1.
The strength that had been holding up my legs gave out.
What ruled my body now was sheer, overwhelming terror.
It felt like I'd come face-to-face with something I was never meant to meet.
The moment that bastard vanished, the crushing presence that had been squeezing my body and the laughter drilling into my ears both disappeared with it.
"What the hell was that...?"
Something beyond human common sense. Incomprehensible.
It was on a completely different level from the crazy bitch who killed me.
If that woman was still a monster that could be counted as human, then the clown who appeared while covering the sky with a curtain was the kind of being that should be called a god.
"Silver Wolf! Are you okay?"
"U, ugh..."
Blood was pouring from her nose, ears, and eyes.
Just facing it had left her like this.
I hurriedly turned to look for Silver Wolf, and there she was, collapsed and unconscious, letting out a groan.
She wasn't bleeding like I was, but her face was twisted in pain.
I looked around.
"...Fuck."
Everyone except me had passed out.
The people who had been looking up at the sky.
The people in the chicken-coop apartment who had heard the commotion and looked out through their windows.
Every last one of them was sprawled out cold with their eyes shut.
This is really impossible to deal with.
How many genres are you trying to mash together?
Cyberpunk sci-fi regression possession Cthulhu xianxia fantasy.
It wasn't even kimchi, mala, sweet-and-sour pork, and pineapple pizza. It felt like they'd just thrown in every weird thing they thought would be fun.
"This is disgusting. I should just quit."
If they were going to pull crap like this, even good little me had no choice but to go on strike.
All they handed out were points, and the only thing you could do with those was slowly save up for gacha.
They set the difficulty to hell mode and expected me to survive on my own.
Thinking about it again just pissed me off.
I picked Silver Wolf up princess-style and laid her down on the bed.
The people collapsed outside were none of my business.
"Haa... sss..."
At least she was breathing normally.
Her mind had just fainted from the shock of it all.
"...Why didn't I pass out?"
I had been furious about my gacha being a total disaster.
Other than that, I'd gotten annoyed listening to the laughter, looked up at the clown in the sky, and told it to shut up.
It wasn't like it had actually shut up and left just because I told it to, right?
"Sss... fuck."
I pulled out a cigarette, stuck it in my mouth, and lit it.
I didn't usually smoke inside the house, but I was in such a bad mood that I couldn't help it.
Come to think of it, had that weird message in the status window been fixed?
"Status... huh?"
A new challenge had been cleared.
========
▶ Challenge completed (!)
- You receive the gaze of the ■■■■ of Elation, ■■.
- You ascend to the Path of Elation.
========
Now I understood.
That bastard who had just appeared.
He must have been the owner of that name covered in black squares.
I'd already seen the Path once in the lower section of the status window.
"Elation, huh..."
It fits.
Just by looking at him, he seemed like the kind of stock-market clown who'd love acting like a clown in front of other people.
I'd even gotten a title.
========
▶ Title acquired (!)
Laugh, and the whole world will laugh with you.
Weep, and you will be the only one crying in this world.
Beyond the impossible.
You have succeeded in facing the essence of Elation.
Impose your destiny upon this world.
◈ Title: [Audience] has been upgraded to [One Who Walks the Path of ■■].
- The chance of attracting ■■■■'s attention greatly increases.
- Synchronization with the Path of Elation increases.
========
As I stared at the status window, the locked Path had been unlocked.
"...Wait, was that a power-up event?"
What kind of lunatic gives a power-up event like this?
What if I'd had a heart attack and died like a glassy-eyed weakling?
I'd asked for it, sure, but I never thought they'd actually give it to me.
And in such a dangerous way, too.
First I tried pressing the words floating above the blue window to figure out what the Path even was.
Click.
"...?"
Click click click click click.
"Seriously."
Was I supposed to figure it out myself?
How rude could it get?
Nothing happened no matter how many times I pressed it. I checked around the status window to see if anything had changed, but all I had was the title and the points I'd earned from clearing the challenge.
So what can I do now?
Nothing.
There was nothing I could do except get angry.
"What the hell is a Path, you nerd?"
Don't talk using terms only you people know.
I want to know what a Path is too!
These proper nouns are a problem no matter where you go.
That's probably the number one reason early stories in nerd games go to hell these days.
They throw around a bunch of terms only they understand, kill all the reader's interest, and then wrap it up with, Wow! We won! Case closed! What a load of crap.
"At this rate, I can only give this status window one star."
The status window still didn't answer me.
For a while, I even tried meditating, desperate to understand what the Path was supposed to be.
After rummaging through the status window for a bit longer, I eventually flopped onto the bed and hugged Silver Wolf.
Whatever.
Someone would explain it eventually.
By tomorrow, the people passed out outside would probably wake up on their own too.
