The Antagonist II
Every once in a while, someone would enter a tomb where Time Seal was cast, usually accompanied by another person. For example, hadn't Kim Joo-chul entered his tomb with his son, Kim Si-eun? However, this was my first time revealing the landscape inside a tomb to someone as close to me as the Saintess.
"This is it."
The Saintess looked around curiously, hand clasped around mine. "So this is the paradise where one's happiest 24 hours repeat endlessly, the world I've only heard tell of in stories."
I cleared my throat. "I think calling it a paradise is a bit much."
"I understand why you'd feel that way, Mr. Undertaker, being a regressor and all. But for regular people who struggle to make ends meet, this place is one of the best options available."
"I don't know about that. Haven't casinos sprung up here recently? Asking the fairies for a dream would do them more good than being subjected to Time Seal."
"Even that casino is one of the choices you created, Mr. Undertaker." When I didn't respond, she added, "Still, it's quiet."
As you all know, Kim Joo-chul's dream was taking place inside a football stadium, replaying the game where he performed brilliantly in front of his family. It was the moment when he achieved perfect glory, wealth, and love stretched into eternity.
However, the stadium, which should have been filled with the cheers of the crowd, was eerily quiet, just as the Saintess described.
"Hmm."
It was a bit too quiet.
"Everyone seems to be asleep."
"That's strange."
It was a world where everyone had fallen asleep. Every single person in the audience seats had passed out, leaving an eerie silence in their wake. It wasn't just the spectators either. The players, who should have been playing on the field, were also lying sprawled across the grass.
Among them was Kim Joo-chul, the owner of this place, the same player who had appeared in my nightmares to warn me. The football player stuck in his prime was lying on the ground, clutching the football.
"Kim Joo-chul. Mr. Kim Joo-chul."
"..."
"Can you hear my voice? Si-eun's father. Si-eun's father."
I lightly tapped his cheek, but there was no sign of him waking up. Even after sending a wave of Aura throughout his body, nothing changed. He was practically in a state of suspended animation.
The over 10,000 people gathered in the stadium had all lost consciousness entirely. Given that they were all illusions, they were in a form of true suspended animation.
I quickly made a decision.
"It looks like we'll need to call the Tutorial Fairy to check on these people's unconscious minds. And, Saintess."
"Yes?"
"Don't let go of my hand, and under no circumstances should you eat or drink anything here. Even if you want to grab something from a vending machine, don't consume a single thing. If you do, you'll be cursed like in the myth of Persephone."
"Ah..."
We re-entered the tomb with the Tutorial Fairy. We needed her power to delve into Kim Joo-chul's dream.
Suddenly, the scenery around us changed completely.
-Aaaahhhh!
-Save me! Please save me!
Half of the stadium's audience seating was burned down, reduced to ruins. People were running around madly, screaming in terror.
-Another day is starting again!
-Someone stop that murderous bastard!
-Hehehe. It doesn't matter if I die, I'll come back after one day anyway! Die! Just try and kill me, you bastards!
It wasn't just screaming. Blood was splattered everywhere.
Some were fighting each other with their fists, others had ripped off seats to use as shields. There were people swinging planks and baseball bats that they had somehow managed to find.
"Stay out of this! Hold your ground!"
Kim Joo-chul was desperately defending his wife and young son. The football players had formed groups, trying to keep themselves safe.
I grabbed the Saintess's hand and approached the group of football players. Kim Joo-chul turned to look at me and shouted, "Hey! Don't come any closer! I'll kill you!"
"Kim Joo-chul, it's me, Undertaker."
"I'll seriously kill you! Huh? Wait, what?" He blinked his eyes in confusion. "Mr. Undertaker? Is that really Mr. Undertaker?"
"Of course, it's me. We survived the Busan Station Tutorial Dungeon together, didn't we?"
"Ah! Ahhh!" Kim Joo-chul dropped the baseball bat he was holding and ran toward me, throwing his arms around me. My shoulders were immediately soaked as tears poured from his once youthful eyes, now filled with the sorrow of a middle-aged man.
"Why, why did you take so long to come? Huh? This isn't a hallucination, right? Oh god, why did you take so long...?"
Without knowing what else to do, I awkwardly patted his back. It wasn't just me feeling awkward either. The Saintess, the Tutorial Fairy, Kim Joo-chul's wife, and even his teammates all stood there with obvious confusion plastered across their faces.
"Calm down, Mr. Kim. Explain it step by step. You said you've been waiting for me, but your memory resets after just a day, doesn't it?"
"One thousand days!"
I froze. "Pardon?"
"I've been waiting for over one thousand days! I've been repeating this hellish day more than a thousand times! It's not just me, everyone here has been doing it!"
"..."
"This place is hell, Mr. Undertaker! Please, save me—save all of us!"
My jaw dropped.
What the hell was going on?
It was dangerous near the stadium, with hundreds, even thousands of rioters running wild. We moved to Mt. Gubong, which Kim Joo-chul said was "relatively safe."
When we climbed the slope and looked back, we could see that the entire Seo-gu district of Busan, including the football stadium, was ablaze.
"...At some point, I began to feel like I was living the same day over and over again," Kim Joo-chul began explaining. "And then, all of a sudden, the memories of you, Mr. Undertaker, flooded my mind. Oh, right. This is all just a dream. In reality, I'm already dead, but here I am, doing this crap."
"..."
"At first, I didn't pay much attention. After all, I had accepted my fate, right? I figured once time reset, I'd forget everything and continue living in ignorance, so it didn't matter. Or so I thought..."
But the memories persisted. Even after 24 hours had passed, the "Continue Playing" button was forcibly activated.
"Fuck. No matter how joyful the memories were, reliving the exact same day over and over again was torture. You were right, Mr. Undertaker. Forgetfulness was a blessing."
He sighed deeply. "At first, I tried telling everyone. That we were stuck, repeating the same day over and over. That once 24 hours passed, we'd be back to living the same day."
"..."
"People just looked at me like I was crazy. I felt sorry for them, but I understood. But after 20 or 30 loops, roughly a month of repeating the same day―"
The anomaly made its entrance at the bar where he and his teammates went after a match.
"Out of nowhere, the bartender said something to me."
"Excuse me, didn't you come here yesterday too?"
"That's where it started. One by one, people began to notice. The bartender, my teammates sitting at the same table, even other customers."
Hey, isn't the TV always showing the same thing?
Didn't we drink together yesterday too?
The food here tastes the same every day.
"In no time at all, even my wife figured it out."
It was like an infectious disease.
A so-called 'Regression Virus' began to spread rapidly. The first to be infected were likely those who had the closest contact with Kim Joo-chul that day. The virus then spread further and further as the same day kept repeating. Even after time reset, the Regression Virus didn't vanish. Infected people continued to spread it to others.
Huh? Was today Saturday?
Wait, wasn't this game yesterday?
The bar patrons infected their family members, the players infected players from the opposing team, the supporters infected other citizens.
The Regression Virus spread at an alarming pace. The problem was that this was a half-baked regression—meaning the same 24 hours simply repeated forever.
Hey, isn't this weird? Didn't you ask the same question yesterday?
Right? Something's off.
Hold on, I've got a friend at a TV station. I'll give them a call...
People tried to spread the word, doing whatever they could to get others to recognize the strange situation.
That only helped the virus spread further. By the time the hundredth day had passed, the virus, which began in a small bar near the stadium, had consumed the entire Seo-gu district of Busan.
Another day has started again...
What the hell is wrong?
What's the government doing about this?
The citizens, led by public officials and police officers, tried to get the situation under control. They reached out to the media and tried to inform the government of the situation in Busan.
They even managed to get in touch with the government.
But everything reset after 24 hours.
Didn't we get a promise from Mayor Jung Sang-guk about this yesterday?
Yes, but... I'm sorry. It seems that no one outside of us is aware that time is repeating.
What?
We're the only ones who know. Everyone else is oblivious to the fact that the same day keeps repeating. So, all the promises made 24 hours ago are forgotten.
Isolation. Quarantine.
The Regression Virus never spread beyond Busan—more specifically, the Seo-gu district. Only the citizens of this place were aware that 24 hours were repeating endlessly.
Like a zombie virus causing an entire city to be sealed off, these citizens were trapped not in space, but in time.
This is impossible!
There has to be some way out of this, right?
Yet, even in the face of the truth, the citizens refused to accept it. They believed that if they could just get the word out to the government, somehow, a solution would be found.
Some like the elderly professor who admitted, "We got the promise, but it didn't matter," were resigned, while most of the citizenry still sought out their own means of salvation.
