Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint - Chapter 592

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 592: Episode 8: Representative Kim Dokja (2)

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"Di-did you just say Jiyoon?"

When Uncle Dansu asked, Ye Hyeonu frowned warily.

"Pardon?"

"Jiyoon! Do you know Jiyoon?"

"She's my friend. Why?"

"Where is Jiyoon right now?"

Startled by the uncle's sudden outburst, Hyeonu turned to me with wide eyes.

I calmed the panting uncle before speaking.

"Your daughter's name is No Jiyoon, Uncle."

Hyeonu's eyes widened.

"No Jiyoon? Seriously?"

He looked back and forth between us, then muttered cautiously.

"They could just have the same name..."

"Is your friend Jiyoon the one who says she'll marry Yu Junghyeok in the future?"

Hyeonu nodded blankly at my question.

"Huh? Yeah. Wow, you really are Jiyoon's father. Wait, but if you're here, then you've read Revelation too..."

"Where is Jiyoon right now?"

This was the first person Uncle Dansu had met who knew his daughter since coming to this world. He looked like he could barely breathe.

"I'm sorry... I haven't seen Jiyoon since I got here, either."

"Ah..."

"But she's definitely somewhere in this world. I was dragged here after going to the theater with her."

At the mention of a theater, Gyeong Se-in asked, "Seventh Apostle, were you at Kim Dokja's Banquet too?"

"Yeah. You too?"

"I went there as well..."

As expected, most readers who had been at the theater seemed to have undergone Possession in this world.

Uncle Dansu added, "I was in the hospital when I was suddenly dragged here..."

So Possession could happen even if someone hadn't been at the theater. Maybe not everyone who came here had been inside it.

Hyeonu sighed and added, "If I'd known this would happen, I wouldn't have gone. I was feeling great until I got the quiz right. It was a hard question, so I was looking forward to the prize..."

"What did you get right?"

"Um, the meaning of 1,863..."

"Ah, so that was the Seventh Apostle."

I vaguely remembered him, too.

The person who had confidently explained the connection between Yu Junghyeok's regression round and the year the subway first opened. The girl sitting beside him had probably asked whether Dokja had come back to life.

Then, was the girl who had asked about Dokja Jiyoon?

As if out of habit, Hyeonu sighed again and glanced at Yu Junghyeok, who was still pacing along the tracks.

"I haven't seen Jiyoon since we split up back then. I naturally thought she'd be beside Yu Junghyeok by now, but it doesn't look like she possessed Jihye, either."

At his thoughtless remark, Uncle Dansu's expression darkened at once.

"Still, if it's Jiyoon, she's alive somewhere, so don't worry too much. A tough kid like her couldn't have died. She's read Revelation more times than I have."

I paused as I listened.

Jiyoon had read it more than fifty times?

Hyeonu gave a faint smile, as if changing the subject.

"Still, it's amazing that you've already made it this far. I only survived because I got lucky and started near Chungmuro, even after reading it fifty times. But you all..."

"We started at Geumho Station."

"Wow, that Geumho Station? Well, since you're Inho Cheon... Then you must have met Jeong Huiwon there too?"

"Yes."

Huiwon was talking with Jihye about ten steps away. From the looks of it, Jihye had taken an interest in her first and was asking all sorts of questions.

"That's really strange. Jeong Huiwon becoming Inho Cheon's Companion... Is this development okay?"

I had nothing to say to that.

As far as developments went, I thought it was fairly original.

"Anyway, it's a relief to meet other members of the Apostle Society. That bastard Killer King brought a whole pack of Misreading Association guys with him, and dealing with them was exhausting."

At that, I remembered the corpses of the inhuman species sprawled before the tunnel. So that had been Ye Hyeonu and Pildu Gong's work.

"Did the Misreading Association attack here too?"

"You've met them already?"

"Thanks to Killer King."

"Ugh, that bastard... Anyway, they came here too. They looked like they'd prepared a lot for an early rush. Of course, I think they seriously underestimated my third-stage Invincible Castle Lord tech tree."

Perhaps because he had a special fondness for Pildu Gong, Hyeonu spent a while going on to us about that Housebound Invincible Castle Lord Development Plan or whatever it was.

How long had he talked?

"I want to go home."

It felt like stepping on a thorn growing in the middle of a field.

Since when had Hyeonu's eyes filled with tears?

Only then did I remember that Hyeonu was around Jiyoon's age.

They all looked excited to have entered a novel, but no one could truly want to end up in an apocalypse like this.

Gyeong Se-in clenched his fists. Uncle Dansu rose to his feet and reached toward the boy's shoulder, as if to comfort him.

That was when a voice came from behind us.

"Quit talking and get over here, kid."

Hyeonu hurried over and sat beside Pildu Gong. When Hyeonu sniffled, Pildu Gong glared at me as if he wanted to kill me.

Hyeonu was, at most, in his mid-to-late teens. A child like him had endured the first and second Scenarios and survived all the way here.

I wanted to tell him something. That he would make it safely back home. That nothing would happen.

But did I have the right to say something like that?

Bzzzzzt.

The same vibration sounded from everyone's pockets.

With slight delays between us, we took out our phones one by one.

Then.

"Inho."

Gyeong Se-in's voice was tense.

He wasn't the only one. Uncle Dansu, even Ye Hyeonu beside Pildu Gong, all wore similar expressions.

The same note had appeared on every phone screen.

―It's been a while, readers.

Representative Kim Dokja had sent a note.

"This, right now..."

I quickly looked around.

I wanted to see if anyone besides us was looking at their phone.

"Let's check it first."

I opened the note.

―Hello, readers. By now, you have all entered the second Scenario, while the quicker among you may already be progressing through the third Scenario.

