The [Great Source] has two avatars: the [Source of Contamination] and the [Source of Life].
So the [Source of Contamination], which is only an avatar, descended, and in two hours this world ends?
“Don’t make me laugh.”
I bared the teeth hidden under my mask and smiled for a second. Not because I felt good.
I’d seen the [Source of Contamination] descend a few times in the game, but it had never played out like this.
This is a scam.
Deception in the same vein as the other choices given to me.
The [Source of Contamination] is only the beginning. The real ruin—
“The real body, the [Great Source], is sleeping under Sokcho. There’s no reason to end it with just an avatar’s descent.”
The true ruin will be brought by the [Great Source] sleeping beyond the door Kim Seonghwan is opening right now.
[The defense conditions for the ‘Ruin Trigger: Soul Contamination’ you have learned so far are as follows.
Defense Condition 1: Unknown
Defense Condition 2: Unknown
Defense Condition 3: Unknown
!Time Limit: In 30 minutes, this world will be ruined!
Gather clues, decode the defense conditions, and block the coming ruin!]
A message prints before my eyes.
In other words, that time limit and those defense conditions mean exactly that.
“Thirty minutes left? Now that’s a thrill.”
Stop the [Great Source] within thirty minutes.
What happened with the [Predator in the Mountains] was intense too—but frankly it was on a scale I couldn’t realistically handle, so I ended up not thinking anything at all.
But this time is different.
“It feels like I can just barely pull it off.”
No. Kim Sinhwa, get a grip.
That’s just a guess, isn’t it?
Besides, this is overreach. An absurd plan. Too much of it rides on luck. Not enough time. Impossible. This is madness.
Even if I can stop it in thirty minutes, two defense conditions are still unknown!
Voices buzz in my head.
Normally they’d offer more varied opinions, but this time they’re united, shouting in one voice.
“Kim Sinhwa, you might be lost in delusions.”
“Bzzt— that’s a banned word now.”
Bzzt, my ass. He’s really lost it.
Complaints pour through my head.
But no.
Once I start doubting my perception and my thoughts, there’s no end.
It’s better to assume I’m just late—that I made the wrong choice—and that I forgot something.
Auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, delusions, uncertain grasp on reality—follow that thread and you end up somewhere even more fundamental.
‘Maybe I’m not actually trapped in [Cthulhu World].’
Maybe I’m sitting at a computer with a broken mind, mistaking a game for reality? Maybe the game never existed to begin with?
A game nobody plays because of bugs, implausible development, and merciless difficulty? There are streamers who deliberately pick only trash games. At the very least it would have become a meme.
Could it really have gotten this little attention?
The delusions that came along with my magic phobia......
They seduce my Intelligence stat and conjure unpleasant hallucinations in my head.
<A vision of me groping a pitch-black monitor with a vacant look.>
Ah, damn it. Stop thinking.
That’s forbidden. Forbidden.
“Damn it. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Calm—no, think about it. A world this absurd can’t exist. Shut up a second. It’s not even the first time you’ve thought this, is it? I said shut up. Come to think of it, who are you? Can’t you go back down below?”
crackle— kzzzzzt—
Ominous sparks leap on all sides.
No, how could I possibly calm down.
Gggggggrrk—
Kim Seonghwan is opening the last door in the depths of this ruin.
A magic circle of flashing light interlaced with sinister mana.
It gives me goosebumps just to look at it.
That wicked— ma.gic.al spectacle stokes my madness. Right, that— the power Kim Seonghwan is moving now......
[You have advanced to the innermost depths of an ancient, timeworn ruin that has slept underground for longer than any human reckoning could dare to measure.]
A message window pops up and blocks my view.
[You broke through the complex maze and traps hidden beneath Seoraksan’s Ulsanbawi, felled the degenerate tribes that barred your path, and repelled the surreal monster that approached to swallow you.]
“What are you saying? Who broke through, felled, and repelled what?”
I bypassed the maze by smashing the floor, skipped the fights with the other species by roughly pushing them aside, and the trailing shoggoth—up there—got stuck in a [repeat-action bug] so it can’t move.
