Bifnen

Bifnen is the leader of the old gods, an ancient Pain Sect Wizard who becomes Father and Judge and eventually monopolizes the highest authority in the Returner’s system. His attempt to restore the old gods’ rule culminates in the Sky Castle war and his execution by Lakrak, the new Constellation of Judgment.

Biography

The judge who condemned the Returner

Before becoming an old god, Bifnen is a Wizard of the Pain Sect who rises to the highest position of Father and Judge through his own ability. The early system abolishes ordinary death and initially brings a long period of celebration and peace. In Aldin’s memory, the Pain Sect seals its knowledge, and Bifnen swears never to use magic for pain again. That recollection may itself have been affected by the old gods’ later alterations to Aldin’s mind, but it preserves the standard from which Bifnen falls: judgment was once meant to restrain divine cruelty rather than legitimize it. (Chapter 304) (Chapter 312) (Chapter 316)

Over thousands of years, the old gods learn to bend causality for amusement, and even their judge becomes more interested in diversion than trials. The system’s technician, the Returner, concludes that the entire structure must be destroyed and nearly strips the old gods of control before Aldin betrays him. Bifnen presides over the defeated rebel’s judgment. When the Returner promises to come back and destroy the system, Bifnen sentences him to Fall and true death, insisting that he will never return. The old gods then torture and imprison the Returner’s soul, turning Bifnen’s verdict into the foundational violence preserving their rule. (Chapter 304)

That victory never becomes emotionally secure. Bifnen is remembered as a judge who has never been defeated, yet his near-defeat by the Returner remains one of the few memories capable of causing him stress. Instead of confronting the system’s failure or the justice of the rebellion, he treats the Returner as a humiliating threat that was conclusively erased. The contradiction shapes his final campaign: Bifnen possesses overwhelming institutional authority, but any resistance resembling the Returner’s challenge provokes fear, impatience, and escalation rather than judgment. (Chapter 304) (Chapter 306)

Father returns to claim Avartin

Bifnen reappears after a forty-thousand-year sleep when Aldin reports that the new gods refuse to leave Avartin. At first he is indulgent, telling her that the result need not be perfect, praising the civilization the players built, and calling her his daughter after she prepares their Fall. His approval is not recognition of Avartin’s people as independent beings. Bifnen and the other old gods discuss taking the Empire intact as a splendid possession, and Aldin understands that they regard its civilization as a new toy whose makers have wrongly claimed the crown for themselves. (Chapter 287)

The old gods return aboard twenty-two high-ranking Sky Castles arranged by their owners’ status, with Bifnen’s fortress above all the others. When the Empire’s population refuses to obey their commands, he does not reconsider the legitimacy of those commands. He concludes that mortals have forgotten the proper response to gods and must be “disciplined” in the old way. The old gods beneath him are already planning experiments, torture, predation, and forced dramas after conquest, while Bifnen’s control of the system makes that future appear inevitable: Aldin can borrow authority, but ultimate control belongs to him. (Chapters 295–296)

This hierarchy also explains Bifnen’s complacency. He has guarded system control for tens of thousands of years while becoming excessively lazy about almost everything else. As long as he survives and sufficient Faith can eventually be gathered, the system makes the deaths of other old gods reversible. Bifnen therefore sees early losses as transactions rather than meaningful defeats, and his followers assume fallen Sky Castles and divine bodies can simply be restored after Avartin submits. Their confidence depends on the system remaining uncontested, precisely the condition the Returner once challenged and Choi Sung-Woon has prepared to undermine. (Chapter 296) (Chapters 300–301)

The siege of the Sky Castles

When Hegemonia, Chistka, and their allies attack, Bifnen initially avoids personal risk. He strikes Aldin for failing to detect the Empire’s offensive, transfers enough system authority for her to make the players Fall, and orders her into the Demon World while he deals with the “rebellious mortals.” The division reflects both control and disgust: Falling someone cannot be completed cleanly through a system window, but requires traversing corrupting passages in the Demon World, work Bifnen considers beneath him. Even after Chistka’s Hierophany cannon shakes his own castle, he dismisses Aldin’s warning that he should arm himself. (Chapters 300–301)

The linked defenses of the Sky Castles initially justify some of that confidence. Bifnen’s uppermost fortress withstands Chistka’s supermassive depleted-uranium rounds, while the security of each lower castle contributes to the whole arrangement. The attackers respond by destroying or displacing those lower positions, weakening the magical network as they climb. Bifnen kicks Aldin toward her assigned task rather than adapting his command, and the system’s hidden weapons remain unused while the supposedly inferior new gods dismantle the hierarchy that protects him. The conflict exposes the difference between possessing authority and understanding a changing battlefield. (Chapters 300–301)

