Chapter 137 - Episode 20. God of Yesterday (1)
Chapter 137: Episode 20. God of Yesterday (1)
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「The most important things you had to do are all in ‘Yesterday.’」
The God of Yesterday, Arteina.
* * *
“Jaehwan?”
Jaehwan froze for a moment when he heard Yoonhwan call his name. He blinked several times.
The feel of the air against his skin. The familiar scent of the tower. Even that tree.
The Tree of Beginning.
There was no mistaking it. It was the tree from the 50th Floor of Atopos.
Why was that tree here?
And how did Yoonhwan remember his name?
“Come on! We’re in the middle of a strategy meeting.”
A strategy meeting? What was Yoonhwan talking about?
People Jaehwan knew stood beneath the tree.
Jay, the blacksmith who had always maintained his weapons. Hiren, the potion maker who had kept him supplied with quality potions. Sakamoto, the science teacher who had taught him about parallel universes...
“Still not awake, are you? That succubus must have had you completely bewitched yesterday.”
“Jaehwan-gun. Everyone is waiting.”
“Seoyul said she would come a little later... Ah, there she is.”
Someone suddenly put him in a tight headlock, forcing him to bend at the waist.
“Hey! Are you still dreaming? Was that succubus yesterday really that pretty?”
The confusion in his mind cleared at once.
A succubus? Right.
They had cleared the 66th Floor of the Tower of Nightmares yesterday.
They had fallen into the succubus’s dream and experienced all manner of sweet, terrible dreams. Many Companions had writhed in ecstasy and agony before dying.
It was not a memory anyone could laugh about, but all his Companions were laughing. They would not have been able to endure it otherwise.
“What kind of dream did you have? You were spacing out for so long.”
At Seoyul’s question, Jaehwan thought.
“A long dream.”
“What kind of long dream?”
After hesitating briefly, Jaehwan began telling them about his dream.
It was the story of Jaehwan climbing 《the Tower of Nightmares》 alone.
Sakamoto regressed. Jay and Hiren left. Seoyul and Yoonhwan died. Jaehwan finally reached the 100th Floor alone, destroyed the tower, and entered 《Chaos》, the Trunk of the Tree of Illusion.
There, he met Mino, old man Cheongheo, Karlton, Sirwen, and the people of Gorgon Fortress. He fought the Lords, followed the traces of a dream demon named Mulack, and reached 《the Abyss》, a Branch of the Tree of Illusion.
He climbed 《the Abyss》, met Runald, Andersen, and Ethan, then fought against the gods’ ‘Alliance.’
The people listening to Jaehwan’s story laughed.
“Hoho. You have quite the imagination too. Something like that could certainly happen in another parallel universe.”
“What an amazing dream. Jaehwan-gun, do you like movies as much as Yoonhwan-gun?”
The faces of his admiring Companions.
Seoyul smiled.
“Ahaha, there is another world beyond the end of this tower? Chaos? The Abyss?”
Jaehwan quietly watched their bright, smiling faces.
It was a time when the tower’s 100th Floor should have marked the end of tragedy.
There was only enough despair for them to keep breathing, and they could stand firmly upon those small despairs and speak of the future.
Jaehwan gave a hollow laugh.
This time that had been a ‘nightmare’ for everyone...
“Honestly, it makes me want to play along.”
...had been the warmest past of his life.
“Huh? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
Jaehwan looked up at the sky without answering.
Perhaps the Companions deceived by the [Stone of Regression] had felt this way too. They must have chosen to surrender themselves to this sweet time and believe it was reality.
“Jaehwan?”
Unfortunately, he could not be deceived.
「Doubt」.
No illusion in this world could fool him.
That was the curse of Awakening.
「Understanding」.
His eyes gleamed with golden light, laying bare the truth of the world.
World Force filled this world.
Jaehwan understood. This was an elaborate illusion created by someone’s Sanctuary.
“Enough games. I’ve been through illusions like this countless times. They’re boring now.”
A voice rang out from the empty air.
[You do not look bored.]
It was the clear voice of a woman.
Jaehwan gauged its direction and asked, “It seems you know my friend.”
[Perhaps I do. Perhaps I do not.]
“Answer me. Is Kim Yoonhwan here?”
[What if he is?]
Rumble!
A terrifying force erupted from Jaehwan’s entire body. World Force surged from his fingertips and flowed into Dokbul.
「World Stab」
His Stab struck the sky, creating an immense rift. The shell of the world tore apart around it.
[Amazing. I never thought a human like you truly existed. You are exactly as the investigation described.]
