I Am Randolph
······for behind Hyun, the figures of two goddesses smiling with gentle benevolence had come into view.
Two goddesses so sacred they could not even be compared to the Orthodox the Death God Religion followed, nor to the gods those people worshipped.
Ah······.
Gazing upon the two goddesses, Raiga found tears streaming down his face before he even realized it.
Priest Andrew.
He had become an Avenger, yet fortunately he still remained within the Goddess’s embrace.
The fact itself was so hard for him to believe that it had become a problem of its own.
······Did His Grace truly······.
Hyun.
The moment Andrew faced him, holy power had welled up again.
More precisely, the moment Hyun revealed his true identity.
And yet Andrew remained bewildered. He could not understand it.
But it had to be true. If it were not, there would be no way to explain the phenomenon of Indulgences being issued once more.
“Why did he call us all here?”
“Is Lord Randolph present?”
In a wide chamber, people had gathered—Serengeti and Priest Andrew among them.
Saintess Seia, Isabella, Hudson, Valte, Isaac.
Even Hana, the Blade Dragon God.
Everyone connected to Randolph had assembled.
Most of them, however, did not know the exact reason for the meeting. Valte and Isaac, having arrived late, were especially puzzled. They could only assume Randolph would be here.
Creak.
The door opened, and a man appeared. He shut it behind him, stepped inside, and stood before them.
But it was not Randolph.
“······.”
“······!!!”
Isabella looked as if she had already sensed something. Hudson’s eyes flew wide in sheer disbelief.
Their reactions varied wildly—yet from the center of them all, he spoke.
“I am Randolph.”
Then, as if the explanation still felt incomplete, he added,
“I am also Park Hyunmyung. And Wilhelm.”
“We call ourselves Players.”
I had agonized over this for a long time.
Whether to reveal it, or keep silent.
But it was a truth that had to come out someday. There is no such thing as an eternal lie, and continuing to deceive the people who had trusted me and followed me would have been a betrayal of that trust.
At the very least, those gathered here had a right to know.
“······Will you be all right?”
While everyone reeled in shock, Isabella asked carefully.
I was not unaware of her concern. In truth, Isabella knew more about me than anyone else. On God’s Island she had glimpsed my memories—and I had glimpsed hers, learning the secret of the Divine Illness.
Even so, Isabella did not know everything about me.
Once I became one with Randolph, the side effects vanished.
The one mercy was that the penalty of a fading presence had disappeared. Randolph and I were no longer separate beings.
And so I intended to speak without the slightest omission or embellishment. Only then would we be able to face what lay ahead.
The upheaval that had shaken the continent of Pangenia. The new trials that included the Forgotten Dungeon of Honor. I could not resolve all of them alone.
From now on we would have to bind ourselves even tighter. Gathering around those I could trust—those I could rely on—was the surest way to prepare for a future no one could see even an inch ahead.
“······Park Hyunmyung?”
The first to react was Isaac.
Isaac of Thunder Severance!
A character who had been wanted nationwide for countless crimes. He had committed every bizarre act imaginable just to confirm whether operators existed, and he would harbor a fierce grudge against me for moving him as I pleased.
Isaac also knew my name—Park Hyunmyung’s name. Isabella had seen my face when she transcended; Isaac had heard my name.
“The sinner, Park Hyunmyung?”
“Calm yourself, Isaac. We all fell under the Divine Illness by our own choices.”
Isabella hurriedly stepped between us. But Isaac’s expression still refused to ease.
“I chose it? What choice are you talking about?”
“Th-that is······.”
Isabella was just as flustered. The entire situation had been far too sudden.
“Isaac. You were fated to die in a mine.”
······And so I spoke.
“A nameless mining town. A place where kidnapped slaves died by the dozens every day. There, you begged me to save you.”
“······!!!”
Isaac’s eyes wavered. Only a handful of people knew about the mining town—but I knew every detail. I had played him myself.
“More precisely, you made a deal not with me, but with the Bluebird—the ‘Operator.’ You summoned me to challenge a death you could never escape under your own power. You chose the challenge.”
“And that is the Divine Illness······?”
“In exchange, you would have lost the related memories.”
“So······ you moved in my place? Because I was going to die in that mine?”
“Mm. Honestly, it wasn’t easy. There were countless watchers, and even among the slaves, informing on each other was routine. At first I only meant to escape.”
“······.”
“Then I changed my mind. I collapsed the mine and freed the slaves. After that I hunted down everyone involved and committed crime after crime. The fact that you became a wanted man is entirely my fault.”
I laid out the full story of why Isaac had been forced to flee to Kramdel. As I spoke, the color drained from his face until it went completely white.
“······Lately I’ve been dreaming a lot. Forgotten memories from the mining town keep surfacing in the form of dreams. I thought they were just······ nonsense dreams······.”
His gaze said he still could not believe it. But it was the truth. Every character connected to me was likely experiencing something similar to Isaac right now.
“If all of that is true······ why did you hide it until now?”
“Because I didn’t know either.”
“······What?”
“I never knew this world was a real, existing world.”
It was cruel—but sometimes the truth still had to be spoken. If I kept hiding it, my words would keep contradicting themselves. What I was about to say was that kind of truth.
It was time to open the locked bolt.
The truth no one spoke of—the truth no one could speak of.
“To me, this world was nothing more than a game.”
That I had played a game, and that all of them had been nothing more than characters inside it.
The story poured out without pause.
That I had never been a holy being from the start. That I had approached them under false pretenses and used them. That I had played countless characters, and that even Wilhelm had been only one of them. And that when Wilhelm died, I had possessed Randolph.
“······.”
“······.”
Every mouth closed. A feast of pure shock. They would need a moment to sort through their thoughts.
