Chapter 16
Chapter 16
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 16
Chapter Title: End of the Tutorial (3)
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Lee Sang-hyun opened his eyes in a pitch-dark cave. It was so dim and damp that even the faint torches hanging on the walls felt ominous.
"......"
Lee Sang-hyun peered intently ahead.
The torches were mounted on the walls at regular intervals like streetlights, but their light grew smaller the farther ahead it went.
Whooooosh!
"?!"
Suddenly, a fierce wind blasted from behind him. Lee Sang-hyun whipped around reflexively.
"!!"
To his astonishment, a sheer cliff dropped away behind him, an endless abyss stretching out like a vast ocean.
...'Like the underworld itself.'
He couldn't see the bottom of the cliff. It was filled only with huddled darkness, and the ceiling stretched endlessly high, as dark and vast as the night sky.
Lowering his gaze, he spotted something across the way.
'That's...'
Far, far away—at least a kilometer, it seemed—there was a place where lights flickered. Squinting, he made out a round 'entrance'.
"......"
The entrance was the only way out of this 'dungeon'. But reaching it from here was impossible.
Not that he could scale the walls, crawl across the ceiling, or climb down and up again—regardless, the place was designed from the start to be uncrossable.
'A carrot on a stick, literally.'
Lee Sang-hyun realized it the moment he saw it, and he understood the reason for such a design.
'Hope torture... A place designed purely to instill despair.'
As Alice had said, Stage 5 existed not to give hope, but to deliver despair.
With no option to go back, the only path left was forward.
But before he could even take a step, Nameless spoke.
'Down...?'
Down—not forward or back, but down.
Lee Sang-hyun could only doubt his own ears. Because it was down.
Down, not even to the side.
Down into that....
Down the cliff?
'I must have misheard... No, I didn't.'
A voice even clearer than before rang out, leaving no room for denial.
It was down.
"......"
Lee Sang-hyun fell silent for a moment and stared down at the abyss-like cliff bottom.
Whooooosh!
The wind rising from below the cliff whistled like a demon's tune—chilling and grotesque. Getting caught in it would surely mean a gruesome end after being toyed with mercilessly.
'Jump down...?'
As a human, he couldn't help feeling fear. Honestly, it seemed insane.
'Logically, it's madness...'
But none of Nameless's instructions so far had been without reason. They all had solid justification, and this one surely did too.
'If there's a reason, it's not madness.'
Lee Sang-hyun thought no more. There was no need to overthink it.
Nameless wanted him to go down, and if a path existed below, there was no reason not to leap.
'Let's go.'
Having decided, Lee Sang-hyun didn't hesitate. He threw himself off the cliff into the endless abyss.
Whooooosh!!
Objectively, it was insane.
A skin-flaying wind surged endlessly. The faint light that had illuminated his surroundings had long vanished above, leaving only pitch-black darkness all around.
Is this what the depths of an abyss felt like?
The pain was unbearable.
......
His body, frozen stiff, awaited only the end of this endless fall.
What an irony. Fearing the end, yet waiting desperately for the fall to stop!
No contradiction could be greater.
......
In a place devoid of even a speck of light, the existence called 'me' was completely erased.
Now, it was impossible to tell if he was falling or rising.
Was he really falling? Or had he already died and was wandering lost somewhere?
......
His heartbeat grew louder, soon filling his entire body. Thump! Thump! Thump!
The wind still howled fiercely, like a demon whistling, sending chills down his spine. But he was adapting; it was getting better bit by bit.
......
Curiosity replaced the fear.
What awaited at this bottom?
What could possibly demand such a long fall?
Death no longer frightened him.
He was more curious about the end.
......
Suddenly, the wind changed. Until now, it had sliced like a knife; below, it carried a stench worse than a sewer's belch.
What lay down there to emit such a nauseating reek?
A mountain of corpses, perhaps? Fitting for the 'Grave of the Fallen'.
......
After an eternity of falling.
The end finally appeared.
The end of what had seemed an eternal abyss.
Something glimmered amid the foul stench. Lee Sang-hyun belatedly realized it was blue.
'W...a...ter...?'
