Chapter 139 - Episode 20. God of Yesterday (3)
Chapter 139: Episode 20. God of Yesterday (3)
──────
“Th-that’s a lie! Someone like him defeated the Six Gods...”
Of course, there were still enemies who had lost their senses. Perhaps fear had paralyzed their reason. One charged at them, wildly swinging a weapon.
「World Stab」
Jaehwan’s Stab shot forward, cleaving the enemy in two and smashing through the Plant’s outer wall.
Rumble!
After that, everything went smoothly.
Having captured the checkpoint, the Ally group found the power supply and entered the Plant.
Passengers were curled up inside the dark Plant’s cocoons.
Runald asked, “Are all these passengers people who failed their ‘Enter Task’?”
“About half.”
“Then what about the other half?”
“They are passengers who chose the ‘State’ as their team.”
The passengers trembled inside their translucent cocoons.
Those who chose the ‘State’ became residents of the Seventh Floor in exchange for supplying World Force to the 〈Metaverse〉.
Runald muttered, unable to understand.
“Why would they make a choice like that?”
“I told you before. If you choose the ‘State’, you do not have to complete the Seventh Floor’s Task. And...”
Andersen looked at the screens installed in the center of the Plant.
“You can also obtain an eternal ‘Yesterday’.”
“‘Yesterday’?”
“That is what they call the dreams these people have.”
The screens at the center of the Plant showed scenes from the passengers’ dreams.
Each screen bore a passenger’s number and name.
[Yesterday of ‘Anonymous God 32’]
[Yesterday of ‘Anonymous God 86’]
[Yesterday of ‘Anonymous God 95’]
······.
Countless ‘Yesterdays’ were there.
In one, a god had become the high-grade god they had always dreamed of becoming. In another, a god had reunited with a beloved Follower.
Watching those scenes, Jaehwan recalled the question he had received when he first ascended to the Seventh Floor.
「Is there something you seek in the 〈Metaverse〉?」
He thought he understood, at least a little, why they had asked that question.
The 〈Metaverse〉 had always been a tower where people like these gathered.
A place for those who could not find what they wanted in reality.
Those who came to escape into something, or to seek what reality did not have.
「A passenger who reaches the final floor may make one wish to the ‘Driver’, the master of the Metaverse.」
Chasing that mirage, which might someday become real, the passengers had come this far.
Perhaps they had even found it.
“This is wrong.”
Runald clenched his fists and glared at the passengers on the screens.
“This is fake.”
“What is real, Runald?”
“The real thing is...”
Runald tried to explain what he felt.
The real thing was something you could feel. Something urgent and earnest, rich and full.
Unfortunately, young Runald did not have the words to explain that feeling.
Then the boy’s god answered for him.
“The real thing needs no proof.”
“Th-that’s right. That’s what’s real!”
Only something constantly compared to the real thing, something fake, needed to prove itself. The real thing was something that clearly felt real.
That was how Runald explained it.
“But can you say those expressions are not real too?” Andersen asked.
Jaehwan was also watching the scenes on the screens.
The faces of people overcome with joy.
Perhaps some of them knew what they saw was an illusion.
Even so, they looked truly happy.
They had finally found, within the illusion of Yesterday, what they had searched for so desperately.
Could anyone tell them it was not real?
Then Jaehwan suddenly realized what those cocoons resembled.
They looked like [Stone of Regression].
“Some people are sharing the same dream.”
Where Runald pointed, there were people sharing identical ‘Yesterdays’.
Passengers were gathering one by one in a vast, open square.
“That place is called ‘The Day Before Yesterday’. It is where Yesterdays are connected.”
People who had been trapped in their own ‘Yesterdays’, dreaming happy dreams, were gathering in The Day Before Yesterday.
A dazzling royal palace appeared on the screen. It seemed to be the royal palace of the ‘State’.
A woman who appeared to be the King waved at the passengers from the palace terrace.
