Chapter 561

Chapter 561

Clatter-

The stage play had finally reached its grand finale. Slowly, the lights of the once-darkened audience seats brightened.

Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap

A storm of applause, so thunderous that it was as though the world was shaking, erupted.

“...”

Se-Hoon blinked blankly, looking around from his seat in the middle of it all.

Damn... Did I doze off for a moment?

He had been watching with decent focus, only to slip at the very end? Unable to believe himself, Se-Hoon followed the other audience members and began clapping with a wry smile on his face—

“?!”

Se-Hoon shot halfway out of his seat, startled by the unexpected poke from the woman next to him.

“Huh? What’s with you? Why are you being so jumpy?” the woman asked in a flustered tone, surprised by his reaction.

“Well, I mean...”

What sane person wouldn’t be startled if a stranger suddenly jabbed them in the ribs...? An odd sense of familiarity swept over Se-Hoon when he looked at the woman to tell her off.

Chestnut-brown hair tied in a single braid, eyes glimmering like emeralds, and a lively face without a hint of dark circles. Something about her felt so familiar, yet he couldn’t say what was on the tip of his tongue.

Puzzling over it, Se-Hoon soon hesitantly asked, “You’re... Lea, right?”

“What?”

The woman—Lea—looked at him with a quizzical gaze before suddenly smirking once something had clicked.

“

Ah~

I get it now. You’re getting some sort of feeling, right? You didn’t say anything this morning... but I guess it was because you’re only now noticing the difference.”

“???”

“Well, whatever. A bit late, sure, but better than never.”

She had become self-satisfied out of the blue? While Se-Hoon was still reeling from the sudden change, Lea stood and naturally took his hand.

“The play’s over. Let’s go.”

“Huh? Oh... yeah, right.”

Led by her, Se-Hoon stepped out of the theater and instinctively scanned his surroundings.

Something’s off... but I can't pinpoint what.

Families, couples, and friends enjoying their day out as far as he could see—an utterly ordinary weekend scene. The theater was bustling with weekend visitors as always, yet the strange, creeping sense of dissonance as they wove through the crowd wouldn’t go away.

Everything was just so... unnatural. It was as though it had all been

manufactured

by someone.

“...”

Se-Hoon’s feet reflexively stopped, feeling a sudden uncanny sensation scraping past his mind like claws. Naturally, that made him inadvertently tug on Lea’s hand.

Feeling it, Lea glanced back in puzzlement.

“What? Did you leave something in the theater?”

“No, it’s not that...”

“Then?”

Se-Hoon hesitated, unsure how to put it into words—or even if he should. There was something telling him that the current moment would be a critical turning point.

He thought about it for a long pause, then finally made his choice.

“The surroundings just feel... off.”

“Off? How?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I’m getting.”

Even as he said it, a faintly bitter smile tugged at his lips. It sounded ridiculous, even to himself.

Am I losing it?

When he thought about it again, it was just some nonsense that he was wasting a rare weekend outing on. He opened his mouth to apologize—

“...Weird.”

Lea, who had been silent and thoughtful since he mentioned it, narrowed her eyes.

“Now that you mention it, yeah. Something

is

strange.”

“...You can feel it too?”

“Yeah. I can’t explain what it is exactly, though.”

Both were now quietly mulling it over, right in the middle of the theater lobby.

“Let’s head outside first,” Se-Hoon eventually said.

“

Hmm...

you think that’s okay?”

“Standing here won’t give us any answers anyway.”

Considering that he couldn’t identify the source of the anomaly, practically anywhere could be dangerous. They could even be swallowed up in an instant.

“Since we don’t know the source of this strange feeling yet, it’s all the same. Let’s move around and figure out exactly what feels off.”

Thinking about his words briefly, Lea then nodded.

“Okay. Let’s stick to the original plan for now.”

Hand in hand, they navigated the crowd and stepped outside to see the flawless blue sky and Golden Ring slicing gracefully across it.

Again, nothing was different. Both frowned.

“Is there anything that you find strange?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Same here. Let’s move on.”

Heading to the parking lot, Se-Hoon’s gaze soon fell on an absurdly massive red motorcycle that turned his expression wry.

“Is this my bike?”

“What, you don’t remember?”

“I think I do... maybe.”

Built from plans inspired by In-Cheol’s monstrous bike, Se-Hoon had originally made it reluctantly because Lea found cars too stifling. Now, though, he took it everywhere.

Something about it feels off again. Like the memory was

inserted

into my head.

Se-Hoon’s brows knit at the dissonance.

Noticing immediately, Lea looked at him in alarm.

“Is it coming at you again?”

“Yeah... it seems so.”

A stabbing discomfort, seemingly warning him not to dig further.

Looks like things are really tangled here.

All he had done was walk to the parking lot—not uncovering anything suspicious—yet the dissonance returned. And that alone was proof that the environment was far more warped than it seemed.

I might be able to find the cause sooner than I thought...

Suppressing the ache in his skull, Se-Hoon mounted the bike and looked at Lea.

“Let’s move. I think I know how to handle this.”

“Explain it to me on the way.”

Climbing on behind him, Lea tightly wrapped her arms around his waist as the giant bike roared out onto the road.

Vrmm!

The ride was perfectly smooth, despite the illegal speeds the bike was hitting, thanks to the enchantments tuned to let them feel only the thrill.

Enjoying the experience, Lea listened as Se-Hoon explained.

“So we just need to act normal?” Lea was surprised.

“Yeah. That should be enough.”

“...Really?”

It sounded too optimistic, but judging from his sharper reactions earlier, she decided to place her trust in him.

“If you’re sure, I’ll act as usual from now on.”

