Episode 291
“……!”
Shivering all over.
Liam, who had been trying to catch some sleep on the floor, jolted awake.
Just a moment ago, he had been facing off against Vargan.
Gasping as if he had just emerged from water, Liam took a moment to catch his breath and surveyed his surroundings.
“Where is this…?”
Tiny desks and chairs lined up neatly in front of a blackboard.
Lockers packed tightly in the back.
Wide monitors and air conditioners, things you wouldn’t see in a fantasy world.
This place, dimly lit with a red glow from the sunset streaming through the windows, evoked a sense of familiarity and nostalgia.
‘Isn’t this my high school classroom…?’
Liam glanced at the clothes he was wearing.
A clumsy, coarse navy jacket and a red tie.
It was the uniform from his high school.
“What the heck is this…?”
Could it be that everything that had happened until now was just a dream?
Rising from his seat with that thought, Liam tried to manipulate his mana.
The blue mana moved freely at his will, crackling with energy.
So it seems this wasn’t a dream after all.
“Is, is there no one else here?”
Liam heightened his senses to examine the school building itself.
He couldn’t detect even a single ant crawling by.
It appeared that Emily, Arha, and the others who had been at the mercy of Vargan had not been transported here.
To grasp the situation accurately, Liam walked over to the window to look outside.
The scenery matched exactly with the world he had lived in.
The old snack shop nearby and the position of the crosswalk.
In the distance, he could see tall apartment buildings and trees with green leaves dotting the area.
It was as if his neighborhood had been moved here intact.
“…There’s someone there.”
Liam spotted a black silhouette in the middle of the playground.
A man dressed entirely in a sleek black suit from head to toe.
Liam realized it was Vargan.
Clang—!
Liam immediately broke the window and jumped down to the playground.
His classroom was on the fifth floor, and it was quite a distance to the center of the playground, but—
Liam’s trained physique could easily handle that amount of physical exertion.
Zing—.
Liam charged with electricity at his fingertips and stood before him.
“…Vargan.”
Just as Liam had recognized. The person standing on the playground was indeed Vargan.
Vargan chuckled and said, “Breaking the window and leaping in? What a grand entrance.”
“……Did you create this space?”
“Sadly, unlike Beled, I don’t possess the ability to create. This is your dream. An illusion crafted by my spell.”
So, it’s fake.
An illusion created by Vargan.
Vargan looked around as if admiring the quality of the illusion.
Liam asked slowly, “Did you somehow look into my brain?”
“Hmm. …More importantly, it seems you’ve uniquely resolved the two souls in your way.”
“…….”
“You chose ‘co-existence’ rather than destruction. That’s a solution even I hadn’t discovered. I can’t believe you actually thought to communicate with the souls through the Soul Forge Hall. A magnificent chatter that could only be realized by someone like you, who had rather mediocre talents.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
Hearing his unique way of speaking, Liam felt oddly relieved.
As Liam let out a sigh, he felt a bit of tension leave his body.
Vargan seemed to guess Liam’s questions and spoke up first.
“It seems you have many things you want to ask me, so I specially prepared this place. Because I’m kind, you see.”
“…That’s convenient. I was worried about the eyes around me after throwing you in jail before asking.”
“Regardless of the possibility, that’s quite a bold statement.”
Vargan brushed off Liam’s comment lightly and asked what it was that he wanted to know.
Liam felt that there was a reason for this setup, but indeed, it was a rare opportunity.
He replied in a serious tone.
“As you mentioned, I just came back from the Soul Forge Hall. I spent 1,000 years there.”
“Considering Finn spent 30,000 years, your talent seems better than his. Anyway, what does that mean for you?”
“…For 1,000 years, I trained and was able to face the original Liam’s soul, and we had many conversations. Of course, it wasn’t easy. Sharing one body is like that, right? Moreover, we are ‘outsiders’ too.”
“And?”
“However… we spent a whopping 1,000 years together. Like we were originally one. Liam and I managed to break down the vague wall that existed between us and reached a stable stage of coexistence.”
There was no longer a need to dispute ownership.
He was himself, and himself was him. Losing even one would be like cutting off an arm.
“While I was having deep conversations with the soul, I often talked a lot about you too. You, who killed the original soul… I really wondered what you were thinking when you collapsed the Academia and entered the Goddess Church. …What your identity is.”
