Chapter 543 – Room 207, Gate Room – Fourth Trial ‘Fallen King’ (29)
– Serena K. Wild
The warm sunlight streamed down on the beaches of California.
As I walked along the soft sand with a hollow heart, I heard someone’s voice.
“Ah ha! There you are!”
Honestly, I knew right away just from seeing them.
It’s a shard.
And a pretty big one at that!
Can you believe a shard this large is still hanging around at this point?
“Who are you?”
“First.”
First? What a weird name!
“Sorry about that, but I was Third until last week.”
“….”
“But after the First kicked the bucket, I ended up with their shard. So here I am, the new First.”
His playful tone hid a serious story.
He was originally the third biggest shard and became the largest one by acquiring Jin Mookgyeong’s shard.
Looks like he’s a companion of that unidentified woman who used to be Jin Mookgyeong’s secretary.
Seems like today’s the day I’m meeting my end.
I thought this day might come eventually, but it arrived sooner than I expected.
“Not surprised? You’ve gathered so many shards that maybe you can read your fate now?”
“….”
“Your expression says otherwise. It looks like you’re lamenting your bug-like self, caught in a spider’s web, waiting for fate to fluke it for you.”
“That’s a bit overboard.”
His tone seemed intentionally irritating.
I probably would’ve got mad before, but now? I just brushed it off.
Not like he’s entirely wrong, anyway.
“Did you come alone?”
“Hmm? Oh! You think I’m Ahri’s buddy?”
“….”
“Nope! Just me. No one else nearby. Not yet, anyway.”
“Confident, are we?”
I won’t go down easily.
“Not at all. My abilities aren’t really suited for fighting.”
“What?”
“Serena, I came here to die for you.”
For a moment, I couldn’t quite understand what he was saying.
“What?!”
“It’s my job, you see. To put a suitable end when the shard battle concludes. From where I stand now, it seems dying for you would be quite the finale.”
This is getting ridiculous!
His role is to put a fitting end on our little brawl?
What kind of nonsense is this?!
Suddenly, the guy tilted his head.
“Aha!”
“…What’s that about?”
“I think I understand why Kain sent you off alive.”
“What?”
“You’ve advanced a step while spending the last few months alone, haven’t you?”
“….”
“Swallow me. And I hope you shine in the final battle you’ve been looking forward to.”
He reached out to retrieve the shard.
Just before his hand touched his forehead, he said one last thing.
“Oh, by the way, I have a letter in my chest. Do read it.”
— Quack!
Finally, the largest shard landed in my hands.
*
Just thinking of listening to his will, I opened the letter, only to find it longer than anticipated.
“On the stormy day, when I woke up in bed, I realized I had become a tool of the great one.”
He obtained the largest shard of all.
Thanks to that, he received a powerful ability right at the start: ‘the power to see fate.’
And that power revealed a dismal destiny to him.
“I deliberately did not create a name for myself. I just assigned a number because someone needed to address me.”
Accepting fate, he lived in Florida with the old man named Mooksung.
At first, the old man seemed to harbor distrust and withheld information, but five years turned out to be a long time.
“There exists a thing called the ‘mirror.’ It’s the reason we were born and posed the greatest challenge to the great one.”
The Great One’s challenge.
“My grandpa regarded the Great One’s dismemberment as a means to resolve trials. Ahri seems to think so too.”
The associates believed Kain split himself to solve the trials.
“I think there was another goal: growth!”
Kain’s hidden objective: growth.
“To achieve this, one must understand the mirror.”
The mirror creates two phenomena: ‘transformation’ and ‘splitting.’
‘Transformation’ twists the original and reconstructs it into something stronger.
‘Splitting’ shatters the original into countless pieces and scatters them across the world.
The former may be okay, but the latter seems more like a curse than power.
“I’ve divided these for explanation, but there’s no separate power here. After all, both transformation and splitting happened to all of us.”
If Kain’s purpose was growth, does that mean overcoming the curse of ‘splitting’ to gain the enhancement of ‘transformation’?
At this point, a question arose.
It’s said transformation grants greater strength, but have we ever gained power beyond the original?
“That’s right.”
Huh?!
I was shocked!
I was just quietly reading the letter; who answered that?
Just as I was startled and tried to look around, my neck wouldn’t budge.
And involuntarily moving my gaze, I began reading the letter’s next part.
“Shall I tell you a fun fact? I heard from my grandfather that Ahri went through ‘splitting.’ Her shards got shattered and scattered around the world.”
“Right. Ahri split before I did.”
The response came again.
Now, I knew where this ‘voice’ was coming from.
“Those who acquired Ahri’s shards all obtained fragments of her memories or personality. Some even called themselves ‘Kim Ahri.’”
I was terrified.
“Why didn’t anything like that happen to us? Haha! No, no!”
The next sentence that came vaguely into view, for which I didn’t even need to read in full….
It filled me with dread.
“Shut it! Kain, you bastard, you’ve already awakened! You finished assembling while we were waiting for the fight to end, didn’t you? Hope it was fun!”
Furious rage and vulgar curses.
Then suddenly, polite language.
You could feel the writer’s whirlwind of emotions flowing through the lines.
— Tap!
I folded the letter.
Not me, but someone else was controlling my body.
