< Chapter 83 - The Guardians of the Holy Cross #2 >
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Uder rarely dreamed.
Especially after the transformation, the sleeping time itself became extremely short, so the frequency of dreaming, which was already low, decreased even more.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t dream at all.
It was a rare occurrence, but it happened, and Uder had a gut feeling.
He said that he was dreaming right now.
“indeed.”
It wasn’t anything like a lucid dream.
No matter how wise he was, it was impossible to think completely rationally in a dream, and even if it were possible, the laws of the world itself were different in dreams.
My dream was to see pigs flying in the sky and cats dancing and think, ‘Ah, that’s how it should be. It’s natural.’
Uder looked around.
Outboxer 009 – It was Kang Jin-ho’s room.
One’s past life.
The self before being reborn in the Pleiades and spending 17 years there.
The room was very spacious.
It was already big, but it felt that way even more because there was almost no furniture in the room.
One bed, one desk, one bookshelf, and one chest of drawers.
Uther looked at the top of the dresser.
Cordelia would have been surprised to see so many photographs decorating the top of the dresser.
Uder looked at the photo on the far left.
About twenty years ago.
Among the fierce-looking foreigners stood a young girl with fierce eyes but who was overall pretty.
Actually, Yuder didn’t like this photo very much.
Because the people around me were not proper colleagues.
Those people who thought of Yuder as just a piece of trash to be used up.
There wasn’t really a big reason why we ended up taking a picture together. It was just their whim.
Uder looked at the picture right next to him.
The boy with the fierce eyes had grown a little.
Except for the boy, they were all foreigners, but unlike before, there were several children in the photo who looked to be around the boy’s age.
Uder continued to look at the photos.
The boy grew up and became a young man.
And in the last photo, the young man was heavily intoxicated and was taking a shot.
“It’s retirement day.”
About 5 years before my reincarnation.
Uder didn’t like telling his story to those around him.
It’s not that I deny the past or that there weren’t any good things about it in the past, but I still don’t talk about it very often.
Even people in the same industry often did not believe Yuder’s story.
“Because I was too young.”
To experience such things.
Uder looked at himself from five years ago, dancing half-naked, and snickered.
If Yuder himself had been born in Korea and not a foreign country, and had lived a normal life, wouldn’t he be seen in that photo not at a retirement party, but at a college graduation party or a company outing… If he hadn’t gone to college, wouldn’t he be seen doing injections at a place like a company outing with coworkers?
‘Come to think of it, I haven’t taken a single photo since I retired.’
Yuder, who was caressing his chin again, turned his gaze towards the bookshelf.
The shelves were packed with books related to heroic biographies.
These days, it’s impossible for game guides to be published in paper form, so they were all old stuff.
‘At the time when Hero Chronicles 2 was first released, there were still strategy books available in paper form.’
That’s why even when Yuder started playing Hero Chronicles 2 late, he was able to obtain strategy guides from used bookstores.
‘Of course, even at the time of release, it was almost in its twilight.’
That’s why most of the books on the bookshelf about heroes’ biographies were books that covered the early days when the first or second volume was published.
Uther reached out to them.
After picking out a book and flipping through it, I looked back at my desk.
Like the rest of the room, the desk was simple.
Three large monitors, a tissue box, a blue keyboard, and a gaming mouse.
And a VR device and dedicated controllers that are only used during battle.
Uther didn’t sit at the desk like Cordelia.
Instead of turning on the computer, I looked at the guidebook again.
And I thought.
Because it was a dream, I naturally thought about things I tried hard not to think about in reality.
“It’s strange.”
I wasn’t talking about being reincarnated in the world of Hero Chronicles 2.
This is because if reincarnation itself is denied, the development of logic itself would be impossible in the first place.
“I’ve thought about it for a long time. It’s too detailed.”
Yuder, who had spoken out loud, turned the pages of the strategy book again.
Yellow Storm – Uder was so obsessed with the story of the heroes that he was obsessed with destroying Cordelia.
That’s why I could say it with certainty.
“It’s strange.”
The setting of the hero story was overly detailed.
Ancient Dwarvish script.
