I spat the lump of blood that had surged up onto the ground.

[Your incarnation body has reached its limit!]

There. With this, the objective was achieved.

The fact that I was stubbornly enduring pain that would normally have been more than enough to make me faint was proof of that.

[Exclusive skill, ‘Fourth Wall’, is currently in operation!]

The fact that this wall had activated meant that the readers I had absorbed, and my backer constellation, had safely entered the ‘Library’.

[Tale, ‘Successor of the Eternal Name’, glares at you with displeased eyes.]

At the grumbling tale, I answered with a bitter smile.

'Thanks.'

If that stubborn tale guy hadn’t cooperated, it would have been impossible to restore the [Fourth Wall].

[Tale, ‘Successor of the Eternal Name’, snorts and turns its head.]

[Your current existence restoration rate is 18.8%.]

The existence restoration rate had risen to nearly 20%. I could feel that the rank of my soul had greatly risen compared to before.

[Great Nebula, <Asgard>, perceives your existence as a threat!]

[Great Nebula, <Veda>, designates you as a singularity!]

The level of my rank had risen to the point where I could no longer avoid the constellations’ attention. That was the case even though I still couldn’t properly control the tales inside me.

[Tale, ‘King of a World Without a King’, is rampaging as it pleases!]

[Tale, ‘One Who Fights Against Miracles’, slips out of your control!]

Since I had inherited intact the abilities my hyung, the Demon King of Salvation, had possessed, perhaps it was only natural.

Gasping for breath, I tried to calm the tales.

[Tale fragment, ‘Twisted Unrequited Love’, wavers unstably!]

[Tale fragment, ‘Youth Who Speaks Like an Old Man’, churns violently!]

[Tale, ‘Heart of a Child’, slips out of your control and runs wild!]

Tales that it still felt awkward to call my own.

Among them were Gu Seonah’s, Kim Kyungsik’s, and tales belonging to unnamed readers.

Some of those tales had such fierce side effects that they were simply impossible to absorb, and Gu Seonah’s tale was especially like that.

[Agitation] went berserk, and the rampaging rank recklessly extended outward, touching the <Hermes System> of <Olympus>.

Thanks to that, the hero-grade constellations from <Olympus> who had invaded the Recycling Center were all annihilated in one blow, so in the end, maybe it turned out well.

[Great Nebula, <Olympus>’s constellations reveal their hatred toward you!]

With this, I had to see myself as having become irreconcilable with <Olympus>.

Well, it didn’t matter. They were bastards who were trying to kill me anyway.

“Dokja!”

Hearing the voices of my companions running toward me, I barely managed to hold on to my fraying consciousness.

[Main Scenario #20 – ‘Graduation Ceremony’ has ended.]

The scenario had definitely ended. But not everything was over yet.

Just as what comes after graduation is more important than the graduation itself, what was going to happen to me from now on was more important.

[You have received the epithet of ‘Demon King of Salvation’.]

[<Star Stream> recognizes you as the ‘Demon King of Salvation’.]

[The role of ‘Great Demon King’ is succeeded!]

[The fate that had been delayed activates.]

[A certain enormous Fate is hoping for your death!]

The Backlash of Plausibility whipped through my entire body.

[You have succeeded in the scenario.]

[You have failed in the scenario.]

Messages that appeared at the same time. Their meaning was obvious.

As an incarnation I had succeeded in the scenario, but as a constellation I had failed it.

Because—

[Constellation, ‘Demon King of Salvation’, accepts his Fate.]

Because just now, I had become the ‘Demon King of Salvation’.

“What the hell is this—”

The moment Gyeong Sein, her eyes widened, reached out toward me, a massive spark flew up.

“U-uhk?”

My body slowly began to float into the air.

“Dokja, why are you—”

Gyeong Sein blankly looked up at my abdomen.

“Why are you, on the Heaven-Piercing ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ Cloud Sword…”

My lower abdomen was pierced by the Heaven-Piercing Cloud Sword. Instead of the vanished Great Demon King’s incarnation body, the Heaven-Piercing Cloud Sword was skewering me.

「This was the price of inheriting the fables of the ‘Demon King of Salvation’.」

“Wasn’t, wasn’t the scenario over?”

Gyeong Sein and Uncle Dansoo were flustered.

I quietly looked down at the two and smiled.

They were people I was grateful to for having survived all the way here. Now they had become incarnations who could pull their own weight. Even if I wasn’t here, they would somehow survive. They would be able to get through the next scenario, and the scenario after that.

“Yes. It’s all over.”

I felt my body slowly being sucked backward. A fissure that had opened in midair was drawing my body in.

「Where does a Demon King who loses a scenario go.」

If I had been offered up to the scenario like my backer constellation, I would have died on the spot here.

