Now it’s my turn.
332nd Round sensed their demise.
Seonhwang, comrades, everyone was gone.
Even if the Giant Monster’s Strength-All-in remained silent, its sealing wouldn’t be eternal.
The signs of defeat were clear.
“It isn’t that hard to take you down. But it is undeniably bothersome. Instead of a fight where we both lose, I will open a new path for you.”
“A new path…?”
“One of the dimensions secured by the Foundation is our world’s [Airodilon]. Take it and leave.”
“!!”
“It’s not just you. If there are people you wish to take along, you may take as many as you like. I’m offering this opportunity even at the cost of my victory’s fruits. You know how invaluable this opportunity is, right?”
Depart into space.
With those you want to bring.
I won’t stop that.
The Director’s proposal was a ceasefire agreement.
332nd Round felt it instinctively.
They could not defeat this man.
What awaited at the end of this long fight was only certain defeat.
“Regret for those you couldn’t protect. Isn’t that a kind offer, considering the common weakness you all share? By not becoming my enemy, you escape that deep regret, your ailing soul can be saved, and you can finally end your long loneliness.”
Not only avoiding such defeat, but gaining a chance to escape long regret.
“That’s… truly a grateful offer.”
Alone in the universe, they pondered.
All the lives they had forsaken.
The possibilities they had closed off.
Now they were being granted a new opportunity.
Loading their beloved characters, their cherished friends onto the Non-fair Flight and departing together.
Those I chose won’t die.
Surviving together, avoiding countless outrageous events, could genuinely enjoy freedom and peace.
In a way, it was undoubtedly one of the endings he desired.
“Declining this would almost make me feel sorry for myself.”
Clenched fists.
Flowing blood.
The Director couldn’t help but chuckle.
“How tenacious you are. What is wrong with you all? Is rational judgment impossible?”
Without restraint, the Director’s dominion twisted and crushed 332nd Round’s opening Dimensional Gate.
As time passed, the area of the Dimensional Gate surrounding 332nd Round gradually shrank.
In the face of the Director’s thorough assault, slowly compressing the surrounding space, 332nd Round drew nearer to unavoidable death.
Every act of resistance led to defeat.
Still, they didn’t stop their march toward defeat.
“The universe is, you know, annoyingly vast.”
“…?”
“I despise the unbearable loneliness, but I also hate the thought of everyone else feeling that hell.”
“Unlike you, they aren’t alone.”
“The reason the universe feels lonely isn’t just because it’s empty. My cowardice, turning my back on the world once, gnaws at my heart as desolate as the vast universe.”
332nd Round constantly regretted their cowardice.
To repeat such a journey for a second time?
That’s absurd.
Letting my dear friends, those I treasure, endure that painful agony?
That too is nonsense.
To take on every tragedy and create a future where everyone can be happy.
That single conviction had forged a hell.
Countless defeats and failures.
Those defeats and failures belong to none other than me.
My own hell that cannot be shared with anyone.
So, I won’t allow it.
I won’t share the title of a Non-fair Flight passenger with anyone.
That’s my resolution as a player!
“If you do, just squish and die.”
Shoulders buckle.
Knees vanish.
Still, they didn’t stop unfolding the Dimensional Gate.
So as not to become complacent.
To remain vigilant of their own strength.
Even until the last second of breath, they unfold the Dimensional Gate, cutting into themselves if needed.
At that desperate resistance, finally, someone moved.
The Foundation’s flagship.
The deck of the Non-fair Flight.
Boom!
Ishtar’s Holy Sword launched a surprise attack on the Director’s main body.
“Ha ha. That rookie warrior has grown enough to stab a sword into a friend’s father’s chest. How commendably you have matured.”
“Do you even have the right to claim to be someone’s father, you piece of trash?”
“Why would I lack for anything?”
The Director, pierced through the chest, reached out and clasped Ishtar’s hand gripping the Holy Sword.
“How…!”
“Don’t believe it? Even holding the sword only a hero can wield, I’m still intact.”
“That’s nonsense!”
“Is there a line of good that belongs solely to one person, and how can one judge evil solely by humanity’s standards?”
Ishtar writhed as the control of the Holy Sword was threatened to be snatched from their grasp.
Seeing Ishtar stepping back in such an unstable stance, the Director chuckled and pointed a finger.
“But you are also a Foundation ‘Scholarship Student.’ Though not my scholar, but my daughter’s scholar, what does it matter? I don’t covet my child’s assets. So please, don’t be too heated to avoid shattering your child’s property.”
The Director’s dominion collided into Ishtar like a giant siege weapon slamming against the gates.
When the annoying obstacle to the Director’s line of sight returned to 332nd Round, despite all those delays, 332nd Round’s position hadn’t changed.
Even with one hand applying pressure, they lacked the capacity to escape their disadvantaged situation.
“On the other hand, I’m greatly disappointed in you. I thought you might have a final resistance, but it’s merely a struggle to survive. Tenacious yet, this is as far as it goes. Farewell.”
“It’s not survival. I’ve been widening the gaps. Opening a door to specific coordinates, creating space for whatever exists beyond to cross over here.”
“From the beginning to now, the space made available to you has been the same, right?”
332nd Round, amidst the Director’s overwhelming pressure, losing even the space to move, taking fatal injuries, what space remains?
The obvious question faced with solemnity surprised the Director’s eyes with astonishment.
In a cramped space where they could barely maintain control over their limbs, there was ultimately only one way to create a gap.
“You’ve hidden a gap within yourself.”
“Yeah, it hurt quite a bit.”
Insanity.
Only those disregarding their own lives could commit such acts.
Truly a madness fitting for an alien Avatar.
