Truth

It felt like being in a dream.

His mind was hazy as if shrouded in fog, and his body felt as heavy as water-soaked cotton, unable to move even a finger.

‘I feel like there was something important…’

No matter how many times he tried to recall, the overwhelming drowsiness kept breaking his train of thought.

He didn’t want to think about anything anymore.

He wanted to surrender to this languid feeling, let go of everything and sleep forever.

He never wanted to wake up.

‘…’

Just before his consciousness sank into the deep darkness, he heard a faint sound.

His consciousness suddenly sharpened at the voice he remembered hearing somewhere.

As if protesting that this shouldn’t happen, an even deeper drowsiness than before tried to push his consciousness into the abyss, but Yuseong barely shook off the drowsiness by focusing on the voice.

‘That’s…’

The first thing Yuseong saw was something indescribable.

A being that made his head spin and nausea rise just by looking at it.

The moment he saw it, he realized.

He realized that this being was the culprit who had left indelible thoughts in his mind.

Boom!

Yuseong, who had been completely absorbed in watching the Outer God slaughtering gods, looked around at the explosion sound coming from somewhere.

The world had transformed into a hell difficult to look at with a sane mind.

People crying tears of blood from empty eye sockets while laughing.

People with vacant expressions continuously self-harming their bodies with exposed bones and organs.

People transforming into inhuman beings with skin turning to scales or tentacles sprouting all over their bodies.

Even hell couldn’t be worse than this.

‘…Let’s move somewhere else first.’

Yuseong, who had been blankly staring at the scene that transcended common sense, barely gathered his wits and tried to move his body.

‘Huh?’

His body wouldn’t move.

He couldn’t move a finger, a toe, not even his eyeballs.

This wasn’t just being frozen from tension or being affected by some binding skill.

Like watching a hyper-realistic VR video, while his sight and hearing were fine, he couldn’t feel any other sensations and his body wouldn’t move at all.

-Mr. Yuseong! Can you hear my voice?

‘Alice? Where are you? Where are you?!’

Hearing Alice’s voice suddenly coming from somewhere while he was panicking, Yuseong desperately called for help.

Though Yuseong could usually laugh off most things, perhaps because he had experienced shocking events one after another, he couldn’t maintain his composure.

At that moment, his arm that wouldn’t move no matter what he tried suddenly moved and pointed at himself.

-Here! I’m with you, Mr. Yuseong!

‘What do you mean you’re here… where exactly…’

Yuseong was about to raise his voice but stopped and closed his mouth.

Another person’s voice echoing in his head.

A body moving against his will.

His own finger pointing at himself and Alice saying she was with him.

All of these led to one conclusion.

‘Don’t tell me… a quest?’

-You figured it out right away! That’s right. Through a quest, I possessed your body!

‘W-wait. How exactly?’

-When I was wondering if there was any way to help you, I remembered what you said about quests being generated when someone earnestly wishes for help. Though I knew the chances were low, since there was no other way, I tried wearing the goggles just in case, and surprisingly, your name was on the first page of the quest list.

‘No way such a coincidence…’

He had certainly wished for anyone’s help just before losing consciousness.

But among countless dimensions, countless worlds, countless beings, for his wish to be registered as a quest, and for Alice to not miss that chance and find and start his quest precisely…

He couldn’t even imagine what those odds would be.

-Mr. Yuseong! The synchronization is complete!

‘Let’s think about unnecessary things later.’

What was important now wasn’t calculating the probability of what had already happened, but figuring out how to deal with this situation.

The first thing to do was understand what the quest’s clear conditions were.

To not waste this hard-earned chance, he needed to know exactly what conditions had to be met.

‘Alice. Tell me what my quest content was.’

“The basic clear condition was to remove the Outer God’s thoughts. And the additional clear condition was to banish the Outer God to another dimension.”

‘Damn it…’

Though he had roughly expected it, hearing it directly made him curse.

It might sound easy, but how exactly was he supposed to remove the Outer God’s thoughts, and how was he supposed to banish the Outer God to another dimension?

As Yuseong was desperately racking his brains, a past memory suddenly surfaced.

‘Wait. Come to think of it, didn’t that goddess I met in the [The Hero Who Couldn’t Become a Hero] quest say that karma could be used to remove an Outer God’s thoughts? I can handle karma too, and I even have karma obtained using the Calamity Fragment right now. Then couldn’t I remove the Outer God’s thoughts myself?’

He had refused back then because of the exorbitant price of 2 billion karma points, but judging from that conversation, if he had enough karma, there was a high possibility he could remove the Outer God’s thoughts.

No, he would definitely be able to remove them.

Karma was a power close to omnipotence.

There’s no way it couldn’t remove mere thoughts when it wasn’t even the Outer God’s main body.

‘…Am I an idiot? Why didn’t I think of something this simple until now?’

He had been so fixated on Hae Cheongyeong’s advice that there was no way to remove the thoughts except reaching the realm of transcendence that he hadn’t even considered other possibilities.

Hae Cheongyeong hadn’t said anything wrong.

It’s just that he himself was a special case who could utilize karma despite not having reached the realm of transcendence.

“With the amount of karma Mr. Yuseong has now, I think we can remove the thoughts, so I’ll get rid of them right away.”

Alice, who could now freely use Yuseong’s skills after synchronization was complete, immediately drew up karma and imbued it with intent.

