WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 630: Episode 15: A Kingless World (1)

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"Kim Dokja?"

At that name, Jeong Huiwon glanced back at me.

She seemed to have remembered the times the other Apostles and I had mentioned that name.

「Jeong Huiwon doesn't know that we are Possessors.」

Huiwon only knew that the other Apostles and I knew the future.

Still, she seemed to have instinctively sensed that something was off.

"Is that a name you know?"

At her younger brother's question, Huiwon shook her head.

"No, it's nothing. So? What else did Dad say?"

"I don't remember everything. He said he knew the future, that this world would soon be destroyed... He said he didn't have time to look after me, so I had to survive on my own somehow. But then he gathered people around him and built up his group. The man next door and the soldiers downstairs followed Dad, too. You remember Sergeant Kim and Staff Sergeant Hyeon, right? A few things Dad predicted actually came true."

I thought about the Reader who had possessed Jeong Huiwon's father.

He, too, must have been trying to survive in his own way. After suddenly being thrown into the world of a novel while reading it, he couldn't have known he was someone's father.

Even so, the boy before me had lost his father because of him.

Dokja had once said that a great destruction wasn't the only kind of destruction. What truly annihilated someone was a small destruction.

Maybe the other Readers who had possessed people here and I were already a Calamity to this world's native people.

"Then the Beggar's Sect captured him during the second Scenario. I haven't seen him once since then. I only heard he was imprisoned beneath Seoul Station..."

Huiwon's father had fought hard in his own way, but it seemed he had ultimately been defeated by the local faction.

Perhaps it was only natural.

This was an area that hadn't even been properly introduced in Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. It was a miracle that he had survived the first Scenario at all.

Huiwon asked again.

"So why are you with the Beggar's Sect? You said those bastards took Dad away. Why are you under that organization..."

As Jeong Eunho hesitated, Huiwon's eyes narrowed.

"You, don't tell me."

"He's still our dad, even like that. Unlike you, I won't abandon my family."

Faint anger rippled through Eunho's voice as he continued.

"His memories might come back someday. He might become our dad again. ...Though that might not be such a good thing."

Only then did Huiwon understand what her brother meant. She clicked her tongue.

"So you joined them and are killing and robbing people? Are you out of your mind?"

"This was the only way. You must have killed someone to survive the first Scenario too, didn't you?"

It was a choice made solely to survive.

Who in this Scenario could refute the boy's justification with a clear conscience?

"Me, the kids here, we're all the same. We were all just struggling to survive."

The children huddled together on their knees behind him sobbed tearfully.

"We were wrong. Please forgive us."

"We won't do it again. We won't."

I knew those words were lies.

If we left without saying anything, the children would use messages about the white flag as bait to rob and kill people again.

Huiwon let out a soft sigh.

"Where's the flag?"

Eunho sighed as well and pointed toward the master bedroom.

"Over there."

This was where the children's looting ended.

The children seemed to know it, too, because they lowered their heads.

"I'm letting you go because you're kids. If I catch you again, I'll really kill you."

The children trembled at Huiwon's warning.

When we opened the master bedroom door as Eunho had said, we saw the white flag planted in the center of the room.

[You have found the white flag!]

Once we claimed that, we would be able to form a new group.

"Hey! Stop them! If they take that, you're all dead!"

The freckled boy wriggling on the floor said that. He had somehow removed the towel from his mouth and screamed desperately.

"Stop them! Hurry up and stop them!"

"Wonsik."

"Shut up, you fucking bastards!"

The excited freckled boy thrashed around and shouted.

"Untie me right now. I'll kill you. Did you forget who my dad is? Do you think you'll all get away with this? Hey! Jeong Eunho!"

"Wonsik. Let it go just this once. She's my sister."

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

Pretending not to hear him, Eunho urged Huiwon on.

"Noona. If you're taking it, take it quickly. People will start coming soon."

"Who's coming?"

"You might not know, but this is a Beggar's Sect branch. Wonsik has already called the beggars. He might not look it, but that bastard is the Ark Master's son. He's in charge here."

"I don't care who comes."

"I know you're strong, but... even you can't fight the entire Beggar's Sect. And the Ark Master here is ridiculously strong. He's a real martial arts master who can fly through the sky."

A real martial arts master.

I suddenly grew curious.

It wasn't as if he were Yu Junghyeok, and there was no way an Incarnation like that could exist at this point, not by any reasonable measure.

More importantly, why would there be a martial artist in South Korea?

"Inho-ssi."

I considered it.

Curiosity aside, clashing with a large faction here wasn't the right choice.

We had come here for two reasons.

One was to find the Berserk Butcher.

The other was to obtain the white flag.

Since the Berserk Butcher was believed to be Huiwon's younger brother, our purpose had already been fulfilled.

"Let's take the flag first."

"You should take it, Inho-ssi."

"Are you sure?"

"I don't really know how to use it anyway."

This time, I didn't refuse Huiwon's concession.

