The Missing II
"Hey, mister."
"Sometimes, when I write down your story as a serial novel, can't I insert 'side stories' as well?"
This conversation took place around the 692nd cycle, right when Oh Dok-seo began to fully Awaken to her Side Story Creation ability.
"Though I call it a side story, it's basically just writing from the perspective of 'someone else.'"
"But it'd be a problem if it eclipses the main storyline. So let's say... yeah. Once I've stacked up about '100 chapters' of the mister's point of view,"
"I'll write one 'side story' each time."
Back then, no one thought anything of it. It was hardly unusual for a novelist—especially a certain LiteraryGirl who complained about serial stress more than anyone—to write side stories as a kind of vacation from the main story.
But wasn't it strange? Despite having declared she'd present one side story every 100 chapters, Oh Dok-seo had never once actually written an episode that truly counted as a "side story." Even when she fell into a crippling slump, whether caused by her own nature or the Infinite Metagame's curse, an Infinite Hiatus Syndrome, she never used her free pass to create a side story.
"By the way."
"It's a side story, so do I still need you to proofread, or can I just write it and post it as I please?"
Thinking back on it now...
"Yeah. Go ahead and write whatever you like."
"Great! Thanks, mister! You'll be blessed!"
What Oh Dok-seo really wanted back then might have been the condition that "she could skip the Regressor's review."
As of the current serial timeline, we're at Chapter 350.
Number of side-story opportunities: 3.5 times.
The shackles of the Infinite Metagame are unlocked. There's no better chance for an Outer God to distort history.
Saying she "had been waiting for this precise moment" might be an exaggeration, but it couldn't be denied that she had been preparing for a time just like this.
Title of the first side story: The Missing.
Selected time: 173rd cycle.
Selected viewpoint: first-person POV, Undertaker.
* And no proofreading by the Regressor required.
For the first time, Miko Oh Dok-seo manifested her power in full.
The fourth shard of starlight.
At last, the constellation was drawn.
We return to that day, the moment Dok-seo roped the other members of the Regressor Alliance into sneaking a peek at the Regressor's romance with her. If I were to describe succinctly what happened to me, the Undertaker, I would say it went like this:
"Undertaker? What's with you all of a sudden?"
At the time, I had been drinking with Seo-rin.
As someone who loves working out, I'm supposed to stay away from alcohol, but an alchemist from Japan, across the Korea Strait, invented a pill advertised with the tagline "Drink this, and your hangover's gone in 50 seconds—no side effects!" If you can afford the price of such a hangover cure, alcohol can indeed become humanity's savior in no time.
Needless to say, Seo-rin and I had no reason to worry about the next day and we were both fairly inebriated.
"Hey, doesn't the weather seem... kind of odd?"
"The weather?" Seo-rin echoed, looking up at the sky.
It was around 10 PM. Except for the nightlife district near the casino, the city of Busan was otherwise asleep.
"I dunno?" she continued. "I don't hear anything out of the ordinary."
"Hmm. Maybe it was my imagination."
Just a moment ago, the clouds in the night sky almost looked like they twitched and rapidly shifted to one side.
Like some gigantic dragon.
I shrugged it off and raised my glass.
'Well. If something that big had actually happened, the Saintess would have tipped me off by now—'
A sudden clang!made my hand pause. Seo-rin looked in the same direction as I did. Some distance away from the bar, one of the streetlamps that lit up the Dream Casino district had burst.
"...What's that?" Seo-rin furrowed her brow and muttered, "Is some Awakener messing around?"
"Not sure. I missed it too."
"You? Wow, you really are drunk, huh?"
I didn't respond, still wary. Something felt ominous. Seo-rin went right back to focusing on her drink, but though I felt a bit buzzed, I sharpened my senses and focused on my surroundings.
It wasn't long before I realized the source of my unease.
'...No one's coming out of the casino.'
At this hour, the main flow of foot traffic in Busan should have been right at the casino entrance—yet it was weirdly silent. And it wasn't just the casino either.
'That customer who went to the bar's restroom still hasn't come out. The waiter who went to the kitchen isn't coming back either.'
Not only were there no people in sight, but their very presence had disappeared. A textbook sign of an abnormal phenomenon.
I immediately lowered one hand beneath the table and wrote a note on my thigh.
'Saintess?'
No response.
'Saintess?'
No response.
"Hey, Undertaker. Let's just finish this and move on to the next spot," Seo-rin suggested.
My mouth went dry. Even as Seo-rin offered me another drink, I quickly took out my smartphone to try connecting to SG Net.
[Cannot connect to the site.]
Dead.
"...Undertaker? Seriously, what's wrong?"
"Listen carefully, Seo-rin."
"Huh?"
"Something's happening and we don't know the cause. Communication with the Constellations is down. Access to SG Net is also blocked."
A blink.
Seo-rin tilted her head. "Out of nowhere?"
"...I'm just as shocked as you are. Anyway, we should stay close and not separate."
"Ah, okay. Got it."
Though I didn't know the cause, it meant the Saintess, Seo Gyu, and maybe even more people had been taken out all at once.
To be honest, only one suspect came to mind.
'Is this Go Yuri's doing?'
And yet... that, too, seemed strange. No warnings whatsoever, just me having a few drinks at night—and then suddenly the world goes off the rails? In an early cycle, maybe. But in this 999th cycle, with all our contingencies prepared to face Anomalies, a sneak attack of this magnitude was highly irregular.
"Let's take a look around."
"Ah—"
I got up, taking Seo-rin's hand. At first, she didn't realize how serious things were, but as the minutes passed—5, 10, 15—her expression steadily darkened.
"There's no one around..."
I nodded. "Right. They're all gone."
Literally.
All of humanity had disappeared, leaving only Seo-rin and me behind.
"Still not hearing anything from the sky?" I asked.
"Yeah. It's silent."
"Think about it. You said you usually hear all sorts of sounds and songs mixed together. Is it normal for the entire sky to make no sound at all?"
"Ah." Some inscrutable emotion flashed over Seo-rin's face. Then she let out a small sigh and took a pill from her pocket, biting down on it: one of Uehara Shino's special anti-hangover drugs. "And I wanted to stay drunk today... Looks like I need to sober up, though. Sorry, Undertaker."
"No need to apologize."
"Let's fly."
Seo-rin hopped on her broom and rose into the sky. I climbed on behind her, and we took off together.
Didn't change a thing.
"I sent a signal to the train, but no response. And the ones supposed to be on patrol at this hour aren't around either... Looks like you were right. Seems like there's absolutely no one left in Busan."
The city looked bleak. Power was still running, so lights flickered around the casino, but I couldn't sense a single human breath anywhere.
Not in the residential areas, not at the National Road Management Corps headquarters, not in the refugee camp, not at the cafe hideout, not at the authors' dormitory.
Nowhere.
"Should we check another city?"
"Nah, I bet Seoul, Sejong, Pyongyang are the same. Everyone's gone but the two of us."
"...I see." While steering her broom, Seo-rin snuck a glance back at me. "So where do we go now?"
We returned to the bar. In a place with no customers, no staff, no owner—just us two—we set down our now-cold side dishes and drinks to brainstorm.
"For now... in cases like this, where something inexplicable has happened, sometimes it's surprisingly best to just stay put in the starting location."
"Like that old movie. What was it called? Cube?"[1]
"Yeah. Since the Anomaly happened where we were, the cause probably lies here as well."
"Huh."
Seo-rin looked around.
The bar was shabby—a hole-in-the-wall joint at best. Still, the owner's cooking skills were top-notch, so Seo-rin and I were frequent customers.
"But there's nothing here," she said then.
That was the problem.
We'd visited this exact same bar countless times, but never encountered anything like this before. Not until the 999th cycle.
I remained calm, working through the logic.
"If that's the case..."
"Huh?"
"We might need the opposite perspective. Instead of 'the world suddenly ended,' or 'everyone vanished except for us two,' think the other way."
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly the reverse, Seo-rin. We're the ones who disappeared."
