Chapter. 21. Another Solo Play (21)
****
Running in the dark was not a very pleasant experience.
‘A full-scale war would have broken out on the ground by now.’
The noise of the battlefield became increasingly blurry, as if it came from the distant past.
We are not moving away from the battlefield. It’s just that the darkness surrounding me is getting thicker.
‘All-out war is a bait to draw out the imperial army inside. As the infiltration team hurries, the time to carry out the operation increases and there is more leeway.’
My impatient mind urged me to trace my steps with my ears and nose.
In fact, at some point I doubted whether I was even going forward.
….Cow.
Thump….
..
.
The faint traces of the battle are being buried.
Crack-tap-crack-
…crack. Tak-
… ….
..
.
The sound of footsteps moving forward at a rapid pace.
Whoosh, whoop, whoop
….huu heh
…
Even the sound of the owner of the footsteps taking a breath disappeared.
All that remains is my pulse throbbing as if trying to break out from under my ears and the sensation of my hands and feet moving awkwardly as if swimming in the air.
Moving your body. Other thoughts seemed to seep into the empty space in my mind where breathing and running forward had left.
These are probably bad thoughts that were clearly brought up on purpose.
The more conscious a thought is, the more strongly it stands out.
[I wanted to tell you that if you decide to do something big, you must accept all the consequences.] The
first thing that came to the surface was what the King of Mute came to me and said on purpose ahead of the war.
[Even a good king cannot stop war. If you want to change the world, accept it.]
‘Am I… strong enough to do all of this?’
My plan, which started with the sole intention of meeting again after breaking up with the professor, has now passed 200 years.
The World Tree made an unreasonable appearance for that purpose, and as a result, he was the first to be exposed to the system and disappeared.
Notum. Even though he achieved so much, he continued to move without stopping until the end of his life, and was not even able to enjoy a portion of the glory he had achieved.
The dragon Aldarshaks was devastated while fighting on the side of the Western Empire against the Magic Empire.
The dragon Senicamar struggled to fill the void left by those who had disappeared as administrator and was killed.
Otman and Aldar spent a long time in the deep sea just to meet me, and guided me until the end before disappearing.
Lucilla gave the last of her life to give me a little time, not knowing when I would return.
‘Can I do it? ‘Do I have the strength not to make it all come to naught?’
The more my memories came back, the more I thought of the people I had met and passed by, the more the burden on my shoulders became so heavy that I could not take my feet off.
….My
feet stopped completely. The darkness that had obscured my five senses was seeping into my brain and slowly calming me down.
It was cozy. It was as if I returned home after a long cold spell and laid down under a thick blanket.
As the darkness subsided, the more I felt the urge to stop here and enjoy this comfort forever.
….shit.
look. Everyone stopped here.
Like a toddler, I felt a mass of putrid flesh being buried in the tips of my outstretched fingers.
It’s here. All those who ran to the end of this canyon found rest here. Just stay still here, where everything that weighed them down, such as loyalty, honor, and responsibility, is covered in soft darkness. He must have fallen into a deep sleep-like state of rest.
dump.
I fell to my knees. The water from the mountain of corpses splashed on my face, but I couldn’t feel any discomfort because all my senses were already numb.
‘I’m grateful.’
I didn’t know that this might be right. Am I not able to estimate my chances of victory against a single Mutlord who serves Nigmi, let alone a Warlord? Warlord has almost omnipotent combat power, enough to take on the continent alone, and System, as her name suggests, already has the power to control the world. Maybe it would be right to end it like this before my foolish plan causes others to suffer.
A feeling of sinking endlessly into the darkness.
Familiar and familiar, as if I had been waiting for it for a long time.
‘….Familiar…?’
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I had known that feeling of being weighed down by a terribly heavy responsibility for a very long time.
Before living life as a Pathfinder. Memories of peeking into things without permission when I was a knight of the Empire, a magic engineer on an island, and I
existed simply as ‘Hyde’ rather than some other Hyde somewhere.
[mother. I will still live. I’m just going to live like this.]
That was the memory of Professor Park, whose life was borne by more people than me.
[….It wasn’t that bad. My feet are very heavy, but you know that. The wasteland is a place where the wind blows very strongly.]
