WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 790: Episode 37: Graduation Ceremony (6)

──────

* * *

I spat the clot of blood that surged up onto the floor.

[Your Incarnation body has reached its limit!]

Good. That accomplished my goal.

The fact that I was enduring pain that normally would have knocked me unconscious was proof enough.

[Exclusive Skill The Fourth Wall is currently active!]

If this wall had activated, then the readers I had absorbed, along with my Patron, must have safely entered the Library.

[The fable Heir to an Eternal Name is glaring at you with displeasure.]

I gave the grumbling fable a bitter smile.

‘Thank you.’

If that stubborn fable hadn't cooperated, it would have been impossible to restore [The Fourth Wall].

[The fable Heir to an Eternal Name snorts and turns its head away.]

[Your current existence restoration rate is 18.8%.]

My existence restoration rate had risen to nearly 20%. I could feel that the Status of my soul had greatly increased compared to before.

[The nebula Asgard recognizes your existence as a threat!]

[The nebula Veda has designated you as a singularity!]

My Status had risen high enough that I could no longer avoid the Constellations' attention. That was despite the fact that I still couldn't properly control the fables within me.

[The fable King of a Kingless World is running rampant on its own!]

[The fable One Who Opposes the Extraordinary has escaped your control!]

I had inherited all the abilities my older brother, the Demon King of Salvation, possessed. Perhaps this was only natural.

I struggled to calm the fables as I caught my breath.

[The Fable Fragment Unrequited Love Gone Awry shakes unstably!]

[The Fable Fragment Young Man Who Speaks Like an Old Man is convulsing!]

[The fable A Child's Heart has escaped your control and is running rampant!]

Fables that still felt awkward to call mine.

Some belonged to Gu Seona, some to Kim Gyeongsik, and some to readers whose names I didn't know.

A few had side effects too severe to absorb at all. Gu Seona's fable was especially like that.

It was then that the Status, which spread wildly as [Incitement] ran rampant, touched Olympus's Hermes System.

Thanks to that, the Historical Constellations from Olympus that had trespassed into the Recycling Center were annihilated at once. In the end, perhaps it had worked out for the best.

[The Constellations of the nebula Olympus reveal their hatred towards you!]

There was no going back with Olympus now.

Well, it didn't matter. They had been trying to kill me anyway.

“Dokja-ssi!”

Hearing my companions running towards me, I barely held onto my fading consciousness.

[Main Scenario #20: Graduation Ceremony has ended.]

The Scenario had definitely ended. However, not everything was over yet.

Just as what came after graduation was more important than graduation itself, what would happen to me from now on was more important.

[You have inherited the modifier Demon King of Salvation.]

[The Star Stream recognizes you as the Demon King of Salvation.]

[The role of the Great Demon King has been inherited!]

[The delayed Fate has activated.]

[An enormous Fate wishes for your death!]

Plausibility Backlash swept across my entire body.

[You have succeeded in the Scenario.]

[You have failed the Scenario.]

The meaning of the messages that appeared at the same time was obvious.

As an Incarnation, I had succeeded in the Scenario. But as a Constellation, I had failed it.

Because...

[The Constellation Demon King of Salvation accepts its Fate.]

I had just become the Demon King of Salvation.

“What in the world...”

Gyeong Sein's eyes widened as she reached for me. At that moment, an enormous shower of sparks burst out.

“Ugh, aaah?”

My body slowly began to rise into the air.

“Dokja-ssi, why...?”

Gyeong Sein stared blankly at my stomach.

“Why is Dokja-ssi... pierced by the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds...?”

My lower abdomen had been pierced by the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds. In place of the vanished Great Demon King's Incarnation body, the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds was now piercing me.

「This was the price of inheriting the Demon King of Salvation's fable.」

“D-didn't the Scenario end?”

Gyeong Sein and Uncle Dansu were flustered.

I silently looked down at them and smiled.

They were people I was grateful had survived this far. They had become Incarnations who could stand on their own now. Even if I wasn't here, they would survive somehow. They would make their way through the next Scenario, and the one after that.

“Yes. It's all over.”

I slowly felt myself being pulled backwards. A crack in the air was sucking in my body.

「Where does a demon king defeated by a Scenario go?」

If I had been offered to the Scenario like my Patron, I would have died here instantly.