But I hadn’t been offered up to the scenario. I had only inherited his [Fate].

So even if I was pierced by the Heaven-Piercing Cloud Sword, I wouldn’t die here.

“Dokja!”

“No! Dokja! Stop!”

I would only be banished to a place where the possibility of death was extremely high.

Waving my hand to calm my companions, I spoke.

“Don’t worry! I’m not going to die! This is just—”

“Do you think we’re idiots?”

Killer King shouted sharply and pushed through the Backlash of Plausibility to grab my arm.

“You bastard, what the hell did you do. Why is the scenario banishing you!”

As expected, it seemed I couldn’t fool the dear readers.

“Everyone grab on! Don’t you dare let this punk go!”

It was the first time I had seen Killer King get this worked up.

Looking at him, I said,

“Cha Sungwoo.”

Cha Sungwoo flinched in surprise and looked at me.

I suddenly found myself thinking that a lot had happened since meeting him. But if you asked whether we’d talked as much as that, we hadn’t.

We didn’t know much about each other.

Where we’d originally lived, what food we liked, what games we enjoyed, what we thought about before going to sleep after a hard day’s work.

We knew nothing about each other.

There was only one thing we shared. That we had read the same story, and admired the same person.

“Get a grip. You’re their Yu Joonghyuk.”

At my words, Cha Sungwoo’s body trembled as if he’d been struck by lightning.

A person with the patience to read a single story a hundred times. Someone with an indomitable spirit that wouldn’t waver no matter what trials he faced.

My companions needed a pillar like that.

“Shut up! Kim Dokja, what the hell do you know—”

With a ripping sound, the sleeve he was holding tore. The fissure pulled me in even more strongly. Just as I was about to be swallowed up into the fissure, a web that flew in from midair bound my body tight.

[Arachne’s Spiderweb].

It was Ji Eunyu.

At the same time, my companions, each holding a strand of the web, started pulling me.

“Pull! Hurry!”

I looked at my companions hauling on the web I was hanging from.

Cha Sungwoo. Cha Yerin. Gyeong Sein. Lee Dansoo. And Ji Eunyu.

Behind Ji Eunyu, Shin Yuseung was also pulling on the rope. Lee Jihye and Lee Hyunsung, who had joined late, were there as well. I could even see Kim Namwoon tugging the rope with one hand as if it were a hassle.

And a little distance away was Jung Heewon, who was just starting to open her eyes. Perhaps because it was still hard for her to move, Jung Heewon was staggering as she reached her hand out toward us.

I looked at her like that, then looked back at my companions and grinned.

“Come on now, don’t worry, everyone. I’m not going to die. I promise!”

This was why I never wanted to be the ‘Demon King of Salvation’.

“Don’t make that kind of promise! In a place like this, if you say something like that you absolutely—”

I knew how deep and far-reaching the ‘salvation’ contained in that epithet was.

Even so, I had received that epithet, and unfortunately, my companions had now become the Demon King of Salvation’s companions.

The gradually stretching spiderweb began to snap one strand at a time, as if the stories that tied us together were unraveling.

“No!”

The web Ji Eunyu was holding snapped.

I spoke toward Ji Eunyu as she receded.

―Ji Eunyu. You’ve always said it.

I really had no intention of dying.

Because I had no intention of dying, this farewell had to be refreshing.

―That if emotion is excessive, it actually interferes with the readers’ immersion.

I could hear Ji Eunyu shouting something from far away, but I couldn’t make out the words.

[You have been expelled from the scenario!]

Pitch-black darkness covered me. A place where no star could see me.

Right after, an intense cold rushed in. It was a chill that was hard to endure even with the [Fourth Wall] in place.

[Tale, ‘King of a World Without a King’, resists the cold!]

[Tale, ‘One Who Fights Against Miracles’, resists the cold!]

[Tale, ‘Demon King of Salvation’, resists the cold!]

The sharp cold began to dig into the tales wrapped around me. I could feel, in real time, the tales that formed the constellation ‘Demon King of Salvation’ freezing over.

[The movements of the tales are slowing.]

What was happening was obvious.

「The constellation ‘Demon King of Salvation’ will die within the story he loved.」

This was the end that awaited the constellation ‘Demon King of Salvation’. And once I perished as a constellation, my incarnation body, already weakened to the limit, would begin to disappear as well.

Just then, along with a faint warmth, a voice was heard.

―You.

Because I knew whose voice it was, I answered with a faint smile.

'Bihyung.'

―You son of a bitch.

[Dokkaebi Communication]. Even that seemed on the verge of being cut off; Bihyung’s voice coming through was unstable.

I briefly stated my business.

'Can I receive the item I requested to purchase earlier.'