Rumbling –
I was caught as I was sinking by the memory of this guy sticking out from the endless darkness like a stone beak sticking out between a cliff.
‘You… how was that possible?’
Instead of ignoring it, he chose to carry every single one of them.
I couldn’t believe that I was a consciousness cloned from the professor.
How on earth? How can I bear all that heavy responsibility and guilt?
[….Thanks to his heavy feet, he is less likely to be blown away than others.]
The weight weighed him down. It was bullied and became a strong center that would not be affected by the storm.
He did not stop, and his heavy steps left deep, indelible marks, showing the way forward for many people.
now. Even for me, who lost my direction and stopped and tried to trace my footsteps.
[Just as there is no half-complete self in the world, there is no half-complete Auror Knight. Either possible or impossible. Only one of the two exists.]
[….This is denial. It is a rejection of one’s own form that has already been completed.]
.
.
.
.
.
.
‘iced coffee.’
.
.
.
.
.
‘i envy you.’
….
Gurgling!
It comes to mind.
My consciousness, which had been sinking into the most comfortable rest with the darkness, was helplessly dragged up like a deep-sea fish fascinated by the light of the distant surface of the water.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Paang-
“Puhaaak! “Cluck, cluck, wow!”
When my senses returned, what I felt was my body half-buried in a pile of corpses and rotten lumps filling my mouth.
“Cough, wow! Shit! “Curses are all so unpleasant…!”
The remnants of darkness still remaining in my mind felt more disgusting than the disgust of the rotten flesh in my mouth.
More than anything, the fact that I almost died without even being able to swing a sword was ringing an alarm in my head.
“Damn lion’s head. “Don’t say useless things…”
It is said that a curse essentially digs into the mind of the target. As if the evil spirit burrows into the broken soul of the warlock and the warlock is completed.
Perhaps the things I just remembered while being swept away by the darkness were the gaps that remained in my heart. A crack inside that opens easily into the curse that deceives others.
“It’s a curse that burrows into the cracks of the heart and sinks it… It was revealing with its entire body what kind of curse it was in the first place.”
The appearance was very similar to the dark entity nestled in a crevice in the center of the capital.
Um…dark. The darkness that penetrates the cracks.
Crash.
“Hmph!”
.
.
.
.
I tried to focus my mind on the sword I had drawn, just in case,
but it fluttered
…
.
.
.
“Hey.”
Just like in the bard’s story, suddenly with enlightenment! And the aura did not soar.
Hyde was still ‘half Oranite’ Hyde.
“…Park Ga-nim, that. “I’m dying of envy.”
What has changed a little is that, thanks to being forced to the bottom of consciousness, I have come to know a little more about myself that I didn’t know before.
The distrust that arose in the face of a gigantic force that shattered mountains and tore apart cities. My disbelief in my meager strength disappeared.
[A realistically impossible situation.]
[What would Professor Park have thought in a situation like this?]
[How would he have solved it?]
This has been the first thought I have when faced with a difficult situation.
What would a professor do?
If it’s a guy.
I wonder how the great saint of salvation would have overcome this difficulty.
“…He seems like an unhelpful person from beginning to end.”
Even though it was ‘I’ who led the world to this point while Professor Park, who had been slow until now, appeared for the first time in 200 years and immediately became the leader of the enemy and destroyed the world.
It’s me.
Not the great saint, the legendary warrior, the genius of strategy, the hero of the wasteland, Professor Park.
Even when wandering around on the train in the Teldrat region. When I met Otman and Wald in the sea, when I arrived in the Western Imperial Territory, and when I reached the capital, I was no different from now.
“I am the one who got this far with that little ability.”
Flap and rummage.
In a moment, I lost feeling in my hands and feet again, so I hurriedly put my hands into my cloak pockets.
My hand, which had lost all feeling, was unable to open the cap of the holy water bottle I had managed to retrieve.
“It wasn’t our way to rush in with all the means and methods available from the beginning.”
“It was especially not my way to tackle the problem head on.”
Crack, clap
, clap!
So I put the whole bottle in my mouth and chewed it.
I don’t know if it was the divine power of the Mercy Church, the pain in my mouth from being pierced by a piece of glass, or the fishy taste of blood, but I came to my senses.
Think about it with a clear mind.
“What would you have done?”
I wonder what Professor Park would have done.
