Chapter 210

“Where do you think you’re going!”

The Star Child stretched his foot forward, stomped down, and unleashed his Stellar Force.

The chaos let out a bizarre scream and retreated, but it was only a very small part.

This entire area was the domain of chaos.

The retreat just now was nothing more than flinching in surprise from the sting of a needle prick.

“W-what should we do, Star Child…?!”

“Hold on tight, young priestess. It’s going to be a rough ride.”

The Star Child emitted Stellar Force from his entire body and shot forward like a jet.

Belatedly, tentacles shot up from the chaos all around, but it was already too late.

With the demonic realm of a capital at his back, the Star Child flew for several hours.

He did not stop even while sweating from the consumption of Stellar Force.

The Star Child, holding the girl, soon arrived at the largest mountain range in the world.

‘This is, the Heavenly Pillar Mountains.’

The final section of the border that separated the Cosmos Empire from the rest of the continent.

“Ah, are we safe?”

“Of course not. Even now, chaos is multiplying at an incredible speed behind us. Hurry down the mountain.”

The Star Child put the priestess down and turned back.

“S-Star Child?”

At the young priestess' trembling call, the Star Child smiled as if to reassure her.

“What’s wrong? The Heavenly Pillar Mountains are high and steep, but there is a path, so it won’t be difficult to descend.”

What the girl feared was nothing of the sort.

“Are you, going back there?”

“Of course. Ah, come to think of it, I’m late with my greetings.”

The Star Child reached out and stroked the girl’s head.

“Thank you. Thanks to you not letting go of the holy relic even in crisis, I didn’t have to leave one of the holy relics, the Chalice of Faith, in that contaminated land.”

“S-Star Child. Please don’t go. That place is a demonic realm…!”

It was the end of a holy and great land.

Although the Star Child before her was the greatest living hero, even he would not be able to survive in that demonic realm.

In fact, that didn’t matter.

The girl might have just wanted the great hero, no.

Just anyone to stay by her side.

But the Star Child’s duty could not answer the girl’s wish.

His existence was too great and brilliant for a single girl to monopolize.

“I can’t do that. There might still be… people I can save. I’m sorry I can’t take you down the mountain.”

With those words, the Star Child once again flew into the demonic realm.

With the will to save even one more person….

On the other hand, the girl collapsed to the ground.

She was not yet an adult, a young apprentice priestess.

To the point where the disaster that had struck overnight felt unreal.

“How, how, how….”

The girl was a child who had been dedicated to Cosmos since birth.

She had grown up with other children of her kind to become a priest.

Therefore, she had not the slightest disagreement that the Star God Cosmos and the Great Empire Cosmos were the best.

Of course, like a girl her age, she was interested in the opposite sex and was an ordinary girl who liked delicious food.

She had been drawn to the rumors circulating, had doubted the corruption of the Imperial Family and the church, and had been inspired by the Peacemaker's revolution, but she was, after all, an ordinary young girl.

“Oh, Cosmos…!”

She looked back at her world, which had collapsed in a single day.

“Did I, did I do something wrong…? Was it because I ate one more honey cake yesterday? Or was it because I had other thoughts during prayer time…?!”

Or she wondered if it was a terrible nightmare.

The temple where she slept and woke up every morning, the boring dawn prayer meetings, the services, the friends she used to chat with, the cool Holy Knights.

They were all gone.

Disappeared.

All devoured.

“Ah….”

A discolored black wind blew and hit the girl.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

“How… what on earth is this…!”

Perhaps because the tension was released at the thought that she had survived, the girl began to cry her eyes out.

The empire, seen from the top of the highest mountain range on the continent, was being dyed very quickly.

In black.

“…Ah…!”

Still, she could see them in the distance.

People running here from all over the empire.

They were the ones who had somehow survived.

The girl couldn’t even see them clearly.

The group in white clothes just looked like moving white pigments.

“H-here!”

The girl who had been sitting down jumped up and waved her hands.

“Over here! Hurry up and run!”

She knew her voice wouldn't reach from this distance, but she shouted anyway.

