The Main Characters That Only I Know

Chapter 358:

“What are you going to do then?”

“We have to find out who the traitor is inside.”

Yu-hyun answered casually. His relaxed attitude made the innkeeper doubt if there was really a traitor among them.

This guy, he didn’t just blurt out whatever came to his mind, did he?

As if he read his thoughts, Yu-hyun chuckled and got up from his seat.

“I have a rough idea of where the bastard is hiding, so let’s get moving right away. We have to cross the Nasa Gate as soon as possible.”

His voice had a strange charisma that made it hard to resist. The innkeeper was at a loss of what to do as he watched Yu-hyun’s behavior.

Kate sighed and dragged him by the hand.

“What are you doing? Hurry up.”

“He knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t say anything rash. Probably.”

“Probably?”

“We have to try something anyway, since we don’t have any other options. Let’s gather all the liberation army members in the city.”

“Oh, if you’re sending them, tell them to come to the square.”

Yu-hyun nodded at Kate’s words and the innkeeper still looked clueless.

“If they all gather in the square, they’ll be noticed by the legion…”

“I’ll draw the legion’s attention. You two just focus on gathering the people.”

“You’ll draw their attention? How?”

“What do you think?”

The innkeeper was speechless at Yu-hyun’s smile.

No way, he’s not thinking of doing that, is he? He prayed with an anxious heart that it wouldn’t happen.

And then, exactly 10 minutes later.

Yu-hyun carried out his words.

The innkeeper realized that his worst fear had come true.

***

Yu-hyun stood in the center of the foggy square and looked up at the gallows.

The corpses hanging from their necks swayed weakly in the occasional wind. Yu-hyun raised a black energy on his hand.

He had to draw everyone’s attention, so he decided to start with a flashy move.

Boom!

The energy that shot out from his fingertips blew up the gallows. The bodies that had been rotting for a long time also turned into dust and disappeared. He couldn’t cremate them, so this was the least he could do to send them off.

“What the hell is going on!”

“It’s the square! A rebel bastard showed up in the square!”

Soldiers clad in black armor gathered in the square in an orderly manner.

Yu-hyun remained still in the middle of the square until they surrounded him.

“What is this? Just one guy?”

“Why is he dressed like that? Is he crazy?”

The legion soldiers looked at Yu-hyun’s outfit with curiosity and disdain as they surrounded the square tightly. The citizens who were walking around the square ran away in fright, and soon only Yu-hyun and hundreds of soldiers were left inside the square.

Yu-hyun muttered as he looked around them.

“Are you all here?”

“Who are you!”

“Is that important right now?”

In this situation where they were facing each other, what did it matter who he was or what he wanted?

Did they think he would spare them if they knew his name? What a joke.

They were many in number, but they were all mediocre in skill. They must have used the legion’s power to kill, loot, and torment people.

“I’ll ask you one thing here. Raise your hand if you can proudly say that you didn’t kill any weak people by joining the legion.”

No one reacted to Yu-hyun’s words. Even if they wanted to hear him, there was no one who could raise their hand.

Of course. There was no one among the soldiers gathered here who didn’t smell of blood.

He was glad about that. At least he didn’t have to go through the process of sorting them out.

“Just finish it quickly.”

He didn’t need to wear a mask this time either.

***

“Oh my god.”

Kate, who had gathered her fellow liberation army members, muttered to herself as she saw the black pillar rising from the central square in the distance.

The same was true for the other liberation army compatriots who followed her.

In the city where everything was blurry and even the boundaries were vague, the black pillar that appeared through the fog was too clear.

“What the hell did you do?”

She had boasted that she would draw attention, but was this something she could do if she wanted to?

At this point, she would believe it if someone said that a malevolent Divine Spirit had descended on that spot.

But they knew. This place was a city that could be called the outermost edge of the mixed world, and the real ones were beyond the birth gate in the center of the mixed world.

The black pillar, the huge storm that rose to pierce this world, was the result of the man who had told them to gather their comrades.

And he did it alone.

“Goodness.”

“This is crazy.”

When they arrived at the scene, the liberation army was frozen in place and spat out curses.

The square was full of corpses of fallen soldiers. They were not gruesome, but they knew that they all died in agony.

Someone swallowed their saliva as they saw the man standing tall in the center.

“Have you all arrived?”

The man, Kang Yu-hyun, greeted them with a smile.

“Then let’s start catching the thief.”

His smile contained a power that could not be resisted. Kate and Jimmy, along with 50 liberation army compatriots, entered the square again where the fog was thick.

“You told us to gather, but why?”

