WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈
Chapter 491: Episode 93: Omniscient Author's Viewpoint (5)
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It was Kim Dokja. This was unmistakably Kim Dokja's sentence. Even without hearing his voice, she knew.
Han Suyeong hurriedly wrote the next sentence.
「What? You're fine.」
Even a writer couldn't control every sentence they wrote. And Han Suyeong was someone who could only write this way.
But Dokja would understand. He was the best reader she knew.
Tap.
The light knock sounded like Dokja's laughter. The clashing of weapons all around them hurt her ears. Her allies were fighting desperately. There was no time to relax.
「You knew it would turn out this way from the beginning, didn't you?」
「……■■■■■」
She couldn't properly see the sentence written on the wall.
As if their earlier communication had only been a coincidence with impossibly low odds.
「Hey! Write it so I can read it!」
Even with Jang Hayoung's help, Dokja's message remained invisible.
[The Wall of Impossible Communication has unleashed its power!]
Tsstststst!
Too many sentences drifted across the wall without context. They were all things she and her allies had said to Kim Dokja. Some sentences were clear, while others couldn't be properly seen.
"Suyeong."
"I know."
Listening to Hayoung, Suyeong placed her hand against the wall again. She tried desperately to piece together the drifting sentences and somehow find Dokja's message.
[The fable Predictive Plagiarism begins its story!]
[The target is a being you cannot understand!]
Context was what connected one printed character to another. The words spread across a sea without context were like a book made to be unreadable from the start.
「"I'm leaving work now."」
「"You said you'd give me a power bank if I went hiking?"」
All Suyeong could do was somehow connect those contextless sentences. Give meaning to nonsensical sentences by providing context. Arrange things that weren't plot development to make them resemble plot development.
But it wasn't enough. No matter how she connected them, there was always a gap where meaning was missing.
"Dokja! Talk! What's the plan? What do you want us to do from here on out?!"
No reply came.
The roaring Outer God King was fighting the Constellations. Her bleeding allies were falling amid the backlash.
Suyeong gritted her teeth. It was fine if Dokja wouldn't tell her. What mattered was reading his intentions. Why he had acted without telling his allies the plan. What Dokja had been thinking when he chose the Outer God King.
Then, one by one, words began to gather.
「If TWSA had been paid content, how much would I have spent by now?」
「What would it feel like to have twenty million won in my bank account?」
「If a house has two rooms, what do people usually put in the other one?」
"We'd never have become friends if we'd met outside."
Words tossed out like notes. Suyeong gathered the words and sentences.
A good writer had to first be a good reader.
Suyeong knew how to read things like that.
「How the hell do people make money?」
Sometimes, she had no choice but to accept that there were sentences she couldn't understand and simply turn the page. So that when she returned to that page one day, she could read the sentence again.
[The target is a being you cannot understand!]
She had no choice but to keep turning pages, then turning the next page and another, desperately gathering clues about that incomprehensible sentence.
「Is there no Plausibility for making money in my life?」
Tsstststst.
In the distance, Huiwon dropped to her knees. Seolhwa rushed over to support her while Sangah and Hyeongseong blocked the weapons flying toward Huiwon.
[The Administration Bureau's Plausibility is suppressing your intervention in the Scenario!]
Dokja was right. It was all because of Plausibility.
The reason Dokja had been poor, and the reason they had ended up like this.
[The Administration Bureau's Plausibility is restraining your body!]
In this world, Plausibility was power. The Scenario flowed toward the side with more convincing Plausibility.
[Your nebula has violated far too much Plausibility.]
Suyeong knew it, too. This backlash was the price for all the crises they had somehow survived through luck. They had come all the way to the Final Scenario without losing anyone, despite having so many allies.
In contrast, the other Incarnations who made it here had to sacrifice more than they had.
「Why only them...」
「This isn't fair.」
「We worked so hard to get here...」
Kim Dokja Company had violated far too much Plausibility. They hadn't made sacrifices wherever sacrifices were needed. More precisely, only one person had been making the sacrifices over and over.
"Dokja."
He had died many times and come back to life. He had also saved beings who should have died. He used a resurrection Attribute or visited the underworld, and he changed the future.
「That was why Dokja had no choice but to become the Enemy of the Story.」
Because the Great Fable Kim Dokja Company had built up lacked Plausibility.
Suyeong gripped the sentences as though scratching at the wall.
That was when a new sentence appeared.
「"For the time being, you manage the nebula vault."」
It was a conversation Suyeong and Dokja had shared not long ago.
「"What? Don't blame me if I spend it all."」
The authority to manage the vault, delegated through the system.
She had wondered what had gotten into stingy Dokja. At the time, she thought he was just passing it off because managing money was a hassle.
[Would you like to check the nebula's balance?]
But would Dokja really hand the vault over to someone for such a reason?
As though possessed, Suyeong opened the vault.
「"You saved up a lot. You cheap bastard. What are you saving this much for?"」
「"I have somewhere to spend it all."」
An enormous number of coins lay piled within the vault. All the gold and treasures every star in the world coveted were there. The basic unit of support in this world, and the force that drove the Scenarios.
