Apostle of the Outer God

When I first felt it,

I remembered the day I first experienced sleep paralysis as a child.

Just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard a sound. Like something heard in a dream—at first vague, then becoming clear. A sound that couldn’t be heard when consciousness was awake, but grew louder as consciousness sank into sleep.

I understood that this sound was heard only by my ears. But soon I was overwhelmed. Was this really a sound only I could hear? Could it be this loud and clear?

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

Gnaw-gnaw-gnaw.

By the time I became unbearably frightened, I wanted to wake up from sleep. But now the sound wouldn’t grow quiet. I couldn’t move a single finger. The sound heard in the nightmare grew louder and louder, and I kept being dragged deeper into the nightmare.

To put it simply… the Outer God’s apostle was like that.

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

Gnaw-gnaw-gnaw.

A sound that couldn’t possibly be heard, yet everyone heard it. Hallucinations heard in nightmares. The sound of the Outer God’s apostle gnawing away at our world. It clearly couldn’t be heard… yet it kept echoing from somewhere deep in our minds. We couldn’t suppress the growing anxiety.

“Even my eyes… can’t see anything. But I’m certain. It’s there.”

Yuria’s voice trembled as well. We stood at Floating Island Sion’s railing, peering into the pitch-black space where not even starlight existed.

-Nadia reporting. Floating Island Sion’s current operation rate is 35 percent. Tracking and marking the Outer God’s apostle nestled between dimensions is still difficult.

Nadia also expressed difficulty. It was definitely there. My soul trembled in warning, clear as day. But we couldn’t see it. Just as we couldn’t see the edges of night, we couldn’t perceive the apostle’s boundaries. What did it look like, how big was it… or did size even exist? How do you fight invisible, untouchable darkness?

So in the end, there was only the method we’d prepared from the beginning. It would have been nice if there were other ways. But there was no choice.

The mages and knights aboard Floating Island Sion were silent.

‘They must all be frightened.’

I am too.

The lower one’s realm, the more merciless and primal the surging terror became.

The smell of urine came from somewhere. The mages who had unknowingly wet themselves didn’t even realize they had pissed themselves as they trembled. It was admirable that they hadn’t collapsed.

‘Please fight well until the very end.’

I inwardly prayed for their fortune in battle. Everything is difficult the first time. The mages who overcome this trial will be different when they next fight an apostle. Mages grow stronger by challenging and conquering. That’s how we become like gods. As long as they don’t die… as long as they don’t give up… they work miracles.

I steadied my resolve.

How am I feeling right now?

Like I’m about to undergo major surgery where my entire stomach needs to be turned inside out.

And it’s not just a metaphor—it’s literally that kind of situation.

Of course there’s no anesthesia, and the surgeon is even myself.

My honest feelings?

Of course I don’t want to do it.

I’m frightened and tormented. I feel like I might go insane.

The mage’s path is one of endless challenges and hardships. Meanwhile, the mage’s will that endures it all is that of a mortal. It gets worn down. It grows tired with use.

‘Haven’t I suffered enough already? How long must I continue to endure this pain?’

There’s a simple way.

Just don’t do it. There’s no need to throw myself into suffering. Let’s turn back even now.

But I can’t do that.

‘Must it really be me? Everyone else lives like this.’

This excuse that works on everyone else doesn’t work on me alone.

Must it really be me?

Of course.

Because there’s no mage stronger than me left in this world.

Everyone else lives like this?

That may be so.

But they can’t see mana.

I’m different. No one else can do it but me.

Once I eliminated the choice of ‘not doing it,’ the path became simple. It wasn’t a matter of whether to go, but how to go. I didn’t need to waste willpower agonizing over whether to do it or not. What remained was only cold reason and planning.

What a mage trains is not willpower. Our willpower as mortals cannot become stronger. Being mortal means exactly that, doesn’t it? Rather than growing stronger eternally, we decline.

