Episode 65

Gang Jegyeong wasn’t the only one disappointed that the main quest seemed to have ended in such a vague, inconclusive way. I was, too. Abrea had suddenly disappeared, and nothing had been resolved, so of course I couldn’t help looking forward to this all the more. There was a very high chance the trailer would reveal what on earth had happened.

If even the trailer didn’t explain it…… well. We’d just have to wait until the next update. What else could we do?

As I listened to the ticklish voice whispering near my ear, the number that had been steadily decreasing reached 5 before I knew it. By then, Gang Jegyeong had also begun to fall silent, leaning back against his seat as he stared at the screen.

The number counted down to 1 in order, then changed to 0, naturally transitioning into the Zero Soft logo. The excited murmuring of the crowd swept once through the stadium. When the logo vanished and the screen was dyed pitch-black, the voices of the people scattered completely, leaving silence hanging in the air.

Then a familiar voice began a calm monologue.

― I began to think something was strange from the day Howa received baptism.

The speaker was Abrea.

― Howa’s body had grown weak because of the first terrorist attack carried out by Eideas. Her immunity had fallen, so she would fall ill and collapse at the slightest chance, and even when food was brought to her, she couldn’t digest it.

The illustrations turning one by one recalled Abrea’s past. The brutal reality of Eideas’s first terrorist attack, said to have caused countless casualties, was depicted, and within it, Abrea and Howa, who had survived, were receiving care from the ruined temple. Both of them were covered in dust and blood, but Abrea was walking around in good health, while Howa, her body skeletal, could not leave Abrea’s arms and remained sickly.

Abrea’s brief recollection moved on to the scene of Howa, having shaken off her illness and grown up safely, receiving baptism at the temple. But Abrea’s expression as she watched the ceremony from behind Howa was extremely uneasy.

― The moment that child had barely recovered her strength and received baptism, she suddenly picked up a sword with that unhealthy body of hers.

― Even though she would collapse from exhaustion whenever she had the chance, she said, “Since this is a body that cannot use the power of God, I must serve God even if I have to take up a sword and shield”……. And so she abused her own body.

On the screen, Abrea and Howa argued fiercely. Neither seemed willing to back down.

― She was the only blood relative I had left. I could not lose Howa, too.

― But unlike before, Howa did not understand at all that I was worried about her body.

As though life had been breathed into what had only been drawings, the two gradually began to move. Abrea, clutching her forehead as she flared up, faced off against Howa, who could not accept her words.

Both of them were angry, but if there was one difference, it was that Abrea’s face was full of anxiety and worry, while Howa’s merely showed dissatisfaction and irritation.

― “I know very well that your abilities are outstanding……. But at this rate, you’re going to die.”

― “If it’s for Lord Shediaz, something like that doesn’t matter at all.”

― “You don’t think about me at all, do you? I’m so worried about you that I can’t even focus on my work!”

― “That’s just a lack of ability. Someone who can’t even separate public and private matters and hasn’t even received baptism—what kind of commander is that?”

― “……What?”

Wow, that was harsh. If I’d said that, my older sister would’ve beaten me half to death and then some.

― Without a doubt, Howa had changed.

― “This is much better than being unable to do anything like before and just praying. No matter what I choose, it’s not something you get to interfere with, Unni.”

As if she no longer wanted to talk, Howa turned and left the room. Left alone, Abrea despaired, her eyes filled with confusion. Abrea’s monologue sounded over the scene.

― Is this truly “your” choice?

The screen faded to black, and a voice that was not Abrea’s cried, “Commander!” When color returned to the screen, it showed the Mirror Maze, a normal dungeon, and inside it appeared characters I had never seen before. Judging by their appearances and attire, they seemed to be priests and assassins of the Jeoba tribe.

Seeing people in the stadium whisper their names and act as if they recognized them, they seemed to be NPCs of the Jeoba tribe. One of them was a face I definitely knew, though only vaguely. It was a famous Jeoba tribe kid, but I couldn’t remember the name.

The conversation itself wasn’t much. As in the main quest, they had investigated the Mirror Maze, but aside from the fact that wind was flowing in from somewhere, they had been unable to find the cause of the abnormal air currents.

Then, upon hearing a faint noise in the Mirror Maze where they thought only they were present, they selected an investigator to confirm who had entered the place.

