Chapter 129
Chapter 129
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 129
Chapter Title: Doomsayer I
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Shin Noah
1
Do any of you have nightmares often?
I do.
For instance, one day in a dream, the villain Goryeo Jang had completely subjugated Seo-gyu as her subordinate. And thus, she had risen as SG Net's tyrant.
-Goryeo Jang: F-From now on, in SG Net, we're banning all that Three Kingdoms boomer bait 24 hours a day...
-ZERO_SUGAR: What are you talking about, A-ryeon?
-Goryeo Jang: Ahh! This resentment, this grudge. As expected, Guild Leader's aggro is the tastiest. So tasty. Guild Leader is the ultimate delicacy...!
-Goryeo Jang: From now on, I'll stand at the top of the heavens...
Then all the SG Net members applauded in admiration at the new admin's bold decision.
Even the Saintess, who always logged in anonymously, and No Do-ha, who rarely participated in community activities, signed up with their real names just for this moment to praise villain Goryeo Jang.
What a horrific nightmare.
Even if the world forgave it, I, the Undertaker, could not. The moment I had that dream, I secretly added an extra shot of espresso to Sim A-ryeon's café mocha the next day (A-ryeon was puzzled by the change in coffee flavor).
There were less horrific but still somewhat realistic nightmares too.
-Teacher? Teac... her?
In that nightmare, me—that is, the 'Undertaker'—was already dead.
I couldn't remember exactly how I'd died. Even I, who had mastered [Perfect Memory], struggled to recall the scenes from a dream. Unless I bought a 100 billion won lucid dreaming service from the Tutorial Fairies, that is.
How had I died?
Betrayed and stabbed in the back by someone? Had I let my guard down enough to be killed by someone I deeply trusted, despite always surrounding myself with a protective aura? Or had I fallen to some monster my aura wasn't effective against?
Unlike others, my causes of death numbered over a thousand, so I couldn't pinpoint it exactly.
-Teacher, teacher. Teacher... Please wake up, teacher. Huh? Open your eyes...
But in the dream, Cheon Yo-hwa was looking at my dead body.
Actually, 'looking' wasn't the right word. Cheon Yo-hwa's red eyes were as clouded as a car's windshield in the rain, seeing almost nothing.
Grope. Cheon Yo-hwa knelt before my corpse, tracing my outline inch by inch with touch instead of sight.
It was fortunate she couldn't see.
Maybe because it was a dream, I was out-of-body, observing the world from a third-person view. And the genre of that world was gore. There wasn't a single intact part on my corpse.
-......
Cheon Yo-hwa soon realized it too. Her hand stopped.
-Die.
She chewed the word over.
-Die, die. Die. Die. Just die.
Crash. Something shattered.
The dream landscape changed abruptly.
Around Cheon Yo-hwa, something writhed—like static from an old TV. The black-and-white noise flickered back and forth, spreading rapidly.
'Ah.'
The noise waves spreading like a tsunami from Cheon Yo-hwa swallowed a city in an instant, then the Korean Peninsula, then the entire world.
As the noise expanded, the world screamed. Zzzt—between screams, blood burst repeatedly.
Birch trees and spider lilies.
The colors of the noise and blood matched exactly those that had once bloomed at Baekhwa Girls' High School.
Divine Domain.
The realm of the Outsider God. When its owner and shaman, Cheon Yo-hwa—who had sealed it herself—wished for the world's end, Mugan colored the world black-and-white and red without hesitation.
'Yo-hwa. No, Yo-hwa. Don't do it.'
Cheon Yo-hwa, who had imprisoned all of Baekhwa's anomalies, showed terrifying power in her fall.
This was exactly the [Bad End] scenario I'd anticipated.
Outsider Gods were dangerous. Cheon Yo-hwa, who had sealed one, always carried the risk of descending as an even more devastating disaster.
But Cheon Yo-hwa was no weak child. She was strong. After the 117th cycle, while alive, I rarely saw her mental state collapse.
Right. While I was 'alive.'
