Above Your Head

Vol 2. Chapter 120: The Salvation of God (57)

“As such, your name is.”

He spoke while fading away.

“Dekarma.”

“…..”

I stood dazed for a moment in the darkened world. There were just too many things in my mind.

‘What does this… mean?’

Until now, I assumed that the administrator became the Machine God after his downfall. Then, he would have met my mother after being fatally wounded by the Martial God Dark. However, what I saw told a different story.

I remembered Dekarma’s words.

- Hahaha! Trash… Right! Definitely trash. Because you cut off your pride and sins and threw it all out!

He was referring to himself with ridicule. Just as Kronos separated his sins and arrogance, the administrator also cut off his antipathy and disgust for the Creation God.

A new scene appeared from the darkness.

A man was lying in the middle of Myeong-dong, a street which was full of people. I could not see the man’s lower body anywhere, and a fist mark the size of a head was clearly imprinted on his chest.

He was crying.

It was not because he was in pain, nor was it because of his anger towards the Martial God for making a mess of everything. He cut off his own soul to return to the father. He slumbered in his Godly Artifact for a long time, and he came to his senses the moment his scraps was about to be killed. Why would he care for the goals of the scraps?

He was now a completely innocent being.

But… When he woke up, he realized that all had been for naught.

Because he was abandoned.

“Keukeukeu… Hahahahaha!”

Tears fell down his mortal body. He knew that the position of the administrator existed no longer. The great status of the God of Information and Civilization was scattered into pieces. Above all… Asura, who was like his brother, was dead. The father had let it pass. No, he had practically approved it.

“Hahaha…”

Even if he still possessed a great Divine Spirit, he was an abandoned being. He did everything to return to the father, but the father forgot about his existence. To be more exact, it would be more appropriate to say that the father no longer cared. Since the father was the world itself, there was no way he would actually forget anything.

“Hey… are you okay?”

A girl approached his slumped figure. She was the only one who could recognize him among the countless people – a flower planted among humans to prepare for the destruction of the world.

That is how they met.

“No!!!”

Booom!

The scene was falling apart. Before I knew it, I was back in the Inner World.

In front of me, Dekarma was standing with a heavily distorted face.

“I am a fake? I… I am just an abandoned piece of shit?”

Uwooooo!

Uwooooooooo!!

A strong current of air swirled throughout the Inner World, as if a typhoon was brewing. Dekarma cried out.

“Ridiculous! You are lying!”

I looked at him in the face and spoke.

“Then why Dekarma?”

De karma.

It was a Buddhist term. To explain, it referred to the karma that one brought upon themselves from the evil deeds they committed in their previous lives… In fact, it was rather an unusual name for the Machine God.

“Because I am the one who goes against fate!”

“Don’t just make things up. If that were the case, you should at least remember the time you were given the name, right?”

Dekarma’s expression turned pale at my words. He had been looking down at me until now as if he had been superior, but some emotions could finally be found.

“You….!!”

Dekarma lunged at me while grinding his teeth.

Fwooosh!

But as soon as he neared, the distance between us quickly expanded. Before I knew it, Myeong-wol stood next to me holding his staff.

“What an incredible presence. Even though this place is akin to my own house… I feel dizzy just meeting his gaze.”

Fwoooosh!

Dekarma rushed back before being pushed away again. Myeong-wol spoke.

“As you know, I can only buy you some time.”

“Didn’t you say it was a good thing that he was connected me before?”

Myeong-wol gestured with his head at my words. As I turned my head, I could see the outside situation.

Father? Are you all right? Get a hold of yourself. Father!

“I don’t know what’s going on, but he’s weakened! This is it! Let’s deliver the final blow!”

“Unified skill activation…”

Gigantes took a step back before curling up.

“All Master.”

Woooong!

In an instant, Gigantes split into seven. One held a celestial blade, another a bow, and yet another a staff. One had its fists covered with the Demon God Armor and charged forward.

That was not all.

“Mirror that reflects endlessly! Go beyond your limits and shine! 17 months of endless world!”

Wooong!

Seven new Gigantes appeared on the other side of Dekarma. It was not an illusion. All of them were material existences with the same power as the original.

A total of 14 Gigantes charged at Hawa. Hawa had held the advantage all this time, but the balance was quickly destroyed as Gigantes attacked with 14 times its original power.

“Do you see? This is what I planned to do originally. Just buying some time! It’s not easy to keep pushing him back when he charges like… Keugh!”

Fwooosh!

Myeong-wol swung his staff once more, and Dekarma was pushed away.

“Hoo… Ha…”

Myeong-wol’s breathing was becoming rough, and his body was getting blurry. Beyond him,

“Huh?”

I could see an old monk seated in a meditative position.

But it was only a corpse with bones and skin.

“…Myeong-wol. That is…”

“It is inevitable. Mere humans are not meant to see and interfere with the flow of karma.”

Fwooosh!

He pushed back Dekarma once again. His blurry figure fluctuated even more.

‘We can’t hold on like this.’

Originally, I should have held an overwhelming advantage, since this was my Inner World. However… the Divine Spirit of Dekarma nullified any advantages. A mutt was fearless in its own house, but it could not win against a tiger.

Of course, there was a way. I could win the battle against Dekarma for possession and take the Divine Spirit as my own.

‘Damn it. But.’

After I was enthroned as the emperor of Leonhardt, I sealed my Divine Spirit in the God-rank gigas, Ra. It was because I felt my ego being contaminated when I was drunk on the Divine Spirit.

