Chapter 418 |
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The Regressor IV
Tick.
The time had come.
The time was finally ripe to pose a certain question to all of you, a question that I had kept endlessly hidden throughout this entire story.
Who is the 'I' in this story?
You all have likely considered 'I' to be the 'Undertaker' this whole time. That was only natural, since the Undertaker was the protagonist.
However, at the same time, you are all aware that the one who refined the Undertaker's tale into written sentences was, in the end, 'Oh Dok-seo'.
– Writer: Undertaker.
In this story, 'I' was the Undertaker.
And, at the same time, 'I' was also Oh Dok-seo all along.
Every story is an imitation of a dream. It was the act of dreaming a dream someone else had, but in the form of a book.
Just as I was currently dreaming Go Yuri's dream, Oh Dok-seo was peeking into the dream of the regressor known as me.
"Dok-seo."
"What's this, why the sudden change in your tone."
"There is something I must tell you right now."
I firmly grasped both of Oh Dok-seo's hands.
He flinched, startled. As the one experiencing Go Yuri's reincarnation, I was the young daughter of a European noble family in this life.
But I cast aside the speech patterns of this life. I cast aside its facial expressions too. For the first time, I completely ignored the rule of strictly adhering to the reincarnation of 'Go Yuri'.
"Uh, huh?"
"You probably won't understand right away. But, someday, you will inevitably read my diary in the form of a novel."
"I've already read that..."
"No."
I shook my head.
"Living as your younger sibling was, from my perspective, no different from an extremely brief flicker. I will spend hundreds of lives with you, and I will spend billions of lives without you."
"..."
"I am living this present moment to console a certain lonely person."
I told him the story.
It was a very long story, but I knew Oh Dok-seo well, and I also knew how to prepare the tale in a form he could easily digest.
It took several weeks for Oh Dok-seo to devour the entire story, suffer from indigestion, and finally, with difficulty, open his lips.
"From me, what... are you hoping for?"
"I am in the process of carving out and severing only the humanity from the vast anomaly named Go Yuri."
Separation. Isolation.
Fundamentally, it was the same as the strategy Go Yuri had employed against the Outer Gods.
"I'm sorry, but it seems I must entrust the same task to you."
"..."
"There is no need for an anomaly called the Undertaker to exist in this world."
I said.
"He has grown too immense. He was already a being where hundreds of regressions' phantoms coexisted with every step he took. Now, billions of reincarnations are mixed in as well. For humanity to treat him as just another human, he has come too far."
"Then?"
"Please leave only the traces of the Undertaker's life as a human in this world."
That is my end.
"Go Yuri handed herself over to me. I, too, will hand myself over to you."
"..."
"Please remember the Undertaker as a mere human. Remember him as a strange man who was just a bit mentally tough, had an extraordinary memory, and liked old classics like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms."
That's right.
The writing process of recounting the stories one by one and embedding the character for person (者) in each subtitle was, in itself, the process of sealing the regressor known as the Undertaker.
It was a measure for someone who could fall into being an anomaly at any moment to desperately be remembered as a human.
"How you will describe me as a person. I will leave the judgment of me entirely to you."
"To me...?"
"Yes."
Go Yuri had said.
That for beings like us, the important thing is how much of yourself you are prepared to discard.
The anomalies discarded nothing.
They forced themselves upon this world. They crushed even the universe's physical laws with their own rules. The anomalies were beings who always cried out 'me', 'me', 'me'.
Therefore, the way to not become an anomaly was simple.
It was to not monopolize the way you understand yourself, but to hand it over to others as well.
Mugan stopped being an anomaly the moment I began to call her Cheon Yo-hwa. Go Yuri went beyond a name and handed her very life over to me.
"It might sound strange right now. But that's because you are, in fact, my shamaness."
I smiled and patted Oh Dok-seo's shoulder.
"Gods exist to be swayed by their shamanesses."
