Chapter 118

Chapter 118

And what was the result?

The living beings of Eden’s world could not endure his control. They eventually raised their rebellion against the being called a god. They forged chains to bind Eden, drove stakes to pin him to the earth, and built a towering structure to ensure he could never leave the ground.

And so the stakes were driven, and the chains were fastened. Eden howled in betrayal. *I only wished for you to walk the right path. I wished for you to be good. I wished for you to love. To give and to cherish. That was all.*

And before him, a human spoke.

*If our will is not in it, is that truly good?*

*That is nothing but a puppet show you orchestrate by pulling strings.*

And indeed, those words were true, so Eden fell into deep despair and wailed wretchedly. In his profound despair, he let go of his world. Thus, his world was abandoned, and those who lived in his world became abandoned beings.

If the matter had ended there, Princeps would not have cared. The story of Eden and his world was a rather pitiful sort, but that place was not her Garden.

However, the matter did not end there.

“The ‘Forsaken One’ each covet living things, you know. You must be aware of that too.”

Princeps spoke in a low voice. As she said, I too knew that the ‘abandoned ones’ she spoke of coveted living worlds. In fact, even now, the abandoned ones that exist within dungeons — the monsters — are always targeting living worlds using a passive skill called ‘Reality Erosion,’ aren’t they?

“That one’s world and mine were quite close. …By now, you should understand what the problem was.”

Where would the ‘abandoned ones’ created by Eden go?

The answer was obvious without further thought.

“They all invaded my world.”

Princeps spoke in a very calm voice, yet with a faint, barely concealed passion.

“At first, it was at a level I could handle by moving personally, but as time passed, it became more difficult. And not only that? Those who were originally in my world, those I had driven out, also seized their opportunity. They too began their invasion, seeking to usurp the world.”

From time to time, those who respected the world of the finite in their own way helped me, but that was all. Saying this, Princeps pointed to the ‘Sleeping Dragon’ that was helping her fend off the invasion of the abandoned ones. At that very moment, in the memory, the Sleeping Dragon was completely incinerating an ‘abandoned one’ that was squeezing through a Crack in the world.

“So I had to decide. Whether to endure until the end like this, or…”

The scenes in the memory continued to flow. Before I knew it, the Princeps in the memory was repeating a scene I had seen before.

On a pitch-black night, there was a young child left alone on a mountain in the dead of night.

And there, there was a monster seeking to covet a living world, and an Administrator trying to deal with that monster.

“Whether to devise a countermeasure, even if it means offering myself as the price.”

In the memory, the child, who was at most five years old, grew remarkably fast. The child soon transformed into the appearance I had just seen and stood before her.

‘You know you’re the strange one, right?’

“‘Strange one,’ you say.”

The Princeps in the memory and the Princeps standing beside me now smiled at the same time.

“‘If self and other are the same, there is no reason not to love everyone in this world.’”

With that scene and those words as the finale, the stage made of Princeps’s memories finally came to a close.

After the memories of another, not myself, surged in like waves and then receded, what remained in me was deep confusion and bewilderment, along with a hint of familiarity. I floundered in a shock that, had I possessed a physical body, would have left me gasping for breath for a long time, swept away time and again by the surging waves of memory.

The memories of ‘Princeps,’ the conversation with Jeong Seojin I had just experienced directly, and my own reality. The memories that swept over me each took different forms, and I had no way to resist all those waves of memory. So, the only thing I could do was to entrust my entire being to the waves. Hoping, almost praying, that I wouldn’t be swept away and disappear, that I wouldn’t be carried off into the vast, open sea.

And so, amidst all the memories chaotically mixing together, the woman gazing at me from beyond a well-polished mirror spoke quietly.

“Still having trouble coming to your senses, I see?”

As she said, I still hadn’t come to my senses. The sudden wave of memories that had crashed over me was a form of violence in itself. I kept floundering in the flood of memories that filled my head to overflowing.

“Still, I suppose it was enough to answer your questions.”

Princeps slowly rose from her seat. She was still fixing her gaze on her own reflection in the mirror. So, I spoke toward the silver star I met beyond the glass, my voice still trembling aimlessly.

‘I’ve learned about you. So… so let me ask just one thing.’

“Go ahead.”

‘What am I, exactly?’

I knew her life now. I knew where she came from, what she was trying to do, what her purpose was and why — I knew it all. But precisely because of that, one final question remained.

‘What are you and I to each other? What kind of relationship is this? And you, you know it yourself, don’t you? That your plan is—’

“Little one.”

Princeps’s fingertips touched the surface of the mirror.

“I resolved to side with the finite, and so I became the ruler of finite things.”

‘…….’

“That means I, too, chose to share my fate with those who possess finite lives. And since finite beings cannot know their own path ahead, I too cannot see my own future.”

Before I knew it, the edges of my vision began to blur heavily. I instinctively sensed this was a sign that I was about to be ‘separated’ from her.

Not yet.

“So, little one, the relationship between you and me will be decided solely by what you wish. If you yourself wish for continuation, I will continue to exist within you. And if you yourself wish for severance—”

I urgently tried to grab hold of her. There was still so much I wanted to ask. Things I had to ask. But the world wouldn’t let me go. My vision collapsed, my hearing faded. As everything crumbled and blurred, Princeps’s final words settled down like a beam of light.

“I will end there.”

My vision sank into blackness.

“Farewell, little one. If you ever meet that child—”

With her words — which I never got to hear to the end — the world closed, and when it opened again, what greeted me was a scene from five years ago, painfully familiar.

* * *

The monster’s footsteps shook the earth, and people’s screams flowed like a river. From somewhere far yet near, the cries of a child who had lost its parents rang out, and the groans of the wounded were so common they might as well be underfoot.

I had witnessed this entire scene before with my own eyes.

“Kyaaaah! Honey!”

“Mommy! Mommyyyy!”

“Left! Run left! The monster’s coming from the right!”

Amid the desperate screams, shouts, and yells of people fighting for their own reasons, tangling and untangling chaotically, a beast’s roar I’d heard before came from far away.

—Krrrrrrrr…

A sound that was like a wolf’s growl, yet also like the groan of someone who had lost their voice. I forced my trembling legs to stand and stared in the direction of the sound.

“It’s a monster! Run, hurry!!”

A young man full of justice, who had spotted the monster just like me, shouted like a scream, then immediately hoisted an elderly person nearby onto his back and started running. The people who heard his shout quickly followed him.

“Hey, what are you doing! Run!”

Just then, a woman running past me grabbed my arm without a word. Hurry! She shouted urgently, as if she wanted to leave me behind at any moment. I forced my dazed mind — still floating in the air — to pull itself together and followed her lead. As I started running, moving my feet as she guided me, I did the only thing I could in this bewildering situation.

‘Avan… Avan! Can you hear me, Avan?’

Holding the ‘Gardener’s Scissors of Life’ that was in my bag, I kept calling out to Avan. Normally, even if I just said the first syllable of ‘Avan,’ he would be standing right beside me, but this time, he showed no response at all.

“I know how bewildering this situation is, but just run for now! If we get to that building over there, there’s a temporary shelter! They say the military is stationed there, so…!”

Despite her small frame, her voice was enormous — a woman who gave me the impression I’d seen her somewhere before pulled my hand again. And right then.

*Boom!* A thunderous crash echoed from somewhere far away. *Kyaaah!* Screams burst out from the crowd. Even though I could have shaken her off anytime I wanted with my awakened strength, I let myself be pulled along by the weak grip of a non-awakened person, turning my head to look behind me as I ran.

‘Ah.’

A face too hideous to be a wolf, and a body far too massive. I immediately recalled the creature’s name. The Black Hound of Mount Haman. If my memory was right, that thing was the boss monster from the Black Hound Dungeon, a C+-Rank dungeon.

“Kyaaah, the monster is chasing us!”

“Never mind that, just run! If there’s a side path, take it and run!”

The beast planted its front paws firmly on the ground, poised as if it would leap at us at any moment. The people fleeing from it weren’t fools either — as if they had predicted its next move, they screamed and shouted in their own ways, desperately trying to escape as far from it as possible.