We need to cause enough chaos so that the world can't ignore us!
That's right! We need to show how severe this is within the next 24 hours so that the government and everyone else realize what's happening!
But how do we do that?
We need to start a riot! Let's cause a bloodbath, something big enough that the world can't ignore us!
Oh...
If enough people get hurt, the government will be forced to act. The media will swarm in to cover the situation.
Let's do it! Everyone, steel your hearts and get ready!
So, they took drastic action.
A riot, meticulously planned and executed, caused massive casualties. Busan was in an uproar as the bloody clash between ordinary citizens alarmed the local government, prompting them to deploy a large police force.
Ahhh! It worked! It worked!
Turn on the TV! The government's making an announcement! They've responded before the day reset!
We're saved!
As long as they know, we'll be okay!
Despite bleeding from their heads and being arrested by the police, the citizens shed tears of joy. They truly believed they had escaped from hell.
But then, 24 hours later...
Oh no.
It's happened again. But this time, the whole country knows! Surely, things will change now.
Nothing changed. In fact, it only confirmed their worst fears.
No one remembers, do they?
What?
The government. No one there remembers anything about the time loop...
Indeed, after all the chaos, the citizens were finally forced to face the cruel truth.
First, the Regression Virus only spread within Seo-gu, Busan.
Second, it never infected anyone beyond that area.
The reason was simple: Beyond this single day, nothing else in the world was actually created.
The Time Seal was not all-powerful. Only the area necessary to recreate Kim Joo-chul's happiest day was fully constructed. The world beyond Kim Joo-chul's daily routine didn't exist. The people and events there were nothing more than shallow images.
What the hell? Why are we the only ones...?
Fuck, what the hell is going on?
The citizens couldn't deduce the full extent of the situation. All they knew was that they had been trapped, living the same day over and over again—hundreds, even thousands of times.
Eventually...
Ah... Ahhh! Aaaahhh!
At some point, societal order began to rapidly collapse. Those who once advocated for reaching out to the government or starting riots quickly lost the support of the masses.
No, it was the leaders themselves who fell into despair. No matter what they tried, no matter how many they killed or how many died, everything reset after 24 hours.
Stop! Calm down! We just need to build a community and cooperate...
Shut up! My family is in Incheon!
Attempts to establish a community consistently failed.
The rule that "people would return to life even after being killed" made it impossible to create a stable society. Human life—time itself—was the fundamental currency of any social system, long before the gold standard was introduced. Morality, labor, relationships. These elements, rooted in the value of life, crumbled the moment that value became meaningless. Society, built by Homo sapiens, collapsed in an instant.
"I just... Mr. Undertaker... Maybe this is all my fault..."
Having witnessed everything, Kim Joo-chul began to tremble.
"You know, I made that wish to you, right? The, uh, the time... what was it again?"
"Time Seal, you mean."
"Ah! Right, right. That's it. I was hit with the Time Seal... Could it be that everyone else got caught up in it, too?" His voice dropped to a whisper, as though he feared someone might overhear. Eyes brimming with guilt, self-loathing, and terror. he bowed his head and muttered, "If... If that's what's happening, then, these sorts of things usually end when the cause dies, right...? But I've already died several times, and yet, still..."
"No." I shook my head. "This isn't your fault."
"R-really...?"
"Yes. Mr. Kim, this place isn't real. It's nothing more than the last remnant you left behind in the world—just a dream."
"Oh..."
"The bartenders, your teammates, your wife—they're not real people, but illusions."
"..."
"There's no fundamental difference between the people here and those beyond Busan. The only distinction is that the illusions here are more detailed, while those beyond are mere rough sketches. The reason the people beyond Busan didn't notice the time loop is simply that they lack the capacity to do so."
His lips quivered. "Y-yeah. You're right. That makes sense... But still, Mr. Undertaker... no matter how you look at it, me, these people..."
At that moment, Kim Joo-chul looked up at me and grabbed my leg.
"P-please, save us."
"..."
"Don't leave us here. Mr. Undertaker... No, Lord. Lord, aren't you the creator of this world? You promised, didn't you? That we'd be able to enjoy this happy day forever. But this... This is different, Lord. This is hell..."
"Please, calm down." I held his trembling hand with my free hand. "Don't worry. This is my responsibility, and I will fix this."
"Ah..."
"If there's blame to be had, it should fall on me and on the anomaly. And—"
My gaze slashed over to meet the Saintess's eyes. She understood the meaning behind my look and nodded slightly in agreement.
"Thanks to your explanation, Mr. Kim, I've figured out the nature of this anomaly."
Valhalla.
A place where, even in death, the same day repeats endlessly, with the dead fighting eternally.
That was the anomaly haunting this tomb.
-x-X-x-
The Antagonist III
We decided to leave the tombstone and return to reality for now. The Crystal Tombstone was ultimately a fantasy realm I had created, no matter how real it felt, so our preparations needed to be done some out in the real world.
Needless to say, Kim Joo-chul panicked.
"Mr. Undertaker! You can't just leave us here like this. You must return. If you don't, we will truly be—"
"I'll return within a week at the latest. Please protect your wife and child and wait for me."
"A week..." Joo-chul trembled as anxiety overwhelmed him.
After barely managing to calm him down, we escaped from the tombstone. The fresh air of the ruined football stadium greeted us. Unlike the fiery scene that consumed the entirety of Busan's Seo-gu district inside the tombstone, the village in reality was quiet.
"I didn't realize... So regressing can push a person's mind to this extreme," the Saintess murmured beside me, still holding my hand. "Kim Joo-chul and the citizens may have fallen into madness, but if we think rationally, it's only been a thousand days. Not even three years have passed. And yet..."
She glanced at me.
I understood what she wanted to say. I've been a regressor for thousands of years, but I still seemed relatively sane.
I shrugged. "I repeat my life, but they're stuck repeating just one day."
"...Is that really the only reason?"
"Either way, we should get moving. Kim Joo-chul may be forgotten in reality, but I don't want to leave him like this."
"Ah, I agree."
We wandered the full breadth of Busan. The objective was simple: to observe whether similar phenomena were occurring with the other people sealed inside Crystal Tombstones, like Kim Joo-chul.
The result?
I groaned. "They're all infected."
It wasn't just Kim Joo-chul. I checked only 50 tombstones, but all 50 individuals were infected with the 24-hour Regression Virus.
There were around 500,000 Time Seals across the Korean Peninsula. All of them were most likely infected with the same bizarre phenomenon.
What's more, after spending an entire day wandering Busan, I discovered something else.
"...Mr. Undertaker, it seems like this is affecting the people in reality as well."
"Hmm."
Just as she said.
Inside the dream realm of Kim Joo-chul's tombstone, I had seen numerous ordinary citizens. Most of them had died or gone missing, but about one-tenth of them had survived the apocalypse and living in the Seo-gu district of Busan. These survivors, specifically the ordinary citizenry who appeared in Kim Joo-chul's dream—strangely, their 'sleep time' had been steadily increasing.
"Hah, don't even get me started. Lately, maybe because of the heat, I've been having some strange thoughts."
I was able to get specific testimony from one of the survivors. He used to be a football player on the same team as Kim Joo-chul.
(Of course, he had no memory of Kim Joo-chul or the fact that he was trapped in a 24-hour loop inside his dream.)
"What do you mean by strange thoughts...?"
"Well... it's hard to explain, but it's like déjà vu? You know that feeling when you think you've gone through something before? Lately, I've been getting that feeling more and more."
"..."
An abnormal symptom.
If only one person had experienced it, I would've dismissed it as heatstroke, but every survivor we found in Seo-gu complained of the same thing. Although the intensity of the feeling varied, they all reported experiencing some form of déjà vu.
All of these people had gone mad after being infected with the Regression Virus inside Kim Joo-chul's dream.
"...Wait a moment."
The Saintess's expression darkened, more than I had ever seen before.
"Mr. Undertaker. Didn't you say that over 500,000 people were sealed in time across the country?"
"That's right."
"...If all 500,000 of them were infected with the Regression Virus, and if every person who appeared in their dreams was also infected, and those symptoms are now showing up in reality..."
I nodded. "Yes. It won't be long before the entire Korean Peninsula begins showing the same symptoms."
A Regression Alliance was called immediately.
I explained to the members the influence this unidentified anomaly was having, writing it down on the blackboard.
[Identity of the Anomaly = Nut??]
Inside the Crystal Tombstones, the sealed people are experiencing a 24-hour regression.