Guguguguguguuuung—
I can sense the presence of the shoggoth beyond that wall, defying physics and repeating rises and drops.
A janky world based on a janky game.
If an object of a certain volume and weight is falling from above a certain height and you strike it with exactly the right impact to ‘send it up,’ it gets caught in that kind of bug.
It’s not a trick you can pull anywhere, anytime. Down here, the mana of a surreal being writhing to descend is spewing a tremendous will toward the surface.
Ggggggg—
A stone chip I kicked spins on its own and rockets skyward.
[And you combined old documents with scarce clues to open the sealed door in the depths of this ruin.]
“He’s the one opening it.”
I start to point at Kim Seonghwan, but a new message window blocks my eyes again.
[The descent of the ‘Great Source’ will begin soon. Are you sufficiently prepared? Once you pass through the door, multiple events will proceed in succession.
<Enter.>
<I still need to prepare.>]
“When did I ever ask for this—why are you suddenly giving me choices?”
Are you mocking me? That cultist—Kim Seonghwan right there—
Rrrrrrrrrrumble!!!
Fweeeeeeeeeee—
A heavy vibration and a dry wind.
“It’s open.”
The door opened.
“I did it...... I did it...... Now our god will descend......”
Kim Seonghwan’s exhausted face. At his level it should have been a tall order, and yet he did it.
“You worked hard, sir. But in fact your friends are probably already doing that down there.”
“Are...... doing it...... What do you mean?”
“It means you can go to sleep now.”
I aimed an [toy gun] with no load in it at him and pulled the trigger. There were no bullets, but the refined mana stone inside threw a short-range spark—kzzzzzzzt!
“Gyaaaaaah!”
He collapsed flat. Really, you worked hard. For a guy with a gut, that was a mighty feat.
I spoke as I walked toward the door he opened.
“Still, thinking about later, I need to be able to open it without him.”
Because I was distracted by the message window, I didn’t check exactly how he opened the door.
No, if it came to it I could have just shoved the message window itself aside—so why didn’t I? Something’s off.
Awkward.
Since yesterday—since I developed [Magic Phobia]—I’ve had this feeling the whole time. I thought I was making the optimal—the best ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ choices, but things keep going wrong.
Irrational choices, implausible developments, a reality check that keeps slipping.
Right. It’s the discomfort I feel when madness constrains my vision and thinking. Like looking at a photo with the focus off. Uneasy. Uneasy. What am I missing? What did I forget again?
What’s the problem? Where do I start adjusting?
When should I roll back to?
---
We are underground—so deep I can’t even say how far we’ve come.
Beyond the door Kim Seonghwan opened lay a bizarre, uncanny, singular—and truly colossal—underground cavern, one that seemed to say the deep, deep ruin we’d been wandering in until now was nothing at all.
Fwoo-oooooo—
A threatening gale blows despite being underground.
Far too wide and far too deep.
A long, long stairway stretching downward.
“Achilles.”
[krrrrrik—]
When Achilles twisted his body, the fireballs, vassals of the [Living Flame], let out their signature screams and spread in all directions.
Fwaaaaar—
Thanks to the light they cast, I could gauge the structure of this vast underground cavern a bit more clearly.
[System: The ‘Offering of the Banquet’ trait is activated.]
It was a gigantic city made in a very distant past.
Buildings of smooth megalith, and tall obelisks standing beside them.
Characters in a strange, alien style that fit with no civilization or culture humanity has ever produced.
A wondrous city that holds staggering secrets and a span of time beyond counting.
An absurd height. No—an absurd depth.
All I could see were the heads of the buildings. There was no way to tell how deep down those structures rose from.
It’s a ridiculous thought, but based purely on the visual information provided—it felt as if these underground structures rose from Earth’s inner core.
“A ruin touched by an Ancient Species.”
One of the personas in my head borrows my mouth to marvel.
“Yeah.”
I’ve thought this since last time: these guys are my other personas, right? Then why do the memories and information they have differ from mine?
“Can you break through in thirty minutes?”
“The only thing that matters in this place is that.”
Down at the foot of the long stairway, I can see a light not made by me.
