Chapter 131 - The Doomsayer III

“Don’t worry too much, Guild Leader.”

Go Yori gave me a wistful smile, as though she were worried about me.

“As you know, this is the well of dreams we descended into through you. I’m merely a character in a dream within a dream, too. I have nothing whatsoever to do with the real me.”

“... You’re just an illusion?”

“Yes. Hmm. If I had to put it into words, perhaps I’m a manifestation of your fear and aversion? Of course, it makes me terribly sad that your unconscious terror took my form, of all things...”

The corners of her eyes drooped sadly, but I couldn’t relax.

Imagine Godzilla wagging its tail and asking you to pet it. Wouldn’t even a light-novel protagonist equipped with an internal “petting → winning them over” protocol have some doubts about the magic in his palm?

“In fact, it wouldn’t make sense if I weren’t an illusion. However mysterious I may seem to you, absurd things like sitting on clouds or being six hundred meters underground wouldn’t happen, would they?”

“...”

“They’re all illusions created by your fear. Even my calling you ‘Guild Leader’ is strange to begin with. Because I...”

“... Never accepted me as your guild leader. The only place that title holds true is in my memories.”

“Yes! Exactly.”

What was I supposed to do?

Trusting Go Yori was out of the question. I’d sooner believe the UFO that fell into the East Sea had actually been an alien civilization’s goodwill ambassador.

But it was also true that I couldn’t flee this place.

I had to wait for the tutorial fairies to rescue me, or find a way out myself. Until then, whether I liked it or not, Go Yori was certain to follow me closely.

“Above all, I can serve as your guide here.”

“A guide? How very welcome. The guide I hired was just assassinated by someone.”

“Ahaha. I’m sorry. But wouldn’t a local guide be more reliable than an outsider like that?”

Go Yori clasped her hands behind her back and leaned her face toward me.

“Ultimately, dream demons are merely bridges between dreams and reality. Hmm. You couldn’t exactly call them a species that belongs entirely to this side, could you? But I, a manifestation of your unconscious, have always existed here and nowhere else.”

“...”

“I know almost everything that happens here. Guild Leader, you came to investigate the nightmares, didn’t you? I’m confident I can guide you far better than some mere dream demon.”

A brief silence followed.

“... I have conditions.”

“Yes. Please tell me anything.”

“Don’t waste your time trying to win my affection. Don’t get too close, either. And don’t kill dream demons without warning like you did earlier. If you violate these conditions, I’ll escape by any means necessary, at any moment.”

What would happen if I killed myself in a dream?

I would have to try it to know, but the fact that it was a manner of death unfamiliar to me made it worth attempting.

Go Yori gave me a vaguely troubled smile.

“Understood, Guild Leader. I’ll do my best, too. But...”

“But?”

“Hmm. It’s nothing. This place is dangerous, so we need to leave quickly.”

Go Yori turned away. The brisk tap of her loafers echoed through the waiting hall.

“Please follow me. I’ll show you the nightmare‘s’.”

4

The moment we left Busan Station, the landscape before us was the void.

Let me take this opportunity to remind you how frightening the void is.

In our reality—in the days before the apocalypse—space-time was always orderly. Look left, and you saw what was on your left. Step right, and you moved right.

Not so in the void.

Ordinary space-time and laws of physics meant nothing there. Especially in a great void of profound Depth.

“...!”

The moment I set foot outside Busan Station, my mind grew hazy.

Two hundred meters away stood a yellow traffic light. It drew my attention for some reason—and at that very instant, it was right in front of my nose.

Blink, blink, blink.

The yellow light flashed furiously before my eyes. I closed my eyes briefly and opened them again, and the traffic light had vanished without a trace.

“...”

WAAAAAAH!

Children’s cries sounded from somewhere. When I turned my head, all I saw was a patch of grass. Whenever it swayed in the wind, it wailed—waaah, waaah—as though borrowing a baby’s vocal organs.

“There, there.”

An old woman crouched in a flowerbed and plucked an azalea bud with a snap.

WAAAAAAH!

Red blood gushed out, and a cry burst forth with it. The old woman stroked the azalea petals as though soothing a newborn, her fingernails stained scarlet with flower juice.