Normally, their memories should reset every 24 hours, but for some reason, their memories are being preserved. This phenomenon is spreading to those around them too.
Not only is this happening inside the tombstones, but it's also starting to appear in reality. The affected people in reality are feeling a strong sense of déjà vu, as if things are repeating.
After hearing the explanation, Noh Do-hwa frowned. "What the fuck? So now we're dealing with a plague that spreads through dreams, turning everyone into half-assed regressors?"
"I can't say for sure," I said calmly. "I suspect that several anomalies have overlapped. I'd like to ask you all—have you recently been feeling an unusually strong sense of déjà vu?"
The members exchanged glances. Seo Gyu spoke first.
"Now that you mention it... While eating breakfast this morning, I suddenly thought, 'I've definitely seen this exact scene before,' hyung."
"I... I had the same experience." Sim Ah-ryeon hesitated as she spoke. "Remember when the guild master asked me to draw that, um, Infinite Metagame? The one with the blue butterfly painting? While I was drawing it, I thought, 'Wait, haven't I drawn this exact same thing before...?'"
"I've had similar experiences as well," Yu Ji-won agreed. "I brushed it off as a trick of the mind, but if it's due to the anomaly, it makes sense. Honestly, even this very meeting room feels oddly familiar."
Of course. I had sealed about 500,000 people in time, so it was more likely than not that Seo Gyu, Sim Ah-ryeon, and Yu Ji-won had appeared briefly in someone's dream.
"It's probable that this anomaly is a combination of several concepts. For instance, it seems that 'Valhalla' is involved."
"Valhalla? As in, the place where warriors go to die, only to kill and die again in the afterlife?"
"Precisely."
Valhalla, one of the afterlives.
In Valhalla, the souls of the invited warriors kill and die each morning, only to be resurrected by evening.
"The concept of a 'day repeating endlessly' aligns closely with Valhalla."
"Hmm..."
"I suspect this anomaly has the ability to manipulate the concept of the afterlife. Hell, oblivion... wherever the souls that disappear from reality gather."
Tap, tap.
I continued explaining, writing on the blackboard. "When I seal people in time, they vanish from the world entirely. In a way, the inside of the Crystal Tombstones isn't much different from the afterlife. At least, that's how this anomaly sees it."
"...So, you're saying this anomaly is corrupting your tombstones?"
I confirmed the Saintess's words. "Exactly. To be more precise, its ultimate goal is probably to corrupt me."
"...You, Mr. Undertaker."
"Think about it. What people experience inside the Crystal Tombstones is essentially a 'miniature version' of what I go through. I'm a regressor, and though their experience only lasts 24 hours, they're regressing too. I don't like making this comparison, but..."
I tapped the blackboard again, adding more words.
[Undertaker = Outer God]
Regression ability, Perfect memory ability
[Kim Joo-chul and other Sealed Ones = Apostles]
Regression ability (24 hours), Memory ability
I turned to face them.
"If things go wrong, this could become the new hierarchy."
The Saintess's eyes widened. "The Undertaker as an Outer God, and the Apostles being targeted first..."
"Yes. Of course, I'm not actually saying I'm an Outer God. I'm just explaining how the anomaly seems to perceive me."
It was a classic strategy—kill the minions to weaken the boss.
"To make this work, the anomaly must make me and the Apostles as similar as possible. The biggest difference between me and Kim Joo-chul, for instance, is..."
"...Memory."
"Exactly. I know I'm regressing and I remember everything perfectly through my Complete Memory. But Kim Joo-chul, until now, didn't even realize he was repeating the same day over and over."
So, the anomaly forcefully molded him in my image and designated Kim Joo-chul as my avatar. Not just Kim Joo-chul either—500,000 Time Sealers were now being compelled to resemble me. If it managed to push all 500,000 of them under its control or subject them to unbearable torment...
"It could land a blow on me as well."
"..."
"I believe that's what the anomaly is trying to achieve. Well, this is still just speculation, of course."
The room fell silent.
Breaking the stillness, Noh Do-hwa tilted her chin in thought. "In short, this anomaly is trying to take you down, huh?"
"Yes. Whether it's intentional or not, the result is the same—it's targeting me."
-x-X-x-
The Antagonist IV
No one panicked, not even in the face of the relentless assault of an anomaly that was set to be classified as an Outer God-class threat. Not just me but the entire Regressor Alliance, who now held the reins of power over the Korean Peninsula, stayed calm.
That much was to be expected, of course.
"Another virus?"
"The imagination of these damn anomalies is pathetic. All they seem to know is how to screw over humanity with pandemics..."
"So is this one stronger than COVID?"
Yeah, the Korean Peninsula had experienced far too much to freak out over yet another pandemic, let alone scream about the end of the world.
Through Constellation Talk and SG Net, we sent out an alert:
[A mysterious virus is currently spreading. Please act accordingly, as you've been trained.]
The citizens responded swiftly. Keeping distance, isolating in their districts, making schedules to avoid overlapping routes—everyone knew the drill.
But this Regressor Virus was something altogether new. It had the power to mock the defense protocols that Korea had painstakingly built over time.
"How are we supposed to prevent a virus that spreads through dreams...?"
Noh Do-hwa summarized the heart of the issue in one sentence.
"With diseases that spread in the real world, you can at least try to lock things down or destroy the source. But this... This thing spreads just because I showed up in the dream of someone you sealed away with Time Seal. Am I right?"
"We've dispatched the Tutorial Fairies to the infecteds' dreams."
"And those 'Hoek' vending machines are supposed to stop the disease?"
"No. At best, they'll just buy us some time."
In short, the disease was uncontainable. No matter how composed the leadership of the Peninsula remained, the situation was escalating fast. Unless one had reached the extreme limit of Aura, it was impossible to avoid sleep for an extended period.
Everyone slept. And everyone who slept was infected through their dreams.
It had only been a single day, but SG Net was already in chaos.
- Anonymous: [Virus] I'm losing my mind; every time I close my eyes, I see the scenes of my death from previous rounds.
- Anonymous: [Virus] This world is just repeating itself, and this life is nothing but one of countless copies.
- Anonymous: [Virus] To those not infected yet, take note. Read this.
- Anonymous: [Virus] This place is hell.
The cries of the infected began to flood in.
I decided to meet with a few of them directly. The symptoms of the Regressor Virus turned out to be remarkably consistent.
"The world, it's repeating! I'm sure of it! Look! This conversation we're having right now definitely happened before!"
Symptom #1: Intense déjà vu.
When mild, it manifested as a fleeting déjà vu. But as the infection worsened, the feeling grew stronger.
"Calm down. This is our first time meeting. Even if there were previous rounds, we've never had a conversation like this."
"No, no! You just don't realize it yet. That's why you're so calm, because you don't know the truth—that the world is repeating!"
"..."
Who would've thought that one day, I'd get lectured about regression?
It sent a strange mix of novelty and awkwardness through me as I watched the infected person nervously chew his nails, his eyes losing focus.
"That expression of yours... Those eyes... I've seen it all before. It's all pointless. We're going to die again. We'll repeat, over and over, living the same lives as if nothing ever happened... I don't want to die. I don't want to live either..."
"Hmm."
Symptom #2: Extreme fear of regression.
Considering most people fantasize about becoming regressors and having an easy life, this symptom was perplexing. However, this symptom stemmed from the first.
If you were truly a regressor in a fictional world, you'd probably enjoy carving out a completely different path from your previous life. But the Regressor Virus was different. The most insidious part of this virus was that it made people feel like every single thought and action had already been repeated thousands, even tens of thousands of times.
No matter what they did, no matter how novel it seemed, they believed they had experienced it all before. Inevitably, no matter what choices they made, they were overwhelmed by an inescapable déjà vu.
In other words...
"It might be more accurate to call this the Déjà Vu Virus rather than the Regressor Virus."
Above all, this virus didn't cause people to truly recognize they were regressing, like I did. Some patients even pointed at me during our interview and said:
"Undertaker? Weren't you a woman?"
"Pardon?"
"Why are you a man this time? Ah, right. There were rounds where you were a man, too."
What utter nonsense.
This was Symptom #3 of the virus.
It didn't actually cause real regression but merely implanted in the infected the false belief that they had been regressing repeatedly. Even when I interrogated them about specific events from past cycles, their answers were vague at best. When questioned about the future, they rambled incoherently.
Yet even if it was just a delusion, we couldn't afford to let our guard down.
When I finished the interviews and stepped outside, Do-hwa was leaning against the wall, watching me.
