The bitterness akin to the broth you’d get by boiling red ginseng spread inside my mouth. I ended up unknowingly smacking my lips, prompting a familiar voice to enter my ears.

“Uh? Looks like he’s coming around. Put this in, too.”

Someone forcibly pried my eyelids open and dropped a substance similar to eye drops on my eyeballs, causing a really cold sensation to spread out and help me regain my wits in an instant.

[Due to consuming new types of elixirs, your Incarnation Body’s recovery has accelerated.]

My vision was restored, and I found myself lying against the belly of a horse. The White Dragon Horse – Chimera Dragon – of Tang Sanzang neighed unhappily and glared at me.

“Oh, he’s awake!”

I saw Yi Gil-Yeong’s and Shin Yu-Seung’s worry-filled faces brighten up. Yi Ji-Hye forcing my eyelids open was grinning as well.

“Hey, what will we do with you when you’re too frail to ride on a bus?”

“Hmm, hmm. You’re supposed to serve your Master, so it’s no good for you to be this feeble, you know?”

The boy put his hands on his waists and fake coughed. I grinned bitterly and tried to prop my upper body up, and Shin Yu-Seung lent me a hand.

“Are you really alright? You fainted all of a sudden….”

“I’m feeling better, thanks to all of you. By the way, these elixirs….”

I looked at all the remnants of various elixirs around me. A few of them were unfamiliar, but there was also one that I did recognise.

It was the eye drops contained in a reddish bottle, called ‘Three Flowers and Nine Fruits Sap’ (三花九子膏), and was one of the treasures found within the Journey to the West that could be earned by defeating the Yellow Wind Demon King.

I was somewhat flustered by this and asked the kids. “….Did you use that on me?”

For a moment there, I thought I could see Yu Sang-Ah’s face in Shin Yu-Seung’s bright smile.

The ‘Three Flowers and Nine Fruits Sap’. Just by putting some in your eye, it restored energy in your body and expanded your eyesight.

[A portion of judges are satisfied by this attempt at reflecting the original work!]

[10 additional points have been awarded!]

Actually, it was Sun Wukong who ended up using the ‘Three Flowers and Nine Fruits Sap’ in the original storyline, too. However…. to think, they willingly spent an item on me that they could’ve used on themselves. For some reason, I felt guilty about it.

I felt my right wrist getting numb so I took a look, only to see something rather horrifying happening there.

“You’re just as weak as that bastard. What’s the matter with your Incarnation Body?”

Yu Jung-Hyeok was holding my right wrist with enough force to pop it like a balloon while feeling for my pulse. Now that I thought about it, this guy possessed the next best medical skills after Yi Seol-Hwa in our group.

He scowled deeply as he continued to observe my condition. “Not a single blood vessel in your internal organs is intact. It’s a miracle that you even managed to participate in this scenario.”

“….Is that so.”

“It’s rare to see a Constellation ending up in such a situation. Are you being chased by someone?”

I looked at him with a bit of surprise.

There was no way he’d ask me that out of concern, so…. Seeing how he was firmly grasping the [Dark Heavenly Demon Sword] with his free hand from a while ago, I could more or less figure out what he was planning to do here.

“No, it’s not like that. I was just in an urgent need for this ‘Great Fable’ so I didn’t have enough time to recover my Incarnation Body.”

“I shall end you right away if you prove to be a burden to this group even for a second.” Yu Jung-Hyeok discarded my wrist like trash and stood up from the spot. “….We’ve wasted precious elixirs.”

Yu Jung-Hyeok strode away and settled down on a nearby boulder to polish the [Dark Heavenly Demon Sword] again. It had been broken once before, so its durability must’ve fallen by a quite lot now.

Yi Ji-Hye, watching that, spoke to me. “My Master, no wait, my Senior Brother is really cool, isn’t he? Even though he’s saying that, he was the first person to recommend using elixirs on you.”

….That Yu Jung-Hyeok did?

I couldn’t understand no matter how hard I thought about it. Even if I was ‘Kim Dok-Ja’ and not the ‘Watcher of Light and Darkness’, he wouldn’t have…..

– He’s not as cold-blooded as you think.

I heard the dumpling [999]’s voice quietly enter my ear.

