Original Chapters (Manhwa): ???~???
21: the Nameless, Binna (3)
Alt. Title: The Tragic Beau
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[The Sub Scenario has been updated.]
[Sub Scenario - Stop the Catastrophe]
Category: Sub
Difficulty: S-
Clear Conditions: The Catastrophe of Questions has been eliminated from the Five Catastrophes. The Nameless Catastrophe, the Belle, has started to awaken. Stop the Nameless Catastrophe from wreaking havoc.
Time Limit: 4 hours
Reward: 30 000 coins
Penalty For Failure: The destruction of the Seoul District will happen sooner.
*The Nameless Catastrophe's stats have been lowered due to the failure of calibrating her stats into numerical value.
Kim Dokja picked up Junghyuk by the arm and pulled the protagonist away from the unexpected situation happening in front of them. Binna, that feisty little girl, had fallen deathly quiet, kneeling beside her brother's... body. The reader couldn't bear to say the word corpse, because the status window that showed up rendered him speechless.
[The skill, Regeneration, fails to activate.]
[The incarnation, Ahn Eun-Byeol, is in suspended animation. Time Remaining: 12 hours.]
Was his sunbae really not a protagonist?!
His sunbae's circumstances were even more unbelievable than Yoo Junghyuk. Junghyuk still experienced death but his sunbae was unkillable. First, his skill, Regeneration, could bring him back to full health as long as he still had a single breath left. Any limbs that were severed would grow back, fully functioning and healthy.
And this time, even though Antinus' poisonous claws pierced right through his sunbae's chest, definitely destroying his heart in the process, yet his sunbae was only in suspended animation instead of dying?!
Granted, Dokja was happy that his sunbae was alive but this situation was simply abnormal. It made him question yet again; who exactly was Ahn Eun-Byeol? What role does he play in TWSA?
A relentless pressure appeared out of nowhere, forcing everyone in the vicinity to kneel down. Those who couldn't handle this pressure fell flat on the ground, coughing up blood. It was no mystery where this force came from.
It was Ahn Binna doing all this.
"I've searched for a very long time," the silent Binna slowly shifted her gaze from her brother's body, towards Antinus who was already half dead after being thrown away. "So, so long that I can't count how many years have passed. I've sacrificed so many lives, and all my life, just to find him again. But you?"
A chill crawled down their spine. Just like her brother, Binna's eyes had turned red; a shade of red that would haunt you even in your dreams. "Who gave you the courage to touch him? A species of little value, who couldn't even leave your name across the universe. Parasite Queen Antinus, you have crossed the line."
"Ha," Antinus coughed. "Isn't it painful... to lose your family? How did you think I felt when I lost mine?! This is your karma! This is your own fault, Nameless! Don't blame me, blame yourself for being ruthless!" Antinus laughed, finally getting her revenge. Even if she died now, she didn't have any regrets.
All of a sudden, her laughter came to an abrupt halt as Antinus began expanding, as if she were a balloon. She got bigger and bigger... and exploded.
Blood splattered all around. Some people felt queasy, others threw up, while Kim Dokja felt his blood run cold.
Yoo Junghyuk:
She's dangerous.
Kim Dokja:
No shit, Sherlock.
It looks like Binna can't distinguish friends from foes now.
"Holy shit, I knew this was going to happen." Kim Dokja, who was still in a state of worry, perked up when he heard Han Sooyoung cursing beside him.
Then, it hit him.
All this time, Han Sooyoung had been friendly with Binna. From the conversations he overheard between them, Sooyoung knew what kind of person Binna was, and what her fate had been in the novel. However, from Dokja's knowledge, his sunbae and Binna weren't even characters in TWSA, so how come Sooyoung knew about them?
Urgent, Dokja pulled Sooyoung by the shoulder, startling the writer, and asked in a low voice, "Hey, Sooyoung, was Binna really in the novel?"
"Duh?" Sooyoung shot him a look that said Did you skip a few chapters? "Although that brat was only mentioned for a few chapters, it left quite an impression on me. She basically destroyed an entire district of Seoul while in the process of saving people. She died from over-exhaustion and the people she saved gave her a funeral."
Kim Dokja listened carefully but still couldn't understand. "What chapters were these?"
"Huh? That, what the hell," Han Sooyoung suddenly frowned. "I don't remember."
Hearing this, Dokja glanced at the siblings' direction. Binna has yet to make a move after killing Antinus. She hugged her brother's body, not saying a single word, her attention focused entirely on his sunbae.
From the information he had, his sunbae and Binna were basically anomalies in TWSA. What Han Sooyoung read, Dokja also knew. Hell, he even had the novel on his phone but it didn't mention the siblings at all.
At this point in time, Dokja decided that their roles were no longer something he should pay attention to. He just needed to know the sunbae he had always known and will come to know in the future.
