From Today, I'm a Player

Chapter 266. The End of a Tragedy Pt. 2

The corpses of giants formed a mountain before him. In fact, that wasn’t entirely correct. Actually, it was just the single corpse of a giant.

“That massive mountain…”

Thjazi and Thrymr, the frost giants of Utgard that he had met in China, couldn’t compare whatsoever with them. The giants before them were true giants.

“Just…what am I supposed to say here?”

It wouldn’t be appropriate to call the corpses lying in front of him giants. Each of them was colossal beyond common sense. Just their size alone conveyed tremendous pressure.

“...”

Even though the colossal giant before him was dead, it still gave off an extremely intimidating feeling. It was completely different from the corpses of monsters he had stepped on when he had entered first Gehenna. If the mana of the monsters could be considered needles, then the mana of these were tree trunks.

No, it was beyond that.

“Ugh.”

It was like massive pillars.

Ssss.

Lee Jun-Kyeong had tried not to use any mana, but now he had no choice but to begin circulating his mana. He had to sit down on the spot, his breath catching.

“Gasp… Gasp…”

Each breath was a burden. Even though he had circulated his mana, it was still too difficult to breathe. The corpses of the giants had that effect.

“Are these the monsters of Gehenna…?” Lee Jun-Kyeong asked as he slowly came to his senses. Then he became sure that was wrong. They definitely weren’t. Their levels of existence were different. They were beings of a much higher class than the monsters. They were beings that could put enormous pressure on him just with their corpses alone.

“Just how…”

What would have happened if they were alive? Just looking at the corpses made Lee Jun-Kyeong feel as though his soul was being consumed. It wasn’t until much later that he was able to move again.

“Whew…”

Lee Jun-Kyeong looked over at them again, taking a deep breath. He was vaguely able to guess the identities of these colossal giants.

“Sponsors…”

They were Sponsors.

***

Lee Jun-Kyeong’s feet moved forward. Now, there weren’t any corpses that squished under his feet. Instead, what caught at him were the solid corpses of giants.

The giants of Gehenna were incomparable to monsters and radiated a terrifying presence even when dead. It was clear that they had to be Sponsors. After all, if these corpses that could make one vomit just by looking at them weren’t the corpses of Sponsors, then what were they? However, this was still something that was unexpected.

“But when did the Sponsors have bodies?”

He had thought of them as just consciousnesses. However, the corpses before him clearly proved their physical existence. Lee Jun-Kyeong stopped, and at the same time, he touched one of the giants’ corpses.

Tap.

“Bleargh!”

As soon as he poured mana into the corpse, Lee Jun-Kyeong began to vomit.

“Gasp… Gasp…”

Only after vomiting for a long time was he able to catch his breath. The moment he had injected his mana into the giant’s body, he saw a huge abyss, which sucked him in. It was a situation where he could have been consumed.

“I need to be more careful.”

He had almost forgotten about it because there weren’t any threats. He had forgotten that this wasn’t the outside world and that Gehnna was a more dangerous place than any other place.

Woosh!

Lee Jun-Kyeong reached out again, prepared to cut off the flow of mana at any time as he injected a very small amount of mana.

“Hmm.”

Fortunately, he wasn't sucked into the abyss this time. He slowly moved his mana and examined the giant’s body. Its mana was overflowing even when dead. The will within the creature was astounding. As he slowly examined it, Lee Jun-Kyeong soon began to adapt.

“Whew.”

He began to put in a little more mana than he had initially done. Little by little, the mana grew. As he did so, the identity of the giant and the power that it possessed began to become clear.

“This is a Sponsor.”

He was sure of it. Lee Jun-Kyeong took his hand away and looked around. He had to be more careful the next time he wanted to inspect something. He picked a direction and started walking, stopping in front of a small giant.

He stood in front of the corpse with the least amount of mana. He placed a hand on the corpse again, resolving himself not to let his mana go to waste. He would find out more clearly who these beings were and what had happened here.

He needed to do so through any means possible.

Ssss.

He was going to use his awakened powers of the source.

***

“Gasp… Gasp…”

His understanding of the power that the Sponsors were aiming for wasn’t very high, nor could his grasp of that power be said to be complete. However, now that the powers of the source had been awakened within him, Lee Jun-Kyeong could at least clearly feel it.

‘What I have within me is only a part of it.’

Using that power, he examined the giant before him. The powers of the source dealt with the essence of life. It was a feeling that cannot be described in words, and that was what he was searching for within the Sponsors.

The result of his inspection was…

“Gasp… Gasp…”

It was horrifying.

The long eras that the Sponsors had lived through, the gruesome slaughter they committed…

The history of their defeat, their lives spent hidden where they trampled upon hundreds of millions of lives…

He saw it all and felt it all.

“Gasp… Gasp…”

It was another abyss of its own. Although he hadn’t consumed it all to the point of losing his being, for a split second, Lee Jun-Kyeong had felt as though he had become a Sponsor. A simple glimpse of their history and the soul that was left behind in the corpse left him devastated.

“The Sponsors…”

Lee Jun-Kyeong stood up straight, holding up his body, which seemed as though it was on the verge of collapse. He could also understand why they had become like this.

‘How long have you waited?’

Compared to the giants, it could be said that humanity was naught but ants. When compared to the power that they had, that person would never be defeated. No, he had more power than that.

It was a pure slaughter. The giants who had ravaged countless living creatures for so long had been butchered. They, who had dug a trap and tried to steal their bodies, had been cut down before they could reach their goal.

The Sponsors were immortal: beings that couldn’t be killed because they had no form.

