WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 628: Episode 15: A Kingless World (1)

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「The Hundred Strongest, No. 89. "Berserk Butcher." Name unknown. Age unknown. From South Korea.

The Berserk Butcher was active in many different ways, from the <Demon King Selection> to <Gigantomachia>. Several nebulae repeatedly tried to recruit him, but he was known to have remained solo until he vanished in the Scenarios of the nineties.

Once he entered a mad state, his combat ability rivaled that of the strongest Incarnations. Records also say that when the Great Fable "Mahanaraka" opened, he clashed with India's Rannvir Khan in a bloody battle.

The Butcher wandered the Scenarios like a ghost, searching for the enemy who had killed a Companion. He always wore a "Skull Mask." It was said that no one knew the Butcher's true face beneath it.」

- From Flying Fox's 『The Hundred Strongest』

* * *

We headed straight for Seoul Station.

There were two main reasons.

One was to find the "Berserk Butcher" Junghyeok had mentioned.

The other was this.

[You are currently in a Wanderer state.]

[You must obtain a flag within two days.]

It was about time to get a new flag.

If I weren't planning to join the Throne Contest, I could have remained a Wanderer a little longer and looked for another way to survive. But since this world was the forty-first round, I had to prepare for every possibility.

Junghyeok might suddenly do something strange, and unexpected bastards like Odokhyeop could appear.

If they somehow claimed the Absolute Throne, this round would be completely ruined.

"Are you sure that Butcher or whatever is around Seoul Station?"

I nodded at Huiwon's question.

"Yes. There are probably hidden flags around here too."

How did I know that?

「Near Seoul Station. There are hidden white flags around Huam-dong and Namyeong-dong.」

The moment I decided to head to Seoul Station, that sentence naturally came to mind.

It was all thanks to the newly acquired TWSA skill.

[The Exclusive Skill Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World is currently active.]

I still hadn't figured out exactly how to use it.

I knew how to turn the skill on and off, but it couldn't search for information I wanted or let me read a specific round of TWSA. Whenever I thought of something or took a particular action, certain details from TWSA simply surfaced in my mind like game tips.

Even that was an enormous help right now.

The only question was why this skill had suddenly appeared.

Considering that sentences from TWSA had started reaching me right after I met Han Suyeong, perhaps she had given me the skill.

But why? For what reason?

I didn't know.

What I did know was that I now had information from TWSA, which put me overwhelmingly ahead of the other Readers and Odokhyeop.

That was all.

We quickly headed southwest toward Seoul Station.

As we passed through Myeongdong 8ga-gil, a street popular with tourists, we occasionally found foreigners. More precisely, we found foreign corpses.

Most of the bodies scattered around had been torn apart by low-grade beast species until they were unrecognizable.

We walked on, trying our best to look away.

"Wow, this street has changed so much. Did you come to Myeongdong often?"

"A few times when I was in college."

"I used to work part-time at that theater."

Huiwon pointed at a half-collapsed building.

"I'm sure it was there..."

Not even a month had passed, yet the Seoul we knew had already been erased from the world.

As if a new story could only begin after that world had fallen apart.

"They used to sell tornado potatoes for so much here. And lobster..."

"Did you ever try them?"

"Not once. How could I afford something that expensive?"

The street that had once been packed with stalls and merchants was now covered in beast and human corpses.

"Still, it smelled nice."

"Yeah."

The Myeongdong Huiwon remembered and the Myeongdong I remembered were probably different.

Yet here we were, standing together in the ruins of Myeongdong, missing street food we had thought we'd never buy for the rest of our lives.

"Inho-ssi."

"Yes?"

"If we're going to Seoul Station, can we stop by Huam-dong for a moment? It's right nearby."

Huam-dong.

According to TWSA, there was a hidden white flag there.

I nodded and asked, "Do you have somewhere to be?"

"There's somewhere I want to visit."

A place someone who survived in a ruined world would want to visit.

I knew where it was without asking.

* * *

Huiwon's past didn't appear in TWSA. More accurately, even Jeong Huiwon herself was never mentioned. She wasn't a main character.

Yet even in 『Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint』, where she had been a main character in her own way, Huiwon's past was never properly covered.

Then again, it wasn't just Huiwon.

Hyeongseong couldn't tell his story about the military, Gilyeong's mother was omitted, Yuseong's dead dog was kept hidden, and Jihye's friend was described only as much as necessary.

In the end, Han Suyeong had written this story, and Kim Dokja Company had told it to her. Why, then, hadn't their stories been introduced in 『Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint』?

It wasn't hard to guess why.

Perhaps Kim Dokja Company didn't think 『Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint』 was their story.

After all, it had been Kim Dokja's story.

"We're here."

The place Huiwon led me to was a military housing apartment building facing a secluded alley.

"How many years has it been? It's gotten old."

"Is it your first time back in a while?"

"I ran away from home in high school. Didn't I tell you?"

Maybe I had heard that. Maybe I hadn't.

"Honestly, I didn't want to come... But since we're heading to Seoul Station anyway, I thought I'd stop by."

Had someone cleared away the bodies? Only bloodstains remained at the entrance leading to the apartment parking lot.

The apartment guard post had been smashed as if a tank had rolled over it. The balcony windows were shattered as though the building had been shelled.

As I watched curtains sway through cracked glass, I thought of all the things that had vanished.

What had happened to everyone who originally lived here?

