Chapter 133
Chapter 133
No one called him a hero.
He had simply received the gods’ love, and thus became the axis of the world.
Through countless repetitions of copying the world, over and over again. The only being who pierced through all those worlds, remembering everything.
Sian Terezia became a hero simply because he remembered everything.
Without him, nothing would change.
[Why… isn’t it working?]
[Right?]
[…It even seems to be glitching a bit?]
Unfortunately, Sian Terezia’s world, even as he stood as a hero, was coming undone.
With each repetition, Sian grew stronger, but the demonic beasts also evolved cleverly through the cycles.
Moreover, perhaps due to the reckless repetition and replication, the world’s resolution began breaking down. The cracks birthed another ‘System Error,’ which soon led to demonic beasts never seen before.
<Your Highness the Crown Prince, you must flee. The demonic beasts are swarming!>
<…>
Sian was growing weary.
No. He wasn’t just tired—he had reached a state where he couldn’t even twitch a finger.
When he regressed and once again opened his eyes in the beloved imperial palace, he simply closed them again.
He gave up on everything and went into seclusion.
Even managing a single smile for those who followed him became difficult.
<Brother, what’s wrong with you?>
<They say demonic beasts are coming. We need to run.>
<…>
Even his younger sister, whom he had once been desperate to protect, no longer registered in his sight.
Sian simply remained in the crumbling palace until the final moment, barely breathing in a daze.
<The main palace has fallen!>
<Aah, Your Highness, please flee!>
<The demonic beasts!>
The servant who had rushed to protect this worthless crown prince until the end, still considering him his master, was trampled to death by a demonic beast.
Sian stared blankly at the demonic beast without even wiping the blood that had splattered on his face.
The demonic beast opened its mouth wide, and Sian’s life—he couldn’t even remember which number it was—ended just like that.
Sian wasted several cycles this way.
Idelbach and Arschen knew they needed to do something about Sian’s condition.
But there was nothing they could do.
Everything was glitching as if the world was about to collapse.
Even the gods’ voices barely reached the world.
Sometimes the world would replicate and restart on its own even when Sian hadn’t died, while other times complete blackout phenomena would occur, making it impossible to peer into the world.
[What do we do?]
[It seems out of control.]
[…W-well, we called a system administrator.]
[Let’s wait and hope Sian can hold on until then…]
While the gods repeatedly turned their world’s system on and off amid the chaos, Sian was going through repetition after repetition.
Dozens of times like this.
[They’re here!]
[It’s the administrator!]
[Please fix it, huuu]
[I can fix the system itself, but I can’t fix internal bugs.]
[T-then what do we do about that?]
[You’ll have to handle it internally as best you can.]
However, when Idelbach and Arschen were finally able to access their world again, they discovered something amazing.
Sian Terezia had succeeded in defeating what could be called the core of demonic beasts—a supreme-level demonic beast.
He was barely holding on, sitting by Lake Yusta Winter in the north.
Despite being made of iron, Sian Terezia’s armor was in tatters, soaked in blood—whether his own or his comrades’, it was impossible to tell.
[My goodness…!]
[D-did he win?]
Sian knelt before the beautiful lake that reflected the clear blue sky, his head bowed low, barely managing to stay upright.
He slowly raised his head.
“My gods.”
Sian Terezia was already a complete wreck.
There wasn’t a single uninjured part of him. His left arm was torn and bleeding, and it was questionable whether it could still function.
One eye blinked aimlessly, as if it had lost focus.
In such a wretched state, he called out to the gods with a hoarse voice.
“Did you… finally come to find me now?”
[Sian Terezia.]
“I protected it. I succeeded in protecting the world…”
Sian barely managed to speak. The reality that the voice he had desperately sought for hundreds of years only came after everything was over felt so surreal.
“I… I saved the world, but I couldn’t save the land I truly wanted to protect.”
Only then did the System hurriedly survey the world.
