#indignity test

"There is something you should understand about the way I work. When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go. It's rather sad, really, but there it is."

Explanation:

For both Dodam and Alberu, Cale appears as someone they instantly reject.

The Terrible Bastard for Dodam was immediately a representation of three years of pain and despair. Dodam did NOT want him, but he needed his salvation and ended up intrigued enough to kidnap him.

The clueless servant for Alberu, who I believe goes unnamed, was immediately a representation of Alberu's fallen status, the lack of regard others held for him, that he would be sent someone who at first glance seemed so utterly useless. Alberu did NOT want him, but he needed someone so 'clueless' that he could turn the first prince's palace upside down.

So...

Once Cale finished with Dodam by providing for all of his needs, from material, to social, to psychological, he was truly wanted, but by nature, not needed.

Once Cale finished with Alberu by changing his material circumstances and fanning the spark in his eyes so that it became a blaze, he was truly wanted, but by nature, not needed.

Very Nanny McPhee.

So...

Now, I've gone into detail here even though this is quite literally just the way the rules of the Indignity Test work because I want to set the foundation (although not complete the construction) for the following statements:

I was rereading Choi Han’s indignity test for the thousandth time (I need more little rok soo pls I'm desperate) and the thing that catches my attention now is the clues.

It says food, warm home, clean clothes, and abundance of food for dinner.

Not thinking about any other clues the author did not show us (there was definitely so much more; we were robbed–) because that would drive me insane from what we know so far (there’s so much yet so little I wanna cry).

Anyway, some found it confusing how there were two notifications about ‘food’ and ‘abundance of food for dinner’ so now I want to word vomit about it.

There is a difference between having food to eat at all and being in front of so much food there’s no way you could eat it all.

Food in general was scarce for Kim Rok Soo at that age (well, at most of his ages but anyway) so imagine being Rok Soo and letting a stranger take you to their house because you want to avoid your own and instead of the things you probably had been expecting, this total stranger just.  Started putting food in front of you and tells you to eat.  To eat all you wanted.  And he leaves for a bit and Rok Soo enjoys the cartoons you rarely get to watch because the TV makes too much noise and you don't want to be locked away in your cold and dark room again.  But then the guy comes back with even more food and when you tell him you’re full he looks.  Devastated.  And the man hides the food he thought you didn’t see, which is so ridiculous you almost crack a smile, until he brings out an apple pie, and now you’re baffled.   

And what really gets me is that Choi Han calls him a good boy.  And little Rok Soo looks baffled.  And there is no notification about comfort or praise covering up his indignity.  

Which implies he is already at that stage where he does not know how to take compliments seriously and just assumes the person is either lying or stupid (which may track in his logic for this stranger that brought some random kid home and just started feeding him).

Or it implies that compliments and praise were never something Kim Rok Soo thought of wanting.

You can’t focus on wanting to be loved if your priority has to be finding a way to survive.

Which tears my heart into pieces because.  This little baby, o my lord, I wish you could feel safe enough to want someone to say something nice about you, that you lived well enough to be concerned about people liking you.  I wish he knew that there would be people who loved him, waiting for him in the future, and that he would not only feel lost forever.  I wish he was living well enough to want to delve into his favorite books with open fervor, talking with others who were reading the same thing and discovering a new way to see a story.  I wish he could feel safe enough to express himself in any other way that did not say ‘it does not matter much what happens anymore’ and ‘I don’t have the strength to go against all of this despair’.  Because this little kid grows up to be so strong, in ways he can’t even see in himself because he’s too busy lifting other people up from groundless depths. 

And he grows up to be something so big, and so warm that it’s such a happy miracle he survived the environments he lived through.  And even after suffering so much loss and failure, he still can’t help caring for people.  And he does it in a way he is conscious of, but he explains it away as a strategy to survive, and it’s his selfish way of finding solace in bright young futures he never had.  Because he needs to justify it.  Because simple kindness can be thrown away and mistrusted so easily, and it can vanish in an instant.  

