WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈
Chapter 539: Epilogue 4: Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (4)
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An explosion rang out across the snowfield.
After knocking back the Hound Chasing the Abyss with the Black Heaven Demon Blade, Yu Junghyeok climbed onto the train's roof.
It was no ordinary explosion. Had something happened inside the train?
[Damn it! There are too many of them!]
Abyssal Black Flame Dragon snarled as he fought off the hounds. There was no end to the hounds pouring in from every direction. Even Great Sage Equaling Heaven, who had repeatedly struck them with lightning and burned them away, spoke in a weary voice.
[I hate to admit it, but we're still no match for those from the 999th round.]
Another tremendous roar came from inside the train. Junghyeok turned toward it without realizing.
What was that?
Something like fable fragments was flowing out from the front car.
Rumble.
Then, something burst out through a hole in the train.
Uriel cried out in alarm.
[Yu Junghyeok! Get out of the way!]
The next moment, hounds spewed from the train and engulfed Junghyeok in black.
* * *
Black fragments crumbled away. The door before her was vanishing around a comma-shaped hole.
Han Suyeong pushed herself up from the floor and looked ahead.
Near the entrance leading to Car 3807, printed characters had fallen to the ground.
「Me too」
「With all of you」
The moment she saw those words, which had not even formed full sentences, Suyeong realized what had touched the door from the other side.
They were fables. Tiny fragments of Kim Dokja.
Her gaze followed those scattered fragments. The closer they were to the center of the car, the more fable fragments had fallen.
「Kim Dokja was there.」
Dokja's body, now as small as a child, floated in the middle of the car. His eyes were closed, and he seemed unconscious. Dazzling fable fragments flowed from his body, which radiated an entrancing light.
The fragments passed through the train windows and drifted away somewhere.
"Ah...?"
The Avatar standing beside Suyeong let out a sound. His eyes trembled in shock. The Avatar walked toward the child Dokja.
"Ah... Ah, I..."
The moment he spoke, a powerful force pulled at the Avatar.
A force calling him.
The Avatar's body was gradually breaking apart. The dissolved fragments were being drawn into his original body.
The Avatar turned, and his eyes met Suyeong's. She reached out without thinking.
"Grab on!"
Her hand didn't reach him. The Avatar broke apart and was drawn in even faster. Fragments of him brushed her fingertips.
Words caught on Suyeong's fingertips.
「I'm sorry」
What was he sorry for?
The Avatar scattered like an illusion and was absorbed into his original body, releasing a bright light. Yet even after completely absorbing the Avatar's fables, Dokja's body didn't grow again.
Instead, even more fables poured out from him.
"Kim Dokja!"
Suyeong knew instinctively that she had to stop it.
If she couldn't, they would lose Dokja forever.
Her muscles, tensed with all her strength, sprang forward like a coiled spring. Just as Suyeong tried to reach Dokja in midair...
「You can't go any far ther」
A violent gale swept through the car with a thunderous roar, and something exploded from Dokja's body.
Dokja's fables were flooding out.
Black sentences streamed from him, soon covering the entire car before swallowing Suyeong whole.
"Everyone, be careful!"
Suyeong was violently pushed away, as though her skin were being scraped.
Dokja was getting farther away.
She looked around, but there was nothing to grab. Even after releasing her Status as a Constellation and borrowing the power of the Great Fables, there was no way to stop the raging current.
"Kim Dokja! Sto-!"
The sentences pouring from Dokja clawed across her entire body.
Sentences someone had endured for a lifetime.
The despair created by one person's life.
The waves of printed characters that covered everything in sight were like deep darkness.
The Dokja she understood was no more than a speck.
Overwhelmed in an instant, Suyeong was helplessly swept away, unable to speak.
Yu Sangah braced her from behind.
"Get a hold of yourself!"
Dokja was faintly visible through the gaps between the printed characters.
Jihye shouted, "He's a kid? Why did Ahjussi become like that?"
"Hyung!"
"Everyone, stick together!"
The Allies wrapped themselves around one another to endure the waves. Even that wasn't enough. They were pushed back, then pushed back again.
At this rate, it was only a matter of time before they were driven out of the car, then thrown from the train itself.
Then someone braced their whole body across the entrance.
"Huaaaap! I'll hold it back!"
It was Hyeongseong.
Creak!
Hyeongseong's [Steel Transformation] activated. His limbs assimilated with the metal of the entrance, forming a net that supported the Allies.
His face twisted in pain as he watched Dokja's fables brush past him.
「Kim Dokja was too difficult for Lee Hyeongseong to understand.」
Understanding someone begins with admitting that, in the end, you don't know them.
Hyeongseong bit his lip until it bled and shouted, "I can only hold on for a little while! Hurry!"
Pildu summoned the turrets of Armament Fortress to support Hyeongseong from behind.
"If I help, we can hold on longer! Hurry up and save him!"
The Allies looked at one another.
"Hold hands!"
Huiwon, gripping Hyeongseong with one arm, held out her hand.
"Everyone, release your fables!"
Seolhwa took her hand, then Yuseong and Gilyeong took Seolhwa's. The children's hands connected to Jihye's, followed by Persephone and Sukyeong.
