Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint - Chapter 782

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 782: Episode 36: The Real Kim Dokja (3)

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When the invitation arrived from the Recycling Center, Lee Gilyeong thought the moment he had been waiting for had finally come.

Even if it was a trap. If he could just see hyung one more time.

"Don't you move. If you use that, I'll seriously kill you."

Lee Jihye warned him as she pointed at the invitation flickering in midair. Gilyeong's expression hardened.

"Why? It came to me."

"Don't you know what might happen if you go there now? Do you even know what's there?"

"Hyung will be there."

Jihye gave the lightly muttered Gilyeong a knuckle rap on the head.

"Get a grip. What are you going to do if you go?"

"I'm pretty strong too, you know?"

"Strong or not, it isn't a place where we can use one hundred percent of our strength."

"Still..."

"What if something happens after you go?"

"Nothing will happen."

"Can you handle it if the Plausibility gets all tangled up? You know why Master and the others hesitate to interfere with worldlines. What if you go there and cause some kind of backlash? What if the Scenario gets twisted and everyone dies? What if Dokja-ajusshi can never come back because of it..."

"Fine."

"What?"

"I said I get it, so stop."

Gilyeong lowered his head, his lips twitching. Jihye looked at him for a moment, then gently placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I understand how you feel, too."

"..."

"Do you think I don't want to go there? We need to talk to the others first. So don't get any strange ideas and stay put. Got it?"

"..."

"Answer me."

"I said I get it."

Jihye watched Gilyeong anxiously for a moment, then sighed and disappeared toward the situation room.

Gilyeong looked up at the message shimmering in the air.

[An invitation has arrived.]

[The filtering has been partially lifted.]

[Someone has invited you to the Scenario Phileia Academy.]

[Through this Scenario, you can meet Demon King of Salvation once again.]

[Will you accept the invitation?]

He reread the messages again and again. He reached for them, then pulled his hand back, over and over.

"Shit..."

After hesitating for a long time, Gilyeong finally cursed in resignation.

He knew Jihye was right. He knew he shouldn't act rashly here.

I'll wait for Jihye-noona to come back. I won't cause trouble on my own again.

I can't ruin everything because of my mistake.

Repeating those thoughts to himself, Gilyeong walked away. His destination was the underground training room. More specifically, the recently built Room of Time.

Gilyeong, who liked comics, had named the room himself.

「Time flows slowly inside this room.」

He had named it himself, but this was Gilyeong's first time entering it.

It had been made by improving a place modeled after the Dark Dimension's Time Stratum, a place known in other dimensions as the Tower of Nightmares.

The moment he stepped through the room's portal, Gilyeong found it hard to breathe.

It felt like inhaling compressed air. The overwhelming density of time pressed down on his very existence.

That bastard must be the only one who trains in a place like this.

Gilyeong walked over to the equipment rack in the corner of the training room. The constellation artifacts and SSS-grade equipment Kim Dokja Company had gathered so far were displayed there.

Demon-Slaying Blade.

Dainsleif.

Ice Wheel Ring.

...

Treasured blades from the First Martial World, constellation artifacts from Norse mythology, projectiles said to have been used by a Great Demon of a previous generation...

Among countless weapons, there was one he knew well.

Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds.

Its blade had been sharpened so it could be used at any time, just like its owner's temperament.

To the right of it was another sword.

Unbreakable Faith.

The last weapon Dokja had used. Yet despite its name, the sword had been snapped cleanly in two.

Gilyeong looked at the blade, which was less than two handspans long, and reached for its hilt.

A blade that had not been sharpened for a long time.

Gripping the hilt tightly, Gilyeong traced an arc through the air.

Dokja had saved his allies with this sword countless times, but in the end, he couldn't save himself.

「Kim Dokja used this sword to cut down the Oldest Dream.」

More precisely, he had failed to cut it down, and the sword had broken in half as the price.

Gilyeong didn't know what Dokja had always been thinking as he held this sword.

Still, he felt as though he could understand Dokja at the moment he tried to cut down his own childhood.

"Wrong."

Startled by the voice from the darkness, Gilyeong turned his head and found a man dressed all in black standing there.

He adjusted his grip on the hilt and answered curtly.

"Then how am I supposed to do it?"

Without a word, Yu Junghyeok gestured toward the air. The Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds hanging on the wall floated up, then flew into his hand.

It was a realm martial artists called Remote Object Manipulation.

Gilyeong grumbled.

"If you came here just to show off some crude trick..."

A brilliant sword light split through the darkness.

Seeing its impeccable trajectory, Gilyeong swallowed the rest of his words without realizing it.

A sword strike like a shooting star.

Junghyeok's history was contained in that brief line segment. He had cut down countless stars, made them fall, and in the end, even brought down the sky where those stars hung.

Did Junghyeok remember everything he had cut down to reach that trajectory?

He suddenly thought it was unfair, followed by a faint feeling of despair.

Standing before the overwhelming history Junghyeok had lived through, he felt pathetic.

"You black-clad bastard."

