Chapter 6: The Kingdom Times (3)
Translator: Pai_
Su-ho brought his father home safe and sound.
Mun Geum, who by all rights should have been fish food by now, was instead able to enjoy a warm and cheerful dinner with his family.
"Now then, let's have a look."
Su-ho was not partaking in the warmth and cheer.
Despite his father's invitation to join the family for dinner, he had breezily declined, then scrambled up the rope ladder to his storage room without a second thought.
The dish he was eager to savor was not to be found on any dinner table.
He made do with something resembling the sandwich-like food favored by the kingdom's common folk, and with that out of the way, Su-ho prepared to feast on the real delicacy.
【Order confirmed: '10-Year Future Scoop' single-use pass.】
【100 Subscription Points will be consumed.】
【Thank you for supporting our advertisements!】
【Current Subscription Points: 70】
Nearly all the points he had earned throughout the day were wiped out in one go, but Su-ho felt not a shred of regret.
If you don't pull the trigger on a limited first-edition when it's right in front of you, when will you ever?
'What kind of articles could possibly be in the paper ten years from now?'
Click-clack, click-clack.
The letters on the Prophecy Newspaper began to move. The advertisement section expanded, and the existing article sections slid and shuffled into new positions.
It was as if ink-colored insects were wriggling about, being stamped onto the page by some invisible typewriter.
Soon the newspaper was completely transformed. Su-ho chewed his sandwich with a crunch, heart pounding, as he awaited the headline scoop from the future.
【Prophecy Newspaper - Kingdom Newsletter】
【Kingdom Calendar Year 1006, October 16th】
【Yesterday's Weather: Very Cloudy】
The date! Not the 990s, but a new century in the thousands!
It truly was a date ten years in the future.
And that wasn't all. His subscription tier, which had originally been a mere Family Newsletter, had been upgraded to the Kingdom Newsletter for this item alone. The quality was exactly as advertised on the flyer.
Su-ho was already basking in blissful satisfaction at this point.
'Truly the one and only journal of record in the kingdom... no, in the entire world!'
It was a cut above the kingdom's countless rags, where shoddy, defective products were magically repackaged as heaven-sent inventions.
Su-ho sank deep into his handmade wooden chair. And so, settling into position to properly savor the article, starting from the headline...
『The Kingdom Has Fallen!』
He could not settle into position.
"?"
His back muscles, just beginning to relax, seized up rigid again. For a split second, Su-ho forgot even to breathe.
Click-clack. The letters printed in real time. Through pupils dilated to their limit, he took in the somehow shabby-looking text, its ink smeared in wild streaks.
「The kingdom's remnants rallied their forces one final time and attempted a counterattack. However, hopelessly outnumbered, they ultimately failed to break the Three Dragon Lords Alliance's advance.」
「The leadership that had been commanding the Kingdom Revival Army was wiped out in this final battle. In particular, with the death of Princess Mang Ryeon-hwa (妄連禍), who had served as the rallying point for the displaced people, the kingdom's fall became an undeniable reality.」[TL: 妄連禍 (Mang Ryeon-hwa) where 妄(mang) means "vain/futile" 連(ryeon) means "to gather" and 禍(hwa) means "disaster/ruin" literally "futile gathering into ruin" a name laden with tragic irony]
「With this, our paper, too, shall lay down its brush and step into the annals of history, concluding a long career of reporting.」
Click-clack, click-clack.
The final sentence was etched slowly, deliberately.
「To all the subscribers who have loved the Prophecy Newspaper until the very end, we extend our sincerest gratitude.」
* * *
"......."
When night fell, the rain came.
The morning edition of the Prophecy Newspaper had already forecast 【Weather: Clear then Rain】, so Su-ho was able to avert the catastrophe of his laundry getting soaked.
Su-ho's ramshackle storage room sat at the very bottom of a cluster of makeshift structures that clung to the city wall like barnacles. When the wind blew hard enough, the whole thing swayed faintly, as if riding a swing.
『The Kingdom Has Fallen!』
The newspaper fluttered along with it.
Su-ho's storage room also came with a small, humble excuse for a balcony-slash-terrace. Climb down the rope ladder from there and you were right at the Royal Capital's South Gate. A fantastic location with a commute of under one minute.
Sitting on the railing beneath the leaking eaves, lower-class gatekeeper Mun Su-ho alternated his gaze between the night sky and the newspaper.
'The rain must have made the Canal's current stronger.'
'No wonder they couldn't find the drowned body.'
Su-ho scratched his head with a contemplative hum.
"Even assuming the kingdom does fall....... I don't know. I've never once heard of a princess with the alias 'Mang Ryeon-hwa'."
In the present day, numerous members of the royal family operated under aliases. Working at one of the Royal Capital's gates, Su-ho had memorized the physical descriptions and names of all the major royals by heart.