"Kim Dokja! Wake up!"
When Jang Hayoung, holding Sukyeong's hand, shouted, Sangah took her hand.
"Suyeong-ssi!"
Suyeong was the last to take hold.
"Got it."
[The Great Fable One Who Defies Fate continues its story!]
The Great Fable binding the Allies together resisted the fierce storm.
Suyeong's body swayed helplessly like a buoy in a storm. She could endure only because the Allies were behind her.
As if rescuing someone from drowning, the Allies tightly held one another's hands amid the waves of printed characters.
Huiwon shouted toward the faintly visible Dokja.
"Dokja-ssi! We're here! Just hold on a little longer!"
Holding hands, the Allies resembled a solid paragraph joined as one. Feeling the warmth passed through their hands, Suyeong came to understand.
Words existed to express that deep darkness.
And stories were made to comfort it.
"Kim Dokja!"
Their hands gripped each other tightly, like sentences supporting one another. Relying on those hands, Suyeong walked toward Dokja one step at a time. Dokja was obscured by dark printed characters, with only his face barely visible.
「What you are do ing now is mean ing less」
The waves grew fiercer as [The Fourth Wall] spoke.
「Kim Dok ja is o ne」
Suyeong knew, too, why Dokja was becoming smaller.
His young face resembled the Oldest Dream she had once seen.
He would forget the memories he had shared with the Allies.
He would even forget reading TWSA.
He would return to the great cycle of the universe and become the purest child.
He would be saved by Secretive Plotter.
But then what would become of the Dokja they remembered?
"Do you know what it took for us to get here?!"
Her fingertips burned as she reached out.
Dokja was right before her.
「The one reader who would understand this story.」
That Dokja was right there.
The distance was less than four meters, yet to Suyeong, it looked like an infinite blank space that nothing could fill. It felt as if an invisible wall stood between her and Dokja.
"You bastard! You said you'd read my novel!"
She wanted to tell him there was a world where he could be saved without sacrificing himself.
She had thought she could do it.
Because she was better at lying than anyone.
"What does TWSA even matter? I can make dozens, hundreds of fictional worlds for you!"
Her voice gradually lost strength.
She had written so many sentences, yet she couldn't save even one person.
Dokja's figure was growing hazy amid the dizzying chaos.
What if she had been a little stronger?
Maybe she had made the wrong plan.
She should have learned far stronger Attributes. She should have built up more brutal fables.
She should never have left Dokja alone in the first place. She should have noticed his plan sooner.
No, perhaps...
She should never have written TWSA.
She should never have become the writer of that story.
Writer.
Suyeong suddenly lifted her head.
「Can I do it?」
She didn't know.
「You can do it」
Someone else was saying it for her.
Memories from the 1,863rd round stirred as fables. Suyeong looked at her fingertips. Her fingers were charred black like charcoal.
She wasn't the protagonist.
She was a writer.
As if holding a pen, Suyeong slowly moved her hand. A trail formed in the air. The trail drew printed characters, and those characters soon became words.
[Your Attribute has been activated to its limit!]
[Warning! You do not have permission to Overwrite!]
Suyeong vomited blood, but she didn't stop.
There had only ever been one way for a writer to reach a reader.
「Han Suyeong imagined. Just as another version of herself had once imagined.」
With the most powerful and heartfelt sentences, she drew a man's hands, arms, and legs.
A character created for only one reader.
A being with a spirit stronger and more noble than anyone else in this world.
The man who had brought down every star in the heavens to end his long regression, then ultimately shattered even the world's system.
Tzzzzzz!
Every character was an Incarnation of their writer.
But that didn't mean they were the writer themself.
The characters who left her fingertips didn't listen to her.
That was why Suyeong had to ask for help from the character she had created.
[The Constellation Designer of the False Ending has opened all her fables!]
[Your new Stigma is blossoming!]
The one word that would fill that blank space.
Suyeong cried out as though screaming her lungs out.
"Yu Junghyeok-!"
The printed characters before her split apart.
Sky Splitter Sword Art.
Secret Technique.
Dark Sea Slash.
A single sword cut through the black night sea. A Transcendent's fighting spirit blooming from the man's entire body lit up the darkness of the printed characters.
[The Stigma Character Summoning has activated!]
A character she had written, yet did not know.
[The character Yu Junghyeok has responded to the call!]
"Hold on tight."
The man manifested in a burst of light. Junghyeok's strong hand gripped hers. Suyeong held back her tears and shouted back.
"You hold on tight!"
From Hyeongseong to Junghyeok, the Allies' fables shone white.
They had lost much to come this far.
"Master! Hurry!"
But loss wasn't all they had known.
Junghyeok reached out.
The remaining reach of one person.
A distance they could not have crossed if even one of them had been missing finally narrowed.
Junghyeok's hand tore through the printed characters. The sentences protecting Dokja fell away one by one. A hand that had endured thousands of regressions firmly grabbed Dokja by the collar, as though drawing out an old memory.
"It's time to stop going back, Kim Dokja."
The next instant, everything in the world went dark, as if the power had gone out.
Footnotes:
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