Heavenly Demon Cultivation Simulation-Chapter 543: Demon Lord (8)
A moment of life or death.
There would be no better opportunity than this.
The Demon Lord reached out without hesitation.
Fwoooosh!
Absolute Supreme Demonic Arts.
The Demon Lord exploded his body’s energy. Absolute Supreme Demonic Arts. Multicolored lightning stretched out like a dragon.
The energy tore through the void and headed straight for the nearby Earth Demon.
But.
Crackle. Crackle.
The lightning began to slow.
The lightning split like branches and then gradually froze as if solidifying.
Lightning frozen in midair. An impossible sight.
The Demon Lord knew what this meant.
‘This time he tried it.’
The time-stop of the Nine Sound Arts.
The opponent, not him, had touched the density of time.
A technique at a level normally undetectable. But the Demon Lord was also one who had ascended to Demon God.
From the slightest change in the air, he realized the opponent was toying with time itself.
‘Not yet!’
Even so, the lightning he had unleashed was still moving.
It advanced inch by inch, as if pushing through sticky mud.
It came within two inches of the Earth Demon’s face, then one inch away.
‘Got it!’
At the moment of certainty, the lightning froze and the airflow solidified.
Light, wind, even thought.
Blue electricity flowed along his facial line, and froze in place.
“……”
Sound too. An extreme density with no movement.
Within it, the Earth Demon had also turned to stone.
The density of time had crossed a critical point.
It was compressed so deeply and strongly that even the caster became trapped.
Two Demon Gods were frozen like statues.
The Demon Lord was frozen mid-attack, right hand extended, spewing lightning.
The Earth Demon was frozen in a blocking pose, left hand raised, stopping time.
A difference of a single hair.
Time continued to pass on the border of life and death.
‘It’s stopped.’
The Demon Lord’s attack halted right before him.
But Seol Hwi himself could not move either. Extreme compression of time, the caster was trapped for diving in too deep.
Strangely, what he felt was not fear.
It was a sense of liberation.
‘If it’s come to this, let’s break the system.’
A realization flashed like lightning.
If he pushed the compression further?
If he exceeded the limit and breached the critical point, the stop would slip out of the power of his system.
And a power that cannot be subordinated will lead to destruction.
Crackle! Crackle!
Cracks began to form in the frozen space.
Fissures spread like spiderwebs. Strange light leaked through the gaps.
Ssshhh.
Patterns rose on the ground.
Ancient script, primitive symbols, geometric patterns like the world’s blueprint glowed beneath his feet.
And from the center of it.
“So it’s you.”
Light took the shape of a human.
A translucent body. Flowing inside it was not blood but characters, formulas and commands circulating like veins.
“Siming Star…”
The being that is the source of the system.
At the boundary where the system’s power was breaking, Seol Hwi could now convey his thoughts and words.
“You came again.”
The opponent’s voice was not ordinary either.
Siming Star’s voice wasn’t normal sound. It was a vibration resonating inside the head, commands etched directly into the brain.
“A player who became a god. And now I see you at the boundary of the system.”
“Indeed.”
Seol Hwi recalled the past. Everything was different from the first time they met.
“The place and the perspective are different, so the positions have changed from then.”
“What do you mean…?”
“Now I intend to topple your system. To go beyond the system’s boundary means destruction.”
Rattle.
Siming Star’s form trembled. Ripples of light spread in concentric circles.
Was it anger, or excitement?
“Destruction…”
Siming Star’s voice shook the space.
“Do you know what awaits beyond the boundary? Eternal stasis, drifting as imperfect fragments. Is that the god you dreamed of?”
Confidence radiated from his form as light.
Seol Hwi answered coldly.
“An imperfect god and a perfect god. What’s the difference?”
“It escapes the shackles of emotion. A pure being with no pain or joy. True perfection.”
“Are you such a being?”
Siming Star’s form distorted.
Characters scrambled in an instant, producing formulas that had lost meaning.
Seol Hwi stepped forward and continued.
“Perfection is proof of not being alive. I hate that.”
Whirr
At Seol Hwi’s words, bursts of light intermittently erupted from Siming Star’s body.
White flashes exploded like lightning and then reconverged.
After a moment, as the light stabilized.
“Huh. You reached that level and still do not know?”
Whoosh
When he raised his hand, the world changed.
Walls vanished and numbers appeared.
Trees turned into incomprehensible numbers, and the sky decomposed into formulas.
An infinite matrix of numbers.
“The world is a simulation.”
The space warped and the scene shifted.
The replicas of the Demon Lord and Seol Hwi, in that life or death moment, appeared in the void.
Faintly glowing shapes like translucent selection windows.
“Everything is calculation. Objects, humans, emotions, even the power you believe to be godly are all numbers.”
He snapped his fingers and the Demon Lord shattered into thousands of pieces and reassembled.
He continued in a voice full of rapture.
“This is the reason for pursuing perfection!”
Siming Star’s voice of joy reverberated through the space.
