Chapter 133
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Doomsayer V
Shin Noah
7
Leaving yet another death on the timeline of my memories, I opened my eyes to find myself in the Busan Station concourse.
I could have said that the familiar 399 survivors had entered my field of vision... if only that were true.
It seemed the bone-chilling wave of mass layoffs hadn't spared the Busan Station concourse either. This time, only a single person was there to welcome me.
"Ah. Guild Master. Are you awake?"
"...Mm."
"Here, it's Ceylon tea. Once you're up, you should wet your throat."
Goyori was sitting on a bench in the concourse. And I was lying on that very same bench.
I didn't know it at the time, but the world indeed had something called genre grammar.
[Same bench] [One person sitting] [One person lying]. When these three concepts combined, an inevitable result was derived that transcended time and space.
Simply put, Goyori was giving me a lap pillow.
Pink hair draped before my eyes like a cluster of acacia blossoms. A fragrance like subtle bath salts, a fruity scent as if apples had been briefly dipped in cold water then fished out, drifted through the air.
"......"
I reflexively tried to sit up, then stopped.
Perhaps because I had just used the forbidden technique [Friend Shield]. I felt a slight pang of guilt. Surprisingly, it seemed my heart still had some spare room for the emotion called "guilt toward Goyori."
In the first place, I couldn't have escaped from the existence before me even if I tried.
"Did I die?"
"Yes. And no."
Goyori swept her hair back behind her ear. Sway. Her hair shook like bellflowers.
"In the sense that you met your death at the hands of [Bad Ending], yes. You died, Guild Master. However, it's difficult to call it true death. In dreams, people cannot die."
"...I see."
Dying in this unconscious world wouldn't trigger 'Return.' My real self was probably still surrounded by tutorial fairies, enjoying a deep sleep.
Good information.
"How did you escape? He was an enemy with virtually no way to oppose him."
"Hmm. That would be troublesome if I tried to oppose him like you did, Guild Master. But I don't needlessly antagonize such beings? If I want to escape, I can simply escape."
True enough. Brainwashing hypnosis beam is easy peasy.
I sighed.
"That old geezer, he was too powerful."
"......"
"I heard that in this unconscious world, the scenery one fears is reflected. Right. Actually, I was afraid of the old geezer."
It wasn't that I disliked Emmet Schopenhauer as an individual. He was my comrade.
It was just that.
"If the old geezer hadn't gone on vacation and had stayed by my side... I've imagined that scenario a few times."
IF. A what-if scenario.
The route where the old man Show doesn't go on vacation.
"The old geezer has a soft heart. Even if he hadn't gone on vacation, love and despair for his wife would have continued to coil in one corner of his heart. If he had forced himself to endure that, and still said 'Let's save the world together' and forced himself onto the battlefield..."
Someday, he would have broken.
There were countless dangerous moments.
For instance, when subjugating the Alienation God Mukan. Mukan shows people the hallucination of 'the most perfect world-line.'
Naturally, the old man Show would have fallen into days of living happily with his wife.
I was able to break free from Tang Seo-rin, Noh Do-ha, and the Saintess... but would the old man Show have been able to escape?
Rather, wouldn't he have fallen to become one of Mukan's new apostles?
For instance, when it was revealed that the tutorial fairies were actually succubi. If you negotiate with succubi, you can manipulate dreams however you want.
This too would have been a temptation difficult for the old man Show to refuse.
For instance, when the existence before me started to take genuine 'interest' in the old man Show.
Like the nightmare I encountered earlier, the old man Show might have fallen into the delusion and paranoia of reuniting with his wife in reality, becoming a villain who moved solely for Goyori's sake.
The best comrade transforming into the worst enemy.
A common development.
"Thinking about it various ways, yes. Rather, it might have been a godsend move for him to cut off his vacation and leave with his wife like now."
"......"
"Dead, a pain in the ass. Alive, still a pain in the ass. Really, an old man who's about as helpful to life as a rat's tail."
The concourse was quiet.
As if hundreds, thousands of years had flowed by in an instant, weeds sprouted from various spots on the concourse floor. Through the punctured roof and ceiling, old sunlight poured down like candle wax.
