Chapter 427: The Savior Ω I |
The Savior Ω I
The old Baekje Hospital. Café.
Emit Schopenhauer was in high spirits.
Partly because he'd just enjoyed a delicious cup of coffee, but more importantly, the loveliest wife in the world was approaching in real time.
"Now then, Embalmer. I simply must ask because I'm dying to know. Exactly how many cycles have you gone through?"
His voice naturally took on the color of a cheerful rhythm.
To be honest, this whole situation felt like a dream to Schopenhauer.
How could he not be happy when he'd just achieved the most important bucket list item of his life?
"Well, let's see. The cycles I actively went through myself are roughly around 2,000. But if you add them all up, it easily exceeds 3,000."
Schopenhauer's voice remained leisurely soaked in the melody of a happy march.
"I figured I'd gone through at least a thousand by the time I died. I suppose the density of time was somewhat different between you and me."
"That's right."
"How long did you live per cycle?"
"Hmm."
"You don't need to give me an exact number. I'm guessing you lived about five years per cycle..."
"Well, the calculation isn't too far off. About twenty years."
A pause.
"Twenty years?"
"Yes."
"..."
Schopenhauer's gaze slowly turned.
The table across from him.
There sat a man sipping his already cold café au lait. From a first-person perspective, the Undertaker. From a third-person omniscient author's viewpoint, a man called Go Yuir.
"Hmm..."
Schopenhauer set down his coffee cup.
Something trickled down the back of his neck.
A secretion commonly known as cold sweat, designed to be released from the Homo sapiens body primarily when detecting that one is utterly screwed.
"What an amusing joke. If that number were true, wouldn't that mean the equation of 3,000 cycles multiplied by 20 years holds? Haha. Roughly 60,000 years old, you say."
"Ah. It's not quite that much. I took vacations and such. The most recent 1,000 cycles or so, the world ended early. It's 50,000 years old."
"Hmm."
The cold sweat wouldn't stop.
"By the way, old man."
"Y-yes?"
"In human relationships, there must be proper courtesy. That's a fact stated in the words of Confucius, whom you loved so much."
"That's right?"
"The foundation of courtesy is showing respect to those who have gone ahead of you, and in East Asia, that respect is simply expressed through honorifics."
"...And?"
"Might I ask how old you are, old man?"
"..."
Thunk.
Go Yuir set down his porcelain cup and smiled brightly.
"Emit Schopenhauer."
"What?"
"Your tone. Don't raise your tone."
"..."
"Even if I've aged, I've lived at least fifty thousand years more than you."
"....."
"Now then. Who's the youngster here?"
Schopenhauer felt his vision grow distant.
This was a nightmare.
"Come now, swing it properly."
"Ack!"
"I don't have high expectations for you. I'm only asking that you swing the sword correctly. Weren't you supposed to be a swordsman? Are my expectations too high?"
"Ack! No, sir!"
"Your sword path is crooked. Again. You got it wrong again, so repeat it 5,000 more times."
"Son of a..."
"Son of, what? Since my colleague abandoned the world, I've aged all alone and my hearing has dulled. Speak loudly so these old ears can hear you."
"No, sir! Aaaaaah!"
People whispered as they passed through the plaza.
"Mom, what are those people doing?"
"Shh. Be quiet!"
It was still June. A time when civilization was less destroyed and more in the process of being destroyed.
There were still pedestrians walking the streets of Busan. Having to strip to the waist and drip with sweat in front of such ordinary people was killing Schopenhauer.
But the balance of the world must always be maintained.
"Tsk, tsk. Calling yourself a swordsman when you can't even use a sword properly."
Someone's death became someone else's life.
The Undertaker, swordsmanship instructor, was savoring being alive in real time.
"Huh? Like this. Huh? I said swing it like this. Ah, really. Is this difficult?"
"Fuck, it's damn difficult! You bastard! How am I supposed to catch up to a crazy person who's been swinging a sword for tens of thousands of years?!"
Schopenhauer burst out shouting. He still vividly remembered getting beaten for about five minutes after doing this earlier, but he couldn't hold it in.
The Undertaker replied indifferently.
"Then you shouldn't have kept regressing for tens of thousands of years."
"..."
"Do you know why I trained with the sword? Old man. It was all so that in the distant future, when you joined the Regression Alliance, I could personally master and pass on the strategy guide to raise you into the ultimate swordsman. With my heart for you and my faith in you alone, I picked up the sword. And you're saying this is difficult? Good grief. This is why trusting people is utterly useless. What can I do if you say you can't do it? I'll just have to break the sword, I suppose."