As the original author of 『Infinite Warden』, I had been able to receive a huge coin royalty the entire time I was active in the scenario as an author privilege.

I had spent more than half of the coins I’d obtained to buy a single item.

―You know this… is originally an item that can’t be sold, right?

'I know'.

―Buying this doesn’t mean you’re going to survive.

Bihyung surely knew as well. At this point, I was going to die with an extremely high probability.

Both as a constellation and as an incarnation.

'You should go now. If you stay here too long, they’ll get suspicious.'

―Stay alive somehow, you idi…!

Bihyung’s voice was cut off.

The cold rushed in again.

[Tale, ‘King of a World Without a King’, stops its story.]

Every time one tale lost its function, it felt like each joint of my body was coming apart.

With my pale, frozen hand, I checked the item Bihyung had given me.

It was a small horn flute.

'Horn of the Horizon.'

An item that sends its user to the ‘Horizon of the Story’.

I drew my frozen breaths a few times, then poured all the breath I had left into the horn.

[You use the item, ‘Horn of the Horizon’!]

Soon, along with the small sound of the flute, my body began to fall somewhere. Falling, falling, and falling again. After who knew how long of that, when I came to my senses, I was on a cold dirt floor.

I suddenly raised my upper body from the ground.

Through the blurry surroundings, I could see a garbage dump.

My stomach churned and I felt like I might cry.

I had survived. Somehow, I had made it here.

「Horizon of the Story」.

I wouldn’t die. I would absolutely survive and return to my companions. And then I would change Kim Dokja’s story.

The moment I looked up at the sky with that thought, the night sky that should have had nothing in it flashed. Lightning bounced several times and struck the ground, and then something descended to the earth.

They were the constellations of <Olympus>.

[This is as far as you go, young Demon King. Now, no one can protect you.]

I let out a bitter smile.

“Well, damn.”

I hadn’t thought those bastards would chase me all the way to a place that wasn’t even a ‘scenario sector’—more precisely, all the way to this landfill.

“They must really be pissed.”

I wrung out the last of my strength and raised my tales. Right after, it felt as if my heart had stopped.

[Tale, ‘One Who Fights Against Miracles’, stops its story.]

[Tale, ‘Demon King of Salvation’, stops its story.]

[All the tales of the constellation, ‘Demon King of Salvation’, stop their stories.]

I felt strength draining from my entire body, and then my body flopped forward. At last, the tales of the ‘Demon King of Salvation’ had spent themselves.

[Your Fate is being realized!]

[Constellation, ‘Demon King of Salvation’, loses the qualification of a constellation!]

[The epithet of the constellation, ‘Demon King of Salvation’, disappears from the star constellation!]

A cold on a completely different level from before pierced into my skin.

I could see the constellations, laughing at me, stepping toward me one step at a time.

They really were vicious bastards. I would die even if they left me alone, yet they had gone out of their way to come all the way here to finish me off.

In the dim surroundings, I could see letters drifting around them.

They were tales I knew well.

Belatedly, I understood several things. The reason they had been able to maintain a healthy Great Nebula even while so recklessly invading the Lower Scenarios.

「Those bastards had already collected a considerable amount of ‘Kim Dokja fragments’.」

And just like Asmodeus had, they had somehow figured out how to use them.

A faint sense of despair washed over me. This time, I felt like there was nothing I could do.

I even thought that if I’d known it would be like this, I should have just given my tales to Ji Eunyu or Killer King before coming here.

But I couldn’t give up until the very end. The moment I thought that I should somehow activate [Agitation] and at least wag my tongue a bit—

“■■. ■■■ ■■■…!”

I heard someone babbling something. When I lifted my head, I saw a familiar figure. A man in a black coat holding a long spear was glaring at me.

Yu Joonghyuk?

For a moment, I couldn’t understand.

How could Yu Joonghyuk be here.

He should have cleared the scenario by now and returned to Earth, so why—

[The current target is carrying out a ‘Personal Scenario’.]

A Personal Scenario. A scenario a constellation could specially bestow on incarnations who had cleared the scenario after the 10th.

If someone had bestowed a Personal Scenario on Yu Joonghyuk, his appearance wasn’t impossible.

But who in the world would take such a risk right now.

There couldn’t possibly be a crazy constellation who would chase all the way to a scenario expulsion zone, defy the will of the Great Nebulae, and grant Yu Joonghyuk a ‘Personal Scenario’—

“You think living like that feels good? You f■cking bast■rds.”

Wait a second. Had Yu Joonghyuk… ever cursed like that?

Behind Yu Joonghyuk, I could see white wings rippling.

A belated sigh leaked out.

There was one person.

A constellation who cursed roughly with a face more beautiful than any constellation I knew.

[Constellation, ‘Demonic Judge of Fire’, does not wish for your death.]