So he explains it away as a selfish action when he wishes to find solace in saving others.

In becoming the comfort to others he did not get.

Reading it, I felt like they had way to much informations and stuff happening in it to not be a real world somewhere and then Raon kinda said he sorta remember Dodam so it can't really be another earth because I feel like Raon would not be feeling Dodam either so maybe another timeline ?

Do you think they'll come back at some point ?

That's an excellent question! I've given it a lot of thought, myself.

Personally, I think the twist is that instead of all tests being illusions, each one worked on completely different mechanics: it was to fool the people undertaking the tests to make them stuck for as long as possible, if not indefinitely, and absorb their despair at being trapped.

The first test was an extra one: unofficially called "test of despair", courtesy of Clopeh.

This test was an "illusion of conditionally alternative reality". The world itself was fake, however, the God of Despair had limited influence over it, due to it being heavily based on the TCF reality. I imagine the God of Despair used up a lot of his power for that one.

That reality was altered in two key ways: one, Cale Henituse did not exist. As in, he wasn’t a member of the Henituse family and was never born there. Two, the White Star was replaced by an avatar of the God of Despair, who made himself look like Cale Henituse. It was to trick Cale's group into fighting an "evil Cale", then display the footage in the real world and present it as "Cale's group betraying him". This scheme ultimately failed, because of the God of Death's cintamani. I am not sure what the passing requirement actually was in that test – because the Sealed God himself destroyed that test before it was finished. He probably figured he had a better chance of tricking Cale into using Embrace on him and using it to control him, somehow. Another scheme failed because of the God of Death – who had Cale use his Divine Item to seal him.

The rest of the tests followed the "standard format" of the Sealed God's temple: sadness, sloth, failure, indignity, and wrath.

The test of sadness was based on a person's memory. That was all there was to it. No alternations, no changes. Pretty simple. To pass it, you needed to "accept your sadness" – the same way Cale had to "accept the despair yet to come" in his test back on Earth 2.

The next test was a lot trickier. It was still based on memory, but it had specific properties: indulgence and numbness. It made the person gradually forget that they're in a test at all. It might seem simple on the surface, but in my opinion, it was the most dangerous test of all. Because once you forget you're in danger at all, how can you defend yourself? Luckily, it seems all of Cale's friends managed to pass that one somehow, even thought the passing requirement was never quite made clear to me. I suppose you just needed to "let go of indulgence" and move forward to face the difficulties of the real life.

The test of failure is where things get interesting. It was intended as an "impossible task" kind of test. As Choi Han's case with Harris Village had shown, it was a test where you experienced a failure of your past in a continuous loop. Try as hard as you can to correct your failure, it was an illusion where reality was actively against you. Choi Han should have no problem returning to Harris Village on time, knowing there was an attack coming. And yet the test made him fail over and over. Choi Han was implied to eventually out-stubborn the test, which is truly impressive, as Clopeh believed such a thing was not possible, and the solution was to "accept failure" in order to proceed.

The test of indignity is the strangest of them all; because all signs show that it was the only one where an Actual Alternate Reality was involved.

From what we know about Single-Lifers, such as Choi Han, they’re the only ones who are able to travel between dimensions in their own bodies without issues – of course in Part Two (slight spoiler alert!) we are introduced to Cale's mirror, another Divine Item from the God of Death. However, even with the mirror or the Hunters, they're all required to pay a price for such travel. Even during their travel to the murim world, Cale and his group needed to change appearance in order to "fit in".

That's because regular people are not meant to dimension-travel. Such things seem to be usually only for Gods, Wanderers or other divine beings. For Variables, such as transmigrators, it's necessary to change bodies to "native" ones when they change dimensions.

It is no coincidence that while Choi Han just got dropped into the TCF universe out of nowhere, Cale's soul was placed in the body of a local. That's because he couldn't be simply transported in his own Korean body. Notice how in each test, except the indignity one, Cale and the others were in their own bodies. Only in this one they were all temporarily transmigrated into someone else – although with how 20-year-old Kim Rok Soo was still inside Cale during the Sealed God's test, it's clear that the God of Despair doesn't switch souls, but temporarily places a second soul in another person's body.

