WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈
Chapter 671: Episode 21: Kim Dokja (7)
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Asmodeus laughed as though Han Suyeong's words were absurd.
【Do you know what you're saying right now?】
Suyeong didn't answer. She hadn't expected him to understand in the first place.
【Were you gathering the "fragments of Dokja" for such a ridiculous reason? To bring back Dokja, who might not even return?】
Asmodeus's voice was strangely agitated.
【Have you ever once thought about the extras you trampled on?】
The extras they had trampled on.
Suyeong frowned.
【I'm asking whether you've ever thought about the people sacrificed for your pathetic cause of finding Dokja.】
Asmodeus added with a mocking, somewhat theatrical tone.
【You've already twisted worldlines several times. Do you really think that was the right thing to do?】
It was true that they had twisted worldlines several times.
Still, every worldline they had twisted had been destined for destruction. They had always acted to reduce the inevitable "great tragedy" to the smallest tragedy possible.
That was the grand principle they had set for themselves.
【Do you think the Dokja you seek thinks the same way you do? Do you really think the countless Dokjas who lost their sense of self while you gathered Dokja's fragments would support you?】
Suyeong couldn't understand what Asmodeus was saying.
While gathering the Dokjas scattered across worldlines, Kim Dokja Company had never once touched a "living fragment of Dokja."
They had collected only fragments that had failed to reincarnate and wandered the universe, along with pieces of fables Dokja had left behind.
"I don't know. I'm not Kim Dokja."
Even so, Suyeong didn't bother defending herself. What would be the point of saying such things? She was already used to being misunderstood.
「"You're afraid people will still curse you even after you defend yourself, aren't you?"」
Dokja had been the only person to accept Suyeong as a companion.
「"I'm usually a really bad person."」
「"And who decided that?"」
What would Dokja say if he saw her now?
Asmodeus spoke as though he knew the answer.
【If you're going to be so shameless, you should stay shameless to the end. At first, you said you would destroy the world as intended. Now you want to change the predetermined course?】
"That's..."
【Did seeing the 49% Dokja change your mind?】
The 49% Dokja.
Suyeong's eyes wavered faintly. She hadn't expected Asmodeus to know even that.
【Did you pity the Dokja you abandoned?】
"...Abandoned?"
Even Suyeong, who was rarely flustered, couldn't help being shaken by those words.
Two others grew angry on her behalf.
[The Constellation Sinister Strategist asks what you could possibly know...]
[The Constellation Lotus Blooming under the Moon wears a cold expression...]
"Lee Gilyeong. Yu Sangah."
The Indirect Messages in the sky faded at Suyeong's words.
She continued.
"Yeah. Maybe you're not wrong. I couldn't save him in the end."
Suyeong remembered the fable of the 49% Dokja.
The one who had wanted to be born as someone other than Dokja.
After finally achieving that wish and gaining the new name Yi Hakhyeon, he had returned to the world that made him "Kim Dokja," for some reason.
「"I can't accept an ending like this."」
This time, he had become not a "reader," but a Writer who wrote stories.
"What's already happened can't be undone. All I can add now are pathetic excuses."
【I'm not interested in your circumstances.】
"Even so, I'm still the Writer of this story."
What did it mean to write a "story" in this world?
What did it mean to bear the responsibility that followed from changing a single line?
Suyeong understood that weight better than anyone, so she decided to pick up her pen before Yi Hakhyeon could.
"I'll destroy the Absolute Throne."
At least Yi Hakhyeon wouldn't have to bear the guilt of opening a tragedy.
"Even if the worldline twists, even if the universe is destroyed, I'll take responsibility for that too."
It was the only gift she could give the 49% Dokja, the Writer Yi Hakhyeon.
【Hmm, I still can't give you the Four-Tiger Evil-Cutting Sword.】
Asmodeus shrugged mockingly at Suyeong, then turned gracefully.
【This story is no longer your story! Now then, don't you all think so as well?】
Suyeong frowned.
Asmodeus kept talking forcefully anyway, as though someone were listening closely to his words and the words that would follow.
【Do you understand now? What kind of person that Han Suyeong is. How selfish she is. How dangerous she is to this universe.】
The space behind Asmodeus began to ripple.
Trembling like a silver screen in the wind, it soon revealed a theater's seats.
There were enough seats for hundreds of people.
"You..."
Little Dokjas were sitting in them.
"Did you collect living souls?"
Asmodeus answered Suyeong, who swallowed her blazing anger.
【Living? Aren't they all readers you killed?】
"What nonsense..."
Suyeong looked over the little Dokjas in the seats.
There were too many to take in at a glance. More than all the readers in this worldline combined.
Could it be?
Just as the horrified Suyeong was about to speak to Asmodeus,
「"What if we go through the first portal and find nothing but another subpar Dokja like last time? Will you believe that one is Dokja too?"」
A familiar story sounded from somewhere.
「"And I'll find every single 'Kim Dokja Fragment' that imagined an ending like that and torment them until they come up with a proper ending."」
They were all things she had said.
