ALL NOVEL A nostalgic sight appeared.
No, a sight I never wanted to see again appeared.
The pale moonlight shining down.
An unidentifiable chill that could not be shaken off.
Darkness with an unwavering will, where nothing ahead could be seen.
It was the hellish Seoul Forest from my memories.
***
It's cold.
Even though I shouldn't be able to feel the cold, it was too cold.
In the dark forest in the middle of the night, I was getting drenched by the drizzling rain.
Even though it was raining, an unidentifiable full moon could be seen in the sky above.
Even though I had no lungs, I felt short of breath.
I endlessly dug at the ground with my bare hands.
My soft gray skin was torn and crushed from picking up rocks and digging into the earth.
My hands were covered in wounds.
Yellow flames flowed out like blood from the wounds on my hands.
I wished for an Object's life, but I didn't wish for a life like this...
Ever since I opened my eyes in the forest, I always felt like I was lingering near death.
Even the bare feet I was standing on were covered in wounds.
My soft soles were easily torn and pierced in the forest.
Even ordinary branches easily pierced through the soles of my feet.
I open my mouth.
Like when I was human, I opened my mouth and shouted from the stuffiness, but no sound came out.
If I could have let out a refreshing scream, my mood might have lifted a bit...
I kept digging into the ground, but the end was nowhere in sight.
I just kept digging down to where the mole was sleeping, hoping to kill it in the light of the full moon.
To survive in this cruel forest.
I kept digging deeper into the ground.
My hands and feet, softer than a human's, became more and more tattered as I dug into the hard ground.
My senses, more sensitive than a human's, made me thrash about from even the slightest wound on my skin. Unable to cry out loud like a human.
The bone-chilling cold didn't go away.
This dark night seemed like it would never end.
No matter how much I dug into the ground where the moles slept, the end was nowhere in sight.
***
While continuing to dig into the ground, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
What am I even doing right now?
This painful sight was something I had already experienced before.
It was from after I had unexpectedly fallen into the forest, before going to the Sehee Research Institute.
It was when I killed any Objects I came across to survive.
The me now is supposed to be enjoying a happy Research Institute life...
What I'm seeing now is the memory of that day when I kept digging into the ground to kill the sleeping moles.
The memory of that time when I chased after moles for days on end, digging into the ground.
If I remember correctly, the memory of this day was one of triumph.
It was the night when I finally reaped the fruits of my long efforts to kill the moles.
The night when the full moon shone down, and its light could be seen even through the rain.
The memory of that day when I dug into the sleeping moles' den and shone the moonlight onto the moles.
The moment when the moles turned to ash under the moonlight, and I obtained the ghostification I had so desperately wanted.
It was difficult, but since it was the moment of success, I remembered it clearly.
If the genre of Seoul Forest before obtaining ghostification was an unstoppable horror thriller, then Seoul Forest after obtaining it was a blockbuster where the protagonist had a chance of winning.
As I realized that, the world began to distort.
Ah, it was a dream.
I could feel the pulse of the golden tree flowing beneath this fake Seoul Forest.
As the world shattered, I woke up from my sleep.
***
When I woke up, what I saw in front of me was a golden Reaper's fist.
Thud thud.
A worried-looking golden Reaper was punching my cheek.
Is it trying to wake me up right now?
The golden Reaper, who had been continuously punching without rest, stopped its fists and clung to my cheek when it noticed I had opened my eyes.
I got up and looked around the golden tree, but nothing had changed.
Ah, I guess it doesn't count as me waking up if it's not a real human, huh?
It seems the condition is only met when a real human wakes up.
A considerable amount of time had passed while I was briefly asleep.
If a day passes like this, it'll be troublesome...
The time was approaching when the one-day time limit golden Reaper would disappear.
Even if I recreated the golden Reaper, I couldn't be sure it would behave exactly the same as this one.
It was difficult to predict what it might be thinking, it doesn't understand speech, and I can't control it at will, so I couldn't carelessly make assumptions.
In case the destruction condition changed, I placed my hand on the golden tree again and checked the destruction condition.
[A human must overcome the tree's nightmare.]
It's still the same.
But there was a change.
Although the destruction condition did not change, I felt something different from the pulse flowing through the tree.
