Chapter 163 – Molang Fantasy (1)
[Chapter 9 – Section 1] Ask Your Questions
Inside an airplane with nowhere to run.
The witch Ranuvela spent her time like any ordinary passenger.
‘Of course…’
With a face that carried the dreamy, fairy-tale atmosphere straight out of a storybook, “ordinary” was the last word that applied to her.
“Do you have something to say?”
Her voice and manner of speaking were very human. In the worst possible sense.
“How did you do it?”
From the airport café all the way to boarding the plane, it had been one shock after another.
“The power of words.”
“Can I do that too?”
“That’s a strange question. You’re already doing it, aren’t you? In the dream. Thanks to that, you won the war quite easily.”
She seemed to be referring to how I had incited the allied forces.
“That was in the dream.”
“Reality isn’t so different. The only difference is that you have to put in about 200 times more effort.”
“200 times…?”
“Touching your own soul to become an Olympic-level star is simple. But touching someone else’s soul… it’s like trying to enter a locked stranger’s house without a key. The difficulty is overwhelmingly incomparable.”
“Ah!”
What Senior and I called the “world,” the witch defined as the “soul.”
Then did that mean the dreams of Ranuvel’s patients weren’t imaginary worlds, but the souls themselves?
There was still far too little information.
“You still don’t understand. If you keep discriminating against people based on money and dawdling like you do, even after 200 years you’ll only be fiddling with your own soul.”
“…Miss Ranuvela, are you actually around 200 years old?”
“What a rude thing to say to a lady! I’m not that different from you.”
“Then how…”
“I don’t discriminate against people. I don’t think of it as making money either. I simply wish that people who can’t adapt to reality can meet a happy death.”
“We really are complete opposites.”
From values to goals, we were total opposites.
“Kang Moon-soo. You have two question opportunities left.”
“Hm? We never agreed on that.”
“I know you view everything self-centeredly, but are you really going to ignore the passengers sitting right next to us?”
“……”
It was such a fair point that I couldn’t argue.
“Eat your in-flight meal, watch a movie, and think about it slowly.”
“…Fine.”
I felt like I’d completely lost the initiative to the witch, but I decided to endure it in order to extract as much necessary information as possible.
***
Questions must be chosen carefully.
For my second question, I selected the one thing about the witch Ranuvela’s abilities that I envied the most.
“How did you escape from the dream?”
“If you never enter in the first place, there’s no need to struggle to escape.”
“Hm?”
She never entered at all?
“Don’t lump me in with you. I’m not a villain who rampages through other people’s souls like you do.”
“…Shouldn’t that be my line? Encouraging patients who could live in reality to die—that’s the real villainy.”
“That’s devil’s logic. Telling someone to stay longer in hell.”
“Reality isn’t hell.”
“There you go interpreting everything self-centeredly again. For you, with your overly generous girlfriend by your side, it might be heaven—but for someone else, reality can be hell.”
“Ahem!”
How dare she hit the nail on the head so unfairly…!
“Only one question left. Once it’s done, don’t talk to me until we land. I’m extremely busy. I need to rest whenever I can.”
“Hm…”
It stung my pride, but even if someone as occult-illiterate as me listened to the witch’s explanations, it wouldn’t change much.
Blood God So Un-hyeon.
I could only hope that Senior, who had mastered sorcery, would explain it in a way even a beginner like me could understand.
In other words,
‘Even Senior would find this difficult.’
A problem that required specialized knowledge, yet the given information was so lacking that even Senior couldn’t make a proper inference.
I reflected on all the time we had spent together and organized my thoughts.
“Miss Ranuvela. What is the standard for a soul to expand?”
“……”
She looked at me as if I were absurd.
“Why?”
“Even if you never learned it formally, isn’t this something you should at least know?”
“……”
How am I supposed to know something I never learned?
I wanted to argue, but I felt like it wouldn’t even be worth the effort, so I shut my mouth.
“Achievements.”
“…That’s it?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“That explanation is way too vague. That should be invalid.”
