abcnovels
Chapter 129 - Eschatologist I
Chapter 129 - Eschatologist I
[Translator - Jjescus]
[Proofreader - Gun]
Chapter 129
??????
Eschatologist I
1
Do you often have nightmares?
I do.
For instance, in one dream, the KoreanVillage Villain (considering her history of neglect and abandonment) completely subjugated Seo Gyu to be her subordinate, turning him into the tyrant of SGNet.
- KoreanVillage: From now on, I'll ban all those old Three Kingdoms debates in SGNet for 24 hours straight...
- ZERO_SUGAR: What are you talking about, Aryeon?
- KoreanVillage: Oh, this resentment and grudge. The Guild Master's trolling is always the most satisfying. It tastes so good. The Guild Master is the ultimate gourmet experience...
- KoreanVillage: From now on, I will ascend to the heavens...
At that, all the members of SGNet applauded the new administrator's bold decision.
Even Saintess, who always connected anonymously, and Noh Doha, who rarely participated in the community, signed up with their real names just to praise the KoreanVillage.
What a horrifying nightmare.
Even if the world forgave her, I, Doctor Jang, could never forgive such a tragedy. The very next day, I secretly added an extra shot of espresso to Aryeon’s café mocha (Aryeon was puzzled by the change in taste).
There are other nightmares, less horrific but with more realism.
- Teacher? Teacher...?
In that nightmare, I, Doctor Jang, was already dead.
I don't remember exactly how I died. Even with my perfect memory ability, recalling what happens in dreams is hard. Perhaps I might know if I bought a lucid dream for a billion won from one of those tutorial fairies.
How did I die?
Was I betrayed and stabbed in the back? Did someone I trusted enough to let my guard down kill me? Or was I killed by some monstrous being that my aura couldn’t protect me from?
Unlike others, I had over a thousand possible causes of death, so it was impossible to determine the exact one.
- Teacher, please wake up, teacher. Please open your eyes...
But in that nightmare, Cheon Yohwa was watching my dead body.
Actually, "watching" isn't the right word. Cheon Yohwa's red eyes were almost blinded, as if they were soaked like a car windshield in the rain.
She groped. Kneeling before my corpse, she used her sense of touch, not sight, to trace the contours of my body, inch by inch.
In a way, it was a relief that she couldn't see.
As if experiencing an out-of-body experience, I observed the world in third-person. The genre of that world was horror. There wasn’t a single intact part of my corpse.
-...
Cheon Yohwa soon realized that too. Her hand stopped.
- Dead.
She muttered, repeating the word.
- Dead, dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
A crashing sound, as if something had shattered.
The scene then drastically changed.
Around Cheon Yohwa, something resembling the static on an old television screen began to writhe. The white and black noise rapidly expanded.
‘Ah.’
The noise, spreading like a tidal wave from Cheon Yohwa, quickly engulfed an entire city, the Korean Peninsula, and the entire world.
As the noise expanded, the world screamed. Between the screams, bursts of blood splattered.
Birch trees and red spider lilies.
The colors of the noise and the blood were eerily similar to those that once bloomed at Baekhwa High School.
The Divine Domain.
The realm of the Forgotten God. When Cheon Yohwa, its master and priestess, wished for the world's destruction, the alien god granted her wish without hesitation, dyeing the world in black and white and red.
‘Yohwa, don’t. Yohwa, please, don't do this.’
The descent of a corrupted Cheon Yohwa, who had once sealed away all the horrors of Baekhwa, displayed terrifying power.
After all, this was the [Bad Ending] scenario I had envisioned.
The Forgotten God was dangerous. Cheon Yohwa, who had sealed such a god, always carried the risk of descending as an even more catastrophic disaster.
But Cheon Yohwa was not a weak child. She was strong. After the 117th turn, I rarely witnessed Cheon Yohwa's mental breakdown while I was alive.
Yes, while I was alive.
What if I were to die?
What if I died before Cheon Yohwa, and in a manner too humiliating for her to accept?
What would happen to the student I had personally handed a graduation certificate to?
Ka ha ha ha ha ka ka ka ka—
The alien god, released from its glass prison, laughed maniacally.
