The Apocalypse Has Been Downloaded – Chapter 68

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: JayM
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Ring ring ring.

Ring ring ring.

“Hmm…”

I sighed and opened my eyes to the familiar sound of my alarm.

“Huh?”

But why did something feel off as I looked at the ceiling of my room?

My house felt strangely unfamiliar. It was the house I had lived in for years…

‘It’s my usual house… What’s going on?’

I tilted my head and stretched.

Then, I went straight to the bathroom, washed my face, and had a cup of coffee.

My pre-work routine. Even though it was something I did every day, I felt strangely out of sync.

“Slurp…”

I couldn’t understand what was going on.

Why did I feel so relaxed? Was I always this relaxed?

I wasn’t worried about being late for work… Why wasn’t I worried about being late?

“Strange… This is strange… I don’t know why it’s strange.”

I sipped my coffee and tried to recall my memories. The real me, not the strange me…

“Right… I should hate going to work. That’s the normal Jang Jo-joon…”

As I thought this, a sense of lethargy, a deep-seated resentment towards work, and hatred for my boss and colleagues welled up inside me.

Recalling these forgotten feelings, the sense of unease I had been feeling finally began to dissipate. It was a sense of stability, as if a distorted picture had been slightly realigned.

“Can’t I just win the lottery…”

I had been buying lottery tickets diligently every week for ten years, but strangely, I rarely won even the smallest prize.

I didn’t know how I was so unlucky. Well, it was probably foolish to expect luck in my miserable life.

“Sigh… My pathetic life…”

I lamented my fate and started getting ready for work.

I couldn’t afford to feel down if I wanted to get along with those bastards at my shitty company without getting into fights.

I had to force myself to cheer up.

Otherwise, I would be stressed out by those people and spend most of my day filled with irritation and anger.

Click.

Resolving to brighten up my shitty life even by just a little, I opened the front door and stepped outside.

Just then, I ran into the woman next door.

‘The woman next door… Eun-ji?’

Wait, how did I know the woman next door’s name…?

And what was this… affectionate feeling?

I wanted to embrace her. It felt like I could. She felt like my woman.

‘Am I going crazy? Why am I acting like this today?’

The holidays must have been too long. I felt giddy, and today, which should have been familiar, felt unfamiliar.

As I stared at her blankly, the woman next door awkwardly greeted me.

“Oh, hello…”

I didn’t know how to respond.

Should I say it’s nice to see her? Or that it’s been a while…?

We rarely even saw each other…

As I hesitated while lost in thought, the woman next door gave me a strange look, then kissed me on the lips.

“Whoa! Wh-what is this…!?”

“A morning greeting. Don’t you know? We always do this.”

“Uh… What?”

“We’ll be late. I’ll go ahead, Oppa.”

She caressed my lower body, then melted into the shadows, sliding down the railing.

“What was that…? Ugh…”

As I watched her descend to the first floor, a sense of disorientation washed over me, distorting reality. A piercing headache followed.

‘Something was incredibly wrong just now. What was that feeling?’

I didn’t know. I just focused on the thought that the woman next door was beautiful, and the strangeness and distortion disappeared. At the same time, a desire to possess her filled the void.

‘Could I… date a woman like that… and even get married?’

I had a life devoid of women. Zero dating experience.

No woman had ever approached me with good intentions. But the woman next door had just made a rather bold move…

I hurried to the subway station while fantasizing about dating the woman next door, getting married, and even having children.

‘Hell subway…’

As expected, the subway was packed in the morning rush. But it was filled with only women.

A woman with an axe, a woman with piercings, a tall woman who looked about 6’3”, and other familiar women filled the subway car.

“Uh…”

Worried about being late for work, I squeezed myself into the crowd and boarded the train.

Breasts pressed against me from all sides, hitting my face.

“Sigh…”

I was buried in breasts. Their alluring scent filled my nostrils with every breath.

My lower body was starting to react… It would be disastrous if I brushed against the buttocks of the woman in front of me.

I desperately tried to suppress my erection.

Then, the woman in front of me started pushing her buttocks against my groin.

It was too much to bear. The more her soft buttocks rubbed against me, the heavier my breathing became, and the more my penis hardened.

‘This crazy woman! What is she doing!’

I had to recite the national anthem repeatedly in my head until I got off the train.

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Time flew by.

It felt like some parts were skipped, but I returned home after working overtime.

“Haa… I’m tired…”

I collapsed onto the floor as soon as I entered my house, catching my breath.

“Ha. That bitch Kim… She only gives me a hard time. I want to sacrifice her…”

How long did I have to live like this?

I was tired of this repetitive routine.

Tired of the constant irritation.

“Should I quit…?”

I had been enduring it no matter how shitty and annoying it was because I had nowhere else to go, but was this right?

If I quit in a fit of anger, I would have to resort to human sacrifices and slave hunting…

“Maybe… that would be better…”

Maybe it would.

I heard the hourly wage was good these days, so maybe I should just quit and become a Cultist.

A shitty salary or a Cultist’s hourly wage…

I wanted to quit and give that bitch Kim a piece of my mind.

