End of the Volume: <The Story of How I Wandered Everworld with Intelligent Little Che and Became One of the World's People>

[December 31, 1999, 00:00:00]

[Your Highness, can you see my words?]

The leaden sky pressed down like an upside-down lid. It seemed that every sky in Everworld was equally bleak and lifeless.

Unlike the empty wilderness elsewhere, this place was covered in standing gravestones and mounds of earth. Thick fog shrouded it all, while rustling black shadows wandered within, making the scene especially terrifying.

Crack, crack.

In the silence, a crack blossomed across the surface of an especially tall gravestone.

The muddled consciousness slowly returned from a state of nothingness, sustained by sufficient and dense [Qi of All Beings] and the [Unfulfilled Wish] it was determined to fulfill.

Drowsy, it was on the verge of awakening.

It could not breathe even once, nor move even a fraction.

Its consciousness was exhausted, its mind a chaotic sea. It could not think at all.

Its consciousness sank into slumber once more.

Within the void, two lines of translucent characters that seemed visible only to certain people flashed past.

[The time has not come.]

[It is not yet time.]

No one responded to the characters.

No one knew how much time passed.

Cold wind and sand howled across the land, raising lonely ghosts throughout the graveyard—mindless spirits that knew only to wander aimlessly.

Without [Qi of All Beings], without an [Unfulfilled Wish], and without a powerful [Self Will], consciousness would inevitably be worn away by the passage of time and the windblown sand, never to awaken again.

Crack, crack.

The gravestone, which had already borne a single crack, was now crisscrossed with fissures that grew wider and wider.

The cracks intertwined. Before long, this gravestone—perhaps the tallest and largest on the entire land—shattered into dust and scattered with the wind.

The surface of the damp, yellow-brown soil stirred and