The screen followed the place the noise had come from, climbing up a pitch-black hole that had opened above the maze. Before long, it reached the end of the hole. In accordance with the world that had been turned upside down, the screen rotated 180 degrees.

A corridor where mirrors faced each other, and the floor below, pierced straight through to form a cliff.

It was the place Jaesugang and I had crossed in the Hidden Mirror Maze.

So the regular Mirror Maze and the Hidden Mirror Maze were connected. Thinking that, I glanced toward Gang Jegyeong without realizing it. That annoyingly handsome side profile was so absorbed in the trailer that he didn’t even notice I was looking at him, wearing the expression of a child who had become distracted by the TV while eating breakfast before going to kindergarten.

I watched that innocent look for a moment, then turned my eyes back to the screen.

The video left the corridor where we had flown around and passed straight through the dark room where we had met Omongnuni. As the screen moved forward, showing the corridor that had been blocked off so users couldn’t enter, Abrea and Adam, whom we hadn’t been able to see since the main quest, appeared. The two of them were laboriously pushing open a large door that looked shabby compared to the others.

Before the two, who were out of breath from opening the heavy door, was a high staircase leading somewhere. As always, the purple spirit flew ahead into that space, drawing a trail of light to guide the way.

Abrea quickly ran up the stairs, stepped onto the final step, and arrived at a place where everything from the ornaments to the floor was made of glass. And at the far end, a door identical to the enormous castle gate seen in the glass cave stood upside down atop a sacred platform.

Abrea, who had been staring blankly at the door, held the key null had given her in her hand and slowly approached the platform. When she moved all the way to the front of the door, the key suddenly slipped from Abrea’s hand as if melting and dripping away from heat. Then, starting from beneath Abrea’s feet, light bent in winding angles like an electronic circuit and extended all the way to the castle gate.

Soon, the enormous castle gate opened smoothly with a low click, the sound of a key fitting into place.

Abrea drew in a sharp breath when she saw what lay beyond the door.

Because unlike the world of Dusk, where war could not be stopped because poverty forced everyone to monopolize resources, what spread out before her was a space where all sorts of trees grew dense and green…… a place truly overflowing with resources.

Most of Dusk’s existing regions formed villages around a single tree, and when you went out into the fields, the only plants were a few clumps of grass. Ateliena, at least, had the setting of regressing to an era when all resources were abundant, so it was the only place where resources could be obtained, which was why the races fought among themselves to take possession of it. In such a world, where Abrea had desperately endured, she fell silent when faced with what lay beyond the door.

Only the sound of a soft, fluttering breeze brushing past filled the stadium. Soon, the monologue continued.

― The priests call me a heretic, but to be honest, I do not deny God’s dignity or disbelieve in His existence.

― I merely…… doubt what has been given to me.

Adam, who had been behind Abrea, strode up to the door and looked back at her.

― “This is the paradise we should have enjoyed.”

― “…….”

― “And the sacrifices and price required to take this back are beyond anything you can dare to predict. Learning the truth is the first sacrifice you must endure.”

― I realized that the world I had endured was something that had been created.

Anguish could not be fully hidden in the voice.

― Then is the God I knew “real”? Or…….

Following Abrea’s voice as she closed her eyes, the image of null flashed past.

― Is He nothing more than a “puppet,” like that one?

The illustration recalling the past from the beginning tore apart, and scenes that had been passing by in fragments slowly revealed themselves. Abrea’s parents vomited blood and died from Eideas’s attack; Abrea went to find a priest in order to save at least Howa, whom a divine knight had rushed in and rescued, but she was refused. Then, before the despairing Abrea and Howa, who looked as if she would stop breathing at any moment, someone approached like a miracle and began to heal her.

In the blurred vision filled with tears, there was a military doctor bearing the insignia of Eideas. And that figure overlapped with Howa, who had become a high-ranking priest after the baptism ceremony and now stood before her.

Returning to the present, Abrea approached Adam with an expression of firm resolve. As she stepped into the space called paradise, the screen was dyed entirely white with a bright light.

― ……I merely longed for the truth more than for God.

The screen, bright enough to make my eyes ache, once again sank into darkness, and along with a song I was hearing for the first time, it showed the dense forest that had appeared briefly earlier as if flying through it. The forest was so green that it cleared my mind just by looking at it, with trees thick enough to call to mind a jungle. As explained before, it was not at all the kind of scenery one could expect to see in a world suffering in poverty from a lack of resources.