Chapter 133
Chapter 133
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 133
Chapter Title: Doomsayer V: Shin Noah 7
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Leaving yet another death etched into my memory, I opened my eyes.
There was the Busan Station concourse.
It would have been great if I could say that the familiar 399 survivors came into my view.
But the chilling winds of mass layoffs had spared not even the Busan Station concourse. Only a single person greeted me this time.
"Ah. Guild Leader. You're awake?"
"...Yeah."
"Here, this is Silenti. Drink some to wet your throat once you get up."
Go Yo-ri was sitting on a bench in the concourse.
And I was lying on the exact same bench.
I didn't know it at the time, but the world had its own strict genre conventions.
[Same bench] [One person sitting] [One person lying down].
No matter the time or space, combining these three elements always produced an inevitable outcome.
In short, Go Yo-ri had given me a lap pillow.
Pink hair draped over my eyes like a cluster of acacia blossoms. A faint scent like bath salts wafted through the air, mingled with the fresh aroma of an apple briefly dipped in ice water.
"......"
I reflexively tried to sit up, then gave up.
Was it because I'd just used the forbidden technique [Friend Shield]? A twinge of guilt crept in. Surprisingly, my heart still had spare room for 'regret toward Go Yo-ri.'
To begin with, there was no escaping the being right in front of me.
"Did I die?"
"Yes. And no."
Go Yo-ri brushed her hair behind her ear. It swayed like a bunch of balloon flowers.
"You're right in that you met your end at the hands of [Bad Ending]. You did die, Guild Leader. But it's hard to call it true death. After all, people can't die in dreams."
"...I see."
Dying in this unconscious world doesn't trigger 'regression.' My real self was still fast asleep, surrounded by tutorial fairies.
Good information.
"How did you escape? It seemed like an enemy with no real way to fight back."
"Hmm. Well, if you try to fight it head-on like you, Guild Leader, it'd be trouble. But I don't bother antagonizing those kinds of existences. Escaping is simple if you just want to escape."
Fair enough. Brainwash beam, easy peasy.
I let out a sigh.
"That old coot was too strong."
"......"
"They said this unconscious world shows you what you fear. Yeah. Truth is, I was afraid of the old coot."
It wasn't that I personally dreaded Emmett Schopenhauer as an individual. He was my comrade-in-arms.
Just...
"What if the old coot never went on vacation and stayed by my side forever...? I've imagined it a few times."
IF. An alternate scenario.
The Old Man Show route where he doesn't take a vacation.
"The old coot has a soft heart. Even if he didn't go on vacation, that love and despair for his wife would have coiled up in a corner of his mind. If he forced it down and dragged himself to the battlefield anyway, saying we had to save the world together..."
Wouldn't he have broken eventually?
There were so many perilous moments.
For instance, when subjugating the Outer God Mugeon. Mugeon shows people the 'most perfect worldline' as an illusion.
Naturally, the old coot would have fallen into days of happy life with his wife.
I managed to shake off Dang Seo-rin, No Do-ha, and the Saintess, but... could the old coot have escaped?
He might have even turned into one of Mugeon's new apostles.
For instance, when it turned out the tutorial fairy was actually a dream demon. Negotiating with dream demons lets you manipulate dreams however you want.
That would have been a temptation too hard for the old coot to resist.
For instance, when the being before my eyes started taking a real 'interest' in the old coot.
Like that nightmare I just faced, he might have fallen into delusions of reuniting with his wife in reality, becoming a villain who moved only for Go Yo-ri.
The greatest comrade turning into the worst enemy.
A clichéd development.
"Thinking about it every which way, yeah. Maybe him cutting ties for vacation with his wife was a divine move after all."
"......"
"Dead, he's a pain in the ass. Alive, he's a pain in the ass. That old man really offers zero help in life."
The concourse was silent.
As if centuries or millennia had passed in an instant, weeds sprouted from cracks in the floor. Aged sunlight dripped like candle wax through the pierced roof and ceiling.
Go Yo-ri didn't respond.
She just smiled awkwardly and listened quietly to my ramblings. As if this 'silent listening' was exactly the comfort I craved right now.
"Guild Leader."
After a long silence, Go Yo-ri whispered.
"Can you ever feel better, anytime?"
A blue apple scent drifted from her murmur.
"Life is like countless dreams anyway. We just call the last one people dream 'reality.' You're no different from a ghost wandering eternally in dreams, searching for a reality you can accept. An undertaker who buries each corpse of his own dreams one by one as they die. This place is an interlude where the corpses you've buried come back to life and dance."
"Dreams within dreams, the world after Bad Ending, parallel worlds, collective unconscious. Probably something like that turned into anomalies, creating the Void."
"And you can become the master of that Void, Guild Leader."
"......"
"I'll help you."
Go Yo-ri's thumb caressed my cheekbone.
Like a child peering down into a deep well, she gazed into my eyes.
"Help? You, help me?"
"Yes. This isn't just your unconscious—it's humanity's collective unconscious too. Imagine what you could do if you could control it freely."
A soft whoosh. Apple-scented breath settled on my cornea.
My face itched.
Each time Go Yo-ri's lips moved, her breath drew closer.
"You could impose your dreams on every other human."
"......"
"Yes. Dreams no one else could experience, landscapes of destruction only you remember. You could share them with others—with precious people, with all of humanity."
"......"
"Show them your life, Guild Leader."
Suddenly, the fruit aroma thickened into wine. Apple-infused vintage.
Like petals blooming open, the wine scent in her breath spread luxuriantly around us.
"How much you suffered, how much you ran for others, how wise and powerful you were."
"......"
"Make them suffer with your pain, devote themselves with your dedication, marvel at your abilities."
