In Ways of Survival, fights between Lee Hyunsung and Yoo Joonghyuk show up pretty often. Of course, most of them were mock sparring matches ordered by Yoo Joonghyuk (“We will conduct a combat stamina evaluation in preparation for the next scenario”), and they stemmed from a special training plan meant to strengthen Lee Hyunsung’s tanking ability.

「“Get up, Lee Hyunsung.”」

Throughout the mock sparring, Yoo Joonghyuk repeats only that line. And of course he would, because in sparring with Yoo Joonghyuk, Lee Hyunsung does nothing but get beaten down and collapse from start to finish.

He collapses, gets up, collapses, gets up.

An incarnation tempered by repeating it hundreds, thousands of times, as if forging steel. That was the Steel Swordmaster of Ways of Survival, Lee Hyunsung.

However, the battle of the 1,863rd round unfolding in front of my eyes right now was subtly different from the pattern of Ways of Survival that I knew.

“Ohh! He landed one!”

Unlike the Lee Hyunsung of Ways of Survival, who would recoil in trauma at the mere sight of Yoo Joonghyuk, the Lee Hyunsung of the 1,863rd round was steady.

Lee Hyunsung fought back as he overturned the entire desert. A strange wave of magic power rose from his fist.

Kim Namwoon, watching beside me, murmured in admiration.

“Wow, he learned that technique already?”

With a roar like a mountain collapsing, a light of magic power exploded from his fist.

[Thunderclap Single Fist].

A martial art of the “Fist King”, a transcendent from the murim. And the footwork he used to avoid Yoo Joonghyuk’s [Heaven-Breaking Sword Art] was Lee Jihye’s specialty, [Ghostly Footwork].

“No, I told him so many times that’s not how you walk like that!”

Lee Jihye, who was watching, said with her lips sticking out.

Even if it wasn’t a perfect level, the fact that Lee Hyunsung was freely using other incarnations’ skills was a huge shock to me.

「It changed from Ways of Survival.」

Come to think of it, in the 1,863rd round, Han Sooyoung used [Black Flame] even though she hadn’t contracted with the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon.

Maybe by repeating the simulations, they had been continuously awakening combat abilities they didn’t originally have.

“That’s it! Push him!”

Lee Hyunsung fought desperately. He calmly redirected Yoo Joonghyuk’s attacks, countered the ones he couldn’t redirect, and when he saw an opening, he thrust his fist in without hesitation.

Since the opponent was Yoo Joonghyuk, he was ultimately getting pushed back in the overall battle of wits, but even so, his improvisation and situational response were at a shocking level.

If Yoo Joonghyuk of Ways of Survival had been beside him, the current Lee Hyunsung would definitely have received a “combat stamina evaluation S-rank”.

Kim Namwoon asked.

“Our mister is amazing, right?”

I nodded and didn’t take my eyes off Lee Hyunsung’s battle.

It wasn’t just desperate—it was a battle where you could even feel a kind of yearning. That was the only way I could describe it.

The fable that dwelled in every punch and every kick was telling Lee Hyunsung’s story.

I didn’t know why he repeated battle with that kind of face. I could only vaguely guess that he had something he wanted to protect just as much.

Kwoaaaaaah!

After a suffocating close match, the outcome was finally decided.

[Fable Simulation ‘1,863—004’ has ended.]

The hazy dust on the screen disappeared, and the door of the training capsule Lee Hyunsung had entered opened.

“You worked hard, mister.”

Lee Jihye handed a towel to Lee Hyunsung, who was soaked in sweat.

“Thanks.”

“It was a shame. I thought you’d win this time.”

Lee Hyunsung gave a bitter smile and shook his head. But the next moment, he turned his head toward me. Had we met eyes for about three seconds? When I bowed my head first, Lee Hyunsung responded as well.

“You’re the person the captain brought.”

No matter the round, Lee Hyunsung was always a kind person. To Kim Dokja, and to the other companions.

But why was it?

Strangely, in the way Lee Hyunsung spoke to me, I could feel a faint wariness.

[Character, ‘Lee Hyunsung’ feels suspicion toward you.]

What?

“Nice to meet you. Please take care of me.”

On the outside, this man was holding out his hand to me, but on the inside, he felt suspicion toward me.

Why?

If I had to name a reason, it wasn’t like I had nothing in mind. I suddenly fell out of the sky like a parachute (I really did fall from the sky), and I might not have sat well with him that I showed up through Han Sooyoung’s introduction.

Lee Hyunsung stared at me for a moment, then turned his body and walked out of the training grounds.

*

One day, two days, then three days passed again.

During that time, Kim Namwoon dragged me around to the sparring hall or the PC cafe and bothered me whenever he had a chance, picking fights and saying things like, “Let’s play a round.”

What was Han Sooyoung thinking, telling me to meet people?

「Time remaining: 27 days.」

With an anxious mind, I checked the scenario contents again. Within the next 27 days, I had to resolve this world line’s problem and find a way to return to my world line.

But what this world line’s problem was, I couldn’t guess at all right now.

So once, I tried bringing it up casually with Kim Namwoon.

“Problem? I don’t know. Even when I talk to her, Jihye doesn’t really react.”

There was no way something like that was the “problem of the world line”.

Next, I asked Lee Jihye too.

“That my swordsmanship hasn’t improved lately?”

“Is there nothing else?”

“That Kim Namwoon keeps hanging around and being annoying? But why?”

This also didn’t seem like a problem big enough to call it a “problem of the world line”.