Because she saw hope.

The desire to rely on the fact that she wasn't the only one who had survived, that there were others in the same situation as her.

“Hurry, uh…?”

That white group was swallowed by darkness in an instant.

They were definitely far from the darkness.

A giant tentacle of chaos that had suddenly shot up from the capital had stretched out and swallowed the group of survivors in the distance.

“Ah, aah….”

The girl, who was backing away, fell backward and landed on her bottom.

The tentacles were coming up.

Giant tentacles.

The hideous and ominous tentacles of chaos were coming up.

Each one was as long and large as a mountain.

They stretched out in all directions and devoured the survivors.

Oh, how hideous.

How bizarre.

How grotesque.

The Cosmos Empire was collapsing in the most gruesome form in the world.

“Ah, uh, aaaaaah…!”

The girl, engulfed in a huge cosmic terror, let out a senseless scream like a mad person.

“Aah, aah, aaaaaaaah….”

At that moment, a giant hand of light descended from the sky and enveloped the girl.

The girl, unable to resist, was led by the hand into a pure white world.

“Ah, aah….”

The light was cozy.

It was warm.

After staying for a long time, the girl, who had been in shock, was finally able to come to her senses.

And she realized.

This light was the light of Stellar Force.

This place was… right before Cosmos.

Not knowing where he was, she prostrated herself in any direction.

“Co-Cosmos, did I, did I have a dream…?”

She asked, but nothing changed.

Cosmos simply made her a Star Maiden.

The girl fell into confusion with her hair and eyes dyed pure white.

“W-why…?”

There was no explanation, no sermon.

Cosmos simply acted without words.

“Lord Cosmos….”

Soon, the future became visible in her eyes.

The future foretold by the great operation of the universe and the flow of the celestial bodies.

It was a future where 99.9% of humanity would be annihilated.

“The world, the world is going to be destroyed…?”

In the future, the girl was fighting as the Director of the Humanity Preservation Agency.

Nevertheless, the future did not change.

The boy named Gilbert, who was chosen by the continent, also fought desperately, but failed.

“This can’t be…!”

The girl, no.

The Star Maiden, stood up resolutely.

“Why are you showing me this?! What do you want me to do!”

After praying in indignation for a long time, the girl realized.

She had to change this future.

‘I can do it!’

She saw countless futures.

Tens of thousands of futures.

She changed the direction of her actions and made hundreds of millions of plans centered on the most important key, Gilbert, and tried to realize them, but.

‘Damn it! Damn it!’

She only saw a future where nothing changed no matter how hard she tried.

Because the fate of this world was already placed in the palm of apocalypse.

‘I need a different fate.’

A separate, different fate that was not part of the storm of apocalypse that enveloped this world.

She immediately recalled the research that had been conducted at the dimensional research institute.

‘Earth…. Another world separate from this one.’

Since she knew of its existence, the connection was established.

The Star Maiden’s eyes glowed white.

Her eyes, aided by Cosmos, transcended time and space and examined another planet.

This was a strange world.

A world without magic, a world where something called science had developed.

Fortunately, the same humans lived there.

“Ah…?”

Her vision forcibly changes.

Cosmos guides her vision.

To… a young man.

“Kim An-hyun….”

He was an unsightly person.

A shabby person who clung to his failures without admitting them until he was 30.

That's why he was beautiful.

To be able to be so engrossed in one thing, what a lovely obsession.

Perhaps he would write an eternal piece of writing upon reaching the ultimate.

But he was born in the wrong era.

He chose the wrong talent to hone.

In the end, he was trapped in his inferiority complex and jealousy and was endlessly buried.

He was ground down by failure and self-loathing.

At that moment, she could realize it.

He was the owner of a soul infinitely similar to a crooked villain she had seen in the future.

They were of the same kind.

From then on, the Star Maiden observed Kim An-hyun for a long time.

“Damn it, outside the rankings again?!”

Failure.

“I'm not going to make it.”

Failure.

“Ugh, uhuhuhuhuk!”

Failure again.