The blue evoked the sea. But it was so faint and insignificant, like glowing plankton.
'Damn!'
He could think no more. The moment he had both dreaded and awaited had arrived.
SPLASH!!
At the cliff's end, in the abyss, what awaited Lee Sang-hyun was neither hard ground nor a grave of corpses, but 'water'.
A vast, unfathomably deep pool—lake or sea, he couldn't tell—awaited him.
Glug... glug... glug!
Fortunately, he didn't die or pass out on impact. But the shock was so immense his body locked up like it was paralyzed.
'M...o...v...e...!'
Staying still meant sinking. And he was sinking fast.
'N...o...w...!'
Lee Sang-hyun thrashed desperately. At first, his limbs wouldn't respond. Then they twitched, and soon he regained full control.
"?!!"
But in the process, the rotten, stench-filled water flooded into his nose.
Glug... glug... glug!
Unable to hold back, Lee Sang-hyun vomited it out. Not just what had entered, but everything inside him, even the breath he'd held.
Cough? Cough!!
The price of expelling his held breath was brutal. Nauseating filth poured down his throat, filling his stomach.
Flail! Flail!
Breathing in this situation was impossible.
Nose, mouth, even eyes filled with muck as he sank rapidly.
......!!
No screams echoed. But his desperate flailing rippled outward, brushing the blue glow.
The rotten, decaying blue glow.
Minutes of groping the unknowable bottom—sinking endlessly without swimming.
Lee Sang-hyun reached the 'bottom'.
More precisely, he arrived by helplessly sinking, but he had reached the end. Beyond the cliff base, the deepest edge of the abyss.
"......"
Surprisingly, his mind was clear. In this ambiguous state of life or death, his consciousness was sharp enough to realize he had sunk to the bottom.
Thump...
The excruciating pain and disgust that had driven him mad had vanished.
Thump...
In their place came silent darkness and emptiness.
Thump...
Ironically, as the darkness and void grew, the existence of 'me' became clearer and more vivid.
Thump...
And he saw it. A blue sea that, even as its body rotted away, never lost hope until the end.
Wooo... woo... woooong...!
It recognized Lee Sang-hyun's presence.
And recognized him as the one it had awaited for eons.
A first-time visitor, longed for vaguely across near-eternal ages—yet 'she' knew him at a glance.
Because there lay the sole 'hope'. The pathetic hope they mocked and scorned.
Her voice was cracked and parched, on the verge of shattering. Yet it brimmed with unbreakable hope.
『...So... we... entrust... it... to... you... Our... wish... and... rage... Repay... it... to... them...』 『...So... that... you... do... not... walk... the... same... path... as... us...』 『...We... truly... hope...』
⟨ Tethys ⟩
Her name was Tethys.
The one who failed to protect the world through folly.
A god of a perished world.
And the mother who cradled the 'water', origin of life.
Swish.
Tethys passed the 'water' she had cherished to the end to Lee Sang-hyun.
The source of water, guarded amid their endless mockery and contempt, even as her once-blue body blackened, rotted, and reeked.
She handed over her final life to him.
Drip.
The moment awaited across eons ended with a tiny ripple on the surface.
For something so long anticipated, it was utterly anticlimactic.
But as with all things,
the end heralded a new beginning.
Woooong!
It poured down his throat relentlessly. Fortunately, there was no disgust. No nausea. Instead, it was refreshing, like gulping cold water.
Thump...!
Fully absorbed into his body, it flowed straight to his heart. And nested there.
Thump...!
Like a blue bird laying an egg, it nested in his heart and began to sing with it.
Thump...!
The gentle melody felt like a lullaby, or a tune one hums unconsciously.
Thump...!
The melody spread through his veins to every corner of his body. From toes to fingertips to hair strands, it swam freely.
Thump...!
The melody that had spread far returned to the heart. Reborn in a new form, it spread again.
Thump...!
This was the 'cycle' of life. Raindrops from clouds become rivers, rivers flow to the sea, and the sea forms clouds anew.
Lee Sang-hyun felt it, understood it. Water was life itself, the origin of life.
Thump thump!!
And Lee Sang-hyun 'awakened'.