What if I died?
What if I died before Cheon Yo-hwa, in a way too humiliating for her to accept?
What would happen to the student I'd personally handed a diploma to?
Kyahahaha, kya kya kya—
Mugan, freed from its glass prison, laughed loudly.
The Earth turned entirely into a mass of black-and-white noise. The Outsider God, assassinated unexpectedly by a Regressor, finally returned and declared final victory.
Though just a dream, the ominous laughter filling the universe was too unsettling to dismiss as a mere mental victory for the Outsider God.
The dirge of the world's end was mockery.
-Huh?
That was when it happened. Cheon Yo-hwa (Thousand Tales) was reverse-swallowed by Cheon Yo-hwa (Heavenly Whisper), and the laughter stopped.
Stare—
It looked at me. I felt with my whole body that the black-and-white noise, the Earth, the universe, the god excluded from the world, was staring right at me.
-You're not dead? Not yet?
There, my dream cut off.
2
Similar nightmares repeated several times.
It wasn't just Cheon Yo-hwa appearing in my nightmares.
The protagonist changed with each dream. Dang Seo-rin, the Saintess, Lee Ha-yul, Sim A-ryeon...
Of course, dreams were just dreams. Brushing it off as 'a nasty bad dream' was simple. I'd ignored them that way in reality too.
"Hoe? A nightmare?"
But after learning in the 205th cycle that the Tutorial Fairy was actually a dream demon, my thinking changed.
I judged it necessary to treat my nightmares more seriously.
"Yeah. Dreams are kind of your area of expertise, right? Could something like a 'dream-parasitizing monster' exist?"
"Hoeoe. Of course!"
Fairy No. 264 wiggled her hips.
"Not just us fairies—dreams are full of all sorts of monsters!"
"Full?"
"Hoe. Humans have long considered dreams another dimension! Based on the terminology dictionary personally developed by Comrade Secretary-General, dreams correspond to 'an otherworld completely different from this one, yet one I can enter, or end up entering'!"
"...The Void."
"Eek eek eek. Correct! There may be humans who've never entered the Void, but none who've never dreamed...! Humans are a pitiful race doomed to experience the Void called dreams from birth! And we fairies live in that 'first Void'! Truly a race overflowing with roots! If any reactionary dares target our rightful Lebensraum of dreams, it's techi-techi!"
"Hmm."
Dreams could be a kind of Void. No, they were the Void.
After talking with the experts on that realm, the fairies, I gained certainty. But questions remained.
And I wasn't the type to agonize alone when questions arose.
I immediately went to the counselor I trusted most and poured out my troubles about the 'nightmares.'
"Why me of all people as your counselor...?"
"Because you've never once been the protagonist in my nightmares."
"Sigh..."
No Do-ha Corps Leader polished her glasses. It meant nothing special. The glasses cloth itself was filthy from not being washed in ages.
Snap. I snapped my fingers to generate aura and meticulously cleaned the smudges off No Do-ha's monocle.
"I told you to clean it with water, not the cloth."
"No time for that. I'm swamped. Sigh. If certain people hadn't barged in demanding psychological counseling, I'd have some leisure too..."
"Was it Ji-won? I'll give her a good scolding later."
"This punk really has no conscience...?"
"Anyway, think with me. If this 'nightmare' is a monster, why does it keep showing me these dreams?"
"Hmm..."
No Do-ha chewed on her pen tip.
"...Setting aside the possibility that it's all just a nasty bad dream from your unpleasant subconscious."
"What the hell kind of person do you think I am?"
"We can only assume the goal is to shake your mental state. Monsters lack intelligence and reason, of course. But if we anthropomorphize them, honestly, you'd be an inexplicable thorn in their side..."
"A thorn?"
"Yes."
No Do-ha smirked.
"You've figured out exactly when and which monsters appear, and you defeat them with all sorts of bizarre methods... What else could that be but inexplicable? There are only two ways to deal with you: overwhelming numbers or mental attacks..."
"..."