“Still….”

And yet this man.

“Just one more work….”

He doesn't stop.

This failure never stops walking.

He may be slow and sluggish, but he does not give up.

The end of this foolish and stupid person may be miserable and unfortunate, but his spirit is lofty.

He was a being like a strand of pasta, so fragile it seemed it would break soon.

Where on earth did such passion come from?

“Maybe this time…!”

He seemed like a madman.

Over a long period of time, the Star Maiden was able to make a decision.

Thanks to realizing the reason why Cosmos had shown her this man.

The Star Maiden, as a price for almost all the power given to her as a Star Maiden, cast a spell to have this man's soul possess Martin, a villain in the future 100 years later, in the timeline where Gilbert, the one chosen by the continent as its savior, existed.

“Cough, cough!”

It was not an easy task.

Because she had to cross a distant time and space to make contact.

She compiled the future she had seen into a text and sent it to him.

Because she had to induce him to create a connection with this continent.

As Kim An-hyun wrote the future of the continent as a novel, the relationship between the continent and Kim An-hyun deepened even more…, and although there was more she wanted to do, she eventually ran out of power.

It felt like 99.9% of the Star Maiden’s power had disappeared….

She had to suffer from a high fever for at least several months.

And when she came to her senses, she was on a quiet land on the border.

Cosmos was gone and could not be seen.

‘Ah.’

The land was full of the scars of destruction.

It was after ruin and war had already swept through.

Chaos, the Time Chaos Dungeon, had finally swallowed the Cosmos Empire and was about to cross the border and swallow the entire continent.

“…Let’s go.”

She could not rest.

The mission given to her by Cosmos was not over yet.

Even if she had lost most of her abilities, she had to create the Humanity Preservation Agency.

So that in the distant future, she could become a helper at the moment Kim An-hyun possessed Martin.

The girl joined the Humanity Alliance forces on the border.

She led the war to victory by establishing brilliant military achievements with her ability to see the future and her intellect honed through experiencing tens of thousands of futures.

The girl, who had thus built up her recognition throughout the Humanity Alliance forces, took the lead in the establishment of the Humanity Preservation Agency, the governing body of the Humanity Alliance, and sat in the position of Director.

The girl became an adult.

Her aging also stopped as she became a daughter of the stars.

She gained a seemingly endless lifespan, but she still lived as she had when she had wandered the borders.

Waiting for the day of promise to come….

“Someday, that day will come.”

The story of the Star Maiden, who was a young priestess, seemed to have ended here.

But like a post-credits scene at the end of a movie, a giant mechanical device gradually revealed itself.

“Mr. Kim An-hyun won’t know much about this world. So, let’s create a helper for him. One that governs memory and knowledge….”

It was like using up the power she had barely recovered over dozens of years in an instant, but she decided to add power for Kim An-hyun, who would be confused after waking up in an unfamiliar place.

The ‘science’ she had seen on Earth was helpful.

The combination of the four great studies of Stellar Force, magic engineering, science, and alchemy made the impossible possible.

At first, it was a simple memory storage device, but as functions were added one by one, it was finally completed.

“Hello.”

[Hello, Director.]

The giant mechanical device answers.

“Who are you?”

[I am A.I. ‘Know-It-All’, who has the top-level control rights of the Humanity Preservation Agency.]

Finally, my soul rises again.

As if being pulled up by a fishing line.

The illusions I had just experienced shoot up in reverse.

That's not all.

Knowledge floods in.

Knowledge that I did not know endlessly… rushes in…!

- You have found the archetype of Know-It-All. The genius talent that the young Martin possessed, the word Know-It-All that Lilac called him. There were many plausible possibilities. Instead of being buried in any one of them, you have endlessly doubted and searched for new possibilities, and have faced the truth.

- The level of the skill, Know-It-All, has risen from 4 to 5! The level notation has disappeared and it has become Master! You can now use the new derivative skill of Know-It-All, ‘Future Prediction’!

- Know-It-All (Master), having recovered its true function, will now devote its full power to your journey of twisting fate.