A young man asked Yu-hyun boldly. The innkeeper widened his eyes and tried to stop him from doing something foolish, but Yu-hyun nodded his head and said it was okay.

“I’m looking for the lord of this city.”

“Looking for the lord, why do you gather us? It sounds like you’re saying that the lord is hiding among us.”

“You’re right.”

Yu-hyun agreed and answered, causing a commotion among the liberation army. Some showed a clear expression of displeasure.

He was strong and arrogant, and they didn’t like hearing that the lord they had been looking for for two years was hiding among them who had been together for that long.

“Well, I know how bad you must feel. But you can’t turn away from the truth.”

Yu-hyun didn’t want to waste time looking for the lord either.

He wanted to go to Heukrae Palace where Kang Hye-rim was staying as soon as possible across the birth gate.

“You’re causing such a fuss?”

“It won’t take long for reinforcements to come anyway. It’ll be over before then.”

“How?”

“There’s a way.”

Of course, the most certain way was to analyze their identities one by one through books, but he didn’t have enough time to go through more than 50 books.

Yu-hyun decided to choose another way. A way to check 50 people at once with certainty.

“Please look at this.”

Yu-hyun picked up something with one hand. The liberation army frowned as they saw it. What Yu-hyun held in his hand was a dead person’s head.

“What does this look like?”

“What do you mean? It’s a person’s head.”

“A head? That’s just a lump of flesh.”

“What’s wrong with your eyes? That’s just a cat corpse.”

Different answers came out in an instant. They were all looking at the same thing, but their results were different.

The stranger thing was that they didn’t feel anything wrong with their answers while saying that.

“Don’t you get it yet?”

Yu-hyun smirked and lifted what he held in his hand into the air.

“What I showed you was nothing but a lump I made by gathering my power.”

“Huh?”

“What did you say?”

“But you all thought of different things while looking at the same thing. Why do you think that is?”

No one could answer Yu-hyun’s question. They were still confused. As if they were intoxicated by the power of fog.

“Fog…?”

Yu-hyun smiled at Kate’s murmur.

“That’s right. It’s because of the strange fog that comes out of that Rashomon.”

“Because of the fog from Rashomon?”

“How is that possible?”

Voices of confusion echoed in the fog.

Yu-hyun spoke in a calm voice.

“Do you know what Rashomon is? Do you know why it became famous and got its name?”

There was no answer. No one knew. No one in this remote place remembered what could be called the remnants of the earth that had disappeared five years ago.

“Rashomon is a novel written by Akutagawa Ryunosuke in 1915. It’s a simple story of people stealing and being stolen from each other to survive. But Rashomon got its name after that, when director Kurosawa Akira made the movie .”

“Rashomon?”

“It’s the Chinese reading of Rashomon. And here, the content of Rashomon is combined with , another novel by the same author. In the movie Rashomon, people give conflicting testimonies and explain from different perspectives about the same incident. They saw the same thing, but they saw it differently.”

The term Rashomon effect, which means perceiving and interpreting the same phenomenon differently, originated from here.

That is to say, this foggy city in front of Rashomon was a space where such a Rashomon effect was constantly activated.

It was possible because this was a mixed world where every story became reality.

He examined everything as he entered the city. His eyes saw the truth, but Kate and Jimmy couldn’t. They called the garbage bags on the street corpses, and the people sitting hunched over beasts.

Yu-hyun realized the peculiarity of this city there.

“You saw the same thing in this fog, but you couldn’t recognize it properly and your opinions differed. But do you know what? When I asked you what this was a little while ago, you all gave different answers.”

They all nodded.

They listened to Yu-hyun’s words as if they were bewitched.

“But among them, there was one person who didn’t answer, as if he had noticed something and clenched his mouth shut. As if he didn’t know if he would give the right answer.”

Yu-hyun’s gaze turned to a man who was mixed in with the liberation army.

He was a young man with a plain appearance and blended in well with the surroundings.

He was so well camouflaged that it felt ‘strange’ when he noticed it.

Yu-hyun smiled as he saw the man’s eyes change.

His lips curled up, and his eyes bent like crescents.

The liberation army, including Kate, felt a chill as they saw his smile.

If they were not mistaken, Yu-hyun’s face shadowed as he smiled, and only his eyes and mouth were visible.

“I found you.”

“…!”

The young man who was hiding among the liberation army clenched his teeth and pulled something out of his pocket. The people around him were too slow to react to his swift movement.

And faster than him, Yu-hyun grabbed his wrist and subdued him.

“Too bad. You shouldn’t try to run away. So many people gathered here to find you.”

Yu-hyun used his inner power to suppress the whole body of the lord who was hiding among the liberation army.