The language of the high elves.
Magic circles that are so complex that you might wonder if they are real magic circles.
Of course, Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, created several languages for The Lord of the Rings, so there is no reason why the production team of Heroes’ Biographies cannot do something similar, but it is still unavoidable to feel a sense of discomfort.
“But there’s something even stranger.”
Uder spoke again in a loud voice.
As if he were telling it to himself.
“I lost my memory.”
Uther himself was reborn in the Pleiades as Uther Bayer.
And then one day when I was 17, I woke up to memories of my past life – memories of Kang Jin-ho.
But there was one strange thing here.
I wasn’t talking about the fact that I had awakened my memories after reincarnation.
“I don’t remember.”
After the rankings are announced each month.
Immediately after teasing Cordelia and disconnecting.
There was no memory after that.
At that point, the memories of Outboxer 009 Kang Jin-ho that Yuder could remember were cut off.
“Why.”
For what reason.
There is a reason for everything that happens in this world.
So it was clear that there had to be some cause for the memory lapse.
What could it be?
Is it just a coincidence?
It’s impossible to remember everything from your past life, so you can only recall a part of it, but why did it end at that exact moment?
“Since it’s a reincarnation, I can’t completely deny the possibility. But there are too many coincidences to believe.”
Cordelia also had no memories of what happened after ending the game.
That’s why Uder came up with two hypotheses.
“One, it is not necessary.”
No memories are needed after that point.
That’s all the memories needed to prevent the coming destruction in the Pleiades. No further memories are needed.
“Two, something happened at that point.”
Both Uther and Cordelia died almost simultaneously – in an accident that left them unable to even properly recognize their deaths.
Uder focused on the first case.
It is not necessary.
Consider the need.
So who determines the need?
For the first hypothesis to be valid, another person with intention was needed.
The other who reincarnated Uther and Cordelia into the Pleiades.
“Stop here for now.”
Instead of digging deeper, Yuder turned his attention to another question.
Either way, it was strange, but if you were to compare the two, Yuder thought the latter – which he was about to talk about – was stranger than the former.
“It’s a matter of time.”
Uther and Cordelia remembered playing Heroes Chronicles 1 and 2, as well as Heroes Chronicles 3.
And this world basically followed the story of the Heroes Chronicles series, as had already been confirmed dozens of times.
An attempt by the Devil’s Hand to kidnap the children of the twelve northern families.
The evil eye that was corrupting the northern barbarians.
A national hero who betrayed the royal family as was his destiny.
And in the near future, the black dragon Malekith will awaken and overthrow the South.
What on earth happened?
Does this mean that the Heroes Chronicles series is a book of prophecy?
If that were not the case, then the Heroes series would not be about what would happen in the Pleiades, but would instead be a record of what has already happened.
“The past and the future are not connected.”
Because it was a result of going against the flow of time.
If time flowed in one direction, it would be impossible for it to be a different world or a different world.
“Is this a time slip?”
In the process of crossing the wall of the world, did we come to the past of the Pleiades, not the same modern times?
“If we assume that Kang Jin-ho’s timeline and Yuder’s timeline are rivers that flow parallel to each other.”
If you jumped over not horizontally but diagonally, and even backwards.
So if that’s how you came to the past.
“I lack knowledge.”
Cordelia might have been disappointed to hear this, but the Uther Wiki didn’t really contain all the knowledge in the world.
Yuder had virtually no knowledge of the physics of time.
So I didn’t dig any deeper this time either.
Having spent much of his life rolling around on the battlefield, Uder tended to focus on the immediate situation at hand.
It was a big picture and a slogan, so I had to get through today to draw it.
Uder put the strategy book back on the bookshelf.
And this time, instead of sitting at the desk, I turned toward the door.
Because I felt a presence outside the door.
‘Who is it?’
It was a house where Yuder lived alone.
Uder took out the pistol he habitually kept hidden in a drawer and carefully opened the door.
There was no one in the living room, which contained only a large TV and a sofa, but there was a humming sound coming from the kitchen.
And Uder blinked with a blank expression.
“Cordelia?”
