I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell - Chapter 342

The Surrenderer IV

[Monster Wave and Nut were nothing more than marionettes meant to hasten my own doom.]

Tap-taptap-taptap!

Text poured forth at a speed of a thousand keystrokes per minute across the laptop screen’s notepad file. Along with it, a low-quality TTS voice prattled on.

[I used the descent of the Monster Wave and Nut to reimagine this Void-tainted world as a server shutdown, thereby cutting through all competition among the Outer Gods to ascend proudly as the one who would destroy the world.]

[And by reinterpreting the Awakeners’ abilities as “skills” in a game, I turned every phenomenon into a “game”—an illusion.]

[In this way, I also devoured the Mastermind’s simulation-cosmology. I set up a contrast between—the “inside” of the logged-in game world—and the “outside” of the logged-out real world.]

[The same goes for Infinite Void.]

[The property of Infinite Void—treating all the world’s elements as mere data—was clearly a step below—my own Void, which turned this entire world into a game.]

[I—was the Outer God that made Monster Wave—Nut—the Mastermind—and Infinite Void all bow down.]

[Unlike them—I was not helpless against the regressor’s time. I placed my own preparations—like demonic artifacts.]

[You must—respect—me.]

Truly, humans are creatures that learn from experience.

Which meant that mocking the Admin of the Infinite Metagame again right now would risk yet another tragedy occurring.

Even beyond all my beloved Three Kingdoms novels being forcibly turned into genderbent stories—who knew what horrendous new hybrid might be born. Imagine if Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei all turned into internet streamers.

I had to endure.

I could endure.

Unlike these Anomalies that knew nothing of humanity or compassion, we humans had the capacity for introspection and repentance—

“But either way, your Miko is still Oh Dok-seo, right?”

[#$□)%(♡)@#%^?_□!]

Ah. Slip of the tongue.

In short, the Outer God the Admin of the Infinite Metagame was in despair.

– I was honestly pretty confident, you know.

Henceforth, the monologue that follows shall be acknowledged as the Admin of the Infinite Metagame’s “human-friendly version” with the background noise filtered out, resulting in a cleaner, more polished voice. The wording and tone were slightly adjusted to be something of an “edited for humans” version.

– Whether it’s Nut’s night sky, Infinite Void’s qualia, or the Mastermind’s simulation games, I could easily reinterpret them all as “games” or “works of fiction.”

– No matter how fiercely they struggled, they couldn’t deny the board I’d laid out.

Of course, the Admin wasn’t truly strategizing in elaborate moves against those other Outer Gods or anything close to it. The Outer Gods altogether were more like a group of mutually incompatible viruses vying for territory, devouring or propagating at will.

Yet once again, for the sake of this “human-friendly version,” we’ll call it a puzzle-solution style retelling.

– Still, in order to convert this world into a “creation” for my “game,” I had to accept certain shackles and chains of my own.

On-screen, the white-haired girl raised her index and middle fingers. No longer was her avatar 144p, but instead, she had become 8K HD. Even so, her skin was unnaturally flawless, betraying her inhuman nature.

– A God.

– I, who would reign as “God,” was bound to remain just a typical raid boss in any piece of fiction.

– That was my first constraint.

Clank!

From the blank desktop, a pixelated chain arose and snared the white-haired girl’s ankles.

– Irregulars like regressors.

– Such a typical “main character” trait, always found in a story’s cast.

– That was my second constraint.

Clack.

Another chain slithered forward like a snake and cuffed the Admin’s slender wrists, leaving no gap.

– But it was a manageable risk.

– From the perspective of an Outer God like me, do you know which type of irregular is the hardest to deal with?

“…Some regressor like me?”

– No.

The Admin of the Infinite Metagame smiled politely, like a well-bred noble maiden.

Come to think of it, the character design this was based on apparently had a background of German nobility too.

– Regressor types are surprisingly easy to handle. They’re mentally fragile.

“Ah.”

