Chapter 536: Hidden Piece (3)
At that moment, after we escaped out of the waves’ wormhole, a heavy silence began to fill the ship. It was hard to get used to the silence as the waves also grew still.
It felt like what happened was a dream.
After passing the giant waves, which had looked like they could have swallowed a whole city, we were at a vast ocean without a single cloud. I didn’t even know where to start.
At this, Park Deokgu carefully opened his mouth.
“Hyung-nim, it seems that we have entered a dungeon…”
“…”
“…”
‘I know that, you bastard.’
The question was what we should do from there. Kim Hyunsung also looked like he didn’t know what to do.
A regressor didn’t know everything, and this was even a dungeon at the Mythic level.
I thought he could’ve known about it since he had some rough memories about multiple topics. However, Kim Hyunsung looked completely clueless.
Even in the first timeline that Kim Hyunsung had been in, a dungeon like that had never been discovered. Not only by Kim Hyunsung but by anybody else.
No matter how hard one tried to hide something like it, they wouldn’t be able to.
‘No, even if it had been discovered…’
It was more than 90% likely that the discoverer died. We probably wouldn’t have been able to come all the way here without the Nice Boat Park Deokgu had made.
‘Wow, it had been so fitting. This bastard…’
We came to the dungeon because of Park Deokgu’s fault, but we also arrived safely thanks to him. I glanced at him because of how things played out so perfectly, but Deokgu only had a face full of guilt.
He looked like he felt sorry from the bottom of his heart. It told me he never meant for anything like that to happen. He was even holding in some tears.
Unbecoming of his giant build, his jaw was shaking as he tried to hold it in, but he couldn’t stop the little teardrops.
He must have definitely been sorry for many things, especially because our long-awaited pleasant break had suddenly changed into a survival game.
Truthfully, it was not the guy’s fault, but due to his personality… there was a high chance that it was actually his fault…
I checked his status window and saw that Park Deokgu’s luck was lower than normal.
‘Sh*t, how could your luck be even lower?’
One could say that we had stumbled into a dungeon by coincidence, but at that point, it was inevitable. It began to feel more appropriate to think that Benignore, Elune, or Loren had interfered into that matter somehow.
I couldn’t even contact those incompetent gods in the situation.
I thought they might have sent me to the dungeon after thinking that they couldn’t stand me anymore, but it didn’t make sense that they would also send Kim Hyunsung to where we were.
At this point, Park Deokgu spoke up.
“S-Sor…”
“Don’t worry, Deokgu. It’s not your fault.”
That was better than him getting discouraged.
“But…”
“Don’t make me say it twice. It’s not your fault. It’s not as if things will change if we discuss whose fault it is. We have to figure out the situation first.”
“But…”
“Do we have any food?”
“It’s all inside the boat.”
“What about water?”
“That is… also in the boat… there’s basically everything inside it.”
‘Huh, so he did prepare well. Was he planning for us to stay in the Mirror Lake for a couple of months?’
“If there is anyone who seems suspicious, let’s bring that up first.”
It became quieter with that one line. People began to glance at Hwang Jeong-yeon.
That was because, in that situation, that person’s knowledge and photographic memory would be useful.
“Although it isn’t definite.”
“Yes.”
“I think we may be in the reflection of a mirror.”
“…”
“It’s simply a hypothesis, so don’t just accept it. If I think about how this world is the world reflected by Mirror Lake, everything fits perfectly. I think this is something like a hidden feature that comes out in games a lot.”
“Hidden feature?”
“You can think of it as a bonus piece. When someone designed this continent, they intentionally created this place. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not that this place hasn’t been discovered so far, but I think it’s reasonable to say that someone might have led us here. The timing is too perfect for it to just be a coincidence.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s Benignore, maybe it’s the god or the devil that manages this continent, or maybe it’s someone even higher than that. It may sound ridiculous, but I think I now understand why salmons live in the lake. Maybe the Mirror Lake is not actually a lake, but a river. It’s a river that connects where we are and the world we came from, and maybe the salmons travel through the flowing river. It looked just like a stagnant lake to us, but… It might not have looked like that to them. Maybe that’s why they were extra delicious…”
“That doesn’t sound ridiculous and sounds like a reasonable explanation. A river that connects two worlds…”
“And also, those waves’ are probably like a wormhole. Everyone saw that, right?”
Everyone nodded. They all looked a little like they were in disbelief. It was a hard situation to accept and believe in.
Unlike me, who originally knew how the empire ran or worked, it was hard for normal people to accept something so seemingly far-fetched.