"You... son of a bitch..."
Schopenhauer despaired.
No matter how he rebelled, there was no way to win this war of words.
Justification, skill, logic. He was getting crushed in every aspect. There was simply no way to counter the argument of "if you don't like it, you shouldn't have regressed."
"Mister!"
A girl with red hair wearing a cap backwards came running with quick steps. It was Oh Dok-seo.
Paper cups sloshed in both of Dok-seo's hands.
"Here! I got you a caffeine booster!"
"Ah. Thanks. You're the only one I can count on, Dok-seo."
"Right? Yay!"
Clap! Dok-seo jumped and high-fived the Undertaker.
On the surface, an innocent girl.
But Schopenhauer never let his guard down.
Over the past few days, he'd painfully learned that behind that pure smile lurked a streak of madness no less than the Undertaker's.
"Actually, at this point in time, there aren't any Regression Alliance members with deep ties to Mister, right? Cheon Yo-hwa and Dang Seo-rin were originally people Mister should have saved, but I did it first. Mister must be very proud of me, but at the same time, part of your heart must feel like you've been NTR'd..."
"Exactly right."
"But don't worry! Mister! I have absolutely no intention of stealing your heroine candidates! Rather, I'll support you with all my power from the front and back so that mister can NTR me!"
"You... What taste..."
"Ehehehehe."
"Ahahaha."
Crazy bastards.
Something more flowed out from Schopenhauer's head, which already felt like it was losing its mind. Humanity. Or perhaps his soul had taken a leave of absence.
Listening to these two regressors and possessors converse in real time caused his SAN value to plummet.
He'd tried to understand them, but the only truth he'd gained from that effort was that these creatures were human grimoires that drove the reader increasingly mad the more deeply one understood them.
"But how long are we going to keep training that mutt No-sho? That old man washed out in the early cycles. Won't we have to invest hundreds more cycles in training if we want to use him now?"
"Well, whatever. It's no big deal."
Really crazy bastards.
Schopenhauer's hand trembled as he swung his sword.
Just one week had already brought this much suffering, and they expected him to repeat this for hundreds of cycles, averaging twenty years per cycle? Was this hell?
'These aren't humans. They're monsters wearing human skin. Only I, who maintains my humanity despite being a regressor, can be the one to subjugate them.'
"Hm? Trainee Schopenhauer. There's no focus in your sword tip. Should I take this as a declaration that you don't want to go home tonight and have dinner with Lady Adele?"
"No, siiiiir!!"
"Depending on your attitude, I can become either the King of Hell or Confucius. What kind of trainee do you want to be when you meet Lady Adele?"
"Wh-what kind of trainee?"
"Are you a No-sho Untermensch trainee who doesn't apply yourself earnestly to training? Or are you a properly squared-away Übermensch trainee, a stalwart of regression?"
Gasp, Dok-seo, who'd been slurping her bubble tea on the side, furrowed her eyebrows.
Her straw was trembling.
"Suddenly hearing that the family of the person I saved is Untermensch drains all my strength. What should I do? I have no strength or energy. At this rate, I might just throw away all my comrades and the world and record the fact that there existed a human who regressed for 3,000 cycles and publish it in Germany. I feel like I'm about to commit the greatest sin as an author..."
Bastards.
Tears welled up in Schopenhauer's eyes.
Actually, the tears Schopenhauer shed were closer to an exaggeration.
At least from the perspective of the Undertaker and Dok-seo, the ones who'd personally bled to forge the strategy routes themselves, it was rather unsatisfactory.
Nevertheless, the reason these two invested time in the shitty game of Swordmaster Maker while indulging the complaints of "kids these days and old folks these days" was simple.
"That old man's authority isn't strictly swordsmanship. It's the ability to cut anything."
"Yeah. Right."
Strategy meeting.
Leaving the old man Scho passed out at their feet after training all day, the Undertaker and Dok-seo were already discussing the next cycle.
"So far, what No-sho can cut is at most the physical reality of the present world. But if he follows mister's training and grows..."
"Looking purely at the authority's potential, he could eventually cut even abstract concepts."
Both of them nodded simultaneously.
"Isn't that a totally broken ability?"
"It is."
This was precisely why the Undertaker had never given up on his former comrade Emit Schopenhauer until the very end.
"Without having to rely on Leviathan's aura, the old man can fight anomalies essentially as if he were an aura user who'd reached the extreme limits of aura."