「"I'll catch that bastard and bring him back somehow. Whether he's 49% or 51%, I'm sick of playing with numbers. I won't accept anything less than 100% now."」
The little Dokjas who had heard those stories asked her,
「Why did you aban don me?」
The hairs on her body stood on end.
A chill seemed to freeze her to the bone.
It felt as though the entire world were hostile toward her.
Resisting that fear, Suyeong opened her mouth.
I didn't abandon you.
She wanted to say that.
But her words couldn't be written.
The Plausibility of the Star Stream held her in place.
Asmodeus smiled.
【It seems our Oldest Dreams agree with me as well.】
Amid the sound of the projector turning, the little Kim Dokjas' question echoed like a round.
Only then did Suyeong realize it.
This story had been unfolding according to Asmodeus's script for a long time.
「"They aren't Dokja anymore. They're people who had already been living in other worlds. They had lives of their own."
"..."
"You called them."
"I didn't call them."」
Something she had never done.
「"Do you really think the countless Dokjas who lost their sense of self while you gathered Dokja's fragments would support you?"」
Something Kim Dokja Company had never done.
「"That one can't become the Kim Dokja we know."」
A single point of truth, skillfully mixed into lies.
The story was complete.
"What the hell did you do?"
Suyeong staggered as she looked at the seats.
[The fable Kim Dokja Company begins its story.]
She wanted to tell them.
That what they had seen wasn't everything.
That perhaps all those words hadn't meant what they thought they meant.
「"That one can't become the Dokja we know."」
Suyeong had definitely said that.
「"Just as the me from the 1,863rd round isn't the Han Suyeong you know."」
To truly face the 49% Dokja, they had to accept that he wasn't the "Dokja" they knew.
Suyeong believed that was how to treat the 49% Dokja as a person in his own right.
They were sentences that hadn't been written in the 『Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint』 she had written.
Whether 1%, 49%, or 51%.
As long as they were Kim Dokja Company, there wasn't a single Dokja who wasn't precious to them.
She could have told them that again and again.
The fact that the Dokja they sought existed in this world didn't mean they were turning away from other Dokjas.
She hadn't written those words in 『Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint』.
They weren't sentences for only one Dokja.
And the 49% Dokja,
「I'm sorry.」
was a Dokja who wanted to become just one person.
「I'm sorry, Han Suyeong.」
Because he couldn't become that, he left their side.
He stopped being Dokja.
"Kim Dokja, I..."
For the first time, Suyeong opened her mouth to defend herself.
If they were Dokja too, they would understand.
Once they heard her fable, they would surely change their minds.
Tststst.
She had to tell them the story.
She had to write here the sentences she hadn't written then.
But she couldn't remember them.
Suyeong stared blankly at the place where the story had once been.
The memories that had vanished when [Avatar] disappeared.
The only sentences that could have persuaded the readers.
She had lost those sentences forever.
【That is the kind of story this world is. Do you understand?】
Asmodeus was smiling.
【This world doesn't want you. Because you are the villains of this world.】
The little Dokjas were tiny fragments of "Dokja."
In other words, pieces of the Oldest Dream.
That was why the stories they read and believed became this world's power.
They became Plausibility.
Tstststst.
A brilliant aura flowing from the theater settled in Asmodeus's right hand.
【So please, die already.】
Suyeong looked at Asmodeus, then at the readers beyond him.
Then she thought of the one person who must have been watching this entire story.
"That's good."
Suyeong smiled.
"I was always the villain anyway."
As she breathed heavily, she became aware of her battered body.
There wasn't much Plausibility left for her now.
[The Constellation Lotus Blooming under the Moon...]
[The Constellation Sinister Strategist...]
But she was still a Writer, and she still had a story to tell.
「"What if Dokja's tastes have changed in the meantime? What if the story you wrote isn't interesting anymore?"」
Remembering Yi Hakhyeon's words, Suyeong gripped the Unbreakable Faith Dokja had left behind.
「What kind of story did Dokja come here hoping to see?」
She didn't know.
Maybe Dokja himself didn't know.
He was the most powerless god in this universe, capable only of reading one story again and again.
"Come at me, Asmodeus."
Suyeong decided to begin the final story for her god.
"This time, I'll finish you off for good."
* * *
rlaehrwk37 : Save Kim Dokja
* * *
I ran through the wind and rain.
Black-and-blue lightning struck nonstop across the stormy sky.
All sorts of thoughts filled my head.
What if I was already too late?
And if I wasn't, how could I stop Yu Junghyeok?
I ran until my thighs felt as though they would burst, thinking of TWSA just as Dokja had whenever a Scenario reached a dead end.
[You cannot activate that skill at this time.]
TWSA had been blocked.
Why?
A bad feeling came over me.
Thunder loud enough to split my eardrums shook the area.
Brilliant blue lightning bolts poured down one after another.
An enormous Plausibility Backlash was raging.
At the center of that storm, I caught sight of an Incarnation.
I blankly murmured her name.
"Han Suyeong?"
Her blackened body was falling toward the ground.
Footnotes:
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