Chapter 102
Chapter 102
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
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『Lee Seung-hoon, the one who created me.』
The Scales of Good and Evil remembered Lee Seung-hoon.
『However, justice must be fair.』
The scales' gaze pierced through him.
『The world's greatest troublemaker, a non-human entity— all lies.』
For the Scales of Good and Evil, which judged good and evil and passed sentence, falsehoods created by the Inverted Cross held no meaning whatsoever.
『Misfortune is the obstacle blocking a smooth life. What obstacle do you fear?』
The scales read Lee Seung-hoon.
After scrutinizing him for a long while, the Scales of Good and Evil discovered something.
『Prophecy.』
A prophecy seen through symbols on the quest ticket.
The symbol of prophecy featured 「Gallery of Surviving Among Entities」, but Lee Seung-hoon couldn't interpret it.
Instead, he speculated on its various possible meanings, and among those guesses was one he hoped would never come true.
『I now know the obstacle suited to you.』
The Scales of Good and Evil tilted completely.
『Misfortune equal to your evil deeds shall make it reality.』
The space in the sky where the scales resided warped.
To summon misfortune.
To draw in chaos from another dimension.
『Receive the misfortune your evil deeds have called forth!』
Not one, but many.
“?”
I reflexively looked up at the sky.
I didn't know why. It was just an instinctive action driven by a strange feeling.
“Challenger, your defeat is at hand.”
Seizing the moment my gaze was stolen, the man drew a ceremonial dagger and stabbed his own heart.
“For us, death is resurrection.”
Black blood sprayed out from the stabbed heart like a burst pipe.
“There was never a path to victory against you from the start.”
The sprayed blood flowed above the man's head, gathered, and then poured down like a baptism.
His time rewound.
‘Resurrection, huh.’
His wounds healed, his body reverted to his twenties.
It wasn't limited to his body; his clothes became like new, and the Demonic Grimoire that had vanished was back in his hand.
“We do not die. Not until we leave the embrace of the loathsome Creator and achieve independence.”
This was a dangerous moment.
I didn't know what he'd do, but he was surely about to perform something risky using an entity.
“Citri's Call.”
As expected, he cast a spell, and two more Antichrists were summoned right beside him.
“Andras's Ruin.”
The heads of the two summoned men exploded like watermelons thrown from a rooftop.
Black bloody water surged up similarly and baptized their flesh.
“Hmm, dead, huh.”
“Oh dear, we got done in.”
They too went through the same process and emerged unscathed.
But I had no time to worry about them.
‘Something's coming.’
「Dried Friendship」 also enhanced intuition. And my intuition was telling me something dangerous was coming from the sky right now. ‘The sky is warping.’ The starlight distorted. The sky right above my head did so, and the Antichrists, sensing something odd about me staring blankly at the sky, belatedly raised their guards.
“What is that?”
“The starlight's distorting?”
“Spatial distortion!?”
The moment everyone's gazes converged on the sky. The distortion vanished as if it had been a lie. Instead, something white fell from where the distortion had been. ‘A person.’ Snow-white hair like fresh snow and healthy brown skin. A boy in patient garb consisting of a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, with ragged scars on each joint and his forehead.
“An ally?”
“Eliminate.”
The Antichrists attacked the boy. They must have mistaken him for an ally I'd called, since I'd been looking at the sky earlier.
“Astaroth's Needles.”
Dozens of massive needles generated in midair shot toward the boy. Thicker than rebar, the needles didn't just pierce the boy—they shredded him.
“Worthless vermin shall rot and return to the earth without accomplishing anything.”
The boy's shredded flesh reflected in a mirror. Each piece of flesh rotted and decayed in an instant.
“Guh! Guh! Heuk! Buh!”
Thinking the boy dead, the man with the crown of thorns tried to steal my power again and convulsed. ‘I recognize that face.’ Looking at the chunks too pathetic to call a corpse, I recalled the boy's face. It was definitely the face from an ad I'd seen on a wall-mounted TV.
“Frankenstein Boy.”
At that moment, the corpse reconstructed. The chunks reverted to their original form in the blink of an eye, severed nerve bundles and muscle fibers reconnecting into one intact body.
“......”
Finally, the boy opened his eyes. As if instinctively knowing who had attacked him, he turned his gaze toward the Antichrists and opened his mouth.
“It hurts.”
“!?”
The falling boy vanished. Only I saw his movement. Kicking off the air, he soared to the ground and stood behind the man holding the Demonic Grimoire.
“As bad as the Professor!”
The boy's small hand reached toward the man with the grimoire.
“Time to get hit!” 0.03 seconds. That was the fleeting moment I perceived, and in that time, the boy tore the man into thousands of pieces. ‘Fast.’ But the man wouldn't die. He'd just rewind time and resurrect. Black bloody water began to surge from the man's flesh divided into thousands of pieces.
“You don't die either! You're an experiment too, huh?”
The boy, Frankenstein Boy, seemed to know well about resurrecting beings and laughed as he opened his mouth wide.
“Then I'll just eat you!”
