Chapter 100 - The Sharer I

1

Perhaps, as you listen to my stories, a question might suddenly occur to you.

'Aren’t all these people a little too noble?'

Yes. Even setting aside the Saintess, whose nobility has reached positively inhuman heights, Dang Seorin (witch cosplay excluded), Noh Doha (personality excluded), and the other people around me (Sim Aryeon excluded) are a fairly noble bunch.

But that question gets the order of cause and effect backward.

- How come everyone who gathers around this person is noble and capable? (X)

- Oh, this person only chooses to associate with noble, capable people! (O)

I, too, have lived through a brutal history of betrayal. People with shitty personalities, people just waiting for an opportunity to stab me in the back, vile and incompetent individuals...

Only after filtering those bastards out, again and again, did I finally arrive at my current relationships.

“By the way, Mister.”

“Hmm?”

Which was why I was a little taken aback when Oh Dokseo asked me this one day in run 669.

“Come to think of it, you hardly ever hang out with the original members these days. You’re always seeing people like Dang Seorin and Noh Doha.”

“Original members? Who do you mean? If you’re talking about Old Man Scho...”

“No, no. You don’t meet the Sword Star until run six. I mean the really early members. Jeong Sohui. Kim Siun. People like Uehara Shino.”

“Ah.”

“In [Omniscient Regressor’s Viewpoint], they only show up right at the beginning, and later they aren’t even mentioned. Why don’t you see them anymore?”

“...”

It felt genuinely strange. Like hearing the name of an elementary school friend I’d forgotten all about.

“I don’t remember.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t remember. I acquired [Perfect Recall] in run five, but wasn’t run four when I mostly worked with them? From my perspective, that was thousands of years ago.”

“Oh...”

“It seems the novel you read includes stories from before run five, too.”

“Yeah, well. It does... Actually, the first and third runs were really important. It went on hiatus right when you entered Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School and ran into that thing called Gapless?”

“Hmm.”

That meant Oh Dokseo at this point had ‘read’ my life from run one through run 117.

From my current perspective, this was run 660. But Oh Dokseo had only observed ‘me through run 117.’

In other words, she was following my life with a lag of roughly five hundred runs.

'The longest bout of jet lag in the world.'

[Omniscient Regressor’s Viewpoint] was an irregularly serialized work. It didn’t release on a regular schedule like modern web novels simply because I moved on to another run.

That wasn’t because the author possessed stress-management skills that would enrage office workers—claiming to be in a slump and taking Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off.

The ‘conditions’ for publication were simply different from those of other novels.

'When I defeat major anomalies, [ORV] releases a particularly large amount of material.'

Tenlegs. Udumbara. Meteor Strike.

In particular, once Gapless was subjugated, the amount of material released for [ORV] jumped dramatically. Naturally, the knowledge possessed by Oh Dokseo, its sole ‘reader,’ also grew steadily.

Compared to Oh Dokseo in run 555, who thought Tenlegs was the final boss, Oh Dokseo in run 669 possessed an overwhelming amount of information.

Of course, her knowledge still had plenty of gaps compared to mine. But she knew things I didn’t.

“Actually, Dokseo, I’d like to ask you what happened between me and those early characters.”

“Huh?”

“Because I don’t properly remember any of it. I have a general idea of what they’re like, but I don’t know what happened in run four. In fact, nobody knows, myself included. Unless you tell us.”

“Uh... Want me to tell you, then? It’s been about a month since I read the beginning, so my memory’s kind of patchy, too...”

“That doesn’t matter at all.”

“Then... Okay, sure. Wow, having the protagonist of a story ask me to tell him his own story feels really weird. That’s wild. I don’t think a scene like this has ever appeared in any work of fiction.”

Oh Dokseo cleared her throat.

“Hmm, okay. Anyway, what happened was...”

“Wait. You don’t need to tell me now.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll ask you in the next run. There’s a much better way than just having you tell it to me as a ‘story.’”

“...?”

Oh Dokseo tilted her head.

“... Mister, what the fuck are you talking about?”

This was precisely what the fuck I was talking about.

2

“You fucking bastard! What the fuck are you talking about!”

“Hweeh...”

The next run. Run 670.

As always, the booming curses of SG Guy, Seo Gyu, rang through the waiting hall of the ‘Busan Station tutorial dungeon.’

Fairy No. 264, receiving those curses straight to the face, wore the same dumbfounded expression as ever. The expressions of the hundreds of civilians weren’t much different.

It was the infinite regressor’s hometown, more dearly missed—and not missed—than my birthplace, which I now barely remembered.

