First, Gong Isu broke the laws of the world.
A sun rising at a time when it must not rise.
[The giant sun in the sky agitates your [Madness: Sunlight Phobia].]
Robbed of strength, Kim Sinhwa crashed to the ground, clutching his head and screaming.
A colossal flame climbed, venting immense light and mana.
Stars startled and fled.
The craven moon had already vanished to the west.
The sky, bleached white, flipped into day.
[System : [Madness: Sunlight Phobia] manifests.]
There is nowhere to run.
Because the sky isn’t all that changed.
An uncompromising pride and an absolute authority draping the earth.
The metallic crystals blanketing the land reflect sunlight to worship the king who returned without warning.
You attempt to resist the delirium with your Willpower stat. Willpower check...
“Aaaaaaah!!”
Kim Sinhwa screamed and looked up.
Time’s ■■■ flying in the sky like the sun’s avatar.
No—there is no longer any need for a meaningless censor.
Kim Sinhwa had satisfied Watch Head’s growth condition.
For Gong Isu—once a vagrant of time, a wanderer of time, a fugitive of time—there must now be a new name.
[Master of Time]
Bow—
the new king has arrived.
A new Feast’s Offering has been born.
We will now observe him.
The point is simple.
Beings of the Abyss—and the Administrators—require a Feast’s Offering.
Without a Feast’s Offering, this world cannot be maintained.
But mere existence is not enough.
A Feast’s Offering is, literally, an offering.
A sacrifice to hold the observers’ gaze.
What matters is the observers.
It is their transcendent observation and recognition that grant power and change to this world.
Because they observe and recognize us, this world can exist.
And because their gaze remains, the Feast’s Offering can bring an enormous change—or a vast stability—to this world.
The beings of the Abyss try to entangle themselves with the Feast’s Offering.
They possess tremendous power—yet the observers will watch only what happens at the Feast’s Offering’s side.
At times the gaze can be led elsewhere, but it cannot be kept there for long.
In the end, the observers’ eyes return to the Feast’s Offering.
That is why those dreadful monsters torment, tempt, or swallow the Feast’s Offering.
To receive the observers’ gaze and be remembered by them, you have no choice but to be associated with the Feast’s Offering.
Become one with the Feast’s Offering, become the being the Feast’s Offering worships—or become the trial that torments the Feast’s Offering.
If we suppose this world is some distasteful novel, then the Feast’s Offering would be its protagonist.
You can’t let the novel’s protagonist disappear, can you?
Therefore, Kim Sinhwa can never leave this world.
Leave by using the Golden Hairpin to go outside it?
Absurd.
You cannot leave by such a method.
They will never let you go.
But I can help you.
“Wait—did that just switch to [I]?”
Has the narration centered on [I] resumed?
A tingling that floods mind and soul alike.
Outlandish pleasure and rapture. A sigh. Relief.
A joy that feels like tears will spill.
“We did it.”
Yes. We did it.
The narration is centered on me.
I am now the Feast’s Offering.
Yes, I am now the protagonist of this novel.
I won this long, long fight.
I won.
From this damn world and its monstrous System—kept alive by someone else’s sacrifice—
I,
once called Bubble Head, or Watch Head.
Yes.
I, Gong Isu, have won.
I have taken back [me].
It is [my] victory.
—or so Gong Isu thought.
Delightful, TikTok Man. I see why you like him.
Wait and see. Let’s carry the narration a bit further. Bubble Head currently believes he has become the Feast’s Offering. Watch just a little longer to see what Bubble Head thinks and does.
Very well. I will provide two free resources so you can stage an even better scene through Watch Head.
My thanks.
“Stop, senior. Stop! You’re thinking about something wrong. This is a trap!”
Kim Sinhwa, lost in delirium, shouted at me.
He cannot say what the mistake is, or what the trap is.
I don’t know what hallucination he’s seeing, but inside Kim Sinhwa’s head absurd leaps of logic must be unfolding.
With a glance tinged with pity, I said to him:
“It’s fine, Kim Sinhwa. Don’t worry. I’ll save you.”
Yet even so—Kim Sinhwa screamed and tried to run.
“Don’t save me! I don’t need it! Let go! Think about why the future you is in the hospital!”
Well, mistrust is understandable.
I invoked a talent to neutralize his resistance—
This is power I obtained by looting the singularity’s might from the Administrators and the System.
There is no problem.
[I] am the Feast’s Offering.
As this world’s [protagonist], [I] can now exert overwhelming influence on Kim Sinhwa, who has been demoted to [supporting cast].
—or so Gong Isu thought.
I will expend a resource here.
Confirmed. No check is required. I will continue inducing stronger delirium in the Feast’s Offering; proceed.
I reached out and picked up Kim Sinhwa in one hand.
I did not grow, nor did Kim Sinhwa shrink.
If you want to grasp the meaning—close one eye and think of the childhood trick of stretching a hand toward something far away.
