WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 513: Episode 99: The Oldest Dream / The Most Ancient Dream (2)

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The subway in front of us slowly came to a stop, then its doors opened.

There was no doubt about it. It was the very subway we knew. Huiwon, her lips moving soundlessly, spoke first.

"Why is a subway here...?"

No one could answer that question.

Gilyeong was the first to move. Sangah cried out.

"Gilyeong! You can't just get on like that-"

Gilyeong stepped onto the subway and looked back at us. As if nothing had happened, the boy shrugged.

Watching him, Jihye took Yuseong's hand and moved.

"I don't know. Let's get on first!"

That prompted the other hesitant Allies to board one by one.

I followed after them.

The moment I stepped onto the subway floor, faintly trembling beneath my feet, a sense of déjà vu washed over me.

「Once, this was Kim Dokja's world.」

That was wrong. This wasn't my world.

「This was everyone's world.」

Sangah, Huiwon, Hyeongseong, Jihye... they all wore different expressions. Just as I had lived my life day by day on this subway, they had probably lived similar lives.

Some had been office workers, some students, and some soldiers, but...

"A subway... I was really sick of these back then, but now I'm so glad to see one I could cry."

At Huiwon's words, we slowly looked around the subway interior. The seats were new, and the handrails had been scrubbed clean. There wasn't even a trace of filth on the floor.

Still, something else was even more surprising.

"There's no one here."

There wasn't the slightest sign of anyone inside the subway. It was an inorganic space, as though nothing besides us was alive. This subway held that strange, unnatural quality.

I looked back at the librarians still outside the train and asked, "Aren't you coming? You wanted to see the end of the world."

「(We can't go.)」

"Why?"

Nirvana and the librarians didn't answer. They exchanged sorrowful looks before saying,

「(It's enough that you see the ending...)」

[The doors are closing.]

I couldn't hear the rest. The doors shut, and with the sound of an enormous wheel turning, the subway began to move. It was neither fast nor slow. Beyond the windows, pitch-black scenery writhed past.

I stared into that darkness for a long time. Just where was this train going?

"Line 3."

Suyeong was the one who said it. I looked up at the route map as well.

Line 3. The line I had always taken to work. The strange thing was that the end of the route map was broken. The station names had been erased, too.

...

The train kept running. Several more minutes passed, but there was no sign that it would stop. It looked like this train would keep going all the way to its final station.

Suyeong dropped into the seat beside me. She blinked her long lashes as she glared at the route map. I asked, "What's with that expression?"

"I don't ride subways."

"Why?"

I suddenly realized it was a stupid question. Someone like her certainly wouldn't have needed to take the subway. Yet what Suyeong said was entirely unexpected.

"There's nothing to look at. Inside or out."

Together, we looked at the broken route map. It was true. Subways always ran along the same routes. They stopped at set times. Similar things happened amid the same scenery every day.

I disliked subways for the same reason. That was also why I had always stared at my smartphone.

"The subway doesn't run to entertain people."

"Oh? That's not something the Constellation Demon King of Salvation would say."

I gave a bitter smile.

Suyeong and I looked in the same direction. Our Allies were there. The people who had endured the apocalypse with me and cleared ninety-nine Scenarios to make it this far.

"Um, we aren't suddenly going back to the first Scenario or anything, right?"

"No way, absolutely not!"

"Should I get some grasshoppers ready just in case?"

The Allies let out quiet laughs as they watched Gilyeong clench his fist with a determined expression.

What did it mean when the most horrible memory became a joke?

What were the Allies feeling as they smiled at that story?

I said to Suyeong, "They have to return to their ordinary lives."

"You think that'll make them happy?"

"That's how every story is supposed to end."

"Since when did you like that kind of plot?"

Suyeong shot back sarcastically.

"You're not thinking something strange again, are you? You're not hiding something from me again, are you?"

"Even if I wanted to, there's nothing left to hide."

It was true. Even in the original work, no one had ever made it this far.

The same went for Secretive Plotter and the people from the 999th round. We were the first to ride this subway.

Looking at the blurred end of the route map, I said, "Suyeong, what do you think...?"