⸢”Do you still believe that you can understand someone through just a few lines of text in a couple of chapters?”⸥

[999] told me that not too long ago.

He was right. Even though I knew his words were correct, I kept forgetting them over and over again.

One’s life would always be greater than a story written about him.

⸢Yu Jung-Hyeok was always behind his comrades.⸥

There were countless paragraphs in the ‘Ways of Survival’, but they couldn’t fully explain the time lived by Yu Jung-Hyeok.

3rd turn, 4th, 5th…. He always was looking at his comrades from a certain distance. He stood there and protected them, and faced off against their enemies.

⸢”Yu Jung-Hyeok, were you able to protect everything you wanted to protect?”⸥

Always, he failed to protect those he had to protect.

Even then, he remained in the same spot.

It was quite likely that I’d never get to fully understand the depths of his determination even if I died and woke up again.

Shin Yu-Seung walked over to Yu Jung-Hyeok polishing his blade.

“Jung-Hyeok-ahjussi.”

He looked back at her with his trademark disinterested eyes, and her small hand pressed against his cheek. Upon closer inspection, a cream-type ointment was applied there.

“….What are you doing?”

“Be still or it’ll get infected, you know. Ah, don’t turn your head!”

“Even without applying things like this….”

As if he was some kind of a vicious wild beast currently being tickled, Yu Jung-Hyeok’s expression became rather complicated.

It took a single person’s name to stop him from shooting up from his spot and leave.

“Seol-Hwa unni asked me to do it, you see. She said that ahjussi wouldn’t care about stuff like this so someone has to mind it for his sake.”

Yi Seol-Hwa’s name caused his shoulders to flinch rather grandly. He seemed to be torn over his decision for a very long time, but then, settled back down on the boulder awkwardly. He loudly declared in a charismatic voice next. “Finish it in ten seconds or less.”

Shin Yu-Seung giggled and nodded her head, and began rubbing the ointment all over him energetically. His lips continued to twitch but he didn’t try to stop her.

The wounds on his body healed at a visible pace after her hands brushed past them.

As expected, Yi Seol-Hwa’s remarkable ointment was something else, indeed. Back in the original story, the [Mass Production-type Maker] even imported her ointment and sold them as a cosmetic product, too. What was its name again? Was it ‘Purest White Fable Cream’ or something?

“Bubble, hiss….”

My ears caught the sounds of onomatopoeia for the first time in a while, so I looked to my side to see what was what, only to find Yi Gil-Yeong and his figuratively-blazing eyes there.

As if he suddenly developed cross-eyes, the boy began alternating his gaze between Yu Jung-Hyeok and Shin Yu-Seung rapidly.

….Oh-ho?

Eventually, he began striding towards where the duo was in a vigorous fashion as if he had made up his mind about something.

“Hey, Shin Yu-Seung!”

His calling prompted Yu Jung-Hyeok and Shin Yu-Seung to look back at him simultaneously. Yi Ji-Hye sidled up next to me and nodded her head, her expression one of contentment. “Finally, Gil-Yeong-ah. You have woken up.”

[Judge, ‘Sakyamuni’s Successor’, likes these young Tang Sanzangs.]

[A portion of audience members enjoy watching the adorable antics of Tang Sanzangs.]

[20 additional points have been awarded.]

Yi Gil-Yeong hesitated greatly where he stood, unable to do anything under the outpouring of attention other than bobbing his lips up and down. He had started this whole thing, but his expression clearly showed that he had no idea what to do next.

In the end, he resorted to shouting out, his face flushed beet red. “I’m gonna apply Dok-Ja hyung’s ointment from now on!”

As if he had finally realised what needed to be said here, he spoke in a triumphant voice next. “Got that? You’ll be in charge of that sooty bastard from here on!”

Yi Ji-Hye dashed forward before I even realised it and smacked the back of Yi Gil-Yeong’s head. Unsurprisingly, the boy grandly faceplanted nose-first into the ground.

“Why did you mention Kim Dok-Ja there, you dumbass?!”

She pinched his ear and pulled him up to lecture him properly.

Meanwhile, Shin Yu-Seung watched the proceedings and shook her head, before returning to her job of applying the ointment.