– It’s never easy to live the same life dozens of times over. Even if they do survive, they’re prone to Corruption. You just happen to be an exception, Regressor.

I was reminded of Old Man Scho, and of many protagonists in countless works who fell to despair under the loneliness and pain of regression.

– The real threat is… “Prophets.”

“Prophets.”

– Yes. No matter how ingenious my strategies, what good would that do? Even if I respond to their moves, they can read four or five moves ahead. If someone can see every future, the game inevitably ends in a stalemate.

– I don’t want a draw.

– So I killed them.

Like Zeus punishing Prometheus.

“…I see. That’s why in the novel you showed to Dok-seo, the prologue had all the prophets die off from the start.”

– Hehe. Indeed. I’m the sort of person who devours the tastiest part of the curry first.

The Admin’s voice had once degraded to series of girlish scoffs, but now she wore a more refined, old-fashioned smile.

– Six prophets, promised for humanity’s future.

– I wiped them all out by letting them all simultaneously read your, the Regressor’s, future. Their minds basically exploded.

– After that, I tossed in a bit more gunpowder. That is, I generously shared with them all my data—absolutely everything—about the entire cosmos.

– Unless you had a special ability, it was impossible for a human brain to handle that much data capacity. Cue poof—nice fireworks.

Firework effects filled the desktop.

– From that point on, I only had to worry about regressors. Out of the two main ones, one was no problem at all.

– As I’d predicted, after tens of cycles, that one collapsed on his own.

Swordmaster Schopenhauer, disqualified.

– Which meant only you remained.

The last irregular. Codename: Undertaker.

– As soon as you surrendered to the time of regression, it would be over for you.

And here, for the first time, the Admin realized her miscalculation.

– Unlike that other regressor, you had no real talent in martial arts or brute force.

– Nor did you have any special standout abilities compared to other Awakeners. Complete Memory? That’s bait for Anomalies at best. He’s sure to die in the tutorial dungeon, anyway.

– A trash ability. An F-rank skill.

– Even Time Seal was no threat. If anything, it helped me, since you basically erased humans for me.

Yet…

– Why did you refuse to give up on this “game”?

100 Cycles passed.

200 Cycles passed.

300, 400 Cycles passed.

To the Admin, it felt like that old song, “Air Man ga Taosenai,” was playing on loop.[1]

– That’s when it hit me.

By the 500th cycle, as an Outer God, she had to admit her miscalculation.

– Complete Memory. That was the culprit.

– Ordinary people internalize pain and trauma more than necessary and quickly let happiness fade.

– But… because you possessed perfect recollection, that typical phenomenon never affected you.

– No matter how many people around you died, how many killings ensued, how many fell into hell, you preserved in your memory the exact moments when they lived most happily.

– To think that this trash skill, which seemed useless, was a trump card for the Regressor…

That was the Admin’s first blunder.

– But… it was still within acceptable parameters.

The Outer God soon devised her next move.

– I would degrade you, the Regressor, to a “mere character in a novel” and introduce someone with a stronger protagonist trait than yours.

Oh Dok-seo. Trait: Book Possessor. A cheat-like ability that could read the entire life story of the Undertaker in advance, in “book” form.

– Did you know? A “Book Possessor” is essentially the same as a “Prophet.” In fact, that’s the most powerful trait you can have.

– Sure, I shot a data bomb at the real Prophets, annihilating their minds. But my Miko was different.

– What the Miko read was a novel—merely text, infinitely compressed in resolution.

– And I just… added a bit of seasoning so that she would form a certain prejudice about you, that’s all. Really just a sprinkle of bias.

Suddenly, I recalled my first meeting with Dok-seo in the 555th cycle, after she’d become a “Book Possessor.” She was quite different then from how she was now.

[Oh Dok-seo: There he is.]

[Oh Dok-seo: The protagonist of this world. Codename: Undertaker.]

[Oh Dok-seo: He’s better-looking than I… Actually, maybe the cover art was better? Hmm. Is he better in person?]

