Chapter 743 – Room 302, The Cursed Room – ‘Brave New World’ (17)
—
「User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 40
Current Location: Room 302, The Cursed Room – ‘Brave New World’
Sage’s Advice: 0」
—
– Han Kain
After Elena and my brother Jinchul joined forces, we zipped through the air for about 30 minutes.
To be honest, the pure travel time was less than 5 minutes.
That’s right; we spent 30 minutes running around fighting angels!
“Ugh! Kain, is this the right place?”
“Yeah, we’re in the vicinity.”
“Where is it though? I mean, uh—”
Jinchul was confused about who we were here looking for.
If it were an ordinary person, they’d probably freeze up right here.
In fact, the angels were chasing us but didn’t seem to care about searching this area.
Fortunately, Jinchul is no ordinary person.
“—That’s right! We’re looking for Ahri.”
“She should be around here. She’ll come out soon.”
As expected, Ahri was using her power of being the invisible girl.
If not for the line I scribbled in the status window, I might’ve also forgotten what I was doing at times.
“Here come more angels again!”
“Aww, do I have to take care of this?”
Jinchul grumbled but dashed in without hesitation, taking down two approaching angels.
With continuous fighting, my brother had become quite the angel-hunting pro, focusing on their wings rather than their bulky bodies.
The angels’ biggest strength is their flying ability, but their most significant weakness? Those huge wings are not very sturdy!
Both their strength and weakness hinge on those wings, so wailing on them strategically works pretty well.
Just then, I felt a soft tap on my shoulder.
“You’re here.”
“—”
For a second, I didn’t catch what Ahri said.
It felt like the invisible girl’s cognitive disruption ability had somehow gotten stronger.
“What did you say? Ugh, release your power.”
Soon, a clear voice reached my ears.
“Why are you causing such a commotion?”
“A commotion? Oh, are you asking why I’m not hiding my identity?”
“Right. By the way, how many angels are you planning to kill? If you make this a big deal, there’s no escaping!”
I shook my head.
“Ahri, hiding your identity doesn’t help us now.”
“What?”
In times like this, I always find myself grateful for the owl.
That’s why I can accurately grasp the situation better than others, like Ahri.
Of course, it helps that I’m a bit smarter than her—let’s be honest, I am, right?—but mainly because I used my advice to find answers.
“The opponent already knows participants have appeared. Ponder what you went through as soon as it started. You’ll get what I mean.”
“…”
A moment later, Ahri let out a heavy sigh and asked the same question Jinchul had earlier.
“I understood what you meant. So how do we escape?”
“As you know, we don’t need to revert this world to escape. That seems unlikely anyway. The Son of Dawn must be wide awake right now…”
Ahri shot back, “The Son of Dawn can’t intervene right away; he’s dealing with the backlash from creating Paradise!”
I hadn’t heard that before.
“Is that info you picked up? So, is it just about handling the angels?”
“Probably.”
“Great! That pretty much solidifies our escape conditions.”
“…”
Thinking back to the previous escape scenarios from Room 101, restoring the destroyed world was a matter of resolution, not an escape condition.
“Just getting away from the angels’ pursuit and finding a moment of calm should suffice.”
A condition far simpler than seeking a solution.
However, that doesn’t mean it’d be easy.
“Getting away from angels? Is that even possible right now? They’re still flying around—Ah!”
Ahri suddenly reached up to the sky.
Right after, blood dripped from above with a ‘scraping’ sound.
“- They’re still soaring high up there!”
“I’ll help Jinchul!”
“Understood.”
At that moment, Elena dashed off to aid Jinchul, and I relayed the plan to Ahri.
“I have two plans. First, the escape plan.”
“Where are we running to? The whole world’s in enemy hands; where do we hide?”
“We need to flee to an area where the Son of Dawn can’t reach.”
“Where’s that? Don’t tell me…”
Ahri’s eyes widened.
“Not the moon, right? I mean, sure, the moon sounds impressive, but—”
I quickly clarified her misunderstanding.
“Ahri, the moon you and I know isn’t comparable to the moon in this time zone.”
“… What?”
“It’s much weaker now. Once the Son of Dawn was freed from his seal, he silenced the moon, right?”
So, the moon isn’t a location outside the Son of Dawn’s domain.
On another note, I thought: if we liken the progression of the Cursed Room to puzzle-solving, looking for an answer on the moon feels odd.
It’s like trying to fit a mismatched piece into a puzzle because I couldn’t find the right one!
The solution to Room 302 probably lies within Room 302 itself.
There was a hint left in the records from the ‘Other Time’s Han Kain.’
「There are several factions within the Administration Bureau.
Some worship the Son of Dawn; it seems they’ve taken control of Room 302…
However, there are skeptics.
It appears they created a ‘Brave New World.’
In other words, this is a place meant to leave pure humans unaffected by the Son of Dawn’s twisting of the world.
It’s said the ‘Brave New World’ cannot be toppled from outside.
But from the moment Meiro and I discovered it, the ‘Brave New World’ was already collapsing.
…
Euthanasia.」
“‘Brave New World.’”
“Is that the place that Seungyub mentioned before he died?”
“Before the end, Meiro and I vaguely glimpsed the reality of the ‘Brave New World’.”
“Hmm…”
“According to the records I left behind, the ‘Brave New World’ isn’t influenced by the Son of Dawn. Also, it can’t be toppled from outside.”
“Is it still there?”
“No. It collapsed before the end.”
“What then?”
“However, you know a location that can approach the ‘Brave New World,’ right?”
“… The school Seungyub attended.”
“Though the world was twisted, this place is still Earth.”
“Geographically, it’s Korea. That mountain over there is probably Gwanak Mountain.”
“You go to the spot where the ‘Brave New World’ once was. Check its condition, see if it can be restored. If it can be restored—”
No more explanation was needed.
