The World After the Fall - Chapter 10

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

◈ The World After the Fall ◈

Chapter 10: Episode 1. Ten Billion Stabs (9)

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Even as he thought it could not be true, there was no other way to explain the impossible phenomenon before him. If that was not Awakening, then what was it?

There was no time to stand there in shock. Countless rays of sword light were flying toward Beastrein.

The force behind every blow he blocked was growing sharply.

He frantically swung his claw, deflecting the rays of light.

Blocking them, blocking them again, and blocking them once more.

By the time he thought he had stopped them all, Beastrein realized too late that he had already been struck.

“...What in the world?”

Pain suddenly seized Beastrein, as though that very existence were being torn apart. There was no fatal wound anywhere on Beastrein’s body. Then where had the attack landed?

“Don’t worry. You probably won’t die. It might be more painful than dying, though.”

Jaehwan had not attacked Beastrein’s soul. He had attacked a Line that came from outside the Tower and connected to Beastrein’s soul.

Jaehwan did not know it, but in the 《Great Lands》, that Line was called a Link, or a Pineal Gland.

A Line connecting the body and soul.

Jaehwan’s Stab had nearly shredded that Line before severing it.

“Kuaaaaaaaaaah!”

Beastrein writhed in terrible pain.

“And listen carefully, one last time.”

Jaehwan took a deep breath and began to speak.

“Humans are not something you can buy and sell as you please. We are not Products you can measure with pathetic standards like levels and stats, then put a price on.”

The 《Tower of Nightmares》 was shaking so violently that it was visible to the naked eye. Jaehwan continued.

“I will no longer follow the Scenario you bastards laid out for me. I will destroy this place and climb to the next floor. Then I will keep climbing, until I see the destruction of the damned world you created.”

Beastrein now felt fear toward the Product he had created. Not even higher-order Adapters of the fourth rank or above had inspired the same feeling as Jaehwan.

An Awakened One who had reached the realm of 「Selflessness」.

One who had become an existence that could not be quantified by the System or defined by anything.

Even Beastrein, the Tower’s master, could not read Jaehwan’s attributes.

[User Information]

Name: ??????????????

Title: ??????????????

Class: ??????????????

Innate Ability: ??????????????

Skills: ??????????????

Beastrein cried out through the pain.

“Please, stop! Please! There is no next floor... There is no such thing as a next floor!”

“No. There is. There is a next floor.”

Jaehwan had not kept talking about a “next floor” while attacking Beastrein out of stubbornness alone.

“There has to be.”

From the first floor to the ninety-ninth.

Once, while searching every corner of the Tower for survivors, Jaehwan had found graffiti in the passageway on the seventy-eighth floor.

「A tower within a tower. A nightmare within a nightmare.」

There was another clue.

On the sixty-sixth floor, this graffiti had been carved behind the succubus’s chair.

「In the end, every Tower of Nightmares is only an imitation of the ‘First Nightmare’ at the top of the 《Phantasmal Tree》. Whenever I create something these days, I can think of only one thing. As long as I borrow the power of the First Nightmare, I will always face the same obstacle. The countless Towers I have created are nothing more than ‘Roots’ meant to sustain the First Nightmare at the top of the 《Phantasmal Tree》.」

It was graffiti that resembled an artist’s anguish.

Jaehwan had wondered whether the graffiti might be clues to Hidden Pieces within the Tower, so he had copied them down whenever he had the chance.

There was similar graffiti on the forty-seventh floor.

「So I dare to arrive at this blasphemous thought. To glimpse the secret of true creation, should we not climb this 《Phantasmal Tree》, the heart of the Great Lands? Having passed through the ‘Trunk’ and ‘Branches,’ should we not confront the ‘First Nightmare’ directly at the top of the 《Phantasmal Tree》?」

At the time, he had not known exactly what it meant. It was one of the Tower’s secrets that Jaehwan had failed to solve before reaching the hundredth floor.

After realizing the Tower’s true nature, though, the graffiti took on an entirely different meaning for him.

Jaehwan recognized it at once.

This was the graffiti of the Master who had created this 《Tower of Nightmares》.

Of course, he did not have enough knowledge to fully decipher every metaphor and symbol in it. That did not mean he had gained nothing from it.

A tower within a tower, a nightmare within a nightmare.

The Roots, Trunk, and Branches of the Phantasmal Tree.

The First Nightmare at its summit.

All of it pointed to one fact.

This world was connected.

For now, it was only a hypothesis.

Still, it was a hypothesis worth confirming.

Jaehwan looked up at the hundredth floor’s ceiling and used Stab against it. A crack began to form in the Tower’s ceiling. Beastrein screamed.

“No! My Tower! Uaaaaah!”

Once more, and then once again.

Through 「Doubt」, Jaehwan saw it clearly.

The particles that formed the Tower, the movement of the energy binding those particles together, and a massive current of energy constantly descending from somewhere unseen above.

From upstream to downstream.

An immense scattering that eventually spread into a vast sea. This place was at the very edge of that sea.

Jaehwan was certain. If he followed this current, he would surely reach the secret of this world.

The hundredth floor was not the end of the Tower.

“If this is the Root, there must be a Trunk too.”

The ceiling gradually crumbled under Jaehwan’s attacks, and white light began to leak through the gaps.

“You cannot! If you leave through that entrance, you will never again...!”

“Goodbye.”

As Beastrein intended, perhaps Jaehwan would eventually have to join the Main Game.

But not now.

He lacked information, and his Combat Power was still too weak.

Was it not already difficult enough just to face one demon, Beastrein?

He needed to learn more. He needed to become stronger.

White light wrapped around Jaehwan.

He leaped into its center.

He would not go to the past.

Nor would he return to the world he had left behind.

The world he chose was always the present.

This very moment, alive and breathing.

That was how he moved toward his own life.

* * *

Something that should never have happened had occurred.

Not only had an Awakened One appeared during the First Cultivation, that Awakened One had broken through the Tower and escaped outside.

Beastrein watched Jaehwan disappear in disbelief, then painfully moved his body and opened a hologram panel.

‘Quickly. I have to tell Big Brother...’

But it was already too late.

The Tutorial Game was collapsing.

Communication had been cut off as well.

‘Damn it, no. This can’t... It can’t be happening!’

The severed Link connecting his body and soul had completely cut him off from the outside. His soul was now completely trapped within the 《Phantasmal Tree》.

When a soul with its Link severed remained in a collapsing world, it vanished with that world.

‘It cannot end like this...!’

He canceled the message he had been composing for Big Brother and looked toward the passage of light through which Jaehwan had disappeared.

Then, in the next moment, the 《Tower of Nightmares》 collapsed.

[Tutorial Game results are being calculated.]

[Calculating...]

[An unexpected error has occurred during calculation.]

[Calculation failed.]

[Searching for Walkers remaining inside the 《Tower of Nightmares》.]

[Searching...]

[There are currently no Walkers inside the 《Tower of Nightmares》.]

...