I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell - Chapter 349

Chapter 349

The Missing I

For a moment, it might sound strange. And for now, it may look like nothing but drifting clouds.

But let us consider a single, rare piece of imagination here.

‘…’

There once was a certain girl.

No. She wasn’t a girl but an adult.

An old woman. A calculator. A planner. An explorer. A gambler. A schemer. A loser. A winner.

One who wandered. One who pursued. One who remembered. One who was forgotten.

It didn’t matter what name she was given because she could become anything. All that mattered was keeping in mind that she was solving a very difficult, extremely complicated puzzle right in the middle of the night sky.

‘…’

The puzzle was four-dimensional.

It demanded not only spatial assembly but also temporal intersections and overlaps. In other words, it wasn’t the kind of problem you could solve by simply hitting the pause button.

None of the puzzle pieces had any color.

Colorless, like a mirror.

These mirror-like fragments were scattered about, and she had no choice but to fit them together herself.

Each attempt at fitting them together cost her decades of time. There was no such thing as a skip button, nor was an auto-hunt option available to her.

The difficulty could only be described as unfathomable.

She had to endure the flow of time without beginning or end.

‘…’

You might want to lament how outdated and unplayable this game was, but at some point, she no longer gave up.

She simply calculated. Plotted. Explored. Schemed. Gambled. Repeated loss and victory.

Even as she wandered, she never stopped pursuing.

She lived by dying. She died by living.

Time flowed on.

‘…’

Finally, the pieces came together.

She picked up a single shard and attached yet another mirror to the night sky, where only a dizzying emptiness stretched beyond.

The Void turned into starlight.

From her perspective, it was beautiful.

The first shard of starlight.

「Oh Dok-seo is a writer.」

Surprisingly, this sentence was true.

She had more days not writing than actually writing, and she was less of a genius who delighted her readers and much more like a genius who enraged them. Nonetheless, by some miraculous principle, Oh Dok-seo was still a writer.

A fine testament to how thoroughly this world deserved to be destroyed.

「Oh Dok-seo writes historical fiction.」

Surprisingly, this was also true.

If you wonder why we’d say “historical fiction writer” instead of “fantasy writer,” well—

It’s probably faster to see for yourself how Dok-seo actually worked.

“Phew.”

The great literary master. The once-in-a-lifetime genius who mocked not only humanity but even Anomalies. Oh Dok-seo…

…Woke up at 2 PM.

With a resounding burst of motivation, she resolved to begin work at 5 PM, then spent the next three hours busying herself checking the latest trends on SG Net. After that, she devoured a hearty dinner to restore her creative stamina, lounged on the sofa for some philosophical meditation until her blood sugar returned to normal, and then, at last, at 10 PM, she murmured with the pensive eyes of a true author:

“All right, the time has come. I shall try writing something.”

[You’re a total bum.]

Ha-yul, who had been working hard all day and was now off duty, flipped through her sketchbook with an expressionless look.

Ever since finding out about the existence known as Oh Dok-seo, Ha-yul had acquired the skill called Quiet, Contemptuous Stare. This was also part of Dok-seo’s gracious influence.

[Trash. Shut-in loser. The disgrace of the Regressor Alliance.]

“So, let’s see. Yesterday, I heard a story about the 173rd run from the old man. Whoa—he said Dang Seo-rin falls into Corruption, so I was kind of expecting a romance scene, but apparently, there’s no memory of anything past the kiss!”

Dok-seo’s eyes gleamed.

That wasn’t just some figurative literary phrase. Her eyes literally sparkled—because she had infused them with Aura. Even regressors usually saved their Aura for the gravest of situations, but every now and then, Dok-seo used hers as proof of her “sincerity.”

“Skipping a naive romance scene… Even if Anomalies might forgive it, and regressors might accept it, I, the free-spirited author Oh Dok-seo, cannot allow it!”

[?]

“I’m certain that in the 173rd cycle, the old man definitely went beyond just a kiss with Dang Seo-rin.”

[Are you nuts?]

Ha-yul’s contempt grew sharper.

If you ignore for a moment that she once killed her father and turned her mother into a doll—yes, aside from that tiny bit of history—she was actually pretty reasonable. And if you take issue with the question of whether that’s really “reasonable,” well, take a look at who’s living in the guild dorm: Oh Dok-seo, Sim Ah-ryeon, and Yu Ji-won. Three mountains that loom overhead.

“Restoration means sincerity.”

[?]

“And creation means… freedom!” Dok-seo whispered gravely. “I made a vow: never to replace the word ‘fuck’ with ‘f—k.’ Because fuck is fuck and damn is damn. If the truth is so obvious, then why would I fail to call love by its true name?”