Yu Jung-Hyeok was stroking his cheek in awkwardness as if he couldn’t really get used to the cream on his skin….

⸢Kim Dok-Ja watched all these happen with a quiet smile.⸥

[‘The 4th Wall’ is gradually getting thicker.]

⸢As if, he was looking at a spectacle happening in the distance.⸥

The smartphone inside my inner pocket was busy creating paragraphs on its own. As the texts floated up, I looked at my companions and thought to myself.

Right, maybe I….

⸢Maybe in that moment, Kim Dok-Ja made up his mind up over a certain something for the first time ever.⸥

*

The transformation into the Outer God gradually sped up. What was once 71% soon became 75%, and it only took a proverbial blink to shoot past 80%.

But when it got around to 85%, it suddenly came to a dead stop.

It was all thanks to my companions looking after me.

“Here, eat this. Oh, and this, too.”

As if it was inversely proportional to my ‘infection’ rate, the scenario clear speed of my companions actually accelerated gradually. As expected, the combination of the 94th scenario’s Yu Jung-Hyeok and Yi Ji-Hye was incredible to behold.

“Senior brother, over there!”

“Below us.”

As befitting the disciples of the [Breaking the Sky Swordsmanship], they were in perfect sync with one another.

The majority of the enemies were taken care of even before they could approach us or come up with dastardly schemes against us. On top of that, they even resorted to using power levels that surpassed the scope of the original to suppress our enemies.

[Current rate of Journey to the West’s progress: 43%]

[Fable chamber ranking has improved!]

[Current ranking of the applicable Fable chamber is 21st.]

[Judge, ‘Golden-bodied Arhat’, is happy with his current appearance as a pretty young girl swordswoman.]

Shin Yu-Seung, now finding herself with nothing to do just like me, muttered to no one in particular. “It’d been nice if Hui-Won unni and Hyeon-Seong ahjussi could come along, too.”

It seemed that those two couldn’t participate this time.

Yi Hyeon-Seong wouldn’t have woken up just yet. He had entered the final phase of [Steel Transformation], so I figured that he’d be sleeping for a long while. However, there should be no problem in regards to his life.

The real problem would be with after he had woken up, actually.

Whatever the case might have been, I thought that this scenario could come to an end in less than ten days at our current pace.

And so, yet another day came to a close, and then another one, and eventually, four days went by.

[Current rate of Journey to the West’s progress: 64%]

[Current ranking of the applicable Fable chamber is 15th.]

[A high number of competitors are keeping a hostile eye on the applicable Fable chamber.]

All I did during those four days was ride on the bus, sleep to my heart’s content, chat with my companions about nothing important, and consume a ton of elixirs.

[Your Incarnation Body has recovered to a noticeable degree!]

[Energy is returning gradually to your Incarnation body.]

…It felt like my cheeks had become fatter by a bit, too.

As I enjoyed this abundant, easy-going life, Yi Ji-Hye, Shin Yu-Seung and Yi Gil-Yeong all observed me with satisfied expressions on their faces.

….As if they were farmers feeling happy about a pig growing all fat and juicy and the like.

“Here! Eat this one, too!”

“Please, take this.”

….Why were they so happy about me consuming these things, anyway?

Yi Ji-Hye to my side complained a little while chuckling out. “They say that if you can’t get a pheasant, then get a chicken instead. I mean, it’s nice to see you eat well and be healthy, you know. If only we fed that guy as diligently as we’re doing now.”

Time continued to tick by.

“Keu-heuk! This isn’t over, Zhu Bajie!”

We encountered Han Myeong-Oh playing different roles many times, and….

….We even ran into a potential helper of ambiguous identity, sporting a wild beard as if ‘he’ was some sort of a Taoist deity or something.

[Hmm, hmm. I’m this mountain’s deity spirit. I’ve learnt a long time ago that you are on a noble journey to India. I have been waiting for you to reach here so that I can provide you with a little bit of help…..]

The kids cried out at the so-called ‘deity spirit’ blessed with a head full of bright blonde hair and the obviously-fake beard.

“Ha-Yeong unni!”

“Ha-Yeong hyung!”

<Episode 82. Outer God (2)> Fin.