I approached Oh Dokseo and greeted her according to the latest millennial-and-Gen-Z trends.

“Hiya! Wassup, wassup! Greetings Attack!”

“Eek! Th-the protagonist...!”

Obviously, since that demographic combined millennials (the 1980s and 1990s) with Gen Z (the 2000s and 2010s), my greeting was indeed up to date.

Apparently, there had once been controversy over lumping a whole thirty years together, but personally, I couldn’t understand what the problem was.

I grouped my own life into thousand-year intervals.

Honestly, wasn’t thirty years just an instant?

But apparently, this came out of nowhere for Oh Dokseo.

“Wh-wh-why are you coming over to me!”

“Please calm down, Ms. Oh Dokseo. I am aware that you have read [Omniscient Regressor’s Viewpoint], which features me as its protagonist. However, it is false, merely a means for aliens to brainwash you...”

“...?”

“My name is Undertaker. In the secret society known as the Library Society, I am called the Duke of the Hall of Black Books. You must place your complete trust in me...”

“...!”

I enjoyed about ten minutes of the most entertaining game in the world: messing with Oh Dokseo.

During that time, SG Guy’s head exploded (sorry, Seo Gyu), Sim Aryeon proved she was a prime destination for screams, and the 398 survivors fled in every direction.

Oh Dokseo and I were left alone. Everyone was too distracted by witnessing a murder right in front of them to notice, but the convenience store, souvenir shop, and vending machines in the waiting hall were actually fucking fantastic loot spots.

I went around the stores, picking up only as many supplies as I needed.

As always, I remembered to take a silver bell from the souvenir shop and put it in my pocket. Then I spent every bit of money I had to clean out the vending machines’ drinks.

“So...”

Oh, Oh Dokseo invested her entire fortune in the vending machines, too. Having heard the whole truth from me, she glared at me venomously.

“You’re saying I formed an alliance with you in some run way back? It’s run 670 now, and you’re asking for my help so you can have ‘an experience as close to run four as possible’?”

“Yes.”

“... Listen, Mister. I’m confused about a lot of things, but let me ask this first. Why the hell did you play that prank earlier?”

“Hmm. Dokseo. Imagine this. You’re working hard to live your life in the real world, and someone comes along bragging that this world is actually a novel and they know its entire plot. How fascinating is that? Wouldn’t you naturally want to mess with them?”

“I don’t get that at all...”

Well, it was a rather sophisticated sensibility to expect from a little brat who was a hardcore web-novel otaku, a poser hipster with terminal indie snobbery, and a sufferer of full-blown adolescent delusions of grandeur.

“But... Isn’t it already way different from run four if I’m traveling with you like this? I’m an extra whose name isn’t even mentioned in [Omniscient Regressor’s Viewpoint].”

“Now, now. An extra? Nonsense. You only say that because ‘that novel’ hasn’t reached run 555 yet. When run 555 starts in the novel, you’ll be a major character right from the beginning.”

“Oh...”

“I’m not hoping for a progression exactly identical to run four anyway. Something similar is enough. I just want to experience my lost memories.”

“Well, in that case... Ah. They’re coming.”

Oh Dokseo murmured tensely.

Footsteps were approaching from the far side of the waiting hall. Seven people.

At the front of the group was a man in his twenties wearing a Hawaiian shirt and carrying a length of lumber. He scowled as soon as he saw us.

“Huh? What the hell? There are people here?”

Lee Baek.

Left alone, he would be eliminated toward the end of the tutorial. His awakened ability was E-rank, too. He wasn’t much different from an ordinary person.

That was all I remembered about him, but Oh Dokseo apparently remembered something else. The kid hurriedly rose onto her toes and whispered to me.

“That’s Lee Baek. He’ll lead the biggest, nastiest group in Busan Station. You had a hell of a time because of him, starting in run one.”

“What? Me?”

“Yeah. Always stirring people up and creating hierarchies among themselves... Once he noticed you, he turned your companions against one another and made them betray you. Anyway, that bastard caused all the infuriating plot developments early on. I seriously considered dropping the novel because of him.”

“Oh.”

I couldn’t imagine being played by some ordinary twenty-something with a measly E-rank ability. It was so novel that I was intrigued rather than offended.

“What are you two whispering about, huh?”

Apparently, Lee Baek didn’t like seeing Oh Dokseo and me whispering. He approached, waving his lumber around.

The rest of his followers looked just as menacing. Maybe they’d known one another before being summoned into the tutorial dungeon? Mainly from back alleys.

“How did I act in run four?”