Just like the previous attack, the boy moved at tremendous speed and gulped down the shredded man's flesh. He swallowed the pieces without chewing, and before the last piece hit the ground, it went into the boy's mouth.
“Delicious! Thanks for the meal!”
He'd shredded and devoured one person. Yet the boy's belly didn't bulge at all. Instead, his stomach writhed several times as if resurrection was attempted inside, but it soon went quiet.
“You bastard! How dare you to the First Apostle!”
Another man shone a mirror. The boy's entire body twisted, losing human form.
“Heh.”
Even in his twisted state, the boy grinned.
“One more meal!”
“Delicious! Thanks for the meal!”
The Antichrist with the Mirror of Lies was also caught and eaten by the boy.
Smelling the same scent from the convulsing Antichrist on the ground, the boy asked me.
“This one okay to eat too?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“Thanks!”
I pondered his identity as I watched the boy crunchily chew and eat the convulsing man.
‘Frankenstein Boy, a lifeform presumed created by Dr. Janus.’
His strength was such that even the tides, not to mention Janus himself, had intended to use him for combat.
‘He gets stronger the hungrier he is, right?’
The hungrier he got, the more violent he became, and his body contained various inventions made by Janus.
To sate such hunger, he had to eat something, but I recalled that ingesting organics couldn't handle the energy.
“Um, hey...”
The boy, having finished off the last Antichrist, looked up at me.
“Can I eat you too?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Fortunately, I'd found a way to sate his hunger.
While observing him steadily even during the fight, I'd spotted a small charging port on the nape of his neck.
“I'll give you something else to eat.”
“Wow! Really?”
“Like pudding?”
“Yeah! I love love love pudding!”
“Here.”
I pulled pudding from the snacks I'd packed in the Void Pocket.
“Wow! Pudding!”
“Sit here and eat.”
I took out a chair, seated the boy, then pulled out a portable power bank enhanced with reinforcement potion.
『Mr. Lee Seung-hoon, isn't that my exclusive one?』 “Yeah, but lend it to me just this once.” 『.......』 I pressed the charger cable to the port on the boy's nape. Worried it might not fit, but wondrously, the moment I brought it close, it automatically changed to match the cable. ‘Dr. Janus's science, huh.’ As charging began, the boy beamed.
“Tasty! And it fills me up!”
“There's more, so eat plenty!”
“Got it!”
He must have been starving, as the power bank and prepared snacks vanished in no time.
“Sleepy...”
Succumbing to food coma, the boy nodded off and fell asleep. I loaded him into the back seat and pondered what to do. ‘I remember the number Dr. Janus asked me to call.’ However, we had a bad connection—not quite enmity, but I couldn't predict his reaction. ‘If he still remembers my gaze, he might even turn hostile.’ Plus, Janus himself was a massive variable. Calling him, armed with formidable science and medicine, could lead to who-knows-what.
“Should I call after this is over?”
With all the self-proclaimed apostles gone into Frankenstein Boy's stomach, stopping Izabel should be easier than before.
“Let's hurry to Uluru.”
The Foundation's independent dimension.
In the conference room of the headquarters overseeing all Foundation operations, Seong Yu-ra convened a meeting.
“The center of this Australian incident is External Special Advisor Lee Seung-hoon.”
A presentation projected on screen.
It analyzed and identified the cause of the mass sleep incident in Australia and the mass convulsions among Foundation agents.
“A few days ago, the External Special Advisor stated a special event would occur at Uluru in Australia. He also warned of the emergence of an entity tied to a primordial being, a concept even we don't know.”
“Why didn't we intervene?”
“Rash intervention could empower the opponent. Entities are inherently like that. But the current situation is urgent. The Special Advisor's information has changed, and his perception has been altered to view him as hostile to the world.”
While most Foundation agents treated Lee Seung-hoon as a dangerous entity, the administrators remained unshaken.
“He was always that kind of person.”
They had treated him as an entity from the start.
They'd only treated him as human per the Sephirot's warning that he must be handled as such.
“But his skills are beyond doubt. If even he fell, the problem is grave.”
“Have you tried contacting him?”
“With unknown methods of information contamination, rash contact could cause greater harm.”
“What about enemy intel?”
“They're called Antichrists. Not the amateur pretenders we've seen before, but beings who received entities directly from demons.”
“Hmm, then there's only one answer.”
The administrators united.
“Physical resolution.”
“Even if there's loss, it's cheaper than a demonic descent or the world's end.”
“Any objections?”
“Agents alone aren't enough.”
Seong Yu-ra advanced the screen.
“I propose deploying the strategic superweapon for mass destruction missions, which was repaired three days ago.”
The screen showed a massive ship straight out of a sci-fi movie.
“Length 127 km, width 88 km. Equipped with 27 black hole engines, a Dimensional Barrier device to spatially isolate all of Australia and minimize external damage, 27 million drone ships, 1,622 railguns, and 3 planetary destruction Destruction Missiles.”
“Approved.”
Even before the explanation finished, the administrators raised their hands one by one.
