The words “Legacy of the Emperor of Ascension” were enough. Se-Hoon had grasped what they meant—and thus what had happened—with just those six words.

“...Going in,” he declared in a low, sunken voice.

Whoosh!

Entering the trial, the location the four of them stood changed once more to become a vast cavern that opened up in front of them.

“Is this... a lab?”

“It looks like it. And there are weird corpses all over the place.”

Corpses that were neither human nor demon—bodies that gave off a faintly unsettling wrongness. Seeing those things everywhere they scanned, Sung-Ha and Amir made puzzled looks.

“It’s probably a lab belonging to Transcendence,” Se-Hoon explained, seeing their looks. “Those are test subjects: hybrids made by mixing humans and demons.” 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

“So that’s why they felt off.”

“They even built a lab in a place like this. Disgusting bastards.”

“...Yeah.”

Se-Hoon’s expression turned complicated at those remarks. After all, before regressing, he’d never heard that Transcendence had a lab within the Garden of Void.

If there’s a Transcendence lab here... then was the Destroyer of Heaven actually a Harbinger of Destruction they created?

The complicated feelings growing, Se-Hoon was about to sink deeper into the thought when Luize tapped his chest twice from within his arms.

“Hm?”

He looked down to see Luize point forward with her thumb and followed it to see something familiar in the center of the cavern.

Woong!

A golden keyhole was floating alone in midair... which meant Ludwig’s secret storage. Connecting the dots, Se-Hoon immediately pulled out the old golden key he’d kept in Dream Storage: the Key of Whitespace.

Click-

It slid in smoothly, then rotated on its own before he even turned it; the lock released with a natural motion.

Swoosh!

Space rippled like a wave from the keyhole through the entire cavern, then everything went still. Like a lie, everything was calm once again—until space began peeling back like a layer of skin to reveal an old yet dignified door in front of Se-Hoon.

Ludwig’s legacy is there, I guess.

If it required the Key of Whitespace to enter, it was clearly meant for him alone. Thus, with certainty, Se-Hoon set Luize down and looked at the other three.

“It’ll probably be dangerous inside, so leave this to me. If anything happens, discuss it with Terra and respond.”

“Understood.”

“Go.”

Tap, tap.

Feeling Luize’s hand patting his shoulder, Se-Hoon faced the door and turned the Key of Whitespace like a doorknob to open it.

Click-

An endless Whitespace, with black noise flickering here and there, opened up before him. Everything in his view changed rapidly, yet Se-Hoon only needed a second to figure out the situation.

He sealed the Void using Whitespace. Now I see why Terra was in such a hurry.

Normally, Whitespace could only be properly perceived by those who handled the power of Space, and if anything was sealed inside it, it could be broken down to the atomic level.

But the black noise—the Void—was different. Instead of being broken down, it continually eroded the Whitespace and collapsed it, resulting in signs of it attempting to leak out.

The only reason it has held this long... seems to be because Terra used the Tower of Heroes to double-seal it.

From what he could guess, she must’ve stabilized the Whitespace seal by fixing its form via the trial, then applying the Towers’ system to keep resetting the trial to maintain Ludwig’s seal.

Still, the erosion scars scattered throughout told the truth: if he’d arrived even a little later, the Void would’ve punched through the Whitespace and spilled down to Earth in a catastrophic disaster.

Now then... The problem is how am I supposed to clean this up?

Why would Ludwig entrust the grotesque Void—something that could erode Whitespace—to him? To figure that out, Se-Hoon stared at the Void spreading throughout the Whitespace, deep in thought—

Woong-

He abruptly felt a faint tremor pulsate in his hand. He looked down: the Key of Whitespace in his grip was glowing pure white, resonating with the surroundings.

This is...?

Curious, Se-Hoon raised the key—space compressed so small it was nearly invisible unfolded out of the blue and Ludwig appeared.

“Chairman?!”

Seeing an old man in bloodstained clothes, with the right sleeve fluttering raggedly, collapsed on the floor, Se-Hoon reflexively stepped forward toward the miserable-looking Ludwig.

...Only to step upon hearing Ludwig’s exhausted voice.

“If you’re seeing me in such a state... then it means you arrived in time. What you’re looking at is a projection of the past... that I sealed inside this space. Simply put, you could say I carved out a piece of recorded footage and stored it separately.”

“...”

“It’s a technique I can’t use unless I’m on the verge of death, so I didn’t bother teaching this to you. Maybe a dying old man like me could use it, but... it’s not something a young man like you should ever have to rely on... cough!”