[Wait. So right now, you want to spy on dad’s love life? Are you actually insane?]

“Of course! If I have to be insane to tell the truth—!”

By the way, let me just say that in my own stories, I’ve always filtered out anything that wasn’t agreed upon by the people involved. Naturally, there was no consent regarding “anything beyond a kiss.” In fact, having explicit consent would have been problematic.

But fuck is fuck, and likewise, Oh Dok-seo is Oh Dok-seo.

“The readers have a right to know…!”

[The most urgent right for your readers is actually for you to write regularly, you know.]

“It’s not only about Dang Seo-rin! Cheon Yo-hwa the student council president, Commander Noh Do-hwa, all the others! Think about it! How could hundreds—no—thousands of repeated runs go by without a single love affair between a man and a woman happening even once?!”

[You’re crazy.]

“This is a trick. A lie! It’s all a ruse by the Infinite Metagame! I refuse to be deceived by this fake world any longer! I will witness the truth with my own eyes! I swear it’s not personal. My foolish heart beats only for the readers…!”

[I’ll go get your brother.]

“Hey, hey, hey.” Dok-seo’s arm stretched waaaay out and clung to Ha-yul’s shoulder, who flinched in alarm.

What in the world? Was this an Anomaly? It was almost identical to a monkey from some joke comic! The intelligence level might not be too different either.

“Okay, okay, you are so uptight. In that case, I won’t insert an R-rated chapter in The Regressor’s Epilogue that I’m serializing.”

[…]

“But let’s just keep it to ourselves.”

[…?]

“I’m going to possess 173rd-run Seorin.”

They called it possession, though the official name was slightly different:

Side Story Creation.

A power that allowed Oh Dok-seo—both writer and V-tuber—to pick some far-distant run from the past and “summon” a character from it.

It took the usual writer’s tool, empathy, to the extreme. She didn’t just sympathize with the character’s feelings—she fully recreated everything that character had felt and thought.

“So while I’m playing the part of your sister from the 173rd cycle… you, Ha-yul, can ask me all sorts of questions.”

[Questions? About what?]

“Ah, geez! Don’t try to act innocent like you’re some pampered noble from a politically gifted, traitorous family background or something!”

[Should I actually kill you?] Ha-yul asked, barely suppressing her murderous intent. It took extraordinary effort to hold back.

“Ha-yul. Huh? Lady Lee Ha-yul. You’re curious too, right… what sort of romantic escapades the old man has?”

It was a whisper from the fiend who wore an author’s mask.

“And it’s not even about what he’s up to now! It’s about what Mister was doing hundreds, no, thousands of years ago. That’s basically a ‘historical’ fact, so it’s not even a privacy issue! Who’s going to criticize a romance from thousands of years ago?!”

[…]

“You can handle the rating. Just lightly—very lightly—ask about it, okay?”

[…]

“Was the kiss… sweet?!”

[…]

“And if it was sweet, did they go even further?!”

[…]

Ha-yul grabbed her half-curly hair with both hands.

She agonized. She wrestled with her desires.

[Just a little. Just a little bit, okay?]

“Deal!”

No point in hiding it.

The aristocratic lady from a traitorous political dynasty was somewhat weak to temptation.

Under normal circumstances—meaning before the 998th cycle of the scenario—this is the point at which the STOP! button would usually activate.

The reason was simple: the Saintess.

In other words, if you compared the world to a classroom, she was always the class president. Our model student.

But now it was the 999th run.

Just as she tried to put a stop to Dok-seo’s chaotic behavior (which, if we’re honest, was far beyond mere chaos from the start), the Saintess hesitated for a moment.

She pressed her own power, Time Stop, pausing the flow of time, and held her chin in thought.

“This… does make sense,” the Saintess murmured.

In a Time Stop, it was easy to lose one’s sense of self, so she intentionally spoke out loud this way to avoid forgetting her position.

It was a habit reminiscent of a certain regressor.

“Mr. Undertaker just got finished telling me about it… That Dang Seo-rin’s behavior was something we’d never seen before, in all cycles combined.”

That stuck in the Saintess’s mind.

“I discussed it with Mr. Undertaker at length, but in the end, we couldn’t find any peculiar changes in the 998th cycle. Nor in this 999th cycle. So…”

Maybe the best idea was to ask the “past” Dang Seo-rin about it—about that unknown potential even Dang Seo-rin herself didn’t realize.

