Chapter Text
"Hayeong. Send a message to Secretive Plotter"
"Secretive Plotter...?"
[SOME CONSTELLATIONS ARE TAKEN ABACK BY YOUR CHOICE!]
[A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF CONSTELLATIONS FEAR AT YOUR CHOICE]
[SEVERAL CONSTELLATIONS URGE YOU TO RECONSIDER]
"Dokja, are you sure that's the right modifier?"
"Why?"
"Take a look at this"
[THE MODIFIER YOU SEARCHED DOES NOT EXIST IN STAR STREAM.]
"Are you sure you entered it correctly?"
"Of course I did. you think I'm dumb?"
「 Secretive plotter does not exist...? 」
[CONSTELLATION, PRISONER OF GOLDEN HEADBAND, LOOKS INTRIGUED.]
[CONSTELLATION, ABAYSSAL BLACK FLAME DRAGON, GROWS CURIOUS.]
[CONSTELLATION, MASTER OF SKYWALKING, ACTIVATES THE NETWORK.]
[MANY CONSTELLATIONS START ASKING ABOUT THE SECRETIVE PLOTTER.]
I didn't think it would be like this and was momentarily paralyzed.
[1 MINUTE REMAINING]
In fact, there were cases where constellations had multiple modifiers. However, was that the current situation? A modifier had disappeared?"What now?"
The timer bled red in the air. The 73rd Demon Realm didn't wait for existential crises. The industrial complex was screaming, the Duke's forces were closing in, and I had a revolution to finish.
[The constellation Bald General of Justice is screaming and standing up!]
I looked up at the sky. It was hard to ignore him anymore.
"...Samyeongdang, please help."
The moment I spoke, lightning flashed in the sky.
[The constellation Bald General of Justice is using probability to summon an incarnation body!]
I stared at the incarnation body that was being formed in the dazzling light and thought about it. It might be better to have a trustworthy ally compared to a strong but uncontrollable constellation.
In the place where the probability of the could not reach—the "Gap between lines"—the man sat upon a throne of discarded memories.
He was the Secretive Plotter. He was the most ancient of tragedies, the one who had repeated the same hell 1863 times. He did not need the to tell him that something had changed. He was the one who existed in the white spaces between the sentences; he was the ink that had dried before the next chapter could begin.
Suddenly, a ripple moved through the void.
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS NARROWING HIS EYES.]
"Kim Dokja."
The name was a splinter in his consciousness. In 1,863 regressions, there was never a Kim Dokja. There was only the tragedy of the regressor and the eternal boredom of the constellations. He had lived through enough "Ends" to know that every story was a lie told by the Dokkaebis. But this Kim Dokja was the ultimate anomaly. He was the variable that turned 1,864th turn into a story the Plotter no longer recognized.
The man stood there. His coat—a white hem stained by the dust of countless worldlines—fluttered against a void where no wind could blow.
He was not looking at the stars. He was looking for the Gaps.
He had spent an eternity scouring the seams of the, searching for a single error code or a stutter in the probability of the universe. He didn't seek a "happily ever after." Such a thing had long been deleted from his vocabulary.
He sought an ending. Not the one dictated by the, but a final, silent conclusion to a story that had been read too many times.
[THE EXCLUSIVE SKILL, RECORD, IS ACTIVATING!]
[THE SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS LOOKING AT THE HORIZON OF STORIES.]
He scanned the multiverse, bypassing the grand nebula wars and the screams of dying planets. He searched for the quietest corner, the most insignificant speck of reality.
And there, he found it.
In the depths of the void, a flickering light appeared. It wasn't a star, nor was it the neon glow of a Dokkaebi's screen. It was the dull, rhythmic pulsing of a heartbeat that shouldn't exist here.
He found himself looking at a Seoul that was still whole. A Seoul where the air was thick with smog instead of monster blood. This world was a wasteland of a different kind—a world without Probability. It was a stagnant pond where no story could grow.
It was a world before the "Fall." A world where the scenarios had not yet arrived, where the sky was still blue and the constellations were nothing more than myths in dusty books. By all laws of the Star Stream, this world should be inert. It should possess zero Probability.
Yet, in a cramped, quiet apartment in Seoul, a spark flickered.
Snap. Crackle.
It was a rhythmic, golden static. It was faint—so faint that even the Great Sage or the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon would have missed it—but to a man who had stared into the abyss for 1,863 lifetimes, it was as bright as a lighthouse.
The Plotter leaned closer, his gaze piercing the veil of the world-line.
On the floor of the apartment sat a young boy. Through the veil of dimensions, he saw him. A young boy, perhaps no more than eleven, sitting on a worn linoleum floor. The child looked ordinary—thin, quiet, and unremarkable. He was small, his shoulders hunched as he stared at a screen, unaware that the King of a desolate world was watching him from the shadows of another dimension.