“You waited here at the vending machines, then slit Lee Baek’s throat as soon as he came over.”

“What? I just killed a person?”

“Yeah. It was pretty much the first satisfying payoff in [ORV]. Without that scene, I really would’ve dropped it.”

“I was quite a savage in run four...”

“Hey, you in the T-shirt! And you, little shit in the cap! Can’t you hear me?”

The moment Lee Baek came within five paces, I took one long stride and arrived right in front of him.

“I said, can’t you hear—me?”

THWACK

I struck his throat with the edge of my hand and knocked him unconscious. He didn’t die. His vocal cords were merely divided, leaving them to experience the sorrow of separated families.

“Huh?”

The others’ eyes widened, but they didn’t have to suffer dry eyes from holding that expression for long. It took exactly three seconds for every follower to lose consciousness with destroyed vocal cords.

“... Woooow.”

Oh Dokseo’s exclamation came belatedly.

“Are they dead? All of them?”

“No, I only destroyed their vocal cords. They’ll be mute for the rest of their lives. As you said, his specialties are incitement and political scheming, so sealing away his voice should be penalty enough.”

“Wow, seriously. Wow. You really have been through hundreds of runs. The genre’s completely changed to an overpowered-protagonist story. Where’d that infuriating loser from the beginning go...?”

“Now, now. That’s quite enough slander. Anyway, what happens next?”

“Ah. You hurt your arm fighting these seven, right? The only healers in Busan Station are Uehara Shino and Sim Aryeon. But Sim Aryeon...”

“Her healing is about as good as Madecassol ointment. At this point, anyway.”

“Come on, it’s still way more useful than Madecassol. Anyway. It’s true she’s much worse than Uehara Shino, so you recruit Uehara as a companion...”

I enjoyed a trip down memory lane with Oh Dokseo as my guide.

'Now that I think about it, I might have rated Uehara Shino more highly than Sim Aryeon back then.'

It was a different sort of experience.

You could call it a process of chasing a mirage of a long-forgotten past, lingering only as vague déjà vu, and retracing it step by step.

The feeling that even I, who remembered everything thanks to [Perfect Recall], still had an unknown past wasn’t bad at all.

It must have been a strange experience for Oh Dokseo, too.

“Huh? Mister, why’s your Japanese so good?”

“Hmm?”

“You just talked to Uehara Shino in Japanese. Originally, you couldn’t speak Japanese, so you used a translator on your smartphone... Oh, right. You said you’d lived for thousands of years. Foreign languages would be easy for you, then...”

“...?”

Uehara Shino watched our conversation with her head tilted. An alchemist I’d considered S-rank material in the distant past, but who would be classified as B-rank at best in the current run.

An old connection who had naturally fallen out of my party. A remnant of time.

“...”

“Jang-san, is something wrong?”

“No, nothing. More importantly, we’ll be taking on the midboss tomorrow, so get plenty of rest.”

“Oh. Okay.”

We cleared the tutorial in the same order as in run four.

Gathering the survivors, demanding food and medicine from the fairy as interim rewards, killing the seven bosses one by one, and so on.

For me, who already knew how to force the ‘exit’ open, it was an utter waste of time—but also a journey through time.

Of course, there were decisive differences from the ‘original’ run four. Past history that could never, under any circumstances, be repeated.

“Hmm, originally, starting today, you’d meet with the survivors and use [Time Seal] on anyone who wanted it...”

Oh Dokseo glanced at me, gauging my reaction.

“... We can’t recreate that. Because everyone you used [Time Seal] on would already be trapped in crystal monuments.”

I stared silently at Busan Station’s restaurant area. It had been quite a while since I’d last visited.

Gravestones.

Crystal monuments visible only to my eyes stood in rows along the restaurant corridor. To me, that made it look more like a cemetery than a dining area.

The remains of people sealed by my ability within ‘the happiest day of their lives.’

Keeping my mouth shut, I slipped a hand into my pocket. The silver bell jingled, and I felt it against my fingers.

Oh Dokseo asked cautiously.

“Um, you can... see them right now, can’t you? The gravestones.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me how many there are in total?”

“Well. I’d have to count the monuments in this restaurant area, but I can tell you the exact number in the entire Busan Station dungeon. I memorized that. One hundred and one.”

“...”

Here slept, in total, 101 people’s dreams, 101 individual afterlives, and 101 gravestones.

Yes.

The number of civilians originally summoned to the ‘Busan Station tutorial dungeon’ wasn’t some odd figure like 399.

Five hundred people.

It had begun with five hundred survivors.

Of those, 101 had had their time sealed by me.