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Chapter 223

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The Exploded II

3

\'Someone in Japan blew themselves up while shouting the name of Doctor Jang!\'

What in the world could this be about?

It didn’t make any sense logically.

There was an insurmountable physical distance between me and the mysterious woman (let’s call her “Y” from now on).

I was dragged to a tutorial dungeon in Busan, while the stage where the High Priestess and Y were captivated was in Kyoto.

Even measured directly, it was a distance of nearly 600 kilometers.

How could a complete stranger, someone I had no memory of, a Japanese person, blow up while shouting the name of Doctor Jang?

“Could it have been an acquaintance of yours...?”

Surprisingly, Noh Doha, who regularly forced me into swimming lessons, showed interest in this mystery.

“An acquaintance? I retrieved some degraded data from the tutorial fairies, but judging by the description, they didn’t seem familiar to me at all.”

“Well, even if they don\'t seem familiar, they could still be acquaintances. You did say your memory is like Swiss cheese, with everything from ages 1 to 20 missing…”

“Oh.”

“Quite a few Koreans have relatives or acquaintances living in Japan. It wouldn’t be strange if you also had someone like that...”

That was something I hadn’t considered.

As Noh Doha pointed out, my childhood was like Schrödinger’s box. Until it was opened, anyone could potentially be an acquaintance.

But I shook my head soon after.

“No, thinking about it, that’s unlikely.”

Noh Doha, neck-deep in the pool, gave me a look as if asking, “Why?”

“All my close family or friends have been [time-sealed]. What’s left are only weak acquaintances. It would be odd for someone like that to shout my name with their dying breath.”

“Ah, yeah, that does make sense…”

Thus, the hypothesis that “this person was connected to me in the past” was dismissed.

With that, Noh Doha lost interest and began swimming elegantly down the lane like a dolphin.

He was swimming with such ease in the backstroke that I wondered if he had any idea about my plans to switch from swimming lessons to personal training the moment he gained a bit more stamina. Our dear Supreme Leader was blissfully unaware.

“...Hey, Doctor Jang. Did you just devise some seriously annoying plan while looking at me like that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ah. Damn, I knew it. What scheme are you up to now...?”

“Nothing of the sort, I assure you.”

I feigned innocence.

At any rate.

Unlike the complex maneuvering and scheming necessary for the [Noh Doha Humanization ~5-Year Plan~], the answer to the mystery of Y came surprisingly quickly, and surprisingly easily.

“Oh? The person whose head exploded right at the start of the Void Arrival in Japan?”

The key to the answer came from none other than Oh Dokseo.

After hearing that Noh Doha and I were having a swimming lesson, she excitedly tagged along, assuming there was some juicy hidden event between the two of us, only to get sullen when she realized it was just a regular swimming lesson.

“Oh, come on, really? Just swimming lessons? Nothing exciting?”

But after eavesdropping on our conversation, her ears perked up.

“That person—wasn\'t that the fake protagonist from the prologue?”

“...?”

“...?”

A fake protagonist in the prologue?

Oh Dokseo, forever a middle schooler (always a second-year), once again used her own private vocabulary, leaving both Noh Doha and me with question marks above our heads.

She scrunched her face in frustration.

“I mean, from The Omniscient Regressor’s Viewpoint that I read before the Void Arrival. The same thing happens in the prologue.”

This was a strange coincidence.

Someone who fell into the same tutorial dungeon as the High Priestess also appeared in Oh Dokseo\'s previous-life novel?

“Does it explain in that novel why the person’s head suddenly exploded?”

“Of course.”

Oh Dokseo nonchalantly responded.

“They were a true prophet.”

4

Until then, I hadn’t pried too deeply into the contents of the Omniscient Regressor\'s Viewpoint from Oh Dokseo.

The reason was simple.

Unlike my biography, which Oh Dokseo had written and edited herself, ORV was a novel originally written by The Admin of All-Play.

In other words, it was practically a cursed artifact tainted by the Alien God’s malice.

‘If I read ORV and learned about my first through fourth turns, it would be like handing the power to define Doctor Jang over to the Alien God for free.’

It was exactly the kind of cunning scheme I would expect from the sly Admin of All-Play.

Of course, there was a chance that the Operator had written the truth out of sheer goodwill.

But my level of distrust for anything related to the supernatural was at “France has such a formidable army, we’re all doomed!”—the same level of paranoia the Germans had during WWII. I had to assume the worst possible scenario.

And if I didn’t, I felt something akin to the “Monkey’s Paw” episode would happen.

Still, based on what Oh Dokseo was saying... it seemed like the part about the mysterious woman Y was safe from the Alien God’s curse.

“So, in ORV, I don’t show up as the main character right away?”

