TCF X ORV - The Rise of Caleism in Another World

CHAPTER 22 - First Day of the Third Scenario

    At the last minute, Yoo Jonghyuk’s eyes seemed to move.

「 I told you that you would die. 」

    The waves of monsters headed towards me. Now there were no more green zones remaining.

“I won’t die.”

    I ignored the monsters and put a hand in my pocket. In fact, I really didn’t want to use this. I couldn’t be assured that there would be no aftereffects. Now I had to believe in the Fourth Wall.

「 That…? 」

    Yoo Jonghyuk’s eyes shook with surprise. This bastard, did he find out? Well, I wouldn’t have known this method without him.

    I looked down at the white stone shining in the palm of my hand.

[Specter’s Stone.]

    It was an item I gained by hunting specters on the way to Chungmuro.

    Hundreds of ground rats started biting at my body.

    I was bleeding from minor wounds and the shoulders struck by the grolls’ horns were red with blood. As the durability of my body rapidly diminished, I put the stone into my mouth.

    Then something like water vapor started to emerge from my mouth. The water vapor formed a fog that covered me.

[The Welcome Prison is activated.]

   The ground rats and grolls stopped attacking me at once.

    Everything around me started to distort. The platform, Yoo Jonghyuk and Lee Gilyoung calling out to me.
I became a ‘ghost.’

*****
「 Dokja. 」

    I noticed as soon as I heard my mother’s voice. This was a dream.

    I tried not to get caught up in it but it wasn’t easy this time. The floor sank like a quagmire and swallowed me.

[Due to excessive immersion, the influence of Fourth Wall has temporarily weakened.]

   Scenes started to weave in front of me, no matter what I wanted.

    A living room covered with blood. The cold body of a man. The back of a woman looking down at the body. No. This memory was difficult to remember. I couldn’t remember it.

    I shook my head furiously and the scene in front of me scattered. This damn trauma…

    It was a memory I didn’t want to see.

    This was why I was reluctant to eat the Specter’s Stone. The Specter’s Stone temporarily made the user a ‘ghost’ and turned them invisible to monsters. But it has a side effect of causing the user’s trauma to peak.

    That’s why I didn’t give it to the other party members. If it had been used by someone other than myself, they might’ve turned into a madman.
·····.

    I had to endure, even if my head was hurting like crazy.

    Certainly, the Fourth Wall was a scam. The skill would even be able to eat away at this stone. I wouldn’t see this effect even with the superior ‘Mental Barrier.’ Where was it? If my guess was correct, this skill…

「 Yoo Jonghyuk? Are you Yoo Jonghyuk? 」

   I thought a trauma had started again but it wasn’t my voice. It wasn’t a voice created by my memories. I looked back and saw a strange woman.

「 …You aren’t Yoo Jonghyuk. I think you are Korean but who are you? 」

    A dazzling blonde foreigner. She was a little girl with a short height. The girl looked at me for a long time with an incomprehensible expression.