Ranker Who Lives Twice

Vivasvat.

Or Chan-hee: Brilliantly sparkling, beautifully happy.

It was the Buddhist nickname my maternal grandfather had given me.

***

‘Why are all the lights still off? Has Jae-won not arrived yet?’ Seo Eun-young opened the front door and entered the living room, but she soon tilted her head as she sensed that something was off. Originally, at this time of day, either her son or husband would have arrived home first and turned on all the lights. Moreover, she had a school reunion meeting today, so she had already told both of them that she would be arriving early in the morning.

While telling herself that she needed to call her husband and son later, Seo Eun-young crossed the living room and turned on the lights. “Goodness! Jae-won, have you been here all along?” She found her son seated with his face down on the dinner table. However, there was something unusual about her son’s mood.

“Is something wrong?” So, Seo Eun-young approached Jae-won cautiously and asked, but her son did not answer. “Did something happen at school?”

However, her son offered no response.

***

Son Jae-won did not attend school for three days after that day. He just locked himself up in his room. He pulled the curtains, turned off all the lights, and stayed in bed. Although his mother brought him meals and outwardly voiced her concerns about her son’s health, Son Jae-won just stated that he was ill and had no appetite.

Neither his father nor his mother could get Jae-won to do anything. All they could do was stand anxiously in front of their son’s door.

Son Jae-won's hands shook but not out of fear. ‘It was just for a moment, but I felt like I was truly…alive.’

Jae-won had acted impulsively because of Min Chae-young's unfortunate predicament. In the beginning, he was not that interested in other people. No, previously, it was more accurate to say that he was completely indifferent. Furthermore, he often applied that same cynical gaze upon himself. He was insensitive to living things. He was a being who lived only because his life started. Emotions, let alone empathy, was something he did not really possess…

However, Son Jae-won felt a different sensation last night. He did not feel any of the guilt that he thought he would feel, based on what he learned in school. After killing the ‘evil’ opponent, all he felt was pure pleasure, a feeling close to joy or a sense of accomplishment.

“…” Since childhood, Son Jae-won always viewed everything else in the world as things beneath him.

It was not that he could not comprehend others. Actually, he could often read people’s thoughts and feelings clearly. At first, he thought everyone in the world was like him, but he soon found out that this was not the case. In the end, he grew frustrated at being the only one who had this ‘sight’ ability. And from some point onward, that frustration turned into boredom, boredom and indifference towards everything.

Jae-won felt it was condescending to hear others call him a ‘genius’ or ‘gifted’ individual. At a certain point, everything was beneath him. There was a high chance for Jae-won to have become arrogant and self-righteous, but it was his family members who corrected his potentially misguided behavior. Thanks to a wise mother and brilliant father, he was able to maintain at least the basic qualities of a human being. Even so, his bored perspective on world affairs did not change.

Moreover, Jae-won possessed a sense of confidence that he would do well in whatever he decided to do. Thus, from the start, he did not put in any effort in any of his pursuits. This unmotivated perspective gave him no choice but to lose interest in all worldly things.

So, at some point, Jae-Won came up with the idea of always ‘being average’. He decided to always be in the middle of the pack in whatever he did because if anything he did seemed to be done too well he would garner too many people’s attention.

At first, if he did something well, he might feel a fleeting satisfaction, like showing off, but if that were to continue over and over, he would get tired of that sensation as well. It was annoying to receive the gazes of people who had high expectations of him, so he instinctively learned how to hide and escape from people’s gazes. This was also the reason why Jae-won consistently scored in the middle of his class academically.

Even if he had no friends, Jae-won could go to school without much fuss. Thus, his entire life was constructed in a way to avoid being noticed. He had put in a tremendous amount of effort to get to where he was.

However, at this moment, it was different. A sense of achievement, which he had forgotten for such a long time, tingled at the tips of his fingertips. He felt he could do something, anything. He felt like he was at a crossroads. He could leave a mark on humanity or be nothing at all. He felt this thought as if it constantly pulsated in his mind. On the other hand, he also felt a great internal conflict since his thoughts were at odds with the teachings he had learned from his parents.