The voice did not seem the least bit flustered by Jaehwan’s sudden attack.
Beyond the shattered world lay another world. The backs of his old Companions. The Tree of Beginning. Yoonhwan turning toward him as if he had been waiting.
“Jaehwan.”
The earlier scene repeated itself.
Jaehwan stabbed again with his sword.
「World Stab」
The Stab split the sky like lightning rising in reverse, and the world tore apart once more.
[I am sorry, but your power will not be enough.]
As though there were dozens, even hundreds of spare worlds, worlds continued appearing before Jaehwan.
Still, he did not give up.
「World Stab」
...
「World Stab」
...
「World Stab」
[I told you. Your power will never...]
「World Stab」
「World Stab」
「World Stab」
The endless barrage of Stabs stripped away worlds as though peeling fruit.
Watching Jaehwan stabbed without end, the voice spoke.
[Do you not even trust yourself now? All five of your senses must be telling you that this ‘world’ is real.]
Crash!
[Stop even now. This world is real. The emotions and stories you feel in this world are real as well.]
Crash!
[Will you destroy even that?]
Crash!
[If the world you just destroyed was real, then the friend you were looking for is dead.]
Crash!
[How... can you be so certain?]
He stabbed, stabbed, and stabbed again. As always, Stab was the only thing he knew.
The straightest, most honest line in the world. Jaehwan had come this far by honing that one line.
“I just know.”
[You asked where your friend was, did you not? You alone do not know what everyone else does. Your friend is probably dead by now. Whether he is in the Metaverse or still in the detention center, there is no way someone without a Follower could still be alive...]
“Looks like you do not know where Yoonhwan is either.”
Crash!
Without doubting his present for even an instant, he kept stabbing with his feet planted firmly on the ground.
The world was reconstructing itself more and more slowly.
“There.”
Jaehwan abruptly changed direction and stabbed into empty air, as though he were stabbing the voice itself.
Something invisible truly seemed to have been pierced by Dokbul. It convulsed violently, and the world began to collapse.
It did not peel apart like a shell. The sound of the entire world splitting apart filled the air.
[You are strong.]
The voice laughed coldly.
The faces of people who had once been his Companions were scorched within illusory flames rising everywhere.
[But with such lonely ‘strength,’ you will not be able to change anything.]
* * *
Pwahhh.
Jaehwan woke while spouting a stream of liquid from his mouth. He struggled to his feet, and viscous fluid poured from all over his body. He lightly shook off the liquid and turned around.
A torn cocoon lay behind him.
Cocoons filled with cultivation fluid.
Looking around, he saw countless cocoons containing souls lined up all around him.
[You have passed the ‘Entry Task’.]
[〈Metaverse〉’s Seventh Floor is a ‘Team Task’, and your team will be determined by how you resolve the Task.]
[You have become a ‘Terrorist’.]
A Terrorist?
“Are you awake?”
At the familiar voice, he looked up and saw Andersen quietly fluttering her wings.
“You were not trapped?”
“I am bound to your Worldview. Strictly speaking, I am practically one body with you.”
Come to think of it, that was true. It was a fact he occasionally forgot.
“Where is Runald?”
“Follow me quietly. He is quite far away.”
Andersen began flying carefully, her voice unusually tense.
Jaehwan moved almost silently, gliding between the cocoons.
Cocoons here. Cocoons there.
Even a rough count showed there were well over a thousand cocoons nearby alone.
Were they all passengers who had reached the Seventh Floor?
Jaehwan looked into the cocoons.
The passengers curled up inside like babies all looked happy.
Tzzzt.
A faint current flowed, and something rose from inside a cocoon.
Jaehwan recognized it at once.
World Force.
The World Force extracted from the cocoons gathered in one place through tubes, then began flowing somewhere else.
“You noticed.”
Andersen spoke in a dark voice.
“This is 〈Metaverse〉’s power plant. It is where they produce the trust distributed as rewards in the tower and extract the World Force needed to activate major Worldviews.”
He had expected a place like this to exist, but he had never imagined it would be like this.
The System ran the tower by directly extracting World Force from passengers.
“This is the price of reaching the Seventh Floor without knowing anything. The System has become even more vicious than before. Still, it was not like this in the past.”
Jaehwan studied the cocoons in the power plant.
Some were quite old. Their souls looked terribly worn, as though their World Force had been drained for a long time.
“I wanted to free them.”
“I see.”
If it was Andersen, he could imagine her fighting the Alliance for that reason.
