previous Lord of Mysteries.
Klein's blank-faced avatar began to mutate. The undigested Attendant of Mysteries characteristic was a poison of pure chaos.
The avatar's skin began to bubble into transparent maggots.
Before the loss of control could complete, Klein snapped his fingers.
He converted the failing avatar into a Marionette, freezing its corruption. Simultaneously, he "Grafted" the cathedral in Foggy Town directly into the Astral World, placing it on the cosmic stage.
From the violet void above, a single drop of darkness fell. It carried the scent of night vanilla and the weight of eternal rest.
The Evernight Goddess had contributed a drop of the River of Eternal Darkness, coating the mad Half-Fool Antigonus in a layer of divine slumber.
"Now," Klein commanded, his voice overlapping with the Sefirah Castle's hum.
[Lv. 7 Mysticism Stabilization is activated!]
Klein activated his Basic Skill from the Tower of Wish. It allowed him to reduce failure of his ritual by 35%!
At the same time his unique skill [Tiresias calculation] showed that success chances rose significantly.
Using the authority of the Error Pathway through Sefirah, Klein reached out and performed the ultimate Theft. He didn't steal an item; he stole Antigonus's identity, fate, and mental imprint.
The backlash was a mental apocalypse. Klein's personality began to dissociate. For a terrifying second, he was the wolf-man Antigonus. The Celestial Worthy used the chaos to strike, but Klein, fueled by madness, directed the two warring wills—the Worthy and Antigonus—to devour each other.
Outside, on the peaks of the Carpathians, a man in a simple linen robe stood with his hands folded. Adam.
Using the Chaos Sea as his source, Adam closed his eyes. Behind him, the True Creator manifested as a shadow of bloody thorns.
['Author' is envisioning a New Legend.]
Adam accommodated the Sun Uniqueness (ripped from the dead Eternal Blazing Sun) and envisioned the Uniquenesses of the Tyrant and White Tower. He transcended the limits of the Sequence, becoming Half a Great Old One.
With a word of "Order," he suppressed the Lord of Storms and the God of Knowledge, pinning them within their Divine Kingdoms. He tried to do so with Evernight, but he couldn't locate her anywhere. To ensure the ritual was not interrupted, Amon hurled the First Blasphemy Slate from the Astral World. It landed near the Abyss entrance, a massive slab of stone that cut off the Mother Tree of Desire's influence over the Chained God and Father of Devils.
But the Astral Barrier was gone. The world was naked already.
Amon didn't wait. His body rapidly expanded, his top hat and monocle growing to the scale of a mountain range as he prepared to swallow the cathedral and the "Fool" within it.
Before his shadow could touch the roof, a wall of pure night rose to meet him. The Evernight Goddess, manifesting as a giantess of starlight and darkness, blocked his path.
She focused her power on the fog world in her hand, preventing Amon's true body from slipping through the cracks of fate.
In the Astral World, the Primordial Demoness saw her opening. She launched a strike of Chaos toward the exposed Klein. The dilapidated walls of the cathedral collapsed, leaving Klein—surrounded by his marionettes and his blank avatar—vulnerable to the goddess of rot.
BOOM.
'Lilith?'
A vine of golden grain and a shield of heavy earth deflected the blow. Earth Mother, wielding the Moon Uniqueness, stood between the Demoness and the Fool.
Near her appeared another figure: Holy Maiden of Luo Sect.
The sky of Earth began to scream. Without the Astral Barrier, the preparations of the gods were merely a delay.
Outer Deities could not allow for the new Lord of Mysteries to be born.
[Outer Deity 'Mother Tree of Desire' has focused its gaze on the Alberta Range!]
[Outer Deity 'Indescribable Mist' is manifesting!]
[Outer Deity 'Indistinguishable Ravings' is infecting the planetary system!]
Without Shakyamuni and Sun Wukong they could easily enter the Earth.
The red windows of the Star Stream began to blink in a rapid, hysterical pattern.
[Main Scenario #??? – The Apocalypse is escalating!]
Inside the hall, Klein Moretti, his eyes now twin vortices of gray fog, reached into the chest of the petrified Antigonus and pulled out a shimmering, transparent light.
The Uniqueness of the Fool.
Angels of the Outer Deities—creatures of light that burned the eyes and shadows that eroded the soul—began their physical descent. The Supernova Dominator's heralds turned the clouds into plasma, and the Monarch of Decay's spores drifted like gray snow over the continents.
Only the Circle of Inevitability and the Primordial Hunger remained patient, their gazes fixed on the Alberta Range where the Fool was being born.
But as the cosmic invasion began, a counter-resonance erupted from the heart of the Foggy Town.
In the conceptual stillness of Foggy Town, the Masters of the Six Sects from the Western Continent appeared. They stood like pillars of ancient ink against the Victorian backdrop, their robes fluttering in a wind that carried the scent of incense and ozone.
At the center of the town, Adam—the Author—stood with his eyes closed. He was no longer just the Sequence 0 of the Visionary pathway. He was a pillar.
"The script requires a Trinity," Adam's voice echoed, vibrating with the power of the Chaos Sea.
By his side, the Lord of Storms and the God of Knowledge and Wisdom were not fighting him. In a spectacular act of deception that fooled even the Outer Deities watching from the void, the three deities merged.
['Author' is Envisioning the Absolute.]
Adam didn't just lead them; he devoured the authorities of Storm and Wisdom. The air crackled with silver lightning and hummed with the weight of infinite scrolls. From the fusion of the three, a new entity emerged—a temporary, fragile, yet terrifyingly potent God Almighty.
The Outer Deities, thinking Adam was occupied holding the True Gods back, failed to realize he had moved the battlefield inside himself. He was now a living wall, a deity capable of rewriting the laws of the local universe.