‘He’ began walking slowly along the beach.
“It wasn’t fun. It was hard and painful. Memories of countless deaths swelled within me.”
He dipped his feet into the sea, reflecting his image in the restless waves.
The calm waters did not reflect the beautiful face of ‘Serena K. Wild’ correctly.
It was as if I was fading away in real-time without a trace….
“Seeing your reflection and calling yourself beautiful? What a fun personality. Oh, that question you asked earlier? I’ll answer it.”
What question did I ask?
“Did you ever gain power beyond me? At least you did. Jin Mookgyeong failed, though.”
Jin Mookgyeong failed but I succeeded?
What a bizarre tale.
Jin Mookgyeong was much stronger than me.
“That guy was strong mainly because he had a lot of gathered shards. He just couldn’t break through in the end. To put it in terms of a martial arts novel, he had plenty of inner strength but lacked enlightenment.”
An incomprehensible story.
“He couldn’t accept the path he was taking until the last moment and got trapped in the illusion of atheism he created. Ahri pointed that out several times; it would’ve been good if he had accepted the advice.”
…
“You are different. You must’ve gained a power similar to the Avatar’s Book, yet learned to use it in a way completely different from mine.”
Serena K. Wild learned a different method than the original.
Another possibility emerged.
“Possession and avatar. Due to the nature of power, I figured the ego would become faint and diffuse. The British prince was a prime example of that. Yet you went in the opposite direction, drawing everything into one point.”
…
“Is it a powerful resistance against mental attacks? The priority of bodily manipulation? I see why the British prince had trouble with you. The side effect is… losing the ability to possess. So that’s why you’re stuck in this girl’s body.”
He has provided explanations and understood all I’d built up without even telling him anything.
It was like he’d been waiting for this moment all along.
“The reason the ‘unborn’ made the Avatar’s Book was to escape the cursed caterpillar’s fate. Thinking in that direction, the moment you lost the ability to possess, you lost the sense of direction.”
My enlightenment veered away from the purpose of the grimoire.
This must be the realization that Kain couldn’t achieve alone.
“But that mountain is quite high. Not bad. Thanks.”
I found myself unable to resist.
Even though my opponent outright acknowledged, ‘Your realization has superior points than mine,’ I couldn’t even control my own body.
“Understand this: I too have been preparing for a long time.”
The shimmering seawater reflected me.
He reached out to Serena K. Wild, as Kain reached for her.
“So, dear, will you tell me what you’ve learned?”
In the midst of distant despair—my last rebellion left a mark.
“I am! I am me forever! I can never be a part of you—”
A colossal hand grasped me.
“Now you are me.”
This was the last memory of me—Serena K. Wild.
*
“User: Han Kain(? Hye)
Date: Day 1,872
Current Location: California, Santa Monica Beach
Teaching: ∞”
– ?
“Ugh…! That was a scare!”
That was quite risky.
I had prepared quite a bit to swallow Serena whole, so I wasn’t worried at all.
But in the final moment, because of her pure will, I almost lost control over her body.
Thinking back, she was a remarkably talented girl.
I decided to put those thoughts about Serena aside for now.
“Serena, First. Both of you did well. I won’t say I’m sorry.”
There’s no need to apologize.
They’re now part of me.
Who would apologize to their own right arm?
“… Is it over now?”
“It’s over.”
A familiar voice.
I turned around to see Ahri ‘bringing’ her wheelchair.
“Tough strength there.”
“The sand’s a hassle, it’s bogging down the wheels. Now, let’s introduce ourselves. Kain and Kain’s historic meeting!”
An existence with no soul, no ego, or anything left; not even able to focus properly.
‘Han Kain’.
“Here’s a gun.”
“…”
It was surreal.
Even though I expected such a moment to come someday…
When it finally arrived, my hands refused to move.
I glanced back at the ‘status window.’
“User: Han Kain(? Hye)
Date: Day 1,872
Current Location: California, Santa Monica Beach
Teaching: ∞”
Thinking about it, it’s strange that I can even see this status window.
Blessings are usually given based on the body, so it shouldn’t be visible when I’m in someone else’s body.
It indicates a distorted blessing.
The content is odd too.
Of course, question marks showed up here and there, and everything from date to location is totally different from the original.
Even the guidance is now termed as teaching.
And the number of teachings is a staggering infinite.
Seems like the entity beyond the mirror is more energetic than the owl and definitely has time on their hands!
These changes.
This distortion.
A solid proof that I’m not pure anymore.
Too early, my avatar tried to prevent the distorted winning condition from occurring in this scenario.
It believed it would lead to ultimate victory.
What about ‘that’?
Considering how it’s been split by the mirror, it likely isn’t the same as before facing the mirror…
At least its body remains the same as the original, so it’s probably less twisted than me now.
Noticing my hesitation, Ahri added another line.
“… This is a note that the First wrote in the morning.”
“Another letter?”
A tiny note bore this message.
“You lost the coin toss. Do you accept the great enlightenment?”
At that moment, I caught a sparkle out of the corner of my eye.
“Teaching: ∞!”
“Teaching: ∞!”
“Teaching: ∞!”
“Ha!”
“What’s up?”
“Why wait until the last moment to be a pain?!”
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