The descent into the core of Planet Oz was not a fall through space, but a regression through the history of the universe.
The Secretive Plotter felt the friction of the iron crust give way to a pressurized void that smelled of ionized ozone and dead stars. At the center of the planet, where gravity should have been absolute, there was only a blinding, singular point of light.
[The Sefirot 'Big Bang' is unsealed!]
It was the "Big Bang" itself, localized within a single coordinate, pulsing with the unbearable heat of a beginning that refused to become an ending.
As the Plotter approached, the light expanded, transforming the interior of the crater into a cosmic battlefield. From the heart of the light, a silhouette emerged—a towering, formless entity composed of collapsing nebulae and white-hot fusion.
This was the Indestructible Psyche of the Supernova Dominator, the lingering will of the Great Old One whose power the Plotter sought to accommodate.
"A puppet who lived a thousand lives is still just a piece of wood. Give your body to me!"
The battle erupted in a conceptual vacuum.
He used all of his abilities.
His stories roared in unison.
True God's powers of Condenser Pathway.
He reached into the singularity, his hands glowing with the dark, heavy gravity of the Secretive Plotter modifier.
"I am the one who watched the end of everything," the Plotter whispered, his voice cutting through the roar of the Big Bang. "I do not contain your fire. I am the shadow that remains when the fire dies."
With a final, agonizing surge of [Probability], the Plotter clenched his hand around the Sefirot.
His body turned into gas-like state, enveloping the whole planet of Oz.
The white light turned jet-black.
The "Big Bang" was compressed into a single, pulsating marble of "Story" and shoved into his chest.
[Accommodating the Sefirot: 100%]
[You have inherited the Authority: 'Condenser of All Light'.]
[You have inherited a Modifier: 'Supernova Dominator'!]
[Your Status as a 'Great Old One' has been solidified!]
[System Alert!]
[Be careful of the Psyche of the previous owner of 'Big Bang'!]
When the Plotter emerged from the condensed point that looked like a small galaxy, there was no crater, no desert of Oz.
Nothing.
[Giant Story 'The Iron Heart's Emerald Dream' has been archived.]
[
His accomodation of 'Big Bang', Sefirot of Supernova Dominator, created a massive explosion that destroyed everything on its way in the 200 light years distance around it.
And in the center of it once stood
The Plotter narrowed his eyes.
The universe felt dim.
Not because his eyes were failing, but because the literal light of the Star Stream was being pulled toward a single, distant point.
The probability was leaking.
"So, you finally finished your snack," a voice rumbled in the depths of his mind. It wasn't one of the 999 Kkomas, nor was it a memory of a past turn. It was the cold, pressurized consciousness of the Supernova Dominator. "This vessel is crowded. Is there a lounge for ancient stellar deities, or do I have to share a room with the suicidal swordsmen?"
The Plotter let out a dry, rasping sigh.
"One more crazy dude in my head," he muttered.
"Who are you calling crazy?!" a voice—the 41st turn Yoo Joonghyuk—snapped from his subconscious.
"You are us, we are you," the 666th turn echoed with a dark chuckle.
"Don't forget that, Plotter. If he's crazy, we're the asylum."
The Secretive Plotter ignored the uncontrollable sea of voices inside, his gaze fixed on the thinning starlight of the horizon.
"You seem to be having fun."
The voice was heat. Not the warmth of a sun, but the scorching, vengeful dry-heat of a desert at noon.
[Outer God 'Living Flame' is glaring at you.]
The Plotter didn't turn around immediately.
He felt the space behind him distort.
A woman stood there, her wings made of purest, white-hot fire that didn't illuminate the dark—it consumed it.
Uriel of the 999th turn.
Beside her, a hulking figure of shimmering mercury steel materialized.
[Constellation 'Master of Steel' is looking at the 'Living Flame'.]
"Uriel, please... calm down," Lee Hyunsung whispered, his voice like the grinding of tectonic plates. He reached out a massive, metallic hand to touch her shoulder. "Captain... he just returned. He needs to stabilize."
Uriel didn't even look back.
With a sharp, flicking motion, she slapped Hyunsung's hand away.
Her eyes—pits of molten gold—never left the Plotter's back.
The Secretive Plotter turned slowly.
He didn't feel any immediate killing intent, which made him more wary than if she had attacked.
"I won't touch you," Uriel said, her voice a crackling embers-hiss. "Not today. There is too little time left to waste on our grudges. The Final Scenario is beginning soon."
The Plotter's eyebrows twitched.
"The Final Scenario? How much time was I in the core?"
"Almost half a month," Hyunsung replied, his silver face etched with a grim solemnity. "The great Nebulas and Outer Deities are already moving."
The Plotter flicked his wrist, summoning his communication interface. The blue screens were a chaotic mess of notifications.
[Group Chat: The Apocrypha]:99+ unread messages...[Extra7]:Plotter, if you're not dead, South America is turning into a nightmare. Hunting of...[Alov]:I'm so tired of writing this story, but don't worry It'll end soon, there's like 20 chapters left!.....
He didn't have time to read the rest.
The space around them began to ripple.
The Status of the Living Flame was rising, a silent ultimatum.
"If you won't go with us," Uriel said, her wings expanding until they blotted out the void where Oz had been, "I'm going to make you."
Lee Hyunsung stepped between them, his mercury skin glowing. "Uriel, please—!"
The Plotter smiled.
It wasn't a smile of amusement, but of a King who had finally found his footing in a new world.
"There is no need for such primitive coercion," the Plotter said.
He raised his hand.
The power of the Supernova Dominator surged—not as a blast of heat, but as a mastery of Gravity and Space.
He reached into the fabric of the Star Stream, grasping a specific narrative coordinate he had woven long ago.