Andersen’s eyes wavered.
Jaehwan read the emotions in those eyes, a long, deep spectrum that ran from anger to resignation.
“Someone you know?”
“Yes.”
Jaehwan realized that the woman was Andersen’s former Companion.
“Even five hundred years ago, she loved attention that much. Now she has become that.”
“That god is Arteina?”
“That is right. She is called the ‘God of Yesterday’ now.”
One of the Four Heroes from five hundred years ago.
Arteina, the God of Yesterday and one of the Metaverse Six Gods.
He had heard that she was stronger than Justice.
That god was probably the one responsible for trapping him in an illusion during the ‘Enter Task’.
“But the people in The Day Before Yesterday do not look very happy.”
Why was that?
The people staying in The Day Before Yesterday wore dark expressions.
Jaehwan carefully watched the passengers’ actions.
Some spent money on goods. Others tried their luck with gacha draws. Some bragged about newly released Skins or hurled insults. Others slandered each other or started fights.
Most of the passengers were using 《Little Brother》.
Jaehwan saw one passenger busily typing messages.
[‘Anonymous God 88’ mocks ‘Naked Stab’, saying that he is not really ‘real’ either.]
[‘Anonymous God 88’ says that ‘Naked Stab’ only landed the final blow on people whom the ‘King of Crows’ and ‘Jin Eunsae’ had already exhausted.]
[‘Anonymous God 88’ says that no god is unaware that ‘Naked Stab’ only beat Rakers by luck, and that Rakers was all bark and no bite.]
A moment later, the passenger’s messages appeared directly before Jaehwan’s eyes through Rene’s channel.
Other passengers sent messages as well.
[‘Anonymous God 127’ is shocked by the strange rumor.]
[‘Anonymous God 51’ asks if that is true.]
[‘Anonymous God 88’ guarantees it.]
Watching the scene, Runald asked in disbelief, “Is that the ‘Yesterday’ those people wanted to find?”
Andersen remained silent for a long time before speaking.
“I do not know either.”
Rene’s voice came from afar.
“We found the power supply! I’m shutting down the Plant!”
With a faint hum, the Plant’s lights went out.
[The Plant’s power will be shut off for 10 minutes.]
[Free the residents inside the Plant.]
Like a massive beast closing its eyes, the lights of the cultivation tanks went out one by one.
Soon, the cocoons’ functions began to shut down one by one.
Passengers writhed painfully in the cultivation fluid.
Rene shouted, “What are you all doing? We need to get them out, quickly!”
At Rene’s urging, Runald stepped forward.
“I’ll try first, Jaehwan-nim.”
Holding the dagger he had taken from his pocket tightly, Runald continued.
“No matter how I think about it, being trapped in a world like this is wrong. If I calmly persuade them, everyone will listen. It will be hard at first, but once they wake up from their dreams, they will come to their senses.”
Jaehwan nodded at Runald.
Encouraged, Runald opened the cocoon right in front of him. With a tearing sound, cultivation fluid spilled out, and the passenger inside tumbled onto the ground like a doll with its strings cut.
Runald quickly caught the passenger.
“Ugh...”
“Are you awake?”
“Where is this...?”
“Please do not be startled.”
Runald began to explain calmly.
“You have been trapped in that cocoon, dreaming, all this time.”
Runald carefully chose his words so the passenger would not be startled.
He erased, one piece at a time, the reality the passenger believed in and wrote the man’s true reality in its place.
Runald explained how unfairly the man had been treated while trapped in the cultivation tank, reminding him that he no longer had to suffer like that.
“It is all right now.”
His words were so smooth and delicate that it was hard to believe they came from a boy.
At least, that was how they sounded to the one speaking.
“You... you...”
The man’s face slowly turned white, like someone being strangled to death.
“What did you do to me?”
“It may still be difficult for you to accept reality, but...”
The man staggered and slapped Runald’s arm away. His body lost balance and collapsed onto the floor.