"Overwhelming numbers—that's the monster wave. According to you, thanks to that 'poison-drinking bird' thing, you can hold out for about eight years anyway...?"
"Yes."
"So what's left? Nothing but chipping away at your mind bit by bit. I've wanted to point this out before... Awakener Undertaker. You tend to treat monsters as a bit too overwhelmingly powerful."
"But they are overwhelming enemies?"
"Well, once they reach battleship-class Outsider God level, sure, we humans are bugs. Even city-class Ten Tribes were hopeless before you grew... But... from the monsters' perspective, aren't you plenty terrifying too...?"
"Hmm."
"So if I were a monster, I'd try breaking your mind. Showing you scenes of the people you cherish breaking down one by one... Not a bad strategy, right...?"
Certainly.
No Do-ha's analysis made sense.
Of course, as she emphasized herself, monsters lacked human-like intelligence.
Rather than monsters having the 'purpose' of breaking 'me,' it was more fitting to see it as 'phenomena threatening me by coincidence.'
Either way, the existence of a 'monster trying to cause my mental collapse' was the same.
"Talking with you clears things up. But in the end, it's just dreams, right? They don't seem to harm our reality right now, so let's leave it be."
"Hmph. Suit yourself. I'll leave monsters to Awakener Undertaker. By the way, it's not bad that I never appear in those gloomy nightmares..."
But after a few more cycles, our judgment proved too complacent.
"Teacher!"
Thud, thud, thud.
Cheon Yo-hwa, ex-basketball ace, came running. Heart Cafe, 1,200 meters deep. Even in such a cozy hideout where running wasn't needed, she rushed to me.
As if I might disappear somewhere.
Only when she reached right in front of me did Cheon Yo-hwa exhale in relief.
"Ah... Uu, Teacher's fine. Thank goodness..."
"What's wrong? Why do you look so bad?"
"...I'm sorry. I had a really bad dream last night."
"A bad dream?"
My long Regressor life had developed a highly sensitive intuition at the nape of my neck. The moment I heard 'bad dream,' it bristled with goosebumps.
"Yes. In the dream, Teacher went through something awful. It was so cruel. Teacher tried his best to help people, but no one appreciated it or remembered, and there was betrayal too, I think..."
As expected.
My premonition was spot on.
"So I was really, really angry. The people around me suddenly didn't feel human anymore, and if they're not human, no need to hold back... So."
"You broke Mugan's seal."
"Ah... Yeah. Um, even when Mugan covered the world and humanity went extinct, I felt nothing. I hated that..."
Yes.
There was something I hadn't considered—and No Do-ha Corps Leader hadn't either.
If the 'nightmare' really was a monster, it couldn't affect only me. Everyone dreamed the same nightmares, ensnared by the same monster.
I could vaguely remember thanks to being an Awakener with [Perfect Memory]. Most people simply forgot after waking.
I wasn't too worried about my own mental state. I'd prepared various means to maintain mental health.
But if it affected others too?
That changed everything.
As you know, Dang Seo-rin, the Saintess, Cheon Yo-hwa, Sim A-ryeon, and so on—all had the potential to 'fall' and end the world if triggered.
A monster gnawing at their minds without their clear recollection was dangerous enough to warrant elevating its threat level.
I headed straight to the casino.
"Fairy No. 264."
"Hoeht. What's up, Comrade Secretary-General?"
"Gather as many available dream demons as possible. Prepare for lucid dreaming too. The time has come to raise the red flag again."
"Hoeak... About 90 can assemble. But what revolutionary enemy has appeared to warrant full mobilization?"
I said,
"We'll smash the monster parasitizing humanity's dreams."
"Hoeoe? As expected of Comrade Secretary-General...!"
Grab. Fairy No. 264 shook my hands with both of hers.
"Dreams are rightfully our territory...! If it's about crushing the reactionaries who dared occupy our homeland, our Fairy Revolution Club will fully cooperate!"
The fairy shed fragrant tears.
It was the historic moment of the first humanity (me)-monster (fairies) alliance.