“At least here, it’s possible…”

In Gehenna, in the space that they had created to take away the bodies of the Incarnations, they had also become living beings. If, by chance, they had been unlucky enough to have been defeated by a different Incarnation, then they would have revived. However, because the one who had defeated them had been the Demon King, none of them could come back.

The powers of the source were powers that held the essence of life. In turn, they were powers that could kill even immortal beings.

“Whew…”

Lee Jun-Kyeong shook his head and came to his senses. It was time to move on again.

Rumble.

Then, suddenly, the ground began to tremble.

“...!”

Lee Jun-Kyeong quickly kicked off the ground and soared into the air. Right where he had just been, a giant’s hand had suddenly tightly clenched the air.

“It came back to life?!”

The power that he had injected into it to inspect it had somehow granted temporary life to the giant. The giant slowly opened its eyes as its body, ravaged by the fierce battle with the Demon King, began to come together.

However, it wasn’t restored perfectly, its arm was the arm of someone else. Its legs couldn’t even hold its body up properly.

However, Lee Jun-Kyeong wasn’t flustered. He had seen their essence. He had seen their lives.

BOOM!

And he had also seen their deaths. Lee Jun-Kyeong’s hand slowly changed shape, growing bigger, bigger, and bigger. It was as if it also belonged to a giant.

“The Arms of Surtr.”

An arm of flame covered the pale red moon and became the sun.

ROAR!!!

When the giant tried to stand up, shaking on one leg, Lee Jun-Kyeong slammed the Arms of Surtr directly onto the giant’s face.

BANG!!

A huge shock came through the flames, catching alight on the giant. For just a split second, Gehenna was lit brightly by a flame.

BOOM!

The giant, who had barely stood up, fell over.

“...”

Then, Lee Jun-Kyeong sat down on the ground and mused to himself. He had just taken out a Sponsor. Of course, the Sponsor hadn’t been complete. It was a reanimated corpse, no different from a skeleton.

Clench.

Nevertheless, he had defeated one. The satisfaction of having defeated a Sponsor filled his mind.

“I’ve really become stronger.”

He finally understood what he had earned with the title Ragnarok.

***

“Now that it’s just the two of us like this…”

“I just had something I wanted to ask you.”

Heimdall looked a little ecstatic while, on the contrary, Athena was extremely cold.

“I know you didn’t tell us everything. Everyone knows that there’s something you’re hiding,” Athena said, directly getting to the point. “Everyone knows that you’re hiding something, but you didn’t say anything because the Underdog…No, Ragnarok hadn’t said anything.”

Heimdall lowered his head for a moment.

Athena continued, “We understand that the Demon King wants to end his tragedy by raising a successor.”

She was asking about the truth.

“At first glance, the Book of the Demon King is Ragnarok’s, something that he alone had. Moreover, you had said that Ragnarok had never been alone, not even once.”

There was a restlessness on both Athena’s and Heimdall’s faces.

“Then, what were the criteria for determining the Demon King’s succession?”

“That…”

“Moreover.” Athena refused to give him a chance to respond, seeming like she wanted to ask everything all at once and get all of the answers at the same time. “I never spoke much with Ragnarok. I even tried not to speak with him as much as possible.”

It was the truth. Even whenever Zeus was friendly with him, even when Lee Jun-Kyeong had saved her, all she had said was thank you and exchanged as few words as possible when necessary.

Athena had—no, even Lee Jun-Kyeong had avoided mixing words with her whenever possible.

“It was the same when I first met him,” she said. “When I first met him, in his eyes, there was anger, hatred…”

There were many harsh emotions.

“And, there was longing.”

However, the problem was what had come after.

“He didn’t seem to know why he looked at me with those eyes, and it was the same for me as well.”

“Are you saying you felt that way too?”

"No." Athena shook her head firmly. “I felt pity, remorse, and…”

She struggled to continue before finally speaking, “I felt like crying. I always felt like crying every time I saw him. Why? Although I tried so hard to find an answer to that question, I couldn’t figure it out.”

Athena, who had always remained silent, was now firing questions at Heimdall without stopping. Speaking about all of her feelings was evidence that her emotions had been aggravated.

“The Demon King’s Successor. The recipient of the Book of the Demon King, Ragnarok. Those are things that only he could be. But who the hell is he? Was he a child left behind by the Demon King? Or…”

The question left unsaid was whether or not it had something to do with Heimdall. A silence filled the air as Athena had said everything she had wanted to say. Now, all that was left was for her to wait for the answer.

However, Heimdall found it difficult to open his mouth. Then, at that moment, he finally lifted his head slowly and said, “He is…that brat… Jun-Kyeong…”

“Heracles! Odysseus!” But at that moment, Jeong In-Chang’s voice overwhelmed Heimdall’s. His voice continued to wrack the air. “Come to your senses!”

Had they been attacked? No. They couldn’t feel the auras of any enemies.

Instead, it was something else.

“Their mana…disappeared?” Athena muttered blankly.

The people that Jeong In-Chang had cried out for, Heracles and Odysseus, their manas had disappeared. However, that didn’t mean that they had died. Only their mana had disappeared. Their vitality was still clearly present.

While Athena was flustered, Heimdall could be heard muttering to himself, “Has it begun?”

***

Lee Jun-Kyeong had arrived at the largest giant. There was someone sitting on it. It was now a corpse, seeming to have just been killed. That person was the size of an ant compared to the giant.

However, when compared to Lee Jun-Kyeong, that person was just as big as he was. He was a human. Lee Jun-Kyeong looked up at the man as he looked down on Lee Jun-Kyeong, almost as if it was natural for him to be on top.

The man quietly moved his lips.

–So you’ve arrived, Son of Heimdall and Athena.