Ludwig joked through his strained words... though the black blood he hacked up made him smile bitterly.

“It seems I don’t have the luxury to explain at length. Sorry, but I’ll get straight to the point.”

Lifting his limp left arm, Ludwig began explaining in earnest.

“As you know, the Whitespace is a conglomerate—an aggregate of countless void spaces that exist in the cracks of space. In a sense, it is the reverse side of the world.”

“The reverse side...”

If the front side was reality, stuffed full of matter that painted it pitch-black, then this pristine Whitespace was the back side painted pure white.

When looking from one side only, the two sides were practically two different things, but the moment one realized they were two sides of a single sheet of paper—space—the Whitespace could be wielded.

“In contrast, the Void does not belong to space... nor anything beyond that, like this very world. That is why it could even erode Whitespace... and crush space.”

Those words made Se-Hoon’s eyes widen. A power that didn’t belong to the world... Se-Hoon, too, possessed something very similar.

Does he mean it’s like the power of Regression?

An independent power completed in the ruined world before regression—something not bound to the Golden Ring. Was Ludwig suggesting the Void was like that?

“I couldn’t discover when or how this power appeared in this world. I even... reviewed the lab’s materials, but it didn’t seem like the researchers of Transcendence knew the details either.”

“...”

“But I did find out how to control it... and what is needed for sealing.”

Ludwig’s wavering posture naturally straightened. His left index finger moved lightly through the air, as if it were a brush.

Woong-

A golden cube was drawn along the path of his fingertip. It looked no bigger than a fist, but Se-Hoon could tell what the truth was at a glance: the interior was vast enough to swallow the sun and still have room left over.

“This is a cube created through my power. If you contain the Void inside it, then seal it using your power... you’ll be able to handle it far more perfectly than I ever could.”

Se-Hoon stared at Ludwig in shock.

...So he knew about my regression all along.

Ludwig’s plan to gather the Void into one place, then use the power of Regression to create a seal that restores the cube each time it was eroded was proof enough.

To be honest, Se-Hoon had suspected it, yet confirming it outright still weighed heavily on his chest. Unlike him, who’d guarded the secret, wary of Ludwig and Jason, the two Perfect Ones had known and still helped him to their very end.

“Are you feeling guilty right now?”

Despite the question, Ludwig had merely predicted Se-Hoon’s reaction because it was only a past projection that couldn’t truly converse.

Yet Se-Hoon answered without realizing that.

“A little.”

“If so, don’t concern yourself with it too much. If I were in your position, I would’ve neatly killed either myself... or Jason, that friend of mine.”

“What?”

An unexpected answer made Se-Hoon freeze. Ludwig, however, made a soft snort as though he’d seen Se-Hoon’s face through time.

“If everything you’ve done until now was to change the future, then it means the previous future did not have a pleasant ending.”

“...”

“I can’t figure out why you reached that ending, or where it all went wrong. But there’s one thing I can be certain of.”

Ludwig locked eyes with Se-Hoon.

“If this is our final trial... then the only one who can surpass it is you—the one who has surpassed more trials than anyone.”

His voice was unwavering.

“...”

“So don’t hesitate. Don’t regret it.”

Ludwig’s eyes grew dim as the head he’d been forcing up sank forward.

“Until the end... the world’s trials...”

The voice that had been dragging itself onward faded without finishing the sentence. Then the space projecting Ludwig melted into the Whitespace and vanished.

“...”

Se-Hoon stared in silence for a long time before turning his gaze to the legacy Ludwig had left behind: the cube.

Woong-

Even after Ludwig disappeared, the cube shone steadily where it had been drawn. Briefly inspecting it, Se-Hoon stretched out his right hand and poured mana into it.

Woong!

The cube resonated as if it had been waiting; in the next instant, the Void scattered throughout the Whitespace was completely sucked into it.

Buzz-

The cube turned black in the blink of an eye, and even its golden frame was slowly staining black. Despite Ludwig’s power creating nearly infinite space, it was crushed wholesale under the Void’s pressure.

However, just as the cube was about to be completely crushed as the last of the Void poured in...

Dream Manifestation: Cycle

The Void was suppressed by an incomplete gray ring, merely two halves, that wrapped around the cube.

Creak-

The ring began rotating in reverse, forcing back the Void that had been trying to burst out of the cube—time itself was being rewound. Yet the cube, ruined by erosion, did not recover.

My power of Regression is still incomplete.

If Ludwig’s power was a law engraved onto the world—onto the Golden Ring—then the power of Regression was the law of Se-Hoon himself, an “external world.”