At my protest, the witch frowned her beautiful forehead and added,
“You don’t even know the achievement system in <Molang Fantasy>?”
“<Molang Fantasy>… you mean that famous virtual reality game?”
“Yes. Is there another Molang Fantasy?”
“I was too busy working part-time at a convenience store, so I never had time to play games.”
“Are you looking for sympathy?”
“No.”
“Then please stop bothering me.”
Swoosh—
Instead of a sleep mask, the witch covered her face with her hat and tried to sleep.
“……”
Something felt a little off. Why would a witch who was clearly superior to me look so tired? Was using hypnosis that exhausting?
I decided to test it.
“Miss Ranuvela.”
“…What is it now?”
She answered with her face still covered by the hat.
“How about a round of cards?”
“No thanks.”
“Forfeit? Then I’ll take it as my automatic win.”
Swish~
At the word “forfeit,” the witch, visibly irritated, pushed the hat aside and glared at me.
“You really are self-centered. Fine. Just one round. If you lose, keep your mouth shut until we land.”
“And if I win?”
“That won’t happen.”
Ranuvela stared at my face and declared it with absolute certainty.
“Still, the bet has to be fair.”
“…Fine. State your demand.”
Got her!
Even though winning the card game was now a prerequisite, losing wouldn’t cost me anything, so there was no pressure.
“If I win, we talk the entire way until we land.”
“…Why?”
“I’m bored.”
The witch observed my face with an expression that clearly said she couldn’t understand, then spoke.
“That explains why that young lady doesn’t trust her boyfriend. Wanting to chat with another woman for five whole hours…”
“……”
I’d suddenly become a terrible person.
“Let’s start right away.”
Tap.
Ranuvela took out the deck of cards and shuffled them quickly.
***
When coldly comparing our skill levels, the chance of me defeating the witch Ranuvela head-on was less than 10%.
‘I got careless back at the café.’
I had thought that since some of my perception carried over into reality, I could just peek at the witch Ranuvela’s cards the same way.
But her cards were shrouded in mist—I couldn’t see them at all.
And at the same time,
‘What if the witch can see my cards?’
The opposite scenario naturally came to mind, and suspicion rose.
Swish~
The start was uneventful. It would have been nice if my hand had come out overwhelmingly strong, but no such miraculous luck arrived.
“I’ll end this quickly.”
“If you can.”
We exchanged light psychological jabs while continuing the game.
However,
‘As expected…’
It didn’t take long before I started feeling myself being pushed back little by little.
“Kang Moon-soo. You’re wasting time—why not just forfeit?”
“You never know until the end.”
“That poor young lady… picking a man who’s so desperate to talk to another woman…”
“That’s a misunderstanding.”
Bringing Song Sun-young into this was a truly dirty low blow.
So I countered with my trump card!
Slap.
Without looking, I immediately flipped over the one card I had just drawn and placed it face-down on the table.
“…That’s not a technique you can pull off with your skill level.”
The witch glared at me with a slightly displeased look.
“Only I know the limits of my skill.”
“You don’t even know what that card is, do you?”
“I do.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Don’t treat me like a beginner who doesn’t even know the rules. Playing a card that doesn’t fit the situation results in defeat. That’s why it’s mostly used when forfeiting.”
A high-level technique that no amateur could use—because if you mispredict the card, even a winning hand could be ruled a forfeit!
In the world of the romance fantasy <The Generous Young Lady Who Receives Everything>, only a handful of people could fully master this technique.
And two cards at once?
That was a divine move possible only for the original protagonist, who had been the undisputed number one in card games. It was fantasy in a world that wasn’t supposed to have any.
“……”
The witch Ranuvela’s expression turned quite serious at the unexpected variable.
“……”
I had bluffed that I knew, but with fewer cards available, my options shrank and the situation grew even more unfavorable.
So I pressed my lips tightly together!
I desperately focused to prevent the worst-case scenario—where even I didn’t know what the hidden card was and couldn’t find an answer.
