WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 421: Episode 79: Secretive Plotter (6)

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It was a piece written by the Recorders of Fear.

The Recorders of Fear. The first humans to encounter Outer Gods, and the authors who spread word of their existence.

[The Exclusive Skill Reading Comprehension has activated!]

[The Exclusive Attribute Scenario Interpreter has activated!]

The moment I saw the title, my heart began pounding.

A story about Secretive Plotter and the Oldest Dream.

Secretive Plotter had spoken of the Oldest Dream so often that this might have been an important chance to learn more about it.

I was so absorbed in the book that I even forgot [999] had disappeared.

* * *

Exactly eight hours later, I closed the book's cover with a blank expression.

"This is..."

I knew the exact words to describe this kind of book.

"It's less interesting than TWSA."

I didn't know who had written it, but if it had been serialized on a twenty-first-century platform, it clearly would have flopped as badly as TWSA.

It wasn't just boring. It was difficult, too.

"What the hell is this even saying?"

There were still parts I could understand.

For example, there were five great Outer Gods in the Great Hole.

「The ‘Living Flame’ that rises in the east.」

「The Calamity of the western world, ‘Owner of the Sunken Island.’」

「The ruler of the northern universe, ‘Great Lord of the Abyss.’」

「The ruler of the southern interstellar realm, ‘King of the Silver Heart.’」

「And the ‘Great Plot,’ crawling from a place that is nothing.」

"It's a worldbuilding guide that rivals TWSA."

Judging from the context, that Great Plot seemed to refer to Secretive Plotter.

There were some interesting passages about Secretive Plotter, too.

「A few Recorders of Fear who encountered the ‘Great Plot’ learned that he was searching for the ‘Oldest Dream.’ ...(Excerpt omitted)... The fortunate Recorders of Fear were able to ask the Great Plot about the identity of the Oldest Dream.」

「【It is the beginning of this universe and the master of the great wheel. My old enemy and my parent. The one who decides the end of all things.】」

「The moment a few Recorders of Fear heard those words, they saw the Great Plot's expression and fainted. When they awoke, they could no longer remember who they were.」

Records written by people who couldn't even remember who they were.

Was that why the book listed the Recorders of Fear as its co-authors?

I wanted to read more about Secretive Plotter and the Oldest Dream, but most of the book wasn't about them. It was just a collection of boring anecdotes about Outer Gods in general.

The plot was a mess, too. Just when a story began to get interesting, it ended out of nowhere. Even within the same work, the timeline was tangled, and the story often failed to make sense.

Every single type of anecdote was like that, so I couldn't get immersed in any of them.

「(An interesting story.)」

Cinema Master Simulacrum interrupted me.

'What's interesting about it?'

「(This book was deliberately designed this way.)」

'You mean it was deliberately written to be boring?'

「(It's a story with a clear message to convey.)」

'If it wanted to convey a message, it should've been written so people could understand it.'

「(It says that what cannot be understood cannot be understood.)」

'What?'

I heard a soft sigh, followed by a small spark before my eyes.

The power flowing from [The Fourth Wall] began turning the book's pages and extracting sentences. When it connected sentences taken from different short stories, they became the following passage.

「An emotion flowing from the distant universe. It was a primordial current that mortals could never follow. We were terrified.」

「They were like monsters from a universe we did not know.」

「It was not ‘fear’ born from something predictable. It was ‘Fear’ born from something we could never understand.」

「One by one, we struggled to give names to that Fear. We wanted to name the unknown and pretend it was something we could understand.」

Only then did the message this book wanted to convey seem clear.

「Of course, it is for you to decide how meaningful that attempt was.」

After reading even that resigned sentence, I felt as though I could understand why the Outer Gods had condemned the Recorders of Fear so fiercely.

Strictly speaking, the modifiers given to Outer Gods weren't their true nature.

「If you ever meet them, remember this. Those who gaze into the abyss can only go mad or become the abyss itself.」

After reviewing it all, I closed the book with a hollow feeling.

"I got far too little out of this."

In the end, there was only one thing I understood from this book.

「Outer Gods are beings that cannot be understood.」

It was an irresponsible statement.

You could put anyone else in place of Outer Gods, and the sentence would still make sense.

「Yu Junghyeok is a being that cannot be understood.」

「Han Suyeong is a being that cannot be understood.」

The meaning would ultimately be the same.

Even apart from Outer Gods, we can't understand one another. Even when we feel we understand, it's only a brief illusion.

I had once discussed something like that with Jang Hayoung.

The One Who Devours Dreams, who had silently listened to my thoughts, chuckled.

「(That's right. That is the message this book wants to convey. In the end, we are all Outer Gods to one another.)」

I closed the book and looked out the window.