The entire Earth turned into a mass of black and white noise. The Forgotten God, assassinated by a regressor, had finally returned to declare its ultimate victory.
Though it was just a dream, dismissing it as a mere mental triumph for the Forgotten God felt too ominous as its laughter echoed across the universe.
The dirge sung as the world ended was one of mockery.
- Huh?
Then, the transformed Cheon Yohwa that had swallowed Cheon Yohwa stopped laughing.
Staring—
I felt it looking at me. The black and white noise, the Earth, the universe, the god who had isolated the world, was staring directly at me.
- Not dead? Yet?
At that moment, my dream ended.
2
Similar nightmares have repeated several times.
It wasn't just Cheon Yohwa appearing in my nightmares.
Every time I dreamt, the protagonist changed. Tang Seorin, Saintess, Lee Hayul, Sim Aryeon...
Of course, a dream is just a dream. It would be easy to dismiss it as just an “unpleasant nightmare.” And in fact, that’s what I’ve done.
“Hoee? A nightmare?”
But after I obtained information in the 205th turn that the tutorial fairies were actually nightmares (Incubi/Succubi), I began to think differently.
I decided it was necessary to take my nightmares more seriously.
“Yeah. Dreams are your area of expertise, after all. Is it possible that a ‘creature that parasitizes dreams’ could exist?”
“Hoee. Of course!”
Fairy 264 wiggled its butt.
“There are plenty of creatures in dreams, not just us fairies!”
“Plenty?”
“Hoee. Humans have long had a habit of considering dreams as another dimension. To describe the situation based on the glossary developed by Secretary General Comrade, a dream is ‘another world that is entirely different from this one, yet one I can enter, or end up entering!’”
“Sounds like the Void.”
“Correct! There may be humans who have never entered the Void, but there are no humans who have never dreamed...! Humans are a pitiable species, destined to experience the Void called dreams from birth! And we fairies are the ones who live in that ‘first Void’...! We are a species overflowing with fundamental significance! If there is any reactionary force that dares to covet our rightful Lebensraum, the realm of dreams, then they will be punished!”
[PR/N: Lebensraum is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s]
“Hmm.”
Dreams could be considered another Void. No, they are a Void.
After talking with the fairies, the experts in this field, I felt more confident. But there were still unresolved questions.
And I’m not the type to brood alone when I have doubts.
I immediately sought out the counsellor I trusted the most and opened up about my "nightmares."
"Why me, of all people?"
"Because you've never been the protagonist in these nightmares."
"Sigh..."
Noh Doha, the chief administrator, wiped his glasses. It didn’t really matter much, as the glasses cloth itself was dirty from how long it hadn’t been washed.
I snapped my fingers, summoning my aura. Carefully, I cleaned the grime off his glasses.
[Translator - Jjescus]
[Proofreader - Gun]
"You should be cleaning those with water, not a cloth."
"I don’t have time for that. I’m incredibly busy. If only certain individuals didn’t come bursting into my office needing psychological counselling, maybe I’d have more free time..."
"Was that Jiwon? I’ll make sure to give him a stern talking-to later."
"Is this guy serious...?"
"Anyway, help me think this through. If this 'nightmare' is a monster, why does it keep showing me these dreams?"
"Hmmm..."
Noh Doha chewed on the end of his pen.
"...Let’s set aside the possibility that this is just some meaningless dream conjured up by your unpleasant subconscious."
"What exactly do you think of me?"
"The only purpose I can see is to shake your mental state. However, monsters don’t have intellect or reason. If we were to consider monsters as intelligent beings like humans, I’d say that Doctor Jang, you, are an inexplicable thorn in their side..."
"A thorn?"
"Yes."
Noh Doha grinned.
"You’ve got a handle on when and where monsters will appear, and you’ve even used all sorts of bizarre methods to defeat them... Isn’t that quite the mystery? The only ways to defeat someone like you are overwhelming force or psychological attacks..."
"..."
"Overwhelming force. That’s what we’d call a monster wave... But according to you, thanks to that, what was it, the bird that drinks poison or something, we’ve got about eight years before that becomes a problem, right?"