From her pink lips, parted like petals, Go Yo-ri's voice flowed thick and sticky like honey.
"You could become the dream of all, Guild Leader. The dream everyone has. If we call that a myth, you'd be a single myth blooming like a miracle in this apocalypse."
"You're not saying that thinking I'll nod along, are you?"
"Yes."
Go Yo-ri smiled with her eyes.
"For now."
She pressed her index finger firmly against my chin.
"But the more your pain ripens, the lower that head will bow, won't it?"
"......"
"Don't get sweet on me carelessly, Guild Leader. If you keep tasting so delicious, I might not be able to stop myself from devouring you."
The murmur right in front of my nose sounded like Go Yo-ri's true words—
And like a mere hallucination of mine whispering.
No matter what, gauging Go Yo-ri's sincerity was impossible.
She called me a dream ghost. But in truth, she was the mirage, her breath and flesh woven entirely from dreamstuff.
Perhaps that was the tragedy assigned to Go Yo-ri's existence.
Gazing up at her red well, the thought suddenly struck me.
8
A week of nights passed.
Sacrificing my neck to an old comrade had been quite the shock, but my mental state had fully recovered after several rests.
I downed the Silenti and farmed silver bells from the souvenir shop. Go Yo-ri watched me with evident amusement.
"What do you plan to do? Like you said, that Bad Ending is an unbeatable enemy."
"Bad Endings have their own uses."
Jingle.
The silver bell wrapped around my wrist chimed softly. My exclusive item, imprinted even in the unconscious (pre-apocalypse price: 9,900 won), felt especially precious today.
"The old coot will return someday."
"Pardon?"
"More precisely, I'll make him return. Can't let the co-CEO bail for personal happiness, right? The problem is, even if I drag the old coot back, he'll just get called a water rocket at first."
Old Man Show's potential was tremendous.
His potential 'alone' was tremendous.
Back when the old coot was alive, even the Korean Awakener Alliance couldn't handle Meteor Shower yet.
Believe it? Meteor Shower. Now so pathetic it's embarrassing to call it a mid-boss, but to the old coot, it'd be like, 'Wait, they made us beat this?'
The old coot's time stopped at the 23rd cycle. By my count, thousands of years in the past.
That's why no matter how great or successful a person is, they need to keep adapting to new eras. Showing up now with the Epic of Gilgamesh yelling, 'Everyone! This is the hottest genre lit these days!' would just be awkward.
"Originally, I planned to train that old coot to death once he returned. His talent is real, so I figured 200 years of light training would make him at least useful."
"Heh."
"But doesn't this unconscious world give us the perfect answer key?"
Go Yo-ri tilted her head.
"Answer key?"
Yeah. Answer key.
I immediately prepared to face Old Man Show's Bad Ending again—the fallen alter version, aka Sword Ghost.
Like last time, the Sword Ghost wandered the devastated Seoul. Dragging a rusty construction site steel pipe with zero style.
Awakeners' sense of flair and dignity? This guy's the one hogging it all.
For the dignity and character of awakeners everywhere, I, the Undertaker, had no choice but to step up.
I took a deep breath.
And bellowed at the top of my lungs.
"Hey, you National Socialist German Workers' Party member bastard!"
"......"
He froze—
The racist hate speech that would make any normal, educated German (except 1930s) have a fit echoed loudly.
For reference, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, aka NSDAP, was more famous by its nickname among awakeners. Nazis.
For reference, Old Man Show voted Social Democratic Party from birth until the world ended. Blood-red through and through.
Germany birthed both Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. In other countries, fascists and commies just ideologically clashed, but in Germany, it mixed with ethnic self-loathing.
Even as an anomaly, a true revolutionary never betrays their ideology.
"Take a look at this!"
Whoosh—thud.
I shook out an old banner.
"......!"
The Sword Ghost's eyes shook wildly at the bold symbol on it.
卍.
Just a Buddhist symbol in the East, but no Westerner steeped in Orientalism would grasp Buddha's profound teachings.
The 'Ka' DNA slumbering nobly in Old Man Show's bloodline triggered an allergic overreaction to the sound of 'Hi.'
"Uwaaaaaah!"
The German super-commie swordmaster roared. If his aura had been red, it'd be perfect.
But the power was real.
True to the protocol to destroy the outdated world from birth, the old coot's—no, steel pipe—slashes razed the city in an instant.
But the Sword Ghost's hand, swinging to cleave me, suddenly slammed on the brakes.
"......! ......!"
Where his aura headed stood rows of clay statues.
Busts perfectly sculpted with the faces of 'Karl Marx' and 'Rosa Luxemburg'!
The Sword Ghost hesitated like a glitched NPC. Like a Japanese Kirishitan ordered to trample a Jesus tablet to prove they're not Christian.
And rightly so—for a German old man, those two statues were Jesus and the Virgin Mary icons.
Swing left, and Marx gets smashed. Swing right, and Luxemburg cracks.
"U, uwaaaah...!"
My preparations didn't stop there.
Just in case, I'd displayed busts of every German leftist politician I knew: Kurt Schumacher, Willy Brandt, Wilhelm Pieck, Walter Ulbricht, and so on.
No matter which faction Old Man Show supported (I don't care about German politics, and unifying the left is a fantasy anomaly), one would hit!
That's right.
I, the Undertaker, hung around Busan Station concourse for a week just to show this.
Thanks to full-effort screw-ups every vacation cycle, my sculpting skills were pretty top-tier.
"You think only you can deploy a domain, old man? This is my domain expansion."
"Uuuaaah..."
"I've hidden statues like landmines all over this city. Come on in, to my unique barrier. The revolutionary space of crimson slaughter."
"Uwaaaaaah...!"
Come at me, commie gramps.
Prove your (ideological) purity with tears.