NovelPantheon

Oldest Dream

Reader whose observation sustains the world-lineshidden sponsor behind RegressionSanctum beyond the Final Wall

The Oldest Dream is the reader whose continued observation gives the world-lines of Ways of Survival reality. The role is first treated as a remote cause behind Yoo Joonghyuk's regressions, then revealed through two versions of Kim Dokja: a frightened child who unknowingly dreams the story and the adult who takes his place to keep its people alive. The title therefore names a necessary position as well as a person, and its power is inseparable from loneliness, incomplete control, and the need for stories.

Biography

The reader behind regression

Long before anyone sees the Oldest Dream, enemies call Yoo Joonghyuk its “puppet.” The Wenny Man and Secretive Plotter use the title because the regressor's repeated lives serve an observer hidden beyond the ordinary Star Stream. Plotter's journey through 1,863 turns transforms that relationship into a grievance: every abandoned world-line remains real enough to suffer, while Yoo Joonghyuk is driven toward another attempt. The 999th-turn Outer Gods consequently bargain with the Dokkaebi King for a route to the sponsor they hold responsible. (Chapters 256, 415, and 476)

The Dokkaebi King later corrects the assumption that this hidden being is the author. The Oldest Dream is closer to a lazy, greedy reader: stories prove their existence when observed, and the Star Stream's banquet continues because someone wants to see the next part. That distinction explains both the Dream's scale and its distance from ordinary omnipotence. Its attention supplies the condition under which world-lines persist, and its subconscious can intrude under a constellation-like identity, but it does not write every action or consciously select every tragedy. The apparent cosmic tyrant is an audience whose desire to continue has consequences it does not yet understand. (Chapters 507–509)

The child in the subway

After completing the Final Wall, Dokja's company rides an empty subway into the sanctum and finds a small boy with a battered hand and a notebook full of Ways of Survival power rankings. He is young Kim Dokja, still living through family abuse, school violence, press attention, and isolation. Reading Yoo Joonghyuk's refusal to surrender gives him a place where pain cannot reach. Each time the protagonist regresses, the child receives another chapter and another reason to survive; his wish that the journey never end becomes fuel for stories realized as other world-lines. (Chapters 513–515)

Adult Dokja has promised to destroy the cause of the Star Stream and initially approaches the boy with Unbroken Faith raised. The child's old coping thought—there is a barrier around me, nobody can hurt me—becomes an absolute shell that breaks the weapon and denies the visitors as delusions. Through Disconnected Film Theory, child and adult exchange Stories, making Dokja face a younger self who neither understands nor controls the scale of his imagination. Han Sooyoung tries to stop the attack, but the decisive response comes from the people who endured the longest consequences of the dream. (Chapter 514)

Plotter raises the sword with which he has killed gods, then uses it to cut the abusive sentences circling the boy rather than the boy himself. The 999th-turn companions recognize that the sponsor they crossed the universe to punish is a powerless child making what Uriel calls a cruel request for help. They take him away with them, choosing an epilogue instead of an execution. This choice does not erase the abandoned lives or declare the child innocent of every consequence; it refuses to answer isolation by abandoning him again. When his tenure ends, the world-lines immediately begin losing the observation on which their movement depends. (Chapters 515–516)

A successor in the empty train

Dokja prevents that collapse by taking the vacant seat himself. Before separation, he uses Avatar to send a self containing 49 percent of his memories back with the company while the 51-percent self remains aboard the subway. He calls the difference proof that he remembers his companions better, but the arithmetic is also a lie designed to let them accept an incomplete rescue. Once the world-line connection closes, the Avatar becomes an independent Kim Dokja who does not know he is a copy. The remaining Dokja enters the sanctum knowingly and accepts the burden the child carried without understanding. (Chapters 516–517)

Subway windows become displays for innumerable world-lines. Fourth Wall explains that Dokja's subconscious is already watching most of them and that simply holding the title does not let him control every dream. He cannot freely revive the Star Stream, visit his companions, or make any wish factual; deliberate interference meets limits of mastery, Story, and Probability. Dokja could close his eyes and let subconscious observation continue, but chooses to look at the tragedies consciously as atonement. His first sustained focus becomes the previously hidden 0th turn of Yoo Joonghyuk. (Chapter 517)