The Andersen Jaehwan had seen was that kind of god.
The cocoons were separated into categories in each section, with different labels attached to them.
[Anonymous God 32]
[Anonymous God 33]
[Anonymous God 34]
Anonymous Gods. He had heard that title somewhere before.
“I found him.”
A small cocoon stood where Andersen pointed.
Its shape gave him an odd sense of familiarity.
Inside it was Runald, curled up small.
“Can I take him out?”
“Normally, no. If the link is severed at the wrong time, it can damage the soul. But he will be fine.”
“Why?”
“His link is not fully established yet.”
Sure enough, only half the light in Runald’s cocoon was on.
Without hesitation, Jaehwan swung Dokbul and cut open Runald’s cocoon.
Then...
“Bleeegh!”
Runald spewed out a stream of liquid, coughing as he tumbled out.
“Jaehwan-nim?”
Fortunately, Runald was unharmed.
“Do you know what dream I just had? Everyone was in a Naked world like Jaehwan-nim...”
His mind did not seem particularly affected either.
That was when warning lights all around them flashed on at once with a whirring buzz.
“We have been spotted. Run!”
Cutting open the cocoon must have caused the problem.
The warning lights flashed in unison, and something that sounded like insects came from somewhere nearby.
A swarm of insects that blackened the air appeared.
“What are those...?”
They were drones.
Jaehwan grabbed Runald by the back of the neck and began running.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
The place where they had been standing moments ago became riddled with holes. Jaehwan swiftly cut down the drones blocking their path with Dokbul and followed Andersen’s lead.
As the warning alarm grew louder, more forces appeared.
There were not only drones, but mechanical hounds shaped like wolves and armed robots covered head to toe in armor.
It seemed the Seventh Floor was a steampunk or science fiction dystopian Worldview.
“Damn it. There are too many. Can you handle them?”
Seeing the drones surrounding them from the front and rear, Jaehwan checked the World Force left within him.
Not enough.
He had apparently spent too much World Force fighting the Metaverse Six Gods on the previous floor.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Deflecting the incoming energy rounds, Jaehwan quickly searched for somewhere Runald and Andersen could hide.
It was not easy.
Even using 「Doubt」 and 「Understanding」, this Worldview was still somewhat difficult for him to comprehend.
That was when the darkness of the world suddenly deepened.
What?
He looked up.
The moon in the sky was turning black. As though guiding them, its shadow stretched in a certain direction.
Sensing something, Jaehwan grabbed Andersen and Runald and ran toward an alley.
The shadow led into an underground waterway below the alley.
Zap!
After skewering several rapidly approaching drones with Stab, Jaehwan lightly bent a nearby pipe to block the entrance to the waterway. They passed through one waterway and climbed back aboveground, finding another alley.
Jaehwan ran along its shadows.
“What? Have you been here before?”
“No, but I think I understand.”
He knew instinctively. Something was guiding him in a way that was incredibly easy for his 「Doubt」 and 「Understanding」 to read.
After running for some time, Jaehwan finally arrived in front of a small abandoned building.
“Ah, this is...”
Seeing the black crescent hanging at the entrance, Runald remembered something and cried out.
“That little kid said it. They told us to come here when we reached the Seventh Floor. This must be...”
The droning buzz of an approaching swarm filled the air.
More than a hundred drones surrounded the sky overhead, blackening it out.
Runald turned pale and pressed close to Jaehwan. Andersen snarled threateningly.
Jaehwan counted the drones.
Could he take them out all at once?
Without hesitation, Jaehwan gripped Dokbul.
Even if he lacked World Force, it could not be helped. As always, striking first was the surest path to victory.
Before Dokbul could unleash its power, bullets from somewhere began shooting down the drones.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Drones were attacking drones.
More precisely, a little over ten drones used precise fire to eliminate all the others. It took less than ten seconds for the confused drones to collide with one another and be completely wiped out.
Those drones looked familiar.
“See? I told you I would be here soon.”
A woman’s voice he vaguely recognized.
A grumbling man’s voice followed.
“Impressive. You are the first person to escape ‘Yesterday’ so quickly. Defeating the Metaverse Six Gods was not just luck, then.”
“It is not just fast. This is the best record ever. Oh, hello?”
A Doll emerged from the darkness and brightly waved at Jaehwan.
“It has been a while. I told you I would bring you to the Seventh Floor, right?”
Her brown hair shone beneath the soft moonlight. Her eyes curved into beautiful crescents.
“I kept my promise, Beginner-nim.”
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