“...”

I steadied my breathing.

Amid a consciousness where the blinking traffic light, the flower-baby’s cries, and the old woman’s stroking echoed forever, I focused solely on the path I was walking.

Beside me, Go Yori blinked.

“Wow. Incredible. You really are maintaining your self-awareness continuously. How do you do it?”

“... I have my own tricks. More importantly, where are the nightmares?”

“Oh. Right over there.”

Go Yori pointed.

I stopped short.

My gaze naturally followed her finger, and I could only hold my breath.

“What is that...?”

The scene before me was both familiar and unfamiliar.

First, the building was familiar: the headquarters of the National Road Management Corps. The building, practically a Busan landmark, towered like the Tower of Babel.

In the run when Busan had degenerated into ‘Utopia,’ I had watched fireworks with Dang Seorin from the terrace at its summit.

“Ah—ah—ah—.”

Dang Seorin was there in this dream, too.

Only she was hanging from the spire, not standing on the terrace.

Great nails pierced her wrists and the tops of her feet, as though she had been crucified. As though this self-proclaimed witch had truly been subjected to a brutal witch trial. Blood streamed from her limbs, yet she never stopped singing.

The blood drained from my own limbs, too.

But the horrific scene didn’t end there.

“—Ah—ah—.”

Directly below Dang Seorin, another person had been nailed up in crucifixion.

Sim Aryeon.

Using the singing technique she had learned from Dang Seorin, she followed her teacher in reciting the refrain of a Latin song.

Both their faces were expressionless. The a cappella duet woven by witch and saintess endlessly shook the city’s night sky—the entire universe.

“What in the world...?”

“You already know, don’t you?” Go Yori said.

“It’s a perpetual-motion machine. The Great Witch sings by burning away her lifespan. Her ability must inevitably reach its end someday, but things change if the Saintess of the North joins her.”

“...”

“Even if the Great Witch’s lifespan runs out, the Saintess of the North can simply replenish it. That effectively creates an inexhaustible fuel for dreams.”

“...”

“Every time the Great Witch moves her mouth, she dies, comes back to life, and dies again, continuing to sing solely for world peace. That’s the kind of nightmare this is.”

I swung my sword at once.

The Tower of Babel collapsed. Dang Seorin and Sim Aryeon’s song faded, swallowed by the crashing tower.

Perhaps I imagined it, but they seemed to look at me and utter a brief dying cry of ‘Ah.’ Even that cry vanished into the cloud of dust.

My heart pounded.

But the nightmare wasn’t over.

“... You can’t kill dreams, Guild Leader.”

Go Yori sounded at a loss.

“As I told you, the nightmares here merely give form to your fears. You’re a wise man. Surely you’ve imagined it at least once? That if those two fell at the same time and their abilities became intertwined, they might build an eternally peaceful Utopia.”

“... What a sick pastime. I would never choose that option.”

“Yes. And you could call this place a dumping ground for the possibilities you didn’t choose.”

“...”

“Worlds after their bad endings. Or the final fates of parallel worlds. Or fragments of possible worlds. Or simply nightmares. Sick pastimes.”

Go Yori took a tapping step forward.

The scenery transformed completely.

Sejong City became a desert of white sand, and in its center, Cheon Yohwa and Lee Hayul sat facing each other.

Though they were impossibly far away, I could somehow hear their conversation clearly.

“... But Teacher sometimes brings up analogies from the Chu–Han Contention and Water Margin out of nowhere. Shouldn’t we insert knowledge of those into ‘Teacher,’ too?”

“Negative. Better to pursue a perfect big brother than big brother as he is.”

“Wow... Hayul, our tastes really seem to match, but then they don’t.”

“Agreed. Cannot understand following an outdated movement like realism.”

“Look who’s talking, doll nerd.”

They chatted softly together. It should have been a heartwarming sight on the surface, but instead my mouth went dry.

CREAK.

Something stood between Cheon Yohwa and Lee Hayul.

It was ‘me.’

A doll that looked like the Undertaker—the Undertaker’s corpse—stood hunched between them.