“Yeah, that’s right. The prologue starts with a completely different person acting like the protagonist, deceiving the readers.”

A fake protagonist.

It wasn’t a common trope, but it popped up occasionally to surprise readers.

A prime example was the Three Kingdoms genre\'s classic The Tale of Jia Xu.

“I don’t know about Three Kingdoms, but anyway... As soon as the prologue begins, people get summoned to a tutorial dungeon, including the fake protagonist.”

“Hmm.”

“But while everyone else is panicking, the fake protagonist awakens the ability of ‘prophecy.’ Well, technically it’s foresight, but whatever.”

Foresight. The ability to see the future.

Apparently, Y had visions of future events as if watching a VR video unfold before her eyes.

Like Oh Dokseo, Y was well-versed in subculture. The concept of a “prophet” wasn’t rare in Korean or Japanese novels, so Y immediately realized how much of a golden opportunity she had stumbled upon.

-She could see! She knew exactly how to clear the dungeon and escape!

-Over there! That person would one day be called the High Priestess and lead the magical girls of Japan. She had to befriend her!

-Ah, yes! Even though the Eight Million Gods would descend, and the archipelago would fall into ruin!

-It’s so tragic...!

-But! With this ability, if I can foresee the future so vividly, I can save countless people! Yes, definitely!

She could do anything.

“At this point, it still felt like a typical overpowered protagonist story.”

However.

The twist came soon after.

-Huh?

As Y kept predicting how to save the survivors of the tutorial dungeon, the citizens of the archipelago, and ultimately the world, she abruptly froze.

It wasn’t over.

-Huh?

The vision didn’t stop.

More importantly, the focus of the vision shifted.

Instead of focusing on Y, the perspective slowly zeroed in on someone else.

A man with pitch-black, well-like eyes.

He died. Again and again.

Sometimes, he died as soon as he was summoned to the tutorial dungeon. Other times, he wandered the world for centuries alone.

-Huh? Huh? Huh?

Everyone the man cherished either met with death or a fate worse than death.

Some were gruesomely torn apart by mobs of people possessed by the supernatural. Some took their own lives endlessly. Some lost their human form and became monsters that eventually killed the man themselves.

It happened over and over again.

-Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?

And all of this was vividly “foreseen” by the prophet Y.

It wasn’t just foresight, either. She heard it. Smelled it. Tasted it. Felt it. She sensed it. She knew it instinctively. It was imprinted into her.

The man’s endless deaths and suffering condensed into a single moment and flooded Y’s brain.

-Aaaagh!

Y screamed. No, she didn’t even realize she was screaming.

Her awakening to the power of prophecy was happening in real-time. The fact that her hair was turning white from the roots down was proof.

-No, no, no, no...

She didn’t want to awaken.

"Stop, please, stop! Aaaaaaaah!"

As Y’s hair gradually turned whiter, the foresight grew stronger. The pain and suffering Y felt from the man became as vivid as if it were happening to him directly.

If she awakened any further... she couldn\'t. It’s not right. For a human, born in a human body, to experience this— to feel this far...

"Ah."

It was then that Y "foresaw."

That for the entirety of her life, as long as she lived as an awakened one, until the moment she died, she would be forced to endlessly witness the life of that man over and over again.

"Ah... haha... ahaha."

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This power was a curse.

Life was nothing but suffering.

And so, when her hair completely turned white, completing her awakening, Y foresaw a method to use an aura, something she had never learned or practiced before.

On her own head.

Crack!

Y died instantly.

“That day, at exactly the same moment, all six people across the world who had awakened their powers of prophecy committed suicide... according to [Omniscient Regressor\'s Viewpoint]. Pop, pop, pop-pop-pop. Six heads exploded.”

Each of them had the potential to save the world.

And in some remote, far-off corner of history, a man lightly opened his eyes.

Doctor Jang.

Every time he opened his eyes, he was always the one who would bury those six Prometheuses.

"And so the prologue ends."

"......"

"Wow, amazing, right? The pain and scenes that you’ll go through as Doctor Jang in the prologue pass by like a quick panorama.”

Oh Dokseo chattered excitedly.

"I knew from just the prologue. This is something special! Sure, since it’s a fake protagonist, it might not appeal to other readers, but I loved it anyway!"

Indeed.

In other words, by the time I, Doctor Jang, started my return, the group that had already exited from the world was not only the tens of thousands of people bound by the [Time Seal], but also the six prophets, including Y.

That is, assuming that Omniscient Regressor\'s Viewpoint was written truthfully by the logout game creator.

"Impressive..."

Noh Doha, who had been listening to the story while poking his head out of the pool, grinned slyly.