“You’ve been thinking about me for 1,000 years? That’s a rather grotesque thing.”
Vargan frowned, like he was looking at a crushed bug.
Regardless of Vargan’s reaction, Liam continued to speak confidently.
“And I came to a conclusion. Perhaps you, too, might have experienced a different cause-and-effect relationship to come to this world.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. Go on.”
Then Liam began to reveal the basis of his thoughts.
“You always had more ‘information’ than I did. That might be because you were Vargan, a noble, while I was just a commoner.”
“That’s a valid point.”
“Yeah, but it seemed strange to me no matter how I thought about it. The difference was too ‘excessive’ to be simply due to class.”
“…….”
“So I made a hypothesis. Maybe there was a significant difference between you and me not as characters in a novel, but as real people. The first one being, if we read the novel at different times and it got revised.”
Liam explained that the novel he read wasn’t a formal serialization; it was at the stage of someone’s personal challenge.
In the end, it never made it to formal serialization before the last episode was published.
Since he was possessed, that work might have been rewritten anew, and perhaps that’s what Vargan read.
Vargan nodded.
Liam moved his lips again.
“…The second hypothesis is that perhaps you were not the author of the novel? If so, it wouldn’t be strange for you to have settings or information that weren’t written in the novel.”
“Are you asking me if I’m the author of that trashy work? That’s incredibly offensive.”
“…Well, it seems the second option is off the table. I thought it was the most likely hypothesis.”
Maybe it was just an act, but Vargan genuinely seemed offended.
Liam proceeded to share his final hypothesis.
“The third one is… it might sound absurd, but what if this world is constructed in a framed way?”
Even he found his own statement absurd.
However, upon finally seeing Vargan’s expression of surprise, he continued.
“Like the status windows often seen in web novels… it’s usually a special ability possessed only by the protagonist. I entered the world of the novel I read and used the status window ability to grow rapidly. …Just like a ‘protagonist in a novel.’”
“It’s a power. I reincarnated into the world of a novel I read and used my ability called status screen to grow quickly… like a ‘protagonist from a novel.’”
“…Oh my.”
“And you acted as if you could see exactly how I would move. If it were just once or twice, I could brush it off as coincidence. But… you know it’s not, right?”
“……”
“Vargan… I’ll ask you. Who was the protagonist of the novel you read?”
“……”
“Was it Arterion like me? Or…?”
“Are you saying you read a novel where you were the protagonist?”
“That’s just a possibility. It ranks pretty low on the list of options.”
“……”
Liam waited for Vargan’s response.
Vargan, displaying no appropriate reaction, let time pass silently.
Just as the surroundings began to turn red and darken, he finally spoke.
“…It’s going to be a long story. Do you still want to hear it?”
“I don’t mind.”
Nodding, Liam agreed.
Vargan moved his mana and warned him.
Even if the truth was shocking, he shouldn’t falter again.
Liam reassured him that he had built a solid mental state since entering this novel world, so he was fine with it.
At that moment—
Zzzz—.
The world began to change.
The space created anew by Vargan was pure white like a canvas, but soon, black ink fell, and countless words appeared all around, recognizable at a glance.
It looked like a page had been torn from a novel.
Vargan kept his mouth shut and did not direct his gaze. It was a sign for Liam to read.
With a somewhat tense demeanor, Liam slowly began to read the text.
—Liam! What on earth have you done!
An enraged Arterion had a tight grip on Liam’s collar.
Liam slammed against the wall, unable to reply, his head hung low.
—Were you bewitched by Jephar? Is that why you did this!
The intense reaction of Arterion was a first.
No heroes around intervened to stop Arterion.
Rather, they were ready to unleash their deadly intent toward Liam.
—How could you do something like this?
—That guy betrayed his comrades and the Church! He must be executed!
—That puppet of the Goddess Church…! We trusted that jerk up until now…!
All were fiercely condemning Liam’s actions.
Among them, the most shocked was Arterion.
With eyes full of hatred, and a face twisted in anguish, he called out a name that would never be seen again.
—Alicia…! You let Jephar’s scheme lead to her death…!!
The quasi-hero Alicia was dead.
A young hero who had drawn public attention lost his life in vain.