"..."
With this, the outline of the plan for how to seal myself after isolating Go Yuri was revealed.
Of course, there was a prerequisite.
'Admin of the Infinite Metagame.'
That unprecedented last-hitter, always eyeing an opportunity to bewitch Oh Dok-seo and snatch the fully prepared meal.
'I have to make sure to subdue him and get a declaration of surrender. That's the only way he won't be able to interfere with Oh Dok-seo's sealing process.'
Fortunately, the role of subduing Admin of the Infinite Metagame had been taken care of by the 'future Undertaker' and the 'past me'.
The repeating time of the world.
Everything was inevitable.
'Go Yuri must have planned it this way, for this route to come to be, even before my first regression began.'
A three-legged race.
'And from now on... I'll have to adjust things so that the prologue of the novel Oh Dok-seo will read begins not with Go Yuri, but with the Undertaker's story.'
It was an easy task.
'All I need is for the Admin of the Infinite Metagame to judge that the Undertaker is a much more dangerous element worth paying attention to than Go Yuri.'
In other words.
'After adjusting all the schedules and entering the main route in earnest, Go Yuri will refrain from intervening in the world's destruction as much as possible.'
It was a kind of camouflage tactic.
I'm not actually dangerous.
No, I am dangerous, but as long as you don't provoke me directly, I don't plan on acting out from now on.
But if you do touch me, smack! I'll have to punish you?
Then Admin of the Infinite Metagame's attention would naturally be drawn to the regressor rather than the reincarnator.
Because it's wiser to focus on eliminating the regressor, who is an immediate thorn in the side, than the reincarnator who has no intention of making a move right away.
"Ha."
A laugh escaped me without my realizing it.
'Isn't that the exact position I remember Go Yuri being in.'
Thinking about her grand strategy also provided the answer to why Go Yuri had reacted so sensitively to the arrival of Leviathan.
'I, the Undertaker, must one day cast aside my aura and find my own method of conquest.'
'But the 664th cycle is too early. The Undertaker is somewhat lacking in experience to decide to abandon his aura.'
'Until he has gained enough experience, it's inevitable that he will have to rely on his aura to survive.'
Go Yuri's so-called [regressor Maker].
The nurturing of the regressor needed to proceed step by step.
It would have been problematic if he realized the truth of Leviathan too early, and troublesome if he realized it too late.
'For one person?'
I faced the next lives.
'Could she have been this devoted?’
I lived everyone's lives and watched over everyone's lives.
I experienced silence through a groaning throat in the lowest basement, and I spoke with a commanding voice from the highest skyscraper.
I lived as a beggar, sitting on the edge of a roadside ditch, relying on a single bowl to beg. To a legless beggar, the depth of that ditch was a valley.
On a street where dust had swallowed the air, I held out my hand toward tourists.
All lives were wretched in the face of destruction.
'The reincarnator was not a being who was merely sad.'
I walked on, firmly grasping the hands that rose like prayers in each and every one of those lives.
'Humans are strong.'
I saw a flower that bloomed in the ditch. I saw the red of its petals, unerased even though it was covered in dust.
'Behold. Even when the Outer Gods who insult the world cackle and make a mess of everything, a single reincarnator and a regressor from among humanity have walked this far.'
Let's go.
'Dok-seo I know you will be sad.'
Let's keep walking.
'I am sad too, for it feels like I am leaving and burdening you with this entire story and all its regrets.'
The Cheon Yo-hwa sisters were born.
I was the sisters' mother's childhood friend. That mother died early, and before she died, she left me with the words to please take good care of her children.
These children would later be possessed by Outer Gods and end up slaughtering countless people.
But these children, smiling before my eyes right now, would come to love a certain man, and eventually come to accept even the world in which that man existed.
'But you are a strong child.'
Dang Seo-rin was born.
