Chapter 386: The Garden of Time (2)

Chapter 386: The Garden of Time (2)

One hundred forty years. I had heard him mention that before.

—When you fought Teacher in a Verbal Match, you said you held out for one hundred and thirty years.

—Yup, that’s it.

His voice was very hollow. Hearing him speak that way made my heart feel heavy. I pressed on my forehead.

—My god. So, Mr. Sword Emperor, you...

The talk I’d had with the Sword Emperor in the Truth Heaven Realm flashed through my mind.

Me: I suddenly had the thought that I might fail the ninety-ninth floor. You died on the ninety-ninth floor.

At those words, the Sword Emperor had reacted strangely.

Idiot: Hmmm. Well, there’s death...

I remembered him repeating that.

Me: What’s on the ninety-ninth floor?

At the time, the Sword Emperor had not given a clear answer. He had said that he just didn’t want to tell me, but that couldn’t have been the whole story.

Me: Can you still not tell me?

—Let’s walk.

I blinked. Before I knew it, the Sword Emperor had gotten up and was looking at me with the same look from back then.

—Uh...

—Just follow me.

The Sword Emperor began

walking

just like before. Ever since I stepped onto this stage, I became weightless. The world no longer tried to hold me down. No matter how hard I stomped, my footsteps made no sound. It felt like I had been cut off from the world.

Over the week, I stopped walking. Floating like the Guardian was more comfortable.

The princess also joined us on our walk.

—

Mahos said it felt like he got noclipped.

—

I don’t know what noclip means, but I think I understand.

Now that gravity had no effect on me, all physical barriers had lost their meaning. If I wanted to, I could walk through floors or walls. That was why I knew how hard it was for the Sword Emperor to walk right now. I had also seen it as a great skill in the Truth Heaven Realm, but now that I was in the same state as him, I really understood how hard it was.

—What are you doing over there? Come.

The Sword Emperor glanced at me, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked like he was on a casual stroll. This was an important moment.

—Give me a moment, please.

Instead of floating away, I gathered my resolve. First, I set my feet on the ground. Though I still couldn’t feel anything, I tried to stand straight.

—Hmm.

The Sword Emperor waited in silence. He neither urged me nor offered advice. Even so, I knew at once that I didn’t really look like a normal person trying to stand up.

—Just a bit more.

The Sword Emperor nodded.

—Take your time.

—Yes.

My thoughts turned serious.

How does one stand?

Even to me, the question felt absurd, but a stronger belief fueled my resolve. This moment was important.

To stand up... First, place my feet on the ground, then the ground will support me... But right now, there’s no ground to support me, so then...

I felt as if a light cloud was drifting around my head. The cloud seemed within my reach, yet I couldn’t grasp it. I took a deep breath. Wait, did I?

No, of course not. I was just mimicking breathing.

I focused again.

I’m now like a ghost. Naturally, there is no air for me to inhale, and that means...

The moment I thought that, another question arose.

Wait, if there’s no air, how can I hear sounds?

I realized that this was very odd. The most common contradiction shown in science fiction films was the roar of explosions echoing through space.

Strange.

When I spoke to the Guardian and the Mirage-Walking Princess, it felt like I was imagining sound. However, the voices of Sylvia and my orphanage director were real.

Sound is delivered by vibrations in the air, but no air can reach me now. Therefore, I shouldn’t hear anything. Meaning...

The moment I realized this, silence enveloped me, like stepping into outer space—no, it felt like the perfect stillness that had existed before time and space had any meaning.

—Hmm.

The Sword Emperor crossed his arms with a faint smile. That smile merely flashed and faded in my mind, disturbing nothing of the stillness I now felt. I was completely captivated by this white moment.

It’s so white.

But, that was strange.

It can’t be white. By the same logic, it can’t be black, either.

I didn’t mean it abstractly, like how silence couldn’t be colored. It was something far more specific and basic.

How am I seeing what I’m seeing?

Color was a wave of light. Just as sound needed air to vibrate, light needed to exist for something to be seen.

But I’m not affected by anything right now. No gravity. No physical force affects me.

Was light a special exception right now? That couldn’t be. In games, light was often marked as a special attribute, but light was only one form of many physical phenomena. As someone who used a holy sword of light, I was well aware of it.

Then I should be unable to see or hear anything...

The light was gone, replaced by perfect darkness that swallowed me.