Her eyes went wide.
"Huh? You and me?"
"Right. Ask yourself: is it harder to make 'all humanity vanish except for these two,' or is it harder to make 'just these two vanish from humanity'?"
"Ohhh. Right, that does seem more likely."
An unknown Anomaly or Void had basically kidnapped us, yet Seo-rin calmly raised her glass. She fell silent for a moment, then spoke.
"Feels a bit weird."
"What does?"
"Your explanation's perfectly convincing. It explains why the world's so quiet, why the usual clamor of songs in my head suddenly stopped. And yet... somehow, this feels more comfortable to me. This feels more 'normal.'"
I stayed silent.
"Come to think of it, it was the same when we first met. Remember? That huge crosswalk? It was just the two of us."
"I remember."
Of course.
"Yeah. This time, the crosswalk's just a bit bigger, right? Not that different, is it? Thinking of it that way, I feel much more at ease. You'll figure something out, anyway."
I opened my mouth, wanting to argue that it wasn't that simple, then closed it again, opting instead to comb through my mental archives for a key to solve our predicament. Whatever else may have happened, the Saintess's existence being erased was more concerning than anything.
While I was distracted, Seo-rin suddenly plopped down next to me.
"...Dang Seo-rin?"
"I think I might know how to clear it."
"Seriously?!"
"Yeah."
Quietly...
"...But can I ask why, if you supposedly know how to solve this, your hand is now pressed against my cheek?"
"Ahaha. You're clueless, huh?" Seo-rin said with a giggle. Thanks to that top-grade hangover cure, her intoxication should have dissipated almost instantly, but her laughter still carried a night-air drunkenness to it. "In a world where suddenly only two people remain—wouldn't the most 'plausible' explanation be that it's all a dream?"
"A dream."
"Right. Whether it's your dream or mine, if we just say, 'It was all a dream,' the mystery is neatly solved. But..."
Softly...
She placed her other hand on my cheek as well.
"And we both know the easiest way to wake up from a dream, don't we, Mr. Self-Proclaimed World's Greatest Expert on Anomalies?"
"...The correct answer: an alarm clock."
"Shut up. You fool."
Seo-rin's breath brushed my lips.
I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing that if this didn't dissolve the Void, we'd be in serious trouble.
The hush that had submerged the entire world flowed like transparent currents, circling quietly between the two of us.
And then
「Foolish man.」
for some reason,
「Was that your first kiss?」
behind my tightly closed eyelids, I suddenly heard a nostalgic voice.
「Undertaker. Put all your memories of kissing onto the scales, if you have any—across all cycles, not just this one.」
Memories of when I revealed to Dang Seo-rin that I was a regressor.
Memories of the 173rd cycle, when she fell into Corruption but I swore to remain by her side until the very end.
「There. Now then.」
「Close your eyes.」
A remembrance of utopia.
Sensing that a great deal of time had passed, I opened my eyes again—
And my eyes went wide in shock.
Seo-rin was right in front of me.
That in itself was normal enough. We'd been alone in a bar just moments ago. But beyond her, the Busan night sky was bursting with fireworks in red and blue, brilliant colors lighting up the air.
Between the explosions, witches from the Samcheon World soared on brooms, laughing and whooping as they flew.
That was not normal. It made no sense.
Just moments ago, Busan had been silent as the grave. Forget fireworks—Seo-rin couldn't hear a single noise anywhere.
Now, above Seo-rin's head, a golden set of scales shimmered like a Constellation.
No denying it. It looked far too much like the scene imprinted in my memory long ago. No, it matched it exactly.
The Dang Seo-rin in front of me...
That Dang Seo-rin, smiling softly...
"Now this is our very first kiss."
...was not the Dang Seo-rin of the 999th cycle.
She was the Dang Seo-rin of the 173rd cycle, the Fallen Great Witch.
What in the world was going on?
To this neverland of a missing space—this utopia—where witches' laughter and bursts of fireworks echoed without end...
I, the Undertaker, had been brought along.
Footnotes:
[1] The 1997 sci-fi horror film Cube features an escape-room premise wherein the characters are tasked with escaping a series of deadly trap-rooms shaped together in a giant cube to get to a room on the outer edge where they can escape. Toward the end of the film, it is revealed that all of the rooms move over time, so the safest way out would have been to stay in the room they originally found themselves in.
-x-X-x-
The Missing III
Originally, my memories were supposed to end right here. In the 173rd cycle, after the "Undertaker" shared a kiss with Dang Seo-rin, the story jumped into the next regression without delay. Yet for some reason...
"Still... Yes, that's right."
Before my eyes, Dang Seo-rin was casually living on into the time beyond the kiss.
She was smiling, tilting her head.
She was alive.
Like a sequel to a novel that had once been left unfinished.
"Well, I know I'm being a bit unreasonable. But, as the master of Utopia, the commander of the National Road Management Corps, and the supreme Great Witch, I might be able to grant one single wish, you know? By the way, that's a really big deal, yeah? The moment you told me I was an Anomaly, it felt like some mental shackle snapped off in my head."
Seo-rin puffed out her chest with a self-satisfied harrumph.
"Right now, I could probably grant any wish, like a genuine god," she continued.
"...A wish, is it."
Finally, the "Undertaker" opened his mouth.
It was certainly not my own will. My tongue was automatically, instinctively moving on its own. I felt like I was a customer in a movie theater, left only to watch the "Undertaker" speak these lines right in front of me.
'No,' I thought to myself. 'Perhaps... while I still don't know why, I might be witnessing the epilogue of the 173rd cycle. If so, it's only natural I can't intervene. In this moment, the one who kissed Dang Seo-rin is the Undertaker of the 173rd cycle. And the person conversing with her now is also my past self.'
My spirit quivered.
'Am I finally going to learn what happened?'
What actually went down in the 173rd cycle?
Until now, I'd simply assumed that right after we kissed, Seo-rin had killed me. It was the simplest and most persuasive explanation.
And yet...
"...When I think about it, you're right."
The epilogue now playing out before my eyes showed me that my original assumption was wrong.
"It's true that in the past, you've never fallen into Corruption exactly like this before. I doubt it'll happen again."
"Because you'd stop me?"
"Yes."
Seo-rin had not killed me. Nor had we perished together. Amazingly, after we shared a kiss, the two of us were still talking to each other in a perfectly normal way.
Having apparently been abducted from the 999th cycle back into this past scene, I held my breath, secretly eavesdropping on the epilogue.
"In the end, you'd have to say this cycle failed. And yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's a rare opportunity," the Undertaker said, stroking his chin. "Just let me confirm one thing. Seo-rin, that golden set of scales of yours... that Equivalent Exchange scale can extract greater rewards the more you sacrifice. Am I correct?"
Seo-rin nodded. "Yeah. When we kissed earlier, I tried it for the first time. Right now, I can probably put 'pretty much anything' on the scales. My own lifespan. Your memories. Anything at all, as long as it matches the price."
Indeed. When you consider it carefully, it's a horrifying power, isn't it?
'My Complete Memory ability is practically absolute. Excluding the handful fo blank slates from the 1st to the 4th cycle—the ones Cheon Yo-hwa mentioned—I remember basically everything else.'
And yet, Dang Seo-rin had just placed even that flawless ability onto her golden scales. She erased all my memories related to that kiss so that the kiss we just shared could be "my first kiss."
'Right, that explains why Infinite Void— Why Cheon Yo-hwa once demanded something so absurd, claiming we'd shared a kiss way back when!'
Realization struck heavy, true, yet totally unexpected.
Still, if here in the 173rd cycle, Seo-rin had wiped out all my memories of my first kiss, it did fit. She had deleted a chunk of memories that Cheon Yo-hwa once possessed. Later on, once Cheon Yo-hwa absorbed all the powers of the Void and the Hidden Mastermind, she reclaimed the memories that had been snatched away.
'Unbelievable, so it was actually...? No, wait, that's the 1st cycle, so... This is getting way too complicated. And besides, the kiss isn't even the main point here!'
