Chapter 142 - Episode 20. God of Yesterday (6)
Chapter 142: Episode 20. God of Yesterday (6)
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Anonymous God 94 realized someone was shaking him inside his cocoon.
“Hey, rookie. Wake up!”
For some reason, he had a feeling the inevitable had finally come.
He had heard stories from the other gods, his fellows on the Seventh Floor. If one slept there long enough, the Terrorists would eventually wake them up.
His fellow god, ‘Anonymous God 37’, had put it this way.
“Put simply, you are unlucky. Still, do not worry. Those bastards cannot touch you. If they want votes, they cannot harm us ‘Anonymous Gods’.”
So Anonymous God 94 was not particularly worried.
The Terrorists were only a tiny faction, after all. Most of them would be dealt with by Arteina before the election even began.
Anonymous God 94 irritably brushed away the hand shaking him and shouted,
“Ah, just leave me alone! I am in the middle of a gacha draw, what the-”
Something struck him across the face.
“Wh-what, what was that?”
Pain spread across his cheek. Tears welled up at the pain transmitted through his Doll.
How long had it been since he had last felt pain like this?
Anonymous God 94 tried to shout again in shock.
Slap!
The other side of his face was struck as well.
His face felt swollen, and indignation surged through him.
Who did they think he was?
He was active as ‘Anonymous God 94’ now, but he had once been a high-ranking god of the 《Abyss》.
“Y-You! Do you think you will get away with this after doing something like that?!”
A hand suddenly reached into the cocoon, grabbed him by the collar, and hurled him onto the ground.
Wondering what lunatic would do something so outrageous, he looked up. Through his hazy vision, he saw the culprit’s face.
“A-Anonymous God 37? Why are you-”
The culprit was the god who had lived alongside him on the Seventh Floor until recently.
The very god who had advised him about the Terrorists.
Yet something was strange about Anonymous God 37.
“I am no longer Anonymous God 37. Get up. Quickly.”
“W-What is this? Why are you-”
A kick landed with a thud, and Anonymous God 94 felt himself being dragged somewhere.
Shortly afterward, his surroundings gradually came into view through the darkness.
Naked ‘Anonymous Gods’ were crouched inside an empty cavern.
A few gods who spotted Anonymous God 94 brightened.
“Oh.”
“You came too?”
He had spent two hundred years living in Yesterday, but this was his first experience like this.
Had the gods of Yesterday ever been kidnapped in such numbers before?
Anonymous God 94 asked a nearby god.
“Hey, 86. What the hell is going on?”
Looking around, he saw countless familiar faces from Yesterday. ‘Anonymous God 98’, who had bragged about a new gacha draw, was there. So was ‘Anonymous God 83’, who had boasted about getting a Legendary Part...
Here, they were all nothing more than naked Anonymous Gods.
“Do not worry. I do not know what is happening, but it will be resolved soon enough. Arteina would never stand for this.”
Yet no drones came to rescue them.
There was a brief buzzing sound from somewhere, but it disappeared almost at once with the sound of something being shot down.
The Anonymous Gods gradually became terrified.
What was happening?
Then a voice echoed through the darkness.
“At first, everyone thought the same way. They thought someone would come rescue them once enough time had passed.”
The Anonymous Gods looked around in alarm.
Where was it coming from?
“Everyone who thought that way died.”
A spotlight flickered on, revealing a man in the center of the cavern.
It was ‘Naked Stab’.
“I-It is Naked Stab!”
“I knew that bastard was behind this!”
“Let us go! What the hell are you doing?!”
The Anonymous Gods began protesting all at once.
Anonymous God 94 joined in and hurled insults at him.
“I will never become a Terrorist like you. No matter what you do, I will not support you!”
“If we work together, taking down one bastard like him will be easy!”
Jaehwan smiled.
“Really? Try it.”
Yet not a single Anonymous God moved first.
Everyone there knew.
That ‘Naked Stab’ had slaughtered three of the Metaverse Six Gods by himself.
Even if they could win by joining forces, most of them would be pierced by that Stab and die. There was no guarantee he would not be one of them.