“Sacrificing Australia if need be.”
“We must stop it.”
Seong Yu-ra nodded gravely as well.
“Ranked 97th among the Foundation's top 100 armaments in the past—currently our greatest asset.”
For humanity.
“The Battleship Doomsday will set sail.”
“Ah!”
“Professor? What's wrong?”
“Franken-boy's location has been pinpointed!”
Dr. Janus, white hair flying, pounded the keyboard.
“He's been drifting through dimensional gaps, so we couldn't locate him! Plus, the battery was down 48%, so no location signal!”
“And now?”
“The dimension's stabilized, and the battery's recharged! Let's see... 75%? Impressive! 27% charged? That's enough organic matter to feed a nation for a day or power from a nuclear plant for half a year!”
“Nuclear? That's too overkill.”
“Just an analogy to the dimension he fell into. Whoever fed our Franken-boy seems no ordinary person. And the planetary coordinates...”
“Why?”
The screen showed Australia.
“How could I not know that place? The most significant spot across all dimensions. Especially for those like me or the tides with similar appearances!”
“Really? I don't know it.”
“The tide needs to study history! Anyway, we don't know if the one who gave Franken-boy acted out of goodwill or malice.”
“Probably goodwill?”
“I'd like to think so. But...”
Dr. Janus switched screens.
[External attack detected]
[Attack pattern: Tachyon particles and quantum tunneling used to fix future changes]
[Details: Interference in the future and attempts to fix fate observed. The targeted future change could not be observed.]
[Result: Defense successful. Tachyon particle pair annihilation confirmed, quantum tunneling blocked.]
“Someone tried to manipulate us to alter the future to their liking.”
“Eek!? They tried to use us?”
“That's right. Now, what to do? Yes, that's best.”
As he typed, the space containing him and the tide was carved out whole and floated up.
The lab ceiling opened, and they jumped through space several times rapidly.
“For precautions, we'll bring the army!”
Countless humans with identical faces deployed on the ground.
The artificial lifeforms without ego, born from the scientist's hands, were armed with his inventions.
“About 100 million should do.”
“Just them?”
“No.”
He grinned at the tide's question.
“I'm going too. How could I send these without going when Franken-boy's waiting?”
“Heh. Then I'll nap at home...”
“The tide's coming too.”
“Why!?”
“Franken-boy cries, the tide has to soothe him. He doesn't like my chest much. Guess bigger ones are better. Human instinct.”
“You could just get bigger ones too, Professor!”
“Shoulders hurt. Pass.”
A warehouse where boxes full of documents formed walls.
Inside the warehouse said to take 200 years to traverse once entered.
A man was taking a nap.
“You were here?”
“Oh dear, what brings you?”
The demon Baal awoke and asked.
Having slacked off for weeks, he gave Asmo excuses that weren't excuses.
“I wasn't playing. I was sleeping to fulfill Mr. Lee Seung-hoon's request without disappointing him.”
“Did he ask you to find something?”
“Yes, before we left the dimension, he asked us to look into the entities we gave humans.”
“Sadly impossible. No one knows where the data's buried.”
“The Chairman might know, but no need to pluck whiskers from a tiger.”
Baal shared additional info, saying this would benefit the company.
“Word is Antichrists—our worshippers—are summoning something. Seems like a descent ritual for protection, and if they summon one of our department heads or executives, it'll give us strong grounds.”
Active intervention in the human world would provoke Eastern Hell.
Heaven, now listless, might regain zeal too.
“Certainly good grounds.”
“Humans begged us first—who can complain?”
A personal request was mere deviation, but this vast ritual, seemingly representing all humanity to summon a transcendent, would give irrefutable justification for intervention.
“That's why the Chairman called you.”
“Huh? The Chairman?”
“He said some nobody ruffled his feathers. Seems he sensed an attempt to alter fate's axis, using him no less.”
“What's that?”
“Not sure of details. Just, ‘Not summoning me for misfortune but using me? Outrageous.’ Anyway, he observed the summoned by Antichrists likely isn't one of ours. No worship from them.”
Not summoning a demon?
Problematic. Another transcendent's descent could make interference hard.
“Thus, he ordered you. Take templars if needed—go disrupt the ritual or swap the summon target.”
“What a hassle.”
Waving his hand irritably, he left the warehouse.
“Swapping's nonsense; might as well rack up debt with Mr. Lee Seung-hoon.”
“How many to bring?”
“Hmm. If we can't stop the ritual, transcendent descent probability high, so...”
He headed to HQ to recruit for this mission.
“30 million interns, 10 million regular employees, 5 million managers should suffice.”
Earth's navel.
Once called Ayers Rock, now Uluru—Earth's largest monolith.
Izabel closed her book atop it.
[Constellations of the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere] The book she'd steadily read while preparing for this over years was worn to tatters. “Then let's begin.” She erected altars. Three altars worshiping totem shapes positioned at the north, southeast, and southwest ends. Having set them up, she stood at the center. “The ritual to summon humanity's guardian and new god.”