Chapter 179: The Wall Between Us
The long story came to an end.
The expressions of those who had learned the truth were far from bright.
“See? I told you there was no need to go out of your way to find out.”
“…….”
“And it’s not like I’m definitely going to be sacrificed as the Vessel of the End. One of the reasons I brought you all to the Fragment’s trials was to get an answer from Baek Hyun-joong. Nothing is certain yet.”
I continued speaking in an attempt to lighten the mood, but their expressions remained stiff.
The chilled atmosphere made me feel strangely guilty.
They were the ones who had asked me to tell them.
Just then, Helena spoke.
What came out of her mouth was unexpected.
“You don’t seem to understand why we’re angry.”
“So you are angry.”
“Of course we are! How could you keep such a huge secret from us all this time?”
I fell silent for a moment.
It was a strange feeling.
I could never get used to how naturally they acted like this.
It had been the same with Park Siwoo, and it was the same now.
The way they acted as though it was only natural for me to tell them my secrets, and the hurt they showed whenever I hid something from them.
It wasn’t unpleasant.
But whenever I saw them act that way, I felt something strange.
The way they truly regarded someone like me as a precious ‘friend’.
Of course, it wasn’t as if the bond between us was shallow.
We were certainly close enough to call one another friends.
It was just that the distance I thought existed between us seemed different from the distance they believed existed between us.
I knew them well.
But they knew very little about me.
Excluding the time we had spent inside the Fragment, we hadn’t even known each other for a full year.
And yet, they treated me as though we were lifelong friends who had known each other for decades.
Then Helena suddenly shouted.
“You’re thinking about something else again! Seriously, do you not understand the concept of communication? You’re not some tragic male lead. You keep trying to solve everything by yourself! Did you think we’d be happy if you kept grinding yourself down and sacrificing yourself like that?”
Only then did I realize why they were acting this way.
I had placed a massive wall between myself and them.
An enormous wall.
To me, they had been characters in a game, while I had been the player enjoying it.
I knew their lives, understood them, and empathized with them, but they knew nothing about me.
The fourth wall between game and reality.
That enormous wall had been something that could never be crossed.
And I had continued applying that same sense of distance to reality.
Even though the massive wall separating us had collapsed long ago.
Park Siwoo spoke.
“Remember? During Hell Manifestation, you threw yourself in front of us to save us. Even though you knew you’d die if you took that attack.”
“…….”
“You’ve probably done things like that dozens, hundreds of times. I’m not blaming you for it. No, I can’t blame you. But if you’ve done all that for us, shouldn’t we be allowed to do at least that much for you?”
I could see the collapsed wall.
The wall of impossibility that had fallen under the name of fantasy.
Until now, I had been imprisoning myself.
Even after seeing that the wall had already collapsed, I kept telling myself that I couldn’t cross it.
Because every time I became aware that this world wasn’t reality, it hurt too much.
Like when I killed Seo Dahee with my own hands.
Like when I lost the Heavenly Demon.
Perhaps I had simply been afraid.
Afraid of the worst possible future I didn’t even want to imagine.
The bad ending I might create with my own hands.
But they had crossed that wall first and approached me.
Something indescribable welled up inside me.
A warm, swelling sensation that also seemed to prick lightly at my chest.
I hated how bittersweet and embarrassingly sentimental it felt, yet it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
I raised my head and looked at them.
Now I felt like I understood exactly why they had cleared the second trial faster than I had.
“Thank you. For thinking of me as your friend. For staying by my side all this time.”
The moment I finished speaking, a cold silence lingered for several seconds.
Their expressions were filled with obvious bewilderment.
“We’ll always be your friends.”
“Never make that disgustingly sentimental face in front of me again.”
“Uh, um, right.”
I regretted the words I had blurted out in the heat of emotion.
But no matter how much I regretted them, words that had already left my mouth couldn’t be taken back.
I wanted to bury my head in the ground and die.
Then Eunha, who hadn’t said a single word until now, quietly asked,
“Embarrassed?”
“Shut up.”
Should I actually just die?
I changed the subject to shake off the humiliation.
“Please, just stop laughing and let’s move on to the next trial. We need to get back to the original world quickly.”
I recalled what the final trial had been.
As always, each trial had been modeled after the defining characteristic of a Playable Character.
Park Siwoo had been tested on his potential, while Dan Chun-woo had been tested on proving his change.
Then what was the final trial?
In truth, the final trial among the Fragment’s trials was an Awakening event meant for Eunha.
Every Playable Character was special, but Eunha was special in a different sense.
A replacement prepared in case something went wrong with the Vessel of the End.
A Test Subject that would never even be used unless something happened to the Vessel of the End. Worse still, she hadn’t even been completed properly, so the treatment she received had been nothing short of horrific.
Even the Academy, which she had believed would be her salvation, had been no different.
Fear and contempt toward her ominous power.
Even so, she moved forward to gain recognition.
To experience the things she had never been allowed to enjoy.
To prove that she, too, was a human being worthy of such things.
The word that defined Eunha was overcoming.
The true nature of the final trial was to eliminate the Origin of Evil sleeping within Eunha.
Through that, Eunha would no longer be my replacement and would achieve a complete Awakening as Eunha herself.
And that power would seal the Power of the End, which could be called the apocalypse itself, reducing its rank until it fell to a level humans could defeat.
This trial would undoubtedly be an enormous help if we ever had to fight the End.
