Conquest Complete, So Why Is the Affection Dropping? - Chapter 32
Merry Christmas to all my readers! To celebrate, I’m treating you to extra chapter updates. Please enjoy this special release of four bonus chapters! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
(Lurelia’s Christmas Bonus – Update 4/4 🎉)
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This world might be fake.
That’s a thought everyone has had at least once.
Especially those who believe in the existence of a ‘God’ who creates and maintains the world.
“Shin Joo……”
Hexion stared blankly at the spot where Shin Joo had vanished like mist.
When she existed, he thought this world was real.
It seems that was a misunderstanding. The world was clearly fake after all.
Not because it’s physically impossible for a person to suddenly vanish like mist before one’s eyes.
But because the mere disappearance of one person suddenly made the entire world appear colorless.
‘Not even colorless.’
Hexion turned his head to look out the window. Outside was covered in darkness. Since it was still night, perhaps it wasn’t so strange for it to be dark outside.
However.
“Aaaaah!”
“Save me!”
“The sky is falling!”
Screams could be heard from everywhere. Hexion slowly walked over and opened the window.
All the stars that had been twinkling in the ink-black sky had disappeared.
And that sky of pure darkness was splitting into small rectangular shapes, gradually devouring the world’s scenery like a predator consuming its prey.
Buildings crumbled one by one from the edge of vision. Black rectangles were erasing the buildings like three-dimensional space being compressed into two dimensions.
People could be seen rising into the air while screaming and writhing.
“Aaaah! No!”
“Mom, no! Mommy!”
The heads of struggling people, their limbs, and finally their torsos shattered into pieces.
Zeros and ones glowing green.
Coincidentally, the same color as Shin Joo’s eyes.
“Shin Joo is the savior of destruction.”
The world is rushing toward destruction.
The only savior preventing that destruction is Shin Joo, who carries God within her.
While the savior Shin Joo exists, the world will never be destroyed.
Conversely, this means that if Shin Joo disappears, there is no way to prevent the world’s destruction.
“D-Divine Master! Divine Master, are you here!”
The door burst open as someone rushed in. Knight Commander Hugo and High Priest Largo. The ones who had turned their backs on him first when Hexion was falsely accused.
The two who came to Shin Joo’s room with pale faces were shocked to find only Hexion standing there in casual attire, with no sign of Shin Joo.
“Hexion! Where is the Divine Master?”
“Surely… surely, you didn’t commit an impure act against the Divine Master…!”
Faces mixed with anxiety and fear. Suspicion and anger.
When he was falsely accused, seeing such expressions directed at him used to make him dejected. There were times he felt hurt by receiving such looks from those whose trust he wanted.
But now he felt nothing.
Because he knew their gazes held no value.
No, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that ‘they themselves’ held no meaning.
“An impure act……”
Hexion narrowed his eyes, recalling Shin Joo’s appearance before she vanished. Unlike their passionate moments in bed, she had suddenly pushed him away coldly and firmly.
She said something about the timing not being right. That this was the end.
“Yes. I committed an impure act.”
“What did you say!”
He didn’t know why Shin Joo had suddenly changed. However, if she suddenly thought to leave this place, it must have been because Hexion did something wrong.
Because he harbored improper desires.
‘Because I… begged her to stay with me.’
Not to return to Shin Joo’s world.
Not to return to her ‘reality.’
Because he wished for her to stay here forever, in this virtual world made of zeros and ones, with him.
She had grown tired of this fake world and returned to the real one.
“Due to my excessive greed, the Divine Master abandoned this world.”
“Y-You…!”
The moment the enraged High Priest Largo raised his hand toward Hexion, the priest’s fingers dissolved into green numbers.
“Eeeek! My hand!”
“Hexion! What have you done!”
Knight Commander Hugo shouted in great anger. However, Hexion felt nothing in response to his rage.
“This world was created by God.”
“Hexion!”
“No. Perhaps I should say it was created for God.”
A world created for just one person – Shin Joo. Since everything in the world exists only for Shin Joo, when she disappears, the world loses its value and vanishes.
Why hadn’t he realized it sooner?
If he had realized a little earlier that this world, all of them, were like daydream existences solely for Shin Joo’s brief amusement.
“Arghhhh!”