"Don't you think there's probably a final boss? That's usually how these things go!"

It was Huiwon's voice. She hadn't been speaking to me. The Allies had apparently been discussing something among themselves. Yuseong added,

"Like a huge dragon."

"But I don't think a dragon would have the modifier 'Oldest Dream.' For a modifier like that, it would have to be..."

"Wouldn't it be the writer?"

"The writer?"

"I mean..."

Gilyeong's eyes turned toward me as he said that, and the others turned to look at me as though the thought had suddenly occurred to them.

『Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World』.

The Allies knew about that novel now.

They knew it contained this world's story.

And that I alone had read that story to the end.

"What do you think, Dokja-ssi?"

No novel is told until a writer writes it.

If this world had been created based on TWSA, their guess was reasonable.

There was a good chance the Oldest Dream was the writer. I thought so too.

But why?

"I don't think the Oldest Dream is the writer of TWSA."

"Why do you think that?"

"I don't know why. I just have a feeling."

I didn't think the being at the end of this was tls123.

I remembered what the Dokkaebi King had said.

「[The Oldest Dream is closer to a reader than a writer. He isn't a being who writes stories for someone else. He's lazy and greedy.]」

I also wondered whether all these assumptions even needed a writer in the first place.

Had this world truly begun because of tls123?

Maybe tls123 had only shown me a world that already existed. Just as Secretive Plotter and the people from the 999th round had existed alone, unrecorded on any page...

"Come to think of it, I've been wondering. How did you end up finding that novel, Dokja-ssi?"

"Ah, I've always wondered that too."

Even Junghyeok, who had been cleaning the Black Heaven Demon Blade as though he wasn't interested, looked toward me when the subject came up. Hayoung asked with sparkling eyes,

"Was there some kind of fateful pull?"

"I understand that feeling! The first time I held a grenade as a new recruit-"

"I just happened to find it while searching the internet."

My answer seemed to disappoint them. It couldn't be helped if they were disappointed. That was the truth. Suyeong scolded me.

"What did you search for that got you a novel like this?"

"Well..."

I couldn't remember clearly either.

Jihye shrugged.

"Who cares about that now? What matters is that you read the novel, Mister."

"Exactly. What would we have done if Dokja-ssi hadn't read it?"

I kept my mouth shut as I watched Sangah smile brightly.

I didn't deserve to hear those words.

「In the end, the stars fell, and time in the world stopped.」

We were heading toward an ending no one in TWSA had ever reached, but there was no guarantee I would find what I wanted at its end.

Even I didn't know what would happen from now on.

「If someone else had read that novel to the end.」

There were people far better than me. Righteous Huiwon, loyal Hyeongseong, upright Sangah. They should have read that novel to the end. If they had, this world would have become something far better.

"Thank you, Mister. For reading that novel back then."

Yuseong smiled as she brought herself level with my eyes.

"That's right. You said that novel wasn't even interesting, didn't you? If it hadn't been Dokja-ssi..."

"If it had been me, I wouldn't have finished even one page. I really hate books."

"I did read a few books from the barracks library in Oz, but I guess reading just isn't for me..."

I barely managed to close my mouth as I watched Hyeongseong scratch his head.

These people before me existed because TWSA existed. Because I had read that novel, I was able to save them when they were in danger.

"I..."

Someone as insignificant as me was able to be loved.

"We made it this far because of the fables you taught us, Hyung."

The children's small hands tightly held mine.

When I slowly raised my head, I saw the darkness flowing past the subway. The fables we had lived through were passing through that darkness.

We silently watched those fables. They were as beautiful as the Milky Way on a winter night and as fleeting as fireworks. Stories no one here could forget, but stories that would someday be forgotten.

Huiwon spoke.

"Dokja-ssi, I think I can ask you now."

I knew what she wanted to ask.

"What exactly is the 'ending' you wanted to see?"

There were no Constellations left to watch us. The Star Stream that had ruled the world was gone too.

There was probably no longer a reason I couldn't tell them.

"One of them... I've already seen."