There was really only one vital point: Right here in the 173rd cycle, the Corrupted Dang Seo-rin before me had risen to a nearly omnipotent state capable of tampering with the Regressor's Complete Memory. According to her, she could place absolutely anything on her golden scales, and in exchange, she could gain any corresponding wish.
If that was the case, then what would the Undertaker of the 173rd cycle—my past self—do when faced with such a one-of-a-kind chance?
'Maybe he borrows Dang Seo-rin's power to hunt down an Outer God? No, that would be pointless. Even if we defeated an Outer God with the Fallen Dang Seo-rin's help, there's no guarantee we could replicate it in a later cycle.'
My thoughts were running a mental race against each other.
'Besides, the fact that it's specifically the 173rd cycle is way too conspicuous. We don't have enough intel! At this point in time, we've barely even taken down the Outer God called Infinite Void. We haven't found any way to tackle the Infinite Metagame, and as for the Mastermind or Leviathan, I might not even know they exist!'
I felt my throat going dry. Or maybe I really was parched.
The faster I thought about the perfect way to utilize this priceless opportunity, the closer I felt to the 173rd-cycle me.
'Any wish I might make now could end up wasted by hindsight. I lack crucial knowledge, experience. I still need to figure out how to conquer this world, this Void! For instance, what if I used this chance to wish for enough power to defeat the Admin of the Infinite Metagame? That'd be a catastrophic mistake!'
I understood.
Logically speaking, I knew.
In the 173rd cycle, the Admin of the Infinite Metagame seemed like an unbeatable entity. A towering mountain. We had no practical way to conquer it. It wasn't until the 593rd cycle that we managed to subdue the Infinite Metagame, and even then it took Dok-seo's cooperation.
'Meanwhile, my 173rd-cycle self has no clue how crucial Oh Dok-seo is...'
I wanted to warn him, to tell my past self that the 173rd cycle is still early in the entire regressor's journey.
There's no need to worry about the Infinite Metagame right now. You should consult Dang Seo-rin about an even worse giant evil that's coming!
In that instant—
'Ah.'
my heart—
Thump!
I felt a sort of resonance, past with present, now with the future, two layers of melody that should never overlap somehow crossing through the miraculous magic of my heartbeat.
The "Undertaker" spoke.
"...Dang Seo-rin."
"Hm?"
"I've made up my mind."
"Oh, really? What's your wish? Now I'm curious too."
"I doubt I can just figure out an optimal wish right now. So—"
Thump.
"I'll ask my future self."
Thump.
"Huh? Your future self?"
"Right."
Thump. Thump.
"Let's say the me from the 10th cycle asked you how to defeat the Ten Legs. Wouldn't that be pitiful?"
"Pfft. Hahaha, true! Makes sense!"
"Maybe we're in the same boat right now. So the wish I want to place upon your golden scales of Equivalent Exchange is—"
Thump!
And—
"Summon the future me to this very place."
My heart pounded.
"Ohhh, your future self, huh? That even piques my interest."
"Really?"
"Yeah! Sounds fun. Dunno if it'll work. Besides, how far in the future are we talking? Right now we're in... Sorry, which cycle was this?"
"The 173rd cycle."
"Got it, 173. Let's see. So if we say... the 300th cycle? The 400th? You want me to bring your future self from around then?"
"No." The Undertaker shook his head as a hint of amusement crept into his voice. "If we're going to make a wish, let's go all in. Summon the me of the 1,000th cycle."
"What the heck? 1,000th? If you haven't saved the world by then, doesn't that mean something's seriously wrong with you?"
"That's exactly why I'm trying this," the Undertaker said with a chuckle. "Think about it. If I put a wish on the scales to bring the me of the 1,000th cycle—and nothing happens—that means I must have already saved the world by then, right?"
"Oh?"
"On the other hand, if it actually succeeds in summoning me from the 1,000th cycle... well, we'll find out plenty of things. Either way, there's no downside."
"Wow, that's our Utopia's Guardian for you, when it comes to this, your brain's in top gear."
"All thanks to having such a wise Great Witch as the leader of the National Road Management Corps."
"Oh hush, flattery will get you nowhere."
Seo-rin smiled.
"Cool, got it," I affirmed. "Then I, Dang Seo-rin, the Great Witch of the Samcheon World, also known by some as the Corrupted 'Great Anomaly,' command you now."
"Are you sulking?"
"Onto the right side of the scales, I place the 1,000th-cycle Undertaker, bringing him into this place."
Fwoooosh!
The golden scales projected into the night sky began tilting violently to the right, as though the chain might snap.
"Huh?"
"Uh— Um. For now..."
"...Looks like it went up."
"Y-yeah."
The Undertaker and Dang Seo-rin spoke at once, both sounding flustered. "Maybe?"
"But this is... wow. Way too heavy," the Great Witch continued. "The heaviest I've ever felt on these scales was Yu Ji-won's feelings, but..."
"And?"
"...Compared to that, this is ten times heavier. No, even heavier than that. I mean, I'm wondering if there's any price in the entire world that can match this weight."
Silence.
After about twenty seconds...
THUD!
Seo-rin slammed the table with her fist and stood up.
"Hey, Undertaker! Isn't this just ridiculous?! How can you fail to save the world even after 1,000 cycles?!"
"Look, don't shout at me about that."
"Who else can I shout at?!"
"This is... it's the Anomalies' fault, Seo-rin. There's no way I could be that incompetent!"
"Seriously! It was all so romantic until we kissed!"
"You started it!"
"Huh? Are you for real? You were basically begging me for a kiss—like, 'Even if the world burns. Even if you turn into an Anomaly. I'll always be by your side forever!' Everyone could see you were craving a kiss!"
"I never dealt with you out of that kind of selfish desire! Not once!"
"That's even worse, you idiot!"
Hmm.
I wished I could plug my ears, but "I" wasn't free to do so.
It was depressing.
The two of them bickered for quite a while. At length, after this petty fight that dragged both human and Anomaly down to a cringe level, they finally pressed their foreheads together in all seriousness.
"My remaining lifespan... Yep,not enough. Ugh, maybe we're not offering the right sort of price..."
"What if we add my lifespan?"
"Still nowhere near enough. And it feels like the 'type' is mismatched. I tried throwing in the entire lifespans of Busan's citizens just as a test, and the scale didn't even budge."
"Wow."
"Feels like it's too much of a cheat code or something. So what do we do?"
They tried various experiments, but that golden scale, which had tilted violently to one side, didn't so much as twitch.
Then—
The Undertaker parted his lips.
"Dang Seo-rin, I need to confess something."
"A confession? About what?"
"To be honest, even if you had killed me a moment ago, I would have accepted it without any regrets."
She looked at me. Facing her gaze, dark as the night sky, the Undertaker continued.
"If our life ended there, I would have been able to accept it... Mind if I ask if you feel the same?"
"Yeah."
Her answer came immediately.
"I do... I feel just like you do."
"Then—" The Undertaker inhaled. "I'll offer up my memories as the price."
Ah.
"Your memories?"
"Yes. The biggest problem with summoning my future self is that I'd acquire far too much knowledge in the present. But even if I do acquire knowledge, if I wipe out my memory of having acquired it—"
"Ah."
"Then maybe it won't be seen as such a cheat code. We'll just forget we ever summoned the me of the 1,000th cycle."
"Wait, so..." Seo-rin trailed off, scrunching her brow. "Let's see if I've got this right: We bring in your future self and ask him a bunch of questions. But then we treat it like none of that ever happened, erasing the fact we asked him in the first place?"
The Undertaker nodded. "Exactly. To me, the 173rd cycle ends here. Actually, it ended the moment we kissed... I'll erase all memory that we had this conversation. And anything that happens after we summon the me of the 1,000th cycle, any actions or discussion, all of it goes away from my memory."
"Even if you do... what good does it do for you? Without memories, it's basically the same as death. No different from dying. Even if you go to the trouble of summoning your future self, it's pointless."
