Chapter 103 - The Pedestrian I

1

There is no skill called [Teleportation] in this world.

The tutorial fairies do pop out of thin air, but as I mentioned in the last episode, that is nothing more than invisibility magic.

Anomalies like the “Reincarnation Truck” appear suddenly beyond the horizon. But those trucks have not used [Teleportation] either. They merely “spawn” in blind spots outside human sight.

Let me repeat: there is no such skill as [Teleportation] in this world.

There is, however, a phenomenon that comes fairly close.

[Mr. Undertaker. I think you need to head down to Busan right away.]

“Pardon? What happened?”

[Well, I’m not sure how to put this...]

The Saintess hesitated.

That alone should have put me on high alert. The Saintess was a perfectionist to an almost obsessive degree, and before speaking to me, she always “rehearsed her lines,” even pausing time to do so.

But I would not learn that secret until run 713, and this was only run 141. So I asked without giving it much thought.

“What is it?”

[... A tunnel has appeared off the coast of Busan.]

“Pardon?”

[Literally, an undersea tunnel has appeared. I think you need to come see it for yourself, Mr. Undertaker.]

2

Have you ever heard of the “Japan–Korea Undersea Tunnel”?

It does not matter if you haven’t. The structure does not exist in reality anyway.

The grand scheme of “Let’s dig an undersea tunnel connecting Japan and Korea!” had been proposed repeatedly for ages, but little evidence suggested its practical benefits would more than cover the astronomical cost.

The man who first proposed the project was hardly an ordinary fellow, either.

He later rose to become prime minister of Japan. His major accomplishments during his term included the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the reconquest of the Philippines, the firebombing of Tokyo, the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the Battle of Okinawa.

The proposer could at least count himself lucky that an “Undersea Tunnel Collapse Disaster” never joined that illustrious lineup.

A pipe dream that existed only on paper.

And so, after receiving the Saintess’s urgent message and arriving in Busan, I could only stare blankly.

“Wait, it really is an undersea tunnel...?”

There were no seagulls off the coast of Busan.

There was a tunnel instead.

More precisely, a tunnel had popped up on the shoreline where Sinseondae Pier had once stood.

It differed from the original proposal in several respects, though. That often happened when grand projects compromised with reality, but this tunnel, originally envisioned as a “railway tunnel,” had become considerably narrower.

Honestly, it was very narrow.

Never mind a train—even a freight truck would have trouble squeezing through.

“Oh. Finally clocked in...?”

Yellow keep-out tape already crisscrossed the tunnel entrance.

As members of the National Road Management Corps hurried about, Noh Doha greeted me while sipping her morning coffee.

“Thanks for all your hard work. I came straight here after the Saintess contacted me. What’s going on?”

“Well, as you can see. Ta-da! A pedestrian tunnel crawled out of the sea. The first report came in at five this morning. Some lunatic Corps member who enjoys getting up at dawn to jog found it first...”

“Does it really lead beneath the sea?”

“I sent the divers out for a little snorkeling. Apparently, now that humanity’s fucked, coral’s growing off Busan too? They said the tunnel stretches down at an angle like a cock, then plunges straight into the seabed...”

“Is that sexual harassment? I’ll sue.”

“Hah. You’re a thousand-year-old geezer. Anyway, Awakened Undertaker, what do you make of this...?”

“It’s definitely an anomaly.”

I looked up at the nameplate engraved above the tunnel entrance.

“And a void at the same time.”

It was filthy with all manner of graffiti and scribbles, but the tunnel’s name was easy enough to read.

Inunaki Tunnel.

The Inunaki Tunnel.

This was not a Korean anomaly.

It came from Japan, the only foreign country across the sea from Busan.

An area-type anomaly with neither legs nor wings had “crossed the sea and invaded a foreign country.” I could hardly help being alarmed.

Its threat level was Continent. In other words, it was an anomaly on par with the World Tree, “Udumbara.”

“... You haven’t ordered any Corps members to explore inside, have you?”

“Hah. Of course not.”

Noh Doha smiled brightly.

“I sent death-row inmates...”

Yu Jiwon stood waiting behind her. A nautical chart titled “Clam Strait and Vicinity” lay spread across a portable folding table.

“How’s it looking, Director Yu? How far have the inmates gotten now...?”

“Surprisingly, they’re already passing Tsushima. Ah, Your Excellency Undertaker. You’ve arrived.”

Yu Jiwon—possessor of the [Minimap] ability, director of the National Road Management Corps’ Operations Control Office, and psychopath—snapped me a salute.

She did this right in front of Noh Doha, her direct superior. What an incredible bastard. Truly, every time I saw her, I could only marvel.

But right now, I needed to focus a little more on her report than on her character.

“They’ve passed Tsushima?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. Look.”

On the chart, chess pieces labeled “Kim Jeongrip” and “Lee Eunju” moved in tiny increments. Presumably, those were the inmates’ names.

Dozens of pawns (♟) lay scattered haphazardly around the chart.

“You sent two people into the tunnel?”

“No, Your Excellency. We sent twelve groups of six inmates each, seventy-two in total, as exploration teams. We loaned bicycles to thirty-six of them, or half.”

“... You really took this opportunity to clean out the Corps prison.”

“It was the Commander’s order, Your Excellency.”

“That wasn’t criticism. This anomaly is at least a Continent-level threat, so it was the right call.”

“I likewise judged the order to be entirely correct, Your Excellency.”

This little bastard...

Anyway, her personality really was not what mattered right now. Apart from the parts responsible for morals and ethics, Yu Jiwon’s brain was exceptionally capable.

“When did you send them in?”

“The exploration operation began at 0710 today. Three hours and sixteen minutes have elapsed since its commencement. The two survivors were among those loaned bicycles. Given the environment inside the void, their travel speed is quite satisfactory.”

“... If the Corps went to the trouble of keeping them on death row, wