Chapter 529

What Taesan felt first was disgust.

The air itself was like a damp swamp.

A nauseating sensation covered his senses. What he had entered now was his own mental image. It was his.

But Taesan didn’t feel comfortable at all.

Taesan lifted his gaze.

What he saw was a world filled with distorted things whose shapes couldn’t even be recognized.

It was his mental image.

It was what Hafran, Amelia, and Essential had spoken of.

[…This is your mental image?]

[This is… strange. It doesn’t feel like it belongs to you, Master.]

“Same here.”

Taesan answered lightly.

This mental image was broken.

“Is this me?”

But it wouldn’t be the whole of him.

Taesan started walking.

He went deeper into the mental image. No matter how far he went, all he saw were distorted contamination and shattered forms. Bardray felt revulsion, and Akasha let out a groan.

He was contaminated.

He had known that from before. Words that Transcender had said to him came back.

[Even if time is turned back, the power you possess remains yours unchanged.]

[You have not yet reached transcendence. You do not have a domain of your own. But your power was not affected by the flow of time.]

[And that power even steals the power of immortals and Old gods.]

Maria had told Taesan that. Something about you is wrong. The power you have is beyond my understanding.

[Why couldn’t you, in your previous life, surpass mortality?]

[It wouldn’t have been strange for you to surpass mortality there. No—more precisely, you should have.]

[But the Soul Rank Ascension you obtained then remains even after you returned time. And with it, you steal power without distinction—Old gods and immortals alike. Even Transcender.]

[What made you that way? What twisted you? I’m looking for it now… but the answer isn’t coming easily.]

And the Magician had said it too. The original you should have surpassed mortality. It wouldn’t have been strange for you to reach transcendence. You achieved that much and had that much potential.

But it didn’t happen.

Instead of surpassing mortality, Taesan obtained the twisted skill called Soul Rank Ascension.

A question that had never been solved until now.

Now he could know.

Old gods.

They were deeply connected to Taesan. He didn’t know since when, but Taesan had been contaminated by them.

That was probably why he could feel familiarity toward their power and handle Black.

But even then, questions remained.

How could he handle the Boundary Line?

The Boundary Line had nothing to do with the Old gods. They couldn’t use this world’s concepts. Mixing Divinity and Black and handling them—that was Taesan’s ability alone.

Here, he would be able to unravel many questions.

Taesan kept walking forward. As a result, Taesan could see one patch of ground.

That place was not contaminated.

It was a very small piece of land, only large enough for one person to enter, but it was clearly something of this world. Even the surrounding contamination couldn’t invade that ground.

[What is this?]

“Probably what I had before I was contaminated.”

The mental image from when he had been an ordinary human.

It was extremely small and fragile, but even within contamination, it kept its place.

That confirmed one thing.

His contamination did not begin from his birth.

It came after.

Then when did it begin? It wasn’t hard to guess.

He moved forward again. The tiny land vanished, and immediately after, many things were mixed together and broken.

And as he advanced, he could feel it.

What covered everything was becoming larger and denser.

It meant it was the period when his mental image grew and strengthened.

Probably Easy Mode. He had honed himself there. As he grew greatly in mind, it was natural for his mental image to grow accordingly.

It was just that it was distorted and broken, so he couldn’t tell what its original form or foundation had been.

Taesan kept walking.

The mental image grew larger and larger. The distorted forms that had been the size of small buildings soon became the size of mountains.

And at the end of it, Taesan could see it.

A massive condensation. Something huge and dense.

A lofty, great point of arrival that even Taesan of now could not dismiss.

Not a realm that merely surpassed mortality. Taesan could tell.

‘…Transcendence.’

The end where, as an individual, you would govern the world’s very concepts—an end even Taesan of now had not been able to reach.

That was the place.

‘So this is it.’

That was the realm his previous life had reached.

But the form was endlessly distorted and ruined.

Originally, it wouldn’t have looked like that.

It would have been brilliantly shining, more majestic than anything—something that formed the world’s concepts.

Yes. Just like the Transcender.

But contamination trampled and crushed that possibility, turning it into something entirely different. That was the possibility and the point of arrival he had lost.

Taesan approached the broken form and placed his hand on it.

What had it been before it was contaminated? He tried to grasp it and read it. He closed his eyes, focused his senses, and contemplated his inner self.

But it was impossible.

Even though it was his own mental image, he couldn’t grasp or read the greatest mental image he possessed. It was like a canvas had already fallen into muddy water and been dirtied, and then someone tried to paint over it.

“I’m the owner.”

Taesan muttered softly and withdrew his hand.

Taesan continued moving forward.

After that, something changed. It was clearly distorted and broken, but it felt somewhat familiar, and he could read it. That sensation grew stronger the farther he went.

Step.

And Taesan arrived at the end of the mental image.

There, a single existence stood.

[…Huh?]

Bardray was startled.

This was Taesan’s mental image. Yet inside it, there was a completely different existence.

No. He couldn’t say it was completely different.

Because it looked exactly like Taesan.

Aside from its entire body shimmering with grayness, it was perfectly identical to Taesan.

[Ah…]

Akasha shuddered. She had no proper memories. Other than her name, only fragments remained.

