Around the time I was born, Earth was a bright planet. Cities were everywhere. When one stepped outside a city, they could quickly reach another. Although the overall population had peaked and was slowly declining, the number of buildings being erected increased. It was as if the cities had found each other and were littering their babies, pushing aside the people.
Every new building overflowed with light. Even after the people vanished, the light lingered like a debt. Logically speaking, it would have made more sense for the conglomerations of buildings to turn into gloomy ghost towns or ruins. Some called it a singularity[1], but more people knew this was merely the unchecked growth of cancer cells.
“There was a time when the night sky was far darker than it is now.”
The director had told me this, but I couldn’t imagine the sight as a child. Throughout my life, the night sky had always been veiled in a hazy, purple mist.
“This planet is suffering from a fever.”
The first darkness I ever saw was not in the night, but in water. More than that, it was within the human heart.
—That’s how it was. So, this is darkness.
True darkness wasn’t black. It was just nothing. A blank space. A void. Because of that, it sometimes felt dazzling white and other times pitch black, yet it was clearly neither. It was just emptiness.
I gazed upon a world that had yet to hold anything.
—It’s beautiful.
Somewhere, I sensed the Sword Emperor.
—Yes, Gong-Ja. What is full is beautiful only because it remains to be emptied. Like that, what is empty is pretty only because it remains to be filled.
I turned my head in the direction from which the reply came.
—Idiot Zombie, do you know how ridiculously you’re acting right now?
I groaned.
—You’re right. I have no head now.
—Yeah. Yet you still turn around. Well, you aren’t doing too bad, but if you do that unconsciously, you’ll go back to how you were before you saw this darkness.
The Sword Emperor’s voice sounded like the fluttering of a robe’s hem. Well, he didn’t make a single sound, actually.
—Move with awareness. Be aware and feel. Only then can you move and accept the world properly.
Before I nodded, I created myself.
—I... am Kim Gong-Ja.
My physical age was about twenty-five. The time I had lived was about a thousand—no, around ten thousand years.
No.
About, roughly, around wouldn’t do. I thought about myself precisely. I… imagined myself. I started to recall Kim Gong-Ja from birth until now without adding or taking away anything. It was a tiring, difficult task, but it wasn’t impossible.
“The Tower’s voice messages we get… aren’t… automated, but…”
“Yes, they’re done manually. Even if multiple events occur simultaneously, it’s just a set of tasks that I have to handle one by one. Inefficiency happens when time and space are limited. Here, we can control time and observe other worlds at will. The idea of inefficiency doesn’t exist.”
Advisor River Eternal.
I thought about the person I once was and the tasks she handled. Compared to her workload, my own life seemed very small, like a grain of sand.
Sand… My fox god.
Even the time when my fox god played with my memories now served as a reference point. That wasn’t all.
The Underworld.
The place I always reached when I died looked like this one.
My holy ground.
Filling up the empty world to build my holy ground had proved useful in many ways. Above all…
Teacher.
That white winter and this darkness were similar. Enveloped in the dark, I recalled, imagined, created, and thought of myself. At last, I opened my eyes and breathed. I felt the temperature, shape, direction, pitch, and volume of my breath. Every bit of it. The hair on my nape—yes, I now had a nape—rose when I exhaled.
Saliva dripped from my lips. I noticed that I lacked the words to name this sensation because I didn’t have enough experience. Even after dying many times and living the lives of others, I couldn’t really describe this sensation or observe my own state. It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel it—I felt too much.
Someday, somewhere, the Sword Emperor’s voice echoed.
—Though the role of the senses is to keep one apart from the outside world, senses that grow too sharp blur that line. Don’t forget this. That is what it means to see.
Badump.
At the sound of my heartbeat, darkness fell. Light burst forth—the dam broke—and the world’s bounds burned in the bright light, followed by the fall of darkness.
—Yes.
I was now back at my holy ground, the Garden of Withered Flowers. It spanned across the eightieth to the eighty-ninth floors, and it also served as my ninety-first floor. The Sword Emperor greeted me with his arms still crossed.
—Let’s walk a bit.
It was as if he were suggesting what he had said moments ago—no, surely that had happened just moments ago.
—Yes, let’s walk a bit.
Still dazed, I shook my head before nodding. I slowly stretched my feet toward the ground, walking in the direction of the Sword Emperor.
Tap.
I took a step.
Tap.
I began walking with the Sword Emperor.
Tap!
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1. An event that some people believe will happen in the future when technology becomes much more intelligent than humans. ☜
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