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Chapter 86. <A Reader’s Mind. (2) >
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Translator: thursdays Editor: Sasha PR: LightBrin
It was creepy. A favorability rating of 95.
And the scene of what happened when the favorability rating reached that high was unfolding in front of me right now.
“Glowja-nim! Until I met you, I was only the blind Shim Bongsa!” the Librarian shouted, squatting as he grabbed the soles of my feet.[1]
“I was deaf until I heard you speak!”
The Librarian’s eyes seemed to sparkle as he tried to clip my little toenail.
“You are my light! You are my music!”
His eyes were scary.
“Since your name means Confucius, I’ll gladly convert to Confucianism! I will be a scholar only for you! Ah, a king needs a friend-like retainer who shares his opinions! From today onwards, I am a Confucian scholar who supports Gongja-nim!”
“Hey. Just- Hey!”
What kind of demented scholar tries to collect someone’s pinky toenail clippings?!
I wanted to ask the Librarian that question, but I stopped when I saw his eyes and realized. He wasn’t in his right mind. His eyes showed that no matter what I said, he would clearly ignore it. First of all, his breathing was ragged.
“If you keep acting like this, I won’t enter any more Apocalypses!”
“…….”
Pause. The Librarian let go of my feet. Creepily, his fingers still twitched even as he stopped manhandling my feet. Was he crazy?
The Librarian pondered over his thoughts like a scholar in deep sorrow.
“……Indeed. It’s an effective threat.”
For a moment, I was relieved that my words had worked.
“But analyzing Gongja-nim’s character, that’ll never happen.”
What?
Character analysis?
“It’s because Gongja-nim knows. There are many other characters like the Heavenly Demon who are withering away unjustly in the other Apocalypses. Considering Gongja-nim’s personality, you won’t be able to resist helping those people.”
The Librarian smiled.
“Don’t look down at a Gongja-maniac. I know Gongja-nim better than you know yourself! I can describe the energy bars that Gongja-nim ate on the first day you entered the Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon, what hand you used to do it, what sort of expression you had, all over two pages…”
He must be crazy, right? This is crazy. He’s crazy.
“Now, Gongja-nim. Be obedient and give me what you should give me! I was being shockingly conscientious when I didn’t force you to sleep with the scent.”
“I’m also shocked by your conscience.”
“Gongja-nim can’t understand. Nobody has ever understood me before. Ah, alas! How terrible is it that I’ve never been understood in my life? How cold is such a human heart? Even so, if I understand Glowja-nim…..”
“Step away from me before I say [I hate you].”
Thud.
This time, the Librarian really stopped.
“Take five steps away from me. Otherwise, I’ll really say it.”
“…….”
The Librarian meekly stepped back.
“Please use your normal way of speaking. It’s kind of gross. Seriously. And please return my hair and my nails.”
“I cannot! Y-you’re being completely unreasonable!”
His old way of speaking had returned.
The Librarian was crying while hugging the silk pouches tightly.
“I’d rather that you cut my head off! No. Wait, just a moment. Gongja. Right now, that was a hyperbole. Please don’t make that expression, like you’re really deciding whether or not to cut off my head… That will seriously hurt my feelings…..”
Like a disheartened hamster, the Librarian began to mutter.
Eventually, I succeeded in calming him down.
After burning up a silk pouch of unpleasant things (there was a terrible scream involved), the Librarian and I managed to start talking for real.
“It was magnificent.”
First, the Librarian reviewed the newly completed [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon].
“Your dedication to the Heavenly Demon was truly admirable! I could see the [ending] when you became her disciple. But you didn’t stop there! The final Battle of Good and Evil…. The greatest match… Yes, the Heavenly Demon must have felt like she was eating sweet chocolate ice cream.”
“Has the world from the [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon] been transferred to the 22nd floor?”
“Yes.”
The Librarian grinned.
“Other hunters will be able to enter the 22nd floor. They’ll also be able to learn skills by looking at the texts stored in the Cheonmugwan. It’s all thanks to your work, Gongja.”
“…….”
I put my hand on my chin.
“There was something I was wondering about while we were in the Apocalypse. I want to ask you this….”
“Ask me anything! I’ll answer almost anything!”
“Stop trying to sneakily take off my shoes like there’s nothing wrong. Why was [The Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon] an Apocalypse?”
The Librarian cocked his head to the side. My question seemed to be unfamiliar to him.