To apply that law to the cube, it needed completeness comparable to the Golden Ring.

If I hadn’t cut away the Destroyer of Moralities’ synesthetic mindscape... I probably could’ve done it.

Maybe even now, if he accepted the concept of a “Regressor” again and stitched the fragmented power back together, he could resolve to solve the cube.

But Se-Hoon didn’t do it. He had promised not to remain a “Regressor,” who repeatedly returned to the past and present, but to become someone who moved forward into the future.

Since this power isn’t complete... then I’ll just have to complete it another way.

Clenching his left hand, Se-Hoon pulled out Luize’s new Fatestone that he had gotten in the Forest of Recursion.

Woong!

The liquid metal held a mysterious blue glow, mixed with countless colors. Feeling its enormous potential, Se-Hoon checked the information through his status message.

[Fatestone: Mixed Azure Silver]

[Tier: Legendary] [Quality: Below Average]

[A liquid metal that holds countless colors.

By synchronizing with the traits of the object it permeates, it can draw out all potential to its limits.

*Able to enhance an object’s potential to its maximum

*Can specialize that enhanced potential toward the synesthetic mindscape embedded within the object with the caveat that durability is consumed permanently]

The Fatestone had reached Legendary-tier despite the bond level being only level four?

Was it influenced by my synesthetic mindscape?

Staring at Luize’s Fatestone that looked like multiple Fatestones fused together with an expression of surprise, Se-Hoon soon faintly smiled and gripped it tightly.

With this, I can’t fail.

With the design in his head finished, Se-Hoon brought the Mixed Azure Silver straight to the incomplete ring encasing the cube.

Woong!

The Mixed Azure Silver flowed like liquid, wrapping around the split ring. From each side, different wavelengths seeped out.

Woong!

One side shifted from dull gray to a near-silver radiance; the other side answered with a change to brilliant gold, flashing like lightning.

The silver spun counterclockwise to devour gold, but the gold chased after silver’s tail to devour it back. Like that, the two lights pursued each other’s tails at terrifying speeds—and simultaneously, the half-collapsed cube was being restored.

Swish-

The Void eroded; the cube recovered. What seemed like an endless cycle gradually settled into a fixed balance, with even the chase stabilizing. Soon, the moment came when the two different powers and laws were connected organically into a single form—as if they had always been that way.

[Seal ‘Aeon Sphere’ has been completed!

The reproduced Legacy of the Emperor of Ascension, forged by blacksmith Lee Se-Hoon! The colossal’s wish—who desired humanity’s ascension until the very end—shall be fulfilled by his successor.

The tier evaluation for ‘Aeon Sphere’ is ‘Aspirant’.]

[You have cleared the trial ‘Legacy of the Emperor of Ascension.]

With a flood of notification messages, Se-Hoon’s body returned to the lab cavern.

“...It worked.”

Looking at the cube—now the Aeon Sphere, with the Void sealed inside—Se-Hoon let out a breath of relief.

And then, in his mind, a familiar voice rang out.

“Administrator! Are you okay? You’re not hurt, right?”

Hearing Terra’s anxious voice, Se-Hoon nodded.

“I’m fine. More importantly, what about the others?”

“Ah, I sent the three of them to the infirmary. Things calmed down for a bit on the Abyss of Demons side.”

“Calmed down?”

“Yes. Tuner said he has a proposal for you...”

Considering those words, Se-Hoon hesitated briefly, then answered.

“So? What is it you want to propose?”

“Huh? What do you mean...?”

“When it’s just the two of us, Terra addresses me as Father. Drop the act and start talking properly.”

“...”

The voice in his head was silent. Soon enough, though, Se-Hoon heard a strange static... which was the prelude to a different voice that cackled in his mind.

“You two were that close? That’s honestly a bit beyond what I expected. Throws me off.”

Hearing Tuner’s fed-up tone, Se-Hoon let out a soft laugh.

“No. That was a lie.”

“...What?”

“When something feels off, I just throw out bait like that. Every so often something bites.”

“...”

He’d been tricked. Chewing on that, Tuner fell silent until he eventually let out a resigned, hollow chuckle.

“I thought I’d been getting played because of regression... but now that I see it, even without that, you wouldn’t be easy.”

“So what’s the point? This is the last time.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’ll get to it.”

Hearing Se-Hoon’s impatience on the verge of cutting the connection at any moment, Tuner got straight to the heart of it.

“For our last standoff, I want it to be one-on-one. Clean and fair. So what do you say? Are you in for it?”