#oh. oh jung heewon. 41st jung heewon. i am in love with you

[lee-hakhyun]

2/2

sacrificial will. that goddamn stigma. kim dokja tells lee hakhyun to trust him. with the breath attack coming?? lhh slowly gets up. there's a system message. your understanding of yoo joonghyuk has increased. the mad soldier yoo joonghyuk story coordinates with incite to increase its power, and,

"Kim Dokja, I'll kill you."

incite affects him, and lhh starts questioning and threatening kdj. while continuously yelling 'i'll kill you!!!', he's able to somehow dodge the breath with the yjh incitment. but incite ends there. lhh can't move a finger. and kdj says that's perfect. the light of sacrificial will flows out of his body, but he doesn't have any companions around, as kim dokja laments that yoo joonghyuk isn't here. but-

jung heewon comes running in.

//

jung heewon remembers the first time she met that man at geumho station.

"Heewon-nim... I love you... really..."

who says strange things,

"There's a character named Jung Heewon in the novel I wrote."

babbling on with a shameless face.

"She looks very strong on the outside, but she's actually a soft-hearted person. She's so strong that she doesn't shy away from fights, which is why she breaks so often."

someone who has risked his life to save her over and over

"I left my home when I was in high school. Didn’t I tell you?"

and the person who had her open up about her family for the first time.

"Jung Heewon. Are you curious about the 'Original Story'?"

the woman in the white coat. and the story from a novel that she told. the jung heewon there was similar to her, but a little different. strong on the outside, yet soft on the inside. someone who had to become stronger every time by squeezing out more courage. jung heewon wondered. why did she have to become so strong?

did she want to become strong?

"I can't let you go! Don't go alone again! Please!"

the jung heewon in that world called out a name many times.

"Dokja-ssi!"

a name she's never called before

"Kim Dokja!"

is it family? someone she loves? she doesn't know. but the jung heewon in that novel seemed heartbroken. and even though she knows this is just a story from a novel, when she thinks of that name, she feels anger, sadness, grief, heartbreak.

and she was feeling those same emotions toward that man now. she gets up, wielding her mikazuki munechika, repeating.

"youcan'tdieyoucan'tdieyoucan'tdie."

her madness is aided by sacrificial will, and her power increases. as she rushes toward the monster, she sees the man's surprised face.

strangely, the moment she saw him, jung heewon felt that she had found something she had spent her her whole life searching for.

//

lhh can't focus on the swordsmanship in frotn of his eyes. he doesn't know if even yoo joonghyuk could do that. jung heewon's sword, so far it can't be seen, completely overpowers the dragon. lhh calls out to jhw, but she just repeats "youcan'tdie" over and over. he asks kdj what's wrong, and he... hesitates, before saying that he doesn't know either.

jhw lunges at the dragon, and lands the killing blow on the dragon. she lands back next to lhh in almost an instant, and collapses. congratulatory messages and coin sponsorships rain down as lhh raises jung heewon. she looks up at him, and says one thing before passing out.

"don't die."

it was only then that lhh realized what kind of stigma [sacrificial will] was, and what kim dokja did.

"You, you're really—" — A bad person.

kim dokja would have known from the start, what would happen to his companions if he used sacrificial will.

"I..." — Didn't you want to be Kim Dokja?

what is it like to be kim dokja? lhh is becoming less and less aware of what it means to be kim dokja.

gradually calming down, kdj tells lhh to check the rewards. there was a fragment near where the dragon fell. but its shape was strange. it looked like... a little doll, with its left arm and right leg missing. smaller than he remembered, but unmistakable.

a kim dokja kkoma.

reaching out with trembling hand and picking up the doll, it slowly opened its eyes and looked at him. no, not him,

[The constellation 'Demon King of Salvation' is looking at his fragment.]

the kkoma trembled. maybe it was crying. but it wasn't crying because it was scared.

— Yes, can you see me?

the cry of someone who has missed for so long. kim dokja soothes the doll, and it closes its eyes. kim dokja calls out to lee hakhyun. grab a sword.

what?

a crack breaks through the air, and a black hand appears through the torn space. the same hand that appeared when jung moonho died at seoul station. it had taken moonho away, but this time-

— Now!

at kdj's signal, lhh cuts the hand reaching toward the fragment. as it touched the blade, it crumbles into dust, and there's a cry of pain from beyond the crack. and then it closed. kim dokja speaks. he thinks there are others who are collecting fragments besides them. lhh thinks of asmodeus, but kdj says it's not him. these guys.. may have been the one who killed 'him[kdj]'.

catching back up (1/2)

with a single attack, lee hakhyun slices off the 5th grade monster's head. he can see bang cheolsoo and the rest of geumho station cheering in the distance, as a message appears with his time: he has 30 seconds left. lee hakhyun thinks that it wouldn't be too bad he if died like this.

kim dokja asks. you don't really want to die, right? he thinks about feeding himself to htten again, but it refuses to eat him. kdj is heard looking around, then directs lhh to the monster's head. there was the monster's core, and... a clump of letters. a story fragment. 'a dokja has a dokja's life.' lhh is instructed to feed it to htten, and,

「"It's fine, Yoo Sangah-ssi." "Pardon?" "Even if you tell me the app, it won't be any use." The genre of my life was plainly 'realism.' "It's because a Dokja has a Dokja's life, you see." And in this genre, I wasn't a protagonist but a 'Reader'.」

it eats the story, and he's given a day to live. a day!! better than nothing. so.. why did this dragon have a kim dokja fragment? ...did this monster eat readers?

kdj says the 4th grade has a larger fragment. if lhh can get that he can live longer. jhw fights the monster alone, and she's doing well, but the dragon suddenly gets in a hit in. the aura of judgment time and madness still flow through as she still has the will to fight, but her body isn't in a state to fight. there's no penalty for fighting, so-

kdj tells lhh to kill it. the dragon that even jhw couldn't take down? but the stage transformation is still there. there's a chance. kdj tells lhh to fight to death if he really wants to be 'kim dokja'. bang cheolsoo and dayoung's mother run up just in time, and lhh hands off jhw to dayoung's mother. jung heewon's eyes are open, and her lips are moving, but lee hakhyun smiles at the group, and tells them to leave gwanghwamun. the stage is weakening, and as lhh prepares incite, kdj reminds lhh that reproducing the same scene won't be as effective since the constellations won't be interested. he can't be the kim dokja who hunted yamato no orochi.

but even if the story has the same content, if the protagonist is different, it becomes a 'different story'. he begins to incite as yoo joonghyuk, as the 'mad soldier yoo joonghyuk' story fragment he has resonates along with him.

It wasn't easy. Even when I used all my mana, I still felt a long way away from reaching Yoo Joonghyuk. — I am! 'I am.' But at least now, I wasn't alone in shouting out these words. — Yoo Joonghyuk! 'Yoo Joonghyuk.'

he fights the dragon, giving everything's he got. the dragon falls to the ground, and so does lee hakhyun. this is as far as he can go. the stage transformation ends, and the dragon... gets back up. it prepares its breath attack. following the incitement, yjh is still affecting him. he thinks that he can't die here, that he has to protect the people...

and kdj tells him good job. his sponsor's power spreads through his body, and he obtains a new stigma. sacrificial will.