"Wow. If I had that kind of ability, I'd seriously bow three times a day saying thank you, Mr. Go Yuir. What's No-sho complaining about?"
"That's what I'm saying."
"Grrrk, hrrgh, kkk..."
Occasionally Schopenhauer convulsed even while passed out, but unfortunately, there was no one here to empathize with his suffering.
It hurt because he was an awakener.
"Haah."
Around the time the old man's groans subsided, Dok-seo stretched out both legs and looked up at the night sky.
"It's like... seeing Mister in person and talking like this really feels like a dream."
"...Does it?"
"Yeah. Well, from my perspective, Mister was a character in a novel. A prophet in a book of prophecy. So naturally it feels new."
Dok-seo spoke as if it were nothing.
"It's for moments exactly like this that hundreds and thousands of versions of me died..."
"..."
"Hm? Ah. You don't need to feel sorry. I did it because I wanted to. Rather, I feel bad that I died so much that I kept forcing those twenty-year cycles on mister."
Dok-seo giggled.
"You know what? Actually, Ye-ji unni and I teamed up to secretly peek at mister from the '0th cycle' days from afar?"
"My goodness."
"Even though my schedule was so packed I barely had time for it. I just couldn't help being so curious. What kind of person could it be? What kind of face would the regressor that the past versions of 'me,' the future me, tried to save with a strategy guide written in blood have..."
The night sky that inhaled Dok-seo's breath filled with a bit more moisture, and so the starlight exhaled a slightly more faint sparkle.
The oldest secret in life.
That the twinkling of the stars and the beating of the heart sometimes matched rhythms seemed to fascinate Dok-seo.
"So what was your impression after spying?"
"Ah, that's not him."
Dok-seo turned her head to look at the Undertaker. Her red eyes were a bit intoxicated by the stars.
"The person I want to save isn't that man."
"..."
"I didn't want to save Go Yuir who lost all his memories from thousands of cycles and finally returned to being an ordinary human. I wanted to save a human who walked forward while enduring all that time."
Swoosh.
Dok-seo stroked the back of his hand.
Originally, from the Undertaker's perspective, he hadn't thought much of it.
Even within the Regression Alliance, the Brats' Axis Powers consisting of Ha-yul, Dok-seo, and Ah-ryeon enjoyed considerable freedom when it came to skinship with the Undertaker compared to other members.
After all, their romantic possibilities had broken through the zero percent barrier.
"When I entered the Busan Station waiting room and saw mister for the 'first time,' I was convinced again. Wow. A completely different being from the person I'd peeked at a few days earlier was standing there, wasn't it?"
"..."
But…
'Wait a minute?'
Thump.
The Undertaker sensed something ominous.
'Hold on. Come to think of it, the Dok-seo of the past was a trash author who only kept abandoning her work. But the one before my eyes is a legendary possessor who personally realized a miracle comparable to Go Yuir or me... isn't she?'
The Undertaker had unconsciously been treating the Dok-seo before his eyes as just Dok-seo. The rice moocher who was part of the Brats.
But naturally, Oh Dok-seo from back then and the current Dok-seo held résumés of completely different density.
'The one who recruited all the key figures including Yo-hwa within just about a month, rescued Lady Adele, improved the Udumbara through the Sword Marquess, manipulated Jung Sang-guk, and shipped the awakening ability eraser not just nationwide but worldwide.'
In what way could this possibly be that trash author from back then?
In the first place, this Dok-seo before his eyes had originally had long hair until they met at the Busan Station waiting room.
She'd only performed the act of cutting her hair to still appear as "the Dok-seo the Undertaker knew."
In other words?
A monster who'd farmed experience points in areas the Undertaker didn't know about rather than the parts he did know. That was the current Dok-seo.
"I don't want an ending where Mister vainly loses all your memories and abilities. That's a different person from the mister I want."
Emotions that were hard to describe mixed and dissolved in her red eyes.
"So just like No-sho ran away through regression, I hope mister will abandon any thoughts of running away through salvation or sacrifice early on."
Squeeze.
Dok-seo's grip on the Undertaker's hand tightened a bit more.
"I want the mister you are right now."
In that moment.
'Wait, am I right now. Possibly...'
Inside the Undertaker's head, a very special type of siren that had never once been triggered by the person before his eyes began to ring violently.
'Am I being flirted with? By Dok-seo??'
Alias, Undertaker.
Real name, Go Yuir.
The crisis of a lifetime.
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