That's why I'm 100% sure the indignity test was the only one with a real other universe involved. There were also differences Cale noticed, such as the absence of the Super Rock in the villa. It wasn't an illusion world based on his memories. It was a different world entirely. But it was still similar enough for the Sealed God to choose it his test target, as the same thing happened with Earth 2.

And finally, we got the last test: wrath.

While the extra test was an illusion of an alternate reality, sadness was a memory, sloth was a mind-numbing trap, the failure was a time loop, and indignity was another world… wrath is the only one which is 100% fiction.

It is a world crafted by a sneaky temple AI for one purpose only: to piss you off.

The thing is, if Cale hadn't thought that nonsense of how "kids complaining about food" et cetera are things that "make him angry", his test would probably be a little different. Because, let's be clear here: if the White Star truly had won over Cale, he would never let him live peacefully with the kids. Especially not comfortably enough for them to complain about such mundane thing as food.

The temple took Cale's absurd suggestions and meshed them all with the vision of what truly pissed Cale off: the White Star winning and doing whatever the hell he wanted. If the White Star had won, he wouldn't leave a single one of Cale's allies alive. …Especially not Raon, whom that bastard threatened to cut his heart out of and feed it to Cale.

The point is: logically, the wrath test made no sense. There wasn't any internal consistency to it – even illusion!Eruhaben himself pointed out it did not make any sense. Clopeh's version of the wrath test was seeing Cale and his group in jail and awaiting a trial, as if that would ever happen! If Cale got caught, they would have tortured and killed him, not involving any legal procedures. What would even be the point?

From my observation, the only way to pass this test is to cool off – so unless you're able to defeat whatever it is that "makes you angry", you'd be stuck. Which, honestly, doesn't seem like a very effective trap to me… but I suppose making someone pissed off enough makes them reckless (as seen by Cale bleeding and all over the place and beating up the White Star with a rock like there's no tomorrow…), which is quite dangerous in itself. And if a person manages to pass all the previous tests without issues, it would make sense that anger could be their final weakness.

To answer your final question - do I think Dodam!verse will come back at some point?

Yes. Absolutely.

*This is just an idea! Anyone can use and/or take inspiration from the thing that i wrote but please don't driectly copy my thing please!*

TCF FIC IDEA CUZ WHY NOT LMAO will edit later ig

Summary probs idk more of a prompt i think: KRS!Cale's Indignity Test: Alberu Crossman meets his "version" of Cale Henituse except Alberu knows that Og!Cale being trash is just an act and attempts to make him either a dongsaeng (cuz of TCF!Alberu's actions and IT!Alberu having visions of those two interacting) or an ally for future purposes. (Its actually just an excuse to write these two heh)

i.e. thengalulu convo between these two ye:

Alberu then looked straight in the eyes of the notorious trash, Cale Henituse, as if he was initiating challenge, before starting to skim through the Henituse Records. (10mins and 14secs)

"Richard, a butler-in-training and servant, was fired for theft and embezzlement, Nala, one of the head maids, was accused of harassing lower ranking maids and the young master and young mistress' Basen and Lily, and was promptly fired later on by the Count and Countess themselves, Vroyz, a citizen in Rain City, kicked out of the  territory after people testifying of him attempting sexual assault, property damage and theft and succeeded in most attempts, Helen, one of the higher ranking knights, was kicked out of the Henituse Brigade after being accused of harassing the new countess..." (22mins and 17secs)

This went on for who knows how long but it still effectively confused but made the suspicions of the disguised dark elves and some human servants loyal to the first prince, more solid and clearer than ever towards the young master, while also making Cale forget that he was in front of a decent amount of people and the crown itself, and broke his act slightly as his not so drunk eyes widened in shock everytime a certain name was mentioned in the records.

'Fuck, I've been found out.'

