“Let’s go back.”

Noah approached the woman, extending his hand. But she shook her head and answered.

“No. I still have things to do.”

At this quiet yet firm refusal, Noah froze in place. Not for a single moment had he imagined she would reject his outstretched hand.

Being refused by his deity… His heart seemed to shatter like ice filled with cracks.

Noah’s steady gaze still rested on the woman, but it no longer shone with desperation. His crumbled faith was being replaced with a sense of betrayal.

The woman’s denial wasn’t a simple refusal. It was a declaration that shook Noah’s very existence. The anger rising from one corner of his heart gradually became impossible to suppress.

“Are you abandoning me? For these filthy creatures?”

“That’s not…”

“You will regret this.”

The woman’s trailing response wasn’t worth hearing anymore. It merely pierced his heart like a sharp dagger. Noah walked out of the forest, engulfed in deep wounds and betrayal. Swirling emotions tangled together, weighing down on his chest.

Standing under the burning sun, Noah coldly gazed at the forest of the beast-people. That suffocatingly damp and humid space, those gloomy and dirty beast-people had changed the woman.

They were the ones who had stolen her purity and urged her to abandon him.

Noah slowly clenched his fist. A subtle trembling could be felt at his fingertips. His burning anger had grown too intense to suppress any longer. Enough to recall the whispers he had ignored until now.

‘Annihilate the Tarkars.’

This was what the wind had continuously whispered to him. Noah had long ignored this mission. The beast-people were trapped in the forest, unable to do anything. Noah hadn’t felt any reason to act.

That complacency was the beginning of everything. The laziness that failed to foresee the inevitable changes fate would bring had created the current tragedy.

Destiny approached him now, an unavoidable reality. The ancient whisper of the wind echoed in his ears once more. The command to erase the remnants of darkness from this world was no longer a simple task but his reason for existence.

Destroying the Tarkars wouldn’t be difficult. Noah’s power, his anger, could push away the darkness covering the forest and burn everything.

His anger blazed like flames. The sense of betrayal froze his heart like ice. Nevertheless, the reason he couldn’t burn down the forest was solely because of the woman. She was his deity and simultaneously his love.

Even though she had betrayed him, even though she no longer wanted him, the woman was still in the forest.

In the end, Noah couldn’t do anything.

Simply because of the possibility that the woman who abandoned him might be in danger.

But he hadn’t given up. While finely tuning his divine power to monitor the woman’s energy, Noah began searching. For a way to burn away the filthy evil while protecting the woman from harm.

Having lost track of day and night and the flow of time, Noah was preparing the final stage. 

However, at that moment, he detected the woman’s energy crossing the forest boundary.

The energy was weak but unmistakable. It was the woman’s trace. Noah burned down the forest of beast-people and followed her energy.

The woman’s trace was heading toward the royal palace. He couldn’t understand why she was there or what reason drove her there. He needed to confirm.

Though knowing he wouldn’t be welcomed after leaving the temple, Noah didn’t stop his steps.

In the king’s audience chamber, Noah demanded directly:

“Please let me see the woman.”

The king silently looked at Noah for a moment.

“What woman?”

Noah didn’t hesitate at all.

“The one I’m looking for is here.”

Noah was resolute.

“Very well. Perhaps it might help.”

At his unwavering voice, the king nodded. Shortly after, Noah was guided deep into the royal palace.

Noah entered the room where the woman was staying. The room was quiet, but the woman’s energy could clearly be felt. Noah slowly moved forward. And finally, when he faced the woman, Noah froze once again.

Pointed ears sprouting from the crown of her head, sharp fangs like those of a beast, and even a bushy tail. The woman had transformed into a beast-person.

Noah approached slowly, exhaling. His hand, extended toward the woman, ultimately failed to reach her.

“Is this…”

His strained voice was mixed with uncontrollable anger and pain.

“Was this what you had to do?”

But Noah’s voice circled the room like an unanswered echo. His green eyes gradually turned red. Even in such anger, Noah couldn’t withdraw his vow to his deity.

He would find a way to restore her. To her original form. Even if he lost everything in the process.

Noah’s determination was intense enough to devour everything. He staked everything on saving her. Divine power continuously poured from his body, and Noah rummaged through forbidden books and ancient records day and night.

His research filled the room. Old books and diagrams applying divine power were scattered on the floor, and Noah’s hands moved without rest. But every attempt ended in failure.

With each failure, Noah pushed himself harder, recalling her image. If he couldn’t save the woman, there was no reason for him to exist.

A long time passed. His body weakened, and his divine power gradually dimmed. Yet after pouring everything out, all he discovered was how the woman had been transformed into a beast-person.

Surprisingly, it was because of mushrooms commonly growing in the beast-people’s territory. That small mushroom had defiled his deity. He couldn’t have imagined that the answer he had been desperately searching for would be something so trivial.

“Just… because of this.”

His once-blazing anger turned into emptiness. He couldn’t fathom Pathos’s intention for allowing such an impure object to exist in the world.

But to Noah, only one thing mattered: the fact that he had found a clue to restore his deity. Even if it was a product of deception.

However, that hope didn’t last long. After a brief moment of empty joy, Noah howled in despair.

The faint energy that had sustained him for so long, the woman’s presence, could no longer be felt.

Noah collapsed on the spot. In the end, he had lost the woman without being able to do anything.

Burning with anger, Noah visited the royal palace that had been protecting the woman. It was then that he discovered the identity of the power that had annihilated her. The royal symbol embedded in the jewel.

The only power capable of annihilating a woman who had once been wrapped in divine authority. It was through that Token of Pathos that the woman had been annihilated.

But the king who would have used that token had also disappeared. No one knew where the token had gone or how it had been used.

Despite employing every method to track it down.

Finally, Noah sought the deity he had avoided his entire life. Kneeling and clasping his hands together, he prayed with a desperate voice for the first time in his life.

“Please give her back. Please.”

His sunken voice contained the grief of someone who had lost everything. At that moment, in the quiet world, a single response came back.

‘Wait.’

It seemed like hope but was simultaneously a harsh command. Noah engraved those words in his heart and began to live through motionless time.

Countless years passed him by. But his world remained frozen. A world without the woman was empty, like a landscape that had lost its light.

But Noah believed. That she would return. In the endlessly flowing time, Noah repeatedly recalled that hope.

Finally, after a long wait, Noah found the woman. Though she had a different face and body, Noah could recognize her at a glance. The very woman who had been his everything and who had taken it all away in an instant.

But the woman didn’t remember him. Her expression no longer conveyed the dignity or sadness of a deity. What remained in its place was the pure curiosity of a stranger who had newly stepped into the world.

Living under the unfamiliar name of Rudis.