***

Around the time I was born, Earth was a bright planet. Cities were everywhere. When one stepped outside a city, they could quickly reach another. Although the overall population had peaked and was slowly declining, the number of buildings being erected increased. It was as if the cities had found each other and were littering their babies, pushing aside the people.

Every new building overflowed with light. Even after the people vanished, the light lingered like a debt. Logically speaking, it would have made more sense for the conglomerations of buildings to turn into gloomy ghost towns or ruins. Some called it a singularity[1], but more people knew this was merely the unchecked growth of cancer cells.

“There was a time when the night sky was far darker than it is now.”

The director had told me this, but I couldn’t imagine the sight as a child. Throughout my life, the night sky had always been veiled in a hazy, purple mist.

“This planet is suffering from a fever.”

The first darkness I ever saw was not in the night, but in water. More than that, it was within the human heart.

—

That’s how it was. So, this is darkness.

True darkness wasn’t black. It was just nothing. A blank space. A void. Because of that, it sometimes felt dazzling white and other times pitch black, yet it was clearly neither. It was just emptiness.

I gazed upon a world that had yet to hold anything.

—

It’s beautiful.

Somewhere, I sensed the Sword Emperor.

—

Yes, Gong-Ja. What is full is beautiful only because it remains to be emptied. Like that, what is empty is pretty only because it remains to be filled.

I turned my head in the direction from which the reply came.

—

Idiot Zombie, do you know how ridiculously you’re acting right now?

I groaned.

—You’re right. I have no head now.

—

Yeah. Yet you still turn around. Well, you aren’t doing too bad, but if you do that unconsciously, you’ll go back to how you were before you saw this darkness.

The Sword Emperor’s voice sounded like the fluttering of a robe’s hem. Well, he didn’t make a single sound, actually.

—

Move with awareness. Be aware and feel. Only then can you move and accept the world properly.

Before I nodded, I created myself.

—

I... am Kim Gong-Ja.

My physical age was about twenty-five. The time I had lived was about a thousand—no, around ten thousand years.

No.

About, roughly, around wouldn’t do. I thought about myself precisely. I... imagined myself. I started to recall Kim Gong-Ja from birth until now without adding or taking away anything. It was a tiring, difficult task, but it wasn’t impossible.

“The Tower’s voice messages we get... aren’t... automated, but...”

“Yes, they’re done manually. Even if multiple events occur simultaneously, it’s just a set of tasks that I have to handle one by one. Inefficiency happens when time and space are limited. Here, we can control time and observe other worlds at will. The idea of inefficiency doesn’t exist.”

Advisor River Eternal.

I thought about the person I once was and the tasks she handled. Compared to her workload, my own life seemed very small, like a grain of sand.

Sand... My fox god.

Even the time when my fox god played with my memories now served as a reference point. That wasn’t all.

The Underworld.

The place I always reached when I died looked like this one.

My holy ground.

Filling up the empty world to build my holy ground had proved useful in many ways. Above all...

Teacher.

That white winter and this darkness were similar. Enveloped in the dark, I recalled, imagined, created, and thought of myself. At last, I opened my eyes and breathed. I felt the temperature, shape, direction, pitch, and volume of my breath. Every bit of it. The hair on my nape—yes, I now had a nape—rose when I exhaled.

Saliva dripped from my lips. I noticed that I lacked the words to name this sensation because I didn’t have enough experience. Even after dying many times and living the lives of others, I couldn’t really describe this sensation or observe my own state. It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel it—I felt too much.

Someday, somewhere, the Sword Emperor’s voice echoed.

—

Though the role of the senses is to keep one apart from the outside world, senses that grow too sharp blur that line. Don’t forget this. That is what it means to see.

Badump.

At the sound of my heartbeat, darkness fell. Light burst forth—the dam broke—and the world’s bounds burned in the bright light, followed by the fall of darkness.

—

Yes.

I was now back at my holy ground, the Garden of Withered Flowers. It spanned across the eightieth to the eighty-ninth floors, and it also served as my ninety-first floor. The Sword Emperor greeted me with his arms still crossed.

—Let’s walk a bit.

It was as if he were suggesting what he had said moments ago—no, surely that had happened just moments ago.

—Yes, let’s walk a bit.

Still dazed, I shook my head before nodding. I slowly stretched my feet toward the ground, walking in the direction of the Sword Emperor.

Tap.

I took a step.

Tap.

I began walking with the Sword Emperor.

Tap!

1. An event that some people believe will happen in the future when technology becomes much more intelligent than humans. ☜