「One of the most powerful fables in this world is ‘coins.’」
But there was a limit to strengthening an Incarnation body with coins. Besides, there was nothing left worth buying from the Dokkaebi Compendium.
She had always wondered why he had gathered coins so desperately despite that.
[Would you like to use coins for the growth of a Great Fable?]
Only now did Han Suyeong understand why.
"Use them."
[You have paid 143,245,199 coins stored in the nebula as Plausibility!]
The moment she declared it, the surrounding fables rushed in like wild beasts craving flesh. Dazzling gold began to cover the area.
[The Great Fable Spring of the Demon Realm is devouring the fable of coins!]
[The Great Fable Holy Flame That Devoured Myth is growing larger!]
[The contrast of the Great Fable Season of Light and Darkness is growing clearer!]
Great Fables that consumed capital possessed greater power.
They manifested the details of their fables more faithfully, more powerfully, and more brilliantly.
Rumble...
As the Great Fables' power began resisting the Administration Bureau's Plausibility, even the Great Dokkaebis and Constellations looked flustered.
Huiwon's sword grew lighter little by little, and Hyeongseong's shield grew sturdier. The beast species and Monarch-Level Insects summoned by Yuseong and Gilyeong swarmed in, tearing into the Constellations at the rear.
"Fire!"
As Jihye's warship began firing, the Incarnations rushing in from the front vanished without a trace. Yet the chance of victory only lasted for a moment.
[The Administration Bureau's Plausibility has increased the level of its sanctions!]
Black cracks began spreading through the sky from the excessive use of Plausibility. The entire Scenario stage was shaking.
Fables flowed from the mouths of several Great Dokkaebis. This battle was also a desperate fight for their lives. To create the ending they wanted, the dokkaebis had entered this Scenario themselves and become part of the story.
"Black Flame Dragon!"
Fierce [Black Flame] surrounded Suyeong. Suyeong swept away the incoming attacks and fired [Black Flame] toward the front. Right beside her, Hayoung protected Suyeong's back with martial arts skills.
Suyeong thought.
Why had Dokja entrusted this role to her?
There were people far more suited to it than she was. For example, the protagonist of some story.
Yet Dokja had entrusted this role to her.
Sssssss...
Hayoung's wall was scattering again. The wall that had exhausted all its power was returning to its original state. It was hard to breathe under the Administration Bureau's sanctions. Dokja, who had seemed within reach for a moment, was growing distant again. The flow of the story was returning to the Great Dokkaebis.
Suyeong screamed.
[Your ■■ is Unending Story.]
A story where no one was lost.
A story where everyone gathered to live together in a big house at the end of all Scenarios.
Her allies had fought for that humble dream.
But that dream couldn't come true because they lacked Plausibility.
[The Constellation Abyssal Black Flame Dragon looks at his Incarnation.]
At that moment, a flash of light went through Suyeong's mind.
The Plausibility they lacked.
「The reason Dokja had entrusted this role to Han Suyeong, not Kim Dokja or Yu Junghyeok.」
[The Constellation Naval Warfare God looks at the Incarnation Han Suyeong.]
Drip, drip...
Blood ran from the stab wound in her shoulder. Suyeong roughly wrapped it in a bandage and looked up at the sky.
Beyond the falling sparks were the distant stars of the Star Stream. More Constellations than ever before were watching this world's end.
[Multiple Constellations are dissatisfied with the Scenario's progress!]
[A considerable number of Constellations condemn the tyranny of the Administration Bureau and Mythical Constellations!]
Suyeong smirked.
"Right, because you're Constellations..."
Dokja must have known. Because he was a Constellation, too. He was a reader who knew better than anyone how to make a Scenario more entertaining, how to make it more suspenseful.
「That was why Dokja hadn't told his allies.」
Suyeong clenched her fist. She had used every coin, leaving her empty-handed.
But what Dokja had left her wasn't coins.
"When the first Scenario began, you said it. You said we'd lived for free, and that we'd have to pay the price from now on."
What Dokja had left behind was...
[The Constellation Bald Army General focuses on the words of the Incarnation Han Suyeong.]
[The Constellation One-Eyed Maitreya focuses on the words of the Incarnation Han Suyeong.]
...their entire lives.
"I'll give those words back to you."
At Suyeong's signal, Biyoo blocked the channel as though she had been waiting for it.
The Constellations' channels went dark.
[All broadcast screens for Channel BY-9158 have been blocked.]
[The Constellation Wind God of the Heavenly Emperor is flustered by the sudden blackout!]
[The Constellation Joseon's Greatest Sorcerer wants to see the next scene!]
As the world fell into darkness, she heard the flustered voices of Constellations watching the channel from other Scenario areas.
All the Subscribers of Kim Dokja Company's channel had to pass through Biyoo's channel. Even Subscribers belonging to other channels could only see the world through Biyoo's channel at this moment.
"Our story is paid content now."
Footnotes:
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