Blue Pillars (3) — Moses’ Insight
The morning sun bathed the land in soft golden light. The endless cycle of the same days was starting to wear on me, yet something fresh always seemed to unfold, making every morning feel brand new.
‘Why is Elena acting this way?’
If I regressed, everything I built with the elves would reset. From her perspective, we’d only known each other for three days. Even with the Submission Oath binding us, it was strange that she’d turn to another man’s scent. That was exactly the kind of thing she’d done before the regression.
‘No way…’
That couldn’t be possible.
Yoo Dahui was the protagonist, so she regressed. I had been the reader who fell into this novel. Within reason.
But Elena? That didn’t make sense.
“Agh, my head hurts…”
“Head hurts? Want me to buy you medicine?”
“…That’s not what I meant…”
Even Yoo Dahui’s worried tone made me burst out laughing. I’d unconsciously imagined something weird. If she knew why my head actually hurt, she might break it open and ask, “Was that what made you feel bad?”
“Still, it feels nice walking together. Like we’re just strolling.”
We were heading toward the boy who wanted to split the lake.
The gap in levels had grown too wide during repeated regressions. Elves or beastmen tagging along made it impossible for monsters to appear, and hunting itself became useless. So we decided to go alone.
I worried Elena might notice our growth, but she only cared about my underwear. How could someone with her skill not see the massive difference before and after we left the academy?
‘…Do we look like ants to her?’
Just as we might not realize how different we are from the ants we see, maybe Elena felt the same way too.
“There it is.”
The familiar lake came into view. A single boy stood there, stretching one hand toward the water and shouting a battle cry.
We naturally walked up to him.
Even as we approached, the boy kept training without paying us much attention.
“Hey. Can I ask what you’re doing right now?”
“Training.”
Yoo Dahui spoke to the boy in her soft, gentle voice. It was a tone I rarely heard, and for a second I felt myself stirring.
“What kind of training?”
“…Training to split the sea.”
The boy shot us a suspicious look and kept talking. I already knew the story, so I half-listened.
Unlike me, Yoo Dahui listened with full attention.
The boy looked only at her and said, “I have to return to my village and split the sea.”
“I see. Then maybe I can help a little? I’d love to lend you my strength since you’re so admirable.”
“…The angel told me to find the blue pillars. But I don’t have time to go looking. I have to train here.”
We had to find five blue pillars. We knew their general location—an octagon around the Temple of the Sea. That meant a much farther place than the three we’d already located.
This part was the same for Yoo Dahui and me. But she needed more.
“Once we find the blue pillars, what do we do then?”
“Um…”
Of course I’d tell him. Yoo Dahui solved things one step at a time.
“I know how to do that too…”
“You haven’t heard anything from the angel about it?”
“…He said the pillars were raised to seal the temple.”
“The temple?”
Yoo Dahui crossed her arms and frowned. We had spent time in the Tower of Struggle, but temple sealing was completely unfamiliar.
A solution wasn’t coming right away. If she thought about it alone for ten minutes, she might figure it out. But I had no reason to wait.
“Breaking the seal should be simple.”
I could just tell her. The best way to raise my value was to solve the novel’s information she didn’t know.
Yoo Dahui never let a single word slip.
“Then the next step would be the temple…”
Her expression lit up. She looked like someone who had been lost and finally spotted a signpost.
“But how?”
That was the important part. Without knowing the method, sealing or temple had no value.
Should I just drop the information? Or swallow it?
Just then Yoo Dahui stared straight at me.
“Hey. Kim Jinwoo.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you thinking about something? It’s fine if it’s wrong, just say it.”
Her face must have shown it.
“Just thinking something easy… It seemed simpler than expected.”
“You’re overconfident, and if you’re wrong you’ll look dumb?”
I smirked at her playful grin and chose my words carefully.
“…The blue pillars need specific conditions to touch. Interpreting that condition inside the seal-breaking framework, it means ‘don’t touch it if you don’t satisfy the requirement.’ Like a failed qualification.”
“So to break the seal you need to qualify?”
Yoo Dahui replied and took something from her inventory. A sandwich she’d bought as a snack.
“Eat this while you think.”
“Huh… thank you…”
She handed one sandwich to the boy, took a big bite of the remaining one, and suddenly offered the other half to me.
“I’m not giving you one?”
“Why? We can share. You don’t want to?”
“That’s not it…”
Who would I even put this on. Still, I took one bite.
Yoo Dahui chewed thoughtfully and kept talking.
“I was thinking of it like a game, so it seemed too obvious?”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. It’s too straightforward. You have to keep touching the pillar, right?”
“Why do you think that?”
Yoo Dahui pulled out coffee from her inventory. The same iced coffee you’d see at any café. We hadn’t noticed it before when we were with others, but now that it was just the two of us she’d bought every snack imaginable.
“Our hands leave no chill when they touch it. If we assume the chill the pillar emits is the test, then whether the seal is active or not can be checked through the chill, right?”
“Hmm…”
“Chill remaining means the seal hasn’t been broken yet. If the blue pillars don’t break the seal one by one, then we have to break them all at the same time.”
“So?”
Yoo Dahui didn’t take my coffee. She only passed me the one she’d been drinking. No straw? She didn’t even have a straw.
She nodded naturally and continued.
“Then it’s obvious we need five people touching the five pillars at the same time to break the seals. There’s a high chance that’s the correct answer.”
Yoo Dahui reached out to me. She wanted the coffee.
Slurp— I drank the rest in one go. Almost gone already.
I handed her the cup full of only ice.
Well? Does it feel warm?