“Damn it. Link travel isn’t working. What is this?”
For some reason, there was no way to escape this space, not even for gods.
“No one is attacking. Then I will assume none of you have any complaints.”
And so the gods’ Today began.
.
.
.
“Roll backward.”
“Roll backward!”
“Roll forward.”
“Roll forward!”
Watching the gods diligently roll back and forth under the guise of training, Anonymous God 94 wondered what exactly he was doing.
‘What is this?’
Just an hour ago, not every god had listened to him. Some stubbornly insisted they would never do training ordered by that bastard. Others lay flat on the ground, as if daring him to do his worst.
Then ten minutes passed. Then thirty.
By the time he came to his senses, they were all rolling back and forth together.
“Roll sideways!”
“S-Sideways!”
“Why are you not rolling?”
“Roll!”
Anonymous God 94 was one of them.
The reason was simple.
‘I do not want to die.’
They might all have been powerful gods who had reached the Seventh Floor, but they had spent centuries trapped in Yesterday, eating, playing, and doing nothing else.
It was absurd to think they could fight someone on the level of the Metaverse Six Gods, ‘Naked Stab’, using their worthless Dolls.
Arteina’s precious drones were nowhere to be seen. All that remained was a grueling ordeal.
“Just wait. Once I recover, someone like him will be nothing.”
“Hang in there a little longer, everyone. The God of Yesterday will come rescue us soon.”
“Even if the God of Yesterday does not come, this cannot last forever. Those bastards will be kicked off the Seventh Floor soon enough.”
“Ah, right. That is true!”
The Anonymous Gods joined in and participated in the training.
They only had to endure a little longer. If they did, that damned Naked Stab would fall apart on his own.
One hour, two hours, three hours...
When a full twelve hours had passed, Anonymous God 94 realized something was wrong.
‘Why has no one come to save us?’
All they did all day was roll back and forth, occasionally sideways, perform strange exercises that had them flopping their bodies around, and practice Stab.
“That is not how you stab.”
Naked Stab did not even count it as a Stab unless they used the proper stance.
‘Why the hell am I learning Stab?’
And so Anonymous God 94 began to stab.
He stabbed, then stabbed again.
One day, two days, three days. Ten days.
A month passed in the blink of an eye.
“Why is no one coming?!”
No answer came.
The only things around him were gods immersed in Stab.
“I have completed five thousand Stabs!”
“Good work.”
“Heh.”
Before long, the Anonymous Gods became addicted to Stab, living for Jaehwan’s praise.
One month, two months, three months. Time kept passing.
Naked Stab, whom they thought would give up after a day or two, trained them without rest.
Roll forward. Roll backward. Stab.
‘What kind of monster is he?’
The gods, including Anonymous God 94, gave up on being rescued.
He did not know why, but no rescue was coming.
They had been abandoned.
Now, they had to survive on their own.
From that point on, Anonymous God 94 began practicing Stab in earnest.
It was no longer Stab to avoid dying.
It was Stab to live.
“A healthy soul!”
He stabbed, then stabbed again.
“Houses a healthy god!”
Time passed endlessly.
One year, two years, three years, four years...
One day, while so absorbed in Stab that he had forgotten time itself, Anonymous God 94 finally achieved fifty thousand Stabs.
‘Huh?’
When he came to his senses, his Doll had changed.
Vitality surged through the body that had once hung limp inside the cocoon.
It felt like the old days, when he had roamed the 《Abyss》 directly with his Vicegerent in his youth.
That was right.
This was what it had felt like.
As he repeated Stab, the distracting thoughts in his mind disappeared one by one.
He forgot the Parts and Skins rotting away in Yesterday. He forgot the stress of new gacha draws. He forgot his envy toward other gods who had obtained better Parts.
He gradually forgot Yesterday.
Instead, his mind was filled with the sweaty Today before him.
「God.」
「Have you truly returned?」
Then he began to faintly hear the voices of his Followers.
「Martis-nim.」
Anonymous God 94.
He had once been known as Martis, the God of the Grasslands.
“You may go now.”
“What?”
Martis turned to look at Jaehwan, whose hand rested on his shoulder.