"Pointless for me, sure."
His quiet murmur.
"But it might matter to the Undertaker of the 1,000th cycle... And to the Dang Seo-rin of the 1,000th cycle. And to all of us, and all of humanity."
Gently, the Undertaker reached out and clasped Seo-rin's hand.
"Dang Seo-rin, watch over my death."
There was a brief silence. Then a sorrowful smile.
"Gladly."
Seo-rin's palm blanketed over the back of my hand, her whisper drifting over our interlaced fingers.
"I, Dang Seo-rin, hereby declare. On the left side of the scales, I place the body, mind, and consciousness of the Undertaker now before me."
With each word—body, mind, consciousness—the scale shifted slightly. Even then, the scales had yet to balance.
"And also, every single event that will happen from now on, in this so-called 173rd cycle... Undertaker forfeits his right to remember them."
The left scale rose a little higher. But balance had still not been achieved.
The master of Utopia whispered.
"And even his time spent together with me... He forgets it all."
At that, the two sides of that golden scale, which seemed like they'd never even out, finally reached equilibrium.
Equivalent Exchange. A power that only a Fallen Dang Seo-rin at the pinnacle could wield.
Beneath the night sky, the witch's scales shone golden like a constellation.
The weight was balanced.
-x-X-x-
The Missing IV
"Undertaker. Even now, you could still back out," Seo-rin said.
At this point, the golden scales were pouring light onto her shoulder. Her face, turned halfway toward me, was partly hidden in shadow.
"We could just laugh, chat..."
"Travel together?"
"Yeah. We could spend the rest of this world—this 173rd cycle—together until it ends in destruction." When I didn't respond, she continued, "And that's not all. If you don't lose your memories here, at least you'd walk away with the knowledge that you fail all the way up to the 1000th cycle, right?"
She made a valid point. And yet when I looked into her eyes, I sensed a pitch-black current swirling in the well of her logic.
She was afraid.
Of what, you might ask? Afraid that the feelings we had managed to share here in the 173rd cycle would vanish so quickly and pointlessly.
It was a good instinct. In the next cycle, I'd be extra cautious to protect the National Road Management Corps so its commander wouldn't meet a tragic end, and I'd set up all sorts of guardrails so Dang Seo-rin wouldn't fall into Corruption.
This life is only for this cycle.
The 173rd-cycle Undertaker squeezed Seo-rin's hand. Perhaps he felt the same.
"Don't think of it that way, Great Witch. You're not parting ways with me—just the opposite. You get to meet the Undertaker of the 1000th cycle. Isn't that lucky?"
She blinked. "What?"
"No person is eternal. Our personalities, habits, humanity—they can all change. In other words, this is an opportunity. You get to see what the man you gave your heart to becomes after a few thousand years. That's like a special event... So there's no reason to be sad. If anything, you should be excited. Even in this vast world, who else but you would get invited to an adventure like this?"
A bemused huff escaped Seo-rin. "You call that a farewell line? There's no trace of romance in it at all!"
"But it made you laugh, right?"
"I only laughed 'cause it was so ridiculous! You're really something when it comes to ruining the mood. You go on about Three Kingdoms all the time just to sound old and keep people from getting too friendly, don't you?"
"Ah, you've caught me."
"...Idiot." She waved her hand. "Just get going, already."
At that, threads of gold poured out from the Undertaker's chest and were sucked into the scales. His life in the 173rd cycle, his mind, the rights to his memories—they absorbed it all until his eyes lost their playful sparkle and grew vacant in a sort of suspended-animation state. Seo-rin's expression fell into sorrow as she watched.
'Ah.'
Simultaneously, the same change occurred in me—I went from floating around like a ghostly observer, separate from "Undertaker," to suddenly feeling a violent pull. The golden light from the magical scales flared, illuminating the entire night sky and pouring into the empty shell of "the Undertaker."
And then, my head was spinning. It felt like I'd broken the surface after diving in deep water. The next instant, I was looking at Seo-rin not from the perspective of a spirit but directly, with my very own eyes.
My self from the 999th cycle had truly "possessed" the 173rd-cycle Undertaker's body.
A tense silence settled over the terrace atop the Tower of Babel.
It was a truly strange encounter. On one side was the Great Witch, still thinking and acting human yet controlling this Utopia city as if it were her limbs—a thoroughly Corrupted being. On the other side was the Regressor of the 999th cycle: a being who might be even closer to an Anomaly than the Great Witch, depending on how you looked at it. Both were doing their best to mimic humans, and in that sense, they were alike.
'She's on guard.'
I didn't feel offended. From Seo-rin's perspective, the me of the 999th cycle was an unknown entity. Depending on how things went, she might need to use all her powers to confront me.
The stillness of silence broke as my lips abruptly parted.
"Sometimes, those shallow Wippa or dimwitted brother—"
A blink.
"—slur the governor's name and call him a hypocrite, but that's downright blasphemous. The governor was imperfect, just like any other human, yet he pressed forward, worrying about everyone's morality. And in the end, he admitted even his own mistakes! How dare those brats like Aman compare themselves to him?"
Another.
"Anyone who disses the Governor is either a child who hasn't lived long enough to realize human imperfection, or a narcissist who'll never become truly human no matter how long they live!"
Then one more.
Dang Seo-rin's expression shifted from wariness to confusion, then realization and scorn, and finally, she breathed out a sigh—one of relief.
She lowered her broom with a slow, casual motion. "Welcome, Undertaker."
"Mm."
"Even after tens of thousands of years, you're still going on about that?"
My sincerity had been proven.
Dang Seo-rin and I—two problem children but the strongest in the world—joined forces. No one in the 173rd-cycle world could stand against us.
"But why is it you from the 999th cycle, not the 1000th cycle?"
"I have a theory."
We spent the whole night on the terrace—it wasn't like any of us actually needed sleep, anyway—holding a strategy meeting.
"A theory?" she echoed. "Let's hear it."
"I think that the moment I got summoned and possessed this body, that might've turned this world into what we'll call my '1000th cycle.'"
"Huh?"
I called it a theory, but I was nearly certain. "Think about it, Seo-rin. The 'Undertaker of the 173rd cycle' just died. And the 'Undertaker of the 999th cycle' left his own world behind to come back into this other past timeline. You could say it's a bonus stage or maybe a 1000th stage."
"Heh. That does make sense."
"But strictly speaking, it isn't a proper 1000th cycle so much as a bonus stage. We've distorted the timeline."
A hidden history, not the official record. A side story rather than the main story.
Still, I had no clue why we ended up alone in a world empty of everyone else right before I was pulled here. But in this messy Void, mysteries are never in short supply. Maybe we'd find clues later.
"So? You sacrificed your soul to summon your future self, so this must be a pretty big plan. What devious scheme is the Undertaker of the 1000th cycle plotting?"
"Like I said, this is a bonus stage."
I petted Blackie.
Oh, right. Blackie was the cat that Seo-rin was raising in this cycle. It looked like a normal cat, one befitting the commander of the National Road Management Corps.
"I can pull off strategies here that would be impossible in the real 1000th cycle, like using Aura infinitely," I offered by way of example.
"Huh? Aura? What about it?"
"Well, Ji-won actually..."
After hearing the truth about the silver-haired psychopath and the nature of Aura, Seo-rin's face contorted in shock.
"N-no way! Yu Ji-won? Our operations officer is the one who controls all the Aura in this world?!"
"Not 'controls' exactly. She more acts as the caretaker. Anyway, that's the gist of it."
"You're kidding! But she... she once got caught killing cats, and we forced her to get personality readjustment via the golden scales..."
"She planned it, obviously—to avoid letting either of us suspect her real identity. She got her 'safe' status certified, so to speak."
"This is crazy..."
Blackie meowed on my lap. Thanks to my regressor's mastery of cat-petting (I'd memorized all the sweet spots through countless cycles), it had long since hit 100 favorability toward me.
"And that's not the end of it. Yo-hwa, well... Actually, there's a being with the same name who's both a human and an Anomaly."
