Chapter 324: Fall. (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 324: Fall. (2)
And so, at the very moment Seo-ha—no, more accurately, the entity that had been Seo-ha until just a moment ago—tried to kiss me.
Unable to endure the visceral disgust and rage, I pushed myself.
7-stack Reinforcement.
I only used it for a split second to break free from the restraint, and the recoil I had to endure was more severe than expected, but honestly, I didn’t give a damn about that right now.
I was so angry that the physical pain didn’t matter.
The entity, who had been staring at me with a dazed expression as I broke free, smirked with Seo-ha’s face.
“How did you know? It really was her until just a second ago.”
Its tone and behavior felt somewhat more similar to Seo-ha than before, but fortunately, it was still alien enough for me to notice.
“Hey, your personality is too rotten. If you swap out like that, what happens to Seo-ha?”
“Even if I did it, she’d think she was the one who did it, so what does it matter?”
I had to stay calm.
No matter how angry I was, letting my rage take control was never a good choice.
I was surrounded by Calamity-class Villains, and Seo-ha’s mental state was at its worst.
Even the slightest mistake here could lead to irreversible consequences.
“Both I and this girl wanted to experience a first kiss, but I guess that’s out the window now.”
The way it moved, swaying with its hands behind its back, was strangely irritating.
When I saw it last time, it was clearly ‘something’ completely different from Seo-ha, yet this time, it was mimicking her with eerie accuracy.
The image of Seo-ha, who looked like she might vanish at any moment, flashed through my mind, fueling a sense of unease.
“…It’s hurtful when you glare at me like that. If it weren’t for me in the first place, this girl would have tried to disappear a long time ago.”
Its boastful attitude, as if it deserved praise, was quite different from the last time I saw it.
“If she’s so precious, you should have stayed by her side. Even if it meant abandoning everyone else except her, why didn’t you choose her?”
It burst into laughter, clutching its stomach. Then, it approached me.
“Then the poor princess would have offered everything to you. She wouldn’t have made a bizarre wish, met a wicked god, and walked this path. Right?”
It laughed for a long time, as if something was incredibly funny.
Then, as if a switch had been flipped, it stopped laughing abruptly and muttered as if bored.
“That’s a lie.”
“…What?”
“Even if you had stayed by her side, nothing would have changed. No, wouldn’t she have broken even faster? Both you and her. Considering the wish she made to me, she was bound to break sooner or later.”
Seo-ha’s wish.
I had a rough idea, but I had never heard it clearly.
“Do you want to know? Exactly what wish this foolish Creator made to the false god she created herself. I might as well tell you, since you have the right to know. You’re the most pitiful victim caught up in this stupid girl’s wish.”
A false god.
The monster that called itself that was smiling again.
It looked at the poor girl with pity, loving her foolishness, despising it, and using it as a source of entertainment.
“Do you know the story of the Little Mermaid?”
“…What?”
Where was this coming from?
“Or, how about Romeo and Juliet? Or Hamlet?”
They were all famous tragedies.
“This girl, who doesn’t even properly know what her own wish is, thinks her wish is simply to save you and return to her original form.”
“Are you saying it’s not?”
“No? It is. That is certainly a part of her wish.”
It is, but it’s only a part.
As is typical with gods, its words were layered with hidden meaning. It meant that wasn’t the complete answer, nor was it everything.
“You wouldn’t know, would you? How could a friend know what she herself doesn’t even realize? It’s not even a wish from that long ago. It’s a desire that formed after entering this world, so it’s only natural you don’t know.”
Honestly, I didn’t know.
The Seo-ha I knew was always someone who wanted to be an author.
After she said she would give up on being an author, we had a huge fight. And after falling into this world and struggling to survive, I needed someone to lean on myself, so I couldn’t pay enough attention to her.
“Seo-ha wants to be the protagonist.”
The words that came out of the evil god’s mouth were quite unexpected.
At the very least, it was completely different from what I had anticipated.
“…What?”
“But at the same time, due to repeated failures, she believes she can never be the protagonist.”
Regrettably, I had an idea of what those ‘repeated failures’ were.
“That’s why this girl tried to deceive her own desires. Just as you used her as a refuge, she used you as a refuge. Since the desire was twisted, a false god like me was born from that twisted desire.”
The miracles performed by gods are always based on human desires.
In the past, on the day I experienced regression, the Witch of the Time Flower had told me that.
A twisted faith born from a twisted desire.
If that was the identity of the monster before me, then what was that god’s goal?
“Since I am a god who grants wishes in a twisted way, I will grant every desire this girl harbors. In a way she would never want. In a way she will regret the most.”
The evil god, ironically, wore a gentle face full of benevolence.
“‘I’ will make you the protagonist for this girl.”
However, that face felt chillingly creepy.
“‘I’ will also make this girl a proper protagonist.”
My only thought was that I had to get that thing away from Seo-ha as quickly as possible.
“Yes, protagonists. You are protagonists. The protagonists of the most hideous, miserable, pitiful, and agonizing tragedy I shall draw. Protagonists of a story where you can never reach each other, and neither can grasp happiness.”
It was benevolence filled with malice.
That thing undoubtedly loved us, but it was a broken existence from birth—one that could only be satisfied by driving the ones it loved to ruin.
“This girl will eventually disappear. Like the Little Mermaid who was stripped of her voice and her strength to swim, only to turn into sea foam. Everything will be taken from her by the wicked witch that is me.”
“Bullshit.”
“In fact, she and I are already becoming one. You’ve already felt it a little, haven’t you? I’ve become much more like her than last time.”
“Stop talking bullshit.”