With that, they went back to chatting until they arrived at their lunch reservation. Since it was a set course, they didn’t need to choose dishes, so they simply chatted idly as they ate.

“By the way, have you heard from Luize?”

“

Hm?

Ah... you mean the expedition?”

Ever since the war with the Demon Force ended, humanity had begun space development in earnest; technologies once thought impossible were actualized through magic, skills, and blessings. At the forefront of it all was Lunatic, their group.

“She said she might drop by soon for some equipment checks.”

Thinking of their friends in space, Se-Hoon immediately began feeling the dissonance again. However, even though it came even harsher than before, Se-Hoon ignored it and kept talking.

He was now actively hunting for the memories that felt unnatural.

“Is it that time already? I thought you’d done a decent job with that gear...”

“Guess it can’t be helped. I only started learning it properly not too long ago.”

Once, Se-Hoon handled the forging and Lea the enchanting. Now, however, he could no longer forge. After losing all his power due to the battles against the Harbingers of Destruction, Se-Hoon could only leave it all to Lea.

“...”

Se-Hoon had a realization. Thanks to Lea bringing the topic up, he finally noticed that the dissonance came with a hollow weakness: his long-honed body and soul were carved out.

My power is... gone.

The memories surfaced. When the demon destroyed his heart, his synesthetic mindscape collapsed, and his mana, skills, and powers all vanished. Without Lea’s emergency aid, he would have died—

Crack!

A sudden crackle of noise was followed by darkness. It lasted for only a heartbeat, but Se-Hoon knew that something within him had changed.

And considering that it happened while recalling the past.... He found the trigger.

So these memories have either been

distorted

or

altered

—

“Ugh...”

Blood—dark and thick—streamed from his eyes, nose, and mouth. The pain flared viciously, as though he were being punished for probing too far.

“Se-Hoon!”

“I’m fine. Ignore me.”

“But you’re bleeding—”

“Enough.”

Wiping it away, he looked at her firmly.

“We’re almost there. Just keep on acting normal.”

“...Alright.”

Despite wanting otherwise, she forced herself to erase what she’d seen and continued the day as if nothing had happened. They headed to a park to walk off their lunch, then visited an auction for space-brought resources.

“That one’s not ba—

cough!

”

To Lea’s dismay, Se-Hoon would cough up blood or lose consciousness entirely every so often, giving her more than one fright. She could see in real-time as Se-Hoon’s face paled until it was like a corpse, and in contrast, as his eyes grew sharper and sharper. Because they were so clear, Lea couldn’t bring herself to stop him.

As such, all she could do was stay by his side, following the day’s itinerary.

“This is the last place I wanted to visit today.”

They arrived at an observatory built on a low mountain, far from the city center. Supporting Se-Hoon up the slope, Lea looked up at the horizon where the sun rippled into waves of crimson and the darkness slowly swallowed the sky above.

The Milky Way sprawled across the dim night, cut through by the Golden Ring.

She had seen the sight countless times, yet it had never lost its wonder.

“This might sound a little disjointed... but given my condition, I hope you’ll bear with me.”

While she had been watching in a daze, Se-Hoon had caught his breath.

“Just say it.”

“We’ve only been out together for half a day... but this feels like the most peaceful time I’ve had in decades.”

Even with the constant waves of pain, the bouts of coughing blood, and moments of lost consciousness, he still found everything about it satisfying.

“I kept thinking about where that peace came from... and I think it was from watching other people.”

“Other people?”

“Before the war against the Demon Force ended, everyone carried quiet fear in their hearts.”

The peaceful and happy days of today... could be destroyed tomorrow, and no one would know until it was. From the very beginning, since the emergence of the Towers of Heroes, that vague unease had driven humanity adrift.

“But now that fear is gone. People believe they’ll be happy tomorrow too—and that belief makes them feel peace.”

“...”

“That’s when another thought came to me.”

Se-Hoon looked up at the Golden Ring cutting across the night sky.

“Can such an ideal world... truly exist?”

His murmur hung in the air.

“...”

“A world where people bring each other only happiness, a life where the world itself brings no misfortune at all... is that

really

possible?”

𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

While it seemed perfectly possible—because the world before their eyes was functioning exactly like that—Lea couldn’t bring herself to answer.

After all, she had felt more than once today that what they considered “normal” might actually be what was strange.

“

I

don’t think it’s possible.”

Drip-

Se-Hoon’s whole body began trembling faintly, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. Once again, the unseen force was punishing him for breaking the rules.

“Maybe in the far future... when we’ve matured so much that our present selves seem like children... it could be possible. But not now.”

The scars left by the war were far too deep; not enough time had passed for those wounds to come close to fully healing.

So why was the world so mature?

Crack!

Hearing the ominous sound of something inside Se-Hoon’s chest crunching, Lea spun toward him—only to see his hand slowly moving to point upward. She raised her head.

Clatter-

That was when she saw them: the countless white threads, invisible until now, stretching from the Golden Ring.

“...Ah.”

Realization struck. The current ideal world wasn’t something

they

had achieved. Rather, Puppeteer—awakened to a new power through Tuner—had seized the Golden Ring and manipulated the entire world into the constructed reality she knew.

This is absurd...

To alter the entire world simply with a single epiphany? Unthinkable.

Is there even a way to beat that?

Lea stared at the Golden Ring, now visibly controlled from above.

No matter how capable Se-Hoon was, defeating the entire world was impossible. Such a task was in a realm of thoughts she had never even considered—

“It’s possible.”

Se-Hoon, whose body had been slumped until now, slowly raised his head.

“Because I’m proof.”

A flicker of violet light flared in his eyes.