Seoul Cyberpunk Story-Chapter 110: True Dragon (3)

[Bye.]

That brief farewell echoed within my consciousness as I woke up.

‘...’

Reality was still cold and suffocating.

Blue spiderwebs constricted my entire body, and the sticky sensation burrowed into my skin like a living creature.

Nothing seemed different compared to the moment before I lost consciousness in the pain.

‘Doesn’t seem like anything’s changed...’

My shadows continued to push against the webs relentlessly, but it was like trying to scoop seawater with bare hands—completely futile.

The only faint comfort was that the situation wasn’t getting worse.

A more complete foresight, huh...

The last gift left behind by that once clueless child.

But what use could that possibly be in this hopeless situation?

Lately, my instincts had become unnervingly sharp—that must’ve been fragments of that so-called ‘foresight.’ But could having sharper instincts alone really help me overcome this overwhelming sea of webs?

Just as that thought began to tangle inside my head—

Suddenly, my thoughts stretched outward to somewhere else.

There was no resistance. It flowed naturally, like water rolling downhill.

And then, as if receiving a revelation, an illusion began to unfold before me.

I couldn’t tell when or where this illusion was.

Time and space were both vague, distorted.

But there was one thing I knew for certain.

This illusion was reflecting me.

It could be me from the future, me from the past, or even a version of me from some alternate possibility.

But the fact that it was me was beyond question.

After all, what I called intuition was inherently personal.

I was pulled into the illusion like that.

****

The planet reflected in the vision was utter chaos.

It wasn’t Babel, but at the same time, it had an eerily familiar structure.

The world was fragmented like the districts of Babel, each piece governed by different physical laws and flows of time.

In some places, gravity acted sideways. In others, time flowed backward.

Light bent unnaturally, sound turned into color, scents took on physical form—each area connecting like mismatched puzzle pieces.

Then, certain regions caught my attention.

The first was a place shrouded in thick, crimson fog so dense you couldn’t distinguish any terrain. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

But this fog wasn’t some ordinary weather phenomenon.

It pulsed, writhed, and seemed to crave something constantly.

Occasionally, formless shadows drifted through the mist, and with each passing shadow, the space itself warped unnaturally.

There were no bizarre masks, but I knew this red fog well—it was the same as what I’d seen within the Corrosion Bomb’s domain.

The second was land wrapped in blue mist and blue spiderwebs.

That domain belonged to a being I remembered clearly.

The very same entity I was still fighting beyond this illusion.

With just those two environments, I could deduce one terrifying fact.

If the beings from the Color Universe fully took root, Babel would inevitably end up like this as well.

Countless other regions appeared before my eyes.

A desert scorched by a mechanical sun.

A lake where relentless rain fell, shrouding everything beyond an arm's reach.

A jungle so dense not even a single step could °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° be taken.

A field where time and space shattered like flower petals.

Each domain reflected the nature of the Outer Gods that ruled over them.

They all shared one brutal truth.

Every single one was utterly uninhabitable for humans.

And yet, shockingly, humans still survived.

Massive fortress walls, soldiers armed with spears and blades—

In the narrow cracks between the Outer Gods’ domains, where clashing laws canceled each other out, humanity built cities and civilization.

This world, ruled by the Outer Gods, looked like pure chaos at first glance.

But on closer inspection, it was strangely stable.

The reason was simple.

The Outer Gods were content to maintain control over their own territories and refrained from invading each other’s domains.

Like predators marking their territory to avoid needless conflict, the Outer Gods maintained silent, unspoken boundaries.

That is, except for the occasional moment when other Outer Gods fell from the Color Universe above.

And so, those eerily peaceful days continued—

Until the boundary of the Color Universe tore open, and something fell through.

At first, I thought it was just another Outer God.

But I quickly realized this being was entirely different from anything before.

It was an Outer God... without a domain.

Or rather, an Outer God that had no need for one.

A massive black figure slowly revealed itself.

A face where only two blazing white eyes could be seen.

A halo burning white, connected to its heart.

Long, slender arms ending in sharp claws.

And legs, anchored deep into the ground like roots.

The black giant that descended onto the land stood still for a moment.

As if surveying the world, or perhaps selecting prey.

And then, it began to move.

The black giant headed straight for the nearest Outer God's domain.

That was a place ruled by a river where time flowed like water.

The river, blending past and future together, would normally disperse intruders across thousands of different timelines, rendering them powerless.

But it didn’t work on the black giant.

The giant simply reached out and grabbed the river of time.

It literally seized hold of time itself.

Time, which should’ve been formless, dripped from the giant’s hand like sticky tar.

And then, the giant brought it to its mouth.

The sound of time being chewed echoed through the air.

A physically impossible sound, yet within the illusion, it rang out with eerie clarity.

The Outer God that ruled the river of time only attempted to flee after that—but it couldn’t escape the black giant’s grip.

And that was only the beginning.

The black giant attacked the Outer Gods indiscriminately.

No, it wasn’t so much an attack as it was pure consumption.

The Outer Gods were helpless.

When they hid within domains saturated with their own rules, the black giant simply tore those domains apart.

When they fragmented reality, hiding within countless overlapping dimensions, the black giant fixed all the layers into one and bit down.

Even when they unleashed flames capable of burning Outer Gods themselves, the black giant adapted instantly and devoured the fire whole.

It was overwhelming power, pure and simple.

Strange spaces that enforced bizarre laws, twisted realities governed by abnormal authority—none of it mattered.

The black giant subdued each Outer God, one by one, with nothing but raw, absolute might.

The Outer Gods’ responses varied.

The red mist, caught by the giant, hurled countless other Outer Gods as bait and managed to escape.

The frog-like being, exhaling freezing air from its many faces, barely escaped, leaving most of its faces behind.

The Outer God of blue mist and webs panicked when its threads vanished into the void, retreating to the Color Universe in haste.

One by one, the Outer Gods vanished.

Either consumed, or fleeing.

At last, when the final Outer God disappeared into the black giant’s belly, the world fell silent.

The grotesque domains the Outer Gods had created began to collapse.

Twisted physical laws returned to normal, warped time and space realigned.

And the black giant still stood there, unmoving.

That’s where the illusion ended.

****

The moment I woke from the illusion, everything had changed.

Or more precisely, I had changed.

The way I saw the world, the way I wielded power, the very structure of my existence—everything had fundamentally transformed.

The black giant's battle I witnessed in the illusion hadn’t just been a spectacle.

It had been a revelation, a lesson, a key to awakening.

When I clenched my fist, the space around me reacted.

My shadow writhed like a living thing, gripping space itself.

Just as the black giant had seized time, my shadow could now easily grasp the formless.

It came as naturally as breathing.

‘This is... strange...’

Just from witnessing a single illusion, I could change this much?

But thinking about it, it made perfect sense.

I had always possessed the potential to fight like that black giant.

The ability to grip space—I already had that.

After all, I’d forcibly seized the domain of the Corrosion Bomb before.

The devouring power capable of consuming all—I had that, too.

Just like when I devoured pizza despite lacking organs, the countless fragments composing my body constantly absorbed all matter.

The illusion merely assembled the puzzle pieces for me.

Scattered abilities fused into one cohesive force, becoming an entirely new dimension of power.

Before I knew it, I was enveloped in a warm, comfortable shadow.

I closed my eyes, sinking deep into my mind.

And I remembered.

Myself, transformed into the black giant.

An overwhelming size, a presence that devoured everything, pure and absolute strength itself.

And at that moment, the change began.

A pixelated white halo materialized above my head.

From the circle embedded in my chest, white light began to spill out.

That light coursed through my entire body, reconstructing every single cell.

And I stood up.

No—rather than standing up, I rose.

Tearing through the blue web cocoon, sprouting upward like a seed breaking through the earth, I emerged over Babel in the form of the black giant.