Chapter 297: Joaquin Academy (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 297: Joaquin Academy (1)
The gods—or rather, the marine creatures—resisted desperately. They were not beings revered as gods for nothing. The scale of their attacks was, quite literally, cosmic.
<You foolish child. Do you truly think something as mere as human wishes could eliminate all of us?>
Jupiter yelled at me. Where his handsome face used to be was now a green octopus head.
"Yeah. Easily."
I replied curtly and drew Murasame and Ten-Thousand-Year Frost. A brilliant light flashed amid the sashimi knives bursting through the abyss.
Slash!
The elongated beam of sword light cleaved the horizon of the abyss vertically. With a single stroke, countless gods were split top from bottom, left from right, and vanished into nothingness.
They seemed to be putting up a fight in their own way, but it was futile. My sashimi knife was a blade that cuts and cleaves all things. Even gods were no exception.
Whoosh...
Jupiter created a moon the size of a soccer ball in his right hand and a sun in his left. He then slammed the two spheres together in front of his chest like forming a hand seal.
○
●
The energy born from fusing opposing forces, Yin and Yang, became a darkness that devoured even light itself—the birth of a black hole. Its caliber was on an entirely different level from the black hole Kuarne had created before.
Rumbleeee.
He warped the abyss itself to twist the trajectory of my blade. Thanks to that, he narrowly dodged the sword beam—though a few tentacles growing like a beard were sliced off.
<You wretched creature! How can you be even stronger now than you were in the past? Even after relinquishing your divinity and choosing mere humanity! When we created this world, we contained no such causality!>
Jupiter glared with bloodshot eyes. He was the only god who had managed to endure the barrage of slashes. The rest had either fled or been swept into the light of the sword, disintegrating into cosmic dust.
The number of gods had visibly thinned. The population that had numbered near thousands was now fewer than twenty. The remaining gods lined up behind Jupiter, glaring at me as if they wanted to tear me apart.
<God of Sword, we know you came from another universe. Is that why? Are you this strong because you come from the Outside beyond our knowledge? Was our vision truly that narrow? Tell us! If we go to the Outside, can we become as strong as you?>
Even in this situation, they still exposed their murky desires.
Should I call them consistent?
Just as Lycan said, although they were the incarnations of greed, it seemed they were incapable of uttering lies. They had a strange sense of diligence in odd places.
But they were missing the point completely. Their fatal mistake wasn't about who I was, where I came from, or any of that nonsense.
"Do you know what your problem is?" I said, gazing at the blade.
It struck me again just how beautiful the wave pattern flowing along the sashimi knife was. Enchanted by this beauty, I had devoted my entire life to it.
"You were never satisfied with what you had." I shifted my gaze back to them. "And you always try to look outside for the cause. Strong because I'm a being from the Outside? Cut the bullshit. Do you have any idea what kind of life I've lived?"
In my previous life, I was miserable. My life story was riddled with oppression and violence. I was born to people too disgusting to even call parents.
Since no one at home bothered to feed me, I went out begging as soon as I could walk. Having no clothes, I scavenged through donation bins to cover myself. Even those were often torn to shreds by the bastards who called themselves my parents.
A father who beat me like a dog whenever he drank, and a mother who was always high on drugs and neglected me.
Though I had parents, I was no different from an orphan. My home was not a cozy haven, but hell itself.
That wasn't to say school or society was kind to me either.
Kids mocked me as a beggar trash and stayed away, while adults remained indifferent. They might have treated me like dead weight, even if they didn't show it openly.
Even so, I never complained once. Holding on to a tiny hope that night would eventually wane and morning would come, I stoked my will to live.
But it was too cruel a burden for a child who hadn't even reached twenty, and at a certain point, I had almost given up on life.
Why only me?
That thought crossed my mind constantly. Now, some might tell me things like: "Be glad you didn't starve to death," or "Consider yourself lucky to be born in Korea."
Happiness and unhappiness are relative, so from someone else's perspective, my life might not have looked completely bottom-of-the-barrel.
News reports of parents killing or abandoning their children pop up once or twice every year. Compared to them, one could think my parents were at least better people since they didn't kill their own child.
—Or so one might think.
Of course, from my perspective, that was utter bullshit.
Those bastards didn't kill my physical body; they killed my spirit.
I clawed and clung to my life all on my own, without a shred of their help.
And the fruit of that desperation was my meeting with Boss.
“Live as a human.”
That was the phrase he repeatedly emphasized to me.
“It's true that life is a continuation of pain. But that doesn't mean you should give up on being human. An unfortunate family isn't an immunity card for doing evil.”
Perhaps those words were Master's own self-reflection or self-mockery.
“You asked me before why I took you in, right? It's because you looked like you were hanging on by a thread. I thought you were genuinely about to stab someone with a knife. Well, I'm not the type to care if a kid I've never seen stabs someone somewhere, but I didn't want shit like that happening around my shop. That's my honest truth.”
Master, just like the gods, spoke only the truth.
