Chapter 26: 4zh1 D4h4k4

4­/_#! ）4#41

­You need to start accepting it. You can't move forward if you stay trapped in the past.

­4­/_#! ）4#41

­Let's end it this time. Open the door yourself and break the cycle.

­Choi Si-woo isn't the protagonist of this world.

"Fuck. Shut up."

I must have dozed off at some point.

Looking outside, the sun was already setting behind the mountains.

I still need to organize my thoughts. Huh?

I don't sense anyone around. Weren't Association Hunters supposed to be watching me?

Maybe they left to protect the Academy.

"Right. This must be that time."

The Akashic Record was right. I tried so hard to forget everything myself. But I can't anymore. I have to break this Möbius strip.

And this event is important to me.

An important event not for Si-woo, but for me specifically. A chance given to me by the Writer who designed all of this.

I instinctively got up and put on my student uniform.

After slashing away the Black Man who had been getting fainter recently, I ran to the Academy.

"Si-woo changed things, so the Mutant raiding the Academy at this timing must be quite limited."

Sin won't show up right away. They're not interested in overthrowing the Academy. But besides Kim Seung-joon, there was one more villain aiming for the Divine Sword beyond Hanseong. The first S-Class enemy for Si-woo and also the one who fired the starting signal for the South Korean Hunter Association's downfall.

"Hunter Kim Jae-soo."

The greatest rival of previous protagonist Yoo Jin-seok, who survived thanks to Jin-seok in the final battle but continued to suffer from an inferiority complex.

The one who showed up trying to get even the 2nd Divine Sword.

I need to protect Si-woo from that bastard.

[Objective: Protect Si-woo］

[Reward: Truth］

I need to protect Si-woo to understand all of this.

After running for who knows how long, I entered Academy grounds.

The Hunters from the Association had been slaughtered.

That rancid smell of blood nearly made me collapse.

And with each step forward, the smell of blood tickling my nose. The killing intent so thick you could feel it on your skin.

All of this hammers home that this is reality.

After running for a while, I saw a man holding Si-woo up by the neck in the middle of massive Demonic Power.

"Well well. Is the 2nd Divine Sword this weak?"

"*cough* Rich coming from someone who ate a Core because they were scared of losing to the Divine Sword. Kek!"

"Seeing your body makes me want to humiliate you in other ways too. But I don't want Jin-seok showing up while I'm having fun."

"Coward. Ugh."

The victim was Si-woo. The perpetrator was Kim Jae-soo with his body dyed black.

S-Class Spearman Kim Jae-soo. He had become a Mutant and ambushed the Academy.

More specifically, to obtain the Divine Sword, or to kill it, or if not those then to make it his vessel.

He was probably in contact with the Black God Church around this time.

An S-Class Spearman becoming a Mutant would be close to SS-Class or slightly below.

Si-woo who hasn't achieved his second awakening called blooming yet couldn't possibly win.

Fortunately I wasn't too late.

"But you know what? What kind of being would emerge if we put an SS-Class Core in a Divine Sword user's body?"

"What are you..."

"This will be the end of both the Divine Sword and Hunter Association."

Kim Jae-soo knocked Si-woo down and was holding an obviously ominous Core towards him.

SS-Class Core.

An extremely familiar scene. And that scene that kept repeating.

At that scene that felt so familiar, I jumped in front of the Core to save Si-woo. And to move forward.

*Crack!*

For a brief moment, I felt the Core pierce into my chest.

Kim Jae-soo was clearly caught off guard, not expecting an outsider to suddenly interfere.

"Yoo.Eun-ha?"

"I can't save this world by just staying at home."

Even as I say this, the Core embedded in my body is rapidly corrupting it.

"You. Why."

The Core replaces my heart and reverts my body to match the Core.

"I'm going to end my fight. So you end yours."

As the massive Demonic Power flowing from the Core started circulating through my body, I felt pain like my entire body was being swept up in rapids and my flesh and bones were being reconstructed.

Eventually, that pain started corrupting my head, and my body tried to go berserk according to the original story.

At that moment, I activated Parallel Circuit.

I made my ego, my personality concept into a parallel circuit. To reduce the pain even a little, to stop my body from going berserk.

To continue this shitty story.

As my berserking body gradually stabilized, I felt the world growing terribly dark.

This was also a scene I'd seen countless times.

[Mission Objective Complete］

[Reward: Truth］

* * *

Truth

I died in different ways countless times repeating the same time.

At first I was a coward like the original Eun-ha.

It might be an excuse, but I was just a normal office worker before facing death. How could I not be scared?

I was even raped by Kim Seung-joon.

That's why I hated frogs. Hated them so much.

After I could get past Kim Seung-joon, my next threat was dying from Core implantation by Mutants according to the original story.

From the start, I threw away my own life.

"Yoo Eun-ha?"

"Now I'll finally wake up from this shitty dream."

And so in the 1st round, I died right in front of Si-woo, deliberately getting pierced and implanted with a Core by a Mutant.

But even though I clearly died, I was back on enrollment day.

Actually experiencing death was the worst.

Could it really be another time loop?

And "could it be" tends to catch people. I had to face the frog again, and this time I died to a Mutant who finally found me while I was running away not wanting to die.

It felt like this was my fate.

The dark sky I see in my daily life was the scene I saw when my vision flickered as I died.

From some round, I started smoking trying to somehow forget those memories.

I was an idiot for thinking I could forget with something like cigarettes in the first place.

"So this time I forcefully intervened. I made the original Si-woo regress and erased your memories."

The black-haired Eun-ha said proudly, puffing out her chest.

Finding that appearance extremely annoying, I sat in the chair in front and slammed the table while glaring at her.

