“I'm tired.”
A line Gong Isu let slip at some point.
“I’m guessing the mental fatigue doesn’t recover, right?”
“Physically I recover, so I don’t need sleep or rest. But apart from that, there’s too much I have to remember. It’s killing me.”
Gong Isu hands over crucial intel without hesitation.
Right, well—either way, once he rewinds I won’t remember it. In a sense, that’s a very gamer-like mindset.
Fine.
I probably won’t be able to remember what just happened.
But I’m recognizing change not through memory—through observation.
While I was immobilized from the jump to the future, I set a few routines.
‘It’s very simple.’
The moment I can move, I cast [Benu’s Cry] to create a noise spike.
If Gong Isu can handle that absurd surprise attack, I treat it as a sign we’ve looped a few cycles and switch to a curse-branch spell.
If he reads that too—the third time I use a different branch—
the fourth, another branch again.
There are plenty of instant-cast spells that, in some form, can arrest the opponent’s actions.
Whatever lands, my next move is always to escape and gather information.
At the same time I set [Lightning] to Auto Cast, store it in the body, and prepare an instant-kill.
The plausible responses Gong Isu can try against a sudden instant-kill are limited, so he’ll likely iterate through a handful of trial-and-error runs.
In that process, I’ll imprint the notion that the only way to stop the instant-kill is to throw lightning.
And then the next, and the next—
With high-speed thought and parallel thought, I was able to draft a decent volume of action plans in a short window.
‘Doing this will make my behavior exhibit a certain pattern, but—’
in reverse, by tracking which numbered pattern gets cut off and how, I can pinpoint the count and limits of Gong Isu’s rewinds—and even teach him particular directives and tactics.
Thanks to that, I’ve learned a few things.
‘First off, he doesn’t rewind to a point before he uses the [Golden Hairpin].’
The rewind ability itself is critical intel.
He says he revealed it just to force me to give up—but because I know it, I could build all these strategies.
Second?
The number of loops he’s run is at least ten... There’s no point estimating a max when I don’t know how good his control is. Anyway, he’s spun it a lot.
But on the way to this point, he’s sometimes slipped up—forgotten a few patterns.
‘Doesn’t seem like he’s good at games, huh?’
I mean, I’ve got 30 points in Intelligence—Gong Isu doesn’t. He has to memorize every last pattern on raw ability. If he doesn’t play games as a hobby, he’s not going to crack me easily.
Third:
He doesn’t seem to want to kill me...?
“Can’t you tell me why you’re doing this crap?”
“I told you earlier—you refused.”
“Tell me anyway. Maybe this run’s Kim Sinhwa feels different about it.”
With a hollow look—(he has neither eyes nor complexion, so call it a kind of personification)—Gong Isu slips past my strike and lets out a short sigh.
Death. Rewind.
A loop with no visible end.
Disappointment. Rewind.
And yet the repetition continues.
A sigh. Rewind.
A miniature of the life carried on so far, perhaps.
Rejection. Rewind.
A chain-hell you can never escape.
Failure. Rewind.
Nothing you do reaches success.
Error. Rewind.
And still, Gong Isu did not give up.
Death again. Rewind.
Then, suddenly, an insight dawns on him.
‘Shut up.’
He denies the realization rising in his head, but there is no other conclusion.
‘Stop observing me and get lost!’
Any foe who repeated rewinds this many times would eventually run dry on strategies to try.
But Kim Sinhwa did not.
A strategy whose bottom does not show.
Dilemmas that continue without end.
‘I’ve solved almost all of it.’
No matter what injury he takes, no matter how many resources he spends—rewind can restore it.
But even for Gong Isu, there is one resource that can’t be recovered.
Mental fatigue.
And reason.
Even if you can repeat endlessly—you can’t restore a mind that erodes moment by moment.
How much longer can I keep repeating?
How much longer can I remember my original purpose?
How much longer can I remain who I am?
‘Shut up.’
A flood of despair.
“Well? How much more can you keep repeating?”
Suddenly Gong Isu feels the unfairness.
I’m this exhausted and in pain—so why does that “monster” meet me with every resource perfectly restored?
Gong Isu feels anger. Gong Isu feels hatred. Gong Isu feels confusion.
‘I never thought that. Shut up! Don’t intrude!’
Fine, then kill him.
That’s a monster. A madman. Persuasion is impossible. Better to kill him. Turn it all into nothing and just kill him here.
You killed last loop’s Kim Sinhwa too, didn’t you?
‘Lies! I never did that!’
No. That’s the truth. It’s your memory. Because you had no arms or legs, you crawled like an insect, clinging to those ridiculous spells and artifacts—that Feast’s Offering—you caught it, tamed it, gave it affection, and then killed it.
‘No, that’s not my memory!’
Recalling what he did, Gong Isu suddenly stops, and—so you dodged that well, Bubble Head. Enough. Are you doing this to catch again, tame again, give affection again, and then kill again the thing you killed—again?
You’re insane, Bubble Head.
How long do you intend to repeat this meaningless farce?
“Forever, continuously.”
“Ah— you’re truly vicious. Senior, are you actually a madman?”
“Maybe I am.”
