Black World (1)
There was no way this situation wouldn’t end in screams.
I still didn’t understand what the hell had just happened, and I still couldn’t tell how things were working now. That part hadn’t changed.
What a crazy woman.
The shaman standing in front of me was nothing more and nothing less than insane.
I kept trying the door, but it stayed firmly shut, with no intention of opening.
This wasn’t the kind of trap I had imagined, but it was somehow even more disconcerting than what I’d pictured.
And all the while, the shaman kept bowing her head and babbling words I couldn’t make sense of.
“Master! Master! I’ve waited for this day for so long.”
“S-shit!”
“My light, my love, my everything.”
“Don’t come any closer.”
Watching her crawl toward me was enough to make my skin crawl.
I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to respond.
Should I call Jung Hayan?
If I made physical contact with her, the information would go to Jung Hayan whether I wanted it to or not.
She would probably realize something had happened to me and head here at once. No, there was a good chance she was already on her way.
But still.
The more I thought about whether that was the right thing to do, the more I found myself grimacing.
Because of the shaman’s sudden behavior, I’d completely forgotten what my original purpose here had been.
I was supposed to find out why she had called me here, and how much she knew about what I had.
Without even realizing it, I had backed myself up until the door was right behind me, while she remained where she’d been after bowing, not far from that spot.
The door was locked, but she didn’t seem to mean me any harm.
If she was going to do something...
She would have done it already.
Even now, her body was shaking badly enough to make her look unstable, but for the moment, talking was the right thing to do.
I briefly considered pretending to be her master, but that felt like a bad idea.
If her eyes could see through essence, she’d probably catch on to something like that immediately.
I glanced around and sat down in a chair, only to find the shaman staring at me with an expression that looked almost hopeful.
Then I looked over my shoulder and saw those same bizarre tools lying there.
They were the sort of things I had no interest in learning the purpose of.
Why the hell is this kind of thing even here in the first place...
“Ahhhhh...”
Don’t make that kind of noise.
“Master.”
Don’t get your hopes up.
The seat I’d ended up in wasn’t exactly ideal.
I didn’t know why there was a whip hanging off the chair, but the first priority was to have a normal conversation.
The problem was that I had no idea how to begin one.
I couldn’t tell whether I should lead the discussion or simply let her set the pace.
The person who was supposed to stand in the overwhelming position of power was the one begging to be treated like a subordinate.
And she was doing it while acting in a rather pitiful way, too.
I realized only belatedly that I’d been lost in thought for too long.
Just as I was deciding that I needed to say something, anything, the shaman spoke first.
“Please speak down to me.”
That was better.
“Do you know who I am?”
“You are my one and only master.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking if you know exactly who I am.”
“I know only that you are my master.”
What the hell is this bullshit...
“The moment I first saw you, I knew at once. You were the one I’d kept searching for all this time. Even my Mind’s Eye, which could see through everything...”
“So you do know.”
“I-I’m sorry. Have I offended you?”
Stop.
“Honestly, this is a little confusing. I don’t know what all this master nonsense is supposed to mean, and if I’m being blunt, this is the first time I’ve ever seen you. I only came here because there was something I needed to confirm, and I don’t know why you’re acting like this toward me. You’re right. I’d say I’m a little put off.”
“I-I’m terribly sorry. I-I failed to consider my master’s feelings and I, I... yes... I’m sorry. I, I made such a mistake. P-please kill me.”
“......”
“What should I do... I-I got too excited and failed to understand the situation properly. P-please, have mercy!”
She’s not acting.
Tears were leaking from her tightly shut eyes, but they were different from before.
She looked genuinely confused.
That at least earned her some credit in my mind for not being a liar.
There was one thing I could confirm: she could see the future or the past.
The description of her trait already said as much.
Trait - Eyes That Pierce Through Essence, the Past, and the Future - Legendary Grade
By paying a price, you can glimpse what others cannot see.
It wasn’t explained in detail, and the wording was vague, but it was probably safe to assume she could see the future or the past. After all, that was literally what the trait was called.
Maybe...
“Have you seen me in the future?”
One possibility was that my future self had somehow affected her badly, and that her constant peeking into the future had ended up swallowing her whole.
That was, if the shaman in front of me really wasn’t lying.
“That is...”
“Or did you meet me in the past?”
“Neither, my master. More precisely...”
“More precisely?”
“More precisely, it is neither the future nor the past. I don’t know how else to describe it, but... there are certainly things my eyes can see. You may find this strange, but what I see is both the past and the future. More precisely, it is memory engraved into my body.”
“Memory engraved into your body?”
“No, it would be more accurate to say memory engraved into my soul. I don’t know how to define it exactly, but I’ve been seeing these things since six years ago, when I first came here...”
“Didn’t you say four years?”
“That is how it is known to the outside world, but it has been six years since I entered this place. If you wish, I can call it four years ago...”
“No, that doesn’t matter. Just explain.”
“The first thing I saw after arriving here was myself with you, my master. I don’t quite know how to put it, but I remember being terribly happy. Of course, at the time, it was a memory I found hard to accept...”
“And the reason you don’t think that was the future?”
“Usually, the future appears white. The past appears gray, and things that are neither past nor future appear black. And I call that the Black World.”
“I see.”
It was convincing.