What we train is methods of handling fear, pain, and panic. Ways to prevent them from consuming us, to deceive ourselves and utilize them. Using finite willpower as sparingly as possible to achieve maximum results.

That is our path.

Whooooo.

When I exhaled and opened my eyes again, my heart was calm. My heart still trembled, my legs felt weak, and my body showed rejection, but these too were merely ‘opponents’ to be deceived and overcome, ‘resources’ to be utilized.

I spoke. Ki-blood throughout my body resonated, carrying my voice far and wide.

“Everyone, don’t think about anything.”

Go back to sleep. Jump right into the nightmare. Isn’t it a waste? When you wake up, it’ll just be a dream.

Those were words my father had said to me. When I first experienced sleep paralysis and woke up trembling.

“Just—drop.”

I don’t tell them what to do. I’ve already told them how to do it. I repeated it continuously throughout our journey here and we trained for it. Now just… drop.

The first to overcome fear was Yuria.

“Like this?”

Yuria stepped on the railing and threw herself down. A few drops of cold sweat she shed floated gently upward.

“Refreshing.”

She began to sing. Her voice grew increasingly distant.

That was the beginning.

The wizards leaped down. Knights led by Zeros and Evan leaped down. Like mice following a piper’s tune, following the song she had started, the mages sang along as they followed one after another. They simply fell toward the pitch-black darkness.

Flash!

Flash!

Rumble—

The Outer God’s apostle was not something that could be explained simply as a demigod.

It was law and order. The seed of a world created by the Outer God. A small ‘other world’ that followed the Outer God’s will to devour our world and fill it with the Outer God’s order instead.

The best way to kill it was to overwrite it with our world’s order. Order against order, world against world. All the mages threw themselves into the domain occupied by the Outer God’s apostle and began birthing a new star.

Song filled the empty space, and within it, a world began to be born. Light flashed, rocks grew, water poured, wind blew, and fire blazed. Following the song, all those spells resonated together, causing the invisible Outer God’s apostle to bloom.

Now I could see the apostle. I could see the mountains and waterfalls clinging to its body and boring into it.

The Outer God’s apostle looked like a giant buried in a continent, and also like an asteroid.

[Graaahhh]

It roared.

Right. To catch the Magic Emperor, you overextended yourself and drew upon the apostles’ power too? You never imagined we’d strike first. How arrogant.

The reason we could use the mass tactics that the Magic Emperor couldn’t.

The dormant Outer God belatedly realized the anomaly and awakened from sleep.

If it hadn’t been sleeping, we couldn’t have even approached like this.

That’s why… if we lose, the damage could approach infinity.

My heart began to race.

My mouth went dry and chills ran down my body.

Be more tense. Be more afraid.

But stay flexible.

Drop. But not just dropping. Spread wings and ride the wind.

From now on, every single moment is someone’s life.

“Kaisel. Tris.”

Of the two, Kaisel had to move first.

The malevolent magical power that had been binding her with divine body fragment equipment was now in a completely cleansed state. Thanks to this, her power had weakened considerably, but in exchange, she had learned magic.

As expected, she had talent. Ancient transcendent vampire lord. The magical powers regarded her as closer to gods than humans and showed unstinting favoritism.

Moreover, she had established a new magical system together with me. She had even created magic I couldn’t have imagined.

Whoosh—

Black and red magical power wrapped around her entire body. Horns made of magical power sprouted from her head, and her fingernails grew wickedly long.

Not Circle magic, not Ki-blood magic, but another form of magic entirely.

It was a kind of mimicry. If Circle and Ki-blood structurally imitated the abilities of old gods (demons), Kaisel imitated the outer appearance of old demons. While ultimately an inefficient method for mortal humans, it suited her. Her soul, which had been special even in the mythological age, was incomparably strong compared to human souls, even if mortal. Above all, ancient things were ‘familiar’ with her. She too had ‘remembered’ them. That’s why her ‘appearance mimicry’ boasted efficiency that humans couldn’t display.