The human who originally possessed Dang Seo-rin's body had died. However, an Outer God who inherited Dang Seo-rin's memories accepted being human, without even knowing that it was an Outer God itself.
She would one day sing a lullaby that puts other anomalies to sleep, despite being an anomaly herself. Walking alongside a single man.
'Don't collapse from sadness.'
Yu Ji-won did not commit suicide.
Originally, Yu Ji-won had ended her own life after murdering her parents and her grandmother, who had dementia, on a terribly rainy day one summer.
She had courage. In addition to the courage to treat every being in this world as an insect, she had the courage to dismiss even herself as one.
I was once born as Yu Ji-won's younger sibling, but surprisingly, the young Yu Ji-won at that time secretly strangled her newborn sibling to death, avoiding their parents' eyes.
It was because there was no need to add one more person to this hell.
'It's alright if you forget everything. That would be one kind of ending too. But if you cannot forget, if you absolutely cannot accept it. Become strong.'
To prevent Yu Ji-won's suicide, another's breath was needed under the night sky of the monsoon rains.
'You must become so abundant that you can still be you even after giving yourself away.'
I could see the path.
On this route, there was Dang Seo-rin, and there were the lives that died to allow Dang Seo-rin to be born, and there was Jung Ye-ji, and the souls sacrificed to bring about Jung Ye-ji, and there was Noh Do-hwa, Cheon Yo-hwa, Yu Ji-won, Lee Ha-yul, Sim Ah-ryeon, Yu Ji-won, so many people.
"..."
Go Yuri looked back at me as she walked.
A smile. Her face was smiling.
I was the same.
'What I want to leave you is not sadness, but the strength to keep walking even while reading all these wounds.'
Go Yuri believed in me.
I believed in Oh Dok-seo.
And...
"Abeub, abububu, bueeeh."
Now, it was my turn to believe in myself.
"Oh? Oh, oh, she smiled! She smiled!"
Tick.
Looking up at the 'I' who was looking down at the 'I' born as their younger sibling.
I opened my tender lips.
Yes, Mr. Undertaker.
Welcome. It's good to see you again. I'm sure the current Mr. Undertaker understands that it's also always possible to say, nice to meet you for the first time.
I will be erased from this world.
It's the fulfillment of the wish you once so desperately wanted, so please be happy.
Ah. No. I'm joking! It’s just a joke.
I've lived a strange life. I ended up living it.
Before you entered my dream. Hmm, yes. It wasn't that you entered, but that I tripped you into it. But please forgive me, as that was my own way of hiding my embarrassment.
Anyway.
Before entering that place, you asked. Why I didn't save Mr. Schopenhauer.
I'm sorry.
Actually, it was on purpose! Of course, everything is the result of my deliberate choices.
Mr. Undertaker, you were a perfect candidate in many ways. To the point that I was inwardly convinced that I had finally found a shaman just for me.
...However, humans can't always be strong.
Even Kafka, whom you like, said it. The reason Alexander the Great could advance was thanks to the existence of the walls of India that he could point to with the tip of his sword.
If you can't see it, you don't aim for it. You give up.
Humans have a sad nature, so it seems they often don't even try to take on a challenge if the goal isn't vividly visible right in front of them.
That's why I created a milestone for you named 'Schopenhauer'.
From now on, or rather from hundreds of millions of years ago, from the very moment you met me, Mr. Undertaker, your destiny as a regressor was sealed, and you will walk a single, long route.
It will be hard. You will be sad.
But, if the goal is visible before your eyes. You possess enough strength not to give up.
Yes.
The corpse of Schopenhauer, who just committed suicide because you couldn't save him, is precisely the milestone I have gifted you.
A mark you can never turn away from, showing you why you started walking this path and what must be waiting at the end of this route.
Emit Schopenhauer.
Please save my father one day.
I expect you will pour out complaints that this is harsh and cruel. I will accept them.
In return, I will be subjugated by you.
Stained by the red flower of the Udumbara.