His Eun-Byeol sunbae.
"We only need to stop Binna from wrecking havoc," Kim Dokja finally broke the silence encompassing their group. "We... don't have to kill her."
"Stop fooling yourself," Yoo Junghyuk interjected. "Ahn Binna is already the Catastrophe. Even if she doesn't awaken now, she will awaken at the start of the Main Scenario."
"What should we do," Sangah clasped her hands together. "Binna is someone very important to sunbae. When he finds out what happened, he..."
"Obviously, he's the one who's gonna destroy the entirety of Seoul." Sooyoung said the words that Sangah refused to believe. "So, should we kill both of them?"
In an instant, Sooyoung received three different intensity of glares. Her palms grew sweaty under their stares. "Okay, okay, I was just kidding. We can't kill both of them but we can die?" She couldn't help but say the last sentence in sarcasm. Sure, don't kill the people who might kill them in the near future.
[The constellation, Love Me Till Death, says she's willing to give you a useless yet useful stigma if you help the incarnation, Ahn Eun-Byeol.]
Everyone had been in the middle of brainstorming while Binna has yet to make a move. Though, the gravity gradually became heavier with each passing minute.
Amidst this, Kim Dokja noticed the status window that appeared right in front of him, causing him to grow silent. Everyone noticed this and glanced at the reader.
"Dokja?"
"I can wake him up."
"What?"
"I can wake sunbae up but it might take a while."
Junghyuk eyed Dokja with a curious look.
Yoo Junghyuk:
What do you mean?
Kim Dokja took a deep breath. His earlier hopelessness was gone, replaced with a determined light. "But you guys have to get Binna away. No matter what, she can't disturb us. If I get disrupted, I have to start all over again and we can't afford to waste time."
...
[Water has memories.]
[Find him, the one who has drowned and got lost in the past.]
[Only when he resurfaces would he come back and stop the Nameless Catastrophe, The Belle.]
[A new Hidden Scenario has arrived!]
[Hidden Scenario - The Tragic Beau]
Category: Hidden
Difficulty: A+
Clear Conditions: Find the incarnation, Ahn Eun-Byeol, and convince him to leave the past.
Time Limit: 4 days
Reward: 10 000 coins
Penalty For Failure: The incarnation, Ahn Eun-Byeol, will be in suspended animation until the end of the Sixth Main Scenario.
*The prolonged suspended animation will be detrimental to the incarnation's mental health.
*Time in this scenario has a ratio of 1 day:1 hour to the world outside.
...
Kim Dokja gasped.
The area he found himself in appeared to be a laboratory. Many flasks and beakers containing questionable liquids filled the countertop at the center of the room. A bunsen burner was lit up, heating a strange liquid. Dokja tried to move but something seemed... weird.
He tried again.
And managed to stand on all fours.
All fours.
... what the fuck?
The reader glanced at his hand... paw, and froze in shock.
No, no, he was not a cat.
He was no dog either.
Dokja seemed to be... a rodent.
"... squeak?!" What the hell?!
...
Sooyoung and Sangah led Binna away with much difficulty, even leaving behind quite a mess in the process. This left Junghyuk to watch over Dokja and Eun-Byeol, who were inside a bubble.
Apparently, one of the constellations that liked Eun-Byeol very much offered Dokja a stigma that only works on people who she gave Only Ruler Of Vanduo to. And the person who happened to have this stigma was none other than Eun-Byeol.
What Dokja received was a complementary stigma that aids the Ruler of Vanduo in times of need, especially if the 'ruler' was under a mental attack. Eun-Byeol's current condition was somewhat similar so the constellation, hurt that her favorite incarnation was in pain, offered her help.
Now, Junghyuk stayed behind to protect them, just in case someone else discovered Dokja and Eun-Byeol and interrupted the process of saving the beau. The regressor sighed, hugging his sword close to him.
He wanted to save Eun-Byeol, too...
...
For the past few minutes, Dokja practiced walking on all fours. Though he stumbled the first few tries, he even managed to learn how to run without rolling like a ball.
Surprisingly, he wasn't a white mouse but a hamster.
Dokja just managed to learn how to move around when the door to the lab creaked open. The light from outside obscured the figure that entered, making Dokja wonder who it could be. Once the door closed, the figure became visible at last.
It was Eun-Byeol.
A young Eun-Byeol at that.
Because from where he was, Dokja noticed his sunbae wearing a middle school uniform.
A loud crash echoed in the lab, coming from the young Eun-Byeol throwing his bag on the floor. His eyebrows furrow in frustration. This young Eun-Byeol never seemed to smile because the moment he entered and grabbed a lab coat, his lips were set into a thin frown.
Dokja the Hamster hid behind a stack of books, watching Eun-Byeol mix unknown liquids one after another in deep concentration. Dokja's train of thoughts came to an abrupt halt when he witnessed the young Eun-Byeol suddenly drink the final solution he had been making this whole time.