I was fearful of transforming into a completely different being. Perhaps it was no different from death.

“I used to be a no-good gangster.”

“…what?”

I looked up at the unexpected comment, and Myeong-wol continued after pushing Dekarma away.

“I was a scoundrel with many complaints about the world. I was an orphan, ugly, and stupid. I went around beating people up because I had a dirty temper, and I was big.”

It was hard to imagine with his current appearance. He gave off a warm impression. He looked as if he couldn’t even kill a single bug, and that he would have always lived with mercy.

“The public prosecutor didn’t choose me without a reason. I had no backing, and I was a troublemaker. I was the perfect scapegoat.”

I already got a glimpse of the events that transpired afterwards. He was subjected to inhuman torture and coerced into accepting false accusation. A sentence of 40 years in jail.

“I would have never imagined it. I thought I was a man who could never live obediently. I would have rather died instead. However… I transformed into a completely different person during the 40 years I spent in prison. Was that all? I used to mock religion while I was in prison, but I became a monk after leaving prison. A lot of people even look up to me. Some even say that I was a monk from my mother’s womb.”

He looked back at me. Behind the old monk with a warm expression, I could see a withering corpse.

He spoke.

“Everyone changes.”

“…..”

I looked ahead. Dekarma was charging. Myeong-wol’s Justice Weapon finally faded away after exhausting all its power, having repeatedly pushed Dekarma away. Myeong-wol’s body was finally disappearing.

“Accept yourself for who you are.”

Pat!

Dekarma finally reached me and grabbed me by my shoulders.

***

It was as if I was thrown into a washing machine. The whole world was in a state of flux. Chaos. I couldn’t even tell up from down and left from right.

‘If he had reached me earlier when he first knocked on the door, I would have been devoured before long.’

However, things were different now. Dekarma had lost confidence in himself, and I was aware of that fact. Most importantly… I built up my own Divine Spirit and faith as I proceeded with the stages of the End Project.

‘But the Divine Spirit isn’t clear yet.’

I had a choice.

First, I could challenge myself to become the God of War. I fought and led with and against countless people. I fought alongside the Constellation of War, Warlord, and the War God Ares. I had enough of the war attribute in my possession. Above all else, the War God was a powerful Divine Spirit.

If it were possible for me to gain the Divine Spirit of war, I could even face Dekarma head-on. War had existed as long as civilization after all.,

‘But I can’t.’

It was not enough. I possessed enough war attribute, but the amount of Divine Spirit I had fell way short for me to become a god of war. In addition, I could feel the competition.

‘The candidates who want to become the god of war… Three?’

Even if it encompassed the entirety of the Great Universe, it was quite a large number. If I wanted to become the God of War, I needed to overwhelm them all. I relied on my equipment and personal skills thus far, but it would be difficult to win against the competition.

‘Next is the God of Steel.’

But most of my attributes were tied with the Spirit Realm, so it would be difficult.

‘The God of Production.’

As expected, this would be difficult as well. There were far more competitors here. I could feel more than 10 beings swarming in the dark when I closed my eyes. I was quite confident in my production skills, but it was nowhere close to a god’s.

‘But… it’s not in vain.’

My competence as a blacksmith. My endurance as a Life Energy Practitioner. My ability as an elemental summoner. All of them knocked against the wall of transcendence.

War God’s Honor.

Ares. The power given to me by the troublemaker was pushing me even further as a power of transcendence.

In the end.

I decided.

Boom!

I faced Dekarma in the empty darkness. He had a blank look on his face.

“What is this…?”

He continued.

“God of Games?”

If anyone could see my title, it would read as such.

None

Level 20

Kwan Dae-ha. God of Games

“Ha!”

Dekarma snorted, then,

“Hahaha! Hahahahaha! Hahahahahahaha!!!”

He started laughing like crazy.

“Hahaha! You idiot! Imbecile! Trying to compete with the gigantic concept of mechanical civilization with such toy-like attributes!”

Craack! Craaack! Crack!

A gray light emitted from Dekarma’s body and began to erode the world. I silently observed him before taking a step forward.

Whoosh!

The wind blew. I radiated waves which slowly covered the whole world and invaded the area where he had eroded.

“…Huh?”

I could see Dekarma panicking at the overwhelming sight.

“Why are you so surprised?”

“W, what the. How could this be? What is this, how…?”

His face became increasingly distorted as he looked at me with disbelief.

Fwooosh!

A strong spirit exuded from his body, but it could not encroach on my territory.

I spoke.

“You are right. How could a God of Games compete against the Machine God? This is just a low-ranking attribute.”

It was absolutely true – if it were about 400 years ago.

There was a game called Illusion. It was a game created with the combined powers of the God of Nothingness and the God of Magic. The game gave birth to numerous players. One of them was Mileon, the Human God who saved the Great Universe from destruction. Was that all? Jenica the Magic Imperial Princess, the Martial Emperor Leygrantz, so on and so forth. The players who were reborn from the game spread their fame across the universe, during and after the Great War.

Similar things were created in all sorts of places and by all kinds of forces. Information appeared in my head. A game called Dynamic Island Online had been created and operated with the Noblese’s backing. A game called the Battle of the Deaths created by the Saints was running in secret.

Ancient sealed deities, the Legion, Space Pirates Basara, and even unknown gods were making games. Even the End Project took on the form a game, didn’t it?

“You’re behind the times, aren’t you?”

I laughed.

Indeed.

Games were overflowing across the entire universe!