2.
"So, do you remember what happened yesterday?"
"...I don't remember."
Silver Wolf sat there with a sulky look on her face.
And I sat on the bed with her, staring at the game screen.
"It's like someone neatly cut it out. I don't remember anything..."
"Not even the clown mask?"
"No."
Wow.
The being I had faced must have been even more incredible than I thought.
I'd gone around asking everyone while waiting for Silver Wolf to wake up.
And not a single person remembered anything.
Mr. Wang, the caretaker.
Silver Wolf.
The strangers.
They all just brushed it off as, Huh, my memory got wiped, some crazy hacker must've run an experiment here~
A hypnotic app that manipulates common sense and memory.
If I had something like that, I could make the woman who attacked me feel every kind of humiliation imaginable.
What an all-purpose tool.
I finished explaining to Silver Wolf exactly what had happened yesterday.
The clown who covered the world with a curtain.
The endlessly spreading laughter.
And the fact that I had come to walk a Path.
Silver Wolf didn't know what a Path was either.
I'd only heard the term myself.
I didn't know what kind of power it had.
Or what it could do.
"Maybe we should go ask the pawnshop owner."
"Maybe. He does know a lot of weird random stuff."
To escape being a total loser, I had to do something.
Even if it was a straw I couldn't see, I still had to grab it.
I got dressed and headed outside.
Of course Silver Wolf came with me.
Silver Wolf wasn't walking a Path, but I still needed to know what kind of power I'd gain once I powered up.
Honestly, I was a little excited.
At the thought that I might finally be able to leave ordinary humanity behind.
Today, a person died in the chicken-coop apartment.
That was the me from yesterday, the one who had doubted the status window.
The cowardly me died today.
From tomorrow on, I'll be reborn as a new Adrian, one who's no longer a total pushover!!!
"Mister!!!"
The old man sleeping sprawled out inside the pawnshop jolted awake in surprise.
"Fuck, you scared me!"
"What is a Path?"
"...You wake someone up and go straight to the point?"
"Yep!"
I'm in a hurry.
I'm really in a hurry.
The moment he heard the word Path, the pawnshop owner adjusted his glasses.
Then he pulled out a sheet of paper.
There was a drawing on it.
"Do you know the basic background?"
"No!"
"...Do you know what Aeons are?"
"No!"
"Then what about the concepts?"
"Can you eat them?"
"You ignorant orphan bastard."
"Do you want to die for real?"
Calling someone an orphan when they aren't one is an insult.
Calling a real orphan an orphan is just abuse.
"I'll explain this once. Listen carefully."
Before explaining Paths, there was a concept I absolutely had to understand first.
Aeons.
In simpler terms, gods.
As gods who govern and symbolize each concept, they are called Aeons.
Aeons and Paths—these two are interlocking parts, gears that fit together.
There is one special thing about them.
Even if an Aeon vanishes or disappears for some reason, once a Path has begun, it continues to exist.
"...So it really was Cthulhu?"
"What's Cthulhu?"
"There are beings like that. Similar to Aeons."
So I got my power from an outer god?
It's not like they're going to rip out my organs later and call it a sacrifice, right?
There are currently twelve confirmed Aeons.
Nanook of Destruction.
Lan of The Hunt.
Nous of Erudition.
Xipe of Harmony.
IX of Nihility.
Qlipoth of Preservation.
Yaoshi of Abundance.
Fuli of Remembrance.
Aha of Elation.
Mythus of Enigmata.
HooH of Equilibrium.
Terminus of Finality.
"That's a hell of a lot."
Actually... weren't Aeons pretty common?
Twelve of them sounds like a small club.
"Got it? A Path is a component of the Aeons. Those who walk a Path can wield the power of concepts that originate from the Aeons."
"...Teehee! That's way too hard!"
"Silver Wolf, did you get it?"
"More or less."
Any chance of a three-line summary?
My head felt like it was about to explode just from hearing all these proper nouns.
If I thought about it in fantasy terms, the Aeons were basically the gods of a fantasy world, and the Path was something like divine power?
"So how do you use the Path!"
That was the most important part!
This was my chance to escape being a loser!
"I don't know."
"...If you don't know, then who does?"
"I can't walk a Path. I used to handle it about ten years ago, but something happened on the Xianzhou, so I can't use it anymore."
A Path was a concept.
To wield that power, the path you walked had to match the Path.
"It's not some common power. You have to be chosen by a god and walk the same road to get it."
"So how do I use it?"
"Ask someone else."
In the end, all I got was a long-winded explanation of proper nouns.
"No!!! No!!! Heaven itself!!!"
"...You've got it rough, Silver Wolf."
"Not really. Adrian's always like this."
So much for a power-up event.
I still hadn't gotten stronger.
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