Once the attackers approach too closely, fear overrides even the old gods’ caution. Bifnen enters Argo’s second-ranked Sky Castle and orders its gatekeeper to release the Myriad Demons, accumulated byproducts of software rot that may connect to a larger space of evil. Argo warns that their numbers are effectively uncontrollable, that the old gods no longer know how to solve the corruption without the Returner, and that deceiving causality afterward may fail. Bifnen kills Argo through the system and opens the seal himself, preferring an existential threat to the humiliation of enemies stepping onto his castle. (Chapters 306–307)

The Myriad Demons create an immense front but do not restore Bifnen’s command of the war. The Starkeeper, imperial fleets, apostles, and returning evil gods keep advancing, while the second moon’s Pulverizer drives Argo’s castle downward and crushes masses of Demons. Sha-Cha openly challenges Bifnen to descend, but he retreats inside his fortress and searches for weapons unused since ancient wars. His escalation buys time for Aldin to make three attacking players Fall, yet it also turns Avartin itself into the battlefield and confirms that preserving his rule matters more to him than preserving the world he claims to own. (Chapter 307) (Chapters 312–313)

Judgment at the first Sky Castle

Bifnen’s final hope lies in the old system and Aldin’s mission, but Sung-Woon has already sabotaged its foundations and transferred its functions into the Sanctuary. Once that deception is revealed, Bifnen stops relying on the system and equips the armament he used before becoming an old god: a crown of thorns, a whip, and a burning sword, with magical light streaming from his wounds. His ancient Wizard power is formidable enough for Sung-Woon to estimate that it rivals a god. It is nevertheless a return to an earlier, personal strength after the absolute structure Bifnen guarded has ceased to answer him. (Chapters 313–315)

The Sanctuary and the Light of Eternity and Life select Lakrak as the Constellation of Judgment because rightful judgment, rather than revenge, is needed to end the accumulated wound. Bifnen misunderstands the change and calls Lakrak a mere creature unable to penetrate his magic. Lakrak evades the whip and throws his divine spear through the castle’s layered wards, destroying the devices that sustain them. When Bifnen answers with his flaming sword, Lakrak grows beyond even the old god’s enormous body, leaving Bifnen unable to imagine an effective attack. The ruler who treated sacred status as an unquestionable hierarchy finally faces a disparity that favors the people he dismissed. (Chapters 315–316)

Lakrak’s enlarged Divine Spear passes through Bifnen’s head, his first Sky Castle, and the Demon-filled second castle before driving both fortresses into the sea. Bifnen’s death prevents the old system from simply reviving every defeated god and ends the assumption that his era can always be restored. Afterward, the Sanctuary uncovers alterations the old gods made to Aldin’s consciousness, including invasive changes that impaired her ability to refuse orders. Her later admission that her life belonged to the system and to Bifnen reveals another consequence of his rule: “Father” preserved obedience by making even family and resurrection forms of captivity. (Chapter 316) (Chapters 319–320)

Appearance and personality

Bifnen first appears fully revealed as a giant approximately one hundred meters tall, standing above the other old gods on the highest Sky Castle. He has pale-gray skin, sixteen wings, an intensely bright halo that hides his face, and a powerfully muscled body exposed except for a single garment. During the final confrontation he is described as roughly one hundred thirty meters tall and returns to his ancient equipment: a thorned crown, a whip in his left hand, and a burning sword in his right. Blood and magical light flow continually from the wounds beneath the crown. (Chapter 295) (Chapters 315–316)

He is imperious, controlling, indolent, and intensely sensitive to humiliation. Bifnen can speak gently to Aldin when she succeeds, but the paternal address disguises a relationship enforced through degradation and violence. He rarely leaves his own castle and is said to regard other castles as unclean, although Argo suspects this supposed phobia is another excuse to insult people. Bifnen has some attachment to the old gods, yet system authority makes them seem like replaceable ants to him. His undefeated self-image leaves him unable to distinguish caution from cowardice or resistance from insolence. (Chapter 287) (Chapters 295–296) (Chapters 300–301) (Chapter 306)

Powers and abilities

Supreme system authority

Bifnen holds the old system’s highest authority and can lend portions of it to another operator. He can inspect recorded statuses and unseal restricted regions; after killing Argo, he confirms the death through the system, and the narrative states that, once he overcomes causality’s slight constraint, he can repeatedly kill and revive. Restoring old gods and their fortresses still requires Faith, while Falling requires work inside the Demon World rather than a clean command. The authority is also vulnerable to the Returner’s architecture; Sung-Woon’s backdoor lets the Sanctuary mimic, redirect, and ultimately replace it. (Chapter 296) (Chapters 300–301) (Chapter 306) (Chapters 313–315)