The world of zero and the birth of Regression

Acting under the modifier Demon King of Salvation, Dokja guides the inexperienced zero-turn Yoo Joonghyuk through revelations and costly interventions. He reveals scenario information, substitutes for other constellations when necessary, and absorbs backlash so that this Yoo Joonghyuk can clear the Star Stream without earlier regression experience. The route diverges radically from the familiar novel: a broad coalition defeats the Final Scenario, the Bureau falls, and Yoo Joonghyuk spends decades rebuilding, marries Lee Seolhwa, cares for orphaned children, and grows old. Dokja watches because this peaceful continuation is the story he wanted to see, even though concentrating on one world-line conflicts with the role's broader duty. (Chapters 518–524)

Near death, Yoo Joonghyuk accepts the Demon King of Salvation's long-standing sponsorship offer. He is happy with his completed life but still wants to know why he appeared without a childhood and what lies beyond the Wall. Dokja warns that meeting him would require regression through 1,864 lives, that success is unlikely, and that the journey will erase almost every memory of the companions who made the zero turn worthwhile. Yoo Joonghyuk chooses the path anyway, answering that forgotten people do not cease to exist. The decision returns agency to the man whom the “puppet” title had made sound mechanically condemned. (Chapter 525)

Dokja gathers the regression histories and creates the Regression stigma, while Fourth Wall proposes retaining fragments sufficient to reconnect this altered life to the known sequence. The act closes the causal loop: the reader who wanted to spare Yoo Joonghyuk becomes the sponsor who grants the protagonist's informed wish to begin again. Dokja cannot accompany or reliably aid the later turns, and the zero-turn companions continue living in their own world-line. Regression is therefore neither a clean reset nor proof that the peaceful life was fake. It is a costly transfer chosen after that life, carrying small impressions toward the eventual encounter between protagonist and reader. (Chapter 525)

Fifty-one percent and the scattered audience

The returned Kim Dokja lives with the company until small errors reveal that he possesses only 49 percent of the remembered person. His companions reject the bargain he made on their behalf, perform group regression, and reach the sanctum again. They recover the 51-percent self and reunite the bodies, but time as the Oldest Dream has already worn away memories and reduced him toward the child's form. Fourth Wall insists that there is one Kim Dokja and refuses the logic that one fragment can harmlessly substitute for another. The rescue returns his body without immediately returning a stable, complete consciousness. (Chapters 535–540)

Back in their world, Dokja lies asleep in a state doctors describe as neither alive nor dead. His soul has not entered the Underworld or another known afterlife; it has scattered into reincarnated fragments across world-lines. Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk respond by turning the company's memories into a novel and distributing it through Biyoo to authors in many universes. They cannot know which readers contain him or whether those readers will finish the text. Their method relies on the Oldest Dream's defining nature: if scattered Kim Dokjas read and imagine the same desired epilogue, their combined attention may give that unwritten future reality. (Chapters 541–550)

The final manuscript cannot simply report a confirmed recovery, because that event has not yet occurred. Its readers must participate in imagining the hospital door opening and the sleeping person returning. The last chapter gestures toward that convergence but does not settle which memories, souls, or identity awaken. “Oldest Dream” has become plural: potential readers who may not know they were ever Kim Dokja. The role that began as solitary consumption ends as a wager on shared authorship, with the company asking its audience to imagine a happiness the original dreamer never permitted himself to dream. (Chapter 551)

Appearance and personality

The revealed child is small enough to look defenseless beside the constellations who reach him. He has bruises on the back of his hand, untidy handwriting, and a notebook filled with character names, skills, stigmas, and power comparisons. He rubs his eyes as if the visitors are phantoms, curls inward when threatened, and calls adult Dokja a monster. These details locate the Oldest Dream's cosmic mechanisms inside recognizable childhood behavior: cataloguing a beloved story, imagining protection, and refusing a reality too painful to process. (Chapters 514–515)

He is not malicious in the purposeful sense attributed to a distant ruler, but neither is the damage dismissed as irrelevant. He is lonely, frightened, absorbed, possessive of the story's continuation, and unable to imagine what an endless sequence feels like from inside Yoo Joonghyuk's life. His “greed” is the reader's demand for another chapter because the alternative is returning to abuse. When confronted, he denies the dream and retreats behind a barrier rather than issuing commands. Plotter's compassion works because it recognizes both the injury done to him and the injury produced through him.