“Ramen~ Ramen~ Delicious ramen~”
Cordelia was boiling ramen while wiggling her butt.
She was wearing an apron while boiling a bowl of ramen, so she turned around and smiled bashfully.
“Didn’t I tell you that I’m really good at making ramen?”
Now that I think about it, this was a dream.
Since it was a dream, it wouldn’t have been strange if Cordelia had come out and cooked ramen for me.
So, Uther sat quietly at the table and watched Cordelia boil ramen.
As I watched Cordelia’s back as she stood in front of the induction stove and cooked, my heart started pounding without me knowing it.
“That’s all. But there’s something I have to do before I eat the ramen.”
Cordelia, who had been tapping the chopsticks she had been using while boiling the ramen, turned around and approached Yuder.
He caressed Yuder’s cheek and brought his face closer.
And then she whispered with a charming smile.
“Because this is a dirty dream.”
“uh?”
“It was a dirty dream. A dirty. dream.”
Cordelia gently bit Uther’s ear and then blew hot breath into it.
Yuder trembled for a moment because his weak point had been hit, but Yuder kissed her cheek as if she found it cute, then sat on her thigh and smiled.
“Hey, Yuder, the ramen will be puffy, right? I’ll make it puffy for you, right?”
Cordelia laughed again and hugged Uther’s neck, bringing her face closer.
And that’s it.
It didn’t continue any longer.
After all, dreams are meant to end at the best part.
“Fuck.”
“Yuderya?”
“No, it just happened to me.”
Uther smiled awkwardly at Cordelia, who tilted her head, and instead of forcing herself to recall her dream, she looked back at reality.
Uther and Cordelia had arrived in Saint Croot.
A bustling trading city.
Because of the Forest of Eternity, which is almost the size of a small country and sits between the South and the Center, southerners had to choose one of two routes to get to the Center.
One was through the trading city of Zephyr, located to the west of the south, and the other was through the trading city of Saint-Crout, right in front of them.
“Yuder, Yuuder. What are you going to eat for lunch? Are you going to eat here and then leave?”
Cordelia was very excited, perhaps because it had been a long time since she had been in a bustling city.
It seemed like he was busy thinking about all the things he wanted to eat.
“I’m going to eat something sweet. Something sweet. Something really sweet.”
Cordelia, who was stamping her feet just imagining it, sniffed as if trying to track down a scent.
“Over there!”
I can smell something sweet from over there!
Truly a beast.
Wild girl.
But unfortunately, Uther had no choice but to hold onto Cordelia’s hand, who seemed ready to run away at any moment.
“Huh? You want me to escort you?”
“No, that’s not it… I think we should postpone it a bit.”
Cordelia blinked at Uther’s words, but only for a moment.
Because I noticed things that I had not noticed before because I was so focused on the sweet stuff.
“What? Did you contact me in advance?”
“Uh, roughly.”
To be exact, it was when Cordelia was wandering around in dreamland.
Uther sent a signal in the manner he had learned from the Holy Cross Guardians he had encountered near Frost Anvil.
A simple join signal.
And the results were right before our eyes.
“The Order of the Holy Cross greets Count August Bayer and Count August Chase.”
Nine monks wearing the black and white robes characteristic of the Order of the Holy Cross.
Cordelia slumped her shoulders at the sight of them confidently appearing and paying their respects, and Uder tried hard to suppress his laughter before welcoming the Holy Cross Guardians.
“Judah August Bayer meets the Defenders of the Holy Cross.”
“Cordelia August Chase meets the Holy Cross Defenders.”
Cordelia also tried to hide her disappointment and bowed, and the young man who had just bowed at the front smiled brightly and spoke.
“I am Manuel, a member of the Order of the Holy Cross. I am very happy to meet you, two heroes of the Order. I will guide you to the Order.”
As I looked, not only Manuel but also the members lined up behind him were looking at me with very friendly eyes.
“Thank you for your kindness.”
“What? It’s something that has to be done.”
Manuel, who was smiling brightly again, began to guide us without hiding his excitement.
< Chapter 83 - The Guardians of the Holy Cross #2 > End
