Chapter 26
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 26
Chapter Title: The Truth
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It's about time you faced it. You can't move forward if you're trapped in the past forever.
This time, end it for good. Open the door yourself and break the chain.
The protagonist of this world isn't Choi Si-woo.
"Fuck off. Shut up."
I must have dozed off at some point.
Glancing outside, the sun was already dipping low toward the western horizon.
I still needed to sort out my thoughts. Huh?
No presence nearby. Weren't the Association hunters watching me?
Maybe they rushed off to defend the academy.
"Yeah. Looks like that's the case."
The Akashic Record was right. I'd been trying so hard to forget it all on my own. But not anymore. It was time to sever this Möbius strip.
And this event was crucial—for me, not Choi Si-woo. It was the opportunity the author, who designed everything, had given me.
I instinctively got up and slipped into my student uniform.
I slashed away the fading black haze that had been clinging to me since earlier and bolted toward the academy.
"Choi Si-woo changed things, so the monster attacking the academy at this exact timing is pretty limited."
No way something like the Seven Deadly Sins would show up right now. They had no interest in toppling the academy. But there was one more villain besides Kim Seung-jun who targeted Hansung Academy to go after the Divine Sword. The first S-rank enemy for Choi Si-woo—and the spark that would bring down the Korean Hunters Association.
"Hunter Kim Jae-su."
The greatest rival of the original protagonist, Yoo Jin-seok. The man who survived the final battle thanks to him but was forever haunted by inferiority.
The guy who showed up gunning for both Divine Swords.
I had to protect Choi Si-woo from him.
[Protect Choi Si-woo]
🎁 Reward: The Truth
By protecting Choi Si-woo, I'd learn everything.
How long did I run? I finally entered the academy grounds.
The Association hunters dispatched here had been massacred.
The overpowering stench of blood nearly made me collapse on the spot.
And with every step forward, the blood-scent tickled my nose. The murderous intent prickling my skin.
All of it hammered home that this was reality.
After sprinting for what felt like ages, I spotted a man in the center of a massive demonic aura, hoisting Choi Si-woo up by the throat.
"Oh dear. Is the second Divine Sword this weak?"
"Cough. Says the guy who ate a core... and still fears losing to a Divine Sword. Keck!"
"Your body's tempting me to humiliate you in other ways too. But I don't want Yoo Jin-seok crashing the fun."
"Coward. Urk."
The victim was Choi Si-woo. The perpetrator was Kim Jae-su, his entire body painted black.
S-rank spear master Kim Jae-su. He'd turned monster and raided the academy.
More precisely, to claim the Divine Sword, kill it, or use its vessel.
He'd probably made contact with the Black God Cult around this time.
An S-rank spearman turned monster? He'd be SS-rank equivalent, maybe a bit less.
Choi Si-woo, who hadn't reached his second awakening yet, stood no chance.
Thankfully, I wasn't too late.
"But you know... what kind of creature would you become if I shoved an SS-rank core into a Divine Sword user's body?"
"What the—"
"This'll end both the Divine Sword and the Hunter Association for good."
Kim Jae-su knocked Choi Si-woo down and shoved a ominously glowing core toward him.
An SS-rank core.
An all-too-familiar scene. One that had repeated endlessly.
At the sight of it—so achingly familiar—I leaped forward to save Choi Si-woo. And to move ahead.
Kwachik!
For a split second, I felt the core embed itself in my chest.
Kim Jae-su looked stunned, never expecting an outsider to butt in.
"Yoo... Eun-ha?"
"I can't save the world by holing up at home."
Even as I said it, the core burrowed deeper, rapidly corroding my body.
"You... why..."
The core replaced my heart, reshaping my body to fit it.
"I'll end my fight. So you end yours."
The massive demonic energy from the core began circulating through me. My body felt swept into a torrent, flesh and bones reconstructing in agony.
Soon, the pain invaded my mind, and just like in the original story, my body started to go berserk.
That's when I activated Parallel Circuits.
I turned my sense of self—my very ego—into parallel circuits. To dull the pain, even a little. To halt the rampage.
To keep this wretched story going.
As my rampaging body slowly stabilized, the world around me plunged into horrifying darkness.
A scene I'd witnessed countless times.
Reward: The Truth
The Truth
I'd died countless times, looping through the same period in different ways.
At first, I was a coward, just like the original Yoo Eun-ha.
Excuse or not, I was just an ordinary office worker facing death. How could I not be terrified?
Even Kim Seung-jun raped me.
That's why I hated frogs so much. Hated them.
After overcoming Kim Seung-jun, the next threat was the original plot: getting a core implanted by a monster and dying.
From the start, I chose to end my own life.
"Yoo Eun-ha?"
"Guess I'll finally wake from this shitty dream."
In the first loop, I died right in front of Choi Si-woo, impaled by the monster and implanted with the core.
But despite dying, I awoke on enrollment day.
Experiencing death firsthand was the worst.
No way it's another time loop, right?
And "no way" has a way of biting you. I faced the frog again, fled to avoid death this time, only to be hunted down by the monster in the end.
It felt like fate.
The dark skies I saw in daily life were the flickering vision as I died.
