Solo Leveling- Ragnarok-Chapter 374

This time, not even a shockwave followed. All sound vanished from the world. All color disappeared. Only two beams of light blazed furiously, trying to consume the other. In the end, like a massive eraser forcibly wiping away a drawing, Ragnarok slowly began eating away at the Itarim and the world they had created. Something gave way.

A soft moan escaped the Itarim’s lips. Their massive, bleeding eye met Suho’s. Even now, however, amid terrible pain, there was an odd sort of elation in them. It burned. It hurt. It was a searing, unbearable pain. Still, at the same time, there was also wonder that they, a god, were dying by the hand of one they had created. How contradictory, how fascinating, how novel an experience this was! This, too, was a new kind of pleasure, one that might finally put an end to the long-standing apathy.

However, there was one thing that disrupted this otherwise perfect stage for the Itarim.

“The abyss, huh?”

Suddenly, their gaze passed over Suho and looked beyond. At some point, a shadow had appeared. It took no part in the battle, merely observing it all from a distance. This shadow was Beru, or rather, someone beyond Beru’s shadow—someone far off in the vast universe, watching everything unfold through Beru with a deep and unfathomable gaze.

“You... simply watch to the end. Just like us.” With the last of their strength, they sent a message toward that gaze. “Look well. It was your son who judged me... in your name.” The Itarim gave a faint smile. “Well? Was my performance worth the watch?”

No answer came. Instead, the gaze pulled back from Beru’s shadow. At that, the Itarim’s expression crumbled.

So is this how it feels to be nothing more than a spectacle for someone else to watch...

At that moment, Suho summoned a final burst of energy, and brought Ragnarok down. The Itarim’s massive divine body shattered under the overwhelming force. Its divinity scattered, breaking apart into particles of light. A low rumble followed.

And so the Itarim, along with the world they had created, began to collapse. Even to the very end, they savored every dreadful moment, and with the last vestiges of power, they whispered directly into Suho’s mind.

“This has been fun, little god... But do keep in mind. I am not the only Itarim...”

The war with the Outer Gods had only just begun.

“Things will get much busier now, for two worlds are left without their gods...”

It was a final curse, and Suho responded boldly.

“Yeah. But that just means Earth will be safer. Your attention will be split in two.”

“Hah...”

With that faint chuckle, the existence of the Itarim was completely extinguished.

A notification dinged.

[You have defeated an “Itarim,” a god of the outer universes.]

A rush of power flowed into Suho.

[You have absorbed a vast amount of divine power.]

All that remained of the god’s divine essence poured into Suho through Ragnarok. It was a truly staggering amount of power that crashed like a waterfall into Suho’s shadow, the shadow of the dead World Tree.

[Power: “World Tree’s Shadow” transfers the absorbed nourishment to the “Dead World Tree.”]

Suho closed his eyes and accepted the incoming wave. It was over. The noises that threatened to tear apart his eardrums, the godly pressure that bore down on his soul—both gone. In that perfect silence, Suho finally felt the crushing fatigue wash over him. The weight of Ragnarok disappeared from his hands, leaving nothing but empty space.

“So... is it finished?”

Suho drew in a slow breath. He had done it. He had truly... killed a god. A faint smile rose on his lips as he checked the system message floating before his eyes. A series of chimes sounded.

[The dead World Tree begins to recover vitality.]

[World Tree recovery progress: 0.01%]

[World Tree recovery progress: 0.07%]

[World Tree recovery progress: 0.13%]

[World Tree recovery progress: 0.26%]

[...]

The dead tree was coming back to life. The long war was finally over. Finally, the first fruit of his efforts was here. Suho slowly raised his eyes to look at Beru, who had been watching the battle from the sky—or rather, from the vast reaches of space, a space the Itarim no longer occupied.

“Young Monarch.”

Beru met his gaze with solemn eyes. He offered no encouragement, no praise like in the past. There was no longer any need. Suho was now a grown man, a warrior in his own right.

“If you wish, I will open the path for you right away,” Beru said.

His shadow flared as he spoke. Suho looked into the flickering dark, or rather, something that lay beyond it. It was a gate. A path that led to his father, who had fought such absurdly powerful enemies, who still fought even now, stretched through that shadow. It was a lonely, shadowed road, passing through the void, beyond the dimension left ruined by the loss of its master, and into the far reaches of the outer realms. The true abyss was waiting.

“Father.” Before that gate, Suho’s eyes blazed brighter than ever. “I’m coming to you now.”

Without a hint of hesitation, he stepped into Beru’s searing shadow. In an instant, his vision went black. The small white flame Suho had created was swallowed by endless night. So this was the path that would lead him to his father, Sung Jinwoo, the Monarch of Shadows.

It was a boundless abyss, a pit of darkness, a space of absolute nothingness where no light existed.

So this... is my father’s power?

Suho couldn’t breathe for a moment as a crushing wave of mana pressed down on him. It was utterly unlike the Itarim’s power. The Itarim had used laws and the power of creation to fight, but Jinwoo’s power was the abyss itself, a force that swallowed all in its path. In this place, sound, light, even the flow of time held no meaning. Only an eternal solitude and silence stretched on, seemingly eternal. The path Suho followed seemed so infinite, it reminded him of the Sea of the Afterlife.

From within him, Antares let out a low growl.

“He’s gotten even stronger than before...” he said.

It was unbelievable. Jinwoo was still growing, seemingly endlessly. The King of Dragons, once the strongest Monarch in existence, felt his pride crack. He ground his teeth at the sheer difference in power. Still, Antares did not abandon the thought of fighting Jinwoo. He would simply wait until the next time.

The primordial darkness might have been lost, but he would do anything and everything in his power to regain his strength. In fact, he would become even stronger. That much was certain. When that time came, he would face him again. Antares made this vow burning with frustration.