"Today alone, 136 suicide cases have been confirmed. There's probably a lot more we haven't found yet..." she trailed off.
"..."
"Those infected by the virus fall into one of two categories: They either become highly violent or sink into severe apathy. The former kills others, while the latter kills themselves. What kind of shit disease is this...?"
Do-hwa tugged on one of her gloves, the black leather creaking as it stretched over her hand. Under the dim light, the five long fingers there clenched tight.
"So, what are you going to do about this...?"
There were two layers to Do-hwa's question. One was the literal meaning.
What are you going to do about the situation?
No matter how elusive the Tutorial Fairies were, they couldn't control the dreams of all infected persons. With three million survivors left in Korea, it wouldn't be long before the symptoms worsened for everyone.
The second meaning was unspoken.
Are you going to abandon this round?
Right now, the members of the Regressor Alliance were experiencing relatively mild symptoms, but that could change rapidly in a few days. Soon, I might witness the people I cared about either killing others or taking their own lives.
And if I didn't want to see that, she could kill me herself. Just like she had done in certain rounds I had never mentioned before.
"We must not surrender."
But this time, I wouldn't.
"This anomaly is not something we can overcome just by resetting to a new round. In fact, doing so will probably make things worse."
"Worse?"
"The host of this pandemic isn't something that appeared in this cycle alone. It's the dreams of those I erased with my Time Seal, and the Seal is immune to the round resets. No matter how many rounds I go through, the Crystal Tombstones I sealed are still there."
Do-hwa's eyes widened slightly. "So, even if you regress, the virus remains trapped in those tombstones...?"
I nodded. "Yes, that's my theory. In fact, it's possible the Regressor Virus didn't just pop up this round. It might have been accumulating ever since the tombstones were created—since the 4th round. It could have transformed over time and only now exploded in this round."
"What round are we on now?"
"The 267th."
"...Fuck."
Exactly.
If my theory was correct, the virus had managed to find the only truly safe zone in this world of repeated cycles: inside the Time Seal. A place that even a regressor like me couldn't alter—a point of no return.
Just like how the anomaly known as Go Yuri had embedded itself deep in my unconscious, the virus too had built its final stronghold, resisting my regressions.
"What's the point of being a regressor if regression is useless? What do you have left, besides that face of yours and your dead-fish eyes...?"
"I make great coffee."
"Who needs that...?"
"I can offer the honor, wealth, and power of Korea to a retired 7th-grade civil servant, like yourself."
"Fuck, no thanks..."
"I can mediate when Dang Seo-rin and Cheon Yo-hwa fight. Not just anyone can do that."
"If you weren't around, they wouldn't even be fighting, you asshole..."
"Hoek!"
The barrage of insults from Noh Do-hwa was interrupted by a most unexpected source—the Tutorial Fairy. With a pop, fairy number 264 appeared out of nowhere, waving its wand dramatically.
"Comrade Secretary! Emergency! A crisis has arrived!"
"It's not as terrifying as that, but still an emergency...!"
I tossed the sausage-loving fairy a pack of the aforementioned sausages. Fairy No. 264 smiled in bliss, chomping down without even peeling off the wrapper. Keeping these Tutorial Fairies loyal required constant, subtle gestures like this.
"Hoek! While we were monitoring the dreams of the infected as per your command, we made a shocking discovery!"
"What is it?"
"Seeing is believing! Site inspections are a core duty of a communist secretary! Come with me!"
The fairy was likely referring to either the Tutorial Dungeons or a dream. Since the Tutorial Dungeons in Korea had long been closed, it was obviously going to be the dream of an infected person—in this case, the dreamscape of the former football player, Kim Joo-chul.
"Under your strict orders, we've been keeping a close eye on this man's dreams!" The fairy fluttered around as we entered the dream.
When I arrived, it was quiet. Earlier, the entire place had been overrun with rioters, wreaking havoc, but now, all was calm. Even the stadium was intact.
Every spectator and player had collapsed, drifting off into sleep, their heads surrounded by ZZZ bubbles. It was the power of a Baku—a dream eater.[2]
"To prevent further spread, we devised this method: First, we put all the residents of this dreamworld to sleep, then entered their dreams to put them to sleep again. Then we entered the dreams within the dreams to put them to sleep yet again!"
"...Sounds like a way to access the unconscious mind."
"Hoek! Exactly! As expected of Comrade Secretary!" The fairy zoomed about excitedly. "When you trap ordinary humans in dream after dream like this, the dream eventually becomes so distorted that it's no longer recognizable as a dream. The virus's space to operate melts away like candle wax! That's how we've been containing the spread!"
Ah, by the way, we could have left the Tutorial Fairies within the Time Seal completely unattended. If humans were left unattended like that, they'd disappear forever, but somehow, the Tutorial Fairies could enter and exit freely as long as I gave them permission.
When I asked how that was possible, they simply said, "Hoek! You call it a cemetery, but for us, it feels no different from a dream!"
Fairy logic was truly mysterious.
"But Comrade Secretary, please come here and check out Kim Joo-chul's dream!"
So I entered.
There, in the middle of the football field, Kim Joo-chul lay sleeping soundly. Taking the fairy's hand (after hearing yet another strange lullaby), I entered his dream within the dream.
Did you watch the Olympic game yesterday?
Everyone! Believe in the Goddess! Believe, and you'll live in heaven!
Honk! Honk!
Dad! I told you not to bring up politics!
The place was swarming with people.
I had been away from this sort of scene for so long that I'd almost forgotten what it was like, but after reflecting on it for a moment, I realized it was... Seoul Station.
"Where... is this?"
People walked around, using smartphones. Cars honked on the road. College students climbed the steps of the station. This must have been what human life looked like before the world ended—a fleeting glimpse of what used to be.
"Is this... really Kim Joo-chul's dream?"
I wasn't looking down on him. As the fairy had explained before we entered, the unconscious mind couldn't create a world this detailed and rational. Even with my Complete Memory, my own unconscious dreamscape had placed a vast desert just outside of Busan Station.
But what about this place?
It didn't seem like a simple product of Kim Joo-chul's unconscious. The acrid smell of exhaust wafting from the asphalt road was so vivid, so real. As real as reality itself.
No.
Exactly the same as reality.
"Hoek! Defining whether this is a dream is tricky, but we've decided to call it an Inner World! What's certain is..."
"What?"
"The Inner World spans as far as the Korean Peninsula and continues to expand in real-time! With a little more effort, it might even surpass reality!" the fairy declared. "And it's not just in Kim Joo-chul either! Anyone infected with the virus—anyone at all—gets linked to this place!"
"...What?"
"Every single person infected in the real world has been abducted to this Inner World!"
Footnotes:
[1] A type of Korean snack sausage, like beef jerky.
[2] Baku are dream-devouring yokai from Japanese folklore that are said to consume nightmares. A person plagued by bad dreams can call out to a baku for protection, but if the creature is hungry after its meal, it may also devourer said person's hopes and dreams.
-x-X-x-
The Antagonist V
Abduction.
Naturally, being abducted by an anomaly is quite different from being kidnapped by a human.
When humans kidnap you, it's usually your honor, wealth, or life that's at risk. But an anomaly? Surprisingly, all of those things might just remain intact.
Anomalies don't do anything outside of what's necessary. If they were after your life, they would kill you on the spot, not bother going through the whole process of an abduction.
No, when an anomaly abducts you, there's only one thing they're after: your 'humanity.' And I'm not just talking about ethics and morality—it includes the logical structure built into the brain of every Homo sapien.
Q. What's 1 + 1?
A. Obviously, it's 2.
Even those who answer that question normally, if abducted by an anomaly, may suddenly respond with:
Q. What's 1 + 1?
A. Having slaughtered the flesh of 10, only 1 limb remains. Since a cross of 1 and 1 is X and X is 10, when two 10s join to form 100, align 100 crossed forearms and you'll have your answer.[1]
Then, they proceed to murder 100 people, including themselves, displaying 100 pairs of forearms.
Being outraged at the fact that they could commit such monstrous acts would mean nothing to them.
A. Why are you getting angry all of a sudden?
Because in their mind, killing 100 people is no different from calculating 1 + 1 = 2. They slaughtered with the same nonchalance as doing simple math.
I just answered 1 + 1 = 2, so why are you upset? Why are you looking at me with such sadness?
They'd look at you with confusion.
They're no longer human.
They're incapable of human conversation.
Thus was the abduction of humanity.
This is what I usually refer to when I say someone has been 'entranced' by an anomaly. It was likely in this sense that the Tutorial Fairy used the word.
