Chapter 43
Amid the blur between reality and fiction, Theo knew one thing for certain.
Even in a world inspired by his creation, he still did not want to die at the hands of any character.
'The Realm of Gloom, huh?Five years for the basics, seven years for mastery.Hah, if this were still just a game, I'd be relaxed.Press skip, next chapter, done.But after Flo Viva Mythology devoured 99% of my real world?Impossible.Seven years to guide a girl whose fate is doomed to end tragically in episode twelve?Not now, thanks.'
Rooooohh!
'Forty-five days.That's all the time I've got—and honestly, that's already too much.Day one to eighteen, introduction.Day nineteen to twenty-eight, foundational development.The rest, refinement.Crazy, anyone at the academy would call this suicide training.But if I don't do it now, episode twelve will be a beta-version apocalypse, and Erietta will turn from the final boss into an undefined creature even Ilux can't handle.'
Theo sat leaning against the timeworn, cracking stone wall, staring at Erietta still meditating beneath the swirling dark-brown wind.
He exhaled slowly, then looked at the yellowed book now covered with scribbles, diagrams, and tiny marks only his mind—trapped between fiction and reality—could comprehend.
In his mind, he whispered that there was no other choice.
The situation was too deep to avoid.
By all logic of the world he created, Theo had to guide Erietta Bathee.
And, damn it, that meant he had to break the rules he wrote himself seven years ago, when Flo Viva Mythology was still only a concept mimicking the horrors of Last Prayer.
He knew the Realm of Gloom was no ordinary branch of Core Lu.
It was a realm even the toughest characters hesitated to touch—for within it, humans are taught not to defeat darkness, but to coexist with it.
From Theo's experience, having played Flo Viva Mythology hundreds of times and tried every possible path, the Realm of Gloom required five years to master the basics, and a full seven years to perfect it while practicing it in the game's reality.
Seven years—a number that meant nothing but time to ordinary players, yet for Theo, now trapped in this world, it was equivalent to endless torment.
He gazed at Erietta, her green hair lifted by the wind, her body slowly floating above the ground.
Theo thought, weighed, then wrote his decision in the yellowed book with ink thicker than usual.
He would not wait seven years.
Unwilling to lock himself into an overly long training cycle for the sake of a girl who, he knew for certain, would end tragically in episode twelve.
So he decided something no one had ever done in the history of the game—bending the training timeline, compressing a process meant to take years into only forty-five days.
Theo divided it with the precision of a writer who would never relinquish control over his own manuscript.
Days one to eighteen would be the introduction, familiarizing Erietta with fundamental theory, teaching her to face the gloom without resistance.
Days nineteen to twenty-eight would be development, when Erietta had to learn to immerse herself in darkness without losing herself.
And days twenty-nine to forty-five would be refinement, the stage where she would confront herself, either to find balance or be destroyed by it.
'Day one, and she hasn't collapsed.Truly remarkable.Even though each strike nearly tore the cloth, even though blood had already dripped onto the training ground, she remains still.No resistance.No escape.No surrender.'
Hooooh!
'Erietta Bathee, you may be annoying, but you are not a human easily classified within the manuscript I wrote.You are more stubborn than any character they have ever written.'
First arc, early episode seven.
Day one began under a darkened sky, as if even nature understood that Realm of Gloom training never occurred without sacrifice.
The dark-brown wind swirled fiercely around Erietta Bathee, seated in the air with perfect posture, as if her soul were anchored at the point between consciousness and unconsciousness.
Theo stood not far in front, letting his long sword, still sheathed, drip with leftover Core Lu energy, with no plan to unsheathe it.
Each time he unleashed the One-Point Technique, Nine Acupunctures Completed, the air around Erietta trembled, cutting the cloth on her body, leaving thin marks on her young skin—but she never opened her eyes.
She remained in meditation, allowing it all to strike her without resistance, as if the pain itself were part of the lesson.
Theo stared long, torn between awe and worry.
In his mind, entwined between reality and narrative, he knew that in the original script, a scene like this should not exist.
There was no training session like this in episode seven, especially for a character like Erietta.
All of this was a deviation he created himself, yet strangely, for the first time since being trapped in this game world, Theo felt alive.
Each strike he delivered seemed to carry a rhythm affirming his existence, proving that he was not merely an observer of a predetermined plot.
He was a writer now living inside his writing, reshaping destiny with his own hands.
Erietta's cloth whipped wildly, partially torn, partially carried by the growing storm.
Amid the swirl of dust and sharp sounds, Theo bent down, opening his yellowed book now full of first-day evaluation notes.
He wrote quickly, recording the pulse of energy sensed from Erietta's body, measuring the flow of Core Lu around the girl.
According to his calculations, progress had reached only about one to four percent of the target—but for Theo, that was already more than enough.
For on this first day, for the first time since the real world had been consumed by Flo Viva Mythology, he witnessed hope sprouting outside the script.
'Day nine—nine colors, nine directions of pressure, and the girl still hasn't fallen.Her body is nearly at its limit, pupils trembling, breath uneven, yet she endures.If I didn't know this scenario for certain, I'd think she isn't human.But that's exactly what I want.I need her to be something not fully human—at least partially.'
Tcuikk - tcuikk!
'If she fails at this point, the entire plan shifts.All the rhythm I built will crack.Ilux won't be ready, and I won't be able to withstand Ilux's wounds.But if she succeeds, this scenario begins to write itself.And I only need to ensure she doesn't lose her mind entering the actual flow of the Realm of Gloom.'
Tcuik—!Slash!!
"Do not react!Focus on calm, not on pain!Let the nine colors consume you, but do not let yourself vanish within them!"
First arc, mid-episode seven.
Day nine greeted with a far more intense atmosphere than previous days.
The sky seemed to reject any light, and in the midst of the stone field shrouded in thick mist, Erietta Bathee once again sat cross-legged, floating in the air with perfect posture, eyes tightly closed as if the outside world had vanished from her awareness.
To be continued…