Runald stepped closer to help him up again.
The man stared silently at his face reflected in the cultivation fluid on the floor.
A gaunt, shriveled soul, pitifully sagging after its World Force had been drained away.
“Why? Why did you take me out?”
“What?”
“I-I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
The man screamed and reached for Runald.
Unable to watch any longer, Jaehwan stepped forward.
“Hey.”
“I’ll kill...”
The man shifted his target to Jaehwan and reached out while shouting.
“Eeeeeek!”
The moment he saw Jaehwan, foam began to spill from his mouth.
His shoulders shook as if an earthquake had struck.
“D-don’t kill me! Please spare me! Please spare me!”
The man threw himself flat on the ground, raised both hands over his head, and begged.
“Please do not kill me! Please do not kill me!”
“I will not kill you.”
“Please spare me! I will not do it! I will not do anything like that!”
What was that supposed to mean?
“L-let me go back! I cannot live here! I cannot live here!”
Having even abandoned his pride as he begged Jaehwan, the passenger glanced at the cocoon he had come from and began crawling toward it.
“I-I’m going back. I’m going back.”
At last, the man climbed into the unlit cultivation tank and curled up, shivering from the cold.
“Do not wake me. Do not wake me. Please...”
Jaehwan, Runald, and Andersen all stared blankly at the scene.
Then, after a while,
[The Plant’s power is returning.]
As the power came back on, the man’s cocoon began restoring itself.
Cultivation fluid filled it, and the man’s body slowly relaxed again.
At the last moment, the man turned to Jaehwan and spoke.
“Th-thank you! I-I’ll support you, Naked Stab.”
“No, if you want to support him, do not go back in there! Come back out!”
Runald shouted, but the man weakly closed his eyes.
The sleeping man returned to Yesterday, and the scenes began appearing on the central screens again.
People started spending money on gacha draws again or logged into 《Little Brother》 and talked however they pleased.
Among them was the passenger who had been saying strange things about Jaehwan earlier.
[‘Anonymous God 88’ says Anonymous God 88 just saw ‘Naked Stab’, and that he really was nothing special.]
[‘Anonymous God 88’ snickers that Naked Stab got scared and could not say a word when cursed at in a low voice.]
Jaehwan checked the label attached to the cocoon of the man he had just freed.
[Anonymous God 88]
That was his name.
“Did you fail?”
When Jaehwan turned around, Rene was looking at them with a bitter expression.
It seemed the others had failed too. All that remained on the floor were traces of people who had resisted desperately to return to their cocoons.
[You have failed to free the residents.]
[You have failed to capture the Plant.]
It seemed that simply capturing the Plant was not enough. They had to free the people for the Task to be completed.
[The ‘Election’ will begin in 23 hours and 30 minutes.]
[Capture a new Plant and gather ‘supporters’.]
Rene sighed.
“I thought maybe you could do it, Beginner-nim, but I guess it was still too difficult. I failed here before too.”
Drones that had spotted them from afar began flying toward them.
“Let’s get out first.”
Jaehwan and the Ally group quickly retreated to the Plant’s rooftop.
From the elevated ground, they could see the lights of the Plants spread across the entire Seventh Floor at a glance.
Countless cocoons hung like wish lanterns.
The endless procession of lights was strange, horrific, and beautiful.
“No matter what we do, they do not want to leave Yesterday.”
Beneath those lights, some dreamed happy dreams, while others dreamed dreams no different from reality.
Happy or unhappy, they lived within them.
[Warning! You must capture at least one Plant within 12 hours.]
[If you fail the Task, you will be forcibly removed from the 〈Metaverse〉.]
The only ‘Today’ Jaehwan could offer passengers like them was one thing.
Rene asked Jaehwan, who had been quietly watching the Plants, “What are you thinking about?”
Jaehwan answered, “Something I did not think about yesterday.”
Footnotes:
Chapter discussion