The second Kim Dokja can’t be reached?

“Don’t tell me.”

A perfectly fine constellation had suddenly gone out of contact. Just like me or the “Demon King of Salvation” were chased by the nebulae, maybe something similar had happened to the second one.

「(It doesn’t look like he’s fallen into the grasp of a ‘Great Nebula’ yet. The coordinates I found are outside a great nebula’s domain.)」

Even so, it wasn’t a situation to feel relieved about. It meant a constellation was cornered to the point he couldn’t even use an indirect message.

As if to say not to worry, the Demon King of Salvation waved his hand and added,

「(I’ll give you the coordinates so just keep them in mind for now. Your condition takes priority right now.)」

That was true as well. If I was going to look for the second one, I had to be fine first.

「(And from where I’m standing, the situation isn’t that bad.)」

“That’s absolutely the line you should never say, isn’t it?”

With a dying incarnation body, being chased by great nebulae, and on the verge of disappearing if I didn’t acquire a new scenario immediately.

And yet “the situation isn’t that bad”?

「(You’ve got someone watching over you.)」

“Who? That naked guy?”

「(Yeah.)」

“You must not have seen what happened recently.”

I recalled Jaehwan’s impassive face. Eyes so fierce it felt like he would unleash a hundred consecutive thrusts if I crossed him even slightly.

But the Demon King of Salvation seemed to differ from me.

「(He didn’t seem that bad.)」

“Excuse me?”

「(He wiped out all the ones who were chasing you two. Even a clone of that ‘Inexpressible Remoteness’.)」

That was true.

「(On top of that, when you got indigestion from eating Narratives, he even patted your back.)」

“I’m not sure about that part. He didn’t pat my back—he beat me almost to death.”

「(You didn’t die, did you.)」

Well, that was true.

「(Is that all? He also let you tag along for a week. He could’ve just gone to find strong foes himself, so why bother dragging you around?)」

Come to think of it, every bit of it sounded plausible, and I had nothing to rebut with.

「(Most decisively, if he was going to kill you, he would’ve done it already.)」

My head grew muddled from the Demon King of Salvation’s barrage of gaslighting.

Was that it? Was he actually a good guy?

If it hadn’t been the Demon King of Salvation asserting that opinion, I might have been almost convinced.

“No, even so, he’s not someone you can relax around. Just look at his personality—he’s arrogant and shameless. Just like—”

「(Yu Joonghyuk?)」

“Right. Like Yu Joonghyuk.”

The Demon King of Salvation smiled faintly.

「(Then isn’t that even better?)」

“Pardon?”

「(If a guy resembling Yu Joonghyuk has kept you alive, that means there’s a clear reason he’s kept you alive. So…)」

Unfortunately, the Demon King of Salvation’s voice grew fainter and fainter. Along with the feeling of my consciousness lightly resurfacing, I felt the Demon King of Salvation grip my shoulder firmly.

「(Don’t worry, youngest. I’ll always be watching.)」

*

When I opened my eyes again, it was noisy around me. A disquieting crackling noise reached my ears.

I turned my head and saw, within pitch-black darkness, two naked men swinging their swords at each other.

One of them, needless to say, was the Sovereign Slayer Jaehwan, and the other one was…

Was I not fully awake yet?

I rubbed my eyes again and again from fatigue and then closed them again.

It seemed I wasn’t fully awake yet. Let’s just sleep.

*

With a gasp, I woke from sleep. Come to think of it, it wasn’t the time to be sleeping.

When I opened my eyes again, the surroundings had fallen quiet.

Was it a dream after all?

[Your incarnation body has temporarily regained stability.]

Sensing a gaze fixed on me, I jerked my upper body up, and in the distance I saw Jaehwan glaring this way.

“You’ve finally woken.”

I rubbed my eyes once more. Jaehwan was properly dressed.

“You’re wearing clothes?”

“Is that so surprising?”

No, you were naked until not long ago.

“I merely forgot to put them on for a moment.”

I wanted to ask if there are humans who forget that, but I felt like I’d get a hundred consecutive thrusts, so I held back.

The smartphone in my bosom buzzed with a hum. When I turned on the screen, a specific episode of “Massacre Method” was loading. It was probably the episode of “Massacre Method” that the Demon King of Salvation had mentioned. I hurried to read that part, but, for once, Jaehwan spoke to me again.

“You broke your promise.”

“What promise?”

“Didn’t you say strong ones would come if I kept you nearby.”

“I did.”

“No one came.”

“It hasn’t been that many days yet, has it?”

To be honest, I hadn’t expected literally no one to show up either. Even if the ones chasing us were the constellations of a great nebula in name, shouldn’t they at least show a shadow?

The fortunate thing was that there was still time left on the promise.

“A week as promised has already passed.”

“Excuse me?”

Had I been asleep that long?

“Today makes the eleventh day. You really didn’t know?”

Cold sweat beaded along my spine.

Had that much time really gone by?

Then why was that man still here? What’s more…

[Your incarnation body has temporarily regained stability.]

Why had my incarnation body suddenly improved?

At first I wondered if it was because I had absorbed Narrative fragments through “Lamarck’s Giraffe,” but that didn’t seem to be the only reason.

It distinctly felt like someone had reassembled the joints of a broken soul.

“You looked about to die, so I took some measures. At that level, you should be able to last about another week.”

This time I really thought I’d misheard.

Did that “Sovereign Slayer” just say what I think he said?

“You saved my life?”

Jaehwan didn’t answer.

I asked, a little moved and also impressed,

“You had a Narrative repair ability too?”

“Narrative repair?”

Come to think of it, since the worldviews were different, he wouldn’t use such terms.

“It was just a small application of a technique called [Slay the Dead].”

“[Slay the Dead]?”

“A technique I learned from an old man called Cheongheo of the God of Despair. It restores a soul stained by time…”

Was he recalling an old memory?

Jaehwan’s eyes deepened for a moment and then returned.

“Let’s stop. Even if I explained, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Precisely because I don’t know, I want to hear more.”

“It’s a boring story.”

“I still want to hear it.”

Jaehwan stared at me and said,

“You’re a strange one.”

“I get that a lot.”

“That guy over there was just as strange as you.”

That guy?

Following Jaehwan’s gaze, I turned my head and saw Yu Joonghyuk curled up on a small floating stone.

But Yu Joonghyuk’s state was a bit odd.

“Why has this strange guy gotten smaller?”

Yu Joonghyuk had become a kid again. Perhaps he’d fought a fierce battle, as his coat was torn here and there and undergoing self-repair.

What on earth had happened?

“He picked a fight with me.”

I didn’t know how many times today I’d be doubting my ears.

Yu Joonghyuk picked a fight? With that man? Why?

On one hand, it sounded like something Yu Joonghyuk might do; on the other, I couldn’t understand why he’d make that choice.

Yu Joonghyuk had a fiery personality. But his flame burned cold and composed. He wasn’t someone who would recklessly start a fight he had no chance of winning.

That guy had lunged at Jaehwan. Even at the cost of the side effect of becoming a kid again.

“We made a bet.”

“A bet?”

“I told him if he could inflict even a small wound on me, I’d spare you.”

Looking closely, a faint wound remained on Jaehwan’s cheek.

A shiver ran through me.

That Yu Joonghyuk actually succeeded. He won a bet with that absolute being who could even vie with myth-grade constellations.

No, wait a second. Then was that scene I saw in my dream real?

I pressed my temples, recalling Jaehwan and Yu Joonghyuk, naked, swinging their swords.

What on earth had that bastard Yu Joonghyuk been thinking?

He could really have died.

Why make a bet with someone who could tear us to pieces anytime he wished?

“I dislike regressors.”

Sitting on the floating stone and wiping his sword, Jaehwan spoke.

“I dislike those who don’t struggle. I despise the rotten disposition of giving up on life without even standing and fighting till the end.”

It had been a while since I felt words that seemed sharp enough to cut. Quiet, refined anger.

Compressing that anger, Jaehwan looked at me, then at Yu Joonghyuk again.

“He was a peculiar one. He went at me with the genuine intent to kill me. Knowing he didn’t stand a chance, he squeezed out all his strength and charged, again and again.”

I recalled Yu Joonghyuk, activating Narrative engravings and leaping like a beast.

He had told me this round was his last. He had said he could no longer regress.

Even so, he risked his life and faced Jaehwan.

“He must have a reason he absolutely has to save you.”

The moment I saw Jaehwan’s face, I understood. Right now, Jaehwan wasn’t trying to talk about me or Yu Joonghyuk.

I recalled his history. The sentences Brother Giyeon had written. Old incidents seemed to come alive in my head along with Jaehwan’s voice.

“I had comrades too.”

Before Jaehwan was called the “Sovereign Slayer.” Back when he climbed a terrible tower called the “Tower of Nightmares.”

On the tower’s final floor, he lost his long-time comrade.

“He had taken an irreparable wound.”

Right before the last floor of the tower, Jaehwan’s only comrade leaned against the window and looked at the sky.

The next floor that only Jaehwan would tread.