Tap, tap, tap…
After several more exchanges of offense and defense, we had almost reached the very end.
‘Just as I expected.’
At this rate, defeat was certain!
Yet the reason I still hadn’t let go of the thread of hope was simple:
The witch Ranuvela’s expression remained deadly serious. It was as if she was wary of some reversal I didn’t know about.
“When are you going to flip that one?”
“When the time comes.”
“……”
I wondered if the pitiful king of Kingdom A in the romance fantasy <The Generous Young Lady Who Receives Everything> had felt this way.
As an aside, it was honestly a shame that I never got to see the legs hidden beneath Princess Aronia’s voluminous skirt until the very end. If the patient had woken up just one hour later…
“You’re not going to do it?”
“I am.”
Even if the wrong card came out and I lost, it was no loss!
Even if a mediocre card came out and I lost, it was no loss!
It might be a little boring, but all I had to do was keep my mouth shut quietly until the plane landed at the airport.
Swoosh—
Letting go of the pressure, I finally flipped over the card I had kept face-down the entire time.
“Ah…”
“Oho?”
The goddess of luck smiled upon me.
***
When the witch Ranuvela had previously said something about being a “powerless woman,” I thought it was laughable. Even a latecomer like me had become a monster capable of dodging bullets!
How could she, who had strengthened her world far earlier than I had, claim to be powerless?
It didn’t make any sense.
‘So those words were true after all?’
As promised, we began talking, and within less than an hour, her accumulating fatigue was plainly visible.
“Kang Moon-soo. Let’s play one more round.”
“No thanks.”
I wasn’t soft enough to fall for the same trick twice, so absolutely not. That’s why I’d set it to just one round from the beginning.
“It was unfair from the start. From the trigger to the bet conditions—everything was advantageous to you.”
“I have plenty to say about that too. Inviting someone over and then just sleeping isn’t exactly polite.”
“You’re the one who lost and had to follow.”
“Still, a guest is a guest. If I’d known Miss Ranuvela would only sleep, I never would have accepted the bet.”
“I didn’t sleep for even one second.”
“You were trying to.”
We had been having this nutritionally void conversation (argument) for an hour now.
“…One more round. If I win, we stop talking and I get proper sleep like normal people. If you win, I’ll answer three more questions…”
“No.”
“…Don’t you feel even a little sorry for your girlfriend who only has eyes for you?”
Song Sun-young again?
But the witch, whose concentration had dropped sharply from fatigue, was no match for me.
“I’m on a business trip. It’s all above board.”
“You call approaching a young member of the opposite sex without any clear purpose ‘work’?”
“I do have a purpose. You just haven’t noticed it yet, Miss Ranuvela.”
“Is your purpose to torment me?”
“No.”
Senior had been right.
‘To infiltrate a patient’s world, you first have to give up your own abilities!’
The witch, who knew far more than I did, was no exception.
How many abilities had she sacrificed to master the hypnosis needed to infiltrate other people’s worlds?
If her explanation was true, it would be around 200 times more than mine.
“Kang Moon-soo.”
“No.”
“…This kind of war of attrition isn’t good for either of us. If your purpose isn’t to torment me, then the reason this time feels so tedious must be because your overflowing stamina is too much to handle, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Here.”
Click—
The witch took a single book out of her travel bag and held it out to me.
“This is…?”
“A way to quickly accumulate achievements.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“It’s real. If it weren’t, why would I carry this book around?”
“……”
Even with her persuasive explanation, it was hard to believe right away.
Why?
<Molang Fantasy: Achievement Collection>
The book the witch recommended to me was a strategy guide for that famous virtual reality game.
_____________________________________________
TL Note:
This novel is fully completed.
You can either:
- Unlock this novel individually through shop or its Collection "Shaman: Breaker of Dreams" and access remaining 68 chapters for only $3
- Or join the Premium Tier ($7) for access to all 6 novels and ongoing updates
Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Vritratls
_____________________________________________