The flag was an item we had to obtain to carry out the King's Path Scenario.

"Then I'll take it."

A strange premonition came over me the moment Huiwon and I entered the master bedroom. A cold sensation ran through me as the surroundings turned monochrome.

A trap.

[The activation conditions for Exclusive Skill □□ have been met.]

It was a message I hadn't seen in a while.

In the instant time stopped, I reflexively looked around.

But there was nothing particularly strange. The same went for Eunho and the other children.

Then what was it?

That was when I spotted a red line entering through the gap in the broken window.

A laser scope.

Someone was targeting this place.

Thankfully, there was no need to worry too much.

I still had Plausibility points left, and I was confident I could write a convincing sentence to escape.

Getting out of a crisis like this was easy enough...

[Exclusive Skill □□ is unstable.]

[Snowfield cannot be activated.]

[The skill has been deactivated.]

What?

The scenery around us changed, and the sound of something being fired came from afar.

Damn it.

I reflexively pulled Huiwon into my arms and dropped to the floor.

But someone moved before I did.

"Noona!"

Having noticed the laser scope, Eunho threw a pair of chopsticks precisely in the direction the red line had come from.

[The Incarnation Jeong Eunho has activated Throwing Lv.2!]

[The Incarnation Jeong Eunho has activated Concealed Weapon Reinforcement Lv.2!]

The moment the chopsticks passed through the window gap, a deafening roar rang out and the entire building shook.

It wasn't an ordinary sniper shot.

Someone had fired an anti-tank rocket at least comparable to an RPG.

When I barely managed to open my eyes through the acrid dust, the master bedroom was a wreck.

The broken window frame dangled loose, while the part of the floor facing the window had been completely destroyed.

On the rooftop of the building opposite us stood the sniper who had aimed at us.

The moment our eyes met, he looked startled.

It was a familiar face.

「"Ch-Cheon Gae-nim told me to watch that road for the expansion of the branch's forces. That was really all! I never intended to hurt you!"」

It was the sniper we had released near Chungmuro before coming here.

Unable to reveal anything about us because of his [Existence Oath], he had decided to kill us rather than return to Seoul Station.

It was a mistake.

I shouldn't have trusted that flimsy [Existence Oath] and let him go.

"Huiwon-ssi, are you alri..."

Red killing intent flowed from Huiwon's entire body as she rose and brushed off the dust.

She was looking at her younger brother lying on the floor.

Eunho had collapsed while clutching his abdomen.

I quickly stopped Eunho's bleeding and examined the wound. It seemed the bullet had been poisoned, and the skin the fragments had torn through had turned a dark red.

[The character Jeong Huiwon has activated Demon Slaying Lv.4!]

Like a roaring beast, Huiwon leaped down to the floor below.

Not long after, screams rang out from the rooftop of the building opposite us.

"A-Aaah!"

Her movements were clearly different from when she had faced the children. Arms and legs were severed and blood splattered as the man screamed madly.

"Here, over here! Aaaaargh!"

At that moment, around ten beggars appeared near the apartment entrance. They seemed to be reinforcements who had rushed over after receiving a [Group Chat] message.

Huiwon's eyes, burning red from the effects of [Demon Slaying], turned toward them.

That was when a barrage of warning shots came flying from somewhere.

Dududududu!

The shots poured down directly on the beggars.

"Aaargh!"

The beggars struck by bullets recoiled in terror and slowly pulled back their line before sending a signal.

"Retreat!"

As the Beggar's Sect members quickly withdrew from the apartment, dragging away the dead beggars, a group of soldiers appeared from the path leading to the underground parking lot.

"Cease fire!"

Their faces were grimy, as though they had spent a long time camping out.

Huiwon, who had finished off the sniper in the meantime, landed on the first floor of the apartment.

Just as a bloody confrontation between the soldiers and Huiwon was about to begin, one man leading the soldiers stepped forward.

A red flag was tucked into his waistband.

"You... Aren't you Huiwon?"

Huiwon's expression softened slightly when she turned toward him.

"Sergeant Kim?"

* * *

The soldiers were the remaining forces once led by Huiwon's father, Jeong Munho.

They said they had been conducting guerrilla operations to rescue Munho after the Beggar's Sect captured him, and had happened to be moving around the apartments near where Huiwon was.

"You're alive. What a relief."

Sergeant Kim held Huiwon's hand tightly in one hand and wiped his eyes several times.

"I'm sorry. Sergeant Major Jeong..."

"I heard the rough details."

Huiwon calmly pulled her hand free and immediately asked what she needed to know.

"How is Eunho?"

Eunho, struck by the sniper's bullet, was still unconscious.

I had hurriedly given him Ellain Forest Essence and applied wound salve, but this wasn't an injury that could be healed by that alone.

A medic had been continuously supplying him with Mana since earlier, but Eunho's complexion only worsened as time passed.

"I'm sorry. At this rate, I don't think he'll make it through the day."

The medic's voice was weak.

I thought the same.