It was an essential skill for a gatekeeper. In this backwater kingdom, there were psychopathic royals and nobles who deliberately went around incognito like secret inspectors, only to rain divine punishment on anyone who failed to recognize them.
In that sense, the kingdom was certainly more advanced than the martial world. You couldn't just watch out for children and the elderly; you had to be on guard across the board, from toddlers to teenagers to young adults to the middle-aged to the elderly, with zero discrimination and equal-opportunity caution.
Having been burned badly once in the past, Su-ho made absolutely certain to use formal speech whenever he was on gatekeeper duty.
Even to someone as meticulous as himself, the alias "Princess Mang Ryeon-hwa" was completely unfamiliar.
"Hmm....... A royal born in the future, maybe? No, probably not. Ten years is too short for that. It's more likely someone who currently goes by a different alias and takes on a new one when she leads the revival army later......."
There was simply too little information.
The Three Dragon Lords Alliance, and all the rest. Proper nouns that would be common knowledge ten years from now had absolutely no entry in Mun Su-ho's present-day mental database.
It was like being an older generation encountering slang for the first time, their brain stuck in an infinite loading loop.
Of course, the information that the kingdom would "fall in ten years" was priceless beyond measure.
At this point, Su-ho already possessed a vantage point ahead of anyone else in the world.
Even now, you could hear the grumbling in the streets, people carping that the country was going to hell, that the nation was doomed... but how could such everyday griping compare to a genuine prophecy?
"Fascinating."
And so, the light in Su-ho's eyes had not died.
Far from sinking into gloom, they sparkled more brightly than ever.
As a child, when he had first realized he had been reincarnated into another world. When he had discovered that magic and Aura truly existed here, and that he could therefore encounter entirely novel kinds of newspapers.
Even that thrill had been fading over the course of nearly twenty years. The laws of the world itself may have changed, but the human curse of growing accustomed to new things remained as constant as ever.
'The kingdom is effectively the last bastion of humanity, the only territory in this world where the human race holds the ruling class.'
'The fall of the kingdom is essentially the end of human civilization.'
The end.
For one individual, it was tantamount to death. And what information could possibly be more riveting to a person than the news of their own death?
For that very reason, before the news of the kingdom's death, Mun Su-ho felt a thrill unlike anything he had experienced before.
"I want to know."
Who was Mang Ryeon-hwa? What was the Three Dragon Lords Alliance? How did the kingdom come to fall? Who were the leaders of the revival army? And what did the press, bearing witness to that grand finale, have to say about it all?
What words did the reporters print in their final dispatches? Were there still hack journalists among them even then? Faced not with composing one person's last words but with penning humanity's final testament, did they despair under the weight of that mission? Or did they face it with quiet composure?
'I want to know!'
All this curiosity and excitement blazed to life. It was a flame that would burn in Su-ho's chest for at least the next ten years, until the prophesied end arrived.
And without a moment's hesitation, Su-ho pressed his fingertip firmly against an item still displayed in the advertisement section.
[Consumable] Deep Investigation Subscription, Single-Use Pass
(30 Points) (Always Available) (Viewable Immediately Upon Purchase)
* Did an article leave you wanting more? Want to dig deeper into the subject or event covered in a particular story? This product was prepared for discerning subscribers just like you.
* Deep Investigation. While not as detailed as a special serialized feature, it guarantees reporting quality far superior to a standard article. Experience premium-grade intelligence!
* Limited to one purchase per day.
The Deep Investigation subscription pass.
In truth, Su-ho could have bought this item at any time. It only cost 30 points, after all. But worried that he might see a future headline and regret having already used it, he had been saving his purchase all this time.
And Su-ho's patience had been rewarded!
If he had jumped the gun and bought the Deep Investigation pass only to spend it on some other article, leaving him with no way to use it now, he would have drowned in bone-deep regret.
【Order confirmed: 'Deep Investigation Subscription' single-use pass.】
【30 Subscription Points will be consumed.】
【Thank you for supporting our advertisements!】
【Current Subscription Points: 40】
One slot in the advertisement section emptied as text clattered onto the page.
【Please select the article you wish to apply Deep Investigation to.】
Su-ho chose without hesitation: the ten-year scoop, the article about the kingdom's fall.
【Selection confirmed.】
【The selected article will now be converted to Deep Investigation!】
The moment his finger traced over the headline, the ink shifted, flowing apart like the currents of a black lake.
『Deep Investigation: A Record of the Kingdom's Final Moments』
The title had changed.
The ink-dark currents spread outward in sequence, transforming the body text as they went.
Su-ho held his breath and began reading the newly detailed information from the future.