Finally, once Jae-won got out of bed and turned on the lights, the intent in his eyes had changed.

***

<Another unidentified body found!>

<A question for the police. Is it fine for things to continue like this?>

<It turns out that the deceased had a prior conviction for murder.>

<Continued discoveries of dead bodies.>

<Are these the acts of a serial murderer or a hero in search of justice?>

***

[The Black King expresses great satisfaction with this ‘dream’.]

The Heavenly Demon slightly frowned when he saw the message pop up in his mind while he was scanning his son’s ‘biography’. “…this fucking bastard. He’s starting to act up again. His sleep talking is a bit longer ‘this time’, no?”

To the Black King, the entire universe was nothing more than just a ‘dream’. However, reversing this equation, it could also be said that all beings living in the universe were the ‘elements’ that made up the Black King’s dream. In other words, if the Black King wanted, he could enjoy the entire life story related to Vivasvat-Son Jae-won as if it were a passing dream. In this way, the Black King was making fun of the Heavenly Demon.

The Heavenly Demon, who was grieving over the death of his own son, was unable to impose any sanctions or retribution on the Black King. Thus, all the Heavenly Demon could do was feel his guilt burrow deeper into his chest.

The Heavenly Demon understood that the Black King was trying to agitate him and poke his sensitive spots, but he still found it too difficult to suppress the anger that was rising from his chest. Still, he forced himself to do so. If he did not, the entire chessboard that he had engineered up to now would be made useless.

[The Black King bursts into laughter, saying the Heavenly Demon is a heartless father who has abandoned his son to his enemies.]

Crack! The Heavenly Demon ground his teeth.

‘Patience, patience, patience…’

It had been a long time since the Heavenly Demon had completely escaped from the Black King’s dream, which the Heavenly Demon accomplished after exuviation and transcendence, when he reached the emperor-level.

Common gods and demons had one foot in the Black King’s dream and one foot out. Because the beings of the Night knew about the Black King’s dream, they want to somehow destroy the ‘dream’ and throw the whole universe into a state of utter chaos once more. On the other hand, the beings of the Day continued to maintain the Black King’s sleep and acted as watchmen to block the Night.

[The Black King sneers at the foe who growls at him.]

[The Black King says that he is excited about the event that takes place ‘every time’.]

“Do you need to be beaten a little so you can come to your senses?”

[The Black King laughs at the fact that the Heavenly Demon is baring his teeth.]

“Fuck you. You’re the stupid bastard who was dumb enough to get stabbed in the back by your own idiotic subordinates.”

[The Black King recalls that things were intense at the time.]

[The Black King speaks to his only foe and his former rival:]

[He feels the restraints that restrain him gradually loosening.]

[The forced slumber that was forced upon him was gradually fading.]

[He says the emptiness he buried himself into was gradually being assimilated into the ‘dream’.]

[Also, he says “your son, who represented the first lock of my restraint, has already died, and I possess the ‘key’ to unlock the second lock, so there’s not much time left before I awake.”]

This time, even the Heavenly Demon could not respond. He understood that this message from the Black King was not a simple form of blackmail or intimidation, unlike those from ‘past’ iterations or episodes, but a mockery that came from a place of confidence.

Normal beings bound by the laws of time and space were not aware of it, but the fact was, this was by no means the first time the Black King has attempted to wake up from a ‘dream’. Of course, the creation and perpetuation of the universe continued up to now because the Heavenly Demon and the Day stopped the Black King in all his previous attempts to awaken.

The Heavenly Demon was now realizing that their efforts to restrict the Black King were reaching a limit. As successive sanctions were imposed on the Black King’s ‘dreams’, the time the Heavenly Demon spent in the Changgong Library was getting longer. Furthermore, the Heavenly Demon was consuming a larger amount of spirit power on each successive occasion. Currently, the beings of the Day had lost their divine power and had almost assimilated into the natural laws. Metatron and Baal remained and were doing their jobs well, but no one knew how much longer they would last.

