Ep.4 - The Curtain Rises on the Stage
Ep.4 - The Curtain Rises on the Stage
His indecisive, hazy eyes cleared—quite ironically—only through heart-wrenching tears.
There was only one path to undo all of this, and only the Self-God could walk it.
Delin panted, repeating the role of the Self-God over and over. He knew the solution. He knew of the ability unique to the Self-God, the power to turn back this entire situation.
"Fine. Good. It doesn't matter anyway, does it? You're going to live with me regardless. Time will eventually resolve everything..."
The queen did not know.
She merely thought about how to re-educate Delin, who refused to open his mouth properly.
The legendary tale even conveyed the biography of the one who turned back time, but it did not convey every detail of his ability.
It was only that,
the Self-God saved whomever he wished,
and returned by shouting "Load" whenever he desired.
The queen did not know.
That was all the ability she knew of.
Whether it had been distorted through the storms of age, or whether the legendary figure who possessed that ability had always kept it a secret...
There was no way to know, but the only chance left to Delin now was surely to exploit that [knowledge gap].
Yet pain would follow.
No, before that, fear would follow.
Fear, anxiety,
the question of whether he could truly pull it off,
hesitation at the approaching pain,
trembling hands, a pounding heart,
the instinct of a living creature that recoils from death,
the brain's dissuasion to protect the body,
and yet, the palpable misery of the women.
Pity for them.
The faith that if the Self-God sacrificed himself, everything would return to the way it was. Earnestness.
Even if it meant returning to a life tossed about by women again,
a desperate wish to avoid at least the bitter future flickering before his eyes.
All those emotions blended together, making Delin's hands tremble terribly. One hand shook from the pain of being caught by the queen, the other shook from the self-destructive act he would soon have to commit.
Beyond the wavering tears,
beyond his blurring vision, he scanned the queen's tools.
They were all sharp, brutal tools that he could not bear to look at properly.
Things made from their very inception to inflict pain upon others.
Seeing them made him even more frightened.
Could he really do it?
No, before that,
would dying like this even trigger a Load?
Would it simply end entirely?
Just like this.
With nothing at all,
would he meet a stupid death because of this soul bond nonsense or whatever?
Would he meet an utterly permanent death without the Load even kicking in properly?
"I have to cut it in one go, so move your hand..."
The queen sobbed as she pinned Delin's hand. In her mind, she pictured the amputation plane just beyond the wrist engraved with God's blessing.
Delin struggled and shielded his own left wrist. It was a desperate squirm to delay the punishment she was about to carry out, even by a little.
Yet the queen kept batting his hand away, preparing to sever the wrist. She aimed the blade, raised it high in that stance...
Again Delin thrashed to block her sword, and again the queen shoved his arm aside...
"I said move your hand! I told you to stay still!"
A threat close to a scream.
The queen, fearing that Delin's struggling would cause her to slice off another body part, suppressed him with tears in her eyes.
She slammed him to the ground,
stomped on him Peok-peok-,
and yet she was sniffling too...
"Please, I'm telling you to stay still! Please!"
Delin coughed up blood under her kicks. It seemed some of his internal organs had been torn from the impact.
"I'll heal everything with healing magic, so just endure it..."
Tasting the metallic tang of blood, Delin finished his deliberation. It didn't matter if the Load failed to work properly. Dying was clearly better than living on in this pain.
But.
Lacking the courage to stab himself to death, he did not have the will to drive those hideous metal implements into his own brain or heart.
With a frail body that was being dragged around so helplessly by the queen's bare hands, how could he possibly sever his own lifeline?
His violently trembling hands could never pierce his own skin. Could never cut his tenacious thread of life.
So...
"Yes. Stay like that. It'll be over soon. Soon..."
Watching the sharp cutting edge rise to head height once more, Delin stopped breathing.
This is the only way.
If I miss this moment, I'll just be dragged back and trained until I forget who I am.
There'll be no other chance to die.
So...
The moment the queen finally put strength into her swing and brought the sword down,
Delin thrust his head into it.
The queen could not stop the sword once she had swung it,
and in the end, the blade plunged straight downward.
Even though she twisted the path of the sword by applying force,
the blade that was supposed to cut his neck ended up lodging right in the center of his head.
His long journey came to an end like that.
Before he could even fully feel the pain,
it finally ended like that.
[You have died. Automatically restoring to the most recent save point.]
"..."
His consciousness returned quite naturally. Like the morning after suffering a long, dark nightmare, waking up was more bitter and unpleasant than ever before.
"Hrg-yeuk..."
His body was incredibly heavy. He could not believe how heavy it was.
But beyond his closed eyelids, he felt the gentle moonlight, and the cool night air blew in,
"Kkeut... kkeu-euk..."
a woman's groan laced with pain brushed his ears...
"Hyung? What's wrong?"
A welcome face looked down at Delin with concern. A young, youthful, but clear and pure soul gazed into him.
"Wouldn't it be better for you two to stay the night at least?"
The villagers gathered around Delin and Chichi. But the two did not even have the leisure to accept the people's kindness.
"I-It's fine... We're fine... We have to leave right away. Chichi-noona, it's okay. Hoo..."
Delin was the first to rise. Having already experienced a regression through death once, his confusion and shock were less than Chichi's.