A door leading outside stood where Jaehwan gestured with his chin.
“B-But...”
“Go. You will understand when you do.”
Martis stared blankly at the door.
He could finally leave.
Yet he was afraid.
How much time had passed outside? What would happen to him once he stepped through that door?
Overcoming his fear, Martis stepped outside.
“Argh! Let me go!”
“Aagh! Save me!”
What was going on?
The sight that greeted him was the very scene he had last seen just before being imprisoned in the mysterious cavern.
Anonymous Gods were being pulled from Plants and sucked into the Cube.
Martis checked the time and doubted his eyes.
“Only ten minutes have passed?”
Martis looked at the cocoon he had emerged from.
[Anonymous God 94]
The cocoon waiting for him looked as if it had only recently been torn open.
It was not too late. He could still return.
If he entered that cocoon again, he could regain everything he had enjoyed in Yesterday.
All he had to do was return right now. Right now.
“Ah.”
Then why could he not make himself move?
Martis dazedly looked up at the sky.
The election was still underway, and he was still on the Seventh Floor.
Nothing had changed.
No, perhaps...
Something had.
Martis looked at the cocoon where he had slept for a moment, then turned away.
“Hey, Martis. Is training over?”
Gods who had regained their names passed by, patting him on the shoulder.
They were pulling ‘Anonymous Gods’ from the nearby Plants.
“Come on, let us start clearing this area.”
Why?
The reason was simple.
They wanted other gods to know the feeling they had discovered.
Martis looked at the cocoon lying in a nearby Plant.
[Anonymous God 324]
It was the number of the god who had once bragged about a new Skin.
Soon, Anonymous God 324’s horrible screams rang out.
Martis smiled as Anonymous God 324 screamed curses at him.
“Training time, rookie.”
Perhaps becoming a Terrorist was not so bad after all.
* * *
Jaehwan looked down at the [Time Cube], which trembled precariously.
[The durability of the ‘Time Cube’ is almost depleted.]
This, too, was nearing its limit.
In truth, making it work this long was practically a miracle.
He had temporarily sealed the holes made by Stab and used the technology Ethan provided to turn the Cube into a kind of Tower of Nightmares.
It was only possible because Jaehwan had already made a Tower of Nightmares once before.
Still, he had not expected it to work this well.
At first, he had only captured a few dozen gods as a test and thrown them inside to see what would happen. He had not expected it to go this far.
The current time ratio of the [Time Cube] was ten years for every ten minutes.
In other words, ten minutes outside was ten years inside the Cube.
Exactly ten years for each team.
Jaehwan was used to enduring time, so he trained the gods over and over.
What was astonishing was how much those thoroughly trained gods had changed.
“Move, move!”
“The next one is that Plant!”
“Jaehwan-nim, we have finished clearing this Plant!”
The gods who emerged from the Time Cube tore open nearby cocoons and brought back Anonymous Gods themselves, as if they wanted to spread the feeling they had experienced.
“A healthy soul!”
That was not enough for them. They even made up their own chant.
“Houses a healthy god!”
Leaving those fools behind, Jaehwan looked up at the screen in the sky.
From a distance, this might look like a kind of Destruction as well.
* * *
[My Seventh Floor! My Seventh Floor!]
Arteina, who had belatedly discovered what Jaehwan had done through the [Time Cube], muttered with trembling lips.
It was something that defied common sense.
[What kind of god could possibly do something like that? How many years has he spent inside the Cube in total?]
A moment later, the advisors answered in shocked voices.
[I-It appears to be at least two hundred years.]
The idea of spending that much time training such pathetic vermin was incomprehensible.
No one in their right mind could do something like that.
[Every god in the Liberation Plant area supports him.]
Even at that moment, the Plants continued to be liberated.
[Naked Stab’s approval rating is rising sharply!]
Jaehwan’s vote share soared in an instant, passing Rene and rising to second place.
Arteina finally made her decision.
[Prepare the Election’s final sequence.]
Arteina’s expression turned cold as she watched Jaehwan on the screen.
[I will show you that ‘Yesterday’ does not disappear so easily.]
Footnotes:
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