Seo-rin tilted her head. "Huh? I know Lieutenant Cheon Yo-hwa quite well."
"They're homonyms in Korean, but the hanja are different.[1] Anyway, that person is both the 'Infinite Void' and a shrine maiden to the Hidden Mastermind—"
I was cut off as a commotion broke somewhere beneath the Tower of Babel.
"Hey, come on! Let me through!"
"Even if you're from the National Road Management Corps, you still can't just barge onto the terrace!"
"But I really have urgent news for Commander Dang!"
"We still have regulations—"
"Ugh! Would I come all the way here during a festival if it weren't critical?! If I don't report this now, our city is doomed! Doomed, you hear me?! If we're late reporting this and everything goes to hell, are you gonna take responsibility?!"
"W-well..."
The rowdy atmosphere from the Utopia fireworks festival below seemed to be rising to our floor. Seo-rin furrowed her pale brow.
"What is this?" she wondered. "I specifically told everyone not to come up here until after tomorrow afternoon."
"Uh..."
She looked pretty annoyed, but I could only blink in like a dazed frog.
The voice drifting up the stairs was awfully, painfully, infuriatingly familiar.
"That's..."
The real question was "why" and "how" did that person appear here now?
An unbearable curiosity filled my chest.
"Sorry, Seo-rin. I think that's an acquaintance of mine."
"What? An acquaintance? Of yours?" The expression on her face translated loosely to "no way" in human language. "The only person you're close with these days is OldManGoryeo. You two have basically set up a whole private corner on SG Net."
Ah, right... In the 173rd cycle, practically everyone in Utopia had completed Dang Seo-rin's Personality Correction program. They sincerely believed that participating in "community stuff" was just a waste of life, time that could be spent reading intellectual books instead.
Truly fitting for a Fallen One—a veritable Anomaly.
Feeling oddly nostalgic, I said, "Let them in. She must have something urgent to say."
"...If you say so."
Seo-rin waved a hand, and the magic activated shockingly easily. The locked iron door opened, and the troublemaker below was pulled in by some invisible force.
"Wah, huh?! Hiyaaaaaah!"
Dangling in midair, the person who was magically summoned sported short red hair and exuded a certain Aura of "utter newbie" from head to toe.
There was no hiding it.
"O-oh, mister!"
She flailed about in the air but somehow managed to meet my gaze with desperate eyes.
We'd collectively agreed to call this hopeless being "Oh Dok-seo."
Dok-seo was thrashing around, but her eyes brimmed with genuine relief when she saw me.
"Mister, it's you, right? Right?! I'm so scared! I opened my eyes and found myself in this weird-ass place and—! And—! I looked all over Busan, and everything was totally different except for the Tower of Babel! What the hell is going on?!"
Seo-rin's scowl deepened at the word "mister."
"You..." she began warily. "Aren't you a librarian under the Forbidden Books Department of the National Road Management Corps? I don't remember your name. Is that right?"
"Uh, y-yeah! Yeah! Seo-rin unnie, it's me! Me!"
"Unnie...?"
Seo-rin looked perplexed—a perfectly natural response. Dok-seo wouldn't formally join the Regressor Alliance until after the 555th cycle. It was only the 173rd cycle now.
So to "the Undertaker" and "Dang Seo-rin" of this time, Oh Dok-seo was no more than a total extra.
'Though the fact she remembers Dok-seo's affiliation is so like Seo-rin,' I mused inwardly.
Back in her days as Guild Leader of the Samcheon World, Dang Seo-rin memorized every guild member's name and family situation. By the 173rd cycle, in which she also held the commander post, she couldn't pull off quite that same feat, but it seemed she remembered the basics.
Anyway.
"Since we're basically strangers, calling me unnie at first sight is a gutsy move. You've got nerve, kid—I'll grant you that much."
"No, no. Wait, Seo-rin," I rushed out.
"Huh?"
"That kid... That little newbie is definitely not the 173rd-cycle staffer from the Forbidden Books Department. She probably got dragged here from the 999th cycle, just like me."
Seo-rin's eyes went wide. "What? You're telling me that in the 999th cycle, she calls me unnie?"
"Well, among our members, she's basically the youngest in spirit..."
"Uwaaah! M-mister, you're still normal—hic! I'm so, so glad! If you were all weird too, then I— I... "
For the record, the actual youngest is Lee Ha-yul in terms of physical age. Naturally, in no cycle did Ha-yul ever treat Dok-seo like a big sister. Whether she considered her even human was questionable.
"What is going on...?"
Confusion rippled through me.
I understood why I got pulled back to the past. The Undertaker of the 173rd cycle made countless sacrifices and used Dang Seo-rin's powers as a Fallen One to summon me and my "future knowledge" for a time. But there was no reason to drag Oh Dok-seo along. None at all.
So why?
Seo-rin let out a long breath. "Looks like this isn't the right time for you and me to relax over drinks. I'll summon Ji-won and the other deputy directors from the National Road Management Corps. Sure, it's late at night, but they don't sleep much, anyway. There's no threat of a Monster Wave attack, so..."
"Huh?" I tilted my head. "Deputy directors—plural? In this cycle, didn't Yo-hwa alone serve as Deputy Director?"
"Um? Oh, yeah, that's correct. Cheon Yo-hwa."
I looked at her in confusion, and she mirrored that confusion right back at me. We'd exchanged the same line, but our interpretations differed somehow.
I repeated my question. "So there's only one deputy director named Cheon Yo-hwa, right? Did you appoint another one without me noticing?"
"...What are you talking about?" Seo-rin frowned, clearly puzzled. "To win over Baekhwa Girls' High Guild, you proposed we recruit their two top members into the National Road Management Corps. That was your idea, Undertaker."
Thump—my heart gave a jolt.
"Two top members? But from what I remember, Baekhwa Girls' High was basically a dictatorship under Student Council President Cheon Yo-hwa."
"...You've been saying weird stuff all night when it comes to the Cheon Yo-hwa business."
Seo-rin's lips seemed to part very slowly.
"Student Council President Cheon Yo-hwa and Secretary Cheon Yo-hwa. Those two governed Baekhwa Girls' High together as twin sisters. Right now, they both serve as deputy directors for us."
That's right.
It wasn't until the 688th cycle that Cheon Yo-hwa sealed away the Mastermind and erased herself in the process.
For the present time, the older twin sister was still alive.
Footnotes:
[1] In other words, they're spelled the same way in Korean and sound the same, but the Chinese characters that define their meaning differ.
-x-X-x-
The Missing V
"Hey there, Teacher! Huh? What's with the gloomy face? Oh—don't tell me you finally got sick of our great witchly leader, the commander of the National Road Management Corps?"
"Aww, unnie, come on, like that's possible! Teacher's such a magnanimous soul that he embraces even the lowliest of dropouts. You can tell from how he let those people, who literally go around cosplaying as witches every single day, all year round, acting like it's always Halloween, join the National Road Management Corps. That's all the proof you need of his generosity."
"Ah—chaa. I guess I wasn't thinking straight. No matter how ugly or vile the vermin are, Teacher still won't cast them out. It's a level of magnanimity beyond any normal imagination!"
"Mhm. Don't beat yourself up, unnie... Actually, I have a little confession to make."
"Huh? What is it, little sister?"
"Well, every time I climb the Tower of Babel and see all those pointy witch hats bustling around, I completely lose faith in humanity... so today while going up the stairs, I snagged three witch hats and chucked them out the window."
"Good grief! We still have a lot of spiritual training to do, little sister!"
"Mm. We just can't keep up with the speed of this world..."
"Indeed, pitiful dropouts like us can only rely on Teacher to guide us!"
"Teacher. I'm ready to endure 500 times more reading of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in its original classical Chinese. Please watch over me!"
I went blank.
It was almost impossible to believe these two were people who'd been summoned at 2 AM. Their tension level was somewhere in another dimension. And those two in question...
A pair of twins.
Old-fashioned as it sounds, they really looked like a "perfectly symmetrical butterfly's wings," a classic decalcomania.