“Why? Hmm. Does a book need a specific reason to be an Apocalypse?”
“I think so.”
I put my shoes back on.
“Librarian-nim, do you like happy endings? Or do you prefer sad endings?”
“Both of them have their merits,” the Librarian replied immediately.
“An ending is like a port where the characters’ lives come to a conclusion. Life can be happy, or it can be rough! A general reader wants the characters to be happy, but I also want to hug them tightly when they fail or are sad.”
“Which means that even unhappy endings are still proper conclusions.”
“Yes. Obviously.”
“That’s why I have more questions.”
I grabbed the Librarian’s wrist, which was trying to go behind my back, and took away the scissors. The Librarian hopped up and down, trying to take back the scissors, but he wasn’t tall enough.
“Even if I didn’t interfere, the [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon] would have a proper conclusion. Even if it is sad.”
“Master and the Murim Lord did their best up to the end. They continued making an effort. Even though the Murim Lord died first and Master went mad… Master still reached the conclusion.”
I looked into the Librarian’s eyes.
“Why was [The Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon] included as an Apocalypse? Library director-nim. Why didn’t the Murim Lord’s death and Master’s madness count as a proper ending?”
In fact, I was thinking about this question ever since I saw the fairy tale, ‘Me and Our Scapegoat’. Apart from whether or not I could accept the ending, the world looked like it had reached a logical conclusion.
The Constellation was silent.
In the library, there were only the quiet breaths of the knocked-out hunters. Saek, seeeek…. Among the rising and falling of the Hunters’ chests, the Librarian was expressionless.
“I wanted to see a happy ending for some reason. Would something like that reason not work?”
“If you don’t like the ending, Librarian-nim can fix it yourself.”
“…….”
“Librarian-nim is strong. In the eyes of a Hunter like me, you seem to be omnipotent and omniscient. But even so, instead of fixing the apocalypse, you sent us.”
In other words, this Constellation was a ‘reader’.
He was a reader who didn’t want to intervene in the story but just receive it as it was. He had no desire to ever be a ‘writer’. He could correct the wrongs, but he refused to do so.
A reader who would never intervene himself.
The Chief Librarian.
“Shall I do a character analysis, too? A thorough person like you would not call something an Apocalypse just because the ending was weird. The Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon and the other Apocalypse, too. In fact, there’s another reason that the Apocalypses are classified as such.”
“……Ah, you won’t just let this go.”
The Librarian smiled bitterly.
“Follow me.”
The Librarian grabbed my hand. With the other hand, he picked up a book.
The title of the book was the Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon.
“—I will tell you the truth of the Apocalypses.”
The Constellation opened the book.
Then, my vision was covered with light.
3.
When I opened my eyes, we were in the world of snowfields.
However, we did not need to walk on the snow. The Librarian was still holding my hand tightly, his long sleeves fluttering like the wings of wild geese in the winter sky.
“What if.”
Over the snowfield.
“What if the zombie virus was a disease that developed on its own in [The Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon]? If that was the case. As you said, I would never have called this place an apocalypse.”
We crossed a snowy mountain.
“That means….”
“The zombie virus did not originate here. It’s a contagion that flowed from outside. It is as if the New World was invaded by external forces.”[2]
Haaa. The Librarian let out a white breath.
“Over there, you can see it.”
It was a high mountain peak.
The sacred mountain of this world.
On top of the mountain, which reached up to the sky, there was something huge.
[Shiny has detected an ominous energy.]
The Holy Sword by my waist trembled.
Noting that, the Librarian said,
“Oho. It seems that your sword can feel it too. That’s not unusual. Since your sword had originally been a whole Constellation. It is a given that one quickly recognizes others who are in similar positions to them.”
“A similar position….”
“Gongja. Have you ever seen a Constellation’s fallen form?”
Fallen. The Devil King of Fall Rain. The demon.
“Yes, I have.”
“Then, have you ever seen the body left behind by the death of the constellation?”
“…….”
“As expected, you haven’t.”
The Librarian had a lonely smile.
“It’s quite the rare sight, so take advantage of this opportunity to see it.”
‘It’ was a dragon.
More precisely, it was the corpse of a dragon.
A dragon lay dead at the mountain’s peak.
The leather, which once had been smooth like silk, was burned black. The horns on the dragon’s head rustled like coal. Its magic pearl, broken into two, was buried in the snow.