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Now I had a feeling that I could invade someone else's dream.
I felt like I could ride the pulse flowing through the tree and enter someone else's dream.
Was this a phenomenon that appeared because I had overcome the tree's nightmare once?
I gently stroked the golden Reaper clinging to my cheek.
It was a gesture to not worry even if I collapsed again.
After patting the golden Reaper's head, I entrusted my body once more to the pulse of the tree.
Zzz
***
Shabby buildings created with impoverished imagination.
A shoddy description of an outskirt city that seemed unfinished.
Other than the man running around with an urgent expression, nothing else was properly realized.
This place must be the dream of that man running around.
The man, gripped by fear, was mindlessly fleeing.
He was fleeing from the monster chasing while destroying the city.
"Kwaaang!"
With a thunderous roar, a building collapsed....
A giant gray Reaper.
No, what does that man think I am?
The giant gray Reaper's appearance was slightly different from mine, which annoyed me even more.
The man who had been diligently fleeing was turned to ashes and died after being hit by the flames the giant gray Reaper spewed from its mouth.
And this shabby world began to rewind.
The collapsed buildings returned to their original places, and the burnt vehicles and trees reappeared.
Finally, when the fallen man on the asphalt appeared from thin air, time in this world began to flow again.
"Aahh! Save me!"
The man screamed when he saw the silhouette of the giant gray Reaper beyond the buildings.
And the man began to flee from the giant gray Reaper.
The giant gray Reaper spewed fire while chasing the man, and the man inevitably got trampled or burned to death.
So, what should I do to help this man overcome this dream?
Should I help him survive?
First, I made a plan to run together with him and help him survive.
As the man drenched in cold sweat appeared from thin air, I ran up to him and waved my hand.
But the man's reaction was different from what I expected.
"Ugh, G... Gray Reaper!"
But when the man saw me, he grabbed his heart and fell to the ground.
When I went over, the man had turned pale blue and was already dead.
Another heart attack?
Why do people always stop breathing just from seeing me?
As the man's heart stopped, the city in the dream began to rewind again.
This Object, it's not as easy as I thought....
***
Boing boing.
The golden Reaper was jumping and playing on the belly of the sleeping gray Reaper.
The golden Reaper, who had been merrily jumping around, suddenly looked up at the sky.
Then, with a regretful expression, it looked back at the gray Reaper and started walking somewhere with a determined look.
It was the second golden wave.
The place the golden Reapers swarmed to was the outskirts of the exhibition hall.
It was where the Objects had fled to avoid the golden Reapers.
The golden Reapers and the Objects that hostile towards humans faced each other.
The expressions of the golden Reapers were serious, as if they were about to wage war.
The Objects also seemed to sense the ominous atmosphere from the golden Reapers, creating a tense mood.
Without anyone giving a signal, they simultaneously charged at each other.
The first to disappear were the Objects without physical immunity.
They were swept away by the golden Reapers' wave and vanished first.
The next ones to disappear were the Objects without regenerative abilities.
They had physical immunity, but their destruction conditions were no different from ordinary objects, machines, or living beings.
The golden Reapers willingly sacrificed their bodies to destroy the physically immune Objects.
Of course, the much smaller golden Reapers met their demise the moment they collided.
Countless golden Reapers disappeared, becoming mere sparks.
Even after the physically immune Objects vanished, only a handful of Objects hostile towards humans remained.
Objects that could not be killed without special means.
Objects that the golden Reapers, lacking the 'eyes', could not kill.
Only those Objects remained.
Instead, the golden Reapers had 'flame' like the gray Reaper.
A very small amount, but 'flame' that fueled the 'eyes'.
The remaining golden Reapers charged at them all at once.
The Objects that got overlapped lost volume equal to the size of the golden Reapers.
Damage that did not fulfill the conditions of death would naturally heal.
But at the spot where a golden Reaper died, a tiny spark of flame remained.
A very small golden flame.
That flame, while unable to kill them, prevented their recovery.
Literally, the golden Reapers fought by burning their own bodies.
Until all hostile Objects became immobilized, and until every last golden Reaper vanished into sparks...
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T/N: I'm having a bit of a headache, so I don't know if I will be posting more chapters today. I'm sorry.