「The Three Dragon Lords Alliance. Also known as the Three Western Dragon Pact. Or, the Army of the Sunset.」
「The union of three Dragon Emperors who dominated the west struck the kingdom like a bolt from the blue.」
「Dragons had always been solitary and proud, never deigning to join hands with one another. But who could have foreseen that they would set aside their pride for the sole purpose of toppling the kingdom?」
"......!"
Su-ho's eyes went wide. An enormous trove of information had come pouring out all at once.
'An army of dragons is marching in from the west? Three of them?'
'Then the most endangered positions are the West Gate and our South Gate!'
But there was no time to be swept away by shock.
The cascade of information, exquisitely summoned by one man's patience, had leapt across a span of ten years, burst through the dam of time, and was now flooding in wave after wave.
Information he could never have accessed at this point in time had today not come to pass.
Prophecies that would never have been unsealed had Su-ho not saved his Deep Investigation pass!
「There were far too many regrets.」
「On this day, Princess Mang Ryeon-hwa tied the straps of her armor with unusual firmness. She knew these were straps that would never be undone.」
「She had been a princess who drifted from one vocation to the next, wanting no part of the power struggle among her siblings. Back then, she bore no sacred alias like 'Mang Ryeon-hwa.'」
「Princess Ho Yeon-hwa.」
「She was merely a royal who was content with a name that was nothing more than a flower...」
The very person who would lead the kingdom's resistance to the bitter end.
Her original alias had appeared. This was the piece of information Su-ho had wanted most desperately.
Princess Ho Yeon-hwa... if his memory served, she was a royal with neither popularity nor renown, just one face among the many members of the royal family. Even he could barely recall her alias.
And yet this same person would one day rise to become the kingdom's last hope!
「In hindsight, the most agonizing regret was failing to identify the traitor....」
「There was no shortage of nobles who warned that this was a ploy by the Three Dragon Lords Alliance to sow discord, but the royal court ultimately....」
「If the Gladiator Slaves' rebellion could have been suppressed early, or if negotiations had been pursued....」
Beyond that, endlessly precious information, and more information still!
The critical failures that had led to the kingdom's downfall. Threats from within and without. Who remained loyal to the very end, and who concealed treacherous intent.
A complete report on all of it now rested in Su-ho's hands.
『Obituary Column』
The Deep Investigation article was at last racing toward its conclusion.
The names of the warriors who had perished in the final battle were listed one after another in the Obituary Column. Every single cause of death read the same: killed in action.
「Princess Mang Ryeon-hwa: Killed by concentrated archer fire while withdrawing after the second charge.」
.
.
.
The top lines of the Obituary Column were occupied by the leadership, princesses and barons and the like. Further down, crammed together in tiny print, among the dense roster of the fallen, a familiar name caught his eye.
「Obsidian Baron: Led his forces despite his aged body; upon witnessing Princess Mang Ryeon-hwa's death, took his own life.」
「Warrior Mun Si-ah: Killed by an arrow while guarding the body of her liege lord, the Obsidian Baron.」
「Warrior Mun Su-ho: Killed by concentrated attack from three enemy soldiers while covering his sister's retreat.」
"Hm."
His liege lord, his little sister, and himself, all there in the Obituary Column.
Seeing lives that were perfectly alive and well printed in a newspaper obituary was indeed a novel experience, even for Su-ho.
Novel, and nothing more. There was little emotional turmoil to speak of.
'Well, at least we survived all the way to the final battle.'
Su-ho returned to his storage room and got his pencil moving at once.
Transcription. He copied the Prophecy Newspaper's Deep Investigation article into his notebook, not missing a single particle, before it vanished at midnight.
Just in case he might forget.
Even while transcribing, Su-ho did not forget to exercise his cleverness. To prevent the catastrophe of someone stealing a peek at his notebook, he wrote everything not in the script of his current life, but in the writing system from his previous one.
(In truth, his handwriting was so atrociously bad that even without the precaution, deciphering it would have been quite the challenge.)
"Good. Got it all copied down."
After considerable time, he successfully finished the transcription.
A contented smile spread across Su-ho's face.
From this moment on, this notebook would undoubtedly be Su-ho's most precious treasure for the next ten years.
He took the notebook and stepped out onto the terrace.
The rain had stopped. Stars poured down from a night sky that had cleared to a brilliant crispness.
In stark contrast to those celestial clusters transmitting the distant past of tens of thousands of light-years ago, the starlight glimmering in Su-ho's eyes was looking toward the future.
"Phewwww... hahhh."
On the railing of a ramshackle lean-to clinging to the city wall, a lone man drank deep of the night. The fierce bellows of the air stoked the flame in his heart ever higher.
"Now then, shall we turn this article into a false report?"
Time limit.
Ten years until the kingdom's fall and his own death.
On that night, a lower-class gatekeeper of the Royal Capital held stars and fire in his chest.