Watching the stars falling out of the sky, Anna Croft swallowed over and over.

In truth, she had seen the sight of stars falling countless times, and it wasn’t particularly shocking. Besides, her dream was to one day bring down every star in that sky and welcome a 「Perfect Night」.

That was why she threw herself into <Asgard> and became the nebula’s representative incarnation.

To bring down stars, you had to use the power of stars.

That was the answer she had arrived at after reading the future. And perhaps because of that—

She couldn’t take her eyes off the scene in the sky right now.

The ruin of the night sky without borrowing the power of stars. Not once had she ever thought a pure human strength could accomplish that dream.

“Cheon Inho. Is this the final chapter you dreamed of?”

The worst villain she had ever known.

A man who had been humanity’s enemy more than anyone—she couldn’t understand why he had committed such a bizarre act at the very end.

“Cheon Inho.”

When she called the name, the slender man slung on her back trembled slightly.

Was he having a nightmare? Or did that name carry some bad memory for him?

“Cheon Inho. We’re here. The Ark is just ahead.”

“……”

“It worked, just like your plan.”

A shooting star fell again from the sky. Avoiding the fragments with [Future Sight] active, she muttered,

“You need to get up now. Even my [Future Sight] has limits. I can’t read every future.”

“……”

“Cheon Inho.”

The man still didn’t move.

Anna Croft hesitated for a moment, then asked,

“Are you… really Cheon Inho?”

In fact, Anna Croft knew. This man wasn’t Cheon Inho. The worst villain she knew was not this man.

Her instinct—her “Great Devil’s Eyes”—was testifying to that.

Then who was he?

After hesitating, Anna Croft opened her mouth again. It was a name the man had once told her.

“Kim Dokja.”

At that name, the man shuddered again. And Anna, the one who spoke it, bit her lip without meaning to.

Why?

The instant she said that name, she felt strange.

[Guaaaaaaaaaah!]

Indra roared in the sky.

Snapping back to herself, Anna Croft hurriedly looked around. Taking advantage of the chaos, Constellations who had spotted them were screaming at the top of their lungs.

[They’re entering the Ark!]

[Don’t let them get away!]

So they’d been found out.

Her [Future Sight], still active in real time, was warning her of danger again.

She ran with Cheon Inho on her back. The ground exploded, and incoming arrows grazed her cheek. Sometimes she got swept up in storms of sword energy fired by transcendents.

But she was a prophet. As long as people called her a prophet, she had to fulfill that role. It was also repayment for the man who had summoned her to this battlefield.

She ran and ran again.

Now there wasn’t even ten meters left to the Ark.

[Constellation, ‘God of Wine and Ecstasy,’ descends to the ground!]

And a story-grade Constellation blocked her path.

Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy.

Just facing him made her knees go weak—the bloodline of Zeus, who claimed to be the strongest among the Twelve Seat Gods.

The moment he, holding a bottle with a languid face, looked this way, the power of [Future Sight] cut out right on cue.

“Ah.”

Anna Croft flailed like someone hanging off the edge of a cliff.

Just a little more.

But she couldn’t see the future. How was she supposed to shake this Constellation?

[You want to go inside?]

As if teasing her, Dionysus asked. She knew he had no reason to let her through. Even so, Anna Croft nodded.

[If you go in, you’ll die. You know who’s inside, don’t you?]

“Even so, I have to go in.”

[Why?]

“Because that’s the correct ending for this worldline.”

[Yeah? And what exactly is that ‘correct ending’?]

“I don’t know.”

[You don’t know?]

Instead of answering, Anna Croft felt the body heat of the man clinging to her back. The only one who knew what it was might be this man.

“Cheon Inho. Wake up.”

When was the last time she’d taken a gamble without seeing the future?

“I’m fine if you call me Kim Anna. Just wake up already.”

With one hand holding up Cheon Inho on her back, Anna Croft drew a dagger with the other.

A single moment was enough. If she used everything she had and created just one moment’s opening, she could at least throw Cheon Inho into the Ark.

The instant Anna Croft hardened her resolve and released the full status of her body—

“Enough with the jokes.”

A man in a pitch-black coat appeared behind Dionysus.

He reached out toward Anna Croft, who stumbled back in shock.

“Come up.”

Anna Croft stared blankly up at Yoo Joonghyuk, then hesitantly reached out her hand as well and said,

“So you were alive, Tyrant King.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s large, solid hand seized her wrist and pulled her up onto the Ark in a single motion.

Having finally caught her breath, Anna looked back and forth between Yoo Joonghyuk and Dionysus and asked,

“Then why are you with that one? Don’t tell me you’ve decided to stand with <Olympus> now, of all times.”

“Did you see a future like that?”

She hadn’t. And the man in front of her—he might regress, but he wasn’t someone who would betray his companions like that.

With his usual indifferent eyes, Yoo Joonghyuk glanced at Dionysus and said,

“It’s just that bastard’s whim.”

As if reacting to his words, Dionysus grinned and shrugged.

It was something Anna couldn’t understand. She knew Dionysus was a weirdo god, but even so—he was Zeus’s bloodline.

But Yoo Joonghyuk looked like he didn’t care about any of that.

“If it’s a trap, we can just kill him when the time comes.”

“So you make the {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} choice, and we share the consequences?”

Letting out a light sigh, Anna Croft realized anew that her heart was pounding.

She didn’t know why. Was it because the instigator, the Tyrant King, and the prophet were all gathered in one place now?

「Maybe this moment could be a rehearsal for the ending of the 41st round.」

Even knowing it was an unrealistic thought, Anna Croft couldn’t help thinking it.

