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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 16
Chapter Title: Snowman's Legacy
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A single person's lifetime encompasses many things.
Their values, aspirations, worth—a life is literally a record from cradle to grave, and death is the final period.
"No, I mean...! So what happens after resting for a month?"
"In my opinion..."
Kang Seol sensed the growing commotion around them and stood up from his seat.
"Let's step outside. It's too noisy here."
"Sure."
The two finished settling the bill and headed out.
Twilight dusk.
Freed from the terror of death, people were showing all sorts of reactions.
"Humans have committed countless sins up until now. This is their judgment!"
"Purify! We must purify!"
Men and women draped in bizarre garb roamed the streets shouting these words.
Whatever they normally believed in, their actions only added to the chaos of the world merger that had turned everything upside down.
"Looks like it's noisy here too. I know a quiet place. How about we talk there?"
"Where is it?"
"...My old workshop."
"Got it."
Why did the old man refer to it as his former workshop?
'Is he not using it anymore?'
With such scant information on the side quest, Kang Seol had no reason to refuse the old man's offer.
Just as the old man said, Kang Seol followed him to his workshop.
The old man seemed somewhat sorrowful, yet also indifferent.
Like someone steeling themselves before hearing bad news.
"By the way... what kind of work do you do in a workshop?"
"What's the point of telling you? You'll see when we get there."
- You could tell him now, sir...
- Lmao that way of talking
Kang Seol trailed behind for a moment, lost in thought, then blurted out.
"It's a clock shop."
"You catch on quick. Didn't I mention it at the tavern?"
The old man glanced once more at Kang Seol's pocket watch and let out a sigh.
"I said it looks like one I made."
The place they arrived at, following the old man, was in a secluded corner of Kongori.
Not quite the rundown slums, but far from the commercial district.
Clank.
The old man unlocked the firmly shut workshop door with a key from his pocket.
"It's still... just as I left it."
Spiderwebs everywhere inside, a faint musty smell.
But Kang Seol didn't find it as unpleasant as expected. It just felt like entering a workshop long neglected.
'It really is a clock shop.'
Clocks filled every corner.
From grandfather clocks to all sorts of timepieces crammed into the workspace.
"Good to meet you. My name is Bill Marcus. Call me Bill."
"I'm Snowman."
"...What?"
"Snowman..."
Kang Seol and Bill both froze for a moment.
'Bill?'
A familiar name, somehow.
But even with his exceptional memory, Kang Seol couldn't quite recall why Bill's name rang a bell.
'Not again.'
He could perfectly remember events from ages ago, so why this blank spot?
Perhaps the pocket watch side quest was one he'd experienced before.
Otherwise, Bill's name wouldn't feel so lodged in his ear like this.
'Trouble is... I don't remember it at all.'
Bill turned around, scanning the clocks, then tossed a comment over his shoulder to Kang Seol.
"I see... What a strange affair."
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. Now, can you tell me how you came to possess that watch?"
Kang Seol gave Bill a slightly embellished version of how he'd acquired the watch.
He'd found it while searching a cliff on Pointy Rock Mountain for medicinal herbs. It wasn't entirely untrue—just missing the surrounding context.
"I see, I see... So you found it there."
"Do you know something about it?"
"Know it? Now I understand everything. Hand me that watch, would you?"
Clack.
Kang Seol passed the pocket watch to Bill.
Bill flipped it over and examined the engraving.
"It's definitely a watch I made. See this engraving?"
"Engraving? Oh, so that's what it was."
"I can't tell if time has faded it or hardship wore it down, but my name is engraved here."
Sure enough.
As Bill said, the back of the watch bore the name "Bill" in a hard-to-read script.
It was so faint that Kang Seol had only noticed it later.
"Twenty years ago, I gave this watch to someone. For my granddaughter."
"Granddaughter? What do you mean?"
"My granddaughter was kidnapped by the trolls of Pointy Rock Mountain twenty years ago. She was crossing the mountains to make a performance schedule, and that was her downfall."
Throb.
Kang Seol felt a headache coming on.
But since this was important talk, he endured the pain and asked again.
"What happened to your granddaughter?"
"..."
"...I see."
"No one stepped up. Not the lord of this place at the time, nor the free knights, mercenaries, or adventurers. I begged them all, but they all said they couldn't help."
The granddaughter had died, but the story of the watch's owner hadn't come up yet.
Kang Seol listened patiently.
"Then, someone appeared. Someone who offered to help rescue my granddaughter."
"Who was it?"
"It's engraved on the watch."
"But there's no name anywhere on the watch..."
"That's because it's hidden inside. Here, look."
Click.
Bill fiddled with the watch's edge, revealing a hidden compartment.
Inside was an elegant inscription and a name.
- May fortune follow the path of the courageous.
'...No way.'
The name of the watch's lost owner was shocking.
- Snowman.
Bill looked at Kang Seol and said.
"Twenty years later, a man around the same age shows up with the same name and this watch... What in the world is going on...?"
Kang Seol was just as baffled.
Bill continued.
"But the watch's owner never returned. Nor did my granddaughter. After that, I left Kongori for a while and only recently came back to the city."
"Ugh..."
"What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing. Just a bit of a headache. Please go on."
"That's the end of the story. Just that there was such a tale in the past. Oh, right! There's a place worth visiting together... What do you say?"
"Where...?"
"My granddaughter's grave. And that adventurer's too."
"...Pardon?"
Bill scratched his nose and said.
"He was the only one who stepped up for my unfortunate granddaughter. Even though we never found the body, I made a small tombstone nearby. How about it? Shall we go together...?"
"Urp... Uuurp..."
"What's wrong with you!"
He remembered.
Everything that had happened between Bill, his granddaughter, and the adventurer named Snowman.
'It was my first piece...'
Truth be told, this wasn't the first time he'd used the moniker Snowman.
He had used it the very first time he set foot in the Eternal World, Pandea.
It was the first of the thirty pieces he'd raised.
Its name was Snowman.
A frost mage.
"Tomorrow... may I come back here tomorrow?"
"Y-Yes, of course. I'll wait here at noon."
"Thank you, then..."
"Get some rest."
With that, Kang Seol left the clock shop.
* * *
What in the world had happened?
'What is this...?'
A piece he'd raised himself had left traces in this world.
The realization shocked Kang Seol.
'Does that mean all the things my pieces did are preserved here?'
Clearly, the Eternal World was like that.
A piece's actions influence the world.
But wasn't that just the game board's system?
Why had events from the game board lingered in reality, beyond the game?
'Was it all real?'
To him, it had seemed merely a game, but it had all been reality.
And this fact implied it wasn't the end.
"Huff... Huff..."
Kang Seol made his way to Kongori's library.
"The library closes in one hour. If you're looking for a specific book..."
"It's fine. I'll find it myself."
Books are records of something.
And an excellent medium for chronicling events over decades.
Kang Seol swiftly scanned the shelves lined with history books.
Countless historical tomes were there.
But what he sought was something else.
'If my first character died twenty years ago... then the time I've arrived at is exactly twenty years after I played the game in my dreams.'
So, he just needed to check the records from the last twenty years.
That was Kang Seol's judgment.
'Where is it... Where!'
The first ten characters hadn't left much of a mark, but the later twenty were different.
Especially the final ten that had reached the Ascension adventure—they surely wouldn't be absent from history.
Drip.
Kang Seol's scanning finger and gaze halted at one spot.
- Turbulent Decade.
He pulled the book without hesitation.
The subtitle was striking.
- Tales of the Superhumans Who Changed History.
Rustle.
His hands flipped through the pages hurriedly.
The best way to gauge a book's contents was the table of contents, so Kang Seol stopped there.
- Preface.
1. How the Duke of Frost Was Born.
2. The Duke of Frost and His Ties to Zodiac.
3. Who Dug Up Emperor Leo's Tomb, Shocking the Continent?
4. The Immortal Who Vanished at an Ominous Time.
5. The Sword That Cuts All—Does It Truly Exist?
6. ...
...
'...They're all my characters?'
Everything mentioned in the book was about the pieces Kang Seol had raised.
"No way..."
A single person's lifetime encompasses many things.
Now, in the Eternal World, Pandea, where Kang Seol resided, his own thirty lives and deaths were intertwined...
He had become part of Pandea's history.
* * *
"Yes, this is the place."
"Your granddaughter is... here."
"No. There's no body. Still, even without one, it's a place I honor, so it has its meaning."
Kang Seol nodded and followed Bill.
Unlike yesterday, he was markedly quieter.
- Snowman suddenly in serious mode, anyone know why?
- Quest's more boring than expected ㅡㅡ
- Shocked by the death of a namesake lol
- Poor guy! Can he walk the tough road ahead like that...
- But does he have to be such a loser?
"Here it is."
A modest tombstone stood there.
Engraved on it was a message Bill had dedicated to her.
- The Most Lovable Woman in the World.
"Commemorating someone feels like a good thing. Even if it's just a tombstone without a body, it brings that person to mind."
"I see..."
"Now, the one next to it is the tombstone for the adventurer with the same name as you. We must find the watch's owner, after all."
"Understood."
Kang Seol strode toward the unfamiliar tombstone.
As he went to place the watch down with no reaction, he paused.
- A Person Who Did Not Ignore Hardship.
Something hot and inexplicable welled up in his chest.
It wasn't vengeance toward the gods, nor excitement for exploring a new world.
His hand, clutching the broken pocket watch, trembled.
"...I'm sorry."
Kang Seol now understood why he hadn't remembered Bill's name or the story tied to this pocket watch.
It was all because he had forgotten.
Forcefully sinking the resurfacing memories beneath the surface, he had barely managed to forget.
There's a term called fumble.
Also known as a critical failure.
When you roll the dice and get a 1, or bring about the worst outcome, it's called a fumble.
His first character, Snowman, had lost its life to a fumble. Young Kang Seol had been so shocked that he tried to forget it.
And so he had.
"I'm sorry... I came too late to find you."
The watch was placed atop the tombstone.
One of the thirty lives Kang Seol had lived was thus concluded.
In that moment, a message filled his vision.
[You have found the true owner of the pocket watch.]
[Reward: Ability points acquired.]
The message, which he assumed would end there, continued unexpectedly.
"Urgh..."
A headache accompanied the new message.
['Snowman''s inheritance begins.]