Even so, Akasha felt fear.

A terror engraved into instinct itself surged up. Bardray panicked, Akasha feared, and Taesan moved his feet.

It was inside him, but not his. Taesan did not know the Black that was surging and swallowing the surroundings.

It lifted its head and looked at Taesan.

Their gazes met.

[You have encountered .]

It wasn’t a name the system could describe, nor was it a name shattered and unreadable like the Old gods’ names.

It was simply empty.

And Taesan had seen that empty system text a few times before.

“Since when have you been stuck to me?”

No answer returned. Taesan hadn’t expected one anyway, so he raised his sword.

“A usurper. Or something else.”

It stared at Taesan.

And its mouth opened.

[That’s unfortunate.]

Somewhere languid, yet greedy. And also as if exhausted. The voice of an old, seasoned man.

It was the voice he had heard when Essential pulled out the mental image.

[If you’d waited just a little longer, it would’ve been complete.]

It rose from its place. Black surged out and covered everything.

Taesan frowned.

“That.”

That Black felt familiar.

Within that Black were traces of the apostles and fragments of Old gods he had brought down so far. He had devoured and wielded them—there was no way he wouldn’t recognize it.

The existence before him was handling that power as if it were its own.

[But even now, it’s still a tempting fruit.]

Pitch-blackness wrapped around it. And Taesan saw it.

Mixed into that pitch-blackness was something of this world.

But it was different from Taesan. It was mixed in, but it wasn’t perfectly formed into the Boundary Line like his. It was only imitation.

He clicked his tongue.

“So you’re a usurper.”

The alien existence that had settled inside him.

A usurper. Among the Old gods, only a usurper could imitate the things of this world.

That fact wasn’t surprising. He had already predicted it. There was no Old god other than the usurper that could defile him.

But he hadn’t known it would be this deeply embedded inside him.

How Forced Attainment dragged up Black that had hit rock bottom.

The reason was simple.

It had dragged up the usurper’s Black.

[You are mine.]

A quiet voice echoed through Taesan’s mental image.

—

Booooom!

An explosion erupted.

Taesan smashed through the usurper’s pitch-blackness and burst out.

[What the hell!]

Only then did Bardray explode with the emotion he had been holding back.

[What the hell! Why is something like that inside you!]

“I don’t know either, so don’t ask me.”

Whoosh.

The Boundary Line rose and wrapped around Bardray. Taesan then swung his sword roughly.

Craaaack!

Black shattered.

Sensing the power, Taesan narrowed his eyes.

“That’s not the usurper’s main body.”

The power and rank he felt weren’t that great. At least, its true body hadn’t taken root inside him.

If something like that had been inside Taesan without anyone noticing, it would’ve been impossible.

“So it’s a clone.”

The usurper’s clone lightly flicked a finger. A created Boundary Line became a wave and swept through the mental image. Taesan drew out his own Boundary Line in response.

Crunch—!

He shattered and crushed it. Feeling the sensation run up his hand, Taesan felt puzzled.

‘It’s stronger than I expected.’

He had known something was inside him, but he thought its strength would be pathetic.

The reason was simple.

Until Taesan contemplated his inner self and reached a certain level, he couldn’t even realize there was something inside him.

It was the same for the Transcender. They could see Taesan’s distortion, but they couldn’t know the exact reason. Even the highest-ranked Transcender like the Demon God and the Magician, and Maria as well. Only those who had directly seen his inner self noticed the usurper’s existence.

So weak that Transcender couldn’t notice it. That had been Taesan’s belief.

But the power the usurper was showing now far exceeded his expectations.

“I don’t know what it is, but…”

Why it was lodged in Taesan’s mental image. Why it had that much power yet wasn’t discovered. He knew nothing.

But there was one thing he was sure of.

That thing was hostile to Taesan.

It was his enemy.

Then there was only one thing Taesan had to do. He tightened his grip on the sword.

First, bring it down. Then think. Pitch-blackness settled into Taesan’s hand.

[You have activated Chaos Summoning.]

A domain of boundary wrapped around Taesan. It was a distorted power that only Taesan possessed—neither this world’s concept nor the Old gods’. No opponent had ever resisted this power. If there were, they had only been crushed by overwhelming quantity or quality.

Taesan put strength into his entire body and charged. Distorted Boundary Lines shattered all at once, carving a path toward the usurper.

And the usurper extended an arm.

Kagagagagak!

The domain of boundary began to be sliced apart. Taesan’s pupils widened.

The usurper was blocking his sword with its arm.

The problem was that what wrapped around that arm was not a distorted Boundary Line, but ordinary Black.

It wasn’t extremely compressed, nor was it an enormous mass. It was a very ordinary level that even Taesan could produce without difficulty now.

But he couldn’t break through.

It wasn’t a matter of quantity or quality, or concepts.

It was something more fundamental than that.

[You’re mistaken.]

Crunch.

The usurper grabbed the sword. The Boundary Line sliced sharply, but it couldn’t wound the usurper’s hand.

Ssshhh.

The distorted things spread through the mental image rose up. They moved freely, as if the owner of this place was the usurper.

[I am you.]

And the risen mental image rushed to swallow Taesan.

[You are mine.]