Addicted to the suppressants provided by Jephar, and stirred on by Liam’s provocation, his original soul was removed through heart-separation surgery.
—Alicia trusted you and acted! She had no doubt it would lead to her own destruction!
Alicia.
The heroine who died by his own hands.
Liam trembled with his head hung low. Tears fell. Guilt constricted his entire being.
Yet, after years of trembling in fear, Liam spoke like he had lost his mind.
Revealing the sordid, rotten truth within him.
—No one helped me… No one, no one… no one understood my situation!
—Liam… what are you saying right now!
—You don’t know! You know nothing! Do you have any idea how much I suffered and feared?! How much agony I went through?!
Liam shouted.
Amidst losing ‘himself’ to two souls, the only one who reached out with understanding was the Cardinal Jephar.
—I didn’t want to borrow his hand! I didn’t want that! But what was I supposed to do when only the drugs he offered had any effect!
Liam, nearly stripped of control by two souls, eventually succumbed and injected himself with the substance given by Jephar.
And the outcome was successful.
After the injection, there was a brief moment where he could completely control ‘himself.’
He could control it.
—I know… I know that what I’ve done is absurd!
Liam needed drugs. Jephar continuously provided them.
Then, after a while, Jephar, who had been giving the drugs for free, began to attach conditions.
As Liam became more addicted to the drugs, he was gradually led to commit heavier crimes in exchange.
—But… there was no other way.
Liam moved to evade the Church’s gaze.
Initially, the conditions were only useless information about the Church.
By the end, it escalated to smuggling out of-class relics.
As things reached a point where drugs wouldn’t solve anything anymore, Jephar proposed surgery.
The price was to disarm Alicia and lure her to a specific location.
With nothing else in sight, Liam accepted the proposal and moved.
Before war broke out, under the pretext of spending one last moment together.
—I never thought… I never thought she would die. If it were Alicia… If it were Alicia, even if she got caught… I thought she would somehow survive… But then…
—Are you really saying that!! You killed Alicia! Liam! You were the one who killed her!
—I… I…
Liam’s sense of reason crumbled.
He belatedly realized how foolish he had been.
But, it was already far too late.
Alicia had become a corpse after Jephar’s failed experiment.
What had happened once could not be undone.
……
“…This is.”
Liam reading a part of the novel.
His complexion went pale.
Vargan quietly watched Liam’s expression before speaking.
“What does that look mean? Is it because your third guess, which you thought had the least possibility, turned out to be correct? Because you were such a horrible being in that world?”
“……”
“Whatever it is, it’s funny. The face of someone seeing their own mistakes turns out like this, a pathetic expression.”
Liam, seemingly out of it, couldn’t move his trembling lips.
Vargan asked.
“What was the ending of the novel you read? Was it a happy ending for everyone? Or was it a sad ending filled with despair?”
“……”
“I understand why you didn’t want to break the existing framework. You probably didn’t want to deviate from the original plot. That was probably the best way to utilize the information you had and lead to a happy ending for humanity. You thought so, didn’t you?”
“……”
“However, in the end, the plot shifted because of ‘you’.”
Vargan conveyed a harsh truth that was hard for Liam to accept.
It was a cruel yet undeniable fact.
“Liam, the novel I read had a horrific ending. It couldn’t even be called a sad ending. Everyone was killed by the Goddess Church, every city was devastated, and ultimately, humanity perished.”
“……”
“It was all caused by you. Just one person, your single intervention led to the worst outcome. But don’t worry. You only fulfilled your duty.”
“……What?”
Liam’s expression looked like it was about to crumble at any moment.
Vargan laughed at him.
“Still don’t get it? ‘The one who has read the Scripture.’”
There was an ancient legend passed down among the Goddess Church.
One day, someone would appear who has read every page of the Scripture.
He would present the future of the Goddess Church and widely disseminate the will of the Goddess.
Drenched in the blood of filthy traitors.
The Goddess Church would enjoy eternal prosperity.
“Fifteen. Among the Archbishop seats, there has been one vacancy that hadn’t been filled for a long time. This vacancy has been referred to as ‘Archbishop Raum,’ waiting for its owner to arrive. That is you, Liam…”
Archbishop Liam.
The one who masqueraded as the protagonist, leading the world to destruction.
The one destined to occupy the vacancy of Archbishop Raum.