Besides Jung Hayan, who looked like she didn’t care about the truth of the world or anything like that and was laughing by my side, completely common people like Han Sora and Ahn Ki-mo looked like they had their mentality crushed.
The object we saw through the waves’ wormhole…
“Space.”
It was a big universe, just like I had said.
The beautifully shining planets, the people who lived in them, floating groups of light, and the enormous creatures were indescribable. I couldn’t explain how I could see all those things, but our Blue Guild members had done just that.
Among those planets and dimensions, I was sure that Earth existed.
Hwang Jeong-yeon seemed to have had the same thought as I did and added onto the story with similar stories, and I nodded at everything to show my agreement.
I was done explaining it from a scientist’s perspective. Kim Hyunsung was the next one to open his mouth. It was like him to be interested in that kind of story.
“We probably saw people who lived in that space. Or the creatures that drifted through space- each of us probably saw something different since we were in different positions. If all of you don’t mind, please say what you saw aloud one by one.”
Kim Ye-ri was the first one to speak.
“I saw a person like Hayan-unni.”
“What?”
“I saw a person who looked like Hayan-unni. I don’t remember in detail, but that image instantly came to me. I think her hair was a bit longer, and her age is different too… I have a headache just trying to remember it.”
It was Park Deokgu who spoke next.
“I-I think I saw the monster who was holding the sword that I saw at the Ancient Museum.”
“An ancient god?”
“No, not an ancient god but a monster like it. The green monster with horns on his head and lots of weapons. It didn’t look like it was dead like that time. It looked alive… I got goosebumps…”
“What is that?”
“I hope I misunderstood, but I think I made eye-contact with it.”
‘Ah, this sh*t, saying nonsense again.’
“Really, it’s true. I really made eye-contact with it… and I think it was for only a moment, but I think it turned its heads toward Hyunsung-hyung and Kiyoung-nim too. It was smiling like it thought that it would be fun. It seriously gave me the creeps.”
More people continued to say what they had seen, but it didn’t seem like many of them had seen something special.
“I saw… a place like Earth… I think I saw someone who looked like the Vice Guild Master. She was a young-looking woman… a bit strange…”
“I do have a younger sister. It would be interesting if Hyejin-ssi had really seen her. What was she doing?”
“…”
“…”
Sh*t, what was she doing?’
“No, it’s fine… even if you don’t tell us anyway.”
“She was slapping someone’s cheeks.”
“What?”
“Uh… I don’t know what to say, but she was slapping the cheek of an older-looking man with a load of cash. After that, she stepped on his head with her heels many times. She laughed like crazy while the man begged on the floor…”
“I think you can stop now. That… probably is someone we don’t know.”
She must be Lee Yulha.
‘That crazy bitch, this…’
I wasn’t sure, but it seemed pretty certain. It was best for me to silence her quickly. What was important was that she was well. It seemed that she was living well without me.
Thankfully, the guild members soon lost interest in Lee Yulha.
It seemed that Cho Hyejin was sure that she must have been my sister, while others couldn’t think that a person who seemed so different from me could be my family.
Rather than my family, they seemed to be focused on something else. Sure enough, Han Sora hesitantly opened her mouth.
“Earth…?”
“I’m not certain, but that’s what I felt… it was a planet like Earth in many ways, but…”
“If…if Cho Hyejin had really seen Earth… then can we go back…to that Earth? If that wormhole really was a river that connected different worlds, wouldn’t there be a way to go back to Earth?”
No, Benignore had said that it was impossible. People who were summoned to the continent from Earth meant they had gotten abandoned.
We probably couldn’t go back using a normal method. The one who answered Han Sora’s question immediately was Kim Hyunsung.
“It will be impossible.”
“What?”
“It’s true that we’ve seen things we can’t believe, but that doesn’t mean we can go all the way back there. In the first place, it’s absurd to think that you can break through the sea of dimensionality. Our bodies, as well as this ship, wouldn’t be able to withstand it. We don’t know if we’ll actually reach our destination, how far it is, or if we can even get in even if we can touch it. I can’t say it with complete confidence, but…”
‘He is telling us to give up on thinking that we can go back.’
It was better to give up useless dreams even if it meant crushing some hope. It was better to quit at the right time rather than struggling uselessly.
Like that, as everyone finished their story, Sun Hee-young came to her senses and spoke. At this point, everyone focused on what she had to say.
It was a wonder what she saw because she was the only one who had gone inside the wormhole and returned.
“…”
“…”
“God.”
“I saw a god a bit different from our empire’s gods… yes, a bit different…”
Kim Hyunsung began to mutter anxiously. “…Outer God.”