The room was round, and so was its window.

Faint sunlight shone through. Outer Gods basking in the sun could be seen among the dense trees.

A few of them waved their tentacles at me. I watched those tentacles for a while, as if I were looking at a scene from a grotesque fairy tale.

Perhaps that form wasn't their true nature, either.

Looking closer, the tentacles' movements even seemed rather elegant.

「(Only those who reach out can know the truth.)」

Maybe I hadn't needed to read the book in the first place. Outer Gods were everywhere here.

After glancing around to check if anyone was watching, I used [Miniaturization] and slipped out through the window. As I floated toward an Outer God, they extended their tentacles toward me as well. I couldn't sense any hostility.

「You may re gret it.」

Despite [The Fourth Wall]'s warning, I reached for the tentacles.

I had always had regrets.

But I regretted the things I hadn't done more than the things I had.

[The Exclusive Skill Reading Comprehension has activated!]

The final Scenario of this Star Stream was a great war against the Outer Gods. After the war, the Outer Gods would disappear from the world.

The only beings never explained in TWSA.

I wanted to ask them. Where did you come from?

Why did you fight against this Star Stream?

The Outer Gods had never answered in the original work. They only wailed or made incomprehensible sounds as they fought the Constellations.

Tsstsstsst...

[The Fourth Wall warns you!]

I grasped the Outer God's tentacle. As if responding to my fingertips, the tentacles wrapped around my fingertips like vines.

The Recorders of Fear had said that Outer Gods were incomprehensible beings and that no one knew where they came from or what they truly were.

They might have been right.

What I was doing now might have been meaningless.

As in the original work, we would fight, and might bring nothing but miserable ruins and destruction.

The next moment, the scene around me was enveloped in a slow melody.

In the brilliant sunlight, the Outer Gods were lowering their heads toward me one by one.

[The fable One Loved by All Things begins its story.]

As if offering up something precious they had kept hidden, small flowers bloomed at the ends of the vines extended by the Outer Gods. A fragrance flowed from the flowers.

The fragrance soon became lyrics, then a story.

「“Captain.”」

It was a fragment of a very old memory.

「“Yu Junghyeok-ssi.”」

As if entranced, I listened to those voices. They were all different, but even with my eyes closed, I could tell whose voices they were.

I had thought about it for a long time.

If Secretive Plotter was the Junghyeok of the original work, and if countless worldlines of TWSA existed as he had shown me...

Where did all the failed stories from those countless rounds go?

「“In the next life, definitely.”」

「“No matter how many times you regress, with you, Captain...”」

A wave of memories swept over my consciousness in an instant.

The memories had no order, nor were they connected consistently. Yet I could connect them, like linking stars that didn't form a constellation.

Maybe I was the only one in the world who could connect them.

Then I understood what the Outer Gods were, why the Yu Junghyeok of the original work had become an Outer God.

Why he had no choice but to become Secretive Plotter.

Stories of suffering that spanned tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of years.

Stories cast out of their worldlines and never acknowledged as fables.

Fragments of failed fables that had become the world's unconscious, drifting through the distant universe and chewing over old memories.

The voices of those who had never been saved.

【Ooooooooh...】

The branches of the Outer Gods that covered my surroundings like a garden were growing.

Though I felt like I would suffocate beneath the waves of memory, I couldn't look away from those memories.

「“Please remember us.”」

I wept as I held onto those fables crumbling away at my fingertips, because they were so precious, and because I pitied them now that no one remembered them anymore.

I can't understand it or change it.

Then as now, all I can do is read.

The Outer Gods began crying out in unison.

【You know usyou know usyou know usyou know usyou know usyou know us】

【Whoareyouwhoareyouwho...whoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyou】

The vines tightened more and more around me. I heard the Outer Gods weeping.

They sounded happy and sad at the same time.

A primordial cry coming from beyond the distant universe.

「I told you not to do th at, didn't I?」

The Outer Gods gathered around me became an endless forest. The growing vines constricted me as if they were trying to swallow me, as if they wanted to accept me as part of themselves. As if they wanted me to stay with them forever.

I barely came to my senses and struggled to force my way through the vines. The more I struggled, the tighter they became.

【Don't le ave】

【Wh y】

I couldn't be consumed here. If I truly wanted to help them, I couldn't lose consciousness here.

【You can't go】

Before I could even draw Unbreakable Faith, my arms were restrained. Just as I was about to be dragged helplessly into the darkness of the vines, a dazzling ray of light split them apart.

A small Splitting the Sky Sword was visible in the faint sunlight.

When I looked up, the child Yu Junghyeok [999] was staring at me.

"What the hell did you do?"

Footnotes:

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