Bright orange hair. Red eyes. Aside from one wearing a pure white uniform and the other wearing solid black, there was no telling them apart by appearance alone.
"Yo-hwa...?"
I choked out their name through my tight throat.
The already high-energy twins grabbed each other's hands with a flourish and struck a pose.
"Yayyy!"
"The two sisters are problem kids but the strongest!"
"Who would have guessed that of the tens of millions of cults on the Korean Peninsula, the final surviving sect would belong not to Christianity or Buddhism, but to Taoism? Who could have imagined?"
"The Yo-hwa–Yo-hwa ☆ Sisters have arrived!"
"Yayyy!"
They high-fived each other.
Then silence.
Again, note that it was 2 AM.
Even though it was technically festival night, in Utopia—a city of upright, well-regulated citizens—most people were fast asleep. Thus, our surroundings were dead quiet.
Beside me, Seo-rin let out a sigh as long as an anaconda.
"Ugh, that's exactly why I didn't want to call these lunatic sisters..."
Truthfully, I was even more flustered. "What's up with them, anyway?"
It was bizarre.
The younger Cheon Yo-hwa sister was famous for always smiling no matter where or when, but she'd never been quite this hyper. She was more the type to stab someone with a smile on her face. And the same went for the elder sister Cheon Yo-hwa. Even back when she was the Infinite Void, and later sealed in that four-season classroom by Time Seal, she was always sly and inscrutable, not this openly frenetic.
They really were shrine maidens from a suspicious cult, so their attitude seemed fittingly shady.
But... well. Seeing them together for the first time, side by side, gave off a whole different vibe. It was like an RPG: If the two appear as bosses, one is only vulnerable to magic attacks, the other only to physical, and if you don't knock them out on the same turn, they resurrect infinitely. That sort of vibe.
"Hey, Teacher, Teacher."
One sister linked arms with me on the left.
"Hey, Teacher, Teacher."
The other sister latched onto my right arm.
"Which one of us do you think is Yo-hwa?"
"Wait! That naive idea of identifying us by uniform color... Mm, that's not good. Not good at all..."
"How do you know we didn't swap outfits in preparation for exactly this scenario?"
"Even if you factor in our manner of speech, perfume, all that, you'd be underestimating our intellect if you tried pegging us down that way, Teacher."
"What are you saying, unnie? You can't call him 'Teacher!' I'm the older one!"
"Huh? Why are you saying that, little sister? My memory of hearing your first cry the moment after I was born is still perfectly vivid—are you committing some betrayal now?"
"Waaah, boohoo, waaa..."
"Oh gosh, how adorable! You're still my little sister! You look exactly like me, how cute, how precious! I want to nibble you up..."
"Let's not cross any lines."
"Yes, unnie."
Someone began to lilt out a sigh.
Ah... ahhh... aah.
"My energy... my energy is draining away!"
I looked to my side to see Seo-rin—and immediately felt her feelings resonated with mine in pitch-perfect tune. She wore the face of someone forced to endure tedium beyond measure.
No doubt about it. These twin sisters must have secretly installed nuclear power plants in their throats, evading the supervision of the IAEA. If left unchecked, they'd chatter on forever.
"Hmm." Ji-won, also summoned here at an ungodly hour, stroked her chin. "How fascinating."
Her bluish-purple eyes seemed to quietly, carefully watch my every move. Maybe because this 173rd cycle's Yu Ji-won had undergone "personality correction" from Dang Seo-rin, her expression gave off a strangely human vibe.
"It's peculiar," she remarked. "Under normal circumstances, Your Excellency the Undertaker would chime in with them, but now he's just silent."
"What...? You think I'd jump into this crazy mess?"
"Huh? Yes, of course. If I may use a metaphor you'd understand, the two sisters were Rosa and Roy, and you were their cat, Nyaong."
Seriously? Wasn't the 173rd cycle supposed to be a constant "serious route?" Just who was my past self, anyway?
Moving on, they weren't the only ones summoned to the Tower of Babel main building.
Ha-yul's eyes were drooping closed out of drowsiness, her head nodding as if playing seesaw, while Ah-ryeon stood there in her normal (filthy) everyday clothes, staring intently at me until she at last opened her mouth to say...
"Wh-who are you?"
Everyone on the terrace turned to look at Ah-ryeon. Even the twin sisters, still clinging to either side of my arms, fell silent.
"Huh? Who is he? He's Teacher."
"Wellllll... He looks like the guild leader, but, um, he feels a bit different... Huh-hum. Very, very different." Ah-ryeon shook her head violently. "S— so... wh-who are you?"
"Wait, I said he's Teacher—"
"Stop. That's irritating... Would you please shut up?"
The night air grew chilly.
Someone sucked in a breath: Dok-seo, crouched anxiously in the corner of the terrace. Even Ha-yul, who'd been napping against a cushion, was blinking awake and staring at Ah-ryeon.
The twins' transformation was dramatic as well. Where they'd been all smiles a moment ago, now their faces went blank. Quietly, those four red eyes with fuzzy boundaries between iris and pupil gazed at Ah-ryeon, wordlessly.
Like insect eyes.
Ah-ryeon, normally the most sensitive to others' gazes, was behaving differently right now. She didn't respond at all to the collective stares, only keeping her focus on me.
Suddenly, it hit me. That abnormally high tension from the twins might have been their flailing attempt to stir up a little warmth among the members, each of whom harbored a piece of the Void, so to speak.
'In the days before Dok-seo joined us...'
After the 555th cycle, things changed.
Dok-seo always roomed with Ah-ryeon, who was perpetually drifting on the outskirts of the group. She even got mild scolding from the ever-serious Saintess. She chatted frequently with the perpetually stoic Ha-yul. She also made a point of following after Seo Gyu when he withdrew from the others to keep them safe from his personal issues.
She got along awkwardly with Yo-hwa, but she never avoided talking to her—she just got verbally smacked around for her trouble.
She even clung to Do-hwa and teased, "Wow, Old Undertaker x Commander pairing! The black-and-black couple is the best!" The type of reckless remark that only LiteraryGirl could make.
All told, the relationships between the current group members were precarious. They were all cursed souls, each just one step from slipping into Corruption. And in that group, Oh Dok-seo was like a clown—a jester among the Regressor Alliance.
After all, weren't writers historically once called minstrels in the earliest days—a sort of clown in a way?
'I see.'
It cast new light on why my 173rd-cycle self might have played along with the twins' antics.
I broke the silence. "Here's a question. My dear members of the Regressor Alliance. You mostly remember that it's the 173rd cycle right now. In your opinion, how many cycles do you think it'll take to save the world without error?"
"Ah... Teacher, you're quite talented, so even if it takes a while... maybe around the 300th cycle?"
"Hey, unnie, think about Teacher's mental health. Let's be generous and say 350 cycles! By the way, let me come along on vacation next time, Teacher!"
[Monster Wave has been wiped out. All that's left is the Admin of the Infinite Metagame. We figure 200 cycles total.]
"I also side with Ha-yul's opinion. It shouldn't be much longer before Undertaker becomes our true savior."
Hmm. Putting on a resolute face, I said, "Here comes the correct answer."
I took a deep breath.
"It failed. It failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed."
...
...?
???
The question marks floating above their heads gradually evolved and grow in number, a bold challenge to Korean spelling conventions.
"We achieved absolutely nothing!"
????????
Silence.
All of them clammed up. Dok-seo, who'd been quiet as a mouse the entire time, suddenly relaxed and got chatty.
"Wow, mister... You just did that coming out thing from Attack on Titan, right? After all, Steins;Gate was a time-loop story, and Attack on Titan once had fan theories that it was a loop story too! So it's a kind of self-referential metaphor for our current predicament, yeah? Haha. That's quite impressive... but you're dealing with a grand literary mind like me, so let's keep it moderate!"
Exactly 12 seconds earlier, the terrace at Babel Tower headquarters had been abuzz in uproar.
