Chapter 273 - The Original World
# Shin Ha-ru, Stardust.
She was currently having a very unpleasant experience.
"....Ugh."
Where did things go wrong?
...When she finished the long battle, she thought everything was over. But what was the problem? Was it letting her guard down at the end against the Moon Cult Leader? No. That wasn't something she could have avoided even if she tried. It was an attack that even her enhanced senses couldn't predict.
This was the result.
Hit by whatever attack he suddenly unleashed, she felt like she was falling through some kind of veil. Then splash.
And now, she was holding her throbbing head in a place where she couldn't see anything, trying her best to prevent her body from being thrown around. It felt like being caught in a whirlpool. Round and round, round and round her body spun.
Then.
"Gasp!"
She finally managed to touch the ground.
"Haa, haa. Hiss.... Haa."
After taking some time to collect herself.
Finally Stardust. When she opened her eyes and looked ahead.
What unfolded before her eyes was.
"...?"
A world of ruins, where everything had collapsed.
"What is this...?"
Stardust muttered with a trembling voice without realizing it.
Under the red sky, an endless ghost city stretched out.
She had been fighting in Seoul, which was already half-destroyed by monsters, but it definitely wasn't this bad. Here, the nearby buildings seemed to have collapsed long ago, with dust flying everywhere.
In this ominous sensation.
"Haa...!"
She forced her tired body to fly up into the sky, searching for people or cities for a long time.
After quite some time, after wandering around extensively, she had to admit it.
...No matter where she went, there were no traces of people. Only ruined cities in a world of destruction.
When she felt it intuitively.
'Is this a different world from the original...?'
That's what she thought.
Considering what was said about the Moon Cult Leader manipulating dimensions... this might be some dimension of a destroyed world.
She had such ominous thoughts, but then shook her head.
No. It could be a hallucination. There's no way something so absurd could happen...
"...."
And her thoughts stopped when she came across a sign while walking aimlessly.
"...New Seoul?"
A sign on the road, a green-tinted sign that read New Seoul.
...Hearing such a term for the first time in her life, she felt something was wrong.
It seemed that.
This place was definitely not the world she knew.
***
How long had she been wandering under the red sky?
She managed to gather some information from the buildings that remained standing.
Computers were already damaged and there was no electricity, so the only reliable sources were torn newspapers and books... but she did learn some things.
"...."
First, the year in this world was several years ahead of her time.
So she had come to the future?
Did the future change so horribly?
...No, that didn't seem right.
"...."
Inside a half-collapsed building.
...In what was probably once called a library, among the burning ruins. She discovered several more pieces of information by searching through the debris.
As seen on the sign outside, this place was called New Seoul, not Seoul.
And the time when this New Seoul was built.
"...After the Moon Priestess's storm destroyed Seoul, Lee Seol-ah, the chairman of Yu-seong Corporation, rebuilt the fallen capital."
....What on earth does this mean?
Under the red sky, with the crimson light entering through the broken windows like a sunset.
Feeling the chilly wind coming through the cracks, she stood there looking down at the paper for a long time before muttering.
"Seoul should have been saved by me and... Egostic..."
That's right.
The Moon Priestess. The black-haired girl in white priestess clothes who Egostic had made his ally.
It's true that she attacked Seoul with a pink storm that she, Shadow Walker, and Icicle couldn't stop... but Egostic appeared and persuaded the priestess to go with him, saving Seoul.
...She even remembered Egostic patting her head and telling her she did well.
Anyway, the Moon Priestess terrorist incident was as vivid as if it happened yesterday.
That's why she couldn't understand what was written in this book.
Seoul had definitely been protected without major damage, so how could it have been destroyed? What did this mean?
...There was nothing more to learn by holding onto this confusing information.
Let's go to another area and investigate further.
With that thought, she flew into the sky again and began searching through the ruins for any information she could find.
Soon after, she was able to gather quite a lot of information.
Especially about a past that had clearly flowed differently from her world.
[[Breaking News] S-class villain 'Saint Petrius', also known as Death Knight, who destroyed four cities, finally arrested. VK Corporation reportedly deeply involved, investigation underway.]
...Death Knight, an A-class villain affiliated with Ego-stream who had no battle records except against her, was somehow recorded as an S-class villain who had killed hundreds of people.
[North Atlantic villain organization Latis launches global invasion... Republic of Korea loses 15 percent of its territory. Some self-congratulatory opinions say 'This is actually doing well under the circumstances'.]
Latis, led by the S-class villain Atlas who definitely wouldn't have attacked Korea, had apparently attacked the Republic of Korea.
