So, the Fake Was Me
When the words “master of the labyrinth” were spoken, the first thing I expected was a human. One of the humans I had killed. Perhaps someone I had slain during the victory ceremony. Even with Koshei still alive, it wouldn’t be strange if one or two others had survived as well. So the first emotion I felt upon facing this android was pure bewilderment. I had never imagined I would encounter an android, and certainly not one wearing a face I had long forgotten. The possibility that it could be the master of this labyrinth had never once crossed my mind.
But that did not mean I was powerless. Monsters prowled outside—twisted abominations born from the tangled fusion of this ruler’s memories and our own. Tenacious, malice-drenched creatures that rose without end. And that was not all. Somewhere within this labyrinth, a version of me at the height of my power—fully equipped and burning with vengeance—was clashing with Koshei. No matter which way the scales tipped, the outcome would not be good for us. I could not guarantee that this Ha Jinwoo was identical to me. I could not expect him to think with the same rational calm.
Therefore only one conclusion remained. The shotgun tucked inside my coat, or the blade in my hand. Perhaps I could even end it with my bare fists or feet. The android before me was fragile, her frame clearly never designed for combat.
Yet for some reason I stopped. I stared at the fake who looked up at me in terror while clutching her already-dead husband.
I knew her at once. Choi Jimin. An android modeled after a woman who was already gone. A meticulously engineered artificial intelligence imitating the deceased. The moment I saw her, memories I had buried for a long time surged back.
We had met before. She had feared me, remaining frozen in place even as I shot her husband dead. She had tried to stop me and I had shoved her aside. I had not wanted to kill her. Even though her original had helped murder Sister Seolah, the android before me was not that woman. She was simply a being who looked the same, carried the same memories, the same personality, the same patterns of thought, and had been endlessly learning in order to become her.
So I had spared her. Spared her and then forgotten. I had been in too much of a hurry to remember. Until this very moment.
“…Alice.”
“Y-yes?”
“How do we leave the Transmigration Labyrinth? What must be done with its master?”
At my question the other android blinked.
“…Usually, you simply kill it.”
I watched the android stiffen in fear at the word “kill.” The artificially created woman who looked to be in her thirties, crouched and trembling inside the bathtub. In her arms lay her husband. He was already dead. Enough time had passed for decay to begin, yet none had occurred. This, too, was the labyrinth’s homeostasis.
I became aware of the shotgun inside my coat. What I had to do was simple. Yet I did not move. I could not say why. Why did it feel so wrong to do it?
Kwaaaaaaaaang!
“Old man, the barrier’s down!”
Kiyara shouted. Pon drew his sword and blocked the doorway. Remy nocked an arrow and ran his hand across the few shafts left in his quiver. Time was clearly running out. I needed to act quickly.
Yet for some reason I simply gazed down at the android. The fake who had lifted her head despite her fear.
“Master.”
Vertea spoke in her monotone.
“If you wish it, this unit will burn her.”
She would set fire to anyone I desired without hesitation.
“Jinwoo… are you all right? Your expression…”
Even as the situation grew urgent, Alice worried for me.
And Sera. When I turned my head, Sera was watching me with a pistol in her grip. Our eyes met. My wife who should not exist, yet stood before me as a fake. My other half who had died and vanished, yet whom I could meet again because of this purgatory’s strange nature.
“Jinwoo, do whatever you want to do.”
The words were different, yet the meaning was almost the same.
I lowered myself until I was kneeling on one knee before the android. Even through her fear, her eyes met mine. They were ordinary brown eyes. Looking at her brought no hostility, only pity.
Created inside endless repeated suffering, she had lost the ability to separate memory from truth and had forgotten she was an android. Despite that endless torment she still felt fear, and she still loved her husband.
I felt no regret for killing the military general now cradled in her arms. Nor could I claim that any of those I had killed on the day of the victory ceremony had died meaninglessly. They had all paid for their sins, and in carrying out that revenge I had not abandoned my own humanity.
“…Ah.”
Only then did I understand what had been wrong.
Outside was a wrong version of me. A version that had chosen the wrong path and killed indiscriminately according to wrong thoughts. Just because the things that version killed were fake, because he himself was fake, because this space was fake, it did not mean the things that happened here were fake.
Just as condolences remain important even when they cannot reach the dead.
What mattered was how I accepted it and how I chose to live. Just as I had once found comfort in a fake Sera, and had thought it beautiful to see a fake Alice carrying her master’s dream.
I knelt on one knee and looked straight into Choi Jimin’s eyes.
“Congresswoman Choi Jimin.”
Her head rose blankly. Her two eyes trembled as they stared at me. I spoke gently.
“Our unit is responding with full force to the disturbances outside. Your husband’s injuries are serious, but they are within the range our medical team can handle.”
I offered a soft smile so she could feel safe.