Gong Isu recognizes that his reason is wearing down. How long until he becomes a complete lunatic?
‘Not long now, it seems.’
“So what’s the final objective? If it’s embarrassing, try saying it once as practice, and if you don’t like it, just rewind.”
Gong Isu fixes that hollow gaze on me and says:
“I’ll help you, junior.”
“Help me?”
“Yes. I’ll help you, junior. That’s what we call each other, right? Senior and junior. As someone who walked the future first—I'll help you.”
“Help me? You took everything I had, hurled me into this ridiculous timeframe—and now you say you’ll help?”
Come to think of it, this is exactly what that Abyssal being—no, the thing beyond the message window—did to me.
“Hahahahaha!”
His body convulses in an unpleasant way. Or is he laughing?
It feels different from before.
I fired off the spells I’d classified as emergency routines to bind his movements—and sprinted dozens of kilometers away in an instant—but—
[System: Heightened Vigilance activates.]
Crkk-crkk-crkk!
Looks like he swung the [Golden Hairpin] and punched holes in space.
Gong Isu steps out of an ugly wound torn in midair.
[flutter-rattle—]
The [Night Veil Wing Cloak] shrouding his shoulders makes an ominous wingbeat.
Tick— tick—
The second-hand sound his “face” emits.
“Look. See how the world changed in half a year after you left it. Without the Feast’s Offering, this world doesn’t hold.”
Countless stars punched into the heavens and grotesque metallic substance carpeting the ground.
A sorcerous night sky glittering in all colors.
A titanic moon staring down on us with a hideous gaze.
Paju—completely unlike I remember it—a foreign landscape.
“So that’s the point? The Feast’s Offering mustn’t leave? Kim Sinhwa doesn’t listen to reason. I’ll show you what happens when you leave the world. What, did you drag me here to deliver that little lesson?”
“No. Listen to me. That’s wrong. That’s not what I’m saying.”
Gods, I’ll go mad.
It seems after rerunning and rerunning, Gong Isu has started to slip into derangement.
But in a sense, that also means my victory is drawing closer. In a deranged state, you can’t truly fix patterns.
Next run or the one after—within a few, I might be able to detain him...?
“How many times do you make me say the same thing. What do you want to do, junior?”
I asked, feeling like I was talking to an alien being with whom communication is impossible.
“What do I want to do?”
“You don’t get the question. That desire to go home—was that ever truly your desire?”
“What?”
“The Administrators are our enemy. I don’t trust them. I mentioned the system, didn’t I? They can inject artificial madness into your head.”
This is confusing. I don’t know ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) how many rounds of conversation we’ve had, but his words keep skittering off in odd directions.
“Oh. You’re saying my wish to go home is just an obsession the Abyssal beings jammed into my head?”
[Madness: Mask Fixation (latent), Sunlight Phobia]
As if reacting to my words, a message pops.
Sure, those are the only two madnesses I have. But Gong Isu answers as if he’s reading my mind, skipping several steps of the dialogue.
“Don’t believe that. That [Message]—they provide it. If they wanted to deceive you, they’d just withhold it.”
“And so?”
“You have to step outside the system the Administrators built. Inside the system, all cognition is distorted. Within the system, proper recognition and observation are impossible.”
Too seductive to dismiss as a madman’s rant.
It’s a question I’ve also thought about more than once—but never found a way to answer.
“But how?”
“Abandon everything. Give up all of it. Then they’ll abandon you. The moment you stop being the Feast’s Offering—you’ll know what I know. I’m repeating this to show you that!”
To escape being the Feast’s Offering, he abandoned everything, discarded everyone he’d ever connected to—and incarcerated himself.
He wants me to do that too?
“So I should live in this absurd wasteland? Throw away everyone I knew?”
“You were going to throw it all away and leave anyway, weren’t you? What’s the problem?”
Damn. Not wrong.
When I hesitate for a beat, he speaks in a voice of immaculate certainty.
“So first—if we’re going to make those Abyssal beings, and those horrific Administrators, accept it, we need to be definitive. My head was enough. Yours won’t be. First, the arms. Then the legs. We cut them off. You have to be completely helpless.”
In a voice closer to noise than speech, Gong Isu speaks. A madman’s voice with no trace of reason.
“What?”
“Yeah. A bit startling, right? I get it. But don’t worry. I’ll cut everything for you. If I use my left hand, there’ll be no problem. The pain—we can blunt it with magic, right? Yes? It’ll be a little inconvenient—but it’s fine, junior. I know what Kim Sinhwa needs in that state.”
Ah.
Aaaah— I get it.
Yeah. I know what this is. I understand. I do. I’ve done it myself, now and then.
Gong Isu is completely insane.
“Sorry, but it seems pointless to keep talking.”
“Do as you like. I’m using force because conversation failed.”
Since when had he started making that deranged proposal? At what point was he already mad?
He’s only revealing his true colors now. For all I know, he met me like this from the start.
“You keep messing up segments you’d already learned. You sure you’re okay?”
“I told you before— the moment you think you’ve learned the rules, an exception appears.”
Saying that, Gong Isu changes his head into another form.
Bzzzzzt!
A head I haven’t seen before. So from here, Gong Isu’s entering Phase 2, is that it?