Stunned, Dokja rushed out behind the stack of books, making his presence known, and waved his paws in the air to reprimand the young Eun-Byeol.
"Squeak! Squeak squeak! Squeak squeak squeak?!" Sunbae! You shouldn't be drinking that! What exactly are you thinking by doing that?!
The young Ahn Eun-Byeol, who had just finished drinking the solution, almost dropped the beaker in his hand when a few random squeaks filled the lab. A hand rested over his chest as he searched for the source of that sound.
There, on the countertop where he left a pile of already read books, was a little white hamster waving its little paws in the air. He didn't know whether he had gotten crazier or it was a side effect of the solution just now but, Eun-Byeol felt like the hamster appeared to be scolding him?
Curious, he approached the countertop and bent his knees until he was eye-to-eye with the hamster. He was sure that he had cleaned this place up well and that nothing but him should be occupying the lab. Besides, this place was filled with toxic and non-toxic solutions.
A little hamster like this wouldn't have survived at all.
"What's a little thing like you doing here?"
Pinching the skin on its back, Eun-Byeol lifted the hamster who kept struggling in the air. "Hmm." The more he observed the hamster, the more Eun-Byeol sensed something amiss. Its beady black eyes seemed to shine with a certain level of intelligence that an organism of its kind shouldn't possess.
The notion of dissecting it to research how its brain works came to mind but Eun-Byeol shooed that idea away. He already decided to stop and forget those times, the only reason he came back to the lab was to release his frustration.
Not to make another unethical experiment.
The hamster must have grown tired because it stopped struggling; instead, it hung limply in the air, as if it accepted its unavoidable fate. The corner of Eun-Byeol's lips twitched, lips almost breaking into a smile, but his gloomy mood returned, as if his brief happiness didn't appear at all.
"..." Eun-Byeol now wondered what he should do with it. "... should I feed you to the stray cats outside?"
"... squeak squeak squeakkkkk!" No, don't! I'm Dokja, your hubae, I'm not a food!
A weird expression appeared on Eun-Byeol's face. Instead of holding the hamster by the skin, he made it rest on his palm. The moment it made itself comfortable, it immediately clutched into his finger and squeaked nonstop. Its chubby cheeks kept wiggling, and Eun-Byeol couldn't resist the urge to poke them.
It instantly turned quiet.
"..." the corner of his eye twitched, lips trembling as a smile threatened to break out. The hamster had turned wide-eyed, as if it couldn't believe that he would do that, and looked at him in disbelief. At this time, the young Eun-Byeol no longer had gloom in his eyes.
Eun-Byeol broke into a hysterical fit of laughter.
"Pfft— what the hell," his cheeks turned somewhat rogue as he laughed. "You're not an ordinary hamster, are you? You seem to understand me on a human level. Don't tell me you're a human turned hamster, noh? That's just... so unscientific. Pretty bizarre if you ask me. Or perhaps it's the drug's work?"
"Squeak? Squeaaaaak?!" Drugs? What do you mean drugs?!
The hamster began another series of squeaks, as if reprimanding him. Eun-Byeol listened with a silly smile, not bothering to stop the little hamster. Instead, he walked around, grabbed a clean evaporating dish, and filled it up with drinkable water. He placed it on a table situated at the corner of the lab while he took a seat on the lone chair beside it.
He lowered his hand on the table and let the hamster get off. The hamster's squeaking gradually got silent and it turned around to drink water. Eun-Byeol's eyes glistened in amusement. Letting himself succumb to his desires, he reached out and... poked it in the butt.
It kept wiggling in the air, as if teasing him to poke it, so that's what Eun-Byeol did.
This caused the hamster to go on another squeaking fest.
How cute, Eun-Byeol couldn't help but think.
On the other hand, Kim Dokja found that this young sunbae... seemed to be having fun teasing his hamster self around. Sure, he was a hamster now, but that was his butt! He got poked in the butt by his sunbae!
The embarrassment.
The horror.
How could his butt get poked?!
"Are you a girl or a boy?"
"... squeak." Just no, sunbae.
But in the end, he still got pushed around, forced to lie flat on the table and show his hamsterhood.
Kim Dokja just wanted to bury himself underground.
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[Hamster Dokja is mortified.]
The stigma Dokja received only works on incarnations with the stigma Only Ruler Of Vanduo. That's what LMTD meant by 'useless yet useful' cause it only works on Eun-Byeol and no one else.
When I think about it, the Ahn siblings are so funny.
If Byeol dies → Binna destroys Seoul.
If Binna dies → Byeol destroys Seoul.
Like brother, like sister.
Anyway, Dan Heng IL cause why not 😭 HIS CLOTHES ARE JUST UGH 💅💅💅