But Yoo Joonghyuk, as if he had no interest in Anna Croft’s thoughts, looked at the man on her back and asked,

“Why did he end up like that?”

“Let’s talk while we move.”

“Follow me.”

Yoo Joonghyuk seemed to already know where the “story nucleus” was. Maybe Dionysus had passed him the relevant information.

“Is that Constellation coming too?”

“He won’t interfere. He promised. More importantly, you still haven’t answered my question.”

“Cheon Inho is…”

Anna Croft added, doing her best to make her explanation sound as little ridiculous as possible.

“He became like this making dumplings.”

“Dumplings?”

“It’s a food called Murim Dumplings. Do you know it?”

Yoo Joonghyuk nodded.

“How many did he make?”

“About a thousand.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression hardened. From that alone, he fully understood the situation.

“So that’s why he ended up like this.”

Even at a glance, Cheon Inho’s complexion was pale. Anna Croft, checking him as well, answered,

“He repeated the same thing for an entire week. He made dumplings, used [Summon the Dead], and fed them to the ones who came back.”

“So that’s how the transcendents got status like that.”

“Here—he said to give you one too, just in case.”

Yoo Joonghyuk received a Murim Dumpling from Anna. The dumpling made from memory was still steaming as if it had just been made. It was probably the thousandth dumpling he’d made.

Tucking it away, Yoo Joonghyuk asked,

“Then what’s his next plan?”

Bringing the transcendents was excellent, and infiltrating all the way to the Ark wasn’t bad.

The problem was from here on out.

The “myth-grade Constellations” waiting for them inside the Ark. The story-grade Constellations still fighting outside were strong, but if they had no way to face myth-grade Constellations, they had no chance at all.

But Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t worried. If it was that guy, he would have thought of something.

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“He never told me the plan after this.”

Yoo Joonghyuk glared at Anna with a look like he couldn’t believe it.

“I’m waking him up right now.”

He reached toward the back of the sleeping Cheon Inho’s neck—then froze.

Since when?

Dionysus, who had been trailing behind them, was nowhere to be seen.

A faint true word drifted into Yoo Joonghyuk’s ear.

[Sorry, but I can’t help you this time. It’s different from Hermes’ case.]

It was then that Anna Croft’s eyes emitted a red glow.

“Yoo Joonghyuk.”

But before she could even spit out her warning, the future fell on them.

“Tyrant King! Run!”

A stream of blood burst from the veins in her eyes as she screamed desperately.

But even Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t move this time.

A status that made resistance itself impossible—one that wouldn’t let him move even a single heel.

Yoo Joonghyuk knew a few Constellations with a presence like this.

And he understood exactly whose power it was.

“Zeus.”

The moment he said the name, Yoo Joonghyuk felt an unprecedented force tearing him apart whole.

Even Anna Croft beside him collapsed, gasping for breath.

“We have to run! Now!”

But this wasn’t a situation where that was possible.

In that brief instant, Yoo Joonghyuk looked back on his arduous life.

He had seen Zeus’s incarnation body a few times before, too. He knew Zeus was strong. He’d almost died countless times—and he had actually died, too.

But even after facing Zeus again and again, Yoo Joonghyuk had never once experienced the true power of the Constellation called “Zeus.”

「This was the status of a real ‘myth-grade Constellation.’」

A presence that forced every living thing to submit.

A myth-grade Constellation was pouring out its entire presence toward the Ark’s intruders.

This was the power of Zeus, pinnacle of the three chief gods of <Olympus>, the seat of lightning.

[Foolish things.]

Just hearing the true word made it feel like his breath would snap.

[You came to death on your own feet.]

The man who had fought tooth and nail against four story-grade Constellations couldn’t move even a finger now.

Yoo Joonghyuk realized what Zeus, at full power, was trying to do.

An unseen, gigantic hand was wrapping around his head. He felt his skull—one Hermes’ story-grade metal couldn’t open—splitting with a grinding sound.

Zeus was opening his head to pull out his soul.

Kugugugugugu!

Yoo Joonghyuk’s soul was currently under the ownership of his sponsoring Constellation. And Zeus was craving his soul even if it meant defying that ownership.

Borrowing the power of other myth-grade Constellations, consuming the enormous plausibility stockpiled in the Final Ark, Zeus was trying to uncover his secret.

「Why do you not die.」

Amid the violent sparks of plausibility, Zeus’s thoughts came through in fragments.

「Why are worldlines reorganized around you.」

「Goblins, Constellations, incarnations—everything in this universe—」

The colossal question of a myth-grade Constellation thundered in his head as if it would burst.

「For what do you exist.」

The next moment, the scenery changed.

Yoo Joonghyuk, slumped weakly, looked around at that landscape.

There was a snowfield.

An endless expanse of distant white.

When he looked back, the footprints he had left were imprinted clearly on the snow road.

Somehow, Yoo Joonghyuk felt like he knew where this was. This was… yes.

This was his inner world.

The next moment, as if a pitch-black night was rolling in, the shadow of a gigantic hand fell over the center of the snowfield.

[At last.]

Zeus’s true word, brimming with exhilaration.

By a myth-grade Constellation’s resolve, the secret of this world was about to be opened.

And just as the secret contained in his soul was finally about to be revealed to all—

Tstststststst!

A massive wall of text appeared over the distant snowfield. At the same time, the shadow of the hand advancing toward him collided with the wall.

The next moment, violent sparks burst as if it had been electrocuted.

[Exclusive skill, ‘The Fourth Wall,’ is strongly activated!]