Of course, if Dok-seo’s Side Story Creation were truly capable of summoning the full power of the Fallen Witch from her prime, it would be dangerous. But Side Story Creation wasn’t omnipotent. Sure, the Infinite Metagame obviously wanted its Miko to eventually reach such heights, but in accordance with that eternal law of an Outer God and its Miko, she was thwarted.

“From what I gather, it merely ‘summons’ the personality and memories that Dang Seo-rin had back in the 173rd cycle.”

Who was to say it truly originated with the Infinite Metagame, though? It was still an extremely game-like power, the Regressor’s timeless clear method was likewise inclined: forcibly dressing that ability up in a name like Side Story Creation.

“In that case… it should be safe, I think.”

It wasn’t perfectly harmless. After all, it would inevitably violate some of the personal privacy of both the Regressor and the Great Witch.

Yet what a coincidence! The Saintess, flawless model student that she was, had precisely one moral principle she did not uphold: “respecting personal privacy.” She single-handedly operated a 24-hour, round-the-clock CCTV that monitored every single Awakener across the Korean Peninsula and all without a single staffer to give her a break. A system so sweeping that even George Orwell would have been appalled.

If she’d cared about the words “personal privacy,” she’d never have set that operation up.

Hence…

“…Yes. Looks like there’s nothing wrong with letting this happen.”

The one and only conscience of the Regressor Alliance lowered her hand that was about to declare STOP! Instead, after releasing Time Stop, she quietly transmitted a message to Dok-seo by Telepathy.

“Ah—”

For some reason, upon receiving the Saintess’s voice, Dok-seo smiled slyly, as if she’d been expecting this all along.

“Ahhh. Sorry, Saintess unnie! Once again, I neglected your feelings.”

?

“Of course you’d be super interested in Mister’s romance scenes too! Gosh, I almost left you out. Don’t worry. Just watch it all you like through Ha-yul’s eyes! I’ll keep it a secret from the old man till the day I die!”

…

A single flower bloomed in the Saintess’s heart.

‘Huh. Why is my heart pounding so fast?’

The petals, however, were quite murky.

‘Could this feeling be… murderous intent?’

It was an evil flower.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Dok-seo had just given the Saintess a little shove toward the brink of Corruption. If the Saintess fell, the end of the world was certain—thus in that context, Dok-seo had unwittingly become the hidden mastermind of ruin.

In any case, the Saintess did not stop her. On the contrary, this was like a model student who stumbled into a gang of delinquents secretly playing with fire and ended up joining them for this runaway joyride.

After 998 normal runs, now on the 999th: derailment.

Thus was the second shard of starlight.

“Ahem? What are you all talking about here?”

“Ah.”

Dok-seo and Ha-yul were in the cafe hideout lobby, a public space that everyone in the Regressor Alliance used freely. That was its purpose, after all.

“J-Ji-won.”

“A good evening to you, Dok-seo.”

Among them was, of course, that pale-haired psychopath who called herself the Regressor’s one and only right hand.

Ordinarily, this specter of authority preferred the dormitory at National Road Management Corps headquarters over the guild’s quarters. After all, she was bound to the Regressor by a solid contract. No matter what sins she might commit, her final testament would always reach some future iteration of Yu Ji-won. In other words, from her perspective, the Undertaker’s favor was pinned at a certain threshold.

However, it was a different story when it came to Noh Do-hwa. Commander Noh’s favor rating had a maximum of 20, and reaching that 20 was unbelievably tough.

For Yu Ji-won, doing mild upkeep with the Regressor was enough for him. The rest of her time she devoted to “conquering” the commander. Efficiency at its finest.

Until the 777th cycle, that is.

When the aurora spread across the night sky, the Regressor’s favor rating limit of 60 jumped straight to 100, and a seasoned gamer knows to grind faster than anyone else after a major server update.

Since the 777th cycle, Ji-won had been coiled up in the guild hideout, and she started by buddying up to Ha-yul. It was all to build a thoroughly rational formula:

Lee Ha-yul = Someone the regressor cherishes like a daughter  

Yu Ji-won = Takes good care of Lee Ha-yul  

Undertaker = “Ah, so my Yu Ji-won is kind after all!”

Flawless, was it not? To capture a general, you first take out his horse.

This silver-haired psychopath even had the steps down pat.

“Well, it’s, like… basically, we’re trying to study what happened when Dang Seo-rin turned ‘Corrupt.’ So, you know, my ability, Side Story Creation? We’ll see what went on with her and Mister when they, you know. It’s just curiosity, totally a trivial thing!”