She continued searching through crumbling newspapers and books among the debris, trying to find more information.
Finally, after who knows how long.
"Haa, haa..."
Following her intuition, she found what seemed to be a collapsed bookstore.
Entering the underground ruins covered in dirt, she pulled out relatively well-preserved current affairs magazines and news from the storage area.
"Haa..."
Sitting on a nearby rock, sighing as she flipped through them.
Eventually, she was able to find quite a lot of differences between this world and the original world by year.
"...."
This world.
It was a much more cruel world than the one she had been in.
A world where thousands died every month, where villains were much stronger, where it was more surprising that nations still existed.
[S-class villain Rhino commits another serial killing terror attack... dozens of victims all dead]
[[Front Page] S-class villain Weapon Master invades Seoul with massive killer robots. Association said 'Run to safety immediately'... but inadequate response criticized. Hundreds dead within an hour... Weapon Master's warning of future invasions increases citizen anxiety.]
[Demon Castle and Demons occupying 30 percent of New Seoul's territory, is there a way to stop them? Experts say 'We're researching but there doesn't seem to be a clear solution...']
[S-class villain Scream Maker's fifth terror attack this month alone... Opposition lawmaker causes controversy with statement 'Thousands of our citizens have already been killed by this guy, and what was the president doing? Playing golf?']
Rhino, a villain whose name she barely remembered, killed dozens of people with each terror attack.
The Demons she had fought were different here, having conquered nearly half the capital with black tentacles, and Weapon Master and Scream Maker, whom Egostic had killed, were alive and well, having killed thousands.
And this was just counting the high-ranking villains who had committed large-scale terrorist attacks.
Even the minor villains she had easily arrested were all somehow continuing their terror attacks without being caught in this world.
Were the villains in this world stronger than those in Stardust's world?
Or...
Was the version of herself in this world much weaker than she was now?
[A-class hero Stardust at all-time worst public approval... 90 percent unfavorable. Incompetence cited as the number one reason... 'A hero who stood by while citizens died' is the prevailing assessment.]
"...."
Seeing her face with a large red X across it in what appeared to be an editorial, she felt bitter. ...One person being weak could make the world turn out like this.
However, more than this.
What concerned her most, what she understood least, was something else.
Namely.
'...Where is Egostic?'
Yes.
Her arch-enemy and A-class villain who should have established the terrorist organization Ego-stream - where on earth was Egostic?
To solve this mystery, she searched through all kinds of information, but couldn't find anyone named Egostic anywhere. Despite the fact that most other villains existed in this world too, only Egostic was missing.
She even looked for other male villains thinking he might have changed his name, but ultimately couldn't find anyone similar to Egostic.
[Surge in applications to emigrate from Republic of Korea... Korea collapsed after the White Witch's mass prison break, where to next?]
She even found what looked like a grown-up version of Egostic's hacker girl from a few years ago in this world's timeline, which was a few years after her original world... but still no sign of Egostic himself.
...What exactly was going on?
Maybe in this world... hmm. Could he have been her ally? Haha. That couldn't be.
With such thoughts, she went outside.
"....Haa."
She saw the still red sky and the collapsed city.
...With neither sun nor moon visible, it was difficult to gauge the time, but she could easily tell that her strength was lacking, probably because she hadn't eaten since arriving here.
...And though she had intentionally avoided thinking about it until now... is there a way to return to my original world?
Let's try to find something first. If I escape from here, I might find a place where people live. According to the latest newspaper, Busan was appointed as the new capital.
With that thought, she forced her tired body to fly over the destroyed world again.
Yes. She continued flying.
"....Huh?"
Then, in a place that looked like a garbage dump where buildings had collapsed and piled up.
Until she discovered the first 'person' she had seen since coming to this world, standing with their back turned at the very top.
"Excuse me!"
With an unconscious feeling of joy, she flew toward them saying that.
And only when she got closer did she notice something strange.
"Huh..?"
A woman with long blonde hair, wearing a dull latex suit mixed with red and blue hues, standing on top of a ruined building.
And the dangerous aura emanating from around her.
And then.
"...What."
...The moment she turned her head at Stardust's voice.
Stardust, Shin Ha-ru, almost stopped breathing.
...Clearly more mature than now, somewhat tired yet sharp in appearance.
But that was definitely.
"...Me?"
Stardust unconsciously muttered.
"...What is this now."
Hearing that dull voice... but unmistakably similar to her own, Stardust fell into even greater confusion.
It was the moment she met this world's Stardust for the first time.