However, I hadn't been offered to the Scenario. I had merely inherited his [Fate].

So even though the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds had pierced me, I wouldn't die here.

“Dokja-ssi!”

“No! Dokja-ssi, stop!”

I would merely be exiled to a place where I was very likely to die.

I waved my hands to calm my companions.

“Don't worry! I'm not going to die! I promise! This is just...”

“Do you think we're idiots?”

Killer King shouted and grabbed my arm through the backlash.

“What the hell did you do? Why is the Scenario expelling you?”

It seemed I couldn't deceive my fellow readers after all.

“Everyone, grab him! Don't let this bastard go!”

It was my first time seeing Killer King so agitated.

I looked at him and spoke.

“Chae Seongwoo-ssi.”

Chae Seongwoo flinched and looked at me.

Meeting him had made me realize all over again just how much had happened. Yet we hadn't actually talked that much.

We didn't know much about each other.

Where we had originally lived, what food we liked, what games we enjoyed, what we thought about before going to sleep after a hard day.

We knew nothing about each other.

There was only one thing we shared. We had read the same story and admired the same person.

“Get a hold of yourself. You're their Yu Junghyeok.”

Chae Seongwoo's body trembled as if he had been struck by lightning.

A person with the patience to read one story a hundred times. A person with an indomitable spirit that no ordeal could shake.

The companions needed a pillar like that.

“Shut up! Kim Dokja, what the hell do you know...?”

Crackle.

The sleeve he was holding tore apart. The crack pulled me in more fiercely.

Just as I was about to be swallowed by it, a web flew through the air and tightly bound my body.

[Arachne's Web].

It was Ji Eunyoo.

At the same time, my companions, each holding a strand of the web, began pulling me back.

“Pull! Hurry!”

I looked at the companions pulling me as I dangled from the web.

Chae Seongwoo. Chae Yerin. Gyeong Sein. Lee Dansu. And Eunyoo.

Shin Yuseong was pulling the line behind Eunyoo. Lee Jihye and Lee Hyeongseong had joined late. Kim Namwoon was there too, pulling the line with one hand as if it were a bother.

Far away, Jeong Huiwon had only just begun to open her eyes. She still seemed unable to move properly, and she staggered as she reached towards us.

I looked at her, then turned back to my companions and grinned.

“Come on, don't worry, everyone. I'm not dying. I promise!”

This was why I hadn't wanted to become the Demon King of Salvation.

“Don't make promises like that! When you say something like that here, it always...!”

I knew how deep and distant the “salvation” contained in that modifier was.

Even so, I had accepted that modifier. Unfortunately, my companions had now become companions of the Demon King of Salvation.

The stretched web began snapping, strand by strand. As if the stories we had woven together were coming undone.

“No!”

The web Eunyoo had extended snapped.

I spoke to Eunyoo as she grew farther away.

“Ji Eunyoo-ssi. You always said so.”

I truly had no intention of dying.

Because I had no intention of dying, this farewell had to be refreshing.

“When emotions are excessive, they only interfere with readers' immersion.”

I heard Ji Eunyoo shouting something from far away, but I couldn't make it out.

[You have been expelled from the Scenario!]

Pitch-black darkness swallowed me. A place where no star could see me.

Then a terrible cold swept over me. Even with [The Fourth Wall], it was a cold almost impossible to endure.

[The fable King of a Kingless World resists the cold!]

[The fable One Who Opposes the Extraordinary resists the cold!]

[The fable Demon King of Salvation resists the cold!]

The piercing cold began to seep into the fables surrounding me. I could feel the fables that formed the Constellation Demon King of Salvation freezing in real time.

[The fables' movements are slowing.]

The meaning of this was obvious.

「The Constellation Demon King of Salvation will die within the story he loved.」

This was the end awaiting the Constellation Demon King of Salvation.

And once I, the Constellation, perished, my Incarnation body, weakened to its limit, would begin to disappear as well.

Then, for a brief moment, a voice came with faint warmth.

“You.”

Knowing whose voice it was, I gave a faint smile.

‘Bihyeong.’

“Damn bastard.”

[Dokkaebi communication].

Perhaps it was about to cut off as well. Bihyeong's voice was unstable.

I got straight to the point.

“Can I receive the item I requested earlier?”