[Oh Dok-seo: But I mustn’t be fooled by his looks.]

She remained alert toward me.

[Oh Dok-seo: The Undertaker is a protagonist who has multiple regressions under his belt. He’s got no tears to shed or warm blood to lose.]

[Oh Dok-seo: He’s full of hatred for monsters, a typical regressor who lives only because he can’t die…]

[Oh Dok-seo: Basically, he’s a madman. If I slip up, he might kill me on the spot. I’ve got to tread carefully.]

It was hard to believe when confronted with the indefinite-hiatus-laden LiteraryGirl of today, but she was once quite sharp. Her movements were swift, her brain cunning, her approach to people proactive, and she knew how to lead. Above all, she had started at the same vantage point as the Regressor Undertaker.

– I was confident I’d chosen the perfect Miko.

A Book Possessor who was wary of the Regressor, fated to collaborate sometimes and clash at others, eventually dancing on the Admin’s puppet stage to overpower him.

But then…

– Then why?!

All at once, the white-haired girl’s face contorted into that of a demon, and the desktop went blood-red.

– When did you acquire Mind Reading?

– Infinite Void! Cheon Yo-hwa! That piece of trash offering! How dare they meddle with the Mastermind’s powers and pull off such a cheap trick!

Yes.

The Admin never realized that she wasn’t exchanging moves with me, the Regressor, across a chessboard as she thought. In reality, someone else stood off-board behind me, wearing a secretive grin as they guided my hand with “hints.”

“Seriously, sunbae, you have too few strategist characters by your side… That’s the problem.”

My “Tactician” in Regressions.

“I’m sorry. I really wanted to save Old Man Schopenhauer for you too, but messing with the causality so drastically would’ve been too much.”

“It already took a miracle to weave together a timeline that could coexist with your footsteps up through the 688th cycle without negating them.”

An expert who knew more about Outer Gods than anyone.

“Aha-ha. Sorry for dropping out early like Grandpa Swordmaster, yeah? Good luck living the rest of your life, sunbae. Work hard for my share, okay?”

“After all, that’s the fate of a regressor.”

Unlike the hotheaded, martial-arts-loving, frontline twin who always charged into battle…

This twin was cold-blooded and cunning, hiding in the background and setting traps.

That was Cheon Yo-hwa’s doing.

In hindsight, it was strange.

Oh Dok-seo was chosen as the Miko and became a Book Possessor in the 555th cycle, yet I gained my Mind Reading in the 554th cycle. They were only one cycle apart: the Book Possessor arrived, and the regressor acquired a new skill. Wasn’t that timing a bit too perfect to be mere coincidence?

“Haaaah, Teacher, can’t you please help me…?”

Thus spoke the 554th cycle.

That day, the student council president of Baekhwa Girls’ High, Cheon Yo-hwa—the younger of the twin sisters, sporting orange ponytails—came to me.

“Help you with what?”

“Well, the house I used to live in was the main base of that cult, right? There’s negative energy piling up and ghosts keep appearing, so I decided I have to do some cleanup. It’s just… too big for me to do alone.”

“Why not ask your Baekhwa friends?”

“Eugh. That’s my old home! There are a bunch of my childhood photos and clothes in there, they’d totally swipe them if they found out.”

“…You’ve had it rough.”

“Hueeeng. Sorry! You’re the only one I can rely on in times like this, Teacher!”

So I helped my student clean out the big Cheon-family estate.

Though it was already touched by the Void, I’d been here before while investigating one thing or another, so clearing it wasn’t too hard. However…

“Exploring these Void-infested spots together reminds me of the old days. I was so scared back then, but now, it feels almost nostalgic.”

“Yeah. That coffee you brewed in the student council room was delicious. And that time we took the water-scooter to the ends of the earth, that was fun.”

“Hehe! Oh, Teacher. There’s still a place here!”

This time around, Yo-hwa knew all the secret passages in the estate. Thanks to that, we made it into places we’d missed in previous cycles, including deep into some tunnel as she led me by the arm.