But it could also be heard another way: that I had deceived them and used them all along.
Isaac seriously considered it.
Was I used?
To use someone means to gain something from them. But Randolph had gained almost nothing from Isaac. On the contrary, he had saved him, erased his evil deeds, and even given him a place to belong. He had let him meet comrades. He had let him taste a warmth he had never felt anywhere else.
But······ even so.
The fact that he had been deceived remained unchanged. If the bonds and relationships built over time had not acted as a sedative, he would have stormed out of the room.
······No. That wasn’t right.
Storming out would have been the merciful option.
I was going to kill him. I was going to cut off his head. All I could think about was taking the life of the bastard who moved me—Park Hyunmyung.
After transcending, he had consumed the Star of the Beheaded so that the moment he saw Park Hyunmyung he could sever his neck on the spot.
And now the man himself stood right in front of him.
Yet Park Hyunmyung was Randolph.
And Wilhelm at the same time······.
Then where was this rage supposed to go?
It had all been far too sudden. And yet he could not refuse to believe it—because Isabella already seemed to know. The way she looked at Park Hyunmyung was filled, without question, with warmth.
“I am a ‘sinner’ as well. We call ourselves Players.”
That was when it happened.
Suddenly, Hudson revealed his own identity.
Everyone’s eyes flew wide as they stared at him. Hudson squeezed his eyes shut and spoke.
“I’m sorry, Serengeti. I’m not a person of this world.”
“······What are you talking about, Hudson.”
“My name is Oliver. I came from Earth, not from Pangenia. This appearance, this face—none of it is the real me.”
“······.”
“But please believe me. The feelings I had when I loved you were real. You’re the only one for me. You always have been, and you always will be—forever.”
“······.”
Serengeti stood frozen, at a loss for words. Their wedding had been postponed because of a sudden Hydragon appearance at the ceremony, but they had been on the very brink of marriage. And now Hudson was a sinner? A person from another world? Even the way they had spoken of love to each other hadn’t been real?
“······So everything was a lie?”
“No. It wasn’t like that. It’s just······ I know it’ll only sound like an excuse, but I had no choice. In this place our existence was literally that of ‘sinners.’ We were treated as invaders.”
“······.”
“In that other world I was trying to die. I was sickly, and I didn’t have a single person I could call a friend. Meeting you in this world made me so happy that I started to believe Hudson—not Oliver—was my true self.”
He had meant to tell her long ago, but he never had. Now he could hide it no longer. If he did not speak now, he would never be able to speak at all.
“Meeting you made me want to live. I wanted to live. Lord Park Hyunmyung······ Lord Randolph saved someone like me. But one corner of my heart was always uneasy. Was it right to keep hiding this? I was terrified that if I told you the truth, you would leave me······ Every single day felt like hell.”
“You still should have told me.”
“I did. It got brushed aside in the chaos, but······ I’m sorry.”
“······Come to think of it, I think you did say something.”
Serengeti bit her lip. Looking back, Hudson’s oddities had not been one or two. And before the wedding, Hudson had clearly spoken to her.
Actually, there’s something I need to tell you.
Tell me? Tell me what?
The truth is······.
The truth?
I’m······ a sinner.
The sinner who stole my heart?
No······ that’s not what I······.
Don’t worry. The ceremony is in a week. I’ve prepared everything, so all you have to do is follow me, Hudson.
Wait. A week······?
······She had definitely heard the word sinner. But she had pretended not to hear it, using the wedding preparations as an excuse. The truth was that Serengeti had been suspicious as well. She had simply looked away, hoping it wasn’t true.
Randolph was a sinner. Hudson was a sinner. She had never fully registered the weight of the word—until it stood right in front of her and threw her mind into chaos.
“I······ also······.”
“······Huh?”
Having sorted her thoughts, Serengeti slowly opened her mouth. When Hudson tilted his head, she let out a long, heavy sigh.
“You’re not my first love either, Hudson.”
“······Uh? What did you just say?”
“Do you know the decisive reason I joined the Knights of the Round Table?”
“······What is it?”
“When I was little, I saw the deputy commander, and he was just too cool.”
“······You said I was your first love.”
“Sorry. That was a lie.”
Hoo!
Serengeti rolled her shoulders as if a weight had lifted and smiled.
“Um······ then why was I on the Mountain of the Cultivator?”
Valte carefully raised his hand. He had been endlessly swinging his spear in the Chaos Domain of the Mountain of the Cultivator—but he had no memory of how he had ended up there.
“Outer Qi training was so boring that I left you there.”
“······Excuse me?”
What kind of bolt from the blue was this?
“I maxed out the restrictions until you couldn’t see a thing. Swinging a spear in that state was so dull that······ I never expected you’d actually keep swinging it there for over two years. I’m sorry.”
“No—are you insane? What am I, some damn bag of peanuts for you to kill time with?”
The curse flew out of Valte’s mouth on pure reflex. Even someone as timid as him could not let that pass without a word. It felt like being forced to face a truth he never wanted to meet.
But what he truly wanted to know was something else.
“That’s massively shocking, but before that—I must have been in a situation where I was about to die as well. I just can’t remember what it was.”
“······To be honest, I don’t remember either.”
“Excuse me?”
“I ran into too many similar situations······ Unless something was special, I don’t remember them well.”
“······.”
“What’s certain is that most of them started with being chased by monsters, or trapped somewhere. The only thing I had to do was survive.”
“Then how many did you manage to make survive?”
“Well. Roughly a thousand runs. I got ninety-nine percent of them to survive.”
“Ghk!”
A death-cry rang out from the side. It was not Valte’s voice. The one who had screamed was none other than Hudson.