The liberation army, who belatedly understood the situation, realized that there was a spy among them and were shocked.

He was not just a spy, but the lord they had been looking for for two years while searching through the city.

They had trouble finding him where he was hiding, but they never thought he would be so close.

They felt more disappointment than joy when they finally found the lord.

“What? There was a lord among us?”

“What on earth have we been doing for two years?”

Ignoring the people who muttered in disappointment, Yu-hyun stepped lightly on the lord’s neck.

“You had a pretty interesting hobby. You hid among the liberation army who were chasing you and played house. And you must have been laughing inside all along. The lord you’ve been looking for so hard is right here.”

“Who are you…”

The lord opened his trembling lips and asked.

“Who do you think?”

“Don’t play games…”

“That’s not important right now. You have the authority to open Rashomon, don’t you?”

The lord’s face turned pale. Flames rose in Yu-hyun’s eyes.

“Open it.”

“You want to go inside…? You don’t seem to know who’s in there…”

“The Black Thunder Lord must be there, along with her army and her elite soldiers.”

“And you still want to go?”

“It’s my choice.”

Yu-hyun said, making Youngju tremble.

“As soon as I open the Naseng Gate, they will move.”

“Who are they?”

“The Black Sword Corps. They are the elite force led by the Lord. They are all level 100. They will come to investigate this city when they find out that the Naseng Gate is open. And they will find out if I betrayed them, or if there are rebels inside the city. Then we will all die. They have no mercy.”

Yu-hyun had never heard of the Black Sword Corps before, but the rebels had.

“Wh-what? The Black Sword Corps?”

“Those crazy sword fiends are coming?”

Some of them looked terrified just by hearing their name, as if they felt a chill.

Yu-hyun realized from their reaction that the Black Sword Corps was a very dangerous group.

“I don’t care. Open it.”

“Are you serious?”

“Me.”

Yu-hyun glared at Youngju as if he wanted to devour him.

“Do you think I’m joking?”

“…Fine.”

Youngju sighed and closed his eyes.

Kugugugung!

Immediately after, the huge Naseng Gate started to open with a loud noise. Everyone looked at the gate with disbelief. They had no idea how much they had struggled to open that gate until now.

The way to the Black Thunder Palace, where the Black Thunder Lord resided, was open.

Youngju gave a cringing smile.

“H-hey, you opened it, so spare my life…”

“I’ll spare you.”

Yu-hyun grabbed Youngju by the collar and threw him into the gap between the rebels.

“I mean me.”

“H-hey!”

The rebels’ eyes turned to Youngju. He was the man who had tormented them for two years, pretending to be their ally and watching them from the closest place with a sneer.

Soon after, a man’s agonizing scream echoed in the square.

“…What are you going to do now?”

Kate approached Yu-hyun and asked. They had succeeded in opening the gate, but it was too noisy. And if the Black Sword Corps came, things would change. She had warned him that they were among the targets to avoid.

“Nothing changes.”

“What?”

“We can’t avoid them anyway. As long as we guard the entrance, we will inevitably clash with them.”

“Then…”

“Yeah. We break through.”

There was no hesitation in Yu-hyun’s voice.

***

The twenty members of the Black Sword Corps, who could be called the elite troops of the Black Thunder Lord, did not panic when the Naseng Gate suddenly opened. They positioned themselves at the entrance.

Their role was to eliminate any suspicious people near the Naseng Gate, or to find out if there were any rebels hiding in the city close to the Naseng Gate.

Their task did not change even when the gate suddenly opened.

“I don’t know what got into this lord here, but keep an eye on everything. You never know what those rebel bastards will do.”

“They won’t get past here anyway. At best, they will raid the city and siege it. Let’s go with ten people. Anyone’s sword got dull?”

“I can’t wait to taste some blood.”

The Black Sword Corps members were already excited about killing people. They were all sword fiends who were crazy about their blades. Of course, their swords never ran dry of blood.

The Black Sword Corps did not hurry. They knew they could not be challenged by the rebels’ level, so they moved leisurely.

Unless their leader came, the rebels would not dare to fight them, and when their leader came, then the army’s support troops would arrive.

Then someone pointed at the sky with their finger.

“Wait. Something is flying over there.”

“What?”

Everyone’s eyes turned to the city. A black object pierced through the thinning fog of the city and flew towards them in a parabola.

It was too fast to shoot down. The black object landed in the center of the Black Sword Corps.

Kwoong!

Yu-hyun, wearing Aporia’s mask, dusted off his clothes and straightened his knees.

“I don’t have much time, so tell me what you want quickly.”

He glanced at the Black Sword Corps once.

“Come at me.”