“Huh? What’s that?”

A jet-black stone statue stood there.

“This thing was here all along…?”

It was a bizarre statue, one that likely represented some deity or another at some point in time, but its head had been cleaved off, making it impossible to identify. In its place was a Buddha’s head on the neck stump. That Buddha’s head was also strange—perfectly ordinary except for an “eye patch” carved over one eye.

I muttered it without thinking. “Gung Ye…?”

“Pardon?”

“No, nothing.”

Gung Ye. A real historical figure, but on the internet more famous as a meme from the drama Taejo Wang Geon for being a mad cult leader who claimed he had the “power of clairvoyance” and shouting “Who coughed?” among other things.[2]

“Huh, weird. My family forbids anything related to Buddhism, so normally we’d just destroy a statue if we found one… If this had been around, they would’ve disposed of it right away,” Yo-hwa mumbled.

It was unfamiliar even to the former successor of the cult. In other words, only someone on par with the “other twin successor” could have hidden such an item so thoroughly under her nose.

Who placed it here, and when?

At the time, neither I nor the younger twin could guess the truth, which was that since the 1st cycle, Yo-hwa’s older twin had stored that strange statue in the estate’s depths.

Why?

“All right, let’s investigate, then.”

“O-okay, teacher. But be careful? The head’s chopped off, so you can tell it’s suspicious. Don’t just reach out and—” She paused, startled as I touched it anyway.

She’d arranged things so that her “sunbae” and her “sister” would discover the statue in the 554th cycle. So that in the next cycle—when the Admin played its “Book Possessor” trump card—the Regressor would already hold a sword to counter it.

“T-Teacher? Why are you spacing out? Is it cursed? Even you can’t handle something so obviously fishy?”

“Yo-hwa.”

“Yes?”

“It seems I… might have just acquired… a new ability.” 

“…Huh?”

At long last, after hundreds of cycles, the Regressor unlocked the skill Mind Reading, and all thanks to a certain supreme trickster who possessed the authority of both Infinite Void and the Mastermind. She took care that the Admin of the Infinite Metagame would never notice, even making the event appear like sheer coincidence to me, her ally.

“Hey, you, mister.”

So in the 555th cycle, Dok-seo approached me.

“Come over here. That freaking fairy’s just caused a blood geyser to spout, and everyone else has gone and bailed. The ones of us left gotta stick together, don’t you think?”

Surely the Admin of the Infinite Metagame was smiling cunningly from behind her then.

The Admin felt confident that by placing the regressor and Book Possessor in close proximity, she could intervene anytime she liked and manipulate the scenario.

[Oh Dok-seo: Come on, damn it, please. Come over here. Without you, we’re all dead!

Except her plan derailed at step one. Because to my Mind Reading eyes, acquired anew in the previous cycle, Oh Dok-seo was…

…Not suspicious or dangerous, nor someone the Regressor must keep at arm’s length.

[Oh Dok-seo: I get it, your first love and the only guild leader you served under is dead and lost to you, monsters are shit, the world is shit, I get it…]

[Oh Dok-seo: But for real, help us out!]

On the contrary, I felt curiosity.

‘Following this kid around looks like it’ll make this cycle a blast!’

Then goodwill. A quick glimpse into Dok-seo’s psyche told me she wasn’t vicious or wicked, so as the Regressor, I felt secure staying close to her.

Hence, the Regressor and the Book Possessor never clashed, never doubted each other. We trusted one another.

Brrrrkk.

From that moment on, the massive tower the Admin had built began to crumble uncontrollably.

Undone by a certain strategist who happened to fall in love with a single regressor.

Footnotes:

[1] “Air Man ga Taosenai” (lit., “I Cannot Defeat Air Man”) is a song about trying to defeat Air Man, the boss of Mega Man 2, and failing over and over again.

[2] In the drama, Gung Ye beats people to death with a mace for coughing in front of him.

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