WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈
Chapter 512: Episode 99: The Oldest Dream / The Most Ancient Dream (1)
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Within a faint light that warmly enveloped his entire body, the Hunchback King dreamed, curled up as though he were still in the womb.
It was a very old dream. A story from before his ■■ had been decided.
He lay in a polluted forest.
“Epsilon! Just a little farther! The Demon King's Castle is right ahead!”
In that story, he had been a hero who set out to defeat the Demon King. A hero who had embarked on an expedition against the Demon King to protect the world.
Yet he never achieved his long-cherished wish. Just before defeating the Demon King, he looked at a close friend and closed his eyes.
“Gilbert...”
The scene changed, and the setting became a battlefield.
He was a martial artist clad in black stealth attire.
“Senior Brother Gwak! The Demonic Cult's headquarters is right there!”
The faces of his Companions filled his view. Longing welled up within him.
The one person he had loved most in that life.
“I'm already beyond saving. Junior Sister, go on without me.”
At the sound of an arrow flying in from somewhere, his vision went dark again.
His head throbbed. As memories flooded in, the Hunchback King's sense of self began to waver.
Were these his memories, or stories from the 「Final Wall」?
Where did this story begin, and where did it end?
Regardless of his will, the story continued.
He was a young hatchling, a beast species of an unknown kind, a master of Murim, or a medieval knight.
Every time, he was an Incarnation carrying out a Scenario.
The last thing he heard before the ‘Final Wall’ was the voice of an unknown shadow.
“My close friend, stay with me in the next life as well.”
Gasp.
The Hunchback King opened his eyes, only for pitch-black darkness to seep into his vision. Cold sweat soaked the back of his neck, sending a chill through him.
‘I am the Hunchback King.’
That was his name. He had another true name, but he had forgotten it long ago. No, he couldn't even be sure that was truly his name.
‘Am I really the Hunchback King?’
Within the dark, swirling vacuum, the Hunchback King sank into deep thought.
It was something he had never considered since escaping mortality.
‘Who am I?’
The fable supporting his existence was shaking.
The Hunchback King looked back over his memories, trying somehow to recover himself.
「In the beginning, there was a Hunchback.」
「He was the first Streamer. A human who sang fables.」
「Then, one day, a dokkaebi appeared in the world.」
「The dokkaebis took "Hunchback's Song."」
That was all he needed to remember.
Those damned dokkaebis had taken "Hunchback's Song." By stealing his birth fable, they had driven him out of the Scenarios of the Star Stream.
[You seem confused, my longtime close friend.]
At the constellation's declaration, the Hunchback King whirled around in alarm. The Dokkaebi King's face floated in the pitch-black darkness.
[Dokkaebi King!]
The Hunchback King snarled and released his Status, but it didn't work properly. In the empty void, the Status he released left behind only faint sparks.
The Dokkaebi King spoke with an indifferent expression.
[We can't fight here. Our powers don't work in this place.]
[You survived somehow. I thought you died to the puppet's sword.]
[I'm as good as dead already. And I'll die again.]
Where the Dokkaebi King was looking, a circular exit of swirling light came into view. The soul forms of the two beings drifted slowly toward it.
The Hunchback King said,
[My fable is beginning now. I will go beyond the Final Wall. I will meet the slothful god who imagined all these worlds and become the only one who knows this world's secret.]
[Are you that curious about the secret of the world?]
[What an obvious question. There is no being that isn't curious about its own birth.]
[That's exactly why existence becomes unhappy.]
With a self-deprecating tone, the Dokkaebi King said,
[Why do you think existence was given such a welcome ability as oblivion?]
Fragments of fables scattered through the darkness. Stories that had lost their context shattered into piles of type. Stories that no one could read anymore.
The Dokkaebi King caressed them, then crushed the fables.
[There are too many unnecessary stories in this universe. A process is needed to eliminate them all for the sake of optimization. That is oblivion.]
[Nonsense! The universe is infinite, just as there is no end to the Final Wall.]
[No matter how much margin the wall has, how much margin do you think is allowed to a mere extra?]
The Dokkaebi King looked down at his body, which was gradually breaking apart.
[Unfortunately, the protagonist chosen by the Final Wall isn't you or me.]
[I don't know what nonsense you're talking about, but...]
[Still, you will soon meet the being you wish to meet.]
At those words, the Hunchback King's shoulders twitched.
The exit of light was visible. Entrancing, dazzling light. Spinning fiercely, the exit looked like the period at the end of some world.
The Hunchback King became afraid.
[Have you ever seen what lies beyond it?]
The Dokkaebi King didn't answer immediately. His expression was bored, as though every sentence after a period was meaningless. Still, he eventually added something more.
[What would it mean?]
[What?]
