The Citadel was screaming.
As the nine other fortresses collapsed into the Rift, the central Citadel became a gravitational anchor, pulling every scrap of bone and dark mana back into the void. The massive structure tilted sharply, its foundations grinding against the air as it began its final descent toward the Association's crater.
"Kang-woo! Pull your hand away!" Seol-ah cried out, dodging a falling rib-pillar.
"I can't!" Kang-woo's teeth were gritted so hard they were bleeding.
The black ink from the throne was crawling up his arm like a parasite, turning his skin into a substance harder than iron and colder than death. The 'Key' wasn't just a tool anymore; it was a root system.
[Warning: The Throne is demanding a 'Final Payment'.][If you leave the seat, the Authority will shatter, and the Rift will explode.]
"If I let go, the mana from those nine Citadels will detonate like a nuclear warhead," Kang-woo gasped. "The whole city goes with me."
Seol-ah reached the throne, her silver eyes wide with terror. She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him free, but the moment her holy mana touched the black throne, a violent discharge of gray sparks threw her back.
"Don't!" Kang-woo roared. "It'll kill you!"
"Check... mate..." The King's voice lingered in the air, a final, spiteful echo. He had lost his physical form, but he had left the 'Debt' behind. The throne was a trap—a seat that required a Sovereign to stay and burn as its fuel forever.
Suddenly, a massive shadow fell over the throne room.
The roof was ripped away. Not by the wind, but by a giant, frost-covered mechanical blade.
Baek In-ho landed on the tilted floor, his face bruised and his white hair stained with blood. He looked at Kang-woo, then at the throne, then at the swirling vortex of the Rift beneath them.
"You really did it, kid," In-ho said, his voice unusually quiet. "You kicked a god out of his own house."
"In-ho! Help him!" Seol-ah pleaded, crawling back toward them.
In-ho looked at Kang-woo's arm fused to the throne. He raised his claymore, the gears whining with a cold, blue light. "I could cut your arm off. But the feedback would vaporize us all."
"Then do what you came for," Kang-woo said, his vision flickering. "The Key. It's part of me now. If you want it, you have to take me too."
In-ho narrowed his eyes. He was an S-rank mercenary. He lived for profit. But he looked down at the city—at the millions of people who were still alive because this 'G-rank trash' was holding a dying sun in his hands.
"The Serpent Guild is going to kill me for this," In-ho muttered.
He slammed his claymore into the floor, not to attack, but to anchor himself. He reached into his tactical vest and pulled out a small, glowing vial—Liquid Mana-Stabilizer, a Rank-S consumable worth billions.
"Drink this, Priestess," In-ho threw the vial to Seol-ah. "And use your 'Bond' to pull him through the throne, not away from it."
"What?"
"Reverse the polarity!" In-ho roared, grabbing Kang-woo's other shoulder with his frost-covered gauntlet. "If he can't leave the throne, he has to become the throne! Consume it before it consumes you!"
[Condition Met: 'The Sovereign's Devouring'.][Do you wish to absorb the 'Throne of Ribs'?]
Kang-woo looked at Seol-ah. She had drunk the vial, and her mana was surging like a tidal wave—no longer silver, but a blinding, pure white.
"Do it, Kang-woo!" she screamed. "I'll hold your soul together!"
Kang-woo closed his eyes. He didn't pull. He opened his mouth and inhaled.
The black ink, the bone-structure, the millions of souls trapped in the Citadel's foundation—they all reversed direction. The massive fortress began to shrink, its matter compressing into a single, terrifying point of density centered on Kang-woo's heart.
[Level Up!][Level Up!][Level Up!][Current Level: 20]
The Citadel vanished.
The three of them plummeted through the open sky. In-ho grabbed Seol-ah and Kang-woo, his frost-mana forming a temporary parachute of ice crystals.
They hit the bottom of the Association's crater with a bone-jarring thud.
Silence returned to Seoul. The ten Citadels were gone. The purple fog was dissipating.
Kang-woo lay in the center of the crater. His arm was back to normal, but his chest was now marked with a permanent, black tattoo of a crown. He was cold—completely cold—but his heart was beating.
[Evolution Complete: 'Lesser Sovereign of the Abyss'.][Lifespan: 10 Years (Recovered from the Throne's Core).]
"You... you're alive," Seol-ah whispered, collapsing next to him.
"I have ten years," Kang-woo said, his voice human again. "I'm not a ghost anymore."
In-ho stood up, coughing out a cloud of frost. He looked at his broken claymore and then at the sky. "Ten years is a long time to be the most wanted man in the world, kid."
"I'm counting on it," Kang-woo said.
But as the Association's reinforcements began to swarm the edge of the crater, Kang-woo felt a strange vibration in his new 'Crown' tattoo.
It wasn't a warning. It was a transmission.
From across the ocean, in a different Rift, a voice whispered in a language older than the world.
"The seat is filled. The Hunt begins."