Had they gone through the first Scenario too? If they had, had they killed their own family members? Or had they knocked on their neighbors' doors and held knives to them?

I didn't know what tragedy had unfolded here.

I was afraid to find out.

[There is a white flag nearby.]

All I knew was that there was a white flag here, and we had to claim it.

Only then could we survive tomorrow and the day after.

Only then could we see the end of this damned world.

"This is it."

Huiwon's home was on the fifth floor.

As she hesitated before the front door, I said, "You don't have to go in."

She had said she didn't like her family. Still, family was family in the end.

"Coming this far is already more than enough, Huiwon-ssi."

Huiwon looked lost somewhere between stale obligation and guilt.

Then resolve settled over her face.

"Still, I want to check."

She really was strong.

After knocking on the door a few times, she thought for a moment, then lifted the cover over the keypad and began entering the password.

Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep beep beep.

After getting it wrong about three times, the door opened.

"Still the same."

The moment the door opened, damp, stale air hit us. It smelled like a home that hadn't been aired out in over a week.

Without even taking off her shoes, Huiwon walked straight inside. She didn't ask whether anyone was there or call out anyone's name.

I was about to follow her, but after some hesitation, I took off my shoes at the entrance.

Beside them were dress shoes and sneakers arranged in neat rows, like towels in a barracks locker.

There was probably no one in this house.

I had a feeling.

Huiwon had apparently already made a round of the house. She came back looking slightly relieved.

"I don't think either of them was home."

Was that fortunate, or unfortunate?

I didn't know.

Huiwon probably didn't either.

I didn't know who had lived here. Still, they didn't seem like people who cooked at home.

There was no food waste in the sink, nor were there any garbage bags in sight.

Huiwon stood at the living room window for a while, looking outside.

"You see that apartment building across from us? I lived there when I was little."

"..."

"Then we moved to that hillside neighborhood over there. I even lived near the front lines, and we stayed around Yongsan for a while. Soldiers' families move apartments regularly."

Huiwon's father had been a soldier.

I had a childhood friend whose father was in the military, so I had heard similar stories before.

"Whenever Dad got reassigned, we'd move to a new neighborhood, and my brother and I followed him around. We'd move just when we were getting used to a place, then move again just when we were getting used to the next one. After Mom ran away, the cycle got even faster."

Huiwon drew a circle on the dusty window.

"They called it moving, but every neighborhood felt the same. There was always a military base nearby, and the distinctive refugee-like smell of families following soldiers. Since it was land for soldiers to live on, the country didn't allocate expensive land to them. In Seoul, they were the kind of neighborhoods that made you wonder if places like this even existed in Seoul... That's why I left home. I was sick of it."

The finger drawing circles stopped.

"I was sick of those people."

Huiwon slowly turned her head and looked around.

On top of the living room cabinet, which reached her calves, was a framed family photo. Inside was a middle-aged man in uniform, a young Huiwon, and a boy who appeared to be her younger brother.

The boy wore a graduation cap, so it was probably taken at his elementary school graduation.

Huiwon took the photo from the frame.

"But when I finally got out, society was the same."

As I looked at the photograph, my parents' faces came to mind for the first time in a while.

They had been good people.

They were such good people that there was no other way to put it.

「But Lee Hakhyun didn't miss them all that much.」

Why was that? I wasn't sure.

Was it strange that I had been born to such good people?

Or...

「Did that life simply not feel like my life?」

Maybe it was because I had read too many novels since childhood.

Whenever I opened my eyes, I read books and lived by writing stories. The place where I had always lived was a world within text, a world of light and darkness ruled by dragons, swords, and magic.

「Perhaps that was why Lee Hakhyun had always lived with the feeling that he was living someone else's life.」

In the black screen of the turned-off television, I saw Inho Cheon's half-lidded eyes.

A face that wasn't mine.

Even now, I was living someone else's story.

[The Constellation Demonic Judge of Fire looks into your face.]

[The Constellation Prisoner of the Golden Headband is curious about your thoughts.]

[The Constellation Abyssal Black Flame Dragon warns you to stop fooling around and go kill the other guys.]

I raised a hand to the face reflected in the screen.

Had Inho Cheon, the person I was possessing, once been someone's child too?

Had he had a family?

For the first time, I thought about the life of the villain who had ruined the fortieth round and disappeared.

Where had Inho Cheon's original soul gone?

[The Constellation Sinister Schemer pities you.]

Huiwon finally raised her head.

"That's enough. Let's go. This isn't why we came here."

I nodded.

Huiwon had probably been hearing the messages ringing by my ear for a while now.

[There is a white flag hidden nearby.]

[The interval between messages grows shorter the closer you get to the white flag.]

There was a white flag somewhere in this apartment building.

"I don't think it's in my home."

At least, it wasn't inside Huiwon's home.

We measured the intervals between the messages and gauged the flag's location.

At this distance, the first place we had to suspect was... the apartment next door?

"I think it's this one."

We stood before the old front door and looked at each other for a moment.

Huiwon asked first, "Should we ring the doorbell, or break it down?"

"If someone were inside, they would've obtained the flag already. We wouldn't be getting messages like this."

"Is that so?"

"Still, just in case."

"Which one?"

We rang the doorbell of the empty apartment at the same time.

Of course, there was no response.

We shared a bitter smile.

Perhaps this was the small scrap of humanity we could still find in this apocalypse.

Then, the next moment,

Click.

Someone opened the door from inside.

Footnotes:

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