[What use would it be to learn that this world is a fragment of some distant dream?]
A profound emptiness filled those words. The Hunchback King couldn't understand them. Though the exit's light grew brighter, the Dokkaebi King's expression became blurrier.
The exit of light was right in front of them now. Uneasy, the Hunchback King asked,
[Why have you continued the Star Stream for all this time?]
Perhaps the question was unexpected. The Dokkaebi King's expression changed strangely. He stared silently at the Hunchback King before speaking.
[Who knows? I've forgotten.]
At that moment, numerous fables overlapped across the Dokkaebi King's face. He looked like a hero defeating a Demon King, a master of the Martial Alliance fighting the Demonic Cult, and a hatchling flapping toward the sky.
He...
[You...]
[Kim Dokja has opened a door that should never have been opened. This world will now be unhappy forever.]
With those words, the world was swallowed by light. They had finally reached the exit.
The Hunchback King staggered into the light. Parting the rays, he moved forward little by little.
The answer was here.
The Oldest Dream that had created this world was here.
Yet the Hunchback couldn't see anything. A loud horn blared from somewhere. A pungent smell stung his nose. Breathing became harder and harder. His body was burning away within the light.
As though this margin had never been granted to him.
[I told you, didn't I? This isn't your story or mine.]
As the Dokkaebi King's voice rang out, the Hunchback King's body began to melt.
[We are only tools of this world.]
His legs melted away, then his torso, but the Hunchback King didn't look away from what lay before him.
The very old dream was there. Every secret of this world was there.
Something he had searched for forever was there.
The Hunchback King saw it. Then he understood what the Dokkaebi King had meant.
That, that was really...
The Hunchback King desperately wanted to cry out. To ask it to look this way. To beg it to see that he was here. To meet his eyes just once.
Then it slowly turned its head.
But by the time its gaze finally reached the Hunchback King, the Hunchback King was no longer there.
It looked away again. Lowering its head, it began focusing on something once more.
* * *
Cough.
A rough sensation filled my mouth. When I exhaled the breath that had built up inside me, something like an insect flowed out.
Looking closer, it was type.
My senses returned, and my vision gradually brightened. White type shone in front of me. The contents were familiar.
Where the hell was this...?
“Dokja-ssi? At this rate, you're going to get sucked into the book.”
A chill ran down my spine.
That familiar voice. Words I'd heard somewhere before. A horrifying image ripped through my imagination. I'd once thought that something like that might happen if I broke the ‘Final Wall.’
But for that to really happen...
Flutter.
Torn pages flew before my eyes.
Looking closer, someone was waving a book in front of me.
“Sangah-ssi.”
Yu Sangah stood before me.
The surroundings gradually came into view. Mountains of scattered books and shelves packed tight with volumes. The faint glow of candelas.
This wasn't the subway. It was a place I knew well.
Sangah smiled.
“It feels cozy here now.”
This was inside [The Fourth Wall].
“What happened?”
“Even if you ask me... I just woke up, too. Should we look for the senior librarians?”
As Sangah shrugged and looked around, I quickly went over what had happened to me.
「We gathered every fragment of the [Final Wall]. Then we finally broke the wall.」
I could still vividly remember the swirling “Square Circle.”
And then? What happened after that?
What about the other Allies?
「Don't wor ry Kim Dok ja」
A voice I had never thought I'd hear again.
I cried out in delight.
“The Fourth Wall!”
「Be qui et in the Li bra ry」
Even that cheekiness was unmistakably [The Fourth Wall] I remembered.
Still, my questions only grew.
Why was I inside [The Fourth Wall] right now?
“Dokja-ssi?”
Voices began to emerge one by one from the darkness. They were Kim Dokja Company's Allies.
“Where are we?”
“I found a weird book. 『Kim Dokja and the Mystery of Sex』.”
“You shouldn't read things like that carelessly, Jihye.”
“Then what about this? 『If They Have the Bible, Kim Dokja Has TWSA』.”
“Do you really want to read something like that?”
Huiwon and Jihye's voices came one after the other. Then small heads popped out of the nearby piles of books like moles.
“Mister!”
“Hyung!”
They were Shin Yuseong and Gilyeong.
In the dim light, I could also see Han Suyeong walking toward us.
“There are all kinds of things here. Is this the ‘Library’ Sangah talked about?”
Suyeong pulled books from the shelves one after another and threw them behind her. Hyeongseong, standing behind her, quickly caught them and tucked them into his arms.
“S-Suyeong-ssi! You shouldn't handle books so carelessly... We don't even know what these are!”
“Hey, what's this? Looks fun.”
Behind them, Pildu Gong, Jang Hayoung, and Anna Croft lay unconscious in a row. Seolhwa was checking their pulses.
At least all the Allies who had entered the Final Scenario seemed to be here.