For an injury this severe, we needed the help of someone like Lee Seolhwa, a Hua Tuo, or an elixir from the Martial World.

It didn't have to be Shaolin's Greater Restoration Pill, but the injury required at least a Lesser Restoration Pill.

[This item is out of stock.]

Was it out of stock again?

I searched through the Dokkaebi Compendium for other elixirs.

[This item is out of stock.]

[This item is out of stock.]

As though they had planned it, every single one was sold out.

Come to think of it, Dokja in the main story had rarely bought elixirs through the Dokkaebi Compendium.

Usually, those elixirs went to Incarnations with fabled-grade or higher Constellations as their Patrons.

Constellations who wanted their Incarnations to grow explosively would have already bought and fed them the middling elixirs.

After flipping through the purchase pages for a long time, I managed to find an elixir classified as low-grade.

+

* Demonic Person Pill - Stock: 3

+

Reading the description, it seemed to be a replica of the Demonic Soul Pill, one of the three great elixirs of the <First Martial World>.

The fact that it was a replica bothered me, but it would be another problem if it had the same side effects as the real Demonic Soul Pill.

「If you take that as is, you'll suffer qi deviation, and every acupoint in your body will burst, killing you.」

Yu Junghyeok had once given that warning in the main story of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint.

In other words, if I made Eunho take this by mistake, far from being healed, he would bleed from all seven orifices and die.

"There's no way right now. Unless he has the protection of a Constellation..."

As I listened to the medic, I stared blankly up at the sky.

The sky, which would usually have been noisy, was especially quiet today.

There had to be Constellations watching, but it was clear without asking that they wouldn't help this boy.

No star would sacrifice Plausibility to save a boy with no connection to them.

The only thing worth hoping for was a Patron, but no matter how I looked at him, Eunho didn't seem to have one.

"Inho-ssi."

"I'm thinking."

What we needed to save Eunho was a powerful medicine on the level of a Lesser Restoration Pill.

If we couldn't buy one from the Dokkaebi Compendium or expect support from Constellations, there was no option except to visit the <Martial World> directly.

But the minimum condition for entering the <Martial World> was clearing the tenth Scenario and obtaining a personal Scenario.

At this point, it was impossible no matter what we did.

Still...

That <Martial World> might be closer than I thought.

"You there."

I called to the children trembling in the corner.

"Is it true that there are martial arts masters in the Beggar's Sect?"

"Martial arts masters?"

"I heard they fly through the sky and use martial arts."

"Ah! Y-Yes!"

The children exchanged glances and nodded.

Then Sergeant Kim, who had been listening nearby, added something.

"It's true. Such people exist."

"Have you seen them for yourself?"

"I've fought them myself. The Beggar's Sect's Ark Master and the three under him are monsters. They fight monsters bare-handed and smash tanks apart with their fists. Bullets don't affect them at all. Our unit was wiped out by them."

People who tore apart monsters bare-handed and weren't even affected by bullets.

They could certainly be called martial artists. And highly skilled ones at that.

I couldn't understand why people like that were in this Scenario at this point, but...

"They might know how to heal Eunho."

"Let's go to those bastards right now."

Huiwon said it as if she meant to wipe out the entire <First Martial World>.

"If we go, we'll have to fight."

"I'm going there to fight."

Huiwon was certainly strong now.

She was strong enough to hunt a Tier-7 Monster alone.

But the enemy wasn't a monster but humans, a group at that.

"Huiwon! You can never go. If you go, you'll definitely die. Sergeant Major Jeong was captured that way too. Those bastards aren't human."

Sergeant Kim spoke in a voice filled with fear.

Huiwon frowned.

"I can't give up on Eunho like this. If no one else is going, I'll go alone."

Right. That was Jeong Huiwon.

Still, I couldn't let her do that.

"Let's negotiate."

"Negotiate?"

"We hand over our hostage and get what we want."

The children flinched at the word hostage.

Huiwon asked.

"Will those bastards care about hostages? They're just kids."

"At least one of them will care."

I looked at the freckled boy crawling across the floor behind the other children.

"You there. They said you're the Ark Master's son, right?"

I remembered what Eunho had said.

「"He might not look it, but that bastard is the Ark Master's son. He's in charge here."」

Then the trembling freckled boy cried out.

"M-Me, I can't! D-Dad will kill me if I go to him. Please. Please."

I struck the back of his neck to knock him out, then casually slung him over my shoulder. I didn't know why he was so afraid, but anyway.

"Let's go to Seoul Station."

We had to go to Seoul Station even if it weren't for Huiwon's younger brother.

[You have become an unnamed Representative.]

The Beggar's Sect.

An unknown group that had occupied the area around Seoul Station as soon as the Scenario began.

Since they hadn't appeared in the Absolute Throne war of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, they had likely been wiped out fighting other kings.

By whom? I didn't know.

But one thing was certain.

[Your current target station is Seoul Station.]

Their end in this forty-first round wouldn't be much different.

Footnotes:

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