They didn’t know what Sian Terezia had done to save the world.
But there were too many scars everywhere to say he had saved the world. It could be described as half-destroyed.
[…The world has collapsed.]
The continent occupied by the Holy Empire, Obedih, was nowhere to be seen in the world.
That land couldn’t even be described as destroyed or sunken beneath the sea.
It had literally vanished.
Where the continent had been, there was a huge gash like a very long wound, and through that gap, black traces were visible.
Space was completely twisted, and inside was a realm of annihilation.
“I had no choice.”
No matter how many times he repeated, there was no other way.
What could he possibly do to eliminate that overwhelming ‘thing’? He had tried everything.
Even divine power was helpless before ‘it.’
Only in the final moment, with tears falling, did Sian make his unavoidable decision.
Even if it meant abandoning his dearest possession.
He used the world, worn thin by hundreds of repetitions.
“I truly had no choice.”
[…Well done, Sian Terezia.]
“But I… I can’t stand myself.”
[Terezia.]
“I can’t accept consoling myself that I had no choice.”
Sian clenched his teeth.
He would try to get angry, but his emotions were too worn down, leaving his mind blank. As he struggled to accept everything, he felt both a quiet relief that the endless loop had ended and a piercing despair at the thought that his beloved homeland might be gone forever.
“…My gods.”
[Sian, you did well.]
“I… now… enough.”
Whether his strength had given out, Sian Terezia’s body slowly tilted.
And when he completely collapsed, his body sank slowly into Lake Yusta Winter—the beginning of everything—with a splash.
He looked at the beautifully rippling blue sky and thought:
Now he wanted to rest forever.
[What do we do?]
[For now… let’s wait while he recovers.]
[Right? We can’t let a hero die like this.]
And a thousand years later.
Sian Terezia awakened from a very long dreamless sleep.
‘Ah…’
He felt despair as he opened his eyes.
‘I have to live like this again.’
* * *
“What the hell… is this?”
How could such a shoddy and ridiculous world exist?
I staggered up from the chair. When I checked the clock on the desk, no time had passed at all.
It felt overwhelming.
I had witnessed an incredibly long span of time following Sian Terezia.
It was hard to keep my balance from the dizziness.
I barely managed a few steps and collapsed onto the bed.
[SYSTEM | You have completed viewing the first story of ‘The Destruction of the World’.]
I mulled over Sian’s life, which I had experienced as vividly as if I had lived it myself.
“…”
I came to understand that the world doesn’t collapse in an instant—it falls apart slowly, not all at once.
Be it a secret or the world’s structure itself, I felt I grasped the nature of this place I stood in.
“This place… was literally a world programmed like a game.”
[Not exactly… it’s a real world.]
[It’s just that the way of designing the world happens to be very much like programming.]
“…”
The fact that Sian wasn’t a regressor who repeated time loops, but simply the only being with all memories in a replicated world, made me sad.
He didn’t save the world because he was a hero, but because if he didn’t save it, he would have to live there forever—he saved the world in order to die.
“So he couldn’t even save the world he wanted to save the most.”
I understood why he had cried out for his homeland like a madman, speaking of Obedih that no longer remained even in history.
I understood why he hated and resented the gods so much.
“…And yet Sian loves this place.”
Even after helping Leilyranda because he disliked this place, he ultimately promised to help me because he loved it here.
Thinking of the pain he must have endured to make such a choice made my heart feel terribly heavy.
[Irina.]
“I find the System a bit overwhelming now.”
[But I won’t harm you.]
“Then what am I?”
Sian was forced to become a regressor and had no choice but to save the world, thus becoming a hero.
The birth of a hero is cruel.
So what am I?
In the current world, there’s already one regressor, and there’s also someone like me who possessed from another world. Even the hero designated in the original game knows nothing.
So what happens to this place?
Ding!
[SYSTEM | The second story of ‘Secrets of the World’ begins.]