"...You fucking bitch. Why tell me only now? You could have told me earlier right? That this was reality."

"I did. Everyone did. A world too real to be a dream, perfect senses too real to be a dream, heroines and Si-woo with perfectly independent egos too perfect to be dream characters. Everyone's very existence told you this world was real."

I couldn't argue and lowered my head at those words.

Indeed. Maybe I was like that.

I didn't want to accept it. I just wanted to go back. I didn't want to be in this scary world. I was too scared to accept reality.

Right. Let's say I accept it, but I still can't end it here.

"Ha. Fine. Keep going. The reward is truth right? You're not trying to settle it with just this?"

"There was a girl. That girl was a god who could create anything she wanted. If there was the sun god Ra in ancient Egypt, that god who suddenly appeared in this era was that girl. But she had a human body and had no idea what kind of power she possessed."

"If a loser gets power they ruin the world... Something like that?"

"Different, but ah. Not wrong. Actually the orphan girl made 'Yoo Eun-ha' real by making the novel she wrote reality."

So that's why Eun-ha was born?

And I was just the perfect fit for that role?

That girl must be this black-haired Eun-ha in front of me.

"I'll play along so keep talking."

"But the girl was bored. So she happened to read about the evil dragon 4zh1 D4h4k4 while reading mythology thinking about making something fun. Ah, sorry. It's written in leet to prevent conflicts from repetition. It's Azhi Dahaka. You know what leet is right? It's like internet slang for English. Like leetspeak."

Ah, I think I get what she means.

The problem is this bitch made Azhi Dahaka. So the woman in front of me is the 1 billion murderer.

"You made that?"

"That? Anyway I made Azhi Dahaka, but then the Great Cataclysm happened. And as this world's history goes, monsters appeared in the world, and all sorts of villains and Hunters emerged. The world broke like that, and because of that all I could do after using so much power was move the timeline a little to return protagonist-class Yoo Jin-seok and me as Eun-ha to the novel's time. And send the evil dragon Azhi Dahaka who was tormenting humans in various ways to another world."

"Another world?"

"You know Schrödinger's Cat right? The cat in the box could be alive or dead... Okay fine. I'll just say parallel universe so stop glaring. I just wanted to chat a bit since it's been a while... The world with the Great Cataclysm was moved to exist as a new parallel world with the previous world, and I sent Azhi Dahaka to that world without the Great Cataclysm."

In other words, she got rid of the hopeless bastard by sending him to another world to protect this world huh.

But then that's strange.

So that Azhi Dahaka came to my Earth, but in the original world there wasn't even an Imugi let alone Azhi Dahaka.

If Azhi Dahaka existed, that Earth should have been ruined too right?

"But the Earth I lived on was fine?"

"Well, yes. I did banish him but I couldn't cause trouble in that world so I reincarnated him as a human. I fixed the ego of Azhi Dahaka who was just mindlessly fulfilling his duty as an evil dragon by having him live a human life. But the original Azhi Dahaka of this world had to return. So I made this world viewable as a web novel in that world. I planned to let him get used to it gradually to prepare for returning to this world. And to add some mischief, I kept killing 'Eun-ha' in the novel. It was so funny seeing him get pissed off after reading it all."

What? Wait. That sounds like she's talking about me.

"No fuck. Wait. Hold on."

"It was hilarious seeing that Azhi Dahaka cursing up a storm. And when the time came, I had him return in Eun-ha's body."

No. It can't be. There can't be such a development.

I can't accept it. I don't want to accept it.

Or maybe there are actually 2 Eun-ha bodies? That must be it.

"That's not it right?"

"Back then I started with the intention of making a novel where Eun-ha was the protagonist from the beginning. I planned to let Azhi Dahaka live as a human. Comfortably as an overpowered character. And Eun-ha's body was perfect for that."

I covered my ears not wanting to hear, but this damn Writer's voice kept ringing in my ears.

"Azhi Dahaka's power was too strong so special conditions had to be attached to regain that power. Since original Azhi Dahaka was like the mother of monsters, getting implanted with at least an SS-Class Core."

"But as time went on he denied the painful reality and thought it was a dream. Not bad. It's impossible to accept that such a world actually exists in the first place. But because of that, he subconsciously thought 'it's just a dream even if I die', so he kept getting game overs right as his prologue was ending. After a few hundred rounds at that event, he showed weakness by hiding in fear, and showed no signs of getting past it."

Why does she keep telling my story.

No. Stop it. I don't want to hear it.

"Azhi Dahaka even kept having hallucinations of his appearance as an office worker, longing for his days of being worn down as an office worker in that world. Visual hallucinations."

It feels like something is weighing down on my shoulders.

"So this time I changed the method a bit. As I said before, I brought back the future Si-woo who failed to clear the original story. I also reset Azhi Dahaka's head. Maybe it was because of the hundreds of accumulated rounds. Or maybe causality was adjusted, but he finally managed to unlock his power with Parallel Circuit and create a development where he didn't die. In game terms, it's like dying hundreds of times to an early mid-boss before finally figuring out the strategy."

"No way. It can't be."

If you study this world's monster-ology, you can learn about Azhi Dahaka's characteristics.

Azhi Dahaka is a pervert who feels ecstasy from humans being confused and falling into division, and feels pleasure and value in existence from killing people.

No matter how pathetically I live, I'd rather just have sex. There's no way I'd commit acts of slaughter for pleasure.

"Don't deny reality again."

How could I possibly accept this? I don't even have memories of massacring people in the first place.

"...Azhi Dahaka."

The moment I heard that name directed at me, I felt like everything inside me was crumbling.

* * *