“My god...” Kandiaru murmured. His voice, on the other hand, held shock and awe. Here was a level of power that could not be calculated, measured, or even understood. Kandiaru, the Architect, who had been with Jinwoo at the very beginning, couldn’t even grasp the scale of Jinwoo’s power now. He could only let out a breath of disbelief. “He has already become... a world unto himself,” he said.

Suho continued forward, listening to their astonishment in silence. Step by step, as he moved along that path, the surrounding abyss began to whisper to him. They were not sounds audible to the ears. They were the traces of the billions of soldiers loyal to his father, remnants of memories and emotions they had experienced. Here, there was absolute loyalty to their master, relentless will to fight against their enemies, and the loneliness of the king who had borne the weight of every battle alone. This path of shadows was the very road his father had walked.

Finally, Suho’s eyes adjusted to the abyss. It was then that he saw them. There were countless corpses, fused with the darkness all around him. It was a battlefield of fallen stars, more horrific and miserable than the Sea of the Afterlife where souls found their final rest. They were the scars of the universe, ravaged by overwhelming power.

As Suho’s steps carried him forward, the dead embedded in the darkness began to open their eyes, one by one. Countless pairs of eyes fixed their gaze on him. In a sky devoid of starlight, cold, lifeless blue lights watched him from every direction. There was no hostility in their stares. They were calm, simply asking the same question.

Son of the king, are you worthy of this path?

It was both a warning and a concern. Still, Suho didn’t stop. How long he walked, he couldn’t say. Eventually, a single ray of light appeared in the distance, far beyond the endless dark. Unfortunately, it was no warm light of hope. With a deafening roar that tore at his eardrums, dozens of stars exploded at once.

The sight before him couldn’t even be described as hell. Hell would have been a peaceful place by comparison. Dying stars wept blood-red tears as they faded away. Enormous living demons screamed as their bodies were torn apart. Gods whose skin was made of nebulae clashed in violent battles in the air. With every swing of their fists, space crumpled like paper, and the dimensional wall melted with each breath they exhaled.

Only then did Suho truly understand. Every battle he had fought until now had been nothing more than child’s play. His fight with the Itarim had been a duel against a single god, but this place was a battlefield of gods. Hundreds of Itarim, each with their own armies, annihilated one another in a chaos that stretched across the universe. They were not allies here. This was the reality of the war against the Outer Gods that his father had faced alone.

Suho was shocked, but only for a moment. Then he saw him. At the center of all the chaos, there was a man, a storm unto himself, devouring everything around him. Billions of shadows danced to his will. Twin daggers moved at the speed of light, slicing through dimensions and piercing the hearts of gods. Every move he made was law itself, and a declaration of death.

It was Jinwoo, the Monarch of Shadows.

His father was there. He was holding his own against three Outer Gods at once, yet he showed no signs of being outmatched. One tried to bind him with thousands of tendrils of dark matter, while another hurled compressed galaxies like cannonballs. The last one unleashed waves of curses that could control the mind. Yet none of their attacks touched him. A wall of shadow vaporized them all before they could reach him.

Jinwoo was far stronger than they were, yet Suho saw more than sheer strength in that figure. Even as endless attacks poured down on him, he never faltered once. In his father’s steadfast back, Suho saw the crushing loneliness he bore and the weight of his struggle. In this colossal battlefield, not once had his father been able to rest. Even as Suho lived an ordinary life, grew stronger, and finally defeated the Itarim, his father had remained here, guarding the world alone, just as he always had. In his mind, this was his duty.

Then, in that very moment, Jinwoo’s head moved ever so slightly amid the chaos of battle. More accurately, his gaze shifted. Even while parrying the gods’ attacks, he instantly recognized his son’s arrival. The storm of the battlefield, as impossible as it seemed, parted before them, and a single path opened within the eye of that massive storm, connecting father and son. There was no time for a long, emotional reunion. This was no place for such luxuries. Even so, a faint smile tugged at Jinwoo’s lips, as if to ask his son what had taken him so long.

Without turning back, he spoke softly. “You’re late.”

That one sentence held countless emotions. Feeling every one of them, Suho let out a small laugh and replied, “There was a bit of traffic on the way here.”

“I see some welcome faces,” Jinwoo said, and his smile grew broader as looked at the shadows following behind Suho. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

“My lord!”

“We’re... We’re back, my lord!”

Greed and Iron, the deserters, had rejoined the shadow army like prodigal sons come home.

“Haha! Mr. Sung, you haven’t changed a bit! Do you never age?” Thomas said, waving.

The many people that Sung Jinwoo had known in the past were now standing beside Suho’s shadow, and Jinwoo was truly glad to see them again.

“Kieeeeek!” shrieked Beru. “My king! It is I, Beru, returned to the battlefield! And I bring reinforcements!”

Without a moment’s hesitation, they plunged into battle, fighting once more at Jinwoo’s side.

A flame ignited in Suho’s eyes. There was no fear in him, only a burning fire in his chest. At last, he fully understood the battlefield he was meant to stand on. Father and son stood back to back.

The colorless darkness and the endless abyss, both shadows, became one at last. Every Outer God who saw them now showed a flicker of shock and wariness in their eyes. The calamity that had been overwhelming even as one had just become two. Jinwoo and Suho exchanged identical grins as they took in their enemies’ reactions.

There stood Jinwoo, the Greatest Fragment of Brilliant Light, the King of the Dead, and the Monarch of Shadows. At his side was his pride, his son Suho—the Protector of the World Tree, the Monarch of Transcendence, and the World Tree’s Shadow. The two stood as one, their eyes cold as they turned to face the enemy. Then, together, they spoke in unison.

“Arise.”

“Arise.”

The true war of the gods, Ragnarok, had begun.