TEOCH 76

I couldn’t stop my knees from buckling, and I collapsed to the ground.

—So that wasn’t a dream, was it?

Charon just stood there smiling. That smile, like someone who had answered a difficult question correctly, was surely an expression of pure joy from her perspective, but for me, it was nothing short of horrifying.

Did this make any sense? Not only me, but even the stage boss remembered the first playthrough? Was this why the difficulty was set to ‘Hard’? Was this the plan from the very beginning? To shove a person into a ditch like this?

—It repeated too often to be a meaningless dream. It was too fickle to be a prophetic dream. Sometimes I died, and sometimes you died. And that happened over and over again, truly countless times.

“…”

—The humans you traveled with always changed. Oh, was the blue-haired mage the one who hardly ever changed? But it doesn’t matter. That person seemed no different from the other two.

“What do you mean, no different?”

—They all just followed your commands without knowing anything. Just like chicks following their mother.

Set a fire here, check if there’s a trap there. Act cute here and die here. I stared silently at Charon, who was smiling brightly while mimicking my actions. Just how much did she remember?

‘The fact that I was the one directing the party, that Damian was a mage who handled fire, that there were allies among my companions who could detect traps…’

Just by thinking for a moment, I could already deduce three things. Of course, she would know more than that. She would know what cards we held and how we would form our strategies.

—You were always there, but you were never the same. At the beginning of the dream, you were a creature so weak and foolish that you would die with a single flick of a finger, but from a certain point on, didn’t you start acting as if you could read me and my sisters like an open book? You were just as frail as before, but you’d gotten better at cheap tricks.

“…”

—It was truly fascinating. Even I couldn’t change in that distant dream and kept repeating those foolish times, so how could you alone grow, even if only a little? And what was the true nature of this endlessly repeating dream…?

Should I try to feign ignorance? What on earth do you mean by a dream? I didn’t have the same dream as you, and the dream you had was neither the past nor the future, but merely a delusion.

Of course, I already knew that such a cheap trick wouldn’t work now.

—So I thought about it.

“…”

—That all the dreams I’ve had until now were things that happened in the past, and you acted differently from us because you remembered the entire past.

“Can I ask a question?”

—What?

“How much do you remember?”

—The mage uses fire to interfere with Scathach, you use the amplifier, the controller, and the jewel to block my and Irene’s magic, while the knight and the other one run around to disrupt Lethe and Hezel’s attacks, and you pretend to be dead from the first blow, then ambush and kill Hezel at the decisive moment before counterattacking us while we’re in disarray. Is that a detailed enough answer for you?

“A little more detailed than I wanted.”

I suppressed the tension that felt like my organs would leap out of my throat, and Charon showed a serene smile that didn’t match the gruesome description. Faced with a situation where practically all of our strategies had been exposed, I was past the point of even feeling angry. I just felt numb.

‘There’s no way to win now.’

In this world where only monsters overwhelmingly stronger than us exist, in order to win, we have to obtain information about the opponent and devise a strategy to somehow strike their weaknesses. But what if the opponent knows all of our strategies? Is it even possible to strike a weakness when all our plans are already laid bare?

That means I have to discard all the strategies I’ve painstakingly built up until now, come up with a new strategy that the opponent can’t predict, and find a different weakness.

It was easier said than done; in fact, it was practically impossible. I couldn’t even farm items properly because of the island’s collapse, the opportunities to block the opponent’s instant-kill moves were fewer than before, and…

—So the dream I remember was real after all. I’m so relieved.

“…”

—Isn’t it a huge relief? Because now you and we can fight on ‘equal terms.’

A situation where not only I, but also the opponent, grows through battle. There was no way a proper fight was possible under these circumstances.

‘What do I do?’

The black-haired harpy chattered on cheerfully like a bird, rambling on by herself. She talked about how I had killed her, what strategies I had used to escape crises, and how her sisters had died at my hands.

I could somewhat guess why Charon was so happily talking about such things. Because it wouldn’t happen anymore. As long as she remembered everything about how we had acted in the past, she could pay us back for everything her sisters had suffered until now. That was probably the context in which she kept talking like that.

‘Is there no way? Anything, anything at all would be good, a way…’

I wracked my brain to find a way to break through the situation. Surely, I wasn’t meant to just die like this. No matter how harsh this world was, it was ultimately just a stage in a game that exists to be cleared. The process might be a little difficult, but it’s not entirely impossible.