That guy must have used any means possible to remove the curse.
If I hadn’t had enough strength, I would have somehow persuaded the others to come along. I must have somehow made up for my lack of power by beguiling people like Kauld, Quadurbu, or Nigmi who were friendly towards me with flashy words.
He overcomes the problems he faces. To pave the way for those who will follow.
“then. “What would I do?”
Crack, cluck,
cluck!
I thought as I spit out the glass stuck between my gums.
If I think about it, my method was similar to his, but different.
“I wasn’t as greedy as him.”
Professor Park’s goal was everyone he could reach.
She embraced everyone she encountered and tackled every problem she encountered.
I say I have a cool-headed, sharp and calculating personality, but… Other than being smart, wouldn’t he be closer to a barbarian?
In comparison, the path I have been on for the past 200 years has had only one clear goal.
Go back on the rough road
and avoid big problems.
A strong enemy-
….Click!
“I passed it on to someone else and ran away!”
Hahaha!
A piece of metal thrown overhead opened and intense light emanated from the gap.
It would have been great if it was a Holy Flashbang from the Light Church, but unfortunately, what I had in my pocket was just a cheap, consumable magic flashbang.
But that was enough.
『Guuuuu-!!!』
In this place, where its nest was clearly evident, the light that was close enough to touch me with my fingertips was enough to light up the creature.
‘If you light a light in the dark, it comes and devours the light source. ‘Even people exposed to the light source’
‘If you don’t turn on the light, you won’t be eaten. That means if there is no light, even he can’t see this way.’
So to speak, light is a double-edged sword in this darkness. An act that reveals the true nature of the curse and at the same time places me in its hands.
As the darkness rushed to devour the magic light, it ran towards the wall of the canyon.
The structure was memorized in the short time it was revealed.
Kaang!
“If the ground was cracked by a large impact, there would naturally be weak points.”
He dug into the most dangerous place with the tip of his sword and shoved a magic bomb into it.
Passyuk –
It was the sound of the magical light that was supposed to brighten up the surroundings like daylight for at least a minute, fading away like a rustle.
Part of me wanted to escape through this gap, but I had no intention of handing this guy over to the Mute elite who would follow. I was sent here in the first place to open a way for them to infiltrate.
That’s not what I said I was passing on.
Kwaaaaaaaaaa!
Shock as if hitting the chest with a hammer. The explosion collapsed some cliffs along a weak section of the canyon.
SsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssspBspBsp-y
before the darkness could seep into the newly widened space, the purple fog that had been covering it quickly seeped in and clung to the reality of the curse revealed in the darkness.
“Mute and I aren’t the only ones here who hate the dark, right?”
The emperor’s curse spread throughout the capital.
Even though it is the land between narrow canyons, only a piece of capital land belongs to the emperor, so the purple fog was pouring into the canyon to exercise its natural rights that had been postponed until now.
『Guuuuu—-』
The purple fog was clinging persistently to something amorphous that was trying to hide itself in the darkness.
“As expected, when you turn on the light, there seems to be something lurking that comes running towards you.”
Whether it was an ancient curse or not, it was not comparable to the power of the cursed flower that the empire had researched and developed for hundreds of years. That’s why I spread darkness throughout this narrow canyon, blocking the purple fog and hiding my true identity.
Soon, the canyon would be filled with a suffocating cursed fog instead of darkness, but since we were about to go to the ground on our own anyway, it was meaningless to us.
The end of the canyon was vaguely visible through the purple fog and the darkness between the real and the non-real.
It’s a road. The fastest way to the center of the castle city.
“…This is my way, Professor Park.”
If you somehow resolve everything you face and head to the end with everyone following you.
I just somehow make my way towards the set destination.
‘different. You and I.’
Perhaps this is the truth I have been ignoring.
More precisely, the future ending it implies is something that makes me want to ignore my destination.
I unconsciously bit my lip at the sudden assumption that came to mind, but my feet running forward increased in speed.
‘…Maybe I can’t go back now.’
my destination. Our ending.
200 years of life have completed me as an independent entity. Enough to reach Orunite even halfway.
perhaps. I didn’t know that I would no longer have a place in Professor Park’s consciousness.
Just like it was a long time ago. The place I have longed for for the past 200 years
may be a destination that is no longer available to me.
****
