TL/Editor: raei
Schedule:
Illustrations: None.
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Dear Respected Teacher,
Professor, a Level 4 anomaly recently manifested in our country. This was due to a terrorist attack by a doomsday cult, which caused four error NPCs to gather.
Fortunately, it occurred in a sparsely populated city and only for a short ti, so there wasn't severe damage, but I am afraid.
Is the world we live in real? Or is it a sophisticated simulation?
Do we truly exist? Or are we just part of a simulation?
The very existence of anomalies that defy the laws of the universe—isn't that proof that our world is false?
Since learning about the existence of anomalies and seeing a city overrun by error NPCs, I have been unable to stop feeling fear. If our existence is a lie, if the world we've lived in and protected is just a simulation...
Professor,
I heard that you have long worked at the taphysical Literature Society, which studies the possibility that our world is a work of fiction within a fra. Please tell the truth.
Do I, do we, does this world truly exist? Is there value in our lives?
Your forr student, seeking only the truth.
---
---
To my forr student,
I am sorry to hear that such an event occurred. My deepest condolences for the deceased.
To get to the point, questions about the existence of being and human dignity are natural. Especially for an employee dealing with anomalies.
Is our world a simulation? Are we part of soone's novel? Do humans lack free will? Are humans nothing but bio-robots made of organic material, moving by electrical signals?
These are topics studied diligently by various research institutes and departnts. And there has been so progress.
If you truly want the truth, I invite you. To the departnt that explores the world beyond the fourth wall, beyond the fra.
If you wish to accept the invitation, please respond with a suitable date.
P.S. It would be best to co quickly. We are close to seeing the fruits of our long research.
Your forr teacher.
---
---
Professor,
The departnt… So the naless departnt truly exists. I thought it was just a common company myth. But if the departnt is real, the answers I seek must be there too.
Alright! I will co! Any ti is good! Even right now is fine!
Please respond as soon as possible.
Your forr student.
---
---
The invitation was rough.
“Wake up. We have arrived.”
His body was roughly shaken.
The doctor blinked several tis, recalling his mory through a foggy mind.
‘After receiving the invitation….’
A black-suited agent, whose affiliation was unknown, had appeared, blindfolded him, changed his clothes, and forcefully gave him a sleeping pill, citing the location's secrecy.
He had considered protesting but decided that knowing the truth was more important, so he reluctantly swallowed the pill.
‘I rember. So, is this the departnt?’
The doctor slowly looked around.
It was a corridor in so building. A pristine white corridor. On either side of him, the two agents who had practically dragged him here were supporting him.
“He is awake.”
The doctor forcefully shook off the agent's arm. It was a gesture filled with emotion. The coercive attitude had been unpleasant, and unpleasant mories are hard to forget. If he hadn't wanted sothing so badly….
The agent who had been pushed away stepped back silently.
At that mont, a grandmotherly voice spoke softly.
“You seem quite upset. But please understand. This place is that important.”
“Ah, Professor.”
At the end of the white corridor, a gracefully aged, robust grandmother walked slowly toward him. The professor he had taken lectures from in the past, the person who now held the answers he sought.
The professor greeted the doctor with a kind smile.
"It's been a while. I hear you're working as a doctor for the company?"
"I've been with the company for quite so ti. But Professor, what I want here—"
The doctor took a bold step forward but staggered, still feeling the effects of the sedative. An agent quickly approached to grab his arm, but the doctor swung his hand, knocking the agent's arm away.
The professor gave an awkward smile.
"You must be in a hurry."
"Of course I'm in a hurry. How can you not understand how the thought that this world, that I, might be an illusion eats away at soone!"
His voice, filled with mixed emotions, echoed through the corridor. Despite staggering, the doctor managed to walk up to the professor. Looking down at the professor, he shouted.
"That's why I ca here! I put up with the rude behavior of these agents or whatever! Give the answers quickly—"
"Calm down. Don't you know nothing about the departnt? Shouldn't you learn the background first to properly understand?"
The professor soothed the doctor as if dealing with an impatient student. Her deanor was calm and serene.
The doctor took a deep breath, then bowed his head.
"I'm sorry. I was too much. I, I, lately, it doesn't feel like I'm really living."
"I understand. This field is like that. It's one of the topics with a particularly high suicide rate. But you've endured well."
"...No, I haven't."
The professor's comfort seed to reach him, and the doctor's breathing gradually steadied.
The professor waited for the doctor to calm down before turning and starting to walk down the corridor.
"Shall we walk for a bit? It takes a while to get to our destination, so I'll give you a short lecture."