Imagining the next floor and the floor after that, he slowly put his hand into his bosom.

“In my world, there is an item called the ‘Stone of Regression.’”

The Stone of Regression.

“An item that sends the user back to the past.”

I knew of that item as well.

Jaehwan’s comrades had abandoned the world using that item.

“Facing death, that comrade took that stone out of his bosom. Even though he knew how much I hated that stone.”

“And then?”

“He said he was sorry we couldn’t go to the next floor together.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him to get lost.”

I gave a wry smile.

“Was there a need to put it that harshly? You said he was a precious comrade.”

“The stone he took out wasn’t a ‘Stone of Regression.’”

He had chosen. To ease Jaehwan’s sense of guilt, he decided to touch Jaehwan’s inverse scale.

He chose to stake his life to open the path of the “Sovereign Slayer.”

“You believed your friend’s lie.”

Jaehwan didn’t answer and gazed into empty space again. Before, I had had no sense of what he was looking at, but now I could somewhat guess what landscape he saw within the void.

“Sometimes I wonder. What if, instead of climbing the tower, I had somehow saved him.”

All humans constantly regress into the past. They regret the choices they didn’t choose. It was the same for Yu Joonghyuk and for the Sovereign Slayer.

I looked down at the fast-asleep kid Yu Joonghyuk.

It was ironic. In round 41, Yu Joonghyuk had earned the hatred of the “Calamity of Flood” as the price for using his comrades like expendables.

That very Yu Joonghyuk had earned Jaehwan’s favor for protecting his comrade.

Jaehwan went on.

“I owe a debt to the one called ‘Yu Joonghyuk.’”

“You mean this guy?”

“No, to a guy called Yu Joonghyuk from another ‘worldline.’”

I blinked blankly and then snapped to my senses.

“Don’t tell me—”

Scenes rose in my mind.

The Washington Dome. The trembling Void Veil.

Back then, the Demon King of Salvation had told me. That beyond the Void Veil, Yu Joonghyuk had come.

The Yu Joonghyuk of <Kim Dokja Company> whom we remembered.

“Where is that Yu Joonghyuk?”

“I don’t know either. He rampaged like a madman, fought the stars, and then disappeared.”

“Ah…”

“He went to the trouble of bringing me all the way here only to vanish on his own.”

…Huh?

“Because the worldviews differ, my abilities don’t manifest properly here. If not for that bastard, I wouldn’t be in a place like this.”

“Were you, perhaps, lost and wandering?”

Jaehwan was silent for a moment.

“I never said that.”

No one who gets lost thinks they’re bad with directions.

“I understand. Anyone gets disoriented in a place they’ve come to for the first time.”

Maybe this was a chance Yu Joonghyuk had given me.

“Is there somewhere you’d like to go? You’d like to meet strong ones, right? It’ll take some time, but if it’s that, leave it to me. I’ll guide you.”

“You’ve completely lost my trust.”

“But I know <Star Stream> better than anyone else, you know?”

That was true. In this world, only Kim Dokja knew <Star Stream> better than me.

And right now, that Kim Dokja was me.

“Where would you like to sightsee? Olympus? Asgard? Ah, would you like to experience Journey to the West?”

I said whatever came to mind, but I really couldn’t take Jaehwan to those places. No matter how formidable Jaehwan was, within the context of constellations roaming star signs, he wouldn’t be able to protect us.

If it were up to my heart, I would have liked to tail this guy together with Yu Joonghyuk and annihilate all of <Star Stream>, but plausibility wouldn’t move that way.

However, I thought this meeting might perhaps become a fortuitous opportunity for Yu Joonghyuk.

Yu Joonghyuk of round 41 was “Yu Joonghyuk who no longer regresses.”

If the “Sovereign Slayer” who loathed regression were to train Yu Joonghyuk, what would happen?

If such a thing were possible, perhaps in this round I would get to see the strongest Yu Joonghyuk in the worldview.

It was then that Jaehwan’s expression changed as he listened to me. He slowly moved his hand to his sword hilt and began to emanate a terrifying dignity.

I clicked my ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) tongue and involuntarily stepped back.

Damn, should I have just kept my mouth shut and stayed still?

Then, thunder rolled from far away. Amid a tremendous roar as if splitting the entire universe in two, Jaehwan let out a chilly laugh. Only then did I feel that something had gone wrong.

“Looks like the guest you mentioned has finally arrived.”

I snapped my head around, and in the faraway void a dazzling legion of stars was approaching.

On the eleventh day since we met the Sovereign Slayer Jaehwan,

<Eden> came looking for us.