Ahri took off without looking back.
Ahri didn’t bother asking us what we would do next.
Since she knew her role clearly, she likely thought any unnecessary information would just complicate things.
Of course, Elena’s situation, who had returned by my side, was different from Ahri’s.
Elena was curious about what we were going to do next.
“Are we letting Ahri escape to the ‘Brave New World’ on her own?”
“That’s the plan. Not sure if it’ll work though.”
“And us?”
I stared ahead, where I saw Jinchul continuing to fight angels without rest.
How many angels had we killed in the last couple of hours?
At least in the hundreds, possibly even over a thousand!
From the angels’ perspective, that likely wasn’t a considerable dent.
How many angels are there on Earth? 1 billion?
At this rate, killing four-digit angels might only be a mere drop in a bucket.
We fundamentally need to change our approach.
“… We need to inform him.”
“Yeah?”
“That the strategy of attrition isn’t working. Let’s move to a wider area!”
*
A desolate plain, wide open all around.
With hardly any geographical features, it was an environment advantageous to opponents with flying abilities and overwhelming numbers.
Thanks to this, Jinchul couldn’t hold off the angels alone anymore.
Fortunately, he wasn’t alone in needing to.
That’s why we have allies for moments like this!
— Whirr!
With a dreadful sound, a swarm of squirming flying insects appeared.
The man-eating swarm descended on the angels, resulting in a grotesquely brutal scene.
In the blink of an eye, the angels were torn into thousands of pieces, consumed alive.
Whether it’s the swarm devouring angels or Elena summoning them, it’s hard to say which is more menacing!
“Ha ha ha! These aren’t your average insects! I mean, calling them snakes was a bit much, but they really are impressive!”
Maybe the angels that charged in while snickering at their colleagues being devoured were the most unnerving of all.
It seems the angels not only lack fear of death but also have a considerable resistance to pain.
Pain is really just a survival mechanism created during the evolution of mortal beings to evade danger.
Shouldn’t the angels who resurrect after dying be sensitive to pain?
“Seriously, these crazy bastards! Ugggh! Elena, the swarm’s coming towards me too!”
“Just dodge it!”
“That’s a bit—”
From the increasingly panic-stricken tone in Elena’s voice, it seemed like our grim imaginations were superseding rational limits.
It meant that the time available for my teammates to keep me safe was running out.
I needed to stay calm during moments like these.
There’s no need to rush in understanding the profound truths of the universe.
In the center of the desolate plain, I closed my eyes and sank into meditation.
Not just any ordinary meditation.
It was a process of pushing my insight to the limit and coming to an understanding of the great principles, in my own way.
About the third sentence contained in the Grimoire.
‘Know that you are the only one under the heavens.’
“…”
Going metaphysical is all well and good, but maybe I should take a more pragmatic approach this time?
As the first civilization paradoxically taught, a person’s soul is pure chaos in itself.
Thus, gathering and refining souls should yield tremendous power.
However, every soul is also like a gem that possesses color.
So, if you gather haphazardly, dissonance can arise due to differing colors.
This is the essence of the fragmentation of self.
…
To prevent dissonance from the differences in color, various methods were devised.
Faith.
It refers to the process of injecting a unified idea into every soul to match their color.
Eternity’s jade.
It refers to the process of erasing the color by dismantling the individual essence of each soul over aeons.
Matching colors.
Erasing colors.
Ultimately, both have the same goal of preventing dissonance from the variance of colors.
However, both methods carry fundamental issues.
Whether it’s faith or eternity’s jade, they demand tremendous time and resources.
This also means the efficiency of soul absorption drops drastically.
Indeed, the moon’s growth had nearly halted from a certain point (the instant it began to experience fragmentation) for eons.
…
When my thoughts reached this point, my suddenly brightened intellect stumbled across an interesting principle.
The power of sacrifice.
Power that had been edited since the moment I first acquired the Grimoire.
Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have any previous knowledge of it and wouldn’t even be able to understand or know what it is.
But now, I think I’m beginning to grasp it.
Because my understanding of the entity that became the origin of the Grimoire has deepened.
A soul is essentially a gem with its own colors.
The problem of dissonance caused by the differences in colors.
Faith aligns the colors, while eternity’s jade obliterates them.
The power of sacrifice shatters the gems.
Offering the mortal as a sacrifice is part of the process of smashing the gems to render their colors meaningless.
Just because I vaguely understand the power of sacrifice doesn’t mean I can use it.
The hotel has edited it so that I can’t reach the power of sacrifice through the Grimoire.
However, I can discern that my understanding is increasingly merging with the realm of the unborn.
I can see where the unborn faced issues while pursuing the magical path and how they attempted to resolve them.
…
Let’s return to the third sentence.
‘Know that you are the only one under the heavens.’
The above methods suggest this.
Unify the colors with one thought.
Erase colors through unbearable suffering.
To break the colors through human sacrifice.
The third sentence poses a fundamentally different question.
Do not cling to colors.
The only true existence under the heavens is me.
Since all colors are part of me, is there truly a need to differentiate between colors?
Heaven and Earth, it’s only me who exists.
All that exists is either me or something becoming part of me.
Therefore, there must only be one singularity in this world.
— Saah…
Angels filled the surroundings.
Just as the third sentence’s profound power neared manifestation!
I heard someone’s voice.
‘… You pose a formidable challenge for me…’
Challenge?
‘… Killing you would be an easy feat. But, can I bring you to repentance…’
What the heck are you talking about?
‘… If I can draw even the most self-centered and corrupted mind into the light, it would be the proof that I am right and Maitreya is wrong…’
Are you talking about me?
‘… But, seeing you harbor evil even after three thousand lives, I feel uncertain about it…’
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