To the same question, Lee Seolhwa answered like this.

“Loneliness, maybe.”

“Loneliness?”

This time a rather abstract answer came back, so I was a little surprised.

Loneliness. An emotion any human experiences, though to different degrees.

But why would that specifically become a “problem”?

Ah.

Come to think of it, in this round, there was no longer a “Yoo Joonghyuk”. I was thinking maybe the loneliness Lee Seolhwa felt was related to that, when Lee Seolhwa smiled and added,

“It’s about the captain.”

“Han Sooyoung is lonely?”

Without realizing, I opened my mouth as «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» if to push back against those words.

“With colleagues this good, how would she have time to be lonely?”

Han Sooyoung’s 1,863rd round was close to perfect.

Without Yoo Joonghyuk, she came all the way to the Final Scenario.

Even more, the fact that this many incarnations survived in the Final Scenario was something even Yoo Joonghyuk of Ways of Survival couldn’t do.

“That isn’t the problem.”

“Then what is?”

Lee Seolhwa didn’t answer. For a moment, she made a strange expression like a broken doll, and then just changed the subject.

“How’s your body?”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s a relief.”

“But what you just said—”

“I have something I need to do, so I’ll get going first.”

It was a conversation that left only an uneasy feeling.

After that, when the day’s work ended, I returned to the assigned lodging. I had all sorts of worries related to the scenario, but even so, it had been so long I couldn’t even remember the last time day after day passed this peacefully.

Sitting in a soft chair and looking at my face reflected in the mirror, I remembered a line I’d heard in passing.

That I looked depressed.

Then a thought occurred to me.

If every time I obtained Kim Dokja fragments, I was being influenced by them, then this “depressed feeling” right now might also be related to Kim Dokja.

So….

“Kim Dokja. Are you watching?”

I spoke to the mirror, but there was no answer.

Well, if they were the kind of people who would answer when you talked to them like this, they would’ve contacted me already.

After hesitating for a moment, I turned on my smartphone and opened the web novel app. It was to check the platform comments for the first time in a while. When, like now, the given information was lacking, using a platform capable of short-term future sight was the best option.

[The current connection is not smooth.]

However, the site connection was not smooth.

Why? Is it because this is another world line?

Bzzzt.

Startled by the sudden vibration, I checked the screen.

[A new message has arrived.]

There were only fixed people who could send a message to this smartphone.

More precisely, only two.

As expected, the sender was Big Bro Fortuitous.

—Ways of Survival, Episode 896

That was the end of the message. It was a contact I’d finally gotten after a while, so I felt disappointed first.

And the content he sent was Ways of Survival again.

But thinking again, even the fact that he sent a short message was something to be grateful for.

Seven characters sent while risking plausibility in a situation where even platform access wasn’t smooth.

If this was a message from Kim Dokja, then there had to be a reason.

I immediately opened the text file of Ways of Survival.

I scrolled down, and scrolled down again.

It wasn’t long before I found the “896th episode” of Ways of Survival that Kim Dokja indicated.

「And Yoo Joonghyuk opened his eyes.」

The Yoo Joonghyuk of Episode 896 was the same Yoo Joonghyuk as always.

The first scenario that began in the subway.

After calmly obtaining the necessary items, Yoo Joonghyuk proceeded with the scenario.

As I followed the smooth process with not a single wasted movement, I realized once again what kind of life Yoo Joonghyuk had lived.

For him, life itself was habit.

A diligence that repeated the same thing over and over, without getting sick of it, for this many times. That diligence was what made Yoo Joonghyuk in the end.

「“Die.”」

Of course, in exchange, his personality got a bit twisted.

「“You die too.”」

He became a strange person who did nothing but tell people to die whenever he had a chance.

「“You survive.”」

Even so, Yoo Joonghyuk faithfully saved the people who had to live, and took them in as companions. Together with them, he carried out the “Absolute Throne” scenario, fought against various nebulae, and Yoo Joonghyuk kept moving forward.

Passing through the “Demon King Selection”, and going through “Gigantomachia” and “Ragnarok” and the “Holy Demon Great War”—running into several crises, clearing scenarios that looked impossible to solve.

I also followed Yoo Joonghyuk’s journey.

Did I obtain too many Kim Dokja fragments?

It had been a long time since reading—especially Ways of Survival—felt fun.

Because I didn’t want to miss this flow, I forgot my own problem for a while and immersed myself in Yoo Joonghyuk’s story.

How long did I read like that?

「And Yoo Joonghyuk reached the Final Scenario.」

I finally reached that sentence. And only then did I realize the strange sense of discomfort I’d felt the whole time I was reading Episode 896.

“Huh?”

Something was wrong.

“The Final Scenario”?

That couldn’t be.

As far as I knew, the only one that got close to the “Final Scenario” aside from the 1,863rd round was the 999th round.

But he reached the “Final Scenario” in Episode 896, a full hundred episodes earlier than that?

Did the content of Ways of Survival change?

Or am I remembering something wrong?

But regardless of my memory, Yoo Joonghyuk continued the scenario, and he even—

「Just like that, he cleared the Final Scenario.」

He even cleared the “Final Scenario”.

「At the end of all scenarios, he slowly looked back at the world. Companions smiling unrealistically, the scenery of the ending he had wanted so badly.」

However, as Yoo Joonghyuk quietly stared at that scenery, he let out a bitter laugh.

「I see.」

And he muttered.

「This world is fake.」