Chapter 73

In an instant, it felt as if electricity shot through his entire body.

The target indicated by the message.

No matter how he thought about it, there was no one else but himself.

Every circumstance pointed to Park Chan-woo, to him.

No matter how he parsed the message, he couldn’t believe it could be anyone else.

More than anything, it wasn’t just the message itself.

…A bug-like play, explosive acquisition of contribution points.

The Lord of the Moon, Ahheta, might have noticed that fact.

‘Is that why they’re trying to find me?’

Well, if Ahheta had noticed, they would certainly try to find and eliminate him.

Even a Lord of the Moon, who stands shoulder to shoulder with the named Creators, would fear being ‘bankrupted.’

What all Creators fear most is bankruptcy.

For a Creator, bankruptcy means death.

When you go bankrupt, you don’t just lose your qualification as a Creator.

You lose all the ‘dignity’ you’ve desperately built up to become a Creator.

Would the demons of the Abyss leave a powerless, dignity-less Lord alone?

Countless demons would swarm in, eager to take that spot, tearing flesh from bone, devouring living flesh.

‘To avoid bankruptcy, you have to minimize risk factors.’

Creators considered the Abyss a sort of ‘game’ or ‘gamble.’

But they overwhelmingly rigged the table in the Creator’s favor.

It started with the entry restrictions for every creative Abyss.

Every creative Abyss has an invisible ‘entry restriction.’

Creators set the details at their discretion, then select the participants.

Level, stats, class, attack and defense, all sorts of things were restricted.

‘We used to call it the invisible damned hand.’

Invisible damned hand!

No joke—it’s the truth.

You could see the conditions for entry with your own eyes, but the restrictions blocking entry were never visible.

For example, if there was an Abyss with an ‘entry condition’ that only allowed level 10 and up.

This ‘entry condition’ would be displayed to all participants.

However, for these lower-level Abysses, they usually set a ‘maximum level’ restriction too.

Level 30, or even lower.

They’d select participants who couldn’t or would struggle to clear the Abyss, then cook them up to the Creator’s tastes.

‘It’s really damned.’

They call it a ‘gamble’ with words, but it shows how much they treat creative Abysses as ‘games.’

If they lose, they just lose a game coin and can start again.

Meanwhile, if a human loses, it always ends in death and ruin.

Unfair.

Not just tilted, but completely overturned.

The problem is, humans have a hard time noticing this ‘unfairness.’

Hardly any humans can notice these restrictions.

They’re set in sneaky, ambiguous ways that make it hard to catch.

So, until the middle stages, we thought there was hope in this gamble.

That someday we could win, someday catch them off guard!

A vain hope.

There was never any hope in this Abyss from the start.

Humanity was nothing but a toy for them to play with and toss aside.

If we’d known from the start that the settings made it impossible for humanity to win, we wouldn’t have tried so hard to conquer the Abyss.

Such vicious deception.

‘There’s definitely an entry restriction in the Night Abyss too.’

…In other words.

The Lord of the Moon, Ahheta, is no different from the other Creators.

He surely set all sorts of restrictions on the ‘Night Abyss.’

That ‘Uninvited One’ probably refers to someone who has bypassed those ‘restrictions.’

‘Once someone enters a creative Abyss, Creators can’t view that participant’s information.’

Even if Ahheta is the host who opened the Night Abyss, she cannot view information about those participating.

‘So that’s why they’re trying to find the Uninvited One by this method.’

Who could it be?

Is the Uninvited One really me?

‘First, the fact that I’m the only fugitive.’

He ponders deeply.

So far, all participants have been ‘Chasers.’

He, on the other hand, was different. He alone held the status of ‘Fugitive.’

Why?

The Second Night Abyss didn’t just have humans as participants. Doppelgangers, those creatures, were also participants like us.

He figured it out.

Humans and doppelgangers.

In this ‘Second Night Abyss,’ both species were participating together.

He might have been designated as a ‘Fugitive’ because, at present, he was more similar to a fugitive… a doppelganger than a human.

That strongly suggested Park Chan-woo was the ‘uninvited human.’

Also—

‘User of undisclosed information.’

No one could know, or did know, the information he was using to earn tenfold rewards—so it wouldn’t be strange if suspicion arose.

Someone was gaining an abnormal amount of contribution points.

If they didn’t find and eliminate him before the night ended, they might feel the game would not go as planned.

However—

‘…Even so, the odds that Ahheta has figured it out are extremely low.’

It wasn’t zero, but he was convinced it was nearly zero.

Once participants started playing, the host couldn’t do much.

Viewing information was impossible, and they certainly couldn’t keep an eye on each individual inside the Abyss.

No matter how unfair the casino, they wouldn’t allow peeking at the other player’s cards.

This was one of the few participant protection rules in the Abyss—an absolute rule.

Even the Great Nine Lords couldn’t break it.

Naturally, they shouldn’t even know who bypassed the entry restrictions.

Not that there were many ways to ignore the ‘entry restriction’ anyway.

‘It’s clear. Someone entered by blatantly bypassing the restriction.’

In any case, he entered by looking up at the full moon in the normal way.

If he could enter, that meant he didn’t totally break the restriction.

Thus, Ahheta could not know what method Park Chan-woo was using to play.

The other Creators who joined the game were the same.

The game board was set; the game had begun.

Creators could only check the results afterward.

