NOVEL WEB Chapter 88 - How to Enjoy Vacation (4)
The tiger bastard let me go. And as promised, he gave me back my weapon.
I considered shooting him right away, but since I didn’t know how strong he was, I decided to hold off on a hasty fight.
Besides, no matter how I looked at it, he looked like he did melee attack, so it would be completely disadvantageous for me to fight at this close range.
Instead, I glared at the door in front of me and clicked my tongue.
“What does this say?”
On the door, there were letters lined up in a row similar to the ones I had seen in the Templ of the Beast before, but I had to be able to read them.
The tiger bastard answered my grumbling indifferently.
“It says, ‘Only those who have overcome the trials on the left can see the miracles on the right.’”
“You can read it?”
“In general. And…”
The tiger bastard’s gaze turned to a few words beneath the large letters.
“A dungeon based on ‘guilt’…”
“What?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
I looked at the tiger bastard with cold eyes and roughly opened the door.
The thick fog that had been lurking beyond the open doors on both sides swallowed us as if it had been waiting.
“Kill! It’s a doppelganger!”
“No! I!”
And then barbed wire, dying people,
A sight I’ll never forget surrounded me.
“Nahyun!”
Damn it!
I swallowed the rising potion.
I felt a hand supporting me as I stumbled. You damn tiger bastard.
Don’t show me a worried expression. How unlucky.
I clenched my teeth. I couldn’t show myself so ugly in front of that guy.
“Hey, tiger. You said ‘guilt’ earlier, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“I think I know what it is.”
When I was young, I would repeatedly see myself in my dreams, helpless and unable to do anything during the doppelganger incident. That dream still haunts me sometimes.
I look at the gun in my hand. It’s the tool that the soldiers used that day to kill people and doppelgangers indiscriminately.
But I won’t kill people with this tool.
“Save as many people as possible.”
That’s what I wanted most at this moment.
“That’s probably the clear condition.”
“Nahyun!”
I see the moment repeating itself. Mom collapses once again.
I look around the corner and see myself as a bastard. I’m crying.
I deliberately approach my younger self and load the gun with a magic stone as if to show off.
“Let’s go. Knock out the soldiers up there first.”
Yes, the gun you’re wielding will be a weapon that saves people.
The feelings that had bloomed faintly in the fortress finally bore fruit here.
I opened the meta point store right away.
[Doppelganger Lens – 300 points]
– You can find doppelgangers.
Even if it was a fantasy, even if it was just a recollection of the past,
“Buy!”
I definitely wanted to do this back then.
A lightning bolt flew from the tiger bastard’s hand. The tiger bastard used the lightning to stun the soldiers.
I scanned the people with my contact lenses. There were seven doppelgangers in total.
Only seven.
Bang—!
As soon as one doppelganger died, it returned to its original ugly appearance.
As soon as people saw it, they screamed and moved away from the corpse.
Was this ordeal a reenactment of the situation back then?
Bang—!
I shot a person with a gentle appearance who pretended to run away like everyone else. That was also a doppelganger. The people were in an uproar again.
“There really are doppelgangers!”
“Run away!”
So were there only seven doppelgangers back then?
…Did so many people die because of seven?
Bang—!
“What! Who is it!”
Some people still want to live and climb up the barbed wire.
However, as if they realized that someone was precisely killing the doppelganger, the soldiers who hadn’t yet been subdued began to hesitate to shoot.
The people were still shocked. However, some began to gradually regain their senses.
“Wait, it looks like a hunter is catching the doppelganger!”
Bang—!
Someone began to command the people.
He shot the doppelganger that was trying to attack him from behind.
Then, as if he had gained confidence, the person began to persuade the people. The people’s madness began to subside.
So no one died anymore.
Bang—!
The people were now tangled together, but they maintained their own order, looking this way with eyes filled with anticipation and hope.
Between them, I felt Mom’s gaze on me.
Maybe it was because of hope, but I could see the dead moving little by little and coming back to life.
Bang—!
The soldiers who had been knocked unconscious woke up. They seemed relieved and slumped their shoulders.
The people were alive, breathing, and laughing. That was proving that this illusion was false.
Bang—!
And yet, and yet…
“Goodbye, Mom.”
The last doppelganger collapsed.
The illusion collapsed.
The place where the illusion disappeared was a large room made of stone.
The tiger bastard came and stood next to me. He carefully reached out his hand to me and asked in a worried tone.
“Are you okay?”
I rubbed my wet eyes.
“…Why wouldn’t I be? Let’s go.”
I showed him a hideous appearance. Since it has come to this, I have to see his hideous appearance too!
I gritted my teeth and walked briskly. The tiger bastard seemed to hesitate for a moment, but soon followed me.
After a long walk, we arrived at the same door as before. The same letters were engraved on it.
“Is it your memory this time?”
The tiger bastard said to me.
“That’s likely.”
“Can you guess what it is?”
When I asked, he stared at me for a long time, then opened his mouth heavily.
“I’m glad you came to this dungeon with me.”
“What?”
“It’ll make my argument more convincing. At least to you.”
What kind of nonsense is this?
When I looked at him as if I was dumbfounded, he turned his head again and put his hand on the door.
“Let’s go.”
“…Yeah.”
I tried to shake off the awkward feeling and waited for the door to open.
After a while, the door opened.
“KEUAAAGH—!”
I could hear the monster’s cry.
The monster, which had the shape of a mixture of all kinds of animals, had many faces carved into it.
As the monster killed people, the faces carved into it increased.
It was a horrifying and bizarre sight.
Monsters that shouldn’t exist in everyday life were flying, crawling, and running all over the city, hunting people.
“Please save me!”
“No!”
I could hear people crying.
I saw them desperately running away. Those who couldn’t run tried to get away from the monster by crawling on the ground.
What on earth has this guy been through?
Tornito whispered to me as I stared blankly at this abyss.
“Look at the tower.”
At those words, I slowly turned my head and saw the broken tower.
The smooth black tower that pierced the sky and had no end was cut off as if someone had messily sliced it in the middle.
Near the tower, there were structures of similar height as the tower, which seemed to be the remains of the tower, stuck into the ground.
“What is this…?”
I recalled what he had said.
He said it was a dungeon that turned the person’s memories of guilt into trials.
So this tiger bastard has seen the sight of the tower collapsing?
“KEUAAAGH—!”
The monster rushed at me. I fired my gun at the monster.
“What the hell, you? Aren’t you brainwashed? Or have you had fake memories implanted?”
“This dungeon only tests things that actually happened. If you’re really suspicious, it might be a good idea to ask the ‘Player’.”
The tiger bastard said, supporting another monster with electricity. The person who was rescued with his life ran away in a panic.
“No way.”
At that moment, a memory flashed through my head. What Gemini had said when I was brainwashed by the Wild Hunters.
[The irregular one who caught the eye of the returned one.]
Since I possessed into this world, that tower has stood firm without collapsing even once.
Therefore, this memory can only be something that will happen in the future.
If he’s someone who remembers things that will happen in the future as the past…
“…’The returned one’?”
A regressor?
The tiger bastard said indifferently to my words.
“I don’t know where you heard that from, but that’s true.”
This is crazy. Now, all sorts of things are popping out.