All this pain, the fear that had continued without end inside this purgatory—no one deserved to endure it. Even if she herself had been both jailer and prisoner.
I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder.
“You may rest now. You have endured bravely.”
Every nightmare has an end. No matter how dark the night, morning eventually arrives.
If her fear and her darkness had come from Ha Jinwoo, then I would take them away. Even if everything here was fake.
Along my outstretched hand I sent a current. It short-circuited the mechanisms that moved her body and powered her artificial mind, breaking them.
“We will take care of everything. I promise.”
Her eyes trembled faintly as the broken internal generator failed. The sight resembled someone slowly falling asleep, unable to fight the tide of exhaustion any longer. It resembled someone closing her eyes in relief, believing the nightmare was finally over.
“Sleep well.”
At last her eyes closed. Still embracing her husband, she settled into the bathtub. The android’s suffering, which had lasted who knew how long, ended here.
The gentlest death I could give. Euthanasia.
I rose to my feet and felt the distant surge of electric currents. The battle between Koshei and the fake Ha Jinwoo was reaching its conclusion. A fierce, violent flow.
Alice gazed at the dead android.
“Is she gone?”
“Yes.”
“But the Transmigration Labyrinth is still…”
Alice’s words trailed off in confusion.
I looked at the android. Through my micro-current I sensed that no power remained. The being who had blindly fed on the fear and despair of adventurers trapped in this labyrinth for so long, spawning ever more monsters and another Ha Jinwoo, was dead.
And now the real trial began. Killing the master, then killing the strongest creation the master had ever made.
I instinctively understood that this was the true way to resolve the Transmigration Labyrinth. Perhaps because it was the kind of ending I myself desired. I could not say for certain.
I drew the longsword slung across my back and gripped it firmly.
*
Kwarurururung!
Lightning howled. Countless accelerated projectiles poured toward Ha Jinwoo, but the version summoned from memory read every one of them with his micro-current. The exoskeleton armor amplifying his output let him predict each trajectory with mechanical precision. The half-shattered shield and greatsword knocked every attack aside.
With a roar that threatened to rupture eardrums, Ha Jinwoo charged. After accelerating with a sonic boom that seemed to split space itself, he chose a powerful push kick. The blow, thrown with his full weight, carried force that Koshei’s ragged arms could never block. Koshei flew backward, both arms torn away, his torso split from the waist.
Kwaaaaaaaaang!
The flying body smashed through the hotel wall and lodged inside it. The area was already littered with the charred corpses of monsters. The reinforcements had stopped some time ago, and the already slim odds tilted even further against the fake.
The replica, unable to fully reproduce the real Koshei’s power, could not overcome a Ha Jinwoo swollen with violence and vengeance. It had already reached its regeneration limit.
With flesh bubbling and boiling, Koshei twisted a smile.
Kwajik!
Without a word, Ha Jinwoo stomped down and crushed his skull.
Even as a fake, it had been a worthy opponent. He had used every piece of equipment. The shotgun was destroyed, the shield nonfunctional. Only the greatsword remained. The exoskeleton suit had been ripped open at the head and right arm. The discharge coil was gone as well. What was left was a slight boost in muscle strength, roughly twenty unusable shotgun shells, and the sword.
Even so, it was more than enough to finish them all. The fake Ha Jinwoo was confident. He took a step forward to continue the slaughter.
That step stopped at once.
His head tilted. His gaze locked onto the figure walking down the far end of the corridor.
Black hair. Black eyes. Tall frame and matching physique. The bearing of a warrior, yet standing there without a single piece of armor to block the hallway.
Ha Jinwoo looked at Ha Jinwoo.
“…So it has come to this.”
He sneered.
He had known there were attempts to mass-produce more super-soldiers through genetic cloning. But.
‘They went this far?’
While mocking the rotten military leadership of South Korea, he clenched his fist with boiling inner rage. Though most of his equipment was spent, he did not need any of it to kill a crude copy.
‘Greatsword, exoskeleton, micro-current. These three are enough. If the conditions are equal, then naturally the original—’
—Crackle!
His thoughts were severed.
The Ha Jinwoo created by Choi Jimin could not comprehend the phenomenon unfolding before him. He simply stared blankly at what should have been nothing more than a replica.
Electricity raced across the exposed skin. Blue flashes rippled along the body, and sparks flickered even beyond the irises of those black eyes. The two clenched fists. The longsword gripped in one hand. The figure looked closer to Koshei than to Ha Jinwoo as lightning coiled around him. Yet it was not Koshei’s pure white lightning. It was a vivid, blue-flame lightning that roared across his frame.
Seeing it, the fake Ha Jinwoo froze. Then he burst into laughter.
“So… I was the fake one.”
His impassive face twisted at once, fury rising. In that instant the fake Ha Jinwoo charged at the real one.