"If everyone infected in the real world has been abducted... how many people are here in this Inner World?"
"Hoek! At least two million! And the number's skyrocketing in real-time!"
I frowned. "Wait, at this rate, it'll surpass the population of the Peninsula."
"That's right! This place doesn't just contain the virus-infected people from reality, but even characters from their dreams! It'll soon exceed ten million! Welcome to the Reversal World!"
"...Huh."
Ten million.
I surveyed the vast emptiness that stretched around Seoul Station. If this place was the Void created by an anomaly, it wasn't just any Void—it was a Great Void.
A Great Void of this scale was incredibly rare. For example, an anomaly like an "apartment trapping 400 souls" would only be a standard Apartment Anomaly. But if an apartment could hold 40,000 souls, additional concepts would be needed. Like, "This reflects the deep desire Koreans have for apartments," or, "It's based on a real apartment with that many pre-sale applications." The anomaly wouldn't just be about the building, but the entire complex. Only then could a Great Void grow larger.
The largest Great Void on Earth was in the western part of Eurasia, where the concepts of World War I and World War II had been linked, trapping hundreds of millions of souls.
"How could it have pulled in millions? Did it declare this place a hell?"
"Hoek, not at all. If anything, it's quite the opposite—"
"Everyone!"
Just then, a voice boomed from the plaza of Seoul Station. It was a man with a megaphone, dressed in an outfit that screamed street evangelist, much like those seen before the collapse of civilization. But there was something a bit off about the writing on his vest.
Goddess = Heaven!
No Goddess = Hell!
The stickers patched across his vest were disturbingly similar to reality.
"Everyone! I'm sorry to interrupt your busy lives! But I had no choice! I had to grab this stage to guide you toward true faith and a righteous life!"
The middle-aged man shouted into his red megaphone.
"As you know, many unfortunate souls are still trapped in hell! Unlike us, they have yet to be saved! They live lives of endless regression, endless cycles, endless suffering! Friends! Family!"
At this point, the sense of "reality" that had anchored this place suddenly and dramatically reversed.
"..."
"..."
Everyone in the plaza stopped moving and turned to stare at the man.
People on the phone hung up. Those looking at their smartphones turned them off. Even those chatting with companions fell silent.
The plaza was engulfed in eerie stillness. There wasn't a single annoyed look directed at the man's megaphone. Everyone stared at him blankly, with dark, hollow eyes.
"Across the Void, countless people still suffer in the inferno of eternal reincarnation! Those people are your friends! Your family! And, ultimately, they are a reflection of yourselves! Let us pray for them! Oh, Goddess!"
"Oh, Goddess!"
The previously silent crowd suddenly roared in unison.
The man waved his arms even more fervently.
"Oh, Goddesssss!"
"Oh, Goddess!"
"Repent! As we live through cycle after cycle, hundreds, thousands of times over, we fall into the delusion that we will be saved! That the world will be redeemed! But we must repent for our sins, for the sins of our friends, family, and selves!"
"Repent!"
"Praise her! The only thing piling up in this endless life is our growing sins. Even if we forget, the Goddess continues to watch over us! Our filthy souls, they are stained with sin. Yet the Goddess, in her mercy, never gave up on us! She has pulled us out of hell and returned us to this world! Praise her!"
"Praise her!"
"Oh, Goddessss!"
"Oh, Goddess!"
The entire plaza descended into madness.
Fairy No. 264 let out a quiet hoek and hid behind me. Even I hesitated for a moment as I saw the frenzied eyes of the crowd.
"Bow down, all of you! Worship her!"
Without a second of hesitation, the crowd in the plaza dropped to the ground. Not a single one of them cared that their suits got dirty.
Kim Joo-chul was among them. He and his wife bowed low to the ground.
"Confront it! As you did yesterday, as you did the day before, as you did a hundred years ago, and a thousand years ago! See your reflection in this eternal hell!"
And then something bizarre happened. The asphalt ground of the plaza turned transparent—like glass. Beneath the glass, scenes began to play. In the place where Kim Joo-chul bowed, the scene was of Kim Joo-chul himself.
"Save me! Please, just let me out of here! I can't keep reliving this day anymore!"
It wasn't just him. Wherever the crowd bowed, each of them saw a vision of themselves beneath the glass.
And among them, I noticed a familiar green-haired figure—it was Sim Ah-ryeon.
The scene beneath the glass that caught and held my attention, however, was the following:
"The National Road Management Corps are the lackeys of hell! They want to trap us in this endless regression! They're the true demons!"
"Demons! Demons! Demons!"
In the scene, a group of protesters gathered in front of the National Road Management Corps headquarters, screaming their chants. Yu Ji-won and her team came out and brutally suppressed them. The Tower of Babel Plaza was filled with screams.
A scene that could have easily been from reality.
I muttered to myself, "What are these scenes?"
"Hoek. They're from the real world." The fairy peeked over my shoulder. "Comrade Secretary, look beneath your feet."
"Huh?"
I looked down, and to my surprise, just like the others, there was a glass panel beneath me displaying a 'scene.'
The Undertaker on the other side was sleeping with his eyes closed. Surrounding him were Noh Do-hwa and the Saintess, sitting nearby. While I lay in bed, they were talking softly.
"Damn. It's noisy outside..."
"The protests are getting worse."
"Well, not surprising. Even the Awakeners are infected with this so-called Regressor Virus. Samcheon and Baekhwa mentioned trying to suppress it, but I don't think it'll last long..."
"I still believe everything will be fine once Undertaker wakes up."
I was speechless. This wasn't just a scene that could exist in reality—it was reality itself.
Then Fairy No. 24 revealed, "But for those humans entranced by this Inner World, it's the opposite."
"...The opposite?"
"Hoek! Yes! Here is the real world, and beyond the glass is the afterlife—their hell!"
My eyes shot wide. "What? How could they be fooled like that...?"
"Hoek! It works! To be more precise, the anomaly is actively pushing that narrative!"
Fairy number 264 continued to explain.
The reason they believed their Inner World was superior to my reality.
"First of all, there's no war here, and civilization is still intact! And like I said, the population here is about to surpass yours!"
Civilization and environment.
"That side is a harsh world, an eternal regression hell. But this Inner World created by the anomaly exists without regression! It continues on like a normal reality!"
The flow of time.
"So, Comrade Secretary, this anomaly has declared your world a 'hell.' It's a challenge to see which world is the true reality and which is the hellscape!"
"..."
I finally understood.
In the end, this anomaly was no different from others in its essence. Anomalies typically create hell within reality, but this one had simply named reality itself as hell. And just like that, it had constructed its own Inner World, claiming it as its territory.
This place was the world of the living, and that place was the afterlife. The anomaly was entrancing people with that narrative.
Reversal. Inversion. A change in perception.
Reluctantly, I admitted, "...Clever bastard. So, where is this, exactly? Is it a dream? The unconscious?"
"Hoek, not quite. You reached this place through a dream, but dreams are just a similar experience!"
"A similar experience...?" With a flash of insight, I deduced, "I see, so that's it. There's an old myth that people can sometimes glimpse the afterlife through their dreams. The afterlife doesn't actually exist in dreams, but it can be momentarily accessed through them. This place must have the properties of the afterlife."
"As expected of Comrade Secretary! Hoek! Of course, the anomaly considers this the real world and the other side the afterlife..."
A cleverly designed trap, no doubt. However, I finally caught a glimpse of the strategy.
It was a simple matter of proving which was the real world and which was the illusion. I just had to reveal that the world I lived in was reality.
"Friends! Rejoice! Your heartfelt repentance has reached the Goddess!" the middle-aged man shouted. "Today, you no longer need to gaze into hell! Lift your heads! Raise your eyes! Behold the sky above you!"
The people lying in the plaza raised their upper bodies. Instinctively, I followed their gaze to the sky.
"Behold the sacred presence of the Goddess!"
And I saw it.
There was no sun. How had I not noticed?
If I had to explain myself, I'd probably have to say because modern people rarely look up at the sun. What's more, judging by the angle of the light, the sun should have been directly overhead, making it difficult to see unless I tilted my head almost 90 degrees.
In other words, even I had assumed that because light was shining from above, what was in the sky must be a sun.
"..."
What actually hung in its place was no sun.
It was a massive eye.
Blink.
The eye blinked, and ever so slowly, for just that moment, the light of the world dimmed.
Before I looked up, I'd assumed what kept casting us into shadow were clouds. But I was wrong.
Blink.
