WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 409: Episode 78: The story's turning point (1)

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Every muscle in my body ached as if I'd been beaten black and blue.

My consciousness, which had briefly vanished, returned, and I opened my eyes in pitch-black emptiness, spewing fables from my mouth. Nothing was visible around me.

Still, I knew where I was.

[Indescribable Distance glances at you.]

It was Indescribable Distance, also known as The Nameless Mist.

I'd encountered one of this bastard's split bodies in the 73rd Demon Realm.

With the power of just one split body, it had annihilated my Demon Realm and brought fabled-grade Constellations and Transcendents to their knees.

I was inside the maw of the Calamity I'd never wanted to face again.

「Kim Dokja thought. This was the only way to stop the Apocalypse Dragon.」

Yeah, I was wondering why you were staying quiet.

「To stop a Calamity threatening the world, he summoned another Calamity. Only Yu Junghyeok, the regressor, would come up with something like that.」

I gave a bitter smile as I watched [The Fourth Wall]'s messages float through the air.

「Even so, Kim Dokja had no choice but to do this.」

The effects of the backlash still lingered around me.

"You have disrupted far too much Plausibility."

"At this rate, the karmic debt of the Plausibility you have accumulated will soon explode. You know what that means, don't you?"

This was the karmic debt of Plausibility I'd built up until now.

The exact debt the Constellations had warned me about and the dokkaebis had spoken of.

「There is no fable that doesn't lose something precious.」

All the great fables of the Star Stream were fables of loss.

Heroes sacrificed something to awaken, while lovers and friends had to lose one of their own to complete their love and friendship.

Every being lost something, and its fable was completed through that loss.

「Kim Dokja hated that.」

I thought that one day, I'd have to pay the price for not losing anything.

That the day would come when I'd have to pay the price for twisting stories and disrupting Plausibility.

「So Kim Dokja decided to use it.」

Tsss, tsss, tsss, tsss!

A mass of fables poured from my mouth.

It wasn't only because Indescribable Distance was attacking me.

What attacked me was distorted Plausibility. The distortion of the world I'd accumulated to summon an Outer God was trying to exclude me from the Scenario.

[The fable Demon King of Salvation continues its story.]

I was able to endure because of my fables.

The fables whispering stories into my ears.

You are the Demon King of Salvation. You must save people.

Just as they had done to Metatron and Agares, the fables were speaking to me.

[The fable King of a Kingless World continues its story.]

[The Great Fable Spring of the Demon Realm continues its story.]

[The Great Fable Holy Flame That Devoured Myth continues its story.]

Amid the trembling dark mist, I could guess what was happening outside.

[Final Dragon of the Apocalypse reveals hostility toward Indescribable Distance!]

[Indescribable Distance is moving.]

Everything was going according to plan.

The Outer God had come to devour me, only to discover more appetizing prey. Now, it was wholly focused on hunting the Final Dragon of the Apocalypse.

The battle between Calamities was beginning.

The Final Dragon of the Apocalypse versus The Nameless Mist.

Their mutual destruction would become the hope of all other beings.

The important thing was buying time.

Buying time so the Constellations could gather again, so those damned stars could form constellations again, worthy of their name.

[Your Incarnation body is severely damaged!]

[The Status of a distant existence is eroding your context of modifiers.]

[The bonds between your fables are loosening.]

[The Star Stream is astonished by your remarkable achievement.]

[A Great Fable for you is awakening.]

From somewhere far away, I heard something like a song.

It was a melody I'd heard a very long time ago. I didn't know if it belonged to my mother, my companions, or someone else.

Still, as I listened to that faint song,

[The fable Companions in Life and Death continues its story.]

I thought that I didn't want to die.

* * *

Rumble!

Worlds were colliding.

Pitch-black mist enveloped Kim Dokja, who had been directly exposed to the Apocalypse Dragon's shockwave. The shockwave was no longer being borne by Dokja, but by that horrifying Outer God.

As two powers born from chaos collided, everything around them was sucked into the void.

[The Constellation Mandala's Protector groans.]

Fortunately, the collision point was farther away than expected, so the allies were safe.

After witnessing the Apocalypse Dragon and now the Outer God, most of the Constellations looked ashen.

Calamities that even fabled-grade Constellations couldn't endure were waging war, as if the Constellations' years of ruling the heavens like kings had all been a lie.

Only then did the Constellations in the night sky realize it.

The end of the world was truly right before them.

For some, though, the sacrifice of one person was a far greater tragedy than the destruction of the world.

"Ajeossiiiiii!"

Jihye let out a desperate cry and fired a barrage into the dark mist. Of course, the barrage couldn't harm The Nameless Mist's true body at all. It was impossible to tell where its body even began or ended.

