WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈
Chapter 510: Episode 98: Have you protected everything you wanted to protect? (3)
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That was a very old promise.
「“I'll bring your story to an end.”」
In the 1,863rd round, I couldn't keep that promise.
[Your ■■ is beginning to waver!]
I got to my feet and gripped "Unbreakable Faith" tightly.
I felt the solid hilt of the sword that had been with me through nearly every Scenario, from the beginning until now. When its tip touched the floor, sentences appeared. Sentences I had never seen before.
「He was more curious than anyone about the end of this world.」
「More than anyone, he hoped this world wouldn't end.」
My final fable was beginning.
“Kim Dokja?”
I pulled Han Suyeong's hand away from my ears.
Her eyes trembled. My bloodstained reflection was visible in them. A long wound ran across my cheek. Torn wings and a broken Demon King horn. I was a complete mess.
Suyeong had trusted that complete mess of a human all this time.
[Have you made your choice?]
The Dokkaebi King asked from the center of the bursting sparks.
The figures of the 999th round, the Kings of the Outer Gods, were struggling to resist. The battle had been evenly matched so far, but judging by the direction of the Plausibility Backlash, the 999th round would eventually be at a disadvantage.
“Yeah.”
I answered the Dokkaebi King.
“I'll cross the Final Wall. Then I'll meet the one beyond it.”
The source of all these tragedies, the Oldest Dream.
“I'll meet him and stop every tragedy in this world.”
As if satisfied with my choice, the Dokkaebi King smiled.
[Good. It is possible if you become my successor. Come, come this way. Hurry and inherit the will of the Star Stream...]
“I never said I'd accept your help.”
I activated [Way of the Wind] and [Electrification] at the same time. White-and-blue lightning coiled around the fastest Footwork in the world, and my body became a mass of light. At the greatest speed I could manage, I passed the Dokkaebi King and the Outer Gods.
My destination was the deepest part of the Final Wall.
[You...!]
I heard the startled Dokkaebi King shout.
In the distance, sentences raced across the Final Wall.
「The place where the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon's final scale and Uriel's final feather fall.」
I gasped and ran toward that sentence.
「The place where Persephone's final tear falls.」
I had to stop the sentences from ending. Even if I saw the end of this world, it couldn't end with that sentence.
The Dokkaebi King must have realized what I was planning, because he shouted in horror.
[Stop! You aren't a being who has been granted permission yet. You can't even touch that wall, much less cross it!]
The moment he finished speaking, the Plausibility Backlash constricted my entire body. The sparks felt as though they would pulverize my Incarnation body molecule by molecule, and for a moment, my mind went blank.
[The Final Wall rejects your approach!]
The wall was rejecting me. It was stopping me from touching its sentences, changing their contents, and going beyond it. As if I could never be allowed to reach that place.
The wall's sentences rapidly widened the space between us and fled far away.
「That sentence did not belong to Kim Dokja.」
A violent gust knocked me over. Like a word thrown into an irrelevant blank space, I tumbled miserably across the floor and was shoved backward.
Something slammed into my back.
Thud.
“Idiot! What do you think you'll accomplish by charging in alone like that?”
It was Suyeong. I grinned at her.
“I didn't charge in alone.”
Behind her, Kim Dokja Company's allies were running toward us.
There was nobody I wanted to lose. Nobody I could lose.
“Dokja-ssi, keep running!”
Having activated [Hour of Judgement], Jeong Huiwon ran toward me with a red glow spilling from her eyes. Hyeongseong and Jihye guarded Huiwon's flanks, while Sangah and the children followed behind them. Jang Hayoung and the masters protected the rear of the group.
“Take this! It's the last Life-and-Death Pill!”
Lee Seolhwa, supporting the exhausted Pildu Gong, threw the pill container toward us. I immediately took out a Life-and-Death Pill and swallowed it. My damaged Incarnation body began to recover quickly.
[Stop!]
At the Dokkaebi King's cry, strange beings appeared between the contexts of the sentences recorded on the wall. They were Outer Gods, beings who had yet to acquire fables worthy of being recorded on the wall.
【■■■! ■■■ ■■■ ■■■!】
Not every Outer God followed their king. Despite their immense power, some had become the Dokkaebi King's hands and feet, willingly serving as Scenario collaborators.
[Stop them! Then I'll leave your fables on the Final Wall!]
The masters saw tentacles pouring in from every direction and drew their swords.
“Leave this place to us.”
The Sky-Splitting Sword Saint's [Sky Splitter Sword Art] and Kyrios's [White Pure Star Energy] joined into a single ray of light, leaving their sentences on the wall.
[The Great Fable First Martial World begins its story!]
The two strongest masters of Murim desperately held off the tentacles. Yet they could only buy us a brief moment. Too many Outer Gods were pouring in through the contexts opened by the Dokkaebi King.
[All fables of Kim Dokja Company shine brightly!]
I couldn't waste the time the masters had bought for us.
The wall recording Uriel's and the Great Sage Equaling Heaven's fables had already moved far away again.
There was only one answer. We had to reach it faster than it could move away.
But how?
That was when a sentence appeared on the Final Wall.
「The Green Zone is attached to the wall... Come to think of it, humans were the only ones who had understood it as a room from the beginning.」
I suddenly looked down at the floor beneath my feet.