The status window didn’t lie.
If what she had seen wasn’t the future or the past, then the answer was obvious enough.
The first timeline?
Maybe it was a delusion created by that woman, but the only thing I could think of right now was the first round Kim Hyunsung had lived through.
It could have been a parallel world or whatever else, and there was also a decent chance it was just delusion like she’d said...
But it’s possible.
This woman seemed to already know me, and she knew exactly what my trait was.
She didn’t seem to realize this was the first timeline, but if the black world she could see really was the first round, then she was effectively a regressor too.
The problem was me.
Did I survive?
I, too, had existed in the first round. In fact, I had assumed my odds of survival were low.
When I’d gone through the first round, Kim Hyunsung probably hadn’t been a regressor yet, either, so I wouldn’t have chosen to follow him.
I likely would have kept moving with Park Deokgu.
Even being saved by Kim Hyunsung in the Tutorial Dungeon had happened twice already.
If Kim Hyunsung hadn’t been there, the human named Lee Kiyoung might never have made it to the continent.
And on top of that...
The fact that I’d apparently acted as this woman’s master suggested that, for all I knew, I’d been something of a capable man in that timeline.
I couldn’t say exactly what had happened, but it left me feeling strangely unsettled.
Of course, all of this assumed that what she’d seen really was the first timeline.
I wasn’t about to stamp it as confirmed just yet, but there was no harm in gathering information.
“Have you seen anything else? No, what exactly did you see about me?”
“I couldn’t see very much, actually. I’m sorry, but my trait doesn’t let me see whatever I want. As for the future or the past, sometimes I can see what I wish to see, but in the case of the Black World...”
So there is a penalty.
“What I can see there are only fragments, or particularly striking scenes. Of course, the scene I saw most often was one with you, my master... no, in truth, most of what I saw was simply memories of the time I spent with you.”
“What sort of memories are you talking about?”
“I-it’s embarrassing to say, but... that... it was...”
Her face drifted toward the objects behind me again.
Only then did I begin to understand her reaction.
Lee Kiyoung, what the hell did you do?
Her age, as seen through the status window, was only twenty.
I had no idea when I’d met her, but the absurdity of it was enough to make me laugh under my breath.
“No, you don’t need to say it. I think I can guess.”
Then I changed the question.
“How did the two of us meet in the Black World? Could you see that part too?”
“Y-yes. If it was something related to you, my master, I could see at least some of it. The fragments were too incomplete for me to explain in detail, but in the Black World, I remember going to find you myself.”
“What?”
“In the Black World, I was also occasionally seeing a future where I was with you. I suppose I must have felt confused after seeing myself so happy. It seemed I was even in pain when I saw myself alongside you. I can understand that, since I felt the same way when I first came here, but the version of me in the Black World looked truly foolish. I even pitied you, which was presumptuous of me. Stupidly, I wanted to reject the future of being with you, and yet I still took pity on you.”
“I see.”
“After I found you, you were badly hurt, so I devoted myself to healing you. That’s how I remember spending a long time with you.”
“You were my lifesaver.”
“I-I'm only embarrassed to hear it. In any case, after you had almost fully recovered, the scene I saw was...”
“......”
“......”
“The scene was?”
“The scene where you were choking my neck.”
“What?”
“The scene where you were choking my neck. I couldn’t see what came after that in detail, but I remember your words very clearly.”
For some reason, I started to feel uneasy.
“What did I say?”
“You said, ‘Cut the cheap pity crap. You damn bitch. You’re all the same.’ And then... that’s how you and I ended up bound together. The next scene was much later. That was how my connection with you began in the Black World. Hehe...”
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
I had no idea how things had ended up like that.
Everything she’d told me was so absurd that my head was starting to spin.
When I forced my wandering thoughts to settle and went through everything one by one, a rough outline began to form.
First. The shaman can see the future, the past, and essence. Unlike the shaman from the first timeline, who could only see the future and the past, the shaman in the second timeline can even glimpse the first timeline.
Second. The future and the past aren’t something you can inspect at will. They open only at random, and only what is random can be seen.
Third. The first timeline she can see is limited. Judging from the circumstances, it seems she can only review memories engraved in her own soul.
Fourth. For reasons unknown, the shaman of the second timeline wants to become my servant. That was probably a side effect of looking too deeply into the first timeline.
Fifth. At least in the first timeline, the shaman was Lee Kiyoung’s lifesaver.
Sixth. The shaman of the first timeline saw the future of the first timeline, meaning the version of herself with me, and felt confused. She denied and rejected her own future.
Seventh. Even so, the first-timeline shaman pitied me, and so she decided to save the human named Lee Kiyoung. I had no idea how she found me or where she found me, but she saved the dying me and brought me home.
Last. Once the first-timeline Lee Kiyoung had fully recovered, he strangled the first-timeline shaman’s neck. After time passed, the first-timeline shaman met the same result as now, unable to change her future.
She had tried to change the future, but she hadn’t been able to.
If I stripped away all the nuance and put it in one sentence, it meant she had saved a life only to get stabbed in the back for it.
No matter how I looked at it, there was no excuse for that.
Was this bastard completely worthless?
The Lee Kiyoung of the first timeline was a complete human piece of trash.
An irredeemable piece of trash, at that.
You... bastard...