Yet the allies couldn't control their rampaging emotions.

"No, no, no!"

As if she'd been struck by a sickness that made her repeat the same words, Yuseong screamed convulsively. As though responding to her emotions, the Chimera Dragon fired its Breath into the sky.

Gilyeong's pupils were half unfocused as he stood beside her. Ominous demonic energy flowed from the trembling boy's entire body.

"Contract... I'll make it... I won't... I will..."

Another three people stepped in front of them.

Before the most horrifying Calamity they could imagine, the allies suffered madness in different ways. Some lost their reason to the emotions crashing over them, while others held on to reason that had been shattered with precision.

Yu Junghyeok had entered Transcendence Form.

Han Suyeong was shrouded in the Black Flame Dragon.

Jeong Huiwon had opened the eyes of God Slaying.

Before anyone could stop them, the three stepped forward at once and looked at each other.

Then someone blocked their path.

It was Anna Croft.

"Everyone, stop! You can't leave the battlefield!"

[The nebula Asgard is controlling the battlefield.]

Along with Anna's voice, Asgard's Great Fable bound the three in place.

Junghyeok's expression twisted.

"Get lost."

"This isn't what the Demon King of Salvation wants!"

"'What the Demon King of Salvation wants'?"

As if she had no need to listen any longer, [Black Flame] formed in Suyeong's left hand.

Anna spoke.

"I've started to see bits of the future."

Fables flowed through her [Arch-Demon's Eyeball].

"It might mean he succeeded."

Anna looked sincerely awed. Watching the fierce battle between the two Calamities unfold in the distant sky, she said,

"He's truly trying to save this world..."

"The end of the world doesn't matter. We..."

"His sacrifice is noble. Do you really not understand what it means?"

"Will you shut your damn mouth?"

Suyeong snapped. Even Anna fell silent for a moment before that terrifying force.

"Why does Kim Dokja have to save the world? Why does that bastard have to sacrifice his life for this worthless crap? Does a world like this even deserve it?"

Suyeong's voice was heated. It was the voice of someone who had repeatedly held back her anger.

Watching her, the Prophet recalled something she had heard long ago.

"The Demon King of Salvation once said the same thing as you."

"We'll have to wait and see whether this world is worth protecting."

Was it back at the Gourmet Association? The Demon King of Salvation had said something like that before.

Anna, too, understood what those words meant.

This was a world ruled by dokkaebis and Constellations. After all, she, too, had created Zarathustra to change it.

Anna looked up at the sky again. The Prophet didn't know whether the Demon King of Salvation was still asking questions about this world even now.

But.

"He's up there right now. To protect the world where he lived with all of you."

Some fables were proven not through words, but through actions.

"You met each other in a world like this, of all places."

At those words, the three wore the same expression for the first time.

Anna continued in a careful voice.

"Trust me as a Prophet. You need to conserve your strength. You must wait for the moment when the two Calamities fight each other to mutual destruction. That's the only way all of us can survive."

"A Prophet? Do you think you're the only one who knows the future?"

Only then did Anna realize something.

The fable "Predictive Plagiarism" flowed around Suyeong. Junghyeok, the regressor, was also constantly seeing through the situation with [Sage's Eye].

Prophets weren't the only ones who could predict the future. These people also had insight into the future greater than anyone else's.

Even so, they chose to save Dokja.

Huiwon drew her sword and spoke.

"I don't know about the future. But I know one thing. You said you want to save the world, right? So do I."

Her will flowed into the Sword of Judgement, making it spew pure white flames.

"That person is the world I want to save."

With those words, the three leaped into the air. Neither the Plausibility of a Great Fable nor the suppression of a nebula could stop them.

Anna urgently reached out her hand, but they were already soaring toward the sky.

What stopped them wasn't a nebula or Plausibility.

Suyeong was the first to notice it.

"What the hell? This is insa-"

Rumble!

The balance of the sky was collapsing amid the desperate battle between the Calamities.

The problem was that the broken balance was tipping toward them.

[That is...]

One of the Constellations muttered.

Something was writhing and splitting apart within the dark mist that covered the sky.

Indescribable Distance, The Nameless Mist, had begun creating split bodies of its own in addition to pressuring the Apocalypse Dragon.

"Ah, ahh. Aaaah..."

A terrifying bright yellow eye appeared through the dark mist. Yuseong's shoulders shook as if she'd remembered an old nightmare.

Yuseong had seen that eye before. Every Incarnation who sees it loses their sanity and degenerates into an otherworldly creature.

That day, every being in the industrial complex had been utterly powerless before that Calamity.

Yet someone remembered that day completely differently.

[It's a little smaller than it was back then.]

It was Cheok Junkyung.

Footnotes:

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