"The Ark is a tool for those who fear the end," the Plotter rumbled. "I do not move for the scenarios. I move the scenarios to me."
[The Authority 'Stellar Convergence' is active!]
[Attracting the 'N'Gai's Forest' to current coordinates...]
The void groaned.
In a spectacular display of spatial distortion, the blackened, twisted trees of the N'Gai's Forest began to bleed through the empty space. The sanctuary of the Outer Gods, the home of the forgotten, was being pulled across the galaxy by the sheer gravitational will of the Plotter.
[Outer God '' has noticed you!]
The Forest slammed into the reality where they stood, anchoring itself into the Cosmos.
"Now," the Plotter said, his black coat settling as the spatial tremors subsided. "We don't need to go anywhere."
He looked at Uriel and Hyunsung.
The blackened, twisted branches of N'Gai's Forest groaned. Having been pulled through the vacuum of space by the sheer gravitational will of the Secretive Plotter, the trees were now coated in a fine layer of crystalline frost.
The Plotter walked through the familiar, gloomy twilight of his sanctuary. His white coat trailed behind him, heavy with the newly accommodated Sefirah.
He looked around, his sharp eyes narrowing. The forest, which once teemed with the incoherent whispers of thousands of lower-ranked Outer Gods, was eerily silent.
Aside from the few kkomas the place was empty.
"They are all gone," a voice said, cutting through the silence like a jagged blade.
The Plotter didn't stop.
He knew that voice.
It was the salt of the sea and the iron of a sinking ship.
Lee Jihye of the 999th turn.
She was sitting beneath a massive, soot-stained willow tree in a clearing that the kkomas had dubbed the Garden of Regret.
She was polishing her sword.
Beside her stood Uriel, her wings folded tightly behind her back, her golden eyes dim. And hovering awkwardly between them, looking like a mountain trying to act as a breeze, was Lee Hyunsung.
"Uriel, please... we agreed to let the Captain breathe," Hyunsung whispered, his mercury skin shimmering in the forest's dim light.
Uriel ignored him.
She stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the Plotter's back.
"After the death of Kim Namwoon in Africa... we didn't know what to do. And with the goal that sustained us for thousands of years was gone."
The Plotter finally stopped.
"We sought vengeance for so long," Uriel continued, her voice trembling with a weight that not even an Archangel should carry. "We followed the trail of the 'Outer God' who stole our Captain's life. We hunted you through the cracks of the world-lines, believing that your death would finally grant us the 'Conclusion' we were promised."
Lee Jihye didn't look up from her sword. The rhythmic shhh-shhh of her whetstone was the only other sound in the forest.
"Then we found this place. Your kkomas… Your regressions told us the truth," she muttered. "That you are him. And that you were the one who made the covenant with the 999th Joonghyuk. The King of Outer Gods... was our Captain all along."
The Plotter closed his eyes.
Within his mind, the Supernova Dominator laughed, a cold, stellar sound.
He raised his hand.
From the shadows of the trees, the kkomas began to emerge.
There were over a hundred of them—the remnants of a hundred different regression turns from 30th to 700th regressions, each one a fragment of a man who had refused to give up. They didn't speak. They simply walked toward the Plotter, their small, scarred faces reflecting the same exhaustion that defined his own.
One by one, they touched his coat, dissolving into streaks of gray and black light.
As the turns converged inside him, the Plotter's presence grew exponentially more dense.
"I created this place to protect," the Plotter said, his voice now layered with the echoes of a hundred selves. "Discarded by the scenarios. Deleted by the Bureau. You... and those like you. I wanted to build a wall that the Star Stream couldn't see past."
Uriel's face showed a flicker of profound sadness—a moment of raw, unadulterated grief—before it returned to its habitual, icy stillness.
She sighed, a sound that carried the scent of burnt incense.
"Vengeance brought us only unhappiness," she whispered. "Thousands of years of hate... for a man who was tried to save us. Who sacrificed himself countless times."
Uriel walked closer, her footsteps silent on the blackened leaves.
She reached out and placed her hand on the Plotter's chest, right over his heart.
"The 999th turn," she said softly. "Our Joonghyuk. Can he come out? Can he talk to us, just once?"
The Secretive Plotter stood perfectly still.
Deep within the core of his being, amidst the roiling storm of the Supernova and the cold logic of the turns, a small, quiet spark flickered.
It was the consciousness of the 999th Yoo Joonghyuk.
'No.'
The answer didn't come as a voice, but as a pulse of narrative rejection.
The Plotter looked down at Uriel.
"He says no. If he speaks to you now, you will seek your closure in him. You will stop moving. You will turn into a 'History' that has ended. He doesn't want that for you."
Uriel's hand tightened on his armor for a second before she let go.
She let out a small, bitter chuckle.
"He... You. You never change. Always the one deciding what's best for us. Always the one carrying the burden of the 'Next Part'."
Lee Hyunsung let out a breath of relief, his massive shoulders slumping.
"At least we're all together. That's a start, right?"
Lee Jihye stood up, sheathing her sword with a sharp, decisive clack. She looked at the Plotter—at the Captain who had become a God of the Void.
"Namwoon would likely cut you in halves, but… He also wouldn't like you to die," Jihye said, her eyes regaining that familiar, mischievous glint she had as a teenager in the subway.
She adjusted the strap of her tattered cloak.
"Shall we go help versions of us? They are entering the final scenario. Usually we'd just watch it unfold… But…"
The Secretive Plotter looked at his companions—the survivors of a thousand tragedies.
"We do not move for them," the Plotter said, though he began to walk toward the center of the forest where the spatial coordinates were thinning. "We move for the 'Conclusion' that hasn't been written yet. For us,"
"Whatever you say, Captain," Jihye smirked, trailing after him.
[The shares of the 'Outer Gods' are being unified!]