Chapter 57: The Abyss of 60%
1. The Erosion of a Delayed World
The sensation of my foot meeting the ground is off.
I clearly pressed down onto the floor.
But the tactile signal is still floating in empty air.
0.1 seconds. In the sliver of that time lag, the delayed impact climbs up my ankle bone and scrapes sharply along my spinal nerves.
All I'm doing is walking, and nausea twists through my stomach.
It isn't my vision that's shaking.
The time between the world and me is clotting into something thick as tar — stretching and warping on its own.
I force myself to inhale.
My alveoli seize up first.
2. The Observer's Gaze and the Suspended Threat
Alpha-00 ripples ahead of me like a heat mirage.
It does not attack.
It stands there — stuffed and mounted — while the killing intent I pour into every swing of my blade turns farcical.
And yet, the mere fact of it standing motionless is enough to warp the density of the coordinates beneath my feet in grotesque ways.
The air thickens into cold metallic particles that stab at my lungs and cling like sap — then in a single instant, all pressure vanishes, as though the space has gone vacuum.
This is not a battle.
Blue text strobes from the center of its chest — from where a heart should be.
No killing intent in its eyes. No rage. Not even the arrogance of a victor.
Only a clear, cutting stare — the gaze of a repairman making one last check of the error margin before disassembling a precision machine that no longer runs correctly — passes straight through me.
Across my retinas, a dry system message crosses alongside the blinking red warning lights.
[Observation target: Stability Collapse Phase] [Data collection rate: 98.4% ··· analyzing]
Through the text blocking my vision, Alpha's expressionless face overlaps.
It neither evades nor blocks the trajectory of my swinging blade.
No — it's as though its very existence has stepped one pace back from the physical laws of reality, rendering all of that unnecessary.
I am not swinging a sword right now.
I am flailing in the middle of a vast ocean of data — thrashing against a phantom with no substance.
The floor called reality is scraped away once more.
Inside Alpha-00's field of perception, the form of the human subject was slowly collapsing.
[Coordinate stability: decreasing.
Neural synchronization: collapse in progress.
Physical boundary of observed subject: becoming indistinct.
One external entity intervenes in the computational zone.
Snow-Type Entity.
Record updated.
Data collection rate: 99.2%]
The floor called reality screams as it is scraped away.
I am still —
standing on it.
Oxygen hasn't even reached me yet and the inside of my ribcage is already burning dry.
The sound of swallowing passes through my throat and echoes three or four times somewhere deep inside my ear canal, disconnected from everything else.
There is no pain.
Only the crawling vibration — the sound of precision components worn down to the point of spinning in place — seeps through my entire body.
My will had already lost ownership of this flesh. It was drifting around my own body like a ghost.
3. Seol's Asymmetric Support
The floor drops out.
Not a simple misstep.
The point where I set my left foot goes under like a program throwing an error — turning to bog — and the physical sensation of reality simply ceases to exist.
My body, having lost any place to stand, is about to pitch headfirst into nothing — when something contacts the outer edge of my left foot.
Something chillingly cold and solid.
Seol.
The moment he set his forepaw down and pressed into the ground where I should have been standing, the rippling, collapsing wave of space came to a halt — as though by a miracle.
Seol's forepaw pressed into the ground once more.
Thud.
The sound was not loud.
But the impact that traveled up through the ground and ran vertically along my spine — that was something else.
Like an enormous invisible nail being driven from the soles of my feet all the way through to the top of my skull. A cool vibration, precise and terrible.
Seol's mane distorted for an instant.
The silver-white grain that should have flowed smoothly spiked and scattered. Strands of light drifted into the air — then were pulled back and coiled inward into the mane as though being reclaimed.
The Archeon particles couldn't hold a stable flow. They kept losing phase, stuttering in and out.
Seol's breathing roughened.
He did not raise his head.
His gaze was fixed only on the unstable coordinate I was standing on — the ground about to give way beneath me.
His claws scraped concrete, driving slightly deeper.
Grrrk.
A sound like metal being ground.
A delay — before that sound reaches my ear and turns into noise.
The vibration that had already rung through the air arrives late, converting into sound inside my ear canal.
Seol's shoulder muscles shuddered — once, largely.
He was holding on too.
But he did not step back.
Seol did not move a single step.
On the collapsing coordinate, he gripped that one spot alone — to the very end.
But this is not salvation.
It is abnormal, cold emergency repair — like hammering a rusted nail with brutal force into a crumbling machine to hold it in place.
Every time his claws drove into the ground, the vibrations traveled through my nervous system and drove into my brain.
Every time the cold radiating from Seol's back forced itself into the gaps of my misaligned body, my instincts screamed and railed against this alien energy — a survival reflex, violent and useless.
My heartbeat was being forcibly synchronized to his rhythm.
I was no longer here by my own will.
I was a ghost, clinging to this space by the energy of a beast.
4. The Abyss of 60% and the Promised Storm
The stench of burning oil pierces through my nose.
This is not a smell.
It is the final scream of a nervous system burning itself alive.
My left field of view has already smeared past any recognizable form — bleeding out into grey noise.
The weight of the fingers gripping the sword can no longer be felt.
No — the very concept that my body ever possessed something called fingers is being erased from the map inside my brain.
The numbers across my retinas begin their final descent, blinking red like something hemorrhaging.
61.5%… 60.8%… 60.2%…
The moment the number finally touches the threshold called 60 — the density of the world drops out from beneath me with a dull, final thud.
The ground beneath my feet screams and twists. The particles suspended in the air become sharp fragments that scrape across my skin.
From inside Alpha's chest, that blue light blinks once more — intense, final — locking in the last coordinate of my existence.
[Synchronization rate: 60.0% / Critical threshold reached]
Alpha-00's hand rises.
Slowly. Inevitable in its arc.
It is less the precursor to destruction — and more the final gesture of an administrator, indifferently closing a ledger after all computation is complete.
The moment its fingertip cuts through the air, the extinction of the signal descended over me before any physical impact could.
I gripped the sword.
And was drawn into the vast, spinning stillness at the center of it all.
And then the world began to fold again —
without a sound.
ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ
It reached 60%.
Alpha never fought.
It observed.
Seol never stepped back.
He held.
The world folded again — without a sound.
See you next chapter.