Cale clenched the wine glass that was graciously given to him prior to this mess and gritted his teeth, opening his mouth to at least save or salvage some of his left over reputation that he worked so hard to build for the past years that was quickly getting trampled down but was promptly stopped by the noise of papers smacking onto the table.

"These are the recorded files of the fired employees of the Henituse County for the past nine to ten years."

He saw Alberu's hand hover his hands softly like a fluttering bird's feather over the papers, with the gaze of his eyes as soft as a doe's and smile as bright as the sun, contrasting his previous actions greatly of practically throwing the files on the table and nearly making them fly. (will probably keep the exaggeration idk)

"And..."

Gentle blue yet sharpened sapphire eyes (im sho shmart) moved towards the red head's, whose face is as red as a rose and eyes shook with emotions that could not be distinguished but is usually seen as between irritated drunkenness or absolute annoyance. (9mins and 32secs)

However, Alberu knew.

"These were the people that the infanous eldest young master of County threw a bottle or four at, prior to their punishments."

He knew it was raw anger and pure fear for his family's safety.

The crown prince smiled gently and youthfully towards the fuming red head, as if he hadn't just dropped a dangerous information bomb for and against a neutral noble, and tilted his head mockingly, asking the other to just give it up.

"Tsk."

What the blonde didn't expect, however, was that he would actually comply. Cale downed the whole glass of wine in his hand that he nearly splintered to pieces if he was any stronger, and slammed down the now empty glass, still skillfully maintaining his elegance all throughout his outburst.

1) "The Henituse Family bows to the collective Royals, not because they were forced to or chose to."

Rust colored eyes beneath the still, slightly bowed head peeked dangerously between the veil of hair and towards the young sun. (npi)

2) 'But because they see no reason to go against them.' (1 and 2: 5mins and 42secs)

The hand that was still holding onto the empty wine glass tightened until the knuckles turned pale white. (2mins and 19secs)

"Yet you seem to be testing my limits here."

Cale finally let go of the sole object that would normally give him a false sense of calmness, crossed his arms and legs in an extremely graceful manner and cocked his head aloofly with the most unrelaxed-relaxed face in existence. (8min and 22secs)

"I will give you what you want that I can with my power, excluding future territorial and political support, in exchange of not coming anywhere near my family."

A finger settled on his bicep started to tap restlessly as his patience wavered as he raised his brow.

"So? What do you want?"

'What do you want from a son of a neutral family?'

Cale was genuinely curious. The crown had not just found him out-the people who were supposedly there, how come they didn't know? Why? Did they not care enough to know what he was trying to do? what he was risking for that was much more valuable than his life? why-and just practically wasted his time and effort and taking advantage of his wide network full of information of different nobles, kingdoms and empires alike just for what, to exploit a weakness of the son neutral family? Or is there something more than that? (13mins and 2secs)

"Why, of course..."

A human servant clasped his hands to his mouth and a disguised dark elf's gaze had darkened in wariness as they both knew what was happening and what was going to come.

"Companionship!"

3) Alberu said with unreasonable pride, smiling impossibly brighter than before as he settled his chin on top of his crossed fingers that is placed on the table with his elbows propped up. (the fanfics that ive read good lord-)

4) 'Never mind, we don't know what's happening anymore.'

5) Said human servant unintentionally smacked his hands towards his forehead as the disguised dark elf bit her lower lip, both faces deadpan. (3, 4 and 5: 17mins and 56secs)

"Haa..."

Cale sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose understandably.

kind of hilarious to me that the fandom’s wiki assumes Kim Seung Jong is dead (it's got the little cross after his name lol).  Like I have no clue if that was revealed by the author and I didn’t know about it, but.  If this was what we assumed because of how Choi Han kept looking at the wooden sword (I just assumed it meant he would kick his ass into a hospital at most).

That’s incredibly funny to me bcause like.  He didn’t kill Cale in the novel when he insulted his dead family, and he will slaughter any enemies that threaten his home, but Choi Han.  That is murder in the modern world sweetie, and police are a lot less okay with it than the Roan kingdom.  