"Chichi-noona. We don't have time to be like this."
Delin approached Chichi, who was prone on the ground retching repeatedly, with a tottering gait. He came up to her and patted her back, helping her to vomit everything up.
"Just throw it all up... We have to go meet everyone."
"Oo-euk... oo-weh-eck..."
"It's my ability. We've returned. I resolved it somehow. First, we need to hurry and meet the others. We need to find Kaede-ssi, then find Neva and Philmark..."
Tak-
Chichi, pouring cold sweat, grabbed Delin's wrist. She also knew that there was no time.
"W-We have to run, fast... Before they come for us..."
"No. We have to gather together."
"I said it's fine, so hurry up and... oo-gook..."
"You're the one who should quit it and listen to me, noona...! If we're going to run, we have to stick together."
The two of them briefly wrestled over this before finally leaving the village and moving on.
Having witnessed Delin's unbelievable ability firsthand, Chichi accepted the situation with remarkable speed.
Even from her perspective, now that they had made an enemy of Albator's queen, a love escape for just the two of them was impossible,
so to break this impasse, they needed the strength of the other women who shared their memories after the Load.
Now that an even larger enemy had appeared, they all had to band together. The fact that they had to join forces with those crazy bitches pissed her off immensely, though.
"Seobang! Seobang-nim!"
A short while later, Kaede came to find the two herself, wagging her tail gently. She had likely followed their scent.
Her tight embrace was extremely overwhelming, but seeing her alive and healthy without any problems brought an involuntary smile to Delin's face.
Of course, it was a huge pain explaining the Save & Load to Kaede, and she drained him with her insistence that she didn't care about any of that and just wanted to hurry up and make babies again,
but anyway, once Kaede understood the current situation, she cooperated in finding Neva and Philmark.
They had to admit those two were strong, didn't they? If they fought on the same side, those two would be reliable allies. Of course, they were annoying bitches who dared to interfere with Seobang-nim and her grand plan to make a big family...
"There they are! Ke-heng!"
The three soon reached Philmark and Neva.
The two women had regressed right back to the point when they were in the middle of the great operation to [capture the witch and head to Raftel], and were sitting in a daze, chugging down alcohol.
"Fucking late."
Philmark already knew. That even if they didn't go looking for them first, he'd come find them with that mutt who had an impossibly good nose at the front of the pack.
"As expected, that hag and the mutt got dragged along through the Load too. I knew it. Hey! Just as I said, right?"
"..."
Neva, who had been sharing a drink beside the thief, slowly got up without a word and trudged over to Delin, pulling him into a tight embrace.
For once, Delin quietly accepted her hug without much resistance, even wrapping his own hands around the small of her back and patting her gently.
The other women frowned or clicked their tongues, but they did not directly stop the reunion. As people who had undergone the same ordeal, they could not block even this reunion embrace out of basic human decency.
————————————
The five of them immediately entered the forest, lit a campfire, and began to discuss their future plans.
There was not much time. As Philmark put it, "If these bitches got dragged along with the Load, then obviously that crazy bitch of a queen did too."
She was right. The common factor among them was that they had shared affection with Delin or felt the emotion called [love] toward him.
Judging by the queen's final behavior, she had no reason not to follow along.
And Philmark's speculation was finally confirmed as fact through Delin's words.
"That's right. She'll follow. Because the people who feel a lot of affection for me are the ones who follow the Load."
Facing an even more certain danger, the four women began to worry. What on earth were they supposed to do now?
"There isn't a single country that can openly defy that bitch queen. There's a limit to living on the run, too."
"But haven't you lived your whole life on the run? I see sufficient possibility in that."
"That's possible for me because I'm me. A bitch who can't even control her own tail is gonna pull off hiding and running away. Sure."
"Don't you mock me! This is imbued with the soul and spirit of our wolf tribe...!"
"This is not the time to fight while spouting that kind of bullshit! Both of you, just knock it off!"
"Her Majesty the Queen is not someone who will let us go so easily, so everyone must steel their resolve. If this keeps up, we'll all get caught again and die."
"Still going on about Her Majesty the Queen. Crazy bitch. You're the biggest nutjob of them all."
With the four of them gathered, the conflict refused to subside. Delin sighed heavily, worrying about the uncertain future closing in on them.
They could not run, and the thought of meeting the queen again to persuade her was even more terrifying...
"Hyoo... What are we to do..."
"When you do not know what to do, advice becomes a desperate necessity."
"...?"
The gazes of all five zeroed in on one direction.
"What?"
Philmark shot to her feet, gripping a dagger.
Not just her, the other women also began to prepare for whatever might happen.
"Oh my. Do put down the weapon. I have no intention of fighting, and I am merely a woman who is not even skilled in combat."
A calm, gentle voice drew closer. Yet along with that incongruous voice, a familiar light also drew near.
"Hoo..."
A rather thick cigarette. No, was it a cigar?
A woman who skillfully puffed on her cigarette, savoring the smoke, revealed herself.
"It hasn't been long since I lit it, so is it alright if I speak while smoking?"
A woman in a nun's habit, with an odd crucifix and a flat liquor flask both tucked at her waist.
"Our... Dragon-nims."
Ep.4 Gathering
end.