I quietly looked at each of my Allies' faces. No sentences appeared on their faces. Even so, as I looked at those faces, I thought I understood the ending I had wanted to see.

"And the other is paying back a debt."

"A debt?"

When I turned my head, Junghyeok was glaring at me.

With a heavy tremor, the train slowly began to decelerate.

We slowly rose from our seats. The Allies, who had been talking noisily, gradually fell quiet. Tension showed on their faces.

I slowly approached the door. Huiwon stood to my left, Junghyeok to my right.

The current of fables drifting through the darkness was slowing.

There wasn't only our story.

「There was a zeroth round, and there was a first round.」

There was a second round, and there was a third round.

「Thus, 1,864 rounds gathered, and those rounds opened this world.」

Countless Yu Junghyeoks had lived through those rounds. Not one had been a proper life, but none had been a wrong life either.

The world was too cruel to discuss the ethics of life, and despair was too vast to speak of hope.

Yet because he never justified himself, Yu Junghyeok remained steadfast.

「Only the desire to see the end of this world.」

I had that desire too.

It was the dream desired by 1,865 Yu Junghyeoks, from the zeroth round to the 1,864th round. It was also the end of this world that I wanted.

"It's been a long time."

Junghyeok shot back as if asking what I was talking about.

"Only four years. Compared to the years I've lived through..."

"Yeah."

Four years. That was how long we had been fighting together.

"It was four years that felt like a lifetime."

Huiwon, standing to my left, poked me with the hilt of her sword.

"We'll keep being together from now on, so why are you talking so dramatically? Don't worry. Whatever monster is waiting for us, I'll finish it off."

I smiled quietly. The subway slowed more and more.

My reflection showed in the pitch-black glass of the door. A bloodstain had spread across the cheek reflected in the glass. I wiped the blood from my cheek, then felt a chill.

「It wasn't the glass. Blood really was smeared across my cheek.」

"The doors are opening!"

At Hyeongseong's cry, every Ally prepared for battle.

"Huh?"

Yet unlike what we had expected, a desolate subway platform greeted us. There were people moving around now and then, but they didn't seem to pay us much attention.

"What? There's nothing..."

The moment I stepped onto the platform beside Huiwon, who had muttered those words, an ominous feeling swept over me. An unfamiliar sense of reality touched my toes. With faint sparks, all my fables pointed somewhere.

「Someone sat on a subway bench.」

A thick backpack, packed with textbooks as though its owner had just gotten out of school. A tiny, scrawny child sat there, small enough that I might have thought him an elementary school student if he hadn't been wearing a school uniform.

As if memorizing English vocabulary, the boy was drawing something like a chart in his notebook.

My head throbbed as I barely forced my reluctant feet to move.

「Kim Dokja had promised. He would bring an end to the culprit who created this world, no matter what kind of being it was.」

Had someone beaten him up? A dark bruise was visible on the pale child's arm. It was the kind of bruise whose origin I felt I knew all too well. My legs gave out, and I couldn't move.

「Time simply does not pass because he neither reads nor imagines.」

I thought all of this could be a dream, a lie. I believed it could be a dream created by the wicked Star Stream. But I couldn't deny it. Every one of my senses told me.

That child was the culprit who had created all these Scenarios.

「You knew it was com ing, Kim Dok ja.」

The Oldest Dream, the god more omniscient and powerless than anyone else in the world.

[The influence of The Fourth Wall is gradually weakening.]

「Kim Dok...」

[The influence of The Fourth Wall is weakening drastically.]

I heard something fall, then saw Huiwon's sword rolling across the floor.

"Ah, ah..."

Huiwon was looking at me. Her eyes moved from the child to me. Despair filled them both, as though she couldn't believe it, as though she wished all of this were a lie.

[The promise with Secretive Plotter has activated.]

I opened and closed my mouth several times.

This might have been Punishment. Only now was I paying the price for the salvation I had received.

[You promised to destroy the Star Stream.]

[Star Stream will not be destroyed as long as the Oldest Dream does not end.]

I looked at the child.

The child with the same face as mine.

The child slowly raised his head and looked at me.

[End the Oldest Dream.]

Footnotes:

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