I wanted to smash the face of that bitch who barked at me like a rabid dog…

As I was thinking this, a scene from a movie suddenly came to my mind.

That movie with James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie.

The protagonist gets an opportunity to quit his job, berate his boss, and smash his colleague’s face with a keyboard.

‘A legendary scene that embodies the resentment of every office worker with shitty bosses and colleagues…’

If I picked up a keyboard and reenacted that scene, I would be sent straight to jail, but I could probably throw a few tentacles at that bitch’s face…

As I was having these useless thoughts…

-Ding-dong.

“Huh?”

Who would come to see me?

Especially this late at night?

I had no family. And sadly, no friends either.

My relatives were worse than enemies to me.

Who could possibly be visiting me?

I checked through the peephole.

“Huh?”

Standing outside was an abnormally beautiful woman with white hair and red eyes.

She was baring her fangs.

“What the… that woman. In the middle of the night.”

This wasn’t a horror movie.

What business did she have at my house at this hour?

“Fuck…”

Slightly creeped out, I didn’t answer her.

Then, I quickly turned on all the lights in the house.

“Haa… I’ve been playing too many games…”

If I developed mental problems, I would be screwed. I had no family to care for me and no assets to rely on.

‘It’s better to die than to struggle with mental illness.’

I didn’t want to be dragged to a mental hospital, pumped full of tranquilizers, and chase bluebirds among lunatics.

“Fuck… Nothing ever goes right…”

It was a truly miserable life. It felt like I was the only one whose life kept going downhill. Like I was the only one cursed with bad luck.

If things were going to go wrong anyway, I wished the whole world would go down with me.

Yes, let’s all go down together.

Negative thoughts consumed me.

Before I knew it, I was tying a noose and was about to hang myself.

-Ding-dong.

The doorbell rang again.

“God damn it!!”

Who the hell kept ringing my doorbell?

I couldn’t take it anymore. Forget being scared.

I grabbed a baseball bat and flung open the front door.

“Urrr…”

Standing at the door was the guy from upstairs.

The guy who sometimes got drunk and mistook my apartment for his…

But something… This… Why did it feel like I had seen this before?

What was this sense of déjà vu?

Why was the guy from upstairs a zombie now?

A zombie?

‘Déjà vu…?’

What did I do next…?

I couldn’t remember. It was hazy.

“Urrr!!!”

I swung the bat without hesitation.

Crack!

The baseball bat connected with the man’s head.

I continued to bash the zombie’s head until he lost his balance and fell.

Then, I stomped on the dying zombie’s neck.

“Haa… Haa… Haa… F-fuck…”

My hands were covered in blood.

The dead Han Tae-yang.

Han Tae-yang…?

“What the… Where am I…?”

I was suddenly standing alone in an unfamiliar house.

The sense of unease reached its peak.

“Ah… Ah…”

Then, from the slightly ajar bedroom door, someone made a strange noise while staring at me.

“Y-you bastard!!! Who are you?!”

“Uu… Uu…”

It was a nameless man who had lost his wife.

I knew his name, but… I couldn’t remember it.

He was looking at me with hatred.

And he wasn’t the only one. The people I had killed were staring at me from all corners of the house.

As if resenting me. As if wanting to kill me.

“Wait. The people… I killed…? I killed them…? What nonsense…”

Slowly, gradually, my memories returned.

Only then did I realize this was a dream.

“A dream… Right. The Escapist’s Blue Pill. Fuck… It was a dream.”

The unease that had been gripping me finally dissipated.

I had felt something was off all day, but it was all a dream.

‘The Escapist’s Blue Pill… What the hell? They said that there would be a special event, and all I got was this boring dream…’

I felt cheated. I had spent thousands of coins for this pointless nightmare.

Did they want me to feel guilty about the people I killed?

Or did they want to scare me?

I felt no remorse for the people I killed. I believed they all deserved to die.

And there was no reason to be afraid of those I had already killed.

Now that I knew that this was a dream, there was nothing to fear.

As I thought this, the space around me shimmered, and a notification window appeared.

“Shared what? Ugh…!”

Before I could question it, I fell asleep again.

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“Ugh… My head…”

I sat up while clutching my slightly dizzy head.

“Where…?”

I opened my eyes to a reddish sky and a landscape filled with strange growths.

It was like a slice of hell. An ominous and unsettling sky.

Red… and redder… like it was stained with blood.

So… red… Beautiful… That is…

What…?

“Hey. Lower your head.”

Someone called out to me as I was captivated by the red sky.

There was a mechanical tone mixed in their voice… Who was it?

I didn’t know.

I should lower my head and see who it was, but…

That red sky, those red eyes…

They were so beautiful… I couldn’t look away…

Zap!!!

“Kyaaaaak!!!”

A sharp shock in the back of my neck. An intense jolt from something that felt like a taser.

I convulsed while foaming at the mouth and collapsed onto the floor.

Thanks to that, I could finally tear my gaze away from the red sky.

“Ugh…!!!”

I looked up at the one who attacked me. A man resembling a heavily armed soldier who was wearing sunglasses was looking down at me.

‘A robot…?’

I squinted and looked closely. He wasn’t a normal human.

He looked more like an android imitating a human.

I could see seams at his joints. And where his skin was torn, mechanical parts were exposed.

‘A robot or a cyborg?’

I wasn’t sure. A modified human or just an android.

But judging by his appearance, most of his body seemed to be made of mechanical parts.

“Sorry for the sudden attack. But I had no choice. It’s the most effective method.”

He extended a hand to me as I wiped the foam from my mouth with my sleeve.

I took his cold hand and stood up.

If he wanted to kill me, he could have done so several times already.

Since he had spared me, he either had something he wanted me to do or he was an incredibly kind robot.

I hoped it was the latter.

“Ugh…”

“Hey, don’t look up at the sky. Nothing good will come of it.”

“Ah… Okay.”

He took a baseball cap and sunglasses from the bag on his back and put them on me.

The brim of the cap partially obscured the sky, preventing me from looking up unless I made a conscious effort.

And the sunglasses further restricted my vision.

“You must never look at what’s in that sky. Not if you don’t want to become fertilizer for this land.”

Fertilizer for this land…? Wasn’t this just a dream?

Was this a kind of dream where I couldn’t return to reality if I died?

Perhaps I had been dragged to a strange place while I slept.

I asked the robot.

“Um, is this a dream?”

“What? A dream? A dream…? Wait, a dream… Yes, a dream. It’s a dream. It’s a dream. Hmm… It was a dream.”

The android suddenly repeated the same words several times like a broken machine.

The sight was slightly unsettling and creepy.

Worried that he might go crazy and attack me, I tried to use a skill to restrain him with some tentacles, but…

‘I can’t use my skills. I don’t even have anything on me.’

Just like in the other dimension, the upper level accessible through the Black Market where dangerous bugs like Possessed, Returners, and Reincarnators gathered, I couldn’t use my skills here either.

Moreover, all I had were the clothes on my back. At least in the other dimension, I had firecrackers and other items, but here, I came empty-handed.

‘It’s natural to be empty-handed in a dream…’

I couldn’t sense the presence of Kashnax or Indikron either.

It seemed like I was completely separated from them in this dream.

‘Huh?’

But for some reason, I could sense Bothamili’s presence.

A presence even stronger than in reality.

I called out to Bothamili, hoping she would answer.

[Hmm… Hmm… This place is…]

[A boundary. A border… A boundary of what?]

[I don’t know. But you can’t leave here through normal means.]

[You must never lose your mind here.]

[If you’re drawn in, you become part of the ‘Nightmare’.]

[Ask the one before you for help.]

[He will… to you…]

Bothamili’s voice was filled with static.

She seemed to have said a few more words, but I couldn’t hear them clearly.

‘Ask the one before me for help?’

I glanced at the android, who was still muttering to himself.

I didn’t sense any malice or hostility from him, but he seemed to be a broken being.

Could I trust someone like this…

“To prevent… the increase of entropy… I passed through… a wormhole… and… this is… a dream… Who am I? I’m a scientist… for research… What research was it…? Ah, to prevent the increase of entropy… I passed through… a wormhole… and… this is…”

He kept repeating the same words like a malfunctioning machine.

If I left him like this, he would probably keep muttering the same thing endlessly, so I decided to wake him up.

“Hey! Excuse me!”

“Gasp…!”

He flinched and came to his senses when I tapped him on the shoulder.

Then, he bowed his head to me.

“Thank you. I too… have been here for too long. My mind keeps drifting.”

“No, but where is this? I know it’s a dream, but…”

I knew nothing, so I needed to borrow some knowledge from him, who seemed to know more than me.

“This is… Limbo. A hellish place you can’t escape…”

“Limbo?”

“Yes. As you said, this is a dream. The problem is that no one knows whose dream it is. So we can’t move on to the next stage.”

I distinctly remembered the system notification mentioning a ‘Shared Dream Tragedy’ before I ended up here…

“Do you know anything about the Shared Dream Tragedy?”

“Shared Dream Tragedy…? I know the Tragedy of the Commons, but… Shared Dream Tragedy… I’m not sure.”

“Tragedy of the Commons?”

I felt like I had heard about that from somewhere before…

Seeing my confusion, the man briefly explained the Tragedy of the Commons.

“The Tragedy of the Commons, simply put, is the concept that if you leave shared resources available to individuals without any rules or laws, everyone will exploit them recklessly, depleting and ruining them… But Shared Dream Tragedy… That’s an intriguing keyword.”

The man stroked his chin, lost in thought.

Then, he suddenly snapped out of it and started walking somewhere hurriedly.

“W-wait! Where are you going?”

“We need to get to the base camp before sunset. You seem to be new here, so if you have nowhere else to go, follow me.”

I had no other options, so I followed him.

Night was always more dangerous than day, no matter where you were.

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T/N – Okay, an intriguing setup, but nothing substantial for now. The robot mentioned stages, so there might be more after this. Hopefully, not a lot, as I don’t really like overly long dream sequences.

If you find any mistakes, feel free to point them out in the comments.