“Aha.” Ji-won made a show of marveling with a nod. “How interesting. Please allow me to join in on this academically minded observation as well.”

“O-oh, sure! Of— Of course.”

Dok-seo felt a bit nervous. From reading the Regressor’s tale in “novel” form, she knew how gifted at murder this pale-haired beauty was.

She also had the worse end of the matchup, fundamentally. Even though Dok-seo herself was a Miko, the Infinite Metagame had now become a Outer God mostly by name (lol). Meanwhile, Leviathan was still in its “secretly powerful” stage. The Regressor and the psychopath were simply restraining themselves for the moment, but if they wanted, they could unleash their Aura anytime.

But that was not the end of it.

“Hey, what’s going on? Let me in too!”

“Ergh, Student Council President…”

Eternal High Schooler Cheon Yo-hwa, reporting in.

“‘Ergh’? That’s harsh. Come on, Dok-seo!”

“…But you, well, you don’t like me… r–right?”

“Eh? Why would I dislike you, Dok-seo? I don’t hate you at all.”

She wasn’t lying.

When nobody else was watching, Yo-hwa had bullied Dok-seo countless times. Again, if we imagine the world as a classroom, Yo-hwa was the vice president, center of the social circle, and the main culprit behind ostracizing Dok-seo. Like the difference between Poison-type and Psychic-type in Pokémon matchups.

“So you’re saying we’re gonna dig up Teacher’s past, right? Hehehe, I wanna join! I’m curious too!”

“Ugh…”

Why did Yo-hwa bully our dear, innocent Dok-seo?

It’s not like this author took more days off from writing than writing itself, or wrote mocking 3,000-word announcements whenever she went on hiatus, or physically hit fans at a fan meet-and-greet, or constantly used Aura for her own self-indulgent whims when even regressors saved it for emergencies. It’s not like she stole the sacred “Mister” title that Yo-hwa used to address her teacher before switching to “Teacher,” is it?

From the viewpoint of the great literary master Oh Dok-seo, it was pure nonsense.

And that still wasn’t the end!

“Wh-what is everyone doing here…?” A greenish-haired woman who embodied the very concept of absurdity poked her head in for a peek, and Dok-seo’s face went sour in record time.

“Ah, shit! Sure! Ms. Ah-ryeon, come on! Let’s just gather the whole neighborhood, why don’t we? Sheesh… Just don’t tell Mister, okay?! Got it?!”

“I-I’m not sure why you’re u-upset with me, but… okay, I’ll keep it s-secret…”

Thɩ𝗌 ƈh𝒶p𝑡ᥱr 𝑖𝓈 pο𝗌𝘵ɛ𝕕 bʏ 𝒌𝘪τℯɳ𝑜𝓋ꬲ𝕝

Ah-ryeon thought, But does keeping a secret as “Sim Ah-ryeon” differ from keeping a secret as “Old Man Goryeo”…?

For reference, in Pokémon terms, Sim Ah-ryeon was like a Digimon. Meaning matchups were meaningless.

“Oh, my head hurts. All right, everyone take a seat on the sofa! We’re about to do the Side Story Creation! Hey!”

Oh Dok-seo, Miko of the Admin of Infinite Metagame. Prime era: 888th cycle. Corruption.

[…]

The Saintess, Miko of Nut. Prime era: presumably 107th cycle and 267th cycle. Corruption.

“Hm. I’ve only heard about it before, but this is my first time seeing an actual Side Story Creation in progress.”

Yu Ji-won, Miko of Leviathan. Prime era: after the summer when she encountered “Mr. Matiz” at age 14, in every run starting from 777th. No record of Corruption so far.

“Um. Huh, Ms. Ah-ryeon?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry, but do you use some kind of perfume? There’s a really unusual smell here…”

Cheon Yo-hwa, Miko of the Infinite Void. Prime era: after the 688th cycle in which her “split personality”—the persona of the Infinite Void—vanished. Multiple histories of world destruction. Multiple Corruptions.

“I don’t, no?”

“Huh?”

“We’re Awakeners, right? Perfume seems pointless, plus it’s expensive, and kind of a hassle. Ehehe. So I just go around comfortably!”

Sim Ah-ryeon, undecided. No recorded world destruction so far. Multiple Corruptions.

“All right, everyone pay attention! We’re starting now!”

From the 107th run, the 173rd run, the 267th run, the 688th run, the 777th run, the 888th run, and on to the 999th run.

Upon treading again on the sand of the Ganges, calling out those numbers and names, climbing the hill of nayuta, and crossing the boundless sea.

So that coincidence may become inevitability, the third shard of starlight sparkled.