Gilyeong asked Junghyeok, who continued swinging the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds without answering.

"Why are you so strong?"

After drawing the same trajectory over and over again, Junghyeok answered calmly.

"Wake up at a set time every day and sleep at a set time."

"What kind of nonsense is that?"

"Use your day properly and regularly. Make your body develop habits before you have to rely on your willpower."

"Don't give me some self-help book advice. Don't you have anything else?"

He hadn't asked because he thought Junghyeok would give him proper advice. He just wanted to hear anything right now, to settle his complicated thoughts.

However, Junghyeok thought about something for a moment before saying,

"Regret often."

"Regret?"

"Think about the things you could have changed if you had been a little stronger."

Gilyeong hadn't expected that answer, so he replied in confusion.

"I do that every day."

"Regret better."

To be honest, he had expected Junghyeok, of all people, to have some special philosophy.

Everyone regretted things. The things they couldn't protect. The things they couldn't change.

Gilyeong had memories like that, too. But now, he was afraid of summoning those memories.

"What if all my feelings wear away?"

"Then make sure they don't."

"How?"

The Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds stopped upright in midair.

Junghyeok stared quietly at the point where its blade was aimed before answering.

"Every morning when I wake up, I think I have been born anew."

"What does that mean? Do you want people to celebrate your birthday every day?"

Junghyeok didn't answer.

He steadily traced line segments through the air.

Watching those lines made Gilyeong feel strange.

Perhaps Junghyeok was still regressing.

Perhaps even after the regressor's trait disappeared, he was still repeating regressions that no one knew about.

"You do it too."

"What?"

"Hold the sword."

"You want to try it now?"

Gilyeong snarled as he gripped Unbreakable Faith awkwardly. The two figures crossed in the darkness.

Crack!

Naturally, Gilyeong was the one sent flying.

"You coward! I don't know how to use a sword well!"

"Get up."

With a battle cry, Gilyeong charged. Unbreakable Faith powerfully swept through the air, and Junghyeok lightly swung his sword.

After rolling across the floor again, Gilyeong shouted,

"What was that? You used some weird trick just now!"

"I only swung my sword."

"Don't make me laugh! You hit me ridiculously hard!"

"Again."

Gilyeong got back up and charged at him again and again. He swung the already-broken Unbreakable Faith.

His breath grew ragged, and his heart pounded violently. An unknown exhilaration began flowing through his entire body.

As their swords clashed again and again, Gilyeong asked,

"If I keep doing this, can I become strong like you?"

"No."

"If I work really, really hard."

"..."

"If I work harder than you're training right now! Then what?"

Unbreakable Faith and the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds collided, creating black-and-white Mana waves.

The intertwined blades answered in place of Gilyeong and Junghyeok.

「Could we one day save Kim Dokja?」

Gilyeong said nothing more, and Junghyeok didn't listen.

Yet the same sentence was engraved upon both their histories.

"If you work that hard."

Junghyeok stepped back lightly and pointed the blade at his own ankle.

"You might be able to catch up to about here."

"You're harsh."

Gilyeong laughed helplessly.

"How long would it take to go a little higher than that?"

"With your talent, around a hundred years."

A hundred years.

Considering how long Yu Junghyeok had trained with the sword, it was an extremely generous assessment. To the regressor Yu Junghyeok, a hundred years was only a hundred years.

But it was different for Gilyeong.

"That's too late."

"..."

"That's too late. It has to be now."

The two blades clashed once more, and Unbreakable Faith flew from Gilyeong's hand.

Junghyeok reached out with his other hand, caught the sword, and said,

"That won't be possible."

Gilyeong, who had lost his sword, asked in a dazed voice,

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"Regret. Then become stronger. You're still young, so you can do a few more things to regret."

Standing firm in the darkness, Junghyeok tossed the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds.

The spinning sword embedded itself precisely into the floor before Gilyeong.

Gilyeong stared blankly at it.

"There are still people here who will put up with your childish behavior."

When he suddenly raised his head, Junghyeok had already turned his back.

Gilyeong looked at that back, then at the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds Junghyeok had thrown him. He bit his lip hard, wiped at his eyes, and said,

"You black-clad bastard."

"..."

"I'll be back. Don't you dare tell the noonas."

With those final words, Gilyeong grabbed the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds and ran out.

Junghyeok watched the entrance through which the boy had disappeared. After looking up at the pitch-black ceiling of the training room for a moment, he calmly walked out.

Someone was waiting at the training room entrance.

"You should have stopped him."

It was Yu Sangah.

"It was a dam bound to burst someday."

"How could you go and throw a bomb at a dam bound to burst someday?"

In the distance, a portal swirled like a storm beyond the window.

A portal leading to another worldline, the world of the 41st round.

Without the slightest hesitation, Gilyeong kicked off the ground and leaped into it.

"I gave him special permission. That guy was born anew today."

"What do you mean?"

Looking down at Unbreakable Faith left in his hand, Junghyeok said,

"There's one more person who will regret it tomorrow."