Or so I wanted to believe.

‘Is it really possible?’

I tried my best to ignore the skeptical voice asking that question, but it wasn’t easy. Perhaps because I was so cornered, thoughts that I normally would have been able to suppress began to pour out uncontrollably.

Maybe there was never any possibility from the start? Will a way to clear it really emerge if I try really hard? This world might be mimicking the appearance and grammar of a game, but there’s no guarantee that it actually has the fairness of a game, right?

Maybe it was just possible to clear it in the first playthrough because I was lucky, and the second playthrough might be an ‘error state’ where no method of clearing it exists. Or it could be the machinations of whoever made this game, be it a developer or a god. Just throwing me the hope that since I cleared it in the first playthrough, I can do it in the second one too, while they enjoy watching me struggle for a clear that will never happen.

‘Should I just… die.’

The sudden thought startled me back to my senses. I felt like I would lose my mind if I continued thinking, so for now, I tried to listen carefully to Charon’s story. It was partly because I wanted to find anything to focus on, but I also held a sliver of hope that I might be able to find a small clue in her ramblings.

Most of what that monster was talking about was the past before the ‘second playthrough,’ but I thought there might be something to gain if I listened carefully. Maybe there were things they didn’t remember, and if I could exploit that weakness, the conquest might become a little easier.

The problem was, there was no sign of that happening yet.

“You certainly remember things meticulously.”

—Impressive, isn’t it? I tried hard to remember, repeating it to myself over and over so I wouldn’t forget anything.

“We’d be much better off the more information you forgot.”

—We? You mean you and I?

“I’m talking about me and my companions. Is there any reason for me to call you ‘we’?”

Charon tilted her head without any sign of displeasure. I just repeatedly rubbed my dry face, trying to loosen my stiff facial muscles. How on earth did she remember everything in such detail? She even remembered the things I wish she’d forgotten, to the point where my motivation was disappearing, let alone any clues.

I mean, really, she even remembers all the petty squabbles between Rikiel and me. Isn’t that less about having a good memory and more on the level of paranoia? Besides, why is she telling me such trivial things? Does she enjoy seeing me suffer?

—Is that so? Well, I am a monster with wings and you are a human with arms. It would be quite difficult to find common ground between us.

“It would be more of a useless and worthless endeavor than a difficult one. By the way, was just standing in front of me and talking to yourself what you wanted?”

—You don’t like to chat?

“Was that what we were doing until now? I thought it was you recounting your experiences with the intention of paying us back for what we did.”

—I don’t really have any intention of paying you back. My sisters and I will just kill you, as we always have.

“You intend to kill us either way. Is there really a need for small talk between those who kill and are killed?”

—Well, we can’t help it since you all come at us. Besides, if we’re in a kill-or-be-killed relationship, are we not allowed to chat?

Putting up with that kind of mockery was becoming taxing, so I just scowled and glared at Charon. She stopped talking when she noticed I was displeased, but she seemed somewhat disappointed. Wait, was that her personality? Getting disappointed when someone doesn’t listen to her story?

No. This isn’t the time to be judging someone’s personality. The really important thing is how to get through this predicament…

—So, if not chatting, what is it that you want?

“Didn’t you come here because you had something to tell me or ask me? Or was your only purpose to confirm that your dream was real?”

—Hmm, that was one of my objectives. To be honest, I wasn’t very confident. There was a pretty big difference between what I saw in the dream and what happened in reality. So I came to ask you.

“It would have been better if I had kept my mouth shut.”

Then I could have confused you even more. As I muttered that, Charon laughed as if it were amusing. Of course, I was not in a good mood. It might be fun from her perspective, but for me, it was a matter of life and death.

—Of course, I had other objectives too. Assuming my dream was real, there were a few things I wanted to ask.

“Things you want to ask?”

—For example, why the islands you visit collapse shortly after you arrive. That didn’t happen in the dream, did it?

“That’s what I want to ask. We didn’t destroy the islands. Really.”

—Yes, you all wouldn’t have destroyed them. You don’t have the ability to. You were so inept that you couldn’t even stop the collapse properly and needed things like amplifiers and controllers, right?

“Well, thank you for accurately assessing our abilities… By the way, I’m curious too, why hasn’t this island collapsed? According to the pattern so far, the collapse should have started long ago.”

—That’s what I wanted to ask you.