It was an impossibility. It was a phenomenon that defied the logic of the Great Hall.
The Plotter's breath hitched. That wasn't magic. It wasn't mana. It was Probability—the very currency of the Star Stream, the lifeblood of the universe—manifesting in a world that shouldn't have a single drop of it.
The boy was a glitch. He was a stutter in the reality of the "Before." He was an anomaly even more inexplicable than Kim Dokja, because he existed where the Star Stream had no right to reach.
Every time the child breathed, the golden static pulsed. It was faint, like the last embers of a dying fire, but to a man who had survived 1,863 regressions, it was as blinding as a supernova.
The Plotter had long ago abandoned "curiosity." Curiosity was a luxury for those who hadn't seen the end of the world. But as he watched the boy tilt his head, oblivious to the King of a desolate world watching him from the shadows of a higher dimension, the Plotter felt a phantom ache in his chest.
This was a spark he had never seen in 1,863 turns—an anomaly he could not simply pass by. He needed to understand.
[ SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS LOOKING AT THE SMALLEST DREAM. ]
The boy, who had been engrossed in his screen, suddenly flinched. His eyes, wide and startled, darted around the quiet apartment, as if searching for something or a ghost someone. His heart hammered against his ribs—a frantic, hollow sound in the empty apartment. He didn't move. He couldn't. His eyes, wide and glassy with a primal sort of terror, darted toward the darkened door, then back to the flickering air in front of him.
[YOU HAVE RECEIVED A MESSAGE FROM THE STAR STREAM!]
[CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS LOOKING AT YOU.]
The boy's eyes widened until they were stark white circles of terror. He didn't know what a "Constellation" was. He didn't know why a blue translucent window was hovering in his living room, glowing with an ominous light.
The boy's mouth opened, but no sound came out. His vocal cords felt like they had been severed by the sheer weight of that gaze. It was a silence born of years of hiding, of learning that noise only brought pain. He scrambled backward on the linoleum, his heels scuffing the floor, until his back hit the cold surface of the refrigerator.
He rubbed his eyes until they stung, praying the glowing words were just a symptom of his hunger or his exhaustion. But the message didn't fade. Instead, the golden static around his small frame intensified, buzzing like a swarm of angry hornets.
[EXCLUSIVE SKILL SAGE'S EYE IS ACTIVATING!]
A cascade of information, fragmented and incomplete, flowed into his mind.
[CHARACTER SUMMARY] NAME: ??? AGE: 15 ATTRIBUTE: ??? █HE O██ W█O D██A█S O█ T██ ██D (INC██P██TE) [INN███ PR█B██TY █ATI██ON (LV. ???)]
For a Being who had reached the [FINAL WALL], for a "Great Old One" who stood at the peak of all Outer Gods, to be unable to read a status window was an insult that felt like a spark of genuine interest.
[STAR STREAM IS NOTIFIED ABOUT TARGET'S EXISTENCE.]
[STAR STREAM IS CONFUSED BY THE TARGET'S EXISTENCE.]
[BUREAU HAS NOT YET FLAGGED THIS WORLDLINE. ]
He watched the boy—this tiny, trembling glitch—pressed himself against the bed-frame.
[CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS MASKING HIS STATUS.]
[ STAR STREAM IS LOSING TRACK OF THE CONSTELLATION'S COORDINATES. ]
[ CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS SILENT. ]
In the Star Stream, a Constellation's gaze was a physical weight. For an Average Human, it could feel like their blood was boiling; for a Hero, it was a divine blessing. But for this boy, who existed in a world where the "System" was supposed to be a ghost story from the future, the Plotter's gaze was a cosmic horror.
The boy's breathing was ragged. He was looking at the air where the message floated, his small hands trembling so violently that the golden static around his fingertips began to hiss.
"...Who?" The boy's voice was a dry rasp, barely a whisper. He wasn't asking the air; he was asking the terrifying weight he felt pressing down on his shoulders.
The Plotter tilted his head. In 1,863 lives, he had killed gods and watched civilizations crumble into stardust. He had forgotten what it felt like to be looked at with such pure, unadulterated fear—not fear of a sword or a disaster, but fear of the unknown.
He watched the boy—this "Smallest Dream"—shrink further into the shadow of the makeshift bed. The boy's ribs were visible through his thin t-shirt, a testament to a life lived in a different kind of scenario: the scenario of neglect.
This was the "Before." This was a world that should have been mundane, yet the Plotter saw the truth written in the boy's small, hunched frame. The child was too thin, his skin bruised in a way that had nothing to do with monsters and everything to do with the cruelty of men.
"Is... is someone there?" the boy whispered again.
The Plotter watched as the boy finally reached out with a trembling hand, trying to touch the space where the message had hovered. His fingers passed through empty air.
[CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS LOOKING AT THE SMALLEST DREAM.]
The room was a cramped, sloped attic where the ceiling slanting low enough to force a grown man to kneel. Dust motes danced in the pale moonlight filtering through a single, grime-streaked window. Stack of old boxes served as a makeshift wall, and the "bed" was nothing more than a thin stained futon pushed into the corner. On top of it, a pile of thin blankets served some heat in this cold room. It was a suffocating space, a crawlspace masquerading as a bedroom.
The Plotter observed the details with a cold, surgical precision: a single bowl with dried crusts of rice, and the oppressive silence of a house that wanted to forget this child existed.
[CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS LOOKING AT YOU. ]
Peeking out from under a tattered, oversized sleeve was a bandage—yellowed and fraying at the edges. It wasn't a medical bandage applied by a doctor. It was a strip of an old bandage, knotted clumsily by small, trembling fingers. Beneath the bandage, the Plotter didn't need Sage's Eye to see the discoloration. The mottled purples and sickly greens of healing bruises mapped out a story of violence that required no Coins to activate. He saw the faint, purple blooms of bruises on the boy's collarbone and the way he favored his left side, shielding a ribcage that likely sang with a dull, constant ache.
He pulled his sleeves down lower. The fabric was rough against the mottled skin of his forearms.
"Don't look," the boy whispered. His voice was smaller now, a secret kept from the happy voices drifting up from the floor below. "It's... it's nothing. I just fell."
[CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS SILENT. ]
The boy looked at the flickering blue screen, his eyes reflecting the cold light of the Star Stream.
"You said you're a... Constellation?" the boy asked. He didn't know the word, but he pronounced it with a hesitant reverence, as if naming a star he wasn't allowed to wish upon. "Are you like... a god? Are you here because of the news? Because of what my mother.."
The boy was so thin his collarbones looked like wings trying to escape his skin.
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER ASKS IF YOU HAVE EATEN TODAY.]
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER ASKS WHY THE ROOM IS SO COLD.]
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER ASKS WHO CAUSED THOSE MARKS.]
The boy's eyes widened, darting toward the flickering blue messages. He tilted his head, a flicker of suspicion crossing his pale face.
"Why are you asking so much?" the boy murmured, his fingers twisting in his oversized shirt. "Are you... are you a reporter? Did the people from the news send you back?"
[ CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER SAYS HE IS NOT A REPORTER. ]
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS LOOKING AT YOUR THIN WRISTS.]
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS SILENT FOR A LONG DURATION.]
[CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER SAYS HE IS CURIOUS ABOUT YOUR STORY.]
The boy flinched at the new message, but he didn't scream this time. He stared at the word 'Story' with a strange, hollow longing.
"A story?" the boy whispered. "There isn't one." His voice cracked, a fragile sound in the suffocating silence of the attic. He looked down at his trembling, bruised hands, his lips curling into a smile that held no joy—only a precocious, bitter wisdom.
"There's nothing... there is nothing interesting here. I'm just... ordinary. My story is just a series of things I want to forget. I'm just a kid who reads webnovels. If you're looking for a hero, you've found the wrong person. I'm not a protagonist. There isn't much to see here."
The boy pulled his knees to his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible, as if he could disappear into the linoleum.
[CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER NARROWS HIS GAZE.]
"Don't look at me like that. I don't have a 'story.' "
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS LOOKING AT YOU WITH INSCRUTABLE EYES.]
The Plotter felt a strange, cold prickle of recognition. He thought of the 1,863 lives of slaughter, the endless cycle of regression, the scars that covered every inch of his soul. But his pain had been forged in the fire of the Star Stream, fueled by the malice of the Great Fables.
This boy's pain was different. It was quiet. It was "pre-scenario." It was a cruelty born not from monsters or dokkaebis, but from the simple, crushing indifference of humanity.
The Plotter had survived the end of the world, but looking at this boy, he felt a flicker of something he hadn't felt in eons: a refusal to watch. He did not know why, but the idea of this specific spark being extinguished in a cold attic felt like a defeat he couldn't accept.
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER HAS DECIDED TO INTERVENE IN THE BEFORE. ]
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER HAS DECIDED TO BECOME YOUR ANONYMOUS PROTECTOR. ]
[A HIDDEN SUB-SCENARIO IS BEING GENERATED!]
[THE CONSTELLATION SECRETIVE PLOTTER HAS DECIDED TO OBSERVE YOUR STORY.]
[THE STAR STREAM IS CONFUSED BY YOUR ACTIONS!]
[THE PROBABILITY OF THE 'GAP' IS FLUCTUATING!]
[THE SECRETIVE PLOTTER IS FIXING HIS GAZE ON THE INCARNATION OF A STORY NOT YET TOLD.]