From that enormous eye came its light—or rather, its gaze—cast down upon us. The pitch-black pupil at its center never rested, constantly shifting.
"Hoek! Danger...!"
The moment the Eye of the Sun—no, the Sun of the Eye—fixed its gaze on me, everyone in the plaza turned their head toward me as well.
"..."
"..."
The residents of this Inner World, who hadn't noticed me until now, suddenly stared at me with piercing gazes.
Even the light from the eye above focused all its attention on me.
The temperature around me skyrocketed, and my skin began to melt like wax.
"Emergency escape, hoek!"
The fairy frantically waved her wand. Half of Fairy No. 264's body exploded right in front of me, but the fairy held onto her wand until the end.
In the next instant, I was forcefully ejected from the dream.
"...Hey."
What greeted me back in reality was a face that could win first place in a contest for The Face You Least Want to See When You Wake Up.
"Hey, Undertaker, are you alright? You're not dead, are you...?"
Also known as Noh Do-hwa.
I struggled to lift my eyelids, and the first thing I saw was her dark circles. Do-hwa was never one to care much about her appearance, but today she looked the worse for wear. She was covered in something that looked like chunks of flesh from head to toe, though it looked to be more like the consistency of jelly than human skin.
Behind her, the Saintess was similarly drenched in a strange, semi-solid substance.
I was about to make a sarcastic comment about their fashion choices, but Do-hwa cut me off first.
"The fairy that sang you a lullaby and took you on a dream trip just exploded. Out of nowhere, half of its body burst apart..."
"Ah." So it was true.
From where I lay in bed, I turned my head. Fairy No. 264 was still holding my hand, but half of its body had vanished.
"Call Ah-ryeon. These fairies are tough, and if we heal it quickly, it'll survive."
Behind Do-hwa, the Saintess nodded. She probably sent a message using Telepathy.
As I straightened my clothes, I asked, "Noh Do-hwa, is there a protest happening outside right now?"
"Hmm? Yes. Ji-won put it down right away, but... That's strange. You heard the noise even while dreaming?"
I rested my chin on my hand, deep in thought.
This time, it was Do-hwa who asked me a question, a scowl on her face. "Because of that fairy, we'll have to redecorate this place. What the hell happened in that dream to cause all this...?"
"The Goddess of the Night, Nut." I paused for a moment, then added, "It's an Outer God."
Footnotes:
[1] The "logic" here goes like this: 2 is expressed in binary as 10. The last 1 standing after slaughtering all those people is you. 1 and 1 crossed looks like the roman numeral X for 10. 10 x 10 (aka 10^2) = 100. So the anomaly needs to take 100 more lives, including the abductee's, in order to reach "2."
-x-X-x-
The Antagonist VI
A wild Outer God appeared!
The world (once again) was doomed! Everyone, run for your lives!
...Yet no one reacted that way.
Everyone remained calm.
People had already mentally sorted the hierarchy of anomalies into five neat categories: Ocean-class, Continent-class, Polis-class, Village-class, and below village-class. So even if I suddenly screamed, "Do you know what an Outer God is? It's insanely strong! It can beat up even Ocean-class anomalies!" they'd probably just respond with, "Who cares, you nerd?"
And honestly, even those in the Regressor Alliance weren't much different.
"Are Outer Gods really that powerful?" Ah-ryeon asked, panting heavily and drenched in sweat. She had just rushed over and healed Fairy No. 264.
"Why are Outer Gods the only ones called that? All the other anomalies are named after places—villages, cities. But Outer Gods sound... small. It feels wrong, out of balance."
"Don't be too hard on it, Sim Ah-ryeon." Surprisingly, it was Do-hwa who chimed in to back me up. "You should never mock the naming sense of the most revered Duke of the Black Library, the Supreme Overlord of the Library Society. You never know when you'll disappear without a trace..."
"H-holy crap! I'm sorry! I think the guild leader's naming sense is perfect! It's the best!"
"..."
Not so surprisingly, Do-hwa had been mocking me all along.
For the record, Noh Do-hwa was the kind of supporting character in a visual novel whose affection level was permanently locked at Lv. 0, regardless of who tried to win her over. But—and here's the kicker—there was exactly one person she allowed to reach Lv. 1: Sim Ah-ryeon.
Why? Simple. Even if Do-hwa got her limbs shattered, Ah-ryeon could heal them instantly. It wasn't about chemistry or personality compatibility, like some people might think. Nope. It was purely about her healing ability.
For the record, the affection level cap in this reality game is Lv. 100. If anyone figures out how to raise the remaining 99 levels, feel free to upload it to SG-Net.
"The Outer Gods aren't called 'gods' because they're gods of our world. They're called Outer Gods because they alienate the world from humanity," I explained.
"H-huh...?"
"They're gods beyond the scope of our world. Karl Marx originally used a term like this—in English, the meaning can be interpreted as "alienation", which connects with the word alien.[2] I came up with this name to evoke that sense of being... alien to us."
"What does that even mean, you nerd?"
"..."
"Ack! As expected from the guild leader. Your baiting is the best thing in the world..."
Calm down. My sword is not meant to cut down humans. Even though Sim Ah-ryeon confuses me to the core, her DNA is still 99.97% similar to mine.
Now I understood why the world had fallen apart. If creatures this irrational were the pinnacle of life, no wonder anomalies could easily dominate us.
"Ah-ryeon," I called firmly, "one of the reasons Outer Gods are terrifying is that their patterns evolve rapidly."
"Evolve?"
"Exactly. For example, if you fail to hunt down a Meteor Shower, it's not the end of the world. The pattern of 'falling from the sky' doesn't change. You just gather your strength and try again. But an Outer God immediately compensates for any weaknesses."
This was the reason I had struggled so much, twisting my body to the limit when I hunted down the Admin of the Infinite Metagame in the 267th round. You could throw as many light jabs or one-two punches as you wanted. They weren't going to accumulate any damage against an Outer God.
You needed one clean hit. A single, precise strike to pierce the bloated belly of an Outer God.
That's the most frustrating part.
My strategy of slowly accumulating data through countless cycles—every regressor's signature method—was the exact opposite of how you had to deal with an Outer God.
"Let me give you a demonstration. Hey, Fairy No. 264, are you conscious?"
"Hoek... I almost took a one-way trip to the afterlife..." Fairy No. 264 wobbled as it answered, its body now even smaller after being sliced in half earlier.
"Call the other fairies. We're entering the Inner World again. This time, Ah-ryeon and the others will come along."
"Hoek... Understood..."
We—the Saintess, Noh Do-hwa, Sim Ah-ryeon, and I—entered the dream simultaneously. Once again, we made it to Seoul Station Plaza, the gateway to the Inner World.
"Um, Guild Leader."
But this time, there was a transparent 'glass' barrier between us and the plaza, preventing us from entering.
"We can see it, but we can't get in...!" Ah-ryeon knocked on the glass with her small fists.
It wasn't just her either. The Saintess unleashed her full aura, trying to hack at it with a hand axe, but the "glass" didn't even get scratched.
Meanwhile, the people in Seoul Station Plaza casually walked across the glass without a care. We were so close, just an arm's length away, yet completely separated, unable to affect each other. It was like how the living and the dead couldn't interfere with each other.
"See? The Outer God has blocked the passage."
"Hoek."
"Nut probably didn't expect me to enter her domain through dreams."
To explain it again, Nut, the Goddess of the Night, had created a domain that spanned both "this world" and the "afterlife." She had the power to designate which was which, and that was why she designated Kim Joo-chul's dream as the afterlife, calling it Valhalla. And she had taken it a step further, declaring our reality as hell.
For those living in hell, there was almost no way to interfere with the living—Nut's domain.
Almost.
"Still, there have been stories throughout history about people experiencing the afterlife in their dreams. Thanks to the Tutorial Fairies, we managed to find this 'dream-entry route,' but once the Outer God noticed the flaw, she blocked it."
"Uh... Then how do we get back in?"
"I don't know."
I lightly tapped the glass separating the afterlife from the living world. It wasn't just a simple knock. I infused my aura into the glass, creating a ripple. My black aura vibrated against the surface, but the glass didn't budge.
This was the frustrating part about dealing with an Outer God. Brute force alone wouldn't work.
Maybe it was simply because I lacked the strength.
"Anyway, I've named this Outer God 'Nut.'"
"Nut..."
"She's a goddess from Egyptian mythology. She governs the night sky, or in other words, the universe and the cycle of day and night."
When Nut caused the world to collapse, the night sky always took on a disturbing, pulsing appearance.