"Yes."
"Then there’s nothing left but to shake your mind bit by bit. I’ve been meaning to point this out... Doctor Jang, you tend to view monsters as overwhelmingly powerful enemies."
"Because they are overwhelmingly powerful."
"Well, when it comes to ocean-level or quasi-deity-level threats, sure, they could crush us humans like bugs. Even the Ten Clans were considered unbeatable before you came along... But from their perspective, aren’t you also a terrifying existence?"
"Hmm."
"If I were a monster, I’d try to break your spirit. Showing you scenes of the people you care about being ruined one by one... It’s not a bad tactic, don’t you think?"
Indeed.
Noh Doha's analysis made sense.
Of course, as he emphasized, monsters didn’t possess human-like intellect.
Rather than the monster having a 'purpose' to break me down, it was more likely that it just happened to produce phenomena that threatened me.
But either way, the fact remained that there was a monster trying to break my mind.
"Talking with you helps me sort things out. But still, isn’t it just a dream? As long as it doesn’t immediately impact our reality, we can leave it alone."
"Heh. As you wish. I’ll leave dealing with the monsters to Doctor Jang. By the way, I’m just glad I’ve never appeared in your grim nightmares..."
However, after several turns, it became clear that our assessment was too naive.
"Sir!"
Thud, thud, thud.
Cheon Yohwa, a former basketball ace, came rushing in. Despite being in the cozy depth of our hideout café, 1,200 meters underground, where running was unnecessary, she hurried toward me as if I might disappear at any moment.
It wasn’t until she reached me that she sighed in relief.
"Oh... Sir, you’re okay. Thank goodness..."
"What’s wrong? Why do you look so worried?"
"...I’m sorry. I had a really disturbing dream last night."
"A disturbing dream?"
My long experience as a regressor had developed a highly sensitive intuition at the back of my neck. The moment I heard the words "bad dream," my neck prickled with goosebumps.
"Yes. In the dream, something bad happened to you. It was so cruel. You tried your best to help people, but no one appreciated it, and though I don’t remember clearly, there was betrayal too..."
As expected.
My intuition had not failed me.
"So I got really, really angry. The people around me suddenly felt less than human, and if they weren’t human, there was no reason to protect them... So."
"You broke the seal of the Endless Hell."
"Oh... Right. Um, Endless Hell covered the whole world, humanity went extinct, and yet I didn’t feel anything. I hated that..."
Indeed.
There was something I hadn’t considered, and Noh Doha had overlooked it as well.
If the "nightmare" was truly a monster, then it wouldn’t just be me experiencing it. All of humanity might be haunted by the same monster whenever they had nightmares.
I could vaguely remember the nightmare because I was an awakened with [Perfect Memory]. Most people probably just forgot about it after they woke up.
I wasn’t too worried about my own mental state. After all, I had various measures in place to maintain my mental health.
But if it affected others as well?
That was a different story.
As you know, people like Tang Seorin, the Saintess, Cheon Yohwa, and Sim Aryeon all had the potential to "fall" and bring about world destruction if pushed too far.
A monster that eroded their minds, even if they couldn’t remember it clearly, was definitely a threat that needed to be dealt with more seriously.
I immediately headed to the casino.
"Fairy Number 264."
"Hoet. What’s going on, Secretary-General?"
"Gather as many available incubuses as possible. Be prepared to engage in lucid dreaming. It’s time to raise the red flag once more."
"Hoek... I can gather about 90 of them. But what kind of enemy has appeared that requires a full mobilization order?"
I spoke.
"We need to crush the monster that’s parasitizing humanity’s dreams."
"Hoeh? As expected of the Secretary-General...!"
Fairy Number 264 grabbed my hands in a double handshake.
"If it’s about reclaiming our rightful territory in the dream world...! We, the Fairy Revolutionary Club, will fully support you in crushing the reactionary elements that have occupied our homeland!"
The fairy shed fragrant, flowery tears.
This was the moment when the first-ever human (me) - monster (fairy) alliance was formed.
[Translator - Jjescus]
[Proofreader - Gun]