Goyori didn't answer.
She simply smiled as if troubled and quietly listened to my story. As if this 'quiet listening' was the very form of comfort I currently desired.
"Guild Master."
After a silence, Goyori whispered.
"Can you feel better, anytime?"
From her whisper drifted the scent of green apples.
"Life is nothing but countless dreams anyway. People simply call the last dream they have reality, but you, Guild Master, are no different from a ghost wandering eternally in dreams, searching for a reality you can accept. A funeral director who buries each of his dreams one by one whenever they become corpses. This place is an interlude where the corpses you've buried come back to life and dance."
"Dream within a dream, the world after bad endings, parallel worlds, collective unconscious. Roughly those kinds of concepts have transformed into anomalies and spread out as emptiness, I suppose."
"And you, Guild Master, can become the master of that emptiness."
"......"
"I will help you, Guild Master."
Goyori's thumb caressed my cheekbone.
Like a young child looking down into a deep, deep well from above, Goyori was looking down at my eyes.
"Help? You, me?"
"Yes. This place is not only your unconscious, Guild Master, but the unconscious of all humanity. If you could wield this place freely, what do you think would become possible?"
A whoosh—sound. Breath carrying the scent of apples settled on my corneas.
My face felt ticklish.
As Goyori moved her lips, her breath drew closer and closer.
"You could impose your dreams on all other humans."
"......"
"That's right. Dreams that no one else can experience, dreams that have already passed. The scenes of ruin that only you remember. You could share them with other people, with precious people, with all humans."
"......"
"Show them your life, Guild Master."
Suddenly the fruity scent crumbled like the aroma of wine. Wine brewed from apples.
As flower petals bloom and open, the wine scent carried in Goyori's breath instantly spread luxuriantly around.
"How painful you were, how much you ran for people's sake, how wise and powerful you were."
"......"
"And thus let them suffer from your pain, let them devote themselves to your devotion, let them marvel at your abilities."
From the pink lips that opened like flower petals, Goyori's voice flowed out thick as honey.
"Guild Master, you can become everyone's dream. The dream that everyone dreams. If we name that mythology, then you, Guild Master, would be a single mythology that bloomed miraculously at the end of this century."
"You don't think I'm saying this expecting me to nod, do you?"
"Yes."
Goyori smiled with her eyes.
"For now."
Squeeze. Goyori's index finger pressed firmly against my chin.
"But as your pain matures more and more, won't that head bow even deeper?"
"......"
"Please don't become sweet carelessly, Guild Master. If you keep becoming that delicious, I'll end up wanting to tear you apart without even realizing it."
The words murmured right before my nose seemed truly to have been uttered by Goyori—and also seemed to have been whispered by mere hallucination of mine.
It was impossible to gauge Goyori's sincerity from any statement.
She called me a ghost of dreams. But in truth, she herself was a mirage whose breath and flesh were entirely composed of dream-threads.
Perhaps that was the tragedy assigned to the existence called Goyori.
Looking up at Goyori's red wells, such a thought suddenly occurred to me.
8
A week of night passed.
Surrendering my neck to an old comrade was quite a shock, but my mental state fully recovered after several rests.
I downed Ceylon tea and farmed silver bells at the souvenir shop. Goyori watched me with amusement.
"What do you plan to do? As you said, Guild Master, that bad ending is an enemy that can't be opposed."
"Bad endings have their own uses."
Jingle.
The silver bells wrapped around my wrist rang softly. My personal item, etched even into my unconscious (price before the end times: 9,900 won), felt particularly special today.
"The old geezer will return someday."
"Huh?"
"More precisely, I'll make him return. The co-CEO of the company ran off to be happy on his own, so I have to drag him back, don't I? The problem was, even if I dragged the old geezer back, I'd only hear 'water rocket' sounds for a while."
The old man Show's potential was tremendous.
'Only' his potential was tremendous.
When the old man Show was alive, it was still an era when the Korean Peninsula Awakener Alliance couldn't even catch a meteor shower.
Can you believe it? A meteor shower. Even that anomaly, now awkward to even call a mid-boss, would have made the old man Show spontaneously say 'Wait, they made this to be beaten?'
