Chapter 125: Enlightenment in the Darkness

Everything was changing faster than before.

The floor undulated like waves.

No. It was my body that moved. My toes lifted slightly, and my center of gravity wavered in the air.

Gravity hadn’t disappeared. It was just that I could no longer tell which way was down.

The moment I tried to regain my balance, something flew at me from beyond the air.

A formless direction.
The trajectory of intent.
That was being thrown at me now.

I instinctively lowered my body.

The sound of a layer of air being sliced. Something brushed past my cheek.

The sensation of my skin freezing.

That being still hadn’t revealed its form.

But, having been attacked, I couldn’t just stand still.

I immediately drew an arrow.

No, I tried to.

But something was strange. The sensation in my fingertips was floating.
The bow in my hand, the joints of my fingers, the tension of the string.

Even though all of it clearly existed, it felt… ‘untouchable.’

The sensations I knew were betraying me here.

At that moment.

The enemy’s intent moved once more.

The entire space tilted.

This time, I couldn’t dodge.

The next moment, the feeling of emptiness piercing through my spine.

The sensation of something scraping along my bones, following my spine. Not skin, not muscle. It was a presence that flowed through my centerline.

My breath hitched. My body recoiled in a reflexive attempt to protect itself.

But it was a belated instinct.

The impact had already arrived.

A sharp sensation flowed like a blow along my back, shoulders, and sides.

A sensation that, rather than being painful, was so deep that it numbed the pain itself.

My knees buckled, my breathing faltered. My heart seemed to momentarily stop beating.

‘I’ve been hit.’

Without even knowing what or how I was hit.

A precise blow that made surviving feel like a fluke.

I braced myself with one hand on the ground.

The floor was still undulating, and I couldn’t even trust the place where my fingertips touched.

The space that had been pushing me out now seeped into my body.

‘Why?’

A question arose.

Why couldn’t I dodge?

---

“…What was that just now?”

One of the technicians pushed back his chair and stood up.

A sharp amplitude briefly registered on the simulation map.

“Her heart rate… stopped for 1.7 seconds. Of course, it didn’t actually stop. The sensory input was cut off, so the system temporarily stopped receiving her heart rate.”

Bharat, the head of technology strategy, exhaled briefly.

“So it wasn’t a physical problem.”

“She took the hit without any defensive reaction. There was… no movement at all.”

Bharat straightened from his posture of resting his chin on his hand and tapped the screen with his fingertips.

“…Her reaction wasn’t slow. Her senses were cut off.”

One of the technicians added.

“Not just prediction, but neural pattern calculations have stopped. Rhythm analysis is overloaded. This isn’t data collection anymore, it’s sensory collapse.”

A brief silence fell over the conference room.

Gideon, silently watching the screen, spoke a beat later.

“…It seems it was too much after all.”

---

…I slowly got up.

I hadn’t failed to dodge because I wasn’t fast enough. Not because I reacted too late.

It was because my senses were wrong.

No, my senses weren’t wrong. They were, in fact, too accurate.

The problem was how I interpreted those senses.

Until now, I had relied on familiar reactions. Familiar timing. A familiar center of gravity.

The rule that in this situation, I should move like this.

That was the way my half-elf body believed ‘reality’ to be when I fought as a hero.

I tried to recall the weight of the floor.

But that was a value that didn’t exist here and now.

So this time.

Instead of memory, I decided to follow only the changes.

If there’s no wind, follow the flow of air.
If there’s no flow, read the gaps where movement can occur.

It wasn’t about clear senses, but about accepting the place where ‘next’ would come, in advance.

I drew an arrow.

The sensation in my fingertips was still heavy, but…

“…I always moved with the premise that this world was fake. Because it was easy. Because it was a game.”

The arrow nocked onto the string without a tremor.

“So, I’ve always tried to break that premise. But…”

The arrow flew.

At that moment.

Something tore.

There was no sound, no sensation of impact.

But there was a definite feeling of ‘penetration.’

This wasn’t an impact.

It was contact.

Then, beyond the torn trajectory, ‘something’ moved.

The space shook, but it no longer attacked on its own.

Instead, the ‘intent’ that had been shaking the space began to move forward on its own.

Standing straight, I raised my bow again.

Now… it was time to face the flow.

Thud.

Something touched the ground.
It seemed like a ‘foot.’
There was weight, and then the floor subtly indented.

The being advanced with formless footsteps.