The Milky Way would turn into veins, throbbing red and blue, or the sunset would drip down like blood.
"In Egyptian mythology, the night sky is the body of the goddess Nut. People back then didn't see the night sky as a vast expanse of space."
"They didn't?"
"They thought of it as a transparent dome covering the sky."
"Huh? How?"
"They believed stars weren't floating spheres but holes in that dome. As the world breathed, the stars were its breath holes, and the starlight was the world's breath shining through."
"Wha...? Starlight as the world's breath..."
"And so, the Pythagoreans, influenced by Egyptian mythology, claimed that as the stars moved, the 'world's breath' rang out like music. It's just that humans couldn't hear the melody."
"Whoa..."
This was why the inside of a pharaoh's sarcophagus was often decorated with night skies. The sarcophagus itself was transformed into a miniature universe. In it, the stars were intricately carved because the "breath holes"—the star-shaped openings—were what allowed the pharaoh's soul to pass through.
"Guild Leader! You suddenly seem super knowledgeable! You actually know more than just memorizing the names of Romance of the Three Kingdoms characters...!"
This brat... "Hey, you. I've always been an expert when it comes to anomalies. I didn't just get here by accident. I studied my way to the top, you know."
"Ah, here comes the lecture..."
"What did you say?"
"Gyaaah! No violence, please!" Tears welled in Ah-ryeon's eyes from where her head was held in a lock. "S-so, how do we cross over to that side if the passage is blocked...?"
"Hmm. Since Egyptian mythology is the main reference here, I guess we'd have to become mummies to cross over."
"Mummies?"
"Yeah. By the way, to become a mummy, you need to have your brain removed. Egyptians didn't think the brain was important—they believed thinking happened through the heart."
"H-huh?! You're talking about dying!"
"How about you become a mummy on behalf of humanity, Ah-ryeon?"
"N-nooo! It's not me who should get buried alive, it's you, Guild Leader!"
Just then, the Saintess raised her hand. "Mr. Undertaker."
"Yes? What is it?"
"If this Outer God, Nut, really has the power to designate which is the afterlife and which is the living world... and if she's labeled our world as the afterlife, specifically a hell where souls suffer..."
The Saintess tilted her head, her watery blue hair swaying slightly.
"Wouldn't more than just déjà vu be happening to people infected by the Regressor Virus? Wouldn't... even worse things be happening? Real, hellish things?"
"..."
Ah.
We hurriedly returned to reality. And outside, hell had indeed broken loose.
"Aaaaargh!"
"I-I've been stabbed! I got stabbed!"
In Busan's Guduk Mountain, trees were being replaced by swords that slashed at anyone who got too close. These "tree swords" weren't just sprouting—they were growing and retracting in real time, like living creatures. They seemed to be spreading down from the mountain into other areas of the city, infecting other trees.
"Save me! Please, let me out of here!"
"O-ow, ow...!"
The ground beneath the protesters in Babel Tower Plaza had collapsed, turning into a massive pit of molten metal.
People flailed and screamed as they fell into the boiling liquid, their skin burning and melting. Strangely, though, their flesh regenerated almost immediately, causing them to drown and burn again and again in an endless loop of suffering.
This "molten pit" was also expanding, threatening to spread beyond Babel Tower Plaza into other districts.
"G-Guild Leader...!"
My comrades were gathered on the rooftop of the National Road Management Corps headquarters, staring at the unfolding chaos. They turned to me, their faces pale with shock.
"This is insane! We weren't even gone that long...!"
We'd only been away for a short while.
But in that time, the world had fallen into hell.
Footnotes:
[1] Heo Jun was royal chief physician of Naeuiwon during the reign of King Seonjo and King Gwanghae of the Joseon period in Korea.
[2] Alienation in the Marxist sense refers to the way people feel estranged from their humanity, like being made to feel like an animal or "other," as a consequence of the division of labor and class in society.
-x-X-x-
The Antagonist VII
I bit my lip. "...The anomaly is rushing because I caught on."
"Wh-what?"
"What you're seeing in Guduk Mountain is the Mountain of Knives Hell, and in the plaza, it's the Boiling Oil Hell. After pulling out Valhalla from the Crystal Tombstones, now it's summoning Buddhist hells."
Even as I explained it to my comrades, my mind conjured countless strategies to overcome the situation, only to dismiss them just as quickly.
'It's moving too fast.'
Barely a day had passed since I first observed the anomaly in Kim Joo-chul's dream, and now, the Outer God was launching an all-out assault like it had been preparing for this very moment.
Of course.
That was exactly why the Outer God had hidden inside the Crystal Tombstones for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. It had been waiting for this.
Just as I, a regressor, had spent lifetimes honing the perfect strike to take down anomalies, the Outer God had taken this life to execute a flawless ambush on me.
"H-hyung, something's wrong."
Even Seo Gyu, who usually put on a tough front, couldn't hide the tremble in his voice. The sight of people melting and screaming in boiling liquid right beneath the headquarters building was enough to shake anyone.
"The people aren't dying. They should be dead after falling into molten metal, but... they keep healing."
"It's hell," I answered. "The Outer God has declared this world a hell. And in hell, no one dies."
"N-no one dies?"
"Right. Because hell is a place for the dead. All they do is suffer, endlessly. From now on, no one will be able to die―"
At that moment, a bolt of realization struck me.
Ah. Ahhh!
That's it.
That's why!
"No one can die, which is why this world has become a hell!"
"What?"
"Think about it, Seo Gyu! I'm a regressor! Because I keep resetting the timeline, everyone in this world has been stuck in a state where they can't truly die. For hundreds, even thousands of years!" I clenched my teeth. "The Outer God used that very state against us! It defined this world as hell, where people live a life of eternal suffering because they can't die. It's not just some anomaly. It's reshaping the world to fit its own interpretation!"
"...!"
Exactly.
It was a complete reversal of thought. A Copernican shift in perspective.[1]
To anomalies, regressors like me are the ultimate challenge. No matter how powerful they are, I can always reset time and continue my hunt. No matter how hard they struggle, they are bound to lose to a regressor in the end.
It was just a shift in perspective, a different interpretation. All the Outer God had to do was define this world not as reality, but as hell, and it could fully exploit my Regression.
Rather than denying my ability, the Goddess of the Night had accepted and twisted it to her advantage.
As long as I continued to use my regression, this world would never stop being hell.
'Unbelievable.'
A chill ran down my spine.
Shock. And awe.
'She used me! Instead of trying to destroy me, she planted the seeds of evil within my abilities to corrupt the world!'
Seeing the look of horror on my face, Ah-ryeon and Seo Gyu grew even more unsettled. They were both heavily reliant on me.
The cold, rational voice of the Saintess broke through the ringing in my ears.
"Mr. Undertaker, can't you just reset the timeline and try again later?"
"...I don't think so. I already explained it to Noh Do-hwa earlier, but this Outer God has latched onto my very abilities."
Nut had burrowed into the Crystal Tombstones, feeding off the souls trapped within, and leveraged the fact that regression exists in this world to manifest the concept of hell.
"Even if I reset the timeline, nothing will change. In fact, things will probably get worse," I summarized.
"Why is that?"
"Right now, at least we're united as the Regressor Alliance. But if I reset the timeline, all of our relationships would be reset to zero. Meanwhile, Nut's hell..."
"...would remain intact, because the Crystal Tombstones, sealed with Time Seal, aren't affected by regression."
"Yes. And as you can see, it took Nut less than a day to summon hell into this world. But rebuilding our alliance would take far longer than that."
"...So what was once an advantage for us—regression—has now become a tool for the enemy. When going against this Outer God, regression is actually a detriment to us."
"That's right."
Checkmate.
There was only one way out.
"The only way is..." I hesitated.
"What is it?"
"I need to reset and immediately travel to Onyang to become infected with the Udumbara virus."
Udumbara. The virus that was called the New Buddha. Once infected, an Awakener would lose all of their abilities.
"If I do that, I'll lose all of my abilities, including Time Seal and Regression."
"..."
I had always made sure to take down Udumbara right after resetting, and it was for one very simple reason: Udumbara had the potential to kill a regressor.
The Saintess stared at me with her clear, blue eyes. "Then what happens?"
"I don't know. In all likelihood, I'll no longer be able to reset the timeline. The world might be left as it is, only to be destroyed by some anomaly and stay that way forever."
"..."
"The worst-case scenario is that even after I lose my powers, the world continues to reset."
"What?" The Saintess blinked. "Ah. You mentioned someone called Schopenhauer. You said he was a regressor too, right?"