I glanced at her with a smirk, and she laughed and separated the cup and straw.
She took another coffee from her inventory and inserted the straw.
“You had another coffee? Just give me that one…”
“No. I like sharing. Want some?”
Yoo Dahui extended the coffee toward me. She was so damn annoying.
When I didn’t take it, she gave a shy smile and took the cup back.
“…So that’s it. Ah… When do we break the seal and when do we conquer the temple?”
“It’ll happen eventually.”
While drinking my coffee, Yoo Dahui looked at me. Her eyes curved in amusement.
“What? Are you sulking?”
“Me? Sulking? No way.”
I wasn’t sulking. I was just angry.
“You’re sulking.”
“No I’m not.”
“You’re sulking while saying that.”
“Seriously…”
The argument continued. Someone’s gaze came from the side. The boy who had finished his sandwich was staring at us.
“If you admit you’re sulking, I’ll let you touch my breasts.”
“Touch… what? Don’t say nonsense. If I’m not sulking, how can I admit it?”
“Huhuhu, not falling for it.”
I unconsciously glanced at Yoo Dahui’s chest. The feminine softness hidden by her clothes made my balls tingle.
“So touching my breasts will make everything okay?”
Yoo Dahui muttered and took out another coffee from her inventory. Look, there’s so many.
“Here.”
“Fine.”
I took the coffee. Now I really wanted a sandwich too. I asked.
“Sandwich…”
“Jinwoo, you really didn’t want to share with me?”
Yoo Dahui’s sudden attack hit like a truck.
“New coffee and your face looks better.”
‘Shit…’
I realized something was wrong. Yoo Dahui’s expression wasn’t good at all. The excited sparkle in her eyes that made her look like she was on a picnic was gone.
“That’s not it…”
“Then what?”
“Just… I thought each of us eating would be more filling and better…”
“So you mean you don’t want to eat with me?”
No, shit. Why are we even talking like this? Every time.
Sharing one sandwich or each eating their own—I was fine with either. But the two of us eating together felt weird somehow.
If I chose the first option I couldn’t explain why I rushed. If I chose the second I couldn’t stop her from rushing.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Dick for breasts.
I believed in Hammurabi’s Code.
“D-do you want me to touch your dick?”
“You’re joking right now?”
My breath caught. Yoo Dahui wasn’t just sulking. She was angry. I didn’t know why, but…
‘She wasn’t in a bad mood earlier.’
Now that I thought about it, I should have kept my sulking to myself.
Just then the boy watching from the side spoke.
“…You two are engaged?”
“Not even engaged. Why do you ask?”
Yoo Dahui answered kindly. Her expression changed so smoothly it was art.
“Touching breasts or dicks is something married couples do, right? But you’re not married yet and you’re doing it?”
There was a time I thought that way. A time I forced people to think that way.
I didn’t know how to explain it.
When I stayed silent, Yoo Dahui glared at me and sighed like she was complaining.
“Right. Not married, not even engaged, and you did filthy things. But you’re not even dating. Doesn’t it sound ridiculous?”
“Filthy things…?”
“Ah, what am I saying to the kid.”
“No! It’s not that kid! I know what I’m talking about!”
Yoo Dahui was struggling with embarrassment, while the boy shouted with total confidence.
Like a student waiting for his teacher’s first-love story, the boy’s eyes sparkled. He even took his hand off the lake and turned toward us.
“So you did filthy things? Then you like him, right?”
“……”
Yoo Dahui couldn’t answer. She only glared at me with a red face. She looked embarrassed.
‘Huh?’
Even though the situation was confusing, I knew this was my chance. A chance to erase the previous rush. In other words, an emergency exit.
“Giving your body to a man means you’re ready to have his child, right? That means you like him?”
“I don’t put that much meaning into it…”
“You understand some things differently because the dimensions are different. Still, you accepted it with the same mindset.”
The boy pressed Yoo Dahui without mercy.
He was fearless. I had never seen this side of him in the novel.
“…The kid is sharp, huh?”
“Unlike appearances, he’s not that young. He knows everything.”
“Yeah?”
“I was listening to you two talking and it got annoying.”
He must have been bored during training.
“Of course, I don’t know why you two wanted to share one sandwich! It’s probably one of the ways to thicken the thread of fate, right?”
“…What? I didn’t put any meaning into it.”
The boy looked much livelier than before. More interested in other people’s romance than training.
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Do you have a heart for your sister?”
If Yoo Dahui’s eyes were sparkling strangely, it was just my imagination.
“Heroes have many women. They scatter their seed among the excellent to make the next generation strong.”
“I get it.”
“Planting seed in a woman who will give birth to a healthy child of mine and becoming the wall that protects her. That’s why I was born a man.”
“That’s cool.”
That’s just genes.
“That’s just wind.”
“That’s also true.”
Yoo Dahui suddenly jumped in. Polygamy is wind, adultery is wind. That’s just common sense for modern people.
“You’ll accept your sister? In your harem?”
“What? Harem?”
Yoo Dahui’s face turned demonic. She glared at me with deadly eyes.
“Harem… isn’t bad.”
“Not bad? You’re crazy?”
Living buried in a woman’s body? What a wonderful life.
“You talk well. What’s your name?”
“Moses. Moses.”
The name of the boy who didn’t even appear in the novel.
“Moses…?”
Yoo Dahui’s eyes widened. She must have heard it once in her lifetime.
“So, what do you think of your sister? You already know for sure how she feels about you from what you just heard.”
“I…”
Yoo Dahui, whose face had turned demonic over the harem talk, was now shining with sparkling eyes.