WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 343: Episode 64: The Road That Isn’t a Road (3)

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The Allies returned to Earth an hour later.

Yu Junghyeok, Han Suyeong, Lee Jihye, Jeong Huiwon, Lee Hyeongseong, Shin Yuseong, Lee Gilyeong, and Lee Seolhwa.

After safely descending to the lower Scenarios through the portal, the first thing they found was a spark flashing in the heart of the industrial complex.

Sparks of Plausibility struck down into the middle of the Factory as though lightning were crashing down.

Jihye asked, "What the hell is going on?"

The Chimera Dragon beat its wings, and before long, the Allies arrived at the Factory. They jumped down from the ramparts and ran straight toward the infirmary. Flying Fox waved upon seeing them barge in without warning.

"Huh, you're already back?"

Huiwon asked, "Dokja-ssi... No, where's Sangah-ssi?"

"She's over there. More importantly, though, it looks like you all need treatment too."

"We're fine. Just take care of Hyeongseong-ssi first."

"W-wait! My skin is only a little burned. I'm fi-"

"Shut up and lie down."

Huiwon and the others tossed the completely charred Hyeongseong onto a gurney, then headed for Sangah's room.

They thought Dokja would have gone there first.

"Dokja-ssi! Sangah-ssi!"

"Y-you can't just barge in like that...!"

However, what the Allies found upon arriving was a completely unexpected sight.

Suyeong muttered, "What the hell is going on here?"

There was no trace of anyone in Sangah's room apart from the bare minimum of medics.

Sangah's soul was still breaking apart.

Dokja was nowhere to be seen.

Rumbblee!

Pitch-black Status flowed from Suyeong's body.

"I'm asking you. What's going on here?"

Overwhelmed by that pressure, the medics spilled everything, including things they had not been asked, from what had happened during the Returnee War to what had happened after Dokja returned.

"...So we began treating Sukyeong-ssi first. It should be nearly at the final stage by now-"

Before they could finish speaking, Suyeong moved. She was so fast that no one could stop her. She jumped onto a nearby chair, grabbed the collar of a man taller than her, and shook him.

"You bastard. You knew everything, didn't you?"

"..."

"Why didn't you tell us properly? If I'd known this-"

"If I'd told you, could you have changed it?"

Junghyeok's cold voice rang through the room. Suyeong's stiffened lips trembled.

Could she have changed anything if she had known? She did not know. Suyeong could not answer that question.

Junghyeok asked again, "I'm asking whether someone like you could have changed it."

"You son of a...!"

This time, Junghyeok did not back down either. Just as the Statuses of the two clashed in midair and threatened to devastate the surroundings, Huiwon stepped between them.

"Both of you, stop! Can't you see Sangah-ssi is right here?"

[The Constellation Demonic Judge of Fire is enraged!]

Junghyeok shook off Suyeong's hand and spoke to the medics.

"Where is Kim Dokja?"

Suyeong also turned toward the medics. Instead of answering, they all looked in the same direction. At the end of their gazes was the room where Sukyeong's operation was underway.

Suyeong asked, "Is Kim Dokja in there too?"

"Yes. Aileen-nim said she needed him..."

The Allies quietly approached the operating room door, careful not to interfere with the surgery. Through the transparent glass, they could see Aileen and Dokja conducting the operation. The backlight from the lamps obscured Dokja's expression, but one thing was certain. He looked terribly gaunt.

Dokja's hands trembled, and his gaze slowly lowered.

Yuseong spoke first.

"Something's wrong with ahjussi."

* * *

The first thing Aileen, who was leading the operation, said after it began was this.

"You need to come in with me."

"Is there something I can do?"

"Yes."

When I entered the room, I saw the fragments of my broken mother.

After Mother summoned Fengbaek through Descent and drove back the Returnees, the veins of all her fables had been severed.

「...Dokja.」

It felt as though I heard those words from somewhere. Maybe it was one of Mother's fables.

I thought, trying to reassure her.

'Don't worry. I didn't choose anyone.'

Mother's soul had to be restored as quickly and accurately as possible. Only then could I buy time to save Sangah.

From this point on, it was Aileen's time as the surgeon.

"Medics, begin supplying Mana."

Aileen took a small brush from within her clothing and began gathering the Fable Fragments floating in the air, one by one.

The operation itself was simple. Collect the scattered Fable Fragments and connect the fables according to their context.

It was the task of restoring sentences that had fallen out of context and lost their meaning to their proper places.

It sounded easy, but even if I searched all of TWSA, there were only a handful of beings capable of performing an operation this extensive. And among them, the most outstanding was the Fable Expert beside me, Aileen Makerfield.

[The fable One Who Repairs Stories begins its story!]

「Every word touched by her fingertips finds its proper place.」

Connecting fables was ultimately the work of a fable. Each time Aileen's brush moved, the broken fables began to join together one by one. The Star Relic Nectar I had obtained was what bound those fables together.

[The Star Relic Nectar Soma is taking effect!]

[The Star Relic Nectar Nectar is taking effect!]

Once the operation had gone on for over forty minutes, beads of sweat formed on Aileen's forehead. It felt strange to watch one of Aileen's operations, which I had read about so many times in TWSA, unfolding before my eyes.

After restoring most of the fables, Aileen moistened her lips with a sip of water from the shelf.

I asked her, "That fragment doesn't seem to fit the context. Is that alright?"