And if necessary, through the Time Seal that I created for you for this very moment.
I will be erased. Leaving behind billions of family members here, along with a soul deleted from billions of routes.
In this world, only you will remember me.
And to walk this entire path, to pierce through the un-washable wound in your heart, the void, there is just one. A condition is needed.
Please love me desperately.
And, please forget me.
Please love other people who are not me.
The fact that you loved me, and the fact that I loved you.
The memory of you hurting me, and the memory of me hurting you, forget it all.
Forgetting even the fact that you have forgotten.
Please continue to live.
...At the end of this ending, there are bound to be aftereffects.
This world, having avoided destruction, will find it a little more... difficult to remember other precious beings.
Memories will become a little more unstable.
It will become a little more difficult to properly look at someone.
Of course. Because the existence known as 'me' has punched a hole in people's hearts.
But, if that is the price.
If this is the only price that must be paid to stop this absurd destruction, I will gladly bear it.
I have been very rude.
Please understand that this was the best that a child who suddenly died one day, only to open her eyes and find herself living another life, could do.
I love you.
Mother. Father. Everyone.
Did I do well?
Did I choose... the right person.
I loved.
I gave up many things. I lived a life where I had no choice but to give up. But still, there was one thing I did not discard until the very end.
That it was good to have been born, even into a world like this, I can now be grateful for it from the bottom of my heart, sincerely.
Farewell.
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Tick.
June 24th, 12:00. The regressor encounters 'Hecate' Dang Seo-rin at an intersection in Busan.
An exodus of refugees from all over the country to Busan.
Worldwide daily death toll: 51,956,792.
June 22nd, 14:20. The regressor reunites with Yu Ji-won at a roadside rest stop in Seocho-gu, Seoul.
The main forces of the Korean Peninsula's military are annihilated by the Ten-Legs.
Worldwide daily death toll: 124,956,792.
June 21st, 13:00. The regressor encounters prosthetic doctor Noh Do-hwa, who was evacuating patients against attackers at the National Rehabilitation Hospital.
Worldwide daily death toll: 319,956,792.
June 18th, 20:00. The regressor enters the Baekhwa Women's High School Tutorial Dungeon. Encounters Cheon Yo-hwa on the distorted timeline of Infinite Void.
Worldwide daily death toll: 771,221,328.
June 17th, 16:00. The regressor makes contact with the one known as the 'Saintess'. The Regression Alliance is formed.
June 17th, 14:10. Emit Schopenhauer dies in a cafe in Busan.
June 17th, 14:00. A large-scale Void White Night occurs south of the Han River in Seoul, on the Korean Peninsula.
June 17th, 14:00. Small-scale Voids, so-called 'Tutorial Dungeons', occur simultaneously all over the world.
Worldwide daily death toll: 1,649,857,026.
June 17th, 13:59.
The regressor regresses.
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April 29th, 16:00.
Oh Dok-seo awakens.
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Tick.
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April 29th, 16:00. Oh Dok-seo awakens.
May 7th, 17:11. Oh Dok-seo dies.
April 29th, 16:00. Oh Dok-seo awakens.
May 7th, 19:20. Oh Dok-seo dies.
April 29th, 16:00. Oh Dok-seo awakens.
May 8th, 04:44. Oh Dok-seo dies.
April 29th, 16:00. Oh Dok-seo awakens.
May 8th, 04:44. Oh Dok-seo dies.
April 29th, 16:00. Oh Dok-seo awakens.
May 8th, 04:44. Oh Dok-seo dies.
April 29th, 16:00. Oh Dok-seo awakens.
May 8th, 13:10. Oh Dok-seo dies.
April 29th, 16:00. Oh Dok-seo awakens.
May 9th, 08:36. Oh Dok-seo dies.
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April 29th, 16:00.
Oh Dok-seo awakens.
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June 17th, 13:59.
The regressor regresses.
Footnotes: