161. Twenty-seven salvations of mankind
“Is this sh*t again?”
I pretended to be nonchalant, but in reality I watched what was happening in my image with great interest.
The black wall came crashing in like a tidal wave, and the ghosts swept away by the black waves screamed. Soon, that scream was swallowed up under the foam.
However, the black tsunami did not invade the area near the sword tower where my mental body was atop. As if I were the last survivor of a disaster movie, I glared at the rolling tsunami with a grim face.
“Yes. If you wait, the rescue team will surely come!”
“Insignificant…Insignificant…Mortal…Has…Are…So…Not…Subjects…Subjects. ..To…”
“That’s true. My older brother is setting the mood at best.”
The excitement was broken by the interrupted voice. I don’t know if I’m saying it right, because I stutter like that. If I wait for him to finish talking, my outfit will explode first.
“Just die.”
I waved my hand lightly with a sigh. In the image, a cloud of starlight glowing white is manifested. A relentless thunderstorm poured down like it would evaporate the entire black sea.
“I… I… I… I… Even… I forgot… I…”
“What?”
And all those thunderbolts were quietly swallowed under the black sea. The turbulent sea soon calmed down. As if nothing had happened in the first place, the black sea continued to speak leisurely and calmly.
“To…Smear…To…To…To…To…To…What…Means…To. ..Is…Is…Is…I…”
The real horse is dirty once. While he was pouring out his words, I called out a thunderbolt over and over again and hit the black sea. But to no avail.
Hey, what kind of trick is this? This place is inside my mental world, and of course I am the one with the strongest breath in it. Just as a guest, no matter how talented he is, eventually has to listen to the landlord.
As long as he pretends to be someone else, he can never be sane like that. Just as the battle of the spirit world does not always end with the victory of its owner. But there are no victories without scars.
“Remember…Remember…You…”
The Black Sea, which had been calm even with a lightning storm, began to boil. A huge wave soared higher than the tower, but it still couldn’t come within a certain range of where I was standing.
Instead, the black muddy stream gushed out in a circle and took the shape of a hemispherical dome. Black waves covered the black sky and confined me in a confined space.
Then, the color began to be added onto the jet-black drawing paper.
“Hmm?”
“Yeah…Near…Won…This…What…What…Was…Was…!”
The voice, which had been long and faintly intermittent, gradually sped up. The moment a whisper, which was nothing at first, turned into a lofty shout, the world, which had been distorted as if white paint had been dissolved, took on a clear color.
In an instant, I was standing in an unfamiliar but familiar place, not at the top of the sword tower. No, everything has changed except for ‘me’. Even the clothes I’m wearing.
It was buried in the corner of the wave of oblivion, but if you see it again, you will never be confused. Before I was Karbal, and before I was Shu.
Before I came to this world, the place where I lived when I was Kim Si-woo, an ordinary young man everywhere. An old and narrow self-made room with a musty smell unique to returning students.
“It’s been a while.”
Everything was as it was in memory. An old fashioned TV that is questionable even if it works. Clothes roughly scattered on the bed, dishes piled up in the sink. That familiar look was somehow unfamiliar.
Yes, too much time has passed. Until a young man dreaming of returning home accepts the life of a different world, and until a human who has become a sword forgets the name of his family.
But even as I thought so, I was picking up the smartphone that was heavily in my pocket.
“Ha, that’s right.”
What did you expect? I don’t know what trick he did, but anyway, the place implemented here is based on my memory. Of course, the blurry parts in my memory are inevitably less complete.
I can’t remember the last phone wallpaper I used right before I fell here. As if reflecting him, only turbid and whitish colors were pouring in a mess on the screen of the mobile phone that was turned on.
“This is you.”
“What?”
Pick. Suddenly, as if the power was turned off, the light on the cell phone I was holding went out. A smooth black screen. Soon, a pair of red, burning eyes floated above them.
I was able to notice it instinctively. That was the ‘darkness’ that had slumbered in the coffin of rest, and now brought me down into this ridiculous fantasy.
“Gaining power, manipulating others… Since everyone was afraid of you, you must have mistaken yourself as if you were a great being.”
In a fast, clear voice unlike before, the darkness poured out poisonous words.
“But, in the end, this is you. A mortal who was no different from a worm. Locked themselves in a small cage and withered…”
“What can I do?”
I wanted to set the mood seriously, so when I said something, I just threw my ears away. I boldly threw away the smartphone I was holding. His words were cut off with the sound of something breaking.
Because of his installments and contracts, I always had to carry this old house like a shrine, but now my wish is fulfilled. I said, stepping on my smartphone that had fallen to the floor.
“Something seems to be trying to disrupt my mind, but I got the wrong street number.”
“Don’t look away from your past!”
“Shut up. This old man is talking right now.”
It’s obvious that these guys are ploys. It infinitely reproduces the bad memories and traumas of the past, eventually destroying the opponent’s mind and usurping the initiative of the body.
