WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈
Chapter 778: Episode 35: The Demon King's Qualifications (4)
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[I did come looking for you.]
Dokja stared at his avatar, then tilted his head.
[But no matter how I think about it, this doesn't make sense.]
[What doesn't?]
[How do you exist here?]
Even if the time of <Star Stream> moved toward the “gaps in stories,” this was an impossible story.
Whether 51% or 49%, all of Dokja's souls had been dismantled and scattered across the universe.
They had become <Star Stream> itself.
If not for Suyeong's novel, the current Dokja could not have been revived either.
So how could his 49% avatar exist in such an unrelated place?
What was even stranger was that the avatar before him felt as if he had existed long before that.
The avatar replied.
[If you exist, then it isn't that strange for me to exist too.]
[Suyeong didn't write stories like that.]
The avatar's gaze changed subtly.
[Probably not.]
[You're me, and I'm you. If Suyeong's story had succeeded, we should have been restored as one being.]
[It's simple. We aren't “one” anymore.]
Not one.
Dokja considered those words for a moment before speaking.
[Let's go back. There are people waiting for us.]
[They're waiting for you.]
[What nonsense are you talking about?]
[Take your hand off and back away.]
[What?]
[The world you're trying to interfere with is “my world.”]
Only then did Dokja look at the Void Curtain he had touched. The world within that Void Curtain was one even Dokja, the Oldest Dream, did not know.
「How could a world exist that he did not know?」
Realization came a moment too late.
The answer to that question was simple.
It was because the avatar before him had become this world's Oldest Dream.
He had watched over this world so that it could come to life and its characters could live.
[I see. You... don't want this world to end, do you?]
The avatar did not answer.
Dokja let out a soft sigh and continued.
[You can imagine this place after we return. So let's go back. I'll read this story with you. You don't have to bear it alone-]
Since when had it been there?
The avatar, gripping an Unbreakable Faith identical to his own, was aiming it at his throat.
[What are you doing?]
He was confused.
Why did the avatar harbor such powerful hostility toward him?
[I told you. This is my “world.” I have no intention of reading it with you.]
[What do you mean, your world and my world? You...]
He had used [Avatar] countless times before, but nothing like this had ever happened.
An avatar beyond the original body's control.
It was like yesterday's me, or the me from the day before yesterday, suddenly declaring, “I'm not Kim Dokja.”
[Don't tell me.]
Dokja thought of Suyeong's avatar, whom he had met long ago in the 1,863rd round.
That Suyeong had also escaped the original body's control and developed an ego of her own.
What if the avatar before him had become like that as well?
Dokja smiled faintly and asked,
[Who are you?]
[What?]
[Who gathered you?]
For an instant, the avatar's eyes wavered.
Dokja did not miss that opening and pressed on.
[As I said, Suyeong never wrote a story in which you existed like this. Which means...]
Dokja slowly raised his Status.
[Before Han Suyeong wrote the novel, someone gathered my “soul.”]
[Nonsense.]
[Is it? It seems the beings behind you are explaining whether this is nonsense or not.]
Dokja could clearly feel it.
The ominous, distant Status coming from behind the avatar.
[R-Run! Run away!]
The stars surrounding them began to sway.
Absolute beings of the universe who made even those Constellations tremble in fear.
There was something there with an aura powerful enough to threaten even him, the Oldest Dream.
[I was wondering what bastards would dare.]
Dokja frowned.
The depths of this universe were vast. No matter how much he was the Oldest Dream, there were beings in this universe who existed beyond his observation or hid between the lines.
Beings who feared being recorded more than anyone, yet wanted to claim the Record more than anyone.
Those beings were undoubtedly behind the avatar now.
[I don't know who tempted you, but you're being deceived.]
[I don't care.]
[You don't care? Really?]
Even Dokja, who had silently endured until now, could not bear it this time.
[There are people waiting for us. Are you going to betray them?]
The avatar he had left behind was a “Kim Dokja” who existed for Kim Dokja Company.
Dokja could not accept that such an avatar would refuse to return to Kim Dokja Company.
[What they want isn't me. It's you.]
[You're me too.]
[“You're me too.”]
The avatar smiled subtly once more.
[I think I'm the one who should be saying that now.]
[What?]
[What do you think the “real” one is?]
[Do you suddenly want to have a philosophical discussion?]
[If the “real” and the “fake” are divided merely because one has a few more percent of memories.]
Status slowly began to boil from the avatar's entire body.
The surrounding universe swayed dangerously as it heated up.
[Then it seems you're the “avatar” now.]
Watching the sword point toward him again, Dokja cocked his head.
[Ah, so you're saying you're the “real” one now?]
The two Kim Dokjas pointed their swords at each other.
Identical coats, identical Unbreakable Faiths.
The only thing that distinguished them was the meaning contained in those Faiths.
[You haven't forgotten, have you? You're no longer 51%.]
Dokja grinned and nodded.
[And you're no longer the 49% I knew.]
As if announcing the start of battle, a shooting star fell from somewhere.
「And the fight began.」
* * *
「Then who exactly am “I”?」
* * *
Gu Seona clearly remembered the moment she first came to possess someone in this world.
That day, she was at a movie theater. She was not there to watch a movie, but to attend a fan event.
"Hey, this is my first time somewhere like this."
Tense as she stood at the theater entrance, she messaged the guy she liked.
His name was Go Jangwon.
His nickname was Gojang, meaning “malfunction.”
It was because he often said things that made it seem like his brain had malfunctioned.
"Gojang. Where are you now?"
"On the subway."
"Which station?"
"Actually, I just left home."
"Want to die?"
"Yeongin, we can wait. You know that, right?"
"Just die."
Even as Seona wondered why she had fallen for a guy like this, she was eagerly looking forward to the event.
Once it was over, they would eat something delicious together, go to a cafe, and talk about novels all day.
Thinking that, she opened the theater door.
Without knowing what would happen to her afterward.
"It still doesn't feel real."
Muttering bitterly to herself, Seona clenched and unclenched her fists several times.
Several months had already passed since that day.
She had changed a great deal during those months. She no longer spoke to strangers. When someone approached her, she first became wary, then suspicious, and even prepared herself to kill them if necessary.
It was a world where she could not survive otherwise.
And she had survived.
「Only to meet Go Jangwon again.」
Seona looked down at the fallen Inho Cheon.
No, he was no longer Inho Cheon.
His appearance, build, and equipped items all made him resemble “Kim Dokja” more than anyone else now.
[Fable Fragment A Certain Beginning is surging!]
Dokja, who had been injected with the Fable Fragment, had apparently completely lost it. He would not stop convulsing.
「A Certain Beginning.」
She had acquired that Fable Fragment several weeks ago.
As usual, she had been hunting monsters and growing stronger by absorbing the souls of readers who died during Scenarios. Then, a familiar being appeared in her dream.
【Honestly, I didn't expect you to survive this long.】
"Representative Kim Dokja?"
The being she had once met in the dream “theater.”
"Or should I call you Asmodeus?"
Seona could now see through his identity.
It was the result of pooling the information she had heard from Ye Hyeonu and other readers, then repeatedly drawing her own conclusions.
【Oh dear. Have I become that famous already?】
"What do you want?"
【There is a “fragment” I wish to give you.】
That was when Seona obtained 「A Certain Beginning」.
Unfortunately, most of the fragment had been lost, so she could not obtain complete memories.
However, it was not difficult to guess what had happened, even from the fable full of holes.
「Kim Dokja and Kim Dokja fought.」
As a result of that confrontation, the “Kim Dokja” she knew had been torn into several pieces.
Seona looked down at the convulsing Dokja.
Was this person really that “Kim Dokja”?
Asmodeus, who had given her the memories, described him this way.
【He is the 49% Kim Dokja. The root cause of all this.】
Seona silently observed Dokja.
Yet no matter how long she watched him, she could not make sense of it.
The more she thought about it, the more things did not add up.
If this guy really was the 49% Kim Dokja, why had he lost all his memories and ended up here?
No, hadn't he been a reader who had lived in reality alongside her before possessing someone in this world?
More than anything, what troubled her was the subtle, inexplicable difference she sensed between the “49% Kim Dokja” she had seen in those memories and the “Kim Dokja” before her.
"Ah, I don't know."
Seona slowly reached for Dokja's neck.
If she absorbed him, she would know.
Only one thing was certain.
The man before her possessed more Kim Dokja Fragments than all she had gathered so far.
If she obtained these Kim Dokja Fragments, she would become closer than anyone to the “one and only Kim Dokja.”
‘Then I can find Go Jangwon.’
Seona took several deep breaths.
Her hand kept trembling.
She had never once taken Kim Dokja Fragments from a living Incarnation.
Every Kim Dokja Fragment she had taken had belonged to readers on the verge of death, or readers who had gone insane.
「“Take my memories.”」
It had been the same when she absorbed Christina.
Christina, who had faced death while undertaking a Twelve Zodiacs Scenario, entrusted the Kim Dokja Fragments she possessed to Seona.
She took on that burden, and grew stronger by as much as she took on.
‘I can do this. Get ahold of yourself.’
Seona slapped her cheeks several times.
She had to do it.
She had to absorb him.
Only then could she grow stronger.
Only then could she get Go Jangwon back.
Having finally made up her mind, Seona reached out once more.
[The fable Heir to an Eternal Name rejects you!]
An intense pain came over her, as though something had bitten her hand.
Tzztztztzt.
Then Dokja's memories began to flow into her.
Some memories were sad, and some were painful.
There were memories she knew, too.
「“Seona-ssi. Don't make things too difficult for Inho-ssi. He's not someone who would lie.”」
The more she examined the memories, the more she felt that something was going wrong.
Was absorbing this guy really the right thing to do?
What if he was actually right?
What if nobody needed to become the one and only Kim Dokja?
Just as she thought that,
[The fable Recorder of Things That Will Disappear begins its story.]
At one corner of those memories, Seona came face-to-face with a fable.
「“Yeongin. We can date. You know that, right?”」
It was the voice of Go Jangwon, whom she had been searching for all this time.
Footnotes:
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