Just with that, the Outer God’s thoughts that had been lodged in a corner of his mind for so long disappeared without a trace like morning mist dissolving in sunlight.

‘To think something this easy was…’

-Mr. Yuseong. The basic clear condition has been met, what should we do now?

Yuseong, who had been letting out a hollow laugh at the self-reproach washing over him, snapped back to attention at Alice’s voice.

Though they had resolved the Outer God’s thoughts more easily than expected, an even bigger problem remained.

‘Just how are we supposed to drive that thing out?’

-How about joining forces with the gods to attack the Outer God?

‘Well. I don’t think the situation would change much even if we added our strength…’

Countless gods and transcendents were rushing like moths to a flame through the cracks exposed while the Outer God was distracted hunting other gods, but they didn’t even dare to fight the Outer God.

In a battle where even gods were being swept away, it was obvious that humans joining in would be of no help.

‘A way to drive out the Outer God. A way to drive out the Outer God. A way to drive out the Outer God… No good. No matter how much I think about it, there’s absolutely no answer to this.’

Just as he was about to fall into despair at the sight of the gods who had been reduced to less than half their numbers, Alice blurted out something unexpected.

-Ugh. The quest rank was low but why is it this difficult?

‘What was the quest rank?’

-Oh, it was E-rank.

‘What? E-rank? Are you sure?’

-Huh? Ah, yes! I read the quest description more than three times just to make sure it was your quest. Quest rank is E-rank. Basic clear condition is to remove the Outer God’s thoughts. Additional clear condition is to banish the Outer God to another dimension. I’m certain!

Thoughts suddenly exploded in Yuseong’s mind.

A quest to banish an Outer God that overwhelms gods and transcendents to another dimension is merely E-rank?

It makes no sense by common sense.

It would be right to think there was some error in the goggles’ system.

‘But what if it’s not an error? What if this quest’s difficulty really is E-rank?’

He recalled a very old quest, [Heavenly Demon Sect. The Final Moment].

Despite the brutal difficulty of having the Murim Alliance and Unorthodox Alliance joining forces and two absolute masters attacking, the quest’s rank was merely F-rank.

It was assigned such a low rank because of the special situation where the client Hae Cheongyeong could easily resolve the problem if he stepped in but couldn’t leave a certain place because he was performing the Sun Moon Ritual.

If the current situation was like back then?

If there was a very simple way to banish the Outer God to another dimension but they just hadn’t found it?

Yuseong gathered his wits and calmly observed his surroundings.

Then he started seeing what he hadn’t seen before.

‘That crack! That’s it!’

There was a massive passage that the gods had created themselves, one large enough for the Outer God to easily pass through.

The position was perfect too.

The Outer God was guarding the front to prevent the gods from escaping, so they could send the Outer God through the crack with just a slight push.

Then, if they closed the crack after that, the situation would be over.

They could deal with the Outer God and damage or even potentially destroy the gods’ stronghold, killing two birds with one stone.

‘I can treat the people contaminated by the Outer God’s thoughts with karma for perfect cleanup. The problem is how to push that thing…’

It’s huge enough to touch the clouds.

A mediocre impact won’t do.

We need one incredibly powerful hit.

And Yuseong could easily think of a suitable medium for that powerful hit.

‘…I’ll give you something better than a steamship. Alice. Go to Dragonia, no, no need to use mine. Go to Vimana’s core.’

“Yes!”

Alice immediately spread her metal wings and charged toward Vimana’s core.

The fortress’s defenses, built assuming battles with demons having high Civilization Grade, were difficult to even scratch with ordinary attacks.

Boom!

But Yuseong was no ordinary being.

His individual abilities alone already rivaled transcendents, and now Alice’s skills as a special custom android were added.

Walls that hadn’t fallen to attacks from multiple ability users and giant humanoid weapons crumbled like styrofoam with just one punch or kick from Alice.

After advancing like that for a while.

A massive hall decorated with countless jewels and gold appeared.

“Die!”

With an enraged cry, Bruce charged in with dozens of swords imbued with sword energy.

But Alice, who had felt the murderous intent prickling her skin even before breaking the wall, easily blocked Bruce’s attack by wrapping herself with karma-coated wings.

Boom!

“Argh!”

The hundreds, thousands of steel feathers shot with the explosion turned Bruce’s body into rags.

The gap between mortals and transcendents can never be bridged.

Unlike Yuseong, Alice showed no mercy in her movements and the strongest user Bruce was incapacitated in one hit.

“You… I should have killed you earlier… Cough!”

Seeing Bruce still directing murderous intent despite looking like he could die any moment, Yuseong felt a slight pang of conscience.

He could fully understand Bruce’s anger since the Earth was being destroyed in real time because of him.

He wanted to explain in detail if possible, but there was no time for that now.

Yuseong shifted his gaze from Bruce and looked around the hall.

Lucifer was in the center of the hall and in the deepest part was the man he had only seen through monitors.

“Han Yuseong. As Bruce said, I should have killed you.”

A dreamy voice that seemed to echo directly in his mind.

However, it had no effect before Yuseong’s mental stats.

Alice, who had been blankly staring at Changwei, heard Yuseong’s voice and relayed it as is.

“Mr. Yuseong says to stop acting tough when you barely have any power.”

“…What?”

“He says Vimana must cost at least hundreds of billions of karma points, so there’s no way you could afford it. You had all your skills and items confiscated as penalties, right?”

Changwei’s solemn expression instantly turned rotten.