She began her performance.

“Come out here immediately, Night That Devours Continents.”

-Grrrrowl!

The pitch-black space split apart, and darkness studded with red eyes poured out from within. Though it was darkness, its texture was different from the surrounding space. It flowed like smoke, and tens of thousands of red eyes that blinked ceaselessly filled the world densely. In terms of size, it was an absurd beast that surpassed even Floating Island Sion.

-Ha… Night That Devours Continents. I remember that guy. He was an annoying one. So he’s not dead. How annoying.

Nadia’s voice carried thorns.

If Floating Island Sion was a continent-scale weapon created by gods, the demons also had such weapons. One of them was precisely the ‘Night That Devours Continents.’

-Grrrrowl.

Night That Devours Continents prowled around Kaisel. It seemed to be sniffing. A being identical to the masters who created it. Even the scent was the same. Drawn by that scent, it had crossed over here. But Kaisel lacked the [Voice] possessed by the beast’s masters. Night That Devours Continents was confused.

But Kaisel acted quite smoothly. ‘It’ll be difficult to give direct commands without Circles. But not being able to communicate doesn’t mean I can’t handle a dog,’ as she had said. She showed not the slightest fear or awkwardness.

“Look. See that bad doggy over there?”

Kaisel pointed at the Outer God’s apostle with fingernails extended by black-red magical power.

Glare!

Tens of thousands of eyes simultaneously turned toward the Outer God’s apostle.

Grrraaahhh!

They flushed red with fury. Though we call them demons, they too were actually old gods. As their kin, it was natural for them to rage against invaders from other dimensions.

Kaisel wore a bewitching smile as she gave her command.

“Now… bite!”

And that exact moment was when Beatrice had to step forward.

A single graceful word emanating from the dragon heart. It was the command of a demigod dragon who had once commanded calamities in ancient times. Of course, just as Nadia had been quite free even from 1st-grade administrator commands, ‘Night That Devours Continents’ originally wouldn’t have obeyed dragon commands either.

But if there was someone who resembled its master, and a dragon issued commands beside them? And if there was a dimensional invader in front of them that deserved to be torn apart?

‘Night That Devours Continents’ thought no further.

Graaahhh!!

Night roared and pounced on the Outer God’s apostle. Kaisel quickly moved her hands, mounting ‘Night That Devours Continents’ like horseback riding. She skillfully controlled the beast, directing its attacks away from our allies.

[Futile struggle!]

Only now fully awakened from dormancy, the fifth apostle bellowed. Still carrying the mountain ranges and seas created by the mages, it thundered.

But it was a bit too late.

Rrrumble!

‘Night That Devours Continents’ bit into the apostle. Darkness fell dimly over the mountain ranges and seas. The apostle could no longer pay attention to the small mages infecting it. It began grappling with the beast targeting its throat. Space warped as enormous darknesses devoured each other.

In the midst of that chaos, ten thousand mages and knights carved spells into the Outer God’s body like viruses. The song grew ever more intense, and the mountain ranges, seas, and storms covering the Outer God grew ever larger.

‘Little gods…’

Was this how the first god born from chaos had been? They erased confusion and filled it with our world’s order. They transformed the small world embodied by the Outer God’s apostle, the fifth apostle, into a harmless continent. They repaid in full what it had done to our world until now.

But that alone wasn’t enough.

We had bound its hands and feet. We had infected it too. But bound hands and feet could be freed given time, and the mages’ struggles were still only at the level of a skin condition.

We needed to stick a syringe directly into its heart and inject the virus.

“Ganda. Nadia.”

-Yes! Nadia ready.

With Kaisel and Beatrice having leaped down as well, no mages remained on Sion.

I looked down at the darkness swirling chaotically and the continent being born between it.

Right. After shaking it up this much, I can see it. Where the apostle’s source lies.

Thud,

I kicked off the railing and leaped.

Into the heart of the nightmare.