“So in the end, without lifting a finger, you wiped out six incredibly powerful awakened beings, each of whom might have saved their own nation. As expected from Doctor Jang Awakened. Even from the sprout, the great anomaly candidate is different, huh?”

“It’s slander.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Those six were likely candidates for whom the creator of the logout game was searching to select as their priestess.”

“Huh...?”

“The logout game has been targeting me from the start. So they would’ve carefully evaluated who the best candidate was. If they wanted to oppose a regressor, they would’ve needed a prophet’s abilities, so they tested the six most suitable people.”

But, as expected from an anomaly, the logout game didn\'t consider human limits at all.

The awakened beings who obtained such overwhelmingly vivid prophetic abilities chose death rather than being involved with me.

“So, it simplified the prophecy it showed to Oh Dokseo here. Filtering it down and down to the point where a human brain wouldn’t be destroyed... That’s the result: the Omniscient Regressor\'s Viewpoint written in novel form.”

“Oh! That sounds convincing, old man!”

“Hmm...”

Of course, there were flaws in this hypothesis too, but for now, avoiding Noh Doha\'s slander was more important, so it didn’t matter.

In any case, it was the fault of the anomaly.

Even from the perspective of the six unfortunate prophets who sacrificed themselves, isn’t being struck down by the alien god a more honorable death than failing to save the world after more than a thousand tries, like the regressor?

5

There is an epilogue.

As I said earlier, I didn’t trust the alien god.

So when I passed into the next turn, I made it a point to visit the tutorial dungeon in Kyoto, where they said the High Priestess had been bewitched.

Even if Omniscient Regressor\'s Viewpoint contained some truth, it would certainly have been deliberately distorted to favor the writer.

For example—

\'No matter how much Y suffered from the prophecy, there was still about 30 seconds before she actually blew her head off.\'

About 30 seconds.

It may seem short, but it was surprisingly long.

To an awakened one who succeeded in foreseeing the fate of the regressor in just under 30 seconds, it would have felt even longer.

\'So wouldn’t she have left some kind of trace?\'

A so-called dying message.

Prophets, especially Y, had the resolve to at least try to save the world, even if I wasn’t there.

Even if the process was so painful that she chose to exit on her own, would she not have left some kind of comment about me, \'the one who continues to challenge without giving up?\'

Something like “hang in there” or “I’m sorry.”

If she had a more vicious temper, it could’ve been “die.” At the very least, she might have left a curse as her last words.

‘Here it is.’

I sneaked past the High Priestess, who still gave off that rookie vibe since she hadn’t made a contract with the nine-tailed fox yet, and found the explosion site where Y had died.

The site was surprisingly well-preserved.

"Oh."

Even the corpse was intact, except for the area above the collarbone, which was [mosaic], [mosaic] censored.

Well, if anyone witnessed someone’s head explode right in front of them, they’d be too traumatized to come near.

Just like when Seo Gyu died at the waiting room in Busan Station, and everyone fled in fear.

“Let’s take a look…”

Sure enough, before long, I found a handwritten message that seemed to have been left by Y.

It was a dying message, written in blood she scratched out of her own scalp with her nails, and it read:

S U

I tilted my head in confusion.

‘SU? Is it a code?’

It was meaningless.

Perhaps the prophet wanted to write more.

But the pain was likely unbearable. Y started to write "some word" but exploded before she could finish.

‘SU... SU... Hmm. If I assume it\'s a short message or word, what words start with SU?’

I tried to think from her perspective.

She knew she didn’t have much time left. Y knew she would soon end her own life, unable to withstand the pain.

So, her dying message to me had to be the shortest, yet most important, thing.

In other words—

‘A prophecy about my fate.’

In the end, the key was whether the regressor, me, would save the world or not.

This was the crux of it.

A prophet, who had glimpsed the future, could provide an answer to a question even I didn’t have certainty about.

Given that, “SU” boiled down to three possible interpretations.

① SUCCESS: In the end, you will succeed. Keep moving forward.

② SUICIDE: You will fail. It’s better to take your own life now.

③ SUKI: I love you! I’m a fan!

④ SUCK YOU: Seo Gyu is the culprit.

I eliminated the fourth one, as it was too random.

The third one was also unlikely. There was no reason to write it in English; I understood Japanese just fine.

So, it had to be either 1 or 2. But which? There was no clear evidence either way.

“Hmm.”

Thus, it became a matter of personal choice: 1 or 2.

I bit my fingertip.

Using the blood slowly trickling out as ink, and my own finger as a brush, I added to Y’s word— to her ‘prophecy,’ her ‘dying message.’

S U C C E S S

I held a funeral for Y’s headless body and buried her. Then, with much lighter steps, I walked away.

In the end, how you interpret prophecy is a matter of the heart, isn’t it?

—The Exploded. End.

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