Exactly.
There were two regressors in this world. If regressors act as a switch for the timeline reset, even if I were to disappear, there would still be another switch. And right now, that switch was stuck in the 'on' position.
I snuck in another point. "Perhaps regression and the world's cyclical resets aren't connected at all."
In fact, I had been keeping this theory in the back of my mind for a long time.
"Maybe it's not really 'regression' at all. Maybe it's more like the world is caught in a cycle of repetition."
Imagine the world coming to an end. Then it starts over again. The universe forms from the Big Bang, the first galaxies are born, Earth forms, and life emerges from the oceans to crawl onto land. Eventually, humans are born, civilization rises, and cities are built. Then one day, a person called the Undertaker is born and heads for Busan Station.
As you know, I possess Complete Memory. In the scenario I just described, what if my Complete Memory wasn't about experiencing multiple lives but rather receiving memories from a certain point? Wouldn't that essentially be the same as Regression?
"...But didn't you say you only awakened your Complete Memory in the 4th cycle?"
"The abilities of Awakeners evolve. Maybe my Complete Memory wasn't fully unlocked until the 4th cycle."
And the truly terrifying part of this theory was something else.
"Let me summarize."
I finally voiced it.
"If I become infected with Udumbara, all the people sealed by Time Seal will be released, and I will lose all memories of previous cycles, starting anew from the Busan Station tutorial dungeon."
Time would pass.
"Time will go on, and eventually, Schopenhauer will return from his vacation. A series of events unknown to me will unfold."
Time would pass.
"And one day, Schopenhauer might lose his regressor abilities, either by being infected with Udumbara or by encountering an anomaly that surpasses his Regression. The world will eventually be destroyed."
Time would pass.
"And finally, in some distant future, when the concept of regression is long forgotten, I might once again awaken my powers at Busan Station."
In other words, everything would start over.
"I would recognize that as the 1st cycle."
And then. And then. And then.
"The 2nd cycle, the 3rd cycle, and eventually, in the 4th cycle, I'd unlock my Complete Memory and meet Schopenhauer..."
And one day.
"I would once again reach what I recognize as this very moment—the 267th cycle."
"..."
"...For all I know, I might have already repeated these cycles countless times."
For so long—ever since I discovered that Udumbara could erase an Awakener's powers—I had been carrying this fear, silently tormented by the thought. The possibility that the 267th cycle might actually be 267×2, 267×3, 267×267, or even 267×267² or 267×267³. The fear that my entire existence could be nothing more than one colossal failure. It was the deepest fear of any regressor.
If this theory was correct, then yes. The Goddess of the Night, Nut, had been right all along.
This world was indeed hell.
"Aaaaaagh!"
"I don't want to live anymore! Kill me!"
"Someone, please, just kill me!"
Below the headquarters, hundreds of people continued to melt in the boiling metal. Their screams echoed out to any eardrum with the vicinity, reverberating against the translucent, glass-like barrier that all humans were born with.
The hell that had descended on this world was spreading rapidly. All of Busan's trees and flowers had turned into swords, and the plazas and alleys were flooded with molten metal.
The Buddhist hells had no end.
Mountain of Knives, Boiling Oil Hell, Frozen Hell, Sword Forest Hell, Tongue Ripping Hell, Snake Hell, Dismemberment Hell, Iron Bed Hell, Storm Hell, Darkness Hell, and beyond these came the Eight Burning Hells, the Black Victory, Intermediate Fusion, Great Roaring, Minor Burning, Major Burning, Avici, and finally, the Eight Cold Hells: Icy Stab, Frostbite, Chilling Wind, Hoo-Hoo Hell, Ho-Ho Hell, Blue Lotus, Red Lotus, and Great Red Lotus.
Those who fell into the Great Red Lotus Hell would spend 25 aeons and 6,000 quintillion years in torment before they could be reborn.
25 aeons and 6,000 quintillion years.
Infinity.
If I didn't reset, endless hell would unfold. If I reset and got infected by Udumbara, I would face the endless hell of a regressor.
'Is this...'
I tightly gripped the handle of my cane sword.
The cane that Noh Do-hwa had made for me during the 100th cycle. A reminder that, just as there was chance in life, so too was there fate—and that fate would one day smile upon me.
Yet today, the world beneath my feet felt unbearably thin.
'Is this the epilogue of my life?'
Squeeze.
Someone placed their hand on mine, covering my grip on the cane.
I turned to see who it was.
"Mr. Undertaker."
It was the Saintess.
"There's a flaw in your theory."
"What?"
"You're not someone who creates hell. Even if the world is repeating itself, you're not someone who's endlessly reincarnating. No, more precisely, right now, you're not endlessly reliving this moment. There's a fatal flaw in that theory."
"...How can you be so sure?"
"Because..."
The light-blue depths of her eyes, which always seemed to gaze at the world from a step removed, looked directly into mine. Those eyes, so like a tranquil sea, seemed to drown out the distant screams of the people around us. Instead, my ears were filled with the quiet murmur of the ocean, as if a gentle wave was lapping at my feet.
In that water, a voice spoke.
Because, she said...
"I'm going to make sure that theory is wrong."
I blinked. "What? What do you mean―"
"Goodbye for now, Mr. Undertaker."
A gentle warmth brushed across the back of my hand.
It felt like I was being pulled into the depths of the ocean. Sinking into an unknown abyss.
"I'll see you soon."
And then.
Time stopped.
Time stopped.
Tim□ stopped.
Ti□□ stopped.
Ti□□ sto□□ed.
Ti□□ □□□ped.
□□
Ti□□ □□□□ed.
□□
□□□ □□□□.
□□□.
□□□□.
□□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□. □□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□ □□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□ □□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□.
□□□ □.
□□□ □□□□.
□□□.
An□□□.
And.
"Hello, Mr. Undertaker."
It was an ordinary greeting. The kind you'd say to someone who had just woken up.
The bright voice washed over me in a greeting. It was a soft, clear sound, like the ocean gently lapping against the shore and lightly brushing your toes.
That sound made me open my eyes.
It felt like no time had passed at all, as if I had simply blinked. So then, why did it feel so strange?
"...Saintess?"
"Yes."
Her voice caressed my eardrums, and for some reason, it felt like I hadn't heard it in a long time.
The Saintess's hand was still holding mine. But the warmth had changed. The temperature, once warm, had grown cool.
It was probably that shift in warmth that made me realize something was off.
After hearing and feeling, my vision finally caught up.
The world was... frozen.
"..."
The swords that had covered the city were now completely still. The molten metal that had flooded the plaza and alleys had also stopped.
The people trapped in the boiling liquid, their screams, Ah-ryeon's worried gaze, Seo Gyu's gaping mouth, and Do-hwa tightening her leather gloves.
The entire hellscape.
Everything had stopped.
"Oh."
A wave of powerful déjà vu hit me.
I'd seen this exact scene somewhere before. It was the hellish landscape that had appeared when I was trapped in the Hell of Infinite Time.
I immediately realized what had caused this frozen world.
I parted my lips. "Saintess, have you... become a Corrupted?"
"Yes."
"Oh, my god."
The Saintess's ability, Time Stop. When pushed to its limit, it could manifest an absurd level of power. This was the first time I had ever witnessed it in reality.
Though, the Saintess had come close to Corruption back in the 107th cycle, she hadn't fully awakened Time Stop. Not to this degree.
"But Saintess, you didn't train your aura that much in this cycle. How could you..."
"I did train," she replied. "By stopping time."
"..."
"Just taking a few steps was difficult at first. Even breathing was a challenge. But I kept pushing, using my aura to hold it all together."
Her voice was so calm that it almost sounded like an ordinary training regimen to anyone who might overhear. But I knew better. I understood just how insane that kind of training was.
"No way. If you stop time, your aura would stop too, and you'd have to force it to move bit by bit. It would be like taking a single breath over the span of thirty minutes—or even an hour."
The Saintess nodded. "Yes. It was very difficult. That's why it took so long."
"...How long, exactly?"
"I didn't count precisely, but I think over 2,000 years."
"..."
Good Lord.
The Saintess smiled at me as I stood there with my mouth hanging open, stunned. There was a playful hint in her expression.
It was a rare expression, one I hadn't seen in ages.
"Maybe now," she said, "I'm finally old enough to be the same age as you."
Footnotes:
[1] Nicolaus Copernicus was the scientist who popularized the theory that it is Earth that revolves around the sun and not the other way around. This paradigm shift is known as the Copernican Revolution.