I like how we just assume that while Choi Han does not want to ruin the life of the person he possessed, he is so down to commit murder because it’s just what needs to happen now.

It is a little concerning though because I don't know if that was ever confirmed as a fake world or a mirror of the real past, but if it's real that could be what happened to the man that saved little Rok Soo. Cale admits that he had a lot of help getting away from his uncle, but there is this perpetual shadow following all of his life where everyone he cares for is ruined in some way. So I worry that if Choi Han murdered his uncle in someone else's body, and somehow left evidence, that was how the man who saved Kim Rok Soo was destroyed and that to Rok Soo, it was his fault in some way. I know that this sort of thing tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, similar to Cale's sloth test, but I'm not too sure.

Of course, I don't mind at all! 😄

Here's my crack AU concept:

Remember how in the first test in the Sealed God's Temple, people were unable to say to the people in the illusion how this was a test, or that this world was an illusion?

I think the only test where that rule did not apply was the Indignity Test – specifically because of my theory that it was an actual parallel world and not just an illusion (as I explained in another one of my posts).

So here's my story idea – what if due to everything being an "illusion", Cale decided to be a bit more liberal with information than usual? Or rather, he randomly tested if he could say that he was possessing Venion's lackey to Dodam (because he was scared that the dragon would blow him up, lol). Once he realizes that he can talk about it, Cale decides to just casually drop info bombs on the people.

It might not be a big divergence from canon, but basically, Cale proceeds to flip things upside down by giving Alberu exposition on everything important (like the war, the curse of the Sun God et cetera), and also straight-up tells Dodam and Choi Han that he already knows them in a different world.

...except this is Cale we're talking about, so naturally, he's TERRIBLE at explaining himself and only confuses everyone. Hilarity ensues.

Thus the resulting title: "It's nothing much, just possession", to which Choi Hand and Dodam respond: "Mister Cale... WTF".

Chapter 733

“How amazing.”

Cale was not tired at all despite not sleeping at all since last night.

In addition…

‘I guess the owners of these two bodies take care of things on their own while I'm in the other body.’

He was curious about how they went about getting things done but didn’t really want to find out.

He was simply amazed that he was feeling so refreshed. However, his body’s condition was not the only amazing thing.

‘They're able to recreate his highness and Raon’s memories so well despite the two of them not participating in the test. How amazing.’

This test was different from the former tests that had shown Cale his past.

“Let’s not think that hard about it for now.’

***

So, like Cale said, "this test was different".

I firmly believe that all the other tests were just illusions. (The only other one that I felt like it might somehow turn out real was the Sloth one, but I still doubt it. Choi Jung Gun was just a very realistic illusion, just like Alberu in the first test; still as suspicious and cunning as ever.) The Wrath Test was definitely fake, since canonically it didn't make sense even in-universe (why would the White Star not kill Cale if he won? No way. Even illusion Eruhaben thought so). So was the Sadness one – just another one of KRS's flashbacks.

This one, though? Indignity? It was "higher difficulty", due to failure of the Failure Test (pun intended). Cale specifically observed multiple things that felt different: like the effect of sleep on his body when he switched (Cale, dude, just how exhausted ARE you all the time that you noticed that??), or that the Super Rock was gone for some reason. (Who got it then???? Please tell me it wasn't the White Star... wouldn't he then have looted the place tho? Or destroyed it completely?) And Cale even felt the urge to give Raon a DIFFERENT NAME. Tell me that doesn't seem suspicious to you!!

No, no way that place was fake. Also, Cale stated that "every time he thinks that this is the end, they meet once again". This is exactly like with the Sealed God's Test with 20-year-old KRS! That place was real and Cale changed it in two seperate places in the timeline!! Just how big was the butterfly effect in that place??? 😮

I'm 100% positive that in TCF Part 2 Cale shall meet the Other Choi Han and Dodam again. He told them his name, so I feel pretty sure they'll instantly recognize him once they hear it. Like Choi Han said, KRS and Cale really are the same, no matter the body. They WILL meet again... and they WILL recognize him.