From some loop onward, I smoked to forget those memories.
Stupid me, thinking cigarettes could erase it.
"That's why I intervened this time. I regressed the original Choi Si-woo from a failed clear timeline and wiped your memories."
The black-haired Yoo Eun-ha puffed out her chest proudly.
Her smug look pissed me off. I slammed the desk from my chair and glared at her.
"...You fucking bitch. Why tell me now? You could've said it sooner—that this is real."
"I did. Everyone did. A world too real for a dream, with perfect senses. Heroines and Choi Si-woo with fully independent egos. Their very existence screamed that your world is reality."
I couldn't argue. I hung my head.
Yeah. Maybe I had ignored it.
I didn't want to accept it. I just wanted to go home. I hated this scary world. Reality was too frightening to face.
Fine. Say I accept it. But that doesn't end things.
"Ha. Fine. Keep going. The reward's the truth, right? You aren't brushing me off with that."
"There was a girl who could create anything she desired—a goddess. If Egypt had the sun god Ra in the past, this era suddenly had her. But she was in a human body and clueless about her powers."
"Power to a loser wrecks the world. Something like that?"
"Not quite, but... not wrong. The orphan girl turned her novels into reality, becoming 'Yoo Eun-ha.'"
So that's how Yoo Eun-ha was born.
And I fit the role perfectly?
This black-haired Yoo Eun-ha in front of me must be the girl.
"I'll play along. Tell me more."
"But she got bored. While reading myths for fun ideas, she learned of the evil dragon Azhi Dahaka. Oh, sorry—retroactive term to avoid loop conflicts. Anyway, you know what a retcon is? Like Yamyeongjeongeum in web novels. The internet knows."
Ah, I get it.
The problem? This bitch created Azhi Dahaka. Meaning the 10-billion killer is standing right here.
"You made that?"
"Yeah, I made Azhi Dahaka, but then the Great Cataclysm hit. Monsters appeared as in this world's history, villains and hunters emerged. The world crumbled, and I, having used a lot of power, could only nudge the timeline to reset the protagonist Yoo Jin-seok and myself—Yoo Eun-ha—back to the novel's schedule. And banish the evil dragon Azhi Dahaka, who tormented humanity in various ways, to another world."
"Another world?"
"You know Schrödinger's cat? The one in the box could be alive or dead... Got it. I'll just say parallel universe, so stop glaring. I just wanted to chat after so long... Worlds with the Great Cataclysm exist in parallel now, but I sent Azhi Dahaka to one without it."
In short, she booted the irredeemable bastard to another world entirely to save this one.
But that doesn't add up.
So Azhi Dahaka came to my Earth? But my original world had no Azhi Dahaka, not even imugis.
If it did, that Earth would've been destroyed too.
"But my Earth was fine."
"Of course. I couldn't dump a menace there, so I reincarnated it as a human. Gave purpose-less Azhi Dahaka, who only fulfilled evil dragon duties, a human life to fix its ego. But the original Azhi Dahaka of this world had to return. So I made this world a web novel visible in that one—prepping it to acclimate and return gradually. For spite, I kept killing 'Yoo Eun-ha' in the story. Hilarious watching you rage after reading it all."
What? Hold on. That sounds like me.
"No, fuck. Wait. Hold up."
"Watching Azhi Dahaka curse up a storm was gold. Then, when the time came, I brought it back into Yoo Eun-ha's body."
No. It can't be. No such plot twist.
I can't accept it. I won't.
Maybe there are two Yoo Eun-ha bodies? Has to be.
"No way, right?"
"At first, I planned a novel with Yoo Eun-ha as protagonist from the start. To let Azhi Dahaka live humanely, as an overpowered munchkin. That convenient vessel was Yoo Eun-ha's body."
I plugged my ears, but the damn author's voice kept ringing.
"Azhi Dahaka's power was too immense, so special conditions were needed to reclaim it. As the mother of monsters, at minimum: an SS-rank core implant."
"But the more it faced harsh reality, the more it denied it as a dream. Not bad—accepting such a world exists is impossible anyway. But subconsciously thinking 'it's a dream, death doesn't matter' led to game overs right at the prologue's end. After hundreds of loops at that event, it got scared, hid, showed weakness—no breakthrough."
Why does it keep describing me?
No. Stop. I don't want to hear it.
"It even missed its corporate drone days in that world, hallucinating its old self as an office worker."
Something heavy pressed on my shoulders.
"So I changed tactics this time. Second mention: regressed future Choi Si-woo from a failed clear. Reset Azhi Dahaka's mind too. Hundreds of loops accumulated— or causality adjusted? Either way, it unlocked power via Parallel Circuits without dying. Like mastering an early mid-boss after hundreds of deaths in a game."
"No. No fucking way."
Studying this world's monster lore reveals Azhi Dahaka's traits.
It revels in human chaos and division, finds ecstasy and purpose in slaughter. A pervert.
No matter how pathetically I lived, I'd choose sex over mass murder for pleasure.
"Stop denying reality."
How could I accept that? I don't even remember slaughtering people.
"...Azhi Dahaka."
Hearing that name aimed at me, everything inside crumbled.