「Not ev ery one」
A bad feeling came over me at [The Fourth Wall]'s words.
There was still someone I couldn't see.
Could it be...?
「(Hahahaha! Yu Junghyeok! I can smell Yu Junghyeok somewhere! Have you finally come to become one with me!)」
A thunderous voice rang out from the deep darkness. It was Nirvana's, without a doubt. The next moment, a dull thud echoed out. Nirvana fell silent and rolled limply across the floor, with a pitch-black combat boot stomping on Nirvana's head.
“What an unpleasant place.”
“Junghyeok.”
It seemed he still hadn't separated from Secretive Plotter. Faint sparks still flowed around him.
Then who were the ones who hadn't made it here?
“The Constellations aren't here.”
“What happened to the people on Earth?”
If [The Fourth Wall] had evacuated us here, something had gone wrong outside.
My chest went cold. I remembered [The Fourth Wall] breaking into pieces and the sentences scattering across it. What had gone wrong? Had the world been destroyed because I tried to change the story?
Then [The Fourth Wall] suddenly said something unrelated.
「Time simply isn't flowing because no one is reading or imagining」
Before I could ask what that meant, someone appeared.
「(You finally broke the wall, Apostle of Eternity and the Final Chapter.)」
「(So this day has finally come.)」
They were the Library's librarians, The One Who Devours Dreams and Simulacrum.
I looked at them, then spoke to [The Fourth Wall].
“Send me back out. There's something I need to confirm.”
The librarians answered.
「(Even you won't be safe if you go outside now. The Star Stream no longer exists. Everything there has stopped.)」
Everything had stopped.
The fables that had resounded above the wall were no longer being told.
Instead, I could hear something like a giant clockwork mechanism turning somewhere. It sounded like a clock's second hand, or a keyboard being tapped at a very slow, steady rhythm.
“Then I'll go meet whoever can make the second hand move again.”
「(Do you truly wish to meet the Oldest Dream?)」
That being was at the final station of every story.
The Star Stream had been destroyed, but there was still a question that needed an answer.
「Why did such a world have to exist?」
When I looked back, my Companions wore similar expressions.
They, too, had problems of their own to resolve and endings they wanted to see. And there was something they had to go through to get there.
Sangah said,
“Let's go together, Dokja-ssi.”
“Me too! I want to go too!”
“I want to know what epilogue Mister wanted to see.”
“Let's not take it too seriously. There might be a surprisingly nice dokkaebi waiting for us. Or we can punch it a few times and make it nice.”
As if agreeing, Biyoo chimed in.
[Baaat!]
That was when Junghyeok, who had remained silent until then, spoke.
“Before that, is there a way to meet it? The wall has broken, but time in the outside world has stopped. If time stops, fables can't move forward. The same must be true for us.”
「(There is a place where time hasn't stopped.)」
Nirvana smiled and pointed at the floor.
That was right. Time in this ‘Library’ had not stopped yet.
“Don't tell me it's inside this Library?”
「(Not exactly. This Library is also only a wall. Still, once you completed the story, a passage opened. Now you can cross over.)」
As Nirvana spoke, he led us onward.
I had a feeling I knew where he was taking us.
I remembered the precipice beneath the Library.
「This was the end of this Library. The end of every story.」
A distant, bottomless abyss. A valley stretching out like an abyss.
I had discovered it the first time I entered [The Fourth Wall].
“That place from back then.”
When I first came here, I had nearly fallen off that precipice.
Back then, Nirvana had told me I would die if I fell there. That was what lay beyond the wall.
Nirvana asked,
「(Kim Dokja, do you really want to go?)」
I nodded. Nirvana pulled on a rope hanging in midair. Something like a pulley moved, and a small elevator slowly rose.
「(Get on.)」
We climbed onto the elevator.
Then it began slowly descending.
[Exclusive Attribute One Who Peered into the Abyss has activated.]
The answer I had been searching for was truly before my eyes now. The fables remaining within me were stirring as well.
How far had we descended? At last, the sound of the pulley stopped.
When I stepped into the darkness, it smelled faintly of mold. The floor was slick and damp. The place seemed to bear traces of a facility that had gone unused for a very long time.
As I held the candela light out in front of me, a faint line made of yellow blocks appeared.
“This is...”
Huiwon muttered.
The next moment, the sound of something running came from the darkness beyond the yellow blocks. The entire darkness trembled ominously. It was a violent roar, as though a monster were charging toward us.
A moment later, two faint eyes appeared in the darkness at the far end of the passage.
“Oh my god.”
Huiwon murmured, but even after seeing the monster, she didn't draw her sword. The others were the same, because we all knew what that monster was.
「The beginning of every story.」
It was a subway.
Footnotes:
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