Adult Dokja brings more knowledge to the role but repeats its central loneliness by choice. He is guilty, attentive, self-punishing, and unable to accept that companions should share the burden. The 49/51 split exposes a familiar dishonesty: he constructs a solution that appears generous while preserving a private remainder for sacrifice. Inside the train he experiences fear, nausea, longing, and temptation whenever the screens show his friends, yet forces himself to keep reading. His special attachment to Yoo Joonghyuk produces costly favoritism and reveals that responsibility has not made him emotionally neutral. (Chapters 517–525)

Prolonged observation erodes the adult successor. By the time the company reaches him, he has lost memories and grown toward the same childlike appearance. After physical reunion, the body remains a sleeping boy who is neither straightforwardly alive nor dead. This regression of appearance is not proof that the child and adult were always a single uninterrupted consciousness; it visualizes the price of occupying the same isolating role. The final plural “Oldest Dreams” have no fixed shared appearance because they live as unknown readers throughout other world-lines. (Chapters 539–541 and 551)

Abilities, attributes, and stories

Dreaming, observation, and world-line continuity

The Oldest Dream's fundamental power is observation that allows a story to prove its existence. Young Dokja imagines while reading Ways of Survival, and those imagined continuations become living world-lines. In the sanctum, adult Dokja sees them through subway-window screens; even when he does not look deliberately, his subconscious watches most of them. Continued attention keeps their time moving, making the reader a structural requirement rather than merely the strongest constellation inside one scenario. (Chapters 507, 514, and 517–518)

This authority is not precise authorship. The child does not select every death, and adult Dokja cannot freely rewrite a world by issuing a thought. A dream contains an enormous subconscious that the conscious self cannot rule, while focused changes draw Probability backlash and may consume the observer's Stories. If observation ends without replacement, dependent worlds begin to stop; if one line receives too much attention, the Dream neglects the wider duty. The latest form is distributed and uncertain: scattered readers may collectively realize an ending, but no individual fragment is shown commanding the whole structure. (Chapters 516–517, 523–525, and 549–551)

Constellation contact and costly interference

The Oldest Dream can appear within a world-line through constellation conventions. The child subconsciously sends messages under an unrevealed identity, while adult Dokja uses Demon King of Salvation to contact the zero-turn Yoo Joonghyuk. He opens private communication, gives portions of revelation, offers sponsorship, substitutes for constellation authority, strengthens relics, and blocks storms of aftermath. These interventions let information and support cross from the reader's sanctum into an active scenario without making the Dream physically present there. (Chapters 517–525)

Each action must still fit the world's Story closely enough to receive Probability. Spoiling future events is especially expensive, overwrites can exceed Dokja's mastery, and protective interference melts away parts of his existence. He cannot simply hand Yoo Joonghyuk Fourth Wall or show him what lies beyond it. Fourth Wall also warns that the completed Star Stream should not be casually restored just to reconnect Dokja with his friends. After his soul scatters, the corpus establishes the fragments as potential readers, not as a network with reliable constellation-channel powers. (Chapters 517, 523, and 525)

Denial barrier and reality rejection

The child manifestation turns a repeated survival thought into defense: a barrier surrounds him, nobody can harm him, and painful events are unreal. In the sanctum, this produces an opaque sphere sturdy enough to break Unbroken Faith and reject adult Dokja's existence as a dream-born character. Because the visitors and the weapon come from worlds sustained by the child's imagination, violence cannot easily defeat the reader by using the reader's own narrative rules. (Chapter 514)

The barrier is absolute in that confrontation but narrow in purpose. It protects the child from an attack; it does not give him calm control, erase transmitted memories, or solve the dependency of the world-lines. Disconnected Film Theory allows Stories to pass between child and adult, and Plotter reaches the situation by cutting abusive sentences rather than the protected body. The power disappears from practical importance once the child accepts the 999th-turn group's company, and it is not separately demonstrated by adult Dokja's scattered reincarnations. (Chapters 514–515)