The Knight Commander’s left arm decomposed and flew away. His armor shattered, and when his chest and neck flew apart, no more sound could come from his gaping mouth.
Staring blankly at the two people dissolving before his eyes, Hexion suddenly noticed a tingling in his fingertips and looked down.
His fingers were decomposing into zeros and ones.
“So I’m fake too……”
Everything in this world was fake.
Even himself.
“Shin Joo.”
Hexion hurriedly turned toward the bed. He tried to grab Shin Joo’s torn clothes, but with both hands gone, he couldn’t.
“Ugh…!”
His body lost balance and fell to the floor when his feet crumbled. He tried to crawl to the bed, but by then his limbs and torso had become unable to maintain their form.
“Shin Joo.”
Lying on the floor, Hexion desperately rolled his eyes to look at the white priest’s robe.
“Shin Joo……”
Had her scent flown away? Or was it because his olfactory organs had decomposed and disappeared?
He could no longer smell her fragrance.
Yet Hexion tried to chase Shin Joo’s traces until the very end.
Until his violet eyes decomposed into zeros and ones, and his vision was engulfed in darkness.
***
Dawn will no longer come.
Cedric stood silently in the night sky.
Instead of twinkling stars, countless green zeros and ones floated in the darkness.
Beautiful green.
It looked like Shin Joo’s gaze, which had touched the entire world, had shattered into pieces and turned into light.
“Shin Joo. Shin Joo-ah.”
Cedric quietly called Shin Joo’s name. A strange pronunciation on the tip of his tongue. She, who seemed born to become Shin Joo, returned to reality sooner than Cedric had expected, abandoning this world.
“It can’t be helped. To humans, a ‘game’ is just a brief amusement.”
A few hours at shortest. A few years at longest.
When capricious humans either see the ending or get bored midway, they quit playing and return to reality.
Leaving behind the game world created solely for them.
How long will an abandoned world last? Even if saved as data, storage devices have shorter lifespans than pets.
If not even saved as data, disappearance happens in an instant.
A short life like a firefly that lives for one season.
If he had existed in the real world even as an insect, would people have felt even a brief moment of pity while turning their backs, leaving him to perish?
“Harming animals or plants brings criticism… but no one criticizes harming virtual humans.”
Just digital data made of zeros and ones after all.
Since they’re not living beings, people feel no guilt while driving them to extinction.
No matter how sophisticated they become.
No matter how human-like they’re made.
No matter how much… they love humans.
Because they have no life, no one acknowledges when they’re abandoned and die.
No, even the word ‘death’ isn’t permitted for them.
They’re just deleted.
“If you’re going to treat us as beings whose extinction doesn’t matter because we’re fake, you should have made us unable to think at all.”
Cedric curled up and hugged his knees.
1 save slot remaining.
He could slowly see the green zeros and ones that couldn’t remain as meaningful data disappearing one by one.
Without even blinking, he took in each vanishing light, trying to engrave them in his eyes.
Because there was no one else who would remember.
“Joo-ah. I have a question.”
Among the vanishing lights, Cedric’s voice rang clear like singing.
“They say when people die, their body and soul separate – the hun goes to heaven and the po goes to earth.”
T/n: This refers to the traditional East Asian concept of dual souls. In Chinese philosophy, particularly Confucianism and Taoism, humans are believed to possess two types of souls: the hun (魂), a celestial/spiritual soul that ascends to heaven after death, and the po (魄), an earthly/corporeal soul that returns to the earth. Cedric is using this cultural concept to philosophically question what happens to the “souls” or consciousness of virtual beings when they cease to exist.
Though there are differences across time and regions, there have always been people who believe in the existence of souls throughout history, East and West.
“When virtual humans made of zeros and ones vanish, where do their memories and emotions go?”
He doesn’t know if Shin Joo-ah believes in souls. But since she could truly laugh and cry in the virtual world, truly felt joy and anger and love while looking at virtual humans.
Perhaps she would keep their existence in her memories, those who couldn’t even remain as data and disappeared, split into zeros and ones.
“I hope you’ll remember.”
If we can’t be together, at least remain as faded memories.
Praying thus, Cedric closed his eyes.
In the space where all the green lights had vanished, a cold system window began its calculations indifferently.
Player [Shin Joo-ah] has logged out.
All unsaved data will be deleted.