You have all survived well. Of course, there are also readers who failed to survive. What can you do? You should have kept up with your reading.

There was a strange chill in that tone.

Was this really a note from Representative Kim Dokja I knew?

―You must all be wondering. Why me? What did I do to end up possessed in this world? Was it because I read that damned novel? But I never even left malicious comments, so why? Who put me in this world, and why?

A bad feeling suddenly came over me.

"Everyone! If you haven't opened the note yet..."

I couldn't finish my sentence.

―You must be frustrated. So, for the readers who have survived so far, I will hold a small briefing. Why you came to this world, and...

Bzzzt.

With that sound, Gyeong Se-in, Uncle Dansu, and Ye Hyeonu fell one after another like puppets whose strings had been cut.

―What you must accomplish to return to your original world.

My vision went dark as well.

―Then I will see you soon.

* * *

In a dark tunnel, a woman in a white coat had been watching Chungmuro Station with a lollipop in her mouth. She suddenly leaped to her feet.

"Remember every person whose phone just rang."

[The Constellation Sinister Strategist asks what the fuss is about.]

"Those guys are all possessed. And..."

The woman checked the faces of Inho Cheon's fallen group one by one before adding, "Track the coordinates of the newly created subspace. Find out where their souls were summoned. Quickly."

* * *

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a wide lobby.

The moment I jumped to my feet, my eye level felt strangely familiar.

As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, the scene around me came into view.

An unlit ticket booth and self-service ticket machines.

This was the theater in Chungmuro.

As I approached one of the machines, someone's face was reflected in its black screen.

My own face was there. Not Inho Cheon's face, but Lee Hakhyun's.

A hollow laugh escaped me as conflicting emotions crossed my mind. Along with a deep sense of relief came an inexplicable disappointment.

Could it all have been a dream?

Of course, something like being possessed in a novel couldn't really happen. Something straight out of a web novel couldn't suddenly happen to me.

That was when the lights on the ceiling came on.

Blinding pillars of light descended around me, and people began being summoned one after another.

"Arghhhh!"

"What is this?!"

Some screamed, while others calmly examined their surroundings.

People had appeared in an instant.

I recognized who they were.

「Readers.」

The readers who had been possessed in the novel alongside me.

Only when I saw them did I realize it. We had all been summoned here in the same appearances we had in reality.

I quickly counted the people. Even a rough count put them at several hundred.

It seemed there were more people who had been possessed elsewhere, not just those who had been at the theater.

I had counted around one hundred and twenty when I spotted a head that stood especially high above the crowd.

I might not recognize everyone else, but I couldn't fail to recognize that person.

"Se-in."

"Huh? Who..."

The startled man turned toward me, and I saw his name tag.

[JudgeHuiwon.]

He seemed to have checked my name tag too.

"I-Inho? You're Inho, right?"

"That's right."

"Argh! Inho!"

Gyeong Se-in threw his arms around me and wailed dramatically.

I hurriedly pulled him away and asked, "Have you seen the others?"

"Well, I don't know what the others actually look like."

That was true.

Perhaps people were beginning to grasp the situation, because voices calling for others rose from all around us.

"Mijin! Seo Mijin!"

"JihyeLove! Is JihyeLove here?"

"NamunMom!"

Come to think of it, there was someone I had to find too. Maybe this was my only chance.

"Se-in. I need to go somewhere for a moment."

"What? Inho, wait!"

I pushed through the crowd, checking faces one by one.

"Ji Eunyu! Is Eunyu here?"

Ji Eunyu, my editor.

She was the one who had brought me to this theater. She had read Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint and answered the quiz, so she must have been possessed too.

"Eunyu!"

But I couldn't see her anywhere.

Had she not been summoned yet?

Or...

I bit down hard on my lip. She was none other than Ji Eunyu. She might have read my novel even more than I had.

There was no way Eunyu could have failed to survive.

That was when I heard a familiar name.

"Jiyoon... Jiyoon!"

A well-dressed middle-aged man was sitting on the floor, desperately calling for someone.

"Uncle."

When I approached, the middle-aged man looked up at me. I didn't recognize his face, but the moment I saw his eyes, I was certain.

"Inho... my friend?"

It was undoubtedly Uncle Dansu.

"Yes."

The real Uncle Dansu was just as handsome as his version in the novel.

The difference was that this uncle's complexion was so poor he looked ready to collapse at any moment, and his body was as thin as a dead tree.

"I'm sorry, my friend. Jiyoon. Please find Jiyoon..."

After saying that, Uncle Dansu fainted.

His head was burning with fever. I hurriedly carried him onto my back. His body was as light as a child's.

Should I take him to a hospital?

But there was no way I could.

The theater's emergency exits and elevators were blocked by translucent walls.

This wasn't the theater we knew. It was a temporary subspace someone had created.

It wasn't built for us to escape.

Then there was only one thing I could do.

"Jiyoon! No Jiyoon!"

I began shouting at the top of my lungs. Gyeong Se-in, who had rushed over, seemed to understand the situation and began calling Jiyoon's name with me.

"Jiyoon! Where are you?"

I saw several children who looked about Jiyoon's age, but Jiyoon wasn't among them.

Before long, every pillar of light disappeared.

The summoning had finally ended.

The next moment, I stopped as I felt a strange pressure. It was hard to breathe, and my head spun.

「Something was watching us.」

I struggled to raise my head as if resisting gravity.

Since when had they been there?

Someone was floating near the theater ceiling.

【Let's see. You're finally all here.】

He wore a pure white coat, had a face resembling Dokja's, and wore his trademark sunglasses as he spoke to us.

【Welcome to Kim Dokja's Banquet, everyone.】