Also.
[Shiny detects the presence of her sisters.]
There was a sword embedded in the middle of its chest.
[Shiny says that it is the Guardian Sword’s second sister, the Sword of Compassion!]
A black energy, takgi, flowed out of the sword.
If we were talking about its characteristics, we could call it an Aura. However, it was not a normal Aura. It was similar to the one that covered the Devil King of Fall Rain. No, it was murkier than that. The surging takgi wrapped around the dragon and covered the top of the snowy mountain. When white snow fell on the mountain peak, the takgi immediately infected it and turned it black.
-It hurts…….
Black snow.
-It’s painful…….
The dark eyes of the Black Dragon seemed to moan.
-It hurts. It hurts, and…….
-It’s agonizing.
-It’s painful. It stings. It’s bitter. It hurts…….
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
“…Didn’t you say that it was dead? Over there, that dragon is still alive even now.”
“It is already dead. What you see and hear is nothing more than a corpse’s resentment. When an existence reaches the level of a Constellation, they cannot die graciously, even if they do die.”
The two of us landed on the mountain peak.
The black dragon was endlessly groaning on.
Looking at the death of a Constellation, the Librarian’s eyes seemed to be filled with regret.
“The plague that your party called the zombie virus. The true nature of it is a curse.”
“A curse……”
“Yes. It is the curse left as the constellation of this martial arts world, [The Yellow Dragon who stays at the Dynasty Lake], died. It is a grudge of being unable to die even when dead. Even though they have already died, the corpse remains and must endure further agony. When they were infected with such a curse, the people of this world became Jiangshi.”
I looked up at the dragon’s corpse.
-It hurts…….
The host of the virus. The epicenter of the curse.
The disease that destroyed this world began with that corpse.
In the end, Master died because of the dragon’s curse.
“…If the Constellation didn’t stab itself in the heart, it means someone else killed it.”
“That makes sense.”
“Who is the culprit?”
“You already have a good idea of who did it.”
I ground my teeth.
“Lefanta Aegim.”
“Correct.”
The Librarian nodded.
“His nickname is the Constellation Killer. He is a person who crosses the boundaries of the world and kills Constellations.”
Shiny said that a Constellation was like the representative of a world.
“And a world that has lost its Constellation is like a castle that has lost its ramparts. The likelihood that it will face an insolent destruction increases.”
Apocalypse.
A world where the representative died and all its inhabitants disappeared.
“Why did he kill ordinary Constellations? He founded the Aegim Empire, so he should quietly act as the emperor of his own country. Why is he going around ruining worlds?”
“That’s something that I cannot answer.”
The Librarian stared attentively at my face.
“I am only a reader. You pointed to me and called me omniscient and omnipotent, but this isn’t true. I may be omniscient, but not omnipotent. I can know the truth of a world, but I cannot intervene there.”
The Librarian, who had spoken self-deprecatingly, suddenly pointed at my waist.
“However, you are different.”
The sword hanging by my side.
“You, who can intervene, are intervening again. Whether you want to or not, you’re fixing things that someone else has broken, one by one.”
“Once, it’s a coincidence. Twice, it’s a connection. But with the third time, it becomes an inevitability. You have saved an empire that had been abandoned by the Constellation Killer. You have taken the Constellation shattered by the Constellation Killer, and now, you have come to a world led to collapse by the Constellation Killer.” said the Librarian.
“The means of killing [The Yellow Dragon of Dynasty Lake] was both vicious and cruel. An ordinary person cannot even touch that sword. But you are able to. Gongja. You have created an inevitability with your coincidences and connections.”
I looked at the black dragon’s corpse again.
I muttered in my mind.
‘Shiny.’
The Holy Sword trembled a little.
[Shiny replies, “Yes, warrior.”]
‘How do I collect your sister sword?’
[Shiny says, “You just need to pull her out and touch the sister sword.”]
‘All right.’
I drew my sword.
The winter air split.
I struck the sword embedded in the black dragon’s chest with my sword.
[The Guardian Goddess absorbs a piece of herself.]
In an instant, my sword was surrounded by light.
~~~
[1] Glowja-nim: A portmanteau of Gongja-nim and glowing.
Shim Bongsa: A blind man in a traditional Korean tale.
[2] New World: As in the Americas. European diseases such as smallpox decimated the Indigenous peoples.