“So, to grant her wish, to make you the perfect protagonists of a tragedy, ‘I’ will take everything from her and become her. And in place of this girl who will eventually vanish, I will have you.”
“Didn’t you hear me tell you to stop talking bullshit?”
Unable to hold back any longer, I lunged forward, but someone blocked my path.
Their face was hidden by a robe, but it was likely another new Calamity-class Villain.
“Of course, I mean a version of you that is even more perfect than you are now.”
Ah, fine. Just keep barking. I’ll shut you up myself.
The moment I extended Ruyi to clear the obstacle, the figure avoided it with movements more graceful than expected.
“To do that, you first need to be broken once more. Right now, you are blooming too upright, clean, and beautiful to be the tragic protagonist I envisioned.”
The robed villain only focused on evading, not launching any attacks toward me, which somehow irritated me even more.
“Wouldn’t it be just right for the male lead facing the tragic heroine to be a bit more miserably broken?”
Ruyi, split into sharp blades, targeted the robed villain, and countless spears and swords poured toward the robe.
But the moment I unleashed the attack—
“N-no…!”
The evil god’s state suddenly turned strange.
No, should I say she returned to normal?
“So-hyun…! Don’t attack, just run…! Run…!”
I wondered if it was a trap, but the monster, returning to its benevolent face, spoke with a tender smile as if coaxing a naughty child.
“…You still had that much lingering attachment? You worked hard enough to reclaim your body from me. Yes, I like this. Two protagonists who care for each other creating a miracle, even if only for a moment.”
The unleashed spears and swords flew toward the robe, and since the figure could no longer evade, the blades began to tear into the robe.
“And when such a miracle vanishes without any fruit, people feel pity and call it a tragedy.”
…Huh?
The face visible beyond the torn robe was one all too familiar to me.
The woman looking down at her wounds had hair and eyes that were pink, as if playing a prank.
“I thought you might have changed a bit, but you’re still the same, aren’t you?”
The way she approached, as if her own wounds were of no concern, was still so terrifying.
I retracted Ruyi and stumbled backward like a fool before falling over.
“You two know each other, right? I put in quite a lot of effort to bring you together.”
I could no longer hear the voice of the evil god, whatever it was saying.
That was how much the being before me was someone I feared.
Her hair was a bit shorter than it used to be, perhaps because she had trimmed it, but the woman with her long hair braided and tied was right there in front of me.
She looked taciturn, yet she was such a beauty that anyone who looked back would want to strike up a conversation at least once—a woman who naturally monopolized the gaze of men due to her very nature.
Her unique mana flared up like a flame, healing her wounds as if burning them away. Soon, she stood before me, completely unscathed and composed.
“It’s been a while. I can’t say I’m glad to see you. You’ve learned to mimic a human quite decently, haven’t you?”
The pink eyes staring at me were filled only with viscous malice and curses.
Lee Yu-na.
This wasn’t the girl I called the Pink Chihuahua.
The nightmare I had left behind and fled from in the far future—or rather, the far past—was standing right before my eyes.
The Immortal Hero, the incarnation of vengeance, the woman I had eventually buried with my own hands.
What…? How?
“Do you like it? It’s a gift I prepared just for you.”
The evil god spoke.
“Since you’re smart, you must have prepared a way to escape from here, right? Even now, you could probably swap places with a clone where your friends are. No matter how much this girl is your weakness, no matter how agitated you are, in a corner of your mind, you’re the type to think about escaping first and finding a way to overcome the situation rather than getting caught now.”
That’s why.
“To make sure I never lose you.”
That’s why.
“To make sure you can’t even harbor the will to escape.”
That’s why.
“To break you completely, I prepared another one of your weaknesses.”
What should I do…?
“Calamity-class Villains? I don’t think they can handle you. I called them to block any help from reaching you.”
The pink hero—no, villain—lunged at me.
I raised my guard, thinking I had to block her, but my guard froze at her next words.
“Are you going to block me? Are you going to fight me?”
The blow bypassed my frozen guard and slammed into my solar plexus.
It wasn’t an attack meant to take me down, but one meant to inflict pain.
The sickeningly familiar sensation made me want to vomit.
“You can block if you want. Are you feeling guilty toward me now, of all times?”
It’s a fake. It might be a fake.
Right, first I need to block and run…
— Kill him.
I needed to think of something.
— If you don’t kill him, I’ll kill you.
I needed to wrap myself in mana and resist.
— No, even if I kill you, I’ll curse you and kill you again.
My arm, struck by her mace, snapped in a grotesque direction and shattered, but not even a scream would come out of my throat.
Something beyond pain dominated my mind, and I couldn’t even resist, as if something else was controlling my body.
“…Is that so? If you’re not going to resist, it’s better for me. I didn’t want to cause harm to the other people here.”
Demonic energy mixed into her blazing divine power, and the pink flames formed the symbol of immortality.
“As long as I can kill you, I’m satisfied. Kang So-hyun.”
The face of the Lee Yu-na I knew as the Pink Chihuahua, who would smirk and call me a friend, seemed to overlap with the face of the Lee Yu-na staring at me with the same cold eyes from my memories.
Ah, right.
That’s right.
This is how it’s supposed to be.
The gaze you direct at me should be full of curses and resentment.
It was normal for us to struggle to kill each other.
Smiling while braiding hair, consulting each other about romance, and comforting each other with pitying eyes—that was never the relationship between you and me.
“Don’t worry.”
Was it Seo-ha’s voice, or the evil god’s?
“Once you’re broken, I’ll reassemble you even more to my liking this time.”
The pink flames, made of pure malice, engulfed me.