The old man Show's time stopped at the 23rd iteration. By my standard, that's a past exceeding thousands of years.
This is why no matter how well people do and succeed, they need a process of constantly adapting themselves to new times. If you came out now with the Epic of Gilgamesh and claimed 'Everyone! This is the trendiest genre literature these days!' wouldn't that be awkward?
"Originally, I planned to train the hell out of the old geezer when he returned. Well, his talent is real, so I figured if I trained him for about 200 years, he'd manage to pull his weight."
"Heh."
"But doesn't this unconscious world offer such an excellent answer sheet?"
Goyori tilted her head.
"Answer sheet?"
Right. Answer sheet.
I had finished preparing to face the old man Show's bad ending, his corrupted alter version, commonly known as Sword Demon, once again.
Like last time, Sword Demon was wandering through a devastated Seoul. Dragging along a steel pipe from a construction site with absolutely nothing cool about it.
Really, the man had lost all sense of an awakener's style and dignity by himself.
To protect the dignity and character of awakeners, I, the funeral director, had to step forward.
I took a breath.
Then spat it out with all my might.
"Hey, you National Socialist German Workers' Party member bastard!"
"......"
Flinch—
Racist hate speech that would make any properly educated German (excluding the 1930s) have a seizure echoed loudly.
For reference, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, commonly known as NSDAP, was more famous by its alias than its official name, like awakeners. The Nazis.
For reference, the old man Show was someone who voted for the German Social Democratic Party from the day he was born until the day the world ended. His blood was very red.
The German people simultaneously produced Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. While the bloody battle between fascists and communists in other countries was mere ideological struggle, in Germany, feelings of hatred toward their own kind were added to the mix.
Even if he falls to become an anomaly, a true revolutionary fighter doesn't betray his ideology.
"Look at this!"
Flutter.
I shook an old banner.
"......!"
Seeing the pattern drawn imposingly on the banner, Sword Demon's eye focus shook violently.
卍.
A character that in the East merely symbolizes Buddhism, but a Westerner steeped in Orientalism couldn't possibly understand Buddha's profound teachings.
The 'Ka' DNA sleeping nobly in the old man Show's veins began to have an allergic hypersensitivity reaction to the sound 'Hi'.
"Grrraaaaah!"
The German-made super red sword master roared. If only his aura color had been red too, it would have been perfect.
But the power was certain.
True to an ideology with the protocol to destroy the entire hackneyed world programmed in from birth, the old man Show's swordplay—no, steel pipe-work—instantly destroyed the city.
However, Sword Demon's hand, which had been trying to cut me down, suddenly had no choice but to slam on the brakes.
"......! ......!"
Where Sword Demon's aura had been heading, sculptures made of clay were lined up.
Busts faithfully sculpted with the faces of 'Karl Marx' and 'Rosa Luxemburg'!
Sword Demon fidgeted like an NPC with a bug. He wore the same expression as a Japanese Kirishitan being told to step on a Jesus placard to prove he wasn't Christian.
Indeed, to the German-made old man, those two busts were Jesus and the icon of the Virgin Mary.
Swing sword energy to the left and Mr. Marx breaks. Attack to the right and Ms. Luxemburg is destroyed.
"Grr, gaaaah......!"
My preparations didn't end there.
Just in case, I had displayed busts of Kurt Schumacher, Willy Brandt, Wilhelm Pieck, Walter Ulbricht, and basically every German leftist politician's bust I knew.
Whichever faction the old man Show supported (I had no interest in German politics, but leftists unifying their factions was nothing but a fantasy and an anomaly), one of them would hit!
That's right.
I, the funeral director, dawdled around Busan Station concourse for a week just to show this.
Thanks to my track record of doing useless things with all my might every vacation iteration, my sculpting skills were quite decent.
"You think only you old men can use domain expansion? This is my domain expansion."
"Grrrr......"
"I've hidden sculptures like landmines throughout this city. Welcome, to my inherent barrier. The crimson massacre revolutionary space."
"GRRRAAAAAAAH!"
Come, you red old man.
Cry and prove your (ideological) purity.