"Um, Teacher. Let me see if I'm understanding this right."
"Go ahead, Yo-hwa. It's still a bit weird for me to see you and your sister together, but I'll try my best to ignore that."
"Ugh, that only complicates things more, so let's set that aside! Anyway!" Cheon Yo-hwa spun around. "So, Oh Dok-seo? Ms. Dok-seo? You have a power called Side Story Creation. Because you used it in front of all of us in the future, you ended up coming here to the 173rd cycle from the 999th. Is that correct?"
"Uh, y-yeah... that's right."
"And Teacher used the Great Witch's golden scales of Equivalent Exchange, sacrificing 'his current life and memories' to bring in 'future knowledge.'"
"Precisely."
Cheon Yo-hwa sighed and pressed her hand to her forehead. "What on earth is going on...?"
The members of the Regressor Alliance each sank into their own thoughts, trying to process all this. They were likely struggling to digest these impossible events.
[That was quite a wise decision.]
The one with the most free time, the Saintess, finished collecting her thoughts first. Apparently, she'd been quiet so far because she'd promised Seo-rin she wouldn't use Clairvoyance at all today. But seeing the entire Alliance gather like this, she'd gone back on that and was now speaking via Telepathy.
[According to Mr. Undertaker's explanation, the more cycles we go through, the harder the clear condition becomes. The usage of Aura is eventually restricted as well.]
Though not physically present, everyone listened to her Telepathic voice.
[And if the older Ms. Cheon Yo-hwa falls out...]
The group's gaze fell on the twins. They'd been sitting on a bench, hands tightly clasped together.
[That would be a serious blow, indeed. In essence, we'd lose the brains of our central strike force in the Korean Peninsula. Though from what we've heard about the Outer God known as the Mastermind, her sacrifice is definitely worth it.]
"...Unnie."
The younger twin looked worried, but the older one had no answer. Strictly speaking, she seemed lost in very deep thought and pointedly kept her gaze fixed on empty air to ponder to herself silently.
"Hmm."
The next one to gather her wits was Ji-won.
"I have a question. Ms. Dok-seo, does Side Story Creation usually allow you to hop between past cycles like this?"
"Uh— Oh, no way! All it ever did was let me 'download' someone else's personality. Like, tbh, I have no idea what's going on or how it happened..."
"I see."
For a fleeting moment, I caught a glimpse of disappointment in Ji-won's eyes.
An unstoppable desire surged up from my stomach.
"So, Ji-won... You might not have told us yet that you're the Leviathan's Miko, but eventually you open up to everyone, so no need to fret."
"What do you mean, exactly? I was planning to inform everyone in due course."
"Oh, so it wasn't just a matter of being content to let Awakeners keep training Aura, thus strengthening Leviathan and your powers, like some sort of 'auto-hunt is sweet' approach?"
"Good heavens, of course not. Your Excellency, I wasn't aware of the Outer God's identity either. Leviathan? That's horrifying."
"Right? By the way, I'm Mr. Matiz."
"...Excuse me?"
"You remember that spot wasn't actually Dobongsan, right? Took me a while to recall."
I diverted the conversation by saying, "The Saintess is correct. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We can figure out exactly how this miracle happened later."
"Excuse me, Your Excellency the Undertaker, sir? 'Mr. Matiz?' What exactly—"
"I'll be forgetting everything that happens from now on, anyway. The summoning was premised on my forgetting. That's how it works."
"Your Excellency the Undertaker? Are you listening, sir?"
"But that doesn't mean my actions from here on are meaningless. I want to seize this chance to muster our maximum fighting force and hunt down the Outer God we can only defeat right now."
"Sir, please listen to me!"
I glanced around. Seo-rin, who'd been quietly waiting for everyone to catch up, finally spoke. "So which Outer God is it that we can only defeat now, Undertaker?"
"The Goddess of Night." I bit down on my anger as it bubbled up from my heart. "Nut."
Looking around, I explained, "Mirror realms. The geocentric worldview. The Eye of Horus. An Anomaly so powerful it treats regression like a mere virus, capable of distributing it across existence. It has so many titles, but we still haven't pinned down its true nature. And..."
I looked up at the night sky. As always, the moon shone brightly, a pristine sphere untainted by the messy chaos below.
"Just like Cheon Yo-hwa sacrificed herself to seal the Hidden Mastermind, and how the Saintess once gave herself to freeze time—"
[...]
"I'm convinced that here, in this ephemeral bonus stage, this short-lived vantage point, we have to launch a surprise strike against that one."
A small hush fell.
Seo-rin nodded. "Sure. If it's that formidable of an enemy, you're wise to strike it early, now that I've gone Corrupt."
"Thanks for understanding."
"Mm. By the way, you might want to answer Ji-won soon. She's giving off an Aura that's... Well, it seems quite concerning..."
"Oh."
Breaking news: Yu Ji-won had narrowly avoided Corruption by a hair.
-x-X-x-
The Missing VI
The readers' fiery wrath that once set SG Net ablaze had faded. The stone tablets announcing the hiatus lay forgotten beneath the East Sea. In an era where no one cared about such things, Corruption had become nothing more than a cheap joke.
Such was the world we lived in.
An author was strolling through the city.
"You know what, mister? When I think about it, I had absolutely no reason to panic."
"Yeah?"
"I mean, this is before the 555th cycle! Before the SG‑Net Novel‑Serialization Board even existed! We're in the prehistoric, primitive days before I ever debuted under the pen name LiteraryGirl. Which means... can you guess what?"
Dok‑seo laughed.
Considering we'd just pulled an all‑night marathon meeting with the Regressor Alliance—partly to stop Ji‑won from Falling—Dok‑seo's smile was almost unnaturally fresh.
Under the clear dawn sky, she tipped her forehead toward the light slowly brightening Utopia's horizon and declared, "I... I am totally, utterly free from serialization now! Ahhh, this air! The sweet nostalgia of Utopia! Mmmm, sooo delicious. Is this what the air of a world without readers smells like? Ooooh! Positively scrumptious!"
"...Right."
"Wait, no, no. mister! Let's just dig up the entire Novel Serialization Board. Then, come the 999th cycle, I'll steal all the chapters Ah-ryeon unnie was publishing and dump them online in one shot! Ka‑yaaah. She'll see them, right? She'll probably leave nasty comments without even realizing they were her own words. Then... I'll capture every last hate post! And reveal, 'Surprise, that was actually your future manuscript!' Ka‑hyaaaa! Pure, soda‑pop justice! I can't wait to see the look on her face!"
I honestly had no idea what kind of face I should be making. Sadly, no abused kid beside me would murmur, "Just smile." Only a chuunibyou with a lethal case who was busy abusing the whole world.
It was never easy.
The takeaway from last night's meeting was simple:
『Attack Nut.』
Nut, the Night Goddess—an Outer‑God‑class Anomaly.
Her compatibility with a regressor like me was the worst. The Saintess had to Fall and even sacrifice herself just to barely seal her away, and even that was only a seal, nothing more. A method for a complete kill was still nowhere in sight.
"Sorry, sunbae. None of us have ever faced Nut directly, so it's hard to wrap our heads around it," said Cheon Yo‑hwa, the older of the twin sisters.
A few days ago, she'd looked lost in deep thought throughout the meeting, but maybe she'd finally sorted it out in her head.
"Haha, honestly, it's a little overwhelming. You dumped so much future intel on us that my brain's about to fry."
"Mhm."
"Still, overwhelming doesn't mean bad. From humanity's point of view, I'd say we've never had a more decisive opportunity." Cheon Yo‑hwa raised her ballpoint pen and clicked. "So, tell me about Nut, sunbae. Like always, let's craft the op together."
We talked for a long time, enjoying the whole sunny café we'd rented out to avoid prying ears. Soon enough, I realized something.
'This kid not only knows the Anomalies inside out, she's got a deep grasp of my regressor abilities too. Smart.'
I already knew that, of course, but sitting here face‑to‑face hashing out strategies made it crystal clear: the elder Cheon Yo‑hwa was sharp.
