The moment I activated the skill, my hand was knocked back with a strong spark.

[You cannot tame the target!]
[Your rapport with the target is insufficient!]
[Your understanding of the target is insufficient!]

No matter if it was Lee Gilyoung who had cleared the final scenario—what I was trying to tame right now was the ‘King of Terror’. A transcendent being whose status couldn’t be measured at a glance.

But I had a countermeasure.

[Exclusive Skill, ‘Agitation Lv.???’, activates!]

[Agitation], trained to the extreme as I passed through the 40th turn’s ‘time stratum’.

I added the authority of [Sentence Enhancement] to it.

「I am Lee Gilyoung.」

And then the voice that had been rasping inside my head like the flutter of an insect’s wings became even clearer.

「“I’m the one who saves Dokja.”」

Insect King Lee Gilyoung.

「“I’m not giving him up to anyone. Not to that black bastard. Not to Shin Yoosung, either.”」

「“I’m going to get stronger. Strong enough that I won’t lose to anyone. Until there isn’t a single insect in the world that I can’t tame.”」

「“Tame it, and tame it again. That’s all.”」

With each line of that voice, scenes rose up. Lee Gilyoung casting [Taming] every time he encountered insect king species, without caring about rank. The boy’s face that didn’t give up, even as he was torn by the claws of insect king species and bitten apart by their teeth.

When you thought about it, that’s what it meant to tame something.

Holding out your hand while accepting that you’ll be hurt, that you’ll be wounded. Placing another person’s sentences into your own blank spaces.

Lee Gilyoung had lived enduring that kind of life, all for the sake of taking back one person.

[The effects of Exclusive Skill ‘Agitation’ influence Exclusive Skill ‘Bookmark’.]
[An additional skill is activated!]
[Exclusive Skill, ‘Advanced Multi-Species Rapport Lv.???’, is activated!]

[Advanced Multi-Species Rapport]. A taming skill that increases the probability of [Taming] by forming rapport with the target.

The moment the golden thread flowing from my fingertips touched the second Kim Dokja, the entire Terror Order let out a fierce scream.

The universe connected.

There was a boy. A boy who loved reading.

He especially liked novels, and among novels, he cherished the story of a regressor more than anything.

「“I am Yoo Joonghyuk.”」

The boy liked that line from the protagonist.

A person who could proudly say his own name, anywhere, anytime.

He admired the protagonist who had lived that kind of life.

“Even so, isn’t it a lie?”

The boy’s friend evaluated the novel the boy was reading like that. Even so, a lie. Fiction that didn’t exist.

At those words, the boy quietly agreed.

“Maybe.”

Everyone knew a novel was fiction. But the boy reading it was definitely a living person.

Even now, the boy remembered clearly. The open window outside. The sensation of gravity disappearing under his feet. The moment he searched for ‘how to survive’ for the first time on an old hospital computer. The feeling of blankly reading the first sentence.

“Still, it’s fun.”

To defend that fiction, the only thing the boy could say was, at most, “It’s fun.”

An interesting story that protected his uninteresting life.

Then the boy’s friend pushed his glasses up and said,

“You can tell without even reading it. It’s a story where the chosen protagonist keeps getting advantages and keeps rising.”

The boy wanted to say that the protagonist of this story didn’t rise so smoothly, but he couldn’t say it. He wasn’t Yoo Joonghyuk.

“A story where a lucky protagonist succeeds exactly as set—what’s fun about that?”

He wanted to say that the protagonist of this story wasn’t even that lucky, but he couldn’t say it. Again, he wasn’t Yoo Joonghyuk.

Instead, the boy said this.

“I think it’s fun.”

“Why? What’s fun about it?”

“Because I’m not the protagonist.”

While reading, the boy found characters like himself, one by one.

「“Captain, I wanted to become like you.”」
「“But I couldn’t. No matter how hard I try, I can’t become like you.”」
「“But even someone like me—please come find me again in the next turn. If we keep going, maybe someday it’ll happen.”」

Even if they couldn’t become the protagonist, there were many characters there who lived earnestly. Quite important supporting characters, supporting characters with little weight, all the way to nameless extras.

「“In the next turn, I want to be of help to you.”」

Countless characters who said similar lines and died.