Seol Hwi remained silent.
He watched his own replica being disassembled and reassembled.
“Seeing you, I finally understand.”
The sound of pieces snapping together echoed in his head.
He sought Jang Dal to remove the root of the problem, but that was not the answer.
He realized that the being he truly needed to resolve the issue with had appeared here before him.
The cause lay further back.
“I knew you made the system, but I didn’t expect you to be the same as the rest. Of course it was you who sowed confusion through the Demon Lord.”
Seol Hwi gazed at him steadily.
“You were the first Administrator here and conferred power to others. Creating everything yourself would have been too obvious and boring, so you summoned players.”
Rumble
Siming Star’s light pulsed roughly. You couldn’t read a human expression, but the tremor was clear.
“In doing so, beings who couldn’t be controlled were created. And a being that defied your prediction.”
“……”
“You wouldn’t have imagined it would destroy itself. It’s uncannily like that one.”
Crackle!
The core of Siming Star flashed as if convulsing. It was clear agitation.
It spoke.
“I am nowhere and everywhere. If I’m gone, another will fill the place. As long as this world exists. So it’s pointless.”
Fwoooosh!
As his words ended, the world completely changed.
From ground to sky, everything was covered in a grid of numbers.
An endless digital sea. It was as if the world’s true form had been stripped bare.
“That makes it even clearer.”
Seol Hwi stared at the waves of numbers and spoke.
“There’s no reason for you to exist. Even if you disappear, another being will take your place, won’t it?”
“…What did you say?”
Siming Star’s light convulsed violently.
“And we are bound to collide.”
Seol Hwi glared and said.
“If I don’t stop you now, I’ll disappear. Your power will consume me someday.”
“…I can control that.”
Siming Star’s reply came quicker.
“I granted the power. I can take it back. And think about this: if you remove me now, you too will vanish from this world. You will be trapped in eternal stasis.”
“That’s not the case.”
Seol Hwi rebutted easily.
“Breaking you means not being subordinated to the system and going beyond it. Beyond that, there will be something even you do not know.”
“……”
“What, is my point wrong?”
There was no answer.
Of course, the area beyond the system is unknown even to Siming Star.
After a long silence, Siming Star shifted the subject.
“Seol Hwi. If you leave here… what will happen to those you tried to save?”
The voice changed, sounding as if genuine curiosity, not calculation, had entered it.
“You came this far for them, didn’t you? The moment you break the system, the link to this world severs. Everything you changed could revert to zero.”
Siming Star said again.
“The world where they live happily. The one you sought to create could collapse. Are you okay with that?”
It was truly simulation-like.
The calculations were surely complete even before meeting Seol Hwi: the emergence of imperfect beings, the world’s changes, all outcomes predicted. That’s why Siming Star could pinpoint everything Seol Hwi had done in this world.
“I will achieve it, that world where they live happily. Breaking the system severs the tie to this world. Isn’t that what you want?”
Faced with logic that tugged at human actions and emotions, especially guilt, Seol Hwi did not flinch and spoke calmly.
“You’re right. I want to watch over their happy lives. But now it’s time to leave.”
“…What do you mean?”
“Each of them has gained a chance to fight from their own place. Now their lives are for them to carve out, success or failure.”
“……”
“True happiness comes when you overcome trials and hardships yourself.”
Siming Star’s characters trembled.
The system could read data but could not grasp the philosophy Seol Hwi had learned through countless regressions.
It didn’t understand the weight of a single life, not theoretically computed infinite chances.
“You see, I like this world, a nurturing simulation. I wish it would continue. Yet the reason I want to destroy it is…”
“……”
“Because I can’t stand someone predicting someone’s life. Opportunities in life may not be equal, but they should be fair.”
Rrrr
The space tore.
Around Seol Hwi, the ground split as if the earth were wailing. Red flames leapt from the fissures, and blue frost scattered like rain above them.
Fire and ice mingled in an instant, and the sky charred black.
“Is this the last resistance?”
Kuwaang! Thud-thud-thud!
Explosions rang out in succession.
It was a force beyond limits.
It seemed not the space before them but the world itself was flipping and exploding.
Light and sound fused into an absolute destruction that wiped out all senses.
Even time could not escape within it.
A wave of complete annihilation that swallowed all existence engulfed Seol Hwi at once.
Ssshhh.
But the change began again.
From the edge of the explosion, the speed began to slow.
Shards of light halted, and flames froze.
The world froze like a single painting.
Stop.
And then compression again.
Everything was imprisoned by the density of time.
In that gap where all variables stood still, numbers scattered like rain.
Piiiiii—
The system’s voice rang out long.
The simulation that calculated the world through time stopped calculating itself once time halted.
Just before that, one final line of voice resonated.
“Yes… In the end, it is human emotion that kills a god.”
At that moment.
Grrrrrr!
The space began to quietly shatter.
The sky cracked like shards of glass,
Walls mixed with numbers and light crumbled, and through the gaps new dimensional light seeped in.