The doctor quickly followed, feeling frustrated by the professor's slow pace.
---
---
The professor and the doctor walked down the white corridor.
An agent trailed behind them, but they made no sound, like shadows, leaving only the quiet conversation between the two.
"Fra narrative. A story within a story. A play within a play. The fourth wall. Characters in a movie talking to the audience. ta-narrative. You're familiar with these?"
"...I am. But suddenly, a ninja appeared. Isn't that anomaly similar? Characters in the narrative talk to us, move to other books or paintings."
"Then it should be easy to understand."
The professor continued her lecture in a slow, deliberate tone, matching her slow pace.
"Our departnt studies that. We got the idea from anomalies that are our world's creations but interact with our reality."
The professor paused to catch her breath. She appeared healthy, but her breathing was strained.
The doctor anxiously paced around the professor.
"I know that. You worked at the taphysical Literature Society, studying the possibility that our world is a frad world. I know that story, so get to the point—"
The professor smiled warmly.
"This is the departnt. Not the taphysical Literature Society. Naturally, we study sothing different, right?"
"Well, yes."
A basic mistake. The doctor blushed. Even in his urgency, such a mistake.
The professor resud walking. The doctor quickly followed.
"We studied ways to venture beyond the fra. To interact with the world outside the fra."
"..."
This ti, the doctor stopped walking. The professor walked a few more steps before realizing the doctor wasn't following and turned around.
There stood the doctor.
His face was pale. His eyebrows trembled ceaselessly. In an instant, he broke into a cold sweat, as if his body had expelled all its moisture.
The doctor opened his mouth. Only groans ca out at first, but he finally managed to speak, moving his tongue with effort.
"That. That ans. That we are characters in a fra…?"
"Don't be so shocked."
"How. How. Then. Then."
He couldn't continue. His dilated pupils stared into space, and he staggered like a drunk, leaning against the wall for support.
The professor slowly approached and patted the doctor on the back.
"I understand what you're thinking and worrying about. But we exist, and our world is real."
"Don't lie to !"
The doctor suddenly straightened up and scread. Exhausted in an instant, he grabbed the professor by the collar.
The two agents moved quickly, but the professor raised a hand to stop them. She t the doctor's eyes.
"Even if our world exists within a fra, it doesn't an our value and existence are aningless."
"How can you say that! If my life is just a string of words written by soone else, what aning does it have—"
"Think about the universe."
It was an unexpected statent.
The professor looked up at the ceiling as if she could see the sky. She continued in a voice that sounded like she was dreaming.
"Leaving Earth, setting foot on the moon, building bases on Mars, sending probes beyond the solar system."
"What does that have to do with anything right now?"
"It's the sa with fras and ta-concepts."
The doctor slowly released his grip on the professor's collar. She stopped looking at the ceiling and faced the doctor again.
"Just as we venture into space after living only on Earth, we can move beyond the fra into the world outside it."
"Beyond the fra…?"
"Our technology has advanced that much. To the point where we can move beyond in a ta-dinsional sense. Shall I explain it more simply?"
The doctor nodded blankly.
"Think of anomalies, like when a ninja suddenly appears. These anomalies interact with the world outside the fra. Does this still make your life aningless?"
If they could interact with the world beyond the fra, could they still be considered re characters in a novel? Could they be simply the creations of soone's imagination?
The doctor looked at the professor with trembling eyes and asked in a faintly hopeful voice.
"Is that possible?"
"Of course. We're almost there."
The professor pointed to the end of the corridor. The doctor followed her gesture to see the corridor's end.
"It's just a wall, isn't it?"
"The fourth wall is a wall too."
The professor took the doctor's hand and led him toward the wall. She said,
"We're going to step outside the fra for a mont."
"Outside."
"We need to go through the outside to reach our destination. Let's go."
---
---
"We've arrived."
"Already?"
The doctor looked at the professor with bewildered eyes. He had no mory of the journey. He hadn't seen anything. He had just opened his eyes, and the space had changed.
The professor sighed with pity.
"You lack the aptitude…. You don't have the aptitude to interact with the world outside."
"You're joking, aren't you? This is so sort of teleportation trick."
The doctor couldn't believe it and distrusted the professor.
The professor no longer made eye contact with him. She looked at sothing behind him and explained.
"If our world were a novel, the process of our movent just now wouldn't have been written. Because we stepped outside the narrative."
"What do you an. Prove it. Prove it to . I still can't believe it."
The doctor was flustered. If he couldn't interact with the outside world, then his life… He couldn't accept such a reality.