“Rather, I find it exciting. How amazing would it be for someone like you to call forth in the final moment? Is it another Strength-All-in? Or another type of Avatar series?”
“If my clones have suffered, then my main body should clean up afterward, right?”
The Avatar’s main body.
At that term, even the grand Director couldn’t hide their tension.
Yet, the Dimensional Gate revealed beyond 332nd Round’s clothing was quite modest in size.
It might even have been insufficient for a full-grown male Avatar to crawl out.
When a small arm finally emerged from the Dimensional Gate.
Everyone was taken aback at the sight of that arm’s size.
“This energy is…”
“Yah!”
A youthful voice.
Yet a thrill of anticipation for the future.
All that eagerness overshadowed by the ominous aura of the soul’s size.
Without a doubt.
There was only one such being in this world.
“Ha ha ha. To call forth my daughter in the end, do you plan on facilitating a family reunion?”
“You don’t understand. What she has undergone to become the being she is.”
“No, I know much more than you think. There are many Avatars that represent the will of the Gods, but the fragment that I salvaged from chaos, unrelated to the will of the Gods is of a different caliber than ‘ordinary Avatars.’ She is the unconsciousness of a God who gained a human body. And she is also my daughter.”
The Director deemed 332nd Round’s final move futile, and 332nd Round viewed this final move as securing the Director’s defeat.
As someone misreading the situation, Ishtar began to cry.
“The soul was torn, yet she came to sense our crisis and sought to help…?”
“Ha ha! The wicked seek goodness from others to utilize, while the good don’t wish to find wickedness in others, it’s quite curious how this works. The current hero is more evil than one might expect, and the Director is more benevolent than he appears.”
“I’m… evil?”
“Yet worry not. Regardless of your morality, now that she has arrived, the grand game has ended. How interesting, that the tyrant, who acted as though everything in the world was someone else’s business, abandoned his own son to become this.”
“Who do you think you are to judge us freely?”
After breaking through about a dozen walls, Ishtar finally managed to get up when she realized the elderly man who had casually been narrating beside her was now gone.
Though Ishtar was perplexed by the bizarre experience, the one most taken aback was Oknodie, who had just emerged from the small Dimensional Gate after tumbling headfirst onto the ground.
“Ow, that hurts!”
“Oh dear. Perhaps you should manage your body a bit better. Come here, Papa will help you.”
“Huh? Whose voice is that…”
“It’s the Director.”
Oknodie’s head turned toward the Director calling out to them, but then they noticed the Dimensional Gate opening from their abdomen toward the dying 332nd Round’s Strength-All-in.
“Gah, Strength-All-in?! How did you get smashed like a newbie?!”
“If anything, I want to ask how you created such a monster…”
Oknodie, looking at the pathetic state of Strength-All-in, answered without a hint of concern.
“I didn’t create it! It was just this round’s random anomaly. Uhm, isn’t this an introduction? I guess you could say it’s the culprit behind the unexplained mishaps that still haven’t been identified?”
“Enough of the explanation. My time is running out.”
“Are you dying?”
“I’m just going back. Repeating my end, reliving a memory where I lost everyone and chew on loneliness, my own hell.”
Memories remain unchanged.
Composed of the sequence of established past.
A hell to which a being derived from memory must return is none other than the unchanging hell known as memory.
“Don’t let our sacrifices be in vain, you hear?”
It’s troublesome.
It’s tedious.
It’s a hassle.
When returning, there were many fears awaiting answers, but thankfully, this round’s main body hadn’t taken a malicious concept.
“The Chairman of the Foundation should be properly dealt with!”
“How reassuring. Just how strong is a main body that has gone through all those ‘trial and error’?”
In response to 332nd Round’s excited words, the just-emerged Oknodie wore a puzzled expression.
“Really? Why would I fight?”
But they also weren’t embracing a purely benevolent concept.
Stepping forward for everyone.
Following in the footsteps of the Seonhwang who chose to seal himself for humanity’s future, or seeking vengeance on him.
They didn’t come to perform such a commendable duty of a dutiful daughter.
“What? Then why are you here?”
“Didn’t you call me to intuit?”
Upon closer inspection, Oknodie had toppled over, and a pile of popcorn seemed to have scattered across the floor just as they took it out.
This guy, having repeated such inhuman sacrifice plays in the Strength-All-in series, seems excessively excessive to the point of having broken their sanity…
“The play has ended. If I die, all that remains is a future where the Director will take over a world without the Seonhwang. You alone can stop that.”
“Aw, did the event already wrap up? You should have called me earlier. That’s so unfair!”
“Ha ha, you’re right. We’ve been too much. Had we called you sooner, we might have been able to rid ourselves of that ominous thing a bit earlier. We could’ve enjoyed the fruits of our failures together…”
They vowed to overcome past failures and finally achieve results with their own hands.
That determination, that arrogance invited defeat.
Therefore, all they could do was ensure they didn’t suffer another failure.
Too many rounds.
Too many failures.
Too many futures experienced. Hoping that at least humanity would remain, that the purpose behind enduring all these tragedies would remain.
[Convergence Magic]
[Memory Transfer]
332nd Round transmitted all observational data and memories from this engagement to Oknodie.
Included in the memories transmitted by 332nd Round were echoes from long ago, when they monopolized the Hidden Piece and personally shattered and annihilated entire planetary systems.
As Oknodie recalled those distant past memories, countless emotions swirled in their eyes, but by the time they fluttered their lips, 332nd Round had already dropped their head.
[332nd Round [Strength-All-in Pattern Recognition is Good Warrior] has died.]
The pattern recognition has concluded.
Now, it was the main body’s time.