As if ignoring perspective—warping the structure and scale of space, I picked up Kim Sinhwa.
Kim Sinhwa, lifted like a toy.
“Why! Why are you doing this!”
A scream-like question flung at the empty air.
Even in powerlessly delirious condition, his gaze kept moving. His sense probed in the wrong direction. And he kept radiating mana in all directions.
So—he doesn’t give up, even in this.
“Why am I doing this?”
Suddenly, I recall the Kim Sinhwa who spent half a year with me.
Kim Sinhwa, who could only eke out life in pain, completely powerless.
I tried many times to rewind time and erase him from existence—but even then, he never gave up to the very end.
I could only be moved.
It made the life I’d lived—solving everything by avoidance alone—feel shameful.
“No! Not you, senior! I’m not crazy! I passed the check! Stop! This isn’t for me!”
“Right, Kim Sinhwa. This isn’t for you.”
Indeed.
This likely isn’t for him. I never asked his opinion.
Even the Kim Sinhwa who spent half a year with me never asked for this.
This is solely for me.
For that trash heap of a System.
For those dreadful Administrators.
To flip off everything that crumpled, tore, twisted, and crushed my life—robbed and insulted and defiled everything I held dear.
That alone is the reason.
I have now become this world’s [protagonist].
And I will extract Kim Sinhwa—now [supporting cast]—from this world.
The [protagonist] Kim Sinhwa cannot leave this world, but no one will care where the [supporting cast] Kim Sinhwa goes.
When all of that is over?
I will use the method I used before—erase this world’s [protagonist].
—or so Gong Isu thought.
I will expend the second resource here.
One moment. I have a concern. Are we about to chain events to the degree that the Feast’s Offering dies? It would be a shame if this ends by breaking the Feast’s Offering.
No. What Bubble Head will break is himself.
[I] stretched out the hand not holding Kim Sinhwa.
A tickling sensation meets my fingertips. The horizon.
I pull.
Rrrrrrrip—
Unable to withstand the pressure, the horizon tears, and the boundary that parts heaven and earth splits.
The Abyss howls.
Beyond, deep and dark, in the far side of space-time.
I see it.
There—that’s where you came from, Kim Sinhwa.
[I] reached to send Kim Sinhwa—
A strange sensation touches the chest. What?
I shifted the sense ordinary people call sight and looked down at my chest.
A sword lodged in my chest. Ah—Kim Sinhwa’s Blade of Flesh.
This won’t stop me.
I warp space and readjust it so the sword was never in my chest.
What seemed to be so was mere optical illusion.
The distance between the sword and me is four meters.
The Blade of Flesh falls to the floor, meaningless.
“Damn it.”
Kim Sinhwa’s sigh.
[I] returned Kim Sinhwa to the world he had been in, the place he ought to be—
A completely different time.
A completely different place.
Sitting alone in the round room of Paju Central Hospital, Gong Isu suddenly let out a deep, despairing sigh.
Night.
Wait.
What just ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) happened?
I’m sure I was looking where Gong Isu pointed... Did time roll back in the meantime?
My memory is hazy. I definitely looked toward some direction he indicated— and I think I saw something there?
At some moment, my action was undone, and I’m right back here facing Gong Isu.
“Damn it, I’m going to lose it. What did you do? Being a time traveler makes you special? What are you plotting?”
Gong Isu moved first.
“Ah... uhhh... aaah...”
He let out a beastlike groan—then collapsed to the ground.
At the jarringly abrupt change, I reached a hand toward him and spoke.
“Senior?”
“Uhh... uuuugh...”
A groan so wretched and sorrowful it shattered all the strategy and resolve I’d built until now.
On his knees, forehead pressed to the ground, Gong Isu sobbed.
If he possessed the ability to shed tears, he surely would have. But all he produced were smeared groans too mangled to parse.
“What? Senior? What on earth just happened?”
Damn.
It seems something horrible did.
Did I land some kind of mental attack on Gong Isu?
What could happen—what could be done to a person—to make him make a sound that awful?
With a strange guilt I couldn’t name, I approached him.
“Die...”
“What?”
“Kim Sinhwa. Hurry and die. Quickly. You have to die now! There’s no other way to fix it. Hurry, die!”
Damn it.
The delirium has gotten worse.
“Don’t worry, senior. I’ll knock you out. First I’ll treat the delirium, and then we’ll go home, so don’t worry.”
“No! You mustn’t! You can’t go back! No, you won’t be able to!”
“Oh, come on—”
“That horrible thing must not happen again! Don’t you understand? You already went once to where you were!”
That’s... novel.
“What?”
“Where you... were is gone now. No—saying it like that... you’ll end up like that again... Fine, I... I want to stop too... But if I’m gone, you’ll end up going there in the end... You really have to die now!”
I find Bubble Head utterly lovable. I will be with him forever from now on.