As the professor walked past the doctor, she spoke objectively, as if stating a fact.
"Unfortunately, Doctor, you will have to live within the frad world. You cannot go outside."
"Lies. Don't lie to ! The company's technology can't be this limited—"
The doctor turned to chase the professor, but he stopped speaking.
There stood a massive chanical figure. It was only an upper body, the size of a small house.
Tap-tap-tap.
The chanical figure was typing on a keyboard the size of a truck.
"What is that? Where are we?"
The professor, who had approached the chanical figure, turned around from its center. With the giant keyboard and chanical figure behind her, she spoke.
"Here is the fra. It is the intersection between the outer world and the inner world. And this is."
Her voice, filled with emotion, blended with the sound of typing.
"One of the extinction prevention devices. A ta-narrative machine created to interact with the outside world. We call it 'The Writer.'"
There was fervor in her eyes and voice. The doctor watched and listened, entranced.
"Even if our world is truly a novel, so what? If we hold the pen, if we are the ones typing on the keyboard, wouldn't our lives still be aningful?"
The doctor was overwheld as he watched the machine's fingers continuously typing on the keyboard.
Then, a sudden thought surged.
'That machine is what makes our world a frad world. It's writing my life as it pleases. If I destroy that writer, I won't be a character in a fra anymore.'
Smack-!
Blood vessels burst in his eyes, turning his vision red. The doctor glared at the machine and charged with a scream.
The professor stepped aside calmly, watching him. The doctor reached the keyboard without any interference and swung his fist.
"...Huh?"
His fist passed through the keyboard as if it were a hologram.
The professor's voice reached him.
"I told you, Doctor. You don't have the aptitude to interact with the outside world. Naturally, you can't interact with the writer either."
The doctor pulled back his fist and stared at it blankly. The professor's calm voice echoed in his ears.
"taphorically speaking, you might be considered just an extra."
His entire body went limp. The doctor collapsed to the ground. The sound of typing on the keyboard echoed endlessly. His vision darkened.
---
---
The doctor lay unconscious in front of the keyboard, his face haggard as if his soul had left him. Blood trickled from the corners of his eyes.
"..."
The professor looked down at him. Over his face, she saw the faces of colleagues from long ago.
The end of the taphysical Literature Society had not been a good one.
Their research ultimately proved that their world was within a fra.
On that day, a day of thunder and lightning, when the lightning of wisdom struck their souls, what had happened?
"Many people left..."
The professor closed her eyes.
Faced with an unbearable truth, many colleagues took their own lives. Others drank mory erasers to escape reality, and only a handful gritted their teeth and took another step forward.
"If our world is just a story, let's hold the pen... If it's a painting, let's hold the brush. If it's a movie, let's write the screenplay..."
Let's write the story within the fra, ourselves. Let's go outside and shape our destiny with our own hands.
So they did just that.
They deleted the departnt's na, becoming the naless departnt, and created 'The Writer,' successfully interacting with it.
Cough, cough.
The professor covered her mouth and coughed. After coughing for a long ti, she wiped her reddened mouth and spoke to the doctor with earnest emotion.
"Doctor, overco this. You are the only one who can succeed . It's okay to be an extra. There's nothing as powerful as a living, moving character. So, overco this and live. I don't have much ti left."
Their research had finally borne fruit, but now there was no one left to see the beautiful sight.
Many from the naless departnt had left. So had reached the end of their lifespan, others had crumbled, and others...
Now, the only researcher left was herself.
Tap-tap-tap.
The machine continued typing on the keyboard.
The professor looked up at the machine. A faint smile appeared on her lips.
"Ah, it has begun."
The sequence to obtain sustainable power from the world outside the fra was in progress.
[Secured 965 continuous ta-observers]
[ta power sponsors: Anonymous, Hair Loss Treatnt, Nanisi, onlyjamie.]
[Plus conversion in progress]
[Serialization schedule and ti: Sat-Wed at 00:05]
Watching the words being written by 'The Writer,' the professor closed her eyes and clasped her hands. She prayed, hoping sincerely.
'Please, let the beings outside the fra enjoy the story of our world.'
So that we can continue to write our story for a long ti.
---
[raei: I was confused at first but... But plus conversion here is the author applying for plus which novelpia's subscription model. The ta power sponsors, I'm assuming, are currently the top supporters/donators? I recognize so of these nas from when there was script credits in ch14. Also make sense as to why I have no idea how to interpret so of the nas, my bad on that one. 965 continuous ta-observers would be readers staying.]
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