Charon retorted with a sullen expression and gesture, as if mimicking me, and when I furrowed my brow, she giggled as if it were funny. I felt even worse than before. Of course, what good would feeling good do in this situation anyway… In any case, Charon continued her story without any regard for my feelings.

—And, I also wanted to ask about how the memories of the past, which I couldn’t remember at all until now, returned all at once. Why did I remember them now, when I couldn’t before?

“It’s no use asking me. I just found out myself that you regained your memories.”

I figured an answer like ‘Because it’s the second playthrough’ wouldn’t work on her, so I gave a vague response. In truth, I only understood that this was happening as a ‘newly added element in the second playthrough’; I had no idea why exactly it was occurring. I thought the reason would gradually be revealed as the stage progressed, but it seemed it wasn’t time yet.

In any case, I was inwardly relieved when I realized Charon showed no sign of asking more questions. Seeing as she didn’t ask something like, ‘There were definitely four of you before, so why are there suddenly five?’, it seemed she had no interest in Tristan. It was a relief, at least, that Tristan wasn’t receiving any attention (whether good or bad!) from someone like her.

Of course, that was the only fortunate thing, and everything else was just bad.

—Hmm, I see… Well, I’ll find out someday.

Charon muttered as such and took a light step towards me. I noticed the temperature of her smiling face drop slightly, and I felt my whole body stiffen. Using the tension as fuel, I slowly moved my legs and stepped back.

Is this finally the main event?

—Maybe this is an exceptional situation, and next time, I won’t remember anything, just like before. Well, I guess we’ll find out if we do it more, won’t we?

“This business of killing each other?”

—Yes. It’s what we’ve been doing for hundreds of years.

“It may be hundreds of years from your perspective, but it was thousands for me. Because there were many guardians I had to defeat after you.”

You’re just a guardian at the very beginning, not a big deal. I was bluffing like that, but in my current state, even dealing with Charon alone was a struggle. My body screamed with even the slightest movement, likely a side effect of the sap, and though the parasite was wriggling diligently, the wounds on my arms and legs still hadn’t fully healed.

Crucially, if I use the parasite in this starved state, my body will be eaten away. This is a situation where I must avoid a full-fledged battle. Of course, it’s not like I have a chance of winning even if I fight in a normal physical condition…

—You defeated all the guardians?

“If you mean the ones on the way to the Demon King’s castle, then yes, all of them. Their memories didn’t return like yours have, but I defeated them anyway. After all, the opportunities are infinite. Thanks to the blessing given by God, no matter how many times, how many tens of thousands of times I die, I go back to the beginning.”

I spouted words I didn’t mean to vomit out the fear and tension filling my stomach. Of course, I had never once thought of this as a blessing. How could I be grateful for a shackle put on me by the game developer or god to prevent me from voluntarily dropping out?

Still, it was quite convenient. Because even if I died by mistake, I would somehow be revived. Every time I experienced death, something was lost, and every time everything I had experienced was treated as if it never happened, a part of me broke, but there was no need to live while being conscious of such things.

“Nothing changes just because you’ve regained your memories. It just means I’ll have to make more attempts to kill you. That’s all there is to it.”

—Then I too will have to make many attempts to kill you. If we’re being technical, I have the advantage over you.

“I suppose so. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll just repeat it over and over again, until you’re crushed by the weight of your accumulated memories, and maybe a new possibility will emerge.”

It was absurd, but once I said it out loud, it felt somewhat plausible. Yes, in the end, there’s only one path left for me. To just smash my head against the same wall over and over again to break through an escape route, whether there’s a possibility or not. Of course, it would be an unrewarding task, but when have I ever done this for the sake of reward? I just did it because it was the task given to me.

Let’s just assume that the possibility of killing the Demon King again in the second playthrough simply doesn’t exist. Still, the fact that I have to keep doing this doesn’t change. And if I happen to come up with a perfect strategy to kill her by luck, that would be a good thing in its own right.

Once I resolved myself like that, I felt my mind becoming somewhat at ease, and I was able to straighten my hunched shoulders and face Charon with a slightly calmer heart. But for some reason, she just tilted her head with a noncommittal, ambiguous expression.

‘What? Why is she acting like that?’

Is she flustered because I’m not more scared than she expected? No, that doesn’t seem right, something feels off… As I remained silent in my confusion, Charon, who seemed to be pondering for a moment, opened her mouth with difficulty.

—Why?

“What?”

—Why… do you keep repeating such an act?

As she asked that, she took one more step towards me.

With an expression of genuine bewilderment.