As the original author of 『The Infinite Prison Warden』, I could receive enormous coin royalties throughout my activities in the Scenarios as an original-author privilege.

I had spent more than half the coins I earned to buy one item.

“You know this item normally can't be sold, right?”

“I know.”

“Buying this won't let you survive.”

Bihyeong must have known it too.

I was now highly likely to die.

Both as a Constellation and as an Incarnation.

“You should go. If you stay here too long, they'll get suspicious.”

“Survive somehow, you idiot...!”

Bihyeong's voice cut off.

The cold returned.

[The fable King of a Kingless World stops its story.]

Each time a fable lost its function, it felt as though every joint in my body were being severed.

With pale, frozen hands, I checked the item Bihyeong had given me.

It was a small horn.

The Horizon Horn.

An item that sent its user to the Horizon of Stories.

I took several ragged breaths, then blew all my remaining breath into the horn.

[You are using the item Horizon Horn!]

Soon, with the sound of a small horn, my body began falling somewhere.

Falling, falling, and falling again.

How long had it been?

When I came to my senses, I was on cold dirt.

I quickly raised my upper body from the ground.

A garbage dump lay before me through the blur.

My stomach churned, and I felt like I might cry.

I had survived. Somehow, I had made it here.

「The Horizon of Stories.」

I wouldn't die. I would definitely survive and return to my companions.

Then I would change Kim Dokja's story.

The moment I looked up at the sky with that thought, the night sky, which should have been empty, flashed.

Lightning flared several times before crashing into the ground, and something descended onto the surface.

They were Constellations from Olympus.

[This is as far as you go, young demon king. Now no one can protect you.]

I gave a bitter smile.

“Well, this is something.”

I hadn't expected those bastards to follow me outside the Scenario Area, all the way to this garbage dump.

“They must be really furious.”

I drew out the last of my strength and raised my fables.

Then it felt as though my heart had stopped.

[The fable One Who Opposes the Extraordinary stops its story.]

[The fable Demon King of Salvation stops its story.]

[All fables of the Constellation Demon King of Salvation stop their stories.]

Strength drained from my entire body, and I collapsed forward.

At last, the fables of the Demon King of Salvation had exhausted their strength.

[Your Fate has been fulfilled!]

[The Constellation Demon King of Salvation has lost the qualifications of a Constellation!]

[The modifier Demon King of Salvation has disappeared from the constellation!]

A cold on an entirely different level from before seeped into my skin.

The Constellations approached me one step at a time, mocking me.

They truly were vicious bastards. I would die if they left me alone, yet they had come all this way to finish me off.

Through the dim haze, I saw the letters floating around them.

It was a fable I knew well.

Only then did I understand many things.

Why they could keep their nebula intact even while recklessly trespassing into lower Scenarios.

「They had already collected a considerable number of Kim Dokja Fragments.」

And like Asmodeus, they had found some way to learn how to use them.

A faint despair washed over me.

This time, I thought there might truly be nothing I could do.

I even thought that I should have simply given my fables to Eunyoo or Killer King before coming here.

Still, I couldn't give up until the end.

Just as I thought I should activate [Incitement] and at least try talking my way out of this...

“■■. ■■■ ■■■……!”

I heard someone saying something.

When I raised my head, I saw a familiar figure.

A man in a pitch-black coat, holding a long spear, was glaring at me.

Yu Junghyeok?

For a moment, I couldn't understand.

How was Junghyeok here?

He should have cleared the Scenario and returned to Earth by now, so why...

[The current target is carrying out a personal Scenario.]

A personal Scenario.

A Scenario that a Constellation could specially grant to Incarnations who had cleared the tenth Scenario or beyond.

If someone had granted Junghyeok a personal Scenario, his appearance here wasn't impossible.

But who would take such a risk now?

There couldn't possibly be a mad Constellation willing to come all the way to a Scenario expulsion area, defy the will of the nebulae, and grant Junghyeok a personal Scenario...

“Do you enjoy living like that? You ■like bast■rds.”

Wait a minute.

Had Junghyeok ever cursed like that?

White wings rippled behind Junghyeok's back.

A belated sigh escaped me.

There was one person.

A Constellation with a face more beautiful than any I knew, spewing such harsh curses.

[The constellation Demonic Judge of Fire does not wish for your death.]

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried