abcnovels
Chapter 221
Chapter 221:
Chapter 221
The collectors had a ‘strange dream’, but if they were asked if it led to a dramatic change that would transform the world, they would all express their skepticism.
Rather, the change they had hoped for was too weak, and the people who had longed for change could not hide their disappointment.
Nothing had changed after they had the dream.
‘Hmm. Everyone seems to be talking a lot about it.’
Seo Sumin, who arrived at the academy early in the morning, overheard the students in her class chatting among themselves.
She couldn’t help but hear them, thanks to her excellent senses.
Most of the conversations were about the dreams they had last night.
“Wow. I’ve never had such a realistic dream before.”
“Really? Why didn’t I have a dream?”
“I heard that not everyone had one. What’s the difference?”
“But when I woke up, my body felt strangely light. I felt stronger than usual.”
“Hey, you don’t get stronger just by sleeping. What are you talking about?”
“Is that so?”
Two male students giggled.
Seo Sumin leaned her cheek on her arm and looked out the window, but her keen hearing did not miss their conversation.
‘It seems that I wasn’t the only one who had a dream last night.’
She also had a dream.
A dream of when she was the leader of the Heavenly Demon Sect.
It was not a pleasant dream for Seo Sumin.
The days when she was revered by everyone as the Heavenly Horse were nothing but bitter memories for her.
But if she was asked if it was painful or hard to remember it as before, that was not the case either.
It was all in the past now. She had decided to shake off all her sorrows and live a new life.
It was all thanks to Kang Yu-hyun’s help.
She still remembered vividly.
The way he grabbed her chin and pulled her close, his intense gaze.
His voice that gripped her heart and bound her soul.
How about his hand that was hotter than the heat of the battlefield?
“…”
As her thoughts went that far, Seo Sumin’s face turned red.
Her white hair and skin contrasted with her flushed cheeks.
Her hair shone faintly in the sunlight.
The mysterious white-haired girl who looked out the window indifferently was a picture in itself.
The male students who had arrived earlier and sat down all looked at her.
Gulp.
Someone swallowed loudly enough to be heard in the quiet classroom.
If they were normal collectors, they would have been overflowing with confidence.
Even people who were timid usually changed their personalities when they entered the academy.
Anyone would have tried to talk to someone of the opposite sex at least once, but no one approached Seo Sumin.
It was natural, since she was the first-ranked student in admission, and a powerful person who defeated even other A-ranked students overwhelmingly.
The atmosphere in the classroom sank awkwardly, and then someone appeared who broke it by opening the back door.
“Sumin! Hi!”
“Oh, Yura. Hi.”
Kang Yura, who came from the dormitory, sat next to Seo Sumin and greeted her.
It was a great fortune for both of them to be in the same class without knowing anyone at the academy.
Kang Yura and Seo Sumin always hung out together at the academy, and as a result, they naturally attracted attention.
The overwhelming first place Seo Sumin and Kang Yura who did not fall behind in the upper ranks.
They were just two people who got together, but they became an exceptional case with a power comparable to other ‘factions’, because they were outstanding in both appearance and ability.
As soon as Yura sat down, she started to chatter about what she had experienced.
“Sumin, do you know what happened to me?”
“What?”
“I had a weird dream today.”
“A dream?”
“Yeah, a dream.”
At the word ‘dream’, Seo Sumin recalled the conversation she had overheard from a fellow student earlier.
She didn’t even need to go that far.
She had also dreamed of the past.
Everyone knew that this was a new change that had been delivered to the collectors recently.
But she was curious anyway, so Seo Sumin asked out of courtesy.
“What kind of dream was it?”
“Well, it was a bit strange. The world was totally messed up, you know?”
“Huh?”
Seo Sumin felt something odd in Yura’s words.
She had arrived early at school and listened to various conversations of the students.
Most of the stories had one thing in common: they were all related to the ‘past’.
Some said they were soldiers on a ship, some said they were people in a deep mountain, or some said they were in a war.
There were such stories, but no one had anything like Yura’s about a ruined world.
Not even anything similar to that.
It was hard to dismiss it as a simple story of a destroyed empire in history.
There were too many things that bothered her.
“Can I hear more about that story? What exactly was your dream?”
“Um, honestly, I thought it was a nightmare. I thought the world we lived in had suddenly gone to hell.”
“The world went to hell?”
“Yeah. It looked like Seoul, I think. It wasn’t a mistake. The city was barely recognizable, the sky was blood-red, and black storms raged everywhere.”
She added with a shiver that it felt like her sanity was being drained just by looking at it.
Seo Sumin asked.
“What about you? What were you like in that dream?”
“I was one of the survivors. I don’t remember the name, but there were five of us, including me. Oh, right. I wondered where I had seen him before, but it was him.”
“Who?”
“He was with me. You know, the girl you fought with during the test. The one who used the red soldiers.”
“Gu Seoyun?”
“Yeah, that’s her. She looked much more mature than now, but I guess she would look like that after 10 years or so.”
Seo Sumin listened carefully to Yura’s words.
And she came to one conclusion.
In her opinion, the dream that happened this time was not just an illusion, but based on something that actually happened.
The dream was about the ‘future’, not the past.
‘Teller Kang Yu-hyun told me. The collectors’ traits are the power of stories that existed in the past. The people who dreamed saw those stories of their traits, but then what about Yura’s dream of the future? Is that even possible?’
Normally, in this case, one could dismiss Yura as having a unique dream by chance, but Seo Sumin did not take Yura’s words lightly.
Rather, because it was Yura’s words, she listened more seriously.
Her sharp senses as a transcender told her.
Everything Yura said was true.
As Seo Sumin’s thoughts and worries deepened, Yura looked around and whispered quietly.
“But Sumin, there was one more thing that was strange.”
“What was it?”
“Well…”
Kang Yura hesitated, wondering if she should tell her or not.
Then she whispered quietly in Seo Sumin’s ear.
“I was a man in that dream.”
“What?”
Seo Sumin had no choice but to ask that, as it was such an absurd thing to say.
***
When everyone else had a dream, Yu-hyun also had a similar one.
It was a dream of the time when he first witnessed the world collapsing, monsters rampaging, and people dying.
It was a dream of the time when he struggled to survive in the baptism of despair.
Yu-hyun woke up from the vivid nightmare, feeling its horror.
“Tsk.”
He got up from his bed and went down to the communal dining room to brew some coffee.
It was a state-of-the-art coffee machine he bought after moving in.
‘How annoying.’
He recalled some unpleasant memories, but he didn’t let them bother him too much.
He had anticipated something like this would happen, after all.
“Hmm.”
Yu-hyun looked down at the hot steaming coffee and let out a sound without realizing it.
Come to think of it, everyone else had dreams based on events that actually happened. But the dream that Yu-hyun had in this time period was not something that actually happened.
There was a contradiction there.
‘Can something that will happen in the future be considered as something that actually happened, just because I have memories of it?’
Yu-hyun took a sip of his coffee and came up with an answer: ‘It can be.’
Yu-hyun’s complicated inner thoughts seemed to be sensed by Baekryeon, who reacted.
[Why? What’s what?]
‘Baekryeon. You know, right? That I came from the future.’
[Yeah. Well, you and I are somewhat connected.]
‘Then, here’s a question. The things that I experienced in the future are all in my memory. Then, would those things be considered as existing or not existing in this present?’
[Hmm.]
It was a question worth pondering, so Baekryeon fell into thought.
Meanwhile, Yu-hyun sat at the table and quietly enjoyed his moderately cooled coffee.
When his cup was almost empty, Baekryeon raised both hands.
[Ah! I don’t know no matter how much I think! The future is the past? That’s totally contradictory, isn’t it?]
‘Right. It’s kind of a time paradox.’
[So, what did you think?]
‘What I came up with is, the moment I remember and think about those things, they become existing things.’
Things that haven’t happened yet become things that have happened.
That sounded illogical to Baekryeon, who asked nervously.
[They become existing things? Just because you remember them?]
‘That’s possible in the mixed world.’
The reason why Yu-hyun was confident was because of the peculiarity of the mixed world.
The mixed world was a place where immaterial things could exist in reality.
Someone’s memory, something that happened in the past, they all appeared in reality through the ‘world of thoughts’.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so, but I realized it after seeing Sumin’s story.’
The world of Heavenly Demon Seo Sumin’s nightmare was created by the seed he used in Paradise.
Naturally, what unfolded inside was Sumin’s past story, and it became reality.
Yu-hyun thought back on everything that had happened and felt something strange.
‘The fact that someone’s memory can become reality… That means I’m no different.’
If this world was a computer, Yu-hyun was like a USB with data that shouldn’t exist.
If this USB connects to the computer’s main body, the data naturally becomes part of the computer.
That was exactly Yu-hyun’s situation.
‘The things I experienced in the future. What if they encounter the peculiarities of this mixed world?’
[Wait. That means…]
‘Yes. That means the moment I remember the future events, they become events that have already happened in this mixed world.’
[Then, is that okay? Even if the future events become real in this world, it doesn’t seem like they would be easy to find out.]
‘Well. I thought so too, but I can’t be sure about that part.’
Yu-hyun wouldn’t have worried much if this dream was entirely his own.
But there were people who had the same experience as him.
Choi Doyoon, Gu Seoyoon, Hwang Se-eun, Jamila.
They shared the same world as Yu-hyun.
Then what about the people of this era?
Would they be able to recall the world he knew?
‘If. Just if, my memory exists in this mixed world. And if it affects the people I knew.’
[Then? Then what?]
‘Well. Then… It would be quite a hassle.’
If that happens, Yu-hyun would be able to confidently claim that this world is a damn place.
[Hey. Wait a minute. Then there’s another problem?]
‘There’s another problem?’
[You only have one memory of the future.]
‘That’s right.’
[Then, what about Kwon Jia?]
‘Huh?’josei
Yu-hyun remembered it only then.
Right. There was Kwon Jia.
She who had lived longer and repeated more lives than him.
If her memory actually affects this mixed world, and it is treated as a real event.
[What happens then?]
‘That…’
When he thought about it, it was not a normal serious matter.
[Shouldn’t you ask her right now?]
‘I can’t do that. It’s too late.’
[What?]
‘She booked a flight ticket early this morning and left for Europe. She said she was going to find the hidden piece of the dream world.’
[Hey! Why didn’t you stop her!]
‘How could I stop her? She said she wanted to go alone. I barely held back from following her.’
He pretended not to care, but Yu-hyun was also worried.
The hidden piece that Kwon Jia was looking for was related to her lost memory.
To be precise, it was an object that could remind her of her past memories.
A mixed world where someone’s past memories and recollections can become ‘reality’.
The dream world created by Sumin’s memory was a typical example.
It was fine now since Kwon Jia couldn’t remember all the episodes.
‘But what if her memory wakes up completely?’
If the information of that vast book that he hadn’t read yet was released in this mixed world?
How much impact would it have afterwards?
Yu-hyun couldn’t even imagine it.