What had worried me the entire time was that the Fable Fragments Aileen had connected were not perfectly orderly.

Aileen lightly wiped her lips before continuing.

"It's alright. That's what people are like."

I thought she might be right. Humans were usually not creatures with orderly thoughts and memories.

Aileen added, "But there are also sentences that will cause serious problems if they're not connected properly. For example, parts like that."

Aileen pointed at Mother's soul form. Unlike the other restored areas, her half-collapsed heart had yet to be treated.

"Actually, we're a little late to restore Sukyeong-ssi. Her theme has already been damaged."

"Her theme?"

For a moment, a passage from TWSA flickered through my mind.

"Did you know that every person's soul is made of stories?"

"I've heard that before."

It was something Persephone had told me as well.

Aileen continued, "Every soul has a core theme that runs through it. The most important story that forms the soul's essence."

At last, a passage from TWSA came clearly to mind.

「Every story has a theme (Thema). Even a story without a theme has the theme of having no theme.」

"Only someone who understands this soul best can touch its theme."

I froze.

"Is that why you said I needed to come in with you...?"

"That's right."

Aileen nodded and continued.

"Only the person who knows that soul best can restore its theme. You have to do this yourself, Demon King-nim. I'll share my fable with you..."

I could not properly hear the rest of what Aileen said.

[The fable One Who Repairs Stories has temporarily settled upon your fingertips.]

I had to do it myself?

"We don't have much time. You need to begin right away. Medics, prepare the Mana supply!"

Holding the brush blankly, I looked at Mother's soul form.

Mother lay with her eyes peacefully closed, like someone dressed in a burial shroud and laid to eternal rest.

The wrinkles she had gained since I last saw her, and wounds I knew nothing about.

Her stern brows and hollow cheeks.

Aileen said, "Think of it as a book. Think of all the fables before you as coming from a single book."

Looking at the difficult sentences floating before me, I struggled to use my imagination. As if pulling out a book I had read as a child from the shelves of my memories, I closed my eyes and stretched my hand into the air.

「"Yes, do you want to read that book?"」

When I cleared away the pale dust and opened the cover, I found the first page, so old and worn that it seemed ready to crumble.

When I opened my eyes again, the fables drifting through the air had gathered at my fingertips.

「"Dokja."」

The fragments began speaking to me, one sentence at a time.

I slowly moved the brush. I thought of Mother, the Mother I remembered.

From the well of old memories, I drew up those words, reeking with damp mold, one by one.

「"Dokja, which character did you like best?"」

I remembered. The books I had first read with Mother.

Without realizing it, I moved the brush.

The overflowing sentences joined together through my brush.

「"It seems you don't like the ending. But not every story can have a happy ending."」

She was the person who made me love books. The person who paid the price for my crime in my place and went to prison. The person who wrote a book from our story.

The person I missed. The person I resented.

She was my mother, yet the person furthest from me.

「"Dokja."」

Blood splattered across the living room. The feeling of the knife falling.

Then Mother's voice continued.

「"Read it again."」

The moment I completed that much, I stopped the brush.

Mother's theme was still incomplete.

"Demon King of Salvation-nim?"

That was all I knew of Mother's story.

「"...A crime. If that is a crime, then I suppose it is."」

「"Do all prisoners think that way?"」

「"How ridiculous, this thing called justice in the world."」

Countless Fable Fragments still drifted around me, but they no longer spoke to me.

They were fragments from contexts I did not know. Sentences I could not understand because I had never heard them.

I felt confused, as if I had suddenly been thrown into the middle of a book I was reading for the first time.

The Lee Sukyeong I knew was only Lee Sukyeong as my mother.

The hand holding the brush trembled. That trembling spoke for me.

I could not do it. This was not something I could do.

Belated regret flooded over me like a wave.

I should have talked to her more. I should have said more. I should have shared more with her.

The hand holding the brush slowly lowered.

Mother's fables were beginning to collapse again. Mother's fables that I did not know drifted around me as if mocking me.

「Perhaps, when it came to even a single person, I couldn't...」

That was when I felt someone's presence behind me.

Someone other than Aileen and me was holding a small brush and staring into the air.

"This is something she said to me."

A middle-aged woman stood there, wearing a fine suit over a light-blue prison uniform.

It was Jo Yeongran, with Joseon's Greatest Sorcerer as her Patron.

Someone else beside her also held a brush.

"Hehe, I never thought I'd miss the days I was behind bars."

Lee Boksun, who had been with us in peace land, smiled.

The Wanderers poured into the room. Each of them held a brush, applied Star Relic Nectar, and began connecting the sentences.

Stories that were difficult for me flowed freely into them.

Puzzles filled in as though it were only natural.

Every Wanderer was telling Sukyeong's story.

My vision blurred, and for a while, I could not speak.

Before my eyes, Mother's life as I had never known it was taking shape. These were the moments I should have known but did not.

Even the Wanderers could not complete every theme.

A few fragments remained, unable to find their owner.

That was when someone beside me took my hand. The hand holding the brush moved on its own and connected a sentence I did not know.

As I tried to say something in surprise, the owner of the hand cut me off.

"Kim Dokja, you think you're some kind of god."

Her grumbling voice carried the scent of lemon candy.

Suyeong snatched the brush from my hand as if frustrated with me.

"There are things even you don't know, idiot."

Footnotes:

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