「“I will definitely kill you.”」

The boy liked their stories just as much as the protagonist’s.

In that sense, it was quite fortunate for the boy that ‘Ways of Survival’ was such a long, rambling novel.

Around that time, the boy started reading other novels too. Among them, there were novels the boy found fairly enjoyable.

For example, a story about a man who hated regression to death.

The difference was that story was very short, unlike ‘Ways of Survival’.

「In the end, every story ends.」

When he realized that fact anew, the boy became afraid.

Someday, the novel he loved would end.

He knew that. Even so, accepting it wasn’t easy.

Even though it wasn’t ‘Ways of Survival’, after seeing the ending of another novel, those thoughts became even stronger. Imagining the characters he loved dying as time passed, the boy trembled with fear.

「What if ‘Ways of Survival’ ends like that too?」

Carefully, the boy imagined the story’s ending.

Would the villain meet a fitting end? Would the supporting characters find their own endings? Would Yoo Joonghyuk ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) finally learn what his ■■ was?

Would they become happy in the end?

And would he, watching them, be satisfied with that?

Only after thinking that far did the boy realize it.

Maybe something like a ‘happy ending’ didn’t exist in this story.

Maybe a happy ending was an illusion that didn’t exist. Maybe, in the end, the ending of this story could only be completed as a tragedy.

「I hope this story never ends.」

It’s fine if today’s episode is sad. It’s fine if tomorrow’s episode is sad, and the next episode after that is sad again. If only that sorrow could postpone the ending.

If only he could live forever while dreaming of a ‘happy ending’.

[‘King of Terror’ begins to dream.]

The first ‘time stratum’ was born at that very moment.

An ability that fixed a story’s coordinates and made it a kind of eternity.

Fables that couldn’t be recorded, or that vanished, piled up in the stratum one by one like that.

A warehouse that stored disappearing stories. A place that would never forget the story, even if the story ended.

「The ‘Terror Order’ was born from that dream of Kim Dokja.」

There, the second Kim Dokja stored up stories, and stored them up again. Even turning away from the brothers’ fight—maybe to avoid joining that fight, he shut himself even deeper inside the stratum and immersed himself in collecting disappearing stories.

And there was a ‘warrior’ who protected him.

[So you were here, Kim Dokja.]

The warrior who crossed worldlines recognized the second Kim Dokja at a glance, and the second Kim Dokja also knew who the warrior was.

The second Kim Dokja asked.

‘Can you protect me?’

[Until when?]

‘Until the day I can think of a happy ending.’

[Fine. When you think of it, make sure you tell me too. I want to write it down on my ‘wall’, too.]

As he collected the sorrow scattered throughout the world, the second Kim Dokja dreamed of a happy ending.

While watching fables vanish, remembering characters who couldn’t be recorded and died as ‘terror’, the second Kim Dokja imagined a happy ending.

But no matter how many fables he collected and recorded, a ‘happy ending’ wouldn’t come to mind. A ‘happy ending’ felt like a concept from another universe that he couldn’t imagine.

Then, one day, he came.

【Of course. There is no such way for everyone to be happy.】

He was a man with striking half-lidded eyes.

【As long as a ‘protagonist’ exists.】

‘A protagonist?’

【Everything begins because of the ‘protagonist’. Because the protagonist exists, this story began, and because the protagonist exists, someone gets hurt and someone dies. Because the protagonist exists, someone becomes a supporting character, and someone becomes an extra. And… because the protagonist exists, your brothers began to fight.】

‘Sad.’

Why did something like a ‘protagonist’ exist in this world? Why did someone have to be the protagonist, and someone else have to not be?

Even so, why did he love this story that had a protagonist?

【There is a way not to be sad.】

‘What is it?’

【Close the ‘book’ this story is written in.】

Close the book.

The second Kim Dokja tilted his head and asked,

‘How?’

【Turn all of the <Star Stream> into the ‘Terror Order’. Enfold the entire universe into the dream you are dreaming.】

The man grinned, showing his white teeth.

【Then this world will be ‘fixed’ forever, without heading toward an ending.】

An eternal postponement of the ending.