Nearby, the Evernight Goddess stood with the Haoli Sect Master. She reached out, her starlight fingers interlacing with the Sect Master's Haoli authority. Together, they forced a connection to the River of Eternal Darkness.
Amanises gasped. The River felt impossibly distant but close at the same time, a faint murmur from across a cosmic ocean. But with the Sect Master acting as a bridge, she channeled its frigid power.
['Star Will' is shaken by the Probability of Main Scenario #???.]
[True God 'Evernight Goddess' has attained the status of Quasi-Eternal Darkness!]
Simultaneously, the God of Steam and Machinery was undergoing his own transformation.
He had begun accommodating the Hermit's Uniqueness—the crystalline eye he had received from Amon. He joined hands with the Current Celestial Master of the Western Continent, their combined authorities of Craft and Information striking a resonance with the Knowledge Moor.
As the Steam God's consciousness touched the Moor, he saw a vision that made his mechanical heart stutter.
In a space beyond the Stars, he saw the King of Dokkaebis. The King was smiling—a sharp, knowing grin that looked down upon the Star Stream like an author satisfied with a twist.
The Steam God realized the truth.
The Sefirot were not lost to the void.
They had been pulled into the "Region of the Final Scenario."
They were foundations of the ■■ now.
From the depths of the Abyss, the Dark Side of the Universe emerged.
The Chained God, Tolzna, finally shattered the shackles of the Mother Tree of Desire.
With the support of the newly born God Almighty (Adam-Leodero-Herabergen), Tolzna and Farbauti fused his essence with the Master of the Shadow Cottage. The corruption of the Mother Tree was burned away by the heat of the Chaos Sea, and in its place, a bridge was built to the Tenebrous World.
A silhouette of absolute shadow and liquid obsidian rose over the Alberta Range.
[Status Acquired: Half-Father of Devils!]
First Blashphemy Slate ricocheted from the Abyss.
The Abyss was no longer a prison; it was an army.
The Holy Monk of Mount Sumeru met with Will Auceptin, the silver-haired boy clutching a spoon of Gwendar ice cream.
They joined their powers, the Key of Light resonating with the Monk's Buddhist enlightenment.
Together, they manifested a Golden Buddha that filled the valley. However, the connection was incomplete.
"We are missing the other King," Will muttered, his youthful face strained. "Without Ouroboros, we can only reach the threshold of Sequence 0."
Little did Will Auceptin know that Kim Hajin replaced Ouroboros as King of Angels of Wheel of Fortune Pathway already.
Because Hajin—the other half of the Wheel of Fortune authority—was not there, the Golden Buddha's light flickered.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over the Buddha. A woman of radiant, terrifying beauty manifested behind them. Her eyes were spinning wheels of silver thread.
The Goddess of Fate.
[Outer Deity 'Goddess of Fate' looks at you!]
She couldn't enter the Final Scenario area directly to accommodate the Key of Light, but she had found a backdoor. She reached out her hand, intending to hijack the Holy Monk's connection to invade the heart of the Star Stream.
"You're quite loud for a child," a new voice interrupted.
Out of a chaotic rift in space, two women appeared, arguing so loudly they ignored the literal Apocalypse happening around them.
It was Athena and Medea, the administrators of the Tower of Wish.
"I TOLD YOU, ATHENA! Why did you tell Extra-nim about that!" Mede screamed, her spear sparking with golden lightning.
"Huh, do you mean that you still have some dignity left," Athena barked back, eating corn.
They had intended to teleport to Tokyo, but the luck given by Kim Hajin had dumped them directly onto the Golden Buddha's shoulder, right in front of a very annoyed Goddess of Fate.
***
[Seoul, Heroes Association Headquarters]
The building groaned as another 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck. Yoo Yeonha didn't flinch. She tapped a series of commands into her smartwatch, her face pale but determined.
"Ma'am! The radar is red!" her secretary screamed over the alarms. "The Angels of the Outer Deities... they've breached the atmosphere over the Pacific!"
"I know," Yeonha said, her voice a cold blade. "Inform all Guilds: This is not a scenario. This is an extinction event. Engage at will."
She looked at the audience.
"Earth's fate depends on us! Act as soon as possible, we'll need any help!"
Yeonha stormed out of the room.
"Inform our strategists to prepare a plan," she clicked her smartwatch.
Near her a bodyguard activated [Lv.2 Fixed Mark] Unique Skill from the Tower of Wish to teleport to her guild.
"Also, tell our Essentials to supply the heroes and incarnations with anything they need."
Her body guard stopped, looking confused.
"Authorities will shoulder all the costs," she smiled greedily.
She descended deep into the Essence of the Strait underground shelter. This wasn't a bunker for people; it was a laboratory for the end of the world.
In the center of the vault stood a grand machine—a towering construct of brass, story-crystals, and tech. It was the Resonance Engine, designed specifically to hold the [Dimensional Entropy] artifact they had got back from Avalon after it was stolen by Hidden Sage.
Waiting for her were Eileen Makerfield, the magic engineer from Lindberg.
Standing with her was the Pope of the Church of the God of Knowledge and Bornova Gustav, his eyes reflecting the calculations of the machine.
"Is it ready?" Yeonha asked, her breath hitching.
"The Story-Experts have finished the calibration," Eileen said, her fingers dancing over a holographic clock. "The entropy is stable."
"Then ring it," Yeonha commanded. "Activate the Dimensional Entropy. And inform the Chameleon Troupe we're paying handsomely for their help."
The Pope of Wisdom raised his staff, and the machine began to hum with a sound that transcended hearing.
It was the sound of a universe being unmade and remade at once.
[Item Information]
===
Name: Dimensional Entropy
Rank: Genesis
...
Status: ACTIVATING...
Current Mana Volume: 1,000,000% and rising.
===