“Still, I don't regret it. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
But the weight of their words was different.
The gods could not lie even if they wanted to, whereas Master chose not to. That difference of a single phrase was as vast as heaven and earth.
“I take pride in having helped you live as a human.”
Master was the Hero of the Origin. A man who had walked a path of violence and death. A human burdened with the trial of infinite regression for the sake of his task.
On top of that, he had ultimately drifted into an unfamiliar world. He must have wandered Earth for decades, searching for the being who would bring his ordeal to a close.
At a glance, I could understand why Master's tone was always sullen and cynical. His life might have been even harsher than mine.
“The day I reached out to you.”
Master had seen his past self in my face.
“…That was the proudest, most fulfilling day of my entire life.”
He taught me how to use a sword and showed me warmth. He turned me into a human. He gave me a home and a place where I could make friends.
Humanity.
That was the source of my strength.
<It seems you have no intention of telling us.>
Jupiter's eye shadows deepened. He turned his head halfway back. Sensing the coldness in his gaze, the other gods flinched. Some kind of consensus seemed to pass between them through eye contact.
A moment later, the gods—excluding Jupiter—quietly nodded. It meant they agreed to his intent.
<We shall rectify past mistakes right here and now.>
Jupiter spread his arms wide. Dark holes formed on both of his palms. The next moment, those holes created whirlwinds and began sucking in the other gods.
Rooooaaar!
As the number of gods diminished, Jupiter's body grew larger and larger. Even tilting my head way back, I could barely see the dark outline of his octopus head.
Flash.
A red dot gleamed from within the colossal shadow. It was a serene light of eyes.
<For the first time, our Aesir pantheon has united as one.>
Jupiter spoke to me. Every time he opened his mouth, thick purple mist spewed out. Entangled in the poisonous mist, the light of the sashimi knives melted away cleanly. Billions of wishes flickered out like candles.
<There is no hope left.>
Jupiter declared confidently. At that, I couldn't help but chuckle.
"No."
It was a bit embarrassing, but I couldn't think of any other retort.
"There's still one blade left."
A sacred light wrapped around Murasame. I wanted to quickly sweep away these evil gods and return home—back to the Academy where everyone was. That was my wish, and my humanity.
"And thanks."
I slowly raised the sashimi knife. I didn't imbue the sword with skill or emotion. Raising the sword and bringing it down was merely a 'cause' to bring about a 'result.'
"Thanks to you, I saved myself the trouble of slashing multiple times."
A brilliant red line carved itself from Jupiter's shoulder down to his flank. In my eyes, I could see the death of a god. And my sashimi knife was the blade that derived that death. The realms of past, present, and future soaked into my mind simultaneously. Causality was clearly resolved, and the blade moved for one purpose alone.
"Be cut."
As Jupiter thrust out his monstrous hand, my sashimi knife carved a diagonal line.
The final stroke. The hand of a god and the blade of a human crossed. The birth and end of a universe exploded at a single moment.
* * *
"Hey."
Someone tapped my shoulder. I opened my closed eyes and rolled my narrowed pupils to the side.
"Congratulations."
The one who woke me up suddenly said. Was it because my focus hadn't quite returned? I couldn't see his face at all. Even though I tried to say something, my voice remained trapped beneath my throat.
"Just lie down and listen for now."
So I'm lying down. But I didn't think I was in a situation where I could comfortably lie down like this. Ah, damn it. Nothing comes to mind about what happened. That's because the finely shredded timelines were intricately tangled inside my head.
Damn it.
As I bit my lower lip, the other person covered my eyes with his hand before speaking. I felt the texture of calluses. Judging by the position of those calluses, it was a hand that had handled a sword quite a bit.
"Kang Geomma, you just severed the fetters of evil that were corrupting a world—no, wait, no. An entire worldline."
His voice was thick with amusement. He continued.
"It's a truly absurd probability. Numerically... well, in Earth terms, the odds of getting struck by lightning? Or maybe getting hit by that lightning 760 quadrillion times? Honestly, I don't know the exact number either. I'm bad at math. Anyway, Geomma, you've essentially saved the entire worldline."
My lips felt bone dry. I wanted to reply or ask something, but not even a rasp came out.
"Enough chit-chat. Let's get to the main point."
"……?"
"I'm going to give you a choice."
A clear energy seeped through my forehead into my brain. My mind cleared. The jumbled, fragmented structure of causality assembled itself cleanly.
Right now, I was observing all worlds without distinction of realms, having realized the truth. Thus, I naturally came to know the identity of the person attempting to initiate such a one-sided conversation with me.
My lips moved. The sound was spoken by him instead.
"You are me."
"You are me."
Resonance in the literal sense. A bizarre experience. It felt as though two people were sharing a single brain.
He pulled his hand away from my eyes. Only now did his face come clearly into view, along with sentences appearing before me.
[G.M. presents you with two choices.]
[1. Will you reign as an Outer God, placing all creation beneath you to control?]
[2. Or will you remain human and return to Joaquin Academy?]