There was no sound, but the way the air and ground ruptured upon contact was… too human.

Left.

The pressure that seeped from my spine to my back.

This time, I followed the direction it moved.

Thud.

I rolled.
I didn’t look back.
The form of the attack was still absent, but the trajectory was clear.

And…

Swish—

The feeling of cutting through the air.

Not a straight line, not a curve, but a single flow wielded by intent.
I immediately drew an arrow and pulled the string.

Direction didn’t matter.

Only the sense of ‘filling’ the place where it would hit was important.

Whoosh—!

The arrow flew, and this time too, there was a reaction.

The being retreated. It was pushed back.

I felt it.

The current enemy, though formless, had movements I could read.

‘Now I can fight.’

I stepped forward.
One step, two steps. My body moved low and light.
My hand was already reaching for the next arrow.

Thwack. Thwack.

I couldn’t hear the sound of the arrows hitting, but I ‘knew’ the arrows were continuously striking.

The current me didn’t define where this was, who the enemy was, or even the senses and standards I believed to be true.

I’m not defining. I’m simply entrusting my body to the flow.

Once again, space collapses. Pressure pours down, and up and down are reversed.

But this time, only my attacks were connecting.

Thump.

This time, I clearly heard a sound.

My vision brightened, and a massive form, pierced with dozens of arrows, came into view.

The realization that it was completely over.

Then, I could organize the realization I had gained.

Until now, I thought this world didn’t accept me.

But rather.

I.

Not even once,

Realized that I had never tried to ‘accept this world as it is.’

Just like I did today.

Origin Rift was easy. Different from the situation just now?

No, it wasn’t a matter of easy or difficult.

The reason I couldn’t truly immerse myself wasn’t because this world was fake, but because

I hadn’t truly accepted ‘myself’ within this world.

That’s why I could only focus when it felt real,
I could only immerse myself when there was danger,
I only felt meaning when it was a fight.

All of that
Was a way of pulling myself up with stimulation.

But now I know.

Immersion doesn’t begin with stimulation, but with the way one accepts existence.

Without needing to prove my identity.
Without needing to explain.

Just by standing here as ‘myself’ within this flow.

In the past, I needed tension and danger to focus –

Now, I don’t need that.

With just the will to fight as my true self, I can immerse myself in any environment.

Not senses, but interpretation leads me to the battlefield.

And now, I’ve changed how I interpret.

‘My past self believed I could only swim if I was thrown into the deep ocean. Now, I’ve learned how to float even in shallow water.’

I now have good people around me who care for me.

I have viewers who truly like me.

So, I believed I was changing.

Yes. Perhaps I was changing little by little.

But essentially, I was no different from when I first arrived on Earth and felt uneasy.

I was always afraid that if my story showed even the slightest inconsistency,

My viewers would stop believing what I said.

Because I had to maintain my identity to exist as ‘myself’ here.

So, I censored even the smallest choices to avoid clashing with my RP. I even endured contradictory choices within that framework.

I think back on recent events.

I knew Senior Miya wasn’t a demon.

And privately, I knew she was a pretty decent person.

But…

Accepting it ‘without verification’ in front of the viewers

Felt like denying the time I lived as a ‘hero.’

So I needlessly nitpicked during the stream, threw out pointless verifications, and acted distant.

I knew. It wasn’t because I doubted her, but because I ‘believed I had to appear that way.’

The same was true in Voxel Craft.

I didn’t harm nature.
I didn’t destroy resources.

I believed I acted ‘like an elf.’

Yet, this thought suddenly crossed my mind.

‘Someone might have, until the very end, only seen it as stealing.’

After all, I lost the trial.

Of course, I protected nature.

But if asked whether ‘that method’ was heroic –

…It was a bit ambiguous.

I didn’t feel guilty because it was a game, but.

Ultimately, the problem wasn’t whether the act was ‘wrong’ –

But whether it clashed with the RP I presented.

I am an elf.

And at the same time, a hero who protects people.

I wanted the viewers to truly believe both.

But the strictness that didn’t allow for any exceptions in one aspect, paradoxically, caused conflict in the other.

Now I seemed to understand.

Accepting this world as it is,

Living as myself within it.

That is true immersion, and true persuasion.

I am still an elf, and a hero.

I don’t intend to give up on trying to make people believe that.

But now, I can let go a little.

And show myself a little more naturally. A little more honestly…