With that, we threw ourselves into the final trial.
It was a day no different from any other.
Yoo Iseo devoted herself entirely to recovering from her injuries, while Instructor Kang Jaeseok ultimately filled the vacancy she had left behind.
For the past few days, the Academy’s personnel had finally been given a brief chance to breathe.
The Demons’ offensive continued, but the High-ranking Executives had stopped showing themselves.
Thanks to that, supplies that had been impossible to deliver for some time finally arrived, allowing the Academy to reorganize itself once again.
Even so, Yoo Iseo couldn’t bring herself to welcome the current situation.
The absence of the High-ranking Executives felt like an omen that they were preparing something enormous.
The others shared the same thought.
Whenever the sun rose and set, the Sword Emperor would drive his sword into the ground and enter deep meditation, while Chun Ga-eun had become difficult to even catch sight of.
They all hoped Yoo Seongwoo and his companions would return as soon as possible.
Yoo Iseo lifted her tablet and examined something.
On its screen was the Fragment where Yoo Seongwoo had disappeared.
What had originally resembled nothing more than a small Fragment had grown until it was large enough to fill the underground cavern.
No one knew what had caused it.
They could only assume that Yoo Seongwoo and his companions, who had entered it earlier, had accomplished something inside.
‘I’d prefer it if you came back a little faster, though.’
The past few weeks had truly been hell.
Especially for Yoo Iseo.
The Demons’ suicide squads constantly attempted to breach the Academy’s defensive barrier, while the High-ranking Executives exerted relentless Pressure.
In terms of overall combat power, the Academy was inferior to Pandemonium.
Pandemonium had four High-ranking Executives, while the Academy had only three Top-ranking Heroes.
The Pressure of knowing that she had to perform well enough to keep those precarious scales from tipping was far too heavy a burden for a girl who was only eighteen years old.
Worse still, she had suffered severe injuries during her battle against Serpin and had become unable to fight, making her guilt even greater.
She slowly moved her still-stiff body.
‘I’ve endured this far. I can’t let everything collapse again!’
Yoo Iseo raised both hands and slapped her cheeks.
Smack!
The stinging pain cleared her head a little.
She couldn’t move forward if she kept thinking negatively.
At least the current situation wasn’t bad.
The arrival of supplies had raised the Academy’s morale, and more importantly, they could finally provide the treatment they desperately needed.
The greatest problem in the war had been none other than the wounded.
The Sword Emperor and the other Top-ranking Heroes were one thing.
But among the mid-ranking and high-ranking Heroes fighting the Demons’ suicide squads and Serpin, the number of people becoming incapable of combat had steadily increased.
However, once the supplies arrived, Potions and medical equipment came with them, improving the situation.
Yoo Iseo herself had also recovered considerably from the severe injuries she had sustained in her battle against Serpin.
‘At this rate, I should be back in peak condition in just a few days.’
As long as nothing happened.
But reality was never on the side of the good.
If anything, precisely because it was reality, it was even crueler.
Yoo Iseo’s instincts sounded a fierce warning.
For a moment, she mistook it for a surprise attack aimed at her, but that wasn’t it.
Her Aura Sense detected nothing.
She couldn’t understand why her instincts were sounding the alarm.
At that moment, her surroundings began to darken.
As though the sun itself were disappearing.
But that was impossible.
It was currently three in the afternoon.
Far too early for the sun to set, and it wasn’t the time for an eclipse either.
She hurried toward the window.
The impossible was happening.
An enormous shadow of darkness was devouring the sun.
The warning from her instincts grew fiercer and fiercer until her head began to ache.
Faced with an incomprehensible phenomenon, her body reacted naturally.
She hurried outside.
The Academy also seemed unable to comprehend the sudden chaos.
At that moment, something slowly began descending from the shadow that had swallowed the sun.
Yoo Iseo finally understood what her instincts had been warning her about.
The thing falling from the shadow that had swallowed the sun drew closer before suddenly splitting apart with a crack.
Crack.
The overwhelming Demonic Energy erupting from within caused her breathing to grow ragged and her knees to tremble.
A group of Demons appeared at the center of the darkness.
Their silhouettes were familiar, yet at the same time unfamiliar.
Pandemonium’s High-ranking Executives.
But there was one additional figure among them that she had never seen before.
It was like a hazy, wavering silhouette.
When he extended his hand, a crimson calamity began gathering in the pitch-black sky as though night had fallen.
Countless people collapsed where they stood at the sight.
That was despair dyed crimson.
Rrrrrumble!
At that moment, the entire Academy shook with a tremendous vibration.
‘Could this be another attack?’
But contrary to her expectations, white light erupted from every direction around the Academy and began drawing an enormous magic circle.
The massive defensive barrier protecting the Academy.
It was one of the legacies that Baek Hyun-joong, once called the strongest Hero, had carved into this land before leaving.
Then the crimson despair descended upon the world and collided with the Academy’s barrier.
Rrrrrumble!
The Academy shook violently as though it might collapse under the tremendous vibrations.
It was truly overwhelming power.
A contest between spear and shield began.
The crimson beam continued pouring down as though it would never end, while the barrier held it back.
How long did the deadlock last?
Krrrrraaaaaash!
The crimson despair and the defensive barrier annihilated each other.
Beyond the shattered defensive barrier, the Demons’ faces twisted into cruel smiles.
It was the beginning of despair.