Avatar division, reunion, and soul fragmentation

Adult Dokja uses Avatar to place 49 percent of his memories into an autonomous self and retains 51 percent in the subway. Separation from the world-line cuts their connection, so the Avatar continues with its own ego and sincerely experiences himself as Kim Dokja. The extra two percent does not make the remainder the only “real” person; it marks Dokja's claim that he retained more companion memories and supplies the discrepancy his friends eventually notice. Both selves carry personhood, consequences, and different experiences after the split. (Chapters 517 and 535)

Physical reunion does not reverse every effect of prolonged dreaming. Memories have already eroded, the reassembled Kim Dokja becomes childlike, and his soul later disperses beyond known afterlives. The fragments reincarnate in other world-lines without guaranteed recollection or agreement. This creates the manuscript plan: address them not through a command skill but through reading, the common behavior still available after the system weakens. The latest scene implies possible convergence while withholding a system notice that would prove complete restoration. (Chapters 539–541 and 549–551)

Creation and transfer of Regression

The adult Oldest Dream creates Regression after the zero-turn Yoo Joonghyuk accepts sponsorship and chooses the arduous route. Dokja gathers the histories he knows into a stigma and transfers it to his incarnation. Activation sends Yoo Joonghyuk toward another turn, while the plan to preserve only fragmented memories reconnects the altered zero turn to the familiar sequence. The stigma's origin therefore lies in the relationship between the reader who knows the regressions and the protagonist willing to risk them. (Chapter 525)

Regression has explicit costs and boundaries. Most memories disappear, Dokja cannot promise continued aid, and 1,864 turns still offer only a small chance of reaching the desired conclusion. The companions of the zero turn do not vanish when Yoo Joonghyuk forgets them; their world-line continues under the Oldest Dream's observation. After the main ending, Yoo Joonghyuk's Regression and Group Regression stigmas are gone, showing that this causal engine belongs to the Star Stream's completed Story rather than an unlimited power the Dream can always reissue. (Chapters 525 and 541)

Relationships

  • Kim Dokja: Young dreamer, adult successor, 49-percent Avatar, 51-percent remainder, reunited body, and scattered souls are connected manifestations of Kim Dokja, but their memories and choices are not interchangeable. The role magnifies his habit of surviving through reading and sacrificing himself through secret arrangements.

  • Yoo Joonghyuk: The protagonist begins as the endlessly observed “puppet” and becomes the zero-turn person who knowingly accepts Dokja's sponsorship. His decision to regress after a complete life transforms the relation from unconscious consumption into a difficult exchange of agency, memory, and trust.

  • Secretive Plotter: Plotter reaches the child as an abandoned Yoo Joonghyuk seeking his sponsor. He refuses both easy forgiveness and execution, cuts away the abusive memories, and leaves with the child and his 999th-turn companions.

  • Han Sooyoung: Sooyoung strikes adult Dokja to stop him killing his younger self, rejects the 49-percent solution, and writes the manuscript meant to reach his fragments. As tls123, her own causal relation to the novel further prevents “author” and “dreamer” from being collapsed into one office.

  • Fourth Wall: The Wall guards and mediates the sanctum, explains the limits of dream mastery, accompanies adult Dokja's observation, and later insists that there is one Kim Dokja rather than a satisfactory replacement fragment. Its comfort can also preserve isolation by telling him he need not consciously look.

  • The 999th-turn companions: Lee Hyunsung, Lee Jihye, Kim Namwoon, and Uriel share Plotter's grievance but recognize the child's helplessness. Their decision to take him with them supplies an epilogue for both the Dream and people discarded from his story.

  • Kim Dokja's Company: The reader's knowledge saves them, while his solitary bargains repeatedly deny them a voice in how he is saved. Their group regression and manuscript turn rescue into a collective act of remembering, writing, and asking rather than accepting the sacrifice he prepared.

Items

  • The Oldest Dream carries no separately catalogued signature item. The child's notebook and the adult successor's subway displays are central media of reading and observation, but neither is represented as an independently generated item in this wiki.