The floor, too, was another wall from a different direction.
Our footprints remained on the wall we had been running across. The fables we had built together rose above them.
「“By the way, Dokja-ssi, what are you looking at so intently?”」
「It was the moment the genre of my life changed.」
「“There are twelve people left in the train car. Three insects remain in the collection net.”」
「One world was being destroyed, and a new world was being born. I was the only reader who knew this world's ending.」
The first Scenario. The time we escaped the subway for the first time.
「Select your patron. The patron you select will become your steadfast supporter.」
「[The Constellation Demonic Judge of Fire is disappointed in you.]」
「[The Constellation Prisoner of the Golden Headband finds your choice amusing.]」
Patron selection. Starlight illuminated our feet.
We started running again. Our fables formed the path ahead of us.
「“Is it true you're monopolizing Food?”」
「“Get up, everyone. The Scenario has only just begun.”」
「“An arrogant tenant has arrived.”」
「“Hyeongseong-ssi, now. Smash it all to pieces.”」
We passed through the battles of Geumho Station and Chungmuro.
「“The ninth... Dropout.”」
「“...Pardon me, but what is your name?”」
「“I am Yu Junghyeok.”」
I remembered the battlefields of Capture the Flag and the bloody fights against the prophets.
「“How absurd. All history has already faded, so why have you gathered here again?”」
「“He calls himself the Tyrant King. I heard that if a man or woman is pretty or handsome, he makes them a concubine. If they're ugly, he kills them or makes them slaves.”」
「“If Dokja-ssi gets caught, he's a slave.”」
「Of the Seven Kings of Seoul, the strongest was naturally Supreme King Yu Junghyeok.」
We faced the War of Kings at Gwanghwamun.
「“That is why I won't sit on the Absolute Throne.”」
We destroyed the Absolute Throne.
「“But I won't allow anyone else to sit on it, either.”」
Every moment had been an ordeal. There hadn't been a single easy Scenario, and we had always fought with our lives on the line.
All those tragedies had become a story in the end.
We ran through that story.
The fables that unwound endlessly like thread soon formed a shape.
It took the form of a white tiger. The white tiger, with noble whiskers and elegant markings, ran beside me.
[The fable King of a Kingless World sees you off on your path.]
"King of a Kingless World." My birth fable was seeing me off.
The white tiger that had cleared the path ahead of us let out a thunderous roar, then stopped. As though this was no longer its part to play, it watched the path I took with distant eyes.
[The fable One Who Opposes the Extraordinary sees you off on your path.]
Before I knew it, my second fable, in the form of a blue hawk, was flying overhead.
The fable I had gained by killing the Returnee Myeong Ilsang, who had descended as the Calamity of Questions.
[The fable One Who Scorned a Storyteller sees you off on your path.]
All our fables made us run atop the Final Wall.
The allies' expressions changed whenever their own fables appeared. Hyeongseong hesitated and kept looking behind him, while Shin Yuseong finally burst into tears.
「This was the path they had lived, and the story they had to bring to an end.」
[The fable One Who Hunted the King of Catastrophes sees you off on your path.]
The fable I had gained by hunting the shadow of Yamata no Orochi in Peace Land.
The shadow of a giant serpent supported the path we were running across.
Not a single one of those stories was anything but precious. We were here because we had truly lived through every one of those moments.
Whenever the Plausibility Backlash grew fiercer, our fables lost strength and crumbled away.
[The fable One Who Slayed an Outer God sees you off.]
A fable resembling a giant squid protected us from the Backlash.
[The fable Demon King of Salvation begins its final story.]
With all my strength, I thrust "Unbreakable Faith" forward.
I drove away the charging Outer Gods and ran toward the Final Wall.
Far away, the Constellations' fables were still continuing their stories.
「The Flame of Karma fell from Uriel's hand. In her final moment, Uriel looked upon a star shining in the night sky. And then...」
It wasn't too late yet.
Uriel, the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon, and the Great Sage Equaling Heaven were all still alive.
I could change the story.
[The Final Wall does not permit your approach!]
I only needed to go a little farther.
[The Access Prevention Process has been executed.]
Then our steps stopped.
Thin, transparent walls stacked in layer after layer stood before us.
Walls formed at an incredibly high density.
I struck them again and again, but they were too strong to break with the power of individual fables.
The Outer Gods that had ignored the masters were charging toward us. The Dokkaebi King seemed relieved as he shouted something at us.
I ignored him and looked up at the night sky.
「The world's stars had set, but not every star had set.」
A faint vibration rang out from somewhere in the night sky.
Suyeong was the first to understand what was happening. She rubbed her eyes roughly.
“You're too late!”
The front of a train came into view in the distance. Surya's solar train was racing this way, knocking aside fragments of the Ark.
[The Constellation Exalted God of Light has manifested on the battlefield of the Final Scenario!]
[Sorry I'm late, Demon King of Salvation.]
Having finally acquired Mythical Status, he had arrived on this stage by crossing the night sky.
“No, you arrived right on time.”
[The Great Fable Spring of the Demon Realm begins its story!]
At last, the conditions for the beginning had been fulfilled.
[Stage Transformation has activated!]
Footnotes:
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