And, more than anyone else, it was also an organ of this body. How many masters and hosts do you think I’ve swallowed so far? Catching an orc in front of an ogre is also oily,
“You have not changed. Aren’t you still parasitically relying on the strength and favor of others? A bug that couldn’t achieve anything on its own…!”
“Why didn’t you achieve anything?”
Quick. As the merciless footsteps completely trampled the smartphone, black steam rose frantically between the broken circuitry and broken fragments.
Soon it filled the room like a heavy cigarette smoke, gathered together and took on a human form. It was only made of darkness, but it resembled the present ‘me’ like twins, as if reflected in a mirror.
From noble mtl dot com
Is it a concept like another inner me? The reproducibility is too low for that. Especially in terms of personality.
“I was a hero.”
In the end, the important thing in the battle of images is mental strength. And a strong will to make it come true. As I stomped my feet and took a step forward, black smoke rushed in line with my footsteps.
If this place were real and not fantasy, I would have heard a voice through the noise between floors. While thinking such a foolish thought in my heart, I sternly declared.
“I was a summoner and the leader of the warrior division. He was a captain, heir, and a traveler. Sometimes I was a store manager, a commander, an engineer, a boss, and sometimes a teacher.”
“What? You mean you were able to accumulate that much experience in that pitiful life? Does not make sense······.”
“Well, it might be a bit different from what you think.”
Even if you look at me now with Cream’s super senses or fairies’ eyes of truth, what I say will be taken as truth. It is always the will of the person concerned to determine the authenticity.
So if what I say is taken as truth by him, it will be true. At one point, I felt a sword in my hand. It was the “Me” Of reality, nothing else.
“I’m sick of playing around, so let’s do this.”
“Wait, I got it. Everything you said was virtual…!”
I’m sure he’s spying on my memories somehow. As you soon noticed. I moved quickly before the one who was intimidated by my roar was called back.
A half-hearted attack that does not contain any martial arts tricks and, if given the name of the skill, would be equivalent to a ‘swinging roughly’. But the other me, made of darkness, couldn’t escape it.
As I turned my back away from the halved masses of darkness and tucked the unsheathed sword into my waist, I shook my head in a serious tone.
“For some, it was real.”
“Keuhiik! Talking nonsense in an unnecessarily spleen tone!”
Yes, I can’t hear you because it’s the words of a loser. In the first place, there is no such concept as vital point or death in the battle of the mind. What matters is momentum. As long as he lost his momentum once, he was already defeated.
That was also the reason I watched it, feeling the half-cut guy squirm behind my back. Anyway, his source is the same darkness as mine. In order to inherit the power of the holy object, you must absorb it as completely as possible.
The last time I swallowed the cup of darkness, my spiritual power and vessel grew quite a bit, but what about this time? As I ate my mouth with anticipation, he screamed in anger.
“I’m not done! Like this, you can’t lose me like this! I will prove, that the qualifications are mine, not you…!”
“No, you are done.”
Leisurely and leisurely, I turned back to him. Certainly, if it wriggles too much, it’s hard to swallow it in one bite, so let’s try our hands a little more.
And the moment I looked at him with such a relaxed thought, the moment I realized, one step too late, that I was still trapped in the illusion he created.
Once again, the space buried under the black sea was shaken and the world began to be colored anew. It was also a familiar sight. Much more than the now vague landscape of the modern Earth.
“To the subject of a bug that is still swayed by bad feelings! I can’t understand, I can’t understand!”
It’s a little hard to say this, but Kim Si-woo, an Earthling, lived a decent life. He’s not particularly angular, and he doesn’t have particularly unfortunate memories. If you think that sometimes mediocrity becomes the most difficult value in the world, you can call it a happy life.
However, just as Siwoo is not the only name I have, my life has not always been marked by happiness. The day I first fell into this world.
Even though it had automatic language translation and a status window, that was all. The status window I had wasn’t a cheat that became insanely strong just by pressing a few buttons. Just, a window that shows the world to the stranger in his way.
“I am real! I’m real! You are fake A fake born only to be defeated by me and merged with me!”
I saw a young man wandering the streets of another world without knowing anything. Everyone there wore a sword. Even a five-year-old child running errands for his mother.
The strong kill the weak to pass the time, and the weak kill the strong to survive. Monsters aim for the walls of the city, and those who believe in God do not hesitate to drop their mace at the unbelievers, and corpses for no reason or explanation are piled up like fallen leaves on the streets.
There, Shu, a man from another world, survived. He is betrayed again and again, until he abandons the soft morals of modern man and realizes that slashing a monster and slashing a human don’t feel that different.
“If I can’t be happy.”
The scenery of the back alley reproduced. People leave without even thinking about wiping the blood on their bodies, and one young man in a mat is lying in a puddle of blood, not even moving.
The ‘other me’, who had been struggling and drowning in the black blood that was too red, slowly got up. Reconnecting the body that had been split in half, picking up the entrails with both hands again.
“This goddamn world, I’d rather perishThrow it away!”
My past self and ‘another me’ cried out in unison.