A structure you could call [about the roof of some building]. Even in this rock city abandoned long ago, it’s the highest-rising building.
But it’s too far. Much too far.
Only after stretching my sensing ability to its utmost could I see the spot more properly.
“It’s the Bongamdang arrangement.”
To be precise, the reverse.
At Bongamdang, headless corpses were placed in ritual patterns.
Over there, dozens—no, hundreds—of bodiless heads were piled up.
My mana-honed senses conveyed not only visual data but olfactory—and, unpleasant as it was, even tactile information.
Cold, squishy, hard, slack—
A hideous reek of blood, the stench of rotting corpses.
The sight, the feel, and the smell were so revolting and blasphemous they didn’t just trigger nausea—they carved a dreadful wound into the human mind and soul.
What did they experience before dying?
All of them had their eyes wide open with faces grotesquely twisted in terror and pain—and without exception, each one clamped their own heart in a mouth forced open.
And one single person.
“That bastard.”
A man in a sinister robe, with a strange sword branched into seven tines, was performing peculiar motions.
His free right hand......
He’s holding the head of a ‘living sacrifice.’ The work isn’t done yet. It said thirty minutes left, right? No, maybe about twenty-five now?
Damn it—he’s too far.
“Hey, you!”
I had to look at something that offended me, but at least this proved my prediction wasn’t wrong. I’m not crazy yet.
That’s a rite for the descent of the [Great Source].
The robed man performing the rite paused and looked my way.
A face wearing a chilling smile. As hazy memories snapped together, I recalled who he was.
“Director Mun Gyeongnam. Doldol, let’s go. That bastard is the mastermind.”
Grrrrrrrrrk—
Doldol lunged forward, ready to smash the stairs to bits.
Kwagwagwagwagwaggwang!!
Uuugh—this is shaking a lot!
“Stop that nonsense right now!?”
We were still too far apart to hold a conversation, yet Mun Gyeongnam pointed his sword at me and spoke.
『So you’re the fixer that bastard child called in.』
A voice conveyed not through air but via mana.
Mm. I can’t do that right now. Speaking low, I tried not so much to communicate my intent as to grasp the range of his abilities.
“Yeah. And my hobby is ruining other people’s plans.”
『Hahaha—very amusing. But you’re already too late. This is a very old plan. I deceived everyone and prepared it for a very long time. And that bastard child Mun Seunghui—』
The moment I humored him with a response, he started babbling his long, sad backstory.
Sure, I’m sure you have your own story and ambitions.
“Shut it! No time, so cut the pointless exposition! I already know you’re unrecyclable trash!”
Skip the event scene! Skip! With less than thirty minutes in real time, why am I watching a cutscene? Start the fight now!
Whirrrrr—
While gauging the resources I’d burned to get here, I tossed a few mana-stone bombs. Not many left, but it can’t be helped.
『You vulgar outlaw—』
He raised the seven-branched sword and chanted. Complex hand signs and flows of mana. A magic circle formed around his body.
“Right. That was your ‘class fantasy.’”
That’s part of why I kept making strange choices, wrong judgments, and foolish moves.
Just as [Sangbulsah] gathers martial artists and the [Blood Demon Sect] gathers geomancers, each cult gathers personnel of roughly similar occupation.
Through the sword in his left hand—Mun Gyeongnam’s mana constructed a nauseating, wicked force that shook the structure of reality.
[The Old Voice] is a cult of mages who, immersed in Western mysticism, opened their eyes to magic.
Viiiiiiing—
『Did you say you were short on time?』
Mun Gyeongnam’s taunting voice.
The power budding at the tip of his sword—
That is—namely—
[Time Stop]
“Ah, da—”
---
“mn.”
[Fireball] [Gust of Wind] [Blast]
Hands of death coming simultaneously from all sides.
Did time really—stop? It wasn’t as long as I expected? Wait, I don’t have ‘time’ to think about this!
Fwaaaaar—
A wave of wind and flame rushes at my face.
And Doldol isn’t under my feet. No—I’m falling from a dizzying height down the stairs.
[The ‘magic’ used by the cultist stimulates the madness dwelling in your mind.]