"The simplest route is to smack Saintess unnie with Time Seal. Nut would get sealed automatically."
"...Losing Clairvoyance, Telepathy, and the Constellations would hurt too much."
"True. But right before you save the world, and after you've wiped out every other Outer God except Nut, you could pop Time Seal, right? That'd be the final cycle, the very last moment. We wouldn't need Saintess unnie anymore."
She was also resolute. Not a flicker of hesitation, even while discussing a scenario where our comrades might vanish forever.
Did she read the look in my eyes?
Leaning her chin on her pen, Yo‑hwa giggled awkwardly. "Mmm, I've been thinking about it for a while. This system that links Outer Gods to their Mikos, maybe it's tilted way, waaay in your favor, sunbae."
"...Pick a Miko, Corrupt her, fuse her with the Outer God, then fire off Time Seal."
"Yup." She smiled, then continued, "And that's not all. So far every Miko we know of happens to be clustered in Korea, right? Why? Sure, this land's always been catnip for cults, but isn't this a bit much? I've got my own theory, but let's stick to Nut for now. So, sunbae—no chance you'll seal Nut and Saintess unnie in the final cycle?"
"No chance."
"Hmm." Her red eyes narrowed. "Because you're afraid she'll get hurt? That's harsh. You forget e‑ver‑y‑thingabout your adorable private student, even call her an Anomaly, but you can't do the same to Saintess unnie? How's that not favoritism?"
"...Sorry. It's not feelings that make me reject that plan."
"Then what?"
"Just a hunch, but Time Seal isn't omnipotent."
I laced my fingers together.
We were broaching a topic I'd discussed with no one, not even with Kim Ji‑soo, Yu Ji‑won's adopted daughter, who'd later become the psychological counselor for the Regressor Alliance. Maybe the only person I could confess it to was the girl sitting across from me, the one destined to be hit by Time Seal.
"For starters, Yo‑hwa, you yourself proved that Time Seal isn't absolute."
"Huh? Me?"
"Yeah. Using my quirk of remembering almost nothing from the 1st to the 4th cycles, you managed to regain a good chunk of your identity even inside the sealed realm. Suppose I seal every Miko and Outer God," I proposed next. "Yo‑hwa, what happens to me after that?"
"You'd become the god of the new world, of course."
I sprang to my feet and, without a moment's delay, launched into the Light Bakayaroid Dance.[1]
Yo‑hwa exploded, powerless to resist. She spewed her coffee, hacking and coughing, tears streaming as she laughed her head off.
"Why, ah, pft, ugh, seriously! Gah! So unfair! How old even is that gag?! Why do I have to laugh at something so dumb?! You crazy, geriatric regressor!"
"You're the one who cracked a joke during a serious discussion. Choose your words carefully if you don't want this happening again," I offered in solemn warning.
"Oh. Ohhh, wow. Seriously... Wow, sunbae. You're a total nutcase. Fine, I, Cheon Yo‑hwa—heir of the House of Cheon—admit it..."
TMI: this heir's favorite work of all time is Death Note. She's watched the musical not only in Korea but even on a pilgrimage to Japan. Her best boy is Ryuk, runner‑up is Misa (reason: she looks easy to exploit like a little sister).
"I don't want all our efforts to end with a single Outer God called 'The Undertaker.'"
"Oh, come on. Quit it with the serious face—I can't focus..."
"In the end, it wouldn't be just Saintess unnie but me too. I'd have to lose my powers. But could we really cherry‑pick so that only Time Seal stays while everything else disappears?"
I had no response to that.
"Even if I disappear, everything about me would vanish. A scenario where only Time Seal remains seems awfully unlikely. So we shouldn't lean on it too heavily." Yo‑hwa put down her tear‑soaked tissue.
"Like with Aura?"
"Exactly, like Aura."
"Hmmm..."
With a click, the cap of her pen snapped shut.
"Then, sunbae, how about flipping it completely on its head?"
"Completely on its head?"
"Yup. You called this cycle your bonus stage, right? Then let's Corrupt not just the Great Witch but the entire Regressor Alliance."
What?
"Wait... Yo‑hwa, what are you even saying?"
At last, Yo‑hwa turned fully serious.
"From where I'm standing, you're kinda scared of using your powers right now. Almost like trauma. The revelation that Aura was part of Leviathan hit you so hard that you're holding back on your other abilities too... I'm not saying your strategy's wrong. Just that you should be aware your thinking's gotten stuck in a rut."
Yo‑hwa opened her notebook and scribbled a phrase.
Overwhelming power.
I found myself mouthing the words.
"Right," she confirmed.
"With overwhelming power—"
"Absolutely everything—strategy, tactics, martial arts—becomes meaningless before true overwhelming power," Yo‑hwa coolly cut off my gag—proof that her learning capacity was intact. "That used to be your specialty. Grind Aura through endless regressions, then steamroll the enemy with that cheat code. Maybe it won't work in the 999th cycle, but right now it's still viable."
"...Because right now, we're in the special stage that's both the 173rd cycle and the 1000th cycle."
Yo‑hwa grinned mischievously. "Exactly. Nut? Unknown, mysterious Anomaly? Scary? Yeah, who cares? Is she stronger than the Great Witch? Maybe. Is she stronger than Oh Dok‑seo, who's soaking in the Great Witch + Infinite Metagame buffs? Stronger than my sister, who drags out the Great Witch + Oh Dok‑seo + Infinite Void's authority? Stronger than me, the puppeteer pulling the strings? Stronger than Team Leader Yu Ji‑won, who squeezes Leviathan's potential to the limit? Stronger than Saintess unnie, who freezes the entire world's time?"
Her crimson pupils met mine.
"And stronger than the Regressor who commands all those Fallen? Do we really think this mystery Outer God tops our full might?"
The answer was obvious.
"Not a chance."
A daring smile stole across her face. Instead of cowering before the Anomaly, she faced it with boundless confidence and rock‑solid self‑belief.
Such was the strategist sitting across from me.
"Crush it with brute force, sunbae. Only you can do it. And only in the destined-to-be-forgotten 173rd cycle can we pull off such reckless insanity. Let's show those Outer‑God bastards—who fancy themselves masters of the universe—what happens when they mess with us."
My heart pounded.
It wasn't love. It wasn't fear.
It was closer to a child's sense of adventure—pure playfulness.
"...You're out of your mind."
Yet the corners of my mouth were already curling up.
"Maybe even truly insane. There's never been a cycle where that many Fallen emerged all at once."
"Yep," she chirped. "We might totally get wiped."
"Even if I call this a 'bonus stage,' the ripple effects on past and future events remain unknown. And you want to create the Fallen on purpose, unsealing Anomalies we've already defeated or locked away?"
"Yep. Dangerous, huh? One slip and our fallen Regressor Alliance members could start a civil war for control of the timeline. Worse than Rome."
"And the cleanup?"
"The almighty Regressor will figure it out somehow, right?"
"You're pitching this as an operation?"
"Yup." Yo‑hwa's smile deepened. "But it's exciting, isn't it?"
Yeah.
Only now did I truly grasp the core of the girl before me. Calling her a strategist wasn't wrong, but it wasn't enough. Schemer fit a bit better, yet still missed the mark.
Gambler.
The elder Cheon Yo‑hwa was simply addicted to gambling. Drop her into Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and she'd choose post‑Liu Bei Shu just because "the win‑rate's lowest and the dopamine's tastiest." Thanks to a lucky combo of sisterly love and a brilliant brain, that dopamine addict managed to pass for human.
"Let's do it, sunbae."
And who am I to hide it?
"The world's already doomed. Let's make it even messier!"
Like teacher, like student.
I'd been sitting at the cosmic poker table called destiny for a long, long time.
The simultaneous Fall of the entire Regressor Alliance.
Project Collapse — COMMENCE.
Footnotes:
[1] A meme of the final episode of Death Note, wherein the protagonist's final, unhinged rant is turned into a dance beat.