“Hmm. Then let’s leave out the Chu–Han Contention and Water Margin, and only load in Romance of the Three Kingdoms knowledge. If we leave that out too, we really can’t call him Teacher!”

“Agreed.”

CREAK. CREAK.

Cheon Yohwa was inputting information into my corpse, just as she had when making zombies into AI judges.

And Lee Hayul’s puppet strings were attached to the resulting ‘Undertaker’s’ body—to his limbs and every muscle.

The ‘Undertaker’ opened his mouth.

-You two... Honestly, what do you think human beings are? I’ve told you time and again. Yohwa, you need to look upon people with a little more warmth.

“Wow! He sounds like Teacher!”

-And Hayul. Didn’t I tell you not to play dolls with living people if you can help it? No, you shouldn’t do it with dead people, either.

“Satisfied.”

The two were perfectly amicable.

In a world reduced to a white desert, they alone put on their puppet show forever.

That scene seemed so very far away.

“That’s another bad ending,” Go Yori whispered beside me.

“Gapless was released and covered the whole world in void, but Cheon Yohwa and the Puppeteer alone were allowed a small oasis.”

“...”

“Oh, please don’t approach them, under any circumstances. They may look ordinary, but their falls have already progressed to an extreme degree. Anomalies capable of destroying the world single-handedly... Guild Leader?”

I ignored Go Yori.

My foot left a print in the sand with a dry crunch.

I had taken only one step, yet Cheon Yohwa and Lee Hayul’s eyes instantly locked onto me.

“...”

“...”

My pupils stared at me steadily, intently. I approached them with measured steps that were by no means slow.

As I did, their faces became utterly expressionless, as though they had never been chatting so happily.

I stood before them.

Then I embraced them both.

As tightly as I could. As gently as I could, so they wouldn’t break.

“Yohwa.”

“...”

“Hayul.”

“...”

“You shouldn’t be in a place like this. Girls, let’s go home. Home...”

“...”

“...”

Softly, their outlines crumbled in my arms. White sand scattered from my embrace, becoming a sand-laden wind.

The desert itself vanished into the wind as well. I was sitting in the middle of an asphalt road riddled with cracks.

“Incredible...” Go Yori murmured.

“Really, how can you hold on to your sense of self so steadfastly? Here, you may indulge your desires however you wish. No—it’s a place where they can’t help but be unleashed.”

“... It’s nothing impressive. Sometimes I drop everything and take a vacation, too.”

“But even those vacations are only a means of returning to reality, aren’t they? Why—why won’t you let yourself go completely? Even once. No one could attack you even if you did.”

Would I have felt a little better if I could have answered, “Because my mind is that strong”?

But that wasn’t the right answer.

To become strong, reasons rooted solely in myself were never enough. I needed other people.

The reason I had been able to hold firm...

“—Oh.”

Paradoxically, it was because there had always been someone else who broke before I did.

“We’re in trouble, Guild Leader. That ‘ending’ is truly dangerous.”

“...”

“It’s one of the two most dangerous beings even in this world of endings. I recommend getting away immediately. You probably won’t be able to lay it to rest as easily as Cheon Yohwa or the Puppeteer.”

Even before Go Yori’s warning, I had sensed something chilling.

‘Something’ was approaching us.

My scalp prickled. Fierce goosebumps rose on the back of my neck, which always detected threats before my five senses did.

I enhanced my vision with aura. Beyond the asphalt forest of collapsed buildings, it was walking toward me.

“Ha.”

Once I saw who it was, I couldn’t suppress a hollow laugh.

Of course.

If this was my nightmare and humanity’s unconscious—if, as Go Yori said, it was a gathering place for the worst bad endings—then naturally, a fate like that had to exist, too.

“You goddamn old bastard. You really never help me with anything...”

Emit Schopenhauer.

My longtime comrade-in-arms.

An awakened. Known as the Sword Star.

A Fallen. Known as the Sword Demon.

The swordsman with the Heaven-Gifted Martial Physique, born with the greatest martial talent on earth, approached me, radiating power so immense it plainly bore no comparison to what he had possessed in reality.