After thinking for a moment, the second Kim Dokja said,

‘If the story stops, then who the protagonist is stops mattering too.’

【That’s right.】

‘Then my brothers won’t fight anymore, either.’

【Exactly.】

The second Kim Dokja smiled brightly.

‘I’ll do it.’

Then the warrior asked,

[Kim Dokja. Is that really what you want?]

When the second Kim Dokja nodded, the warrior smiled and replied.

[Okay. I understand.]

Then the sound of a book closing rang out.

I was flung back through the air, gagging. It was only a very brief moment, but it felt like I had vividly lived through part of the history he had lived. Blood dripped from my seven orifices, and a message came through.

[Exclusive Skill, ‘Taming Lv.???’, has failed.]

Taming someone meant sharing that being’s emotions. Sharing his sorrow and joy, his despair and terror.

But the target I wanted to share with was the ‘King of Terror’. A being who had stored up emotions over years I couldn’t even measure.

[Exclusive Skill, ‘Multi-Species Rapport Lv.???’, is active.]

It felt like someone was grabbing my brain with both hands and squeezing.

Just having our minds connected was enough to make me feel like I’d go insane. My consciousness kept growing hazy.

[Exclusive Skill, ‘Fourth Wall’, activates strongly!]

「(Get a grip!)」

It was the voice of the first Kim Dokja—the ‘Demon King of Salvation’.

「(If you get eaten here, it’s all over, youngest.)」

I know. But there was nothing I could do. Even my trump card, ‘Insect King Lee Gilyoung’, wasn’t working.

At this rate, the entire worldline was going to become the ‘Terror Order’.

To stop that, no matter what, I opened my mouth.

“I understand how you feel.”

Now I understood why the second Kim Dokja had made the ‘Terror Order’.

“But this isn’t it.”

I also understood what his end had come from.

Turning all of <Star Stream> into the ‘Terror Order’. If that happened, the protagonist would disappear from this world. Me, Yoo Joonghyuk, and all the other characters would all become part of ‘terror’, and be preserved forever as fables inside the stratum.

Then the fight would stop.

But with that, this story would be halted forever. No one would ever know the ending of the story covered by thick binding.

“You liked this story.”

「…….」

“You survived while watching this story. You know it too, deep down. This story isn’t only the protagonist’s story. This story is—”

This was a story for a single reader.

“We made it together.”

A protagonist is not a protagonist from the beginning. Only because there is a ‘reader’ who reads that protagonist and wants to become the protagonist does the protagonist finally become a protagonist.

Maybe [Advanced Multi-Species Rapport] was getting through, because for the first time, I felt the second Kim Dokja turn toward me. Then a voice rang inside my head.

「If this story continues, one of us has to become the ‘protagonist’.」

“…….”

「Because this world is now a story for ‘one reader’.」

I couldn’t bring myself to refute that.

The second had thought it through. If this world continued, then in the end, Kim Dokja would have to kill Kim Dokja.

Just like the other fragments of Kim Dokja had done—he knew that fables would continue in order to choose the protagonist called ‘the one and only Kim Dokja’.

[A fable, ‘Heir of an Eternal Name’, writhes.]

The second Kim Dokja said,

「I’m trying to stop that story.」

Was I being persuaded by his story right now because of [Advanced Multi-Species Rapport]?

For an instant, that thought crossed my mind. Wouldn’t it be better if, like he thought, everything turned into ‘terror’? Was there really meaning in an ‘ending’ that we had to see, even if we endured every tragedy to come?

「Do you really think the story will stop if you close the book?」

That wasn’t the voice of the ‘King of Terror’.

Goosebumps rose along my spine. There was someone else in this snowfield.

Along with a clear ring of steel, I saw the White-Blue aura slicing through the air.

「Everything is already written, and at the same time, it is being written.」

A coat scattering pure white, a hazy smile like the day we first met—his sword drew an arc.

「So as long as even a single reader is curious about the next story.」

In an instant, the severed arm of the ‘King of Terror’ flew through the air. The ‘blade of conviction’, radiating brilliance, was burning pure white right before my eyes.

Stepping on the pitch-black fable that had fallen with a flutter, ‘the Kim Dokja of the snowfield’ turned to me and said,

「The story doesn’t end.」