That was the reason why the Heavenly Demon threw down Ruyi Bang and built the Tower. To tighten the loosening of the Black King’s restraints, the Heavenly Demon imprisoned the gods and demons within the Tower, adding to the Tower’s overall weight.

There were many benefits to taking this approach. What the Heavenly Demon wanted to achieve once he became an emperor-level being was to create a relatively safe universe for humans by forcibly separating humans from the domination of the gods. Thus, by establishing the Tower, it could be said that the Heavenly Demon’s main pursuit was accomplished. Furthermore, by ‘inviting’ heroes born in each universe, dimension, and planet into the Tower, it was possible for the Heavenly Demon to exclude in advance the candidates that could become divine beings.

As Yeon-woo had guessed, the Tower was like a kind of prison. However, the Tower also functioned as something that Yeon-woo had not previously considered.

‘The Tower is also a nurturing ground to develop beings that’ll stab the Black King in the back.’

The Day was now almost at the end of its life, and soon, it would be destroyed. It was the Heavenly Demon’s intention to develop a being to rise and take over the position of Day to, once again, put the Black King to rest.

Vivasvat/Son Jae-won belatedly realized his father’s mission, but once he did, he had tried his best to seek and obtain the position that his father needed. However, after some minor clashes between father and son, the Heavenly Demon turned his back on his son, and Vivasvat/Son Jae-won eventually went against his father’s will and became Allforone, blocking the movement of beings on the Tower’s seventy-seventh floor.

Anyway, disregarding the Heavenly Demon’s personal feelings, when looking at the purpose of maintaining the Tower, it was Yeon-woo who best suited the Heavenly Demon’s intentions. However, the Black King had noticed the Heavenly Demon’s intentions, and after several attacks, he found a way to prepare for the Heavenly Demon.

What would happen next remained to be seen. Depending on how Yeon-woo progressed forward, the future pathway of all beings would become completely different.

***

‘…what, what was that just now?’ For a moment, Yeon-woo thought he had seen a daydream. ‘Allforone… Was it part of Vivasvat’s legends?’

It was not difficult for Yeon-woo to realize that what he had seen was a memory dealing with Vivasvat’s childhood. However, he could not understand why Vivasvat’s childhood memory had suddenly popped up in his mind. Perhaps a part of Vivasvat’s legend Yeon-woo was devouring while activating the divine domain of ‘Allforone’ suddenly jumped out and was reflected in Yeon-woo’s Consciousness.

The contents contained in the daydream were all enigmatic. Yeon-woo could not understand how a being who lived for thousands of years spent his childhood on Earth during the same era as himself. In Kronos’ legends, the existence of the Heavenly Demon and Vivasvat’s subsequent birth was portrayed as things that occurred before the creation of Earth.

‘An emperor-level being transcends time and space. It may have been that the Heavenly Demon realized something changing in the distant past and appeared to counteract it.’

However, Yeon-woo felt certain that all the Heavenly Demon’s secrets could be known if he scanned Vivasvat/Son Jae-won’s legends a little deeper. He could figure out the relationship between the Heavenly Demon and the Black King, the real purpose for which the Tower was created, the reason why father and son split, Vivasvat-Son Jae-won’s ultimate goal, and the collision between the existences of Day and Night.

Furthermore, it may also hold the key to fighting against the Black King, who was trying to restrain Yeon-woo. Yeon-woo just might find a hint. He had to uncover all the secrets surrounding this world. And more than anything…

[Vivasvat’s legends want to convey something to you.]

Yeon-woo got the feeling that somehow, Vivasvat was still talking to him.

[You are quickly devouring Vivasvat’s legends!]

[Your divine domain, ‘Allforone’, is shining brilliantly!]