The only thing they could influence were the ‘Incarnations’ they’d contracted with.

Even that had many restrictions.

At most, they could send a few lines of advice via message.

Why else would they have prearranged things in the Water God’s dungeon?

If Creators could interfere freely with their Incarnations, there’d be no need to prepare in that way.

Therefore, the ‘Uninvited One’ is not him.

‘If not me, then who?’

He kept thinking.

A mage is one who acts only after confirming every variable.

At last, a memory surfaced.

…There had been similar experiences in the past.

Sometimes the host would move personally to find an ‘Uninvited One’ who had entered without notice.

‘Only beings strong enough to withstand the Abyss’s rupture can freely enter other Abysses. Witches, divine beasts, strong members of the Twelve Species…’

A realm unreachable by humans.

Creatures of the 11th Realm or higher could bypass some of the creative Abyss restrictions.

Such beings sometimes broke into other Creators’ Abysses as ‘Uninvited Ones.’

But such monsters would hardly care about a freshly opened Abyss on Earth.

No matter that he’d conquered the Tower of Arrogance.

There’d be no reason to stir up trouble in a Creator’s Abyss and make enemies of them.

And yet, one entered.

Ahheta was searching for someone who’d entered her creative Abyss without permission.

To punish the foolish one who dared trespass in her domain.

‘Invisible, undetectable. Magic.’

Recalling the message, he deduced the Uninvited One’s identity.

Soon Park Chan-woo was sure—the Uninvited One was a magic user.

And not just any magic—a supreme level.

Only pure magic could evade a Creator’s gaze.

‘If someone can use magic at this level…’

He nodded.

The outline became clear.

The intruder was probably—

‘A Dragon.’

One of the Twelve Species: the Dragon race.

Even the Lords of the Abyss feared their magic.

Moreover, not just any dragon.

‘At least an Elder Dragon.’

…Park Chan-woo’s expression hardened.

A monster of despair capable of destroying the world alone.

An Elder Dragon or stronger had entered the Night Abyss.

—

Black Dragon, Ataraxia.

Even among the dragons, the Elder known as the ‘Despair Dragon’ looked around.

‘The Lord of the Moon, Ahheta. So this is the Night Abyss she created.’

He, too, had experienced such places many times.

In ages past, the Abyss reached the world of the dragons, and the self-proclaimed ‘Creators’ had opened creative Abysses and presented trials to them.

Of course, nowadays, no one dared open an Abyss in the dragon world.

If any ordinary Creator tried, they’d simply become food for the dragons.

But the Lord of the Moon, Ahheta, was no ordinary Creator.

‘It’s been quite a while since I entered the Night Abyss.’

Recalling memories of the distant past, Ataraxia smiled.

It was war.

Dragons and demons.

Each fighting for victory, engaged in slaughter.

As soon as Dragon God Sephiro, who had been sitting quietly in the Dragon Shrine, rose to his feet, the war ended at once.

It remained as a rather entertaining memory of the otherwise uneventful dragon world.

Especially since the Lord of the Moon, Ahheta, had massacred many dragons.

Conversely, Ataraxia had killed hundreds of Creators.

‘There is a Wish and a bearer of the Star of Arrogance here.’

Ataraxia’s reason for entering the Night Abyss was simple.

He was tracking the ‘Wish’ and ‘Star of Arrogance’ under orders from the Black Witch.

Having confirmed that a human from Earth had conquered the Tower of Arrogance, he had followed the trail all the way to the Night Abyss.

However, the Lord of the Moon, Ahheta, was a demon of Demon King class or higher.

Even the dragons found such a being difficult to handle.

Currently, the Twelve Species and the Abyss had agreed to a pact of ‘non-aggression.’

If something went wrong, another war could break out.

But Ataraxia didn’t care.

He was a ‘hardliner’ who wanted to go to war with the demons again.

Of course, he would need the permission of Dragon God Sephiro to wage war.

‘That one has no interest in the world anyway.’

Dragon God Sephiro did not concern himself with the affairs of the world.

Even if the dragons were on the brink of destruction, he would not pay much attention.

Back in the old war against the demons, the only reason Sephiro suddenly intervened was that one of the Great Nine Lords happened to catch his attention.

Black Dragon Ataraxia.

The Elder Dragon of Despair was one who, with the support of the Black Witch, wished to wage war on the demons of the Abyss once more.

‘I can’t just reveal I’m a dragon outright.’

Swoosh!

Ataraxia’s massive body soon shrank to human size.

And in an instant, he became ‘human.’

It wasn’t just his appearance that became human.

《Congratulations!》

《You have been chosen as a ‘Chaser.’》

Thanks to the Black Witch’s index finger, he fully acquired the status of ‘human.’

Then, lifting the invisibility magic, Ataraxia shrugged.

‘Ahheta. You will never find me.’

Though Ahheta might sense his presence due to his forced entry into the Night Abyss, that was all.

He would never be able to find Ataraxia, who now held the qualification of ‘human’ by the Black Witch’s power.

This was the reason an Elder Dragon like him followed the Black Witch.

To stir up chaos in the guise of another species and incite the Abyssal Lords into war.

Then, after victory, to dedicate all glory to Lord Sephiro and receive his attention!

That was the greatest honor and pride of the dragons.

Ataraxia smiled.

“This is going to be fun, for the first time in a while.”