Falling and delegated control

Bifnen can authorize the Fall that strips gods of divinity and ejects them into mortal existence, but he does not personally perform the detailed operation shown in the final conflict. He transfers authority to Aldin and sends her through the Demon World, where she manipulates representations of the targeted players across imagery worlds. The separation is a practical limit as well as a preference: the task cannot be completed with a clean command from his window and exposes its operator to corruption, injury, and counterattack. Aldin succeeds in making three players Fall, yet Bifnen’s system still fails because the opposing strategy anticipates their mortal descent and compromises the deeper machinery. (Chapters 287–289) (Chapters 300–305) (Chapters 312–314)

Ancient Pain Sect magic

Before becoming an old god, Bifnen rises through the Pain Sect as a Wizard, and his final equipment restores that pre-system mode of combat. His crown of thorns turns continuous wounds into magical light, while his whip and flaming sword function as weapons at the scale of his giant body. The sword’s fire can smash the edge of a Sky Castle, and the fortress around him carries several layers of protective magic. Sung-Woon judges this old armament capable of rivaling a god, but it does not make Bifnen immune to superior causality: Lakrak’s Judgment shatters the wards and renders both whip and sword ineffective. (Chapter 312) (Chapters 315–316)

Sky Castle defenses

Bifnen’s first Sky Castle is a home, arsenal, command post, and the apex of a linked magical formation. Its defenses survive repeated direct hits from Chistka’s Hierophany cannon, including supermassive depleted-uranium ammunition. The protection is distributed rather than absolute. Lower castles occupy magical coordinates that help maintain the upper castle’s security, so destroying or moving them weakens Bifnen’s position; the wards also depend on physical devices that Lakrak’s spear can break. The fortress stores ancient weapons and gives Bifnen strategic height, but isolation inside it contributes to his poor awareness and cannot save him once the system and defensive network collapse. (Chapter 295) (Chapters 300–301) (Chapters 306–307) (Chapters 313–316)

Release of the Myriad Demons

Bifnen can use his authority to open Argo’s sealed region and release the Myriad Demons. Their virtually endless numbers can flood the Sky Castles and form a battlefield-wide barrier, but they are not ordinary summons under his precise control. They are products of accumulated software rot, continually breed, and may be connected to a larger evil space. The old gods do not know how to eliminate or reliably gather them again without the Returner, and Bifnen’s proposed plan to erase them with causality-defying magic and then sleep through the consequences is explicitly disputed as unsafe. Releasing them is therefore an uncontrolled escalation, not proof that he commands infinity. (Chapters 306–307) (Chapters 312–314)

Giant divine body

Bifnen’s old-god body is vastly larger than mortal species and is physically coordinated enough to wield correspondingly immense weapons. He can withstand the violent motion of a bombarded Sky Castle, strike Aldin with casual force, and swing a sword whose flames destroy part of the fortress around him. Size alone is not decisive among divine beings. Chistka’s artillery forces him to brace himself, and Lakrak’s Constellation form grows so much larger that Bifnen recognizes a true disparity in power before the fatal strike. The source does not identify a separate Hierophany, Incarnation, or named body-changing skill for Bifnen. (Chapter 295) (Chapters 300–301) (Chapters 315–316)

Power progression

Relationships

• Returner: The Returner builds and maintains the system, then rebels when it becomes an instrument of abuse. Bifnen sentences him to Fall and true death, but the promise of return remains a lasting trauma and anticipates the system’s eventual destruction.
• Aldin: Bifnen calls Aldin his daughter while treating her as an expendable operator. He lends her authority, beats and humiliates her for failures, and relies on conditioning that leaves her struggling to refuse the old gods’ orders.
• Lakrak: Lakrak becomes the Constellation of Judgment and executes Bifnen. Their confrontation reverses Bifnen’s hierarchy: the “mere creature” carries Avartin’s rightful authority, while the former Judge’s magic cannot preserve him.
• Choi Sung-Woon: Sung-Woon inherits the Returner’s technical challenge without accepting that he is the same person. His Sanctuary exploits the old system’s stagnation, removes Bifnen’s absolute advantage, and calls the judgment that ends Bifnen’s rule.
• Chistka: Chistka’s Hierophany artillery repeatedly bombards Bifnen’s fortress. The shots cannot immediately pierce its linked protection, but they visibly shake both the castle and its supposedly untouchable owner.
• Hegemonia: Hegemonia leads the direct assault through the Sky Castles, forcing old gods into retreat. Bifnen responds to her advance by delegating the players’ Fall and ultimately releasing the Myriad Demons.
• Argo Charul Dome: Argo serves as gatekeeper of the Myriad Demons and refuses Bifnen’s catastrophic order. Bifnen kills Argo through the system, steps over the body, and opens the seal himself.
• Sha-Cha: Sha-Cha returns with other former enemies of the old gods, challenges Bifnen from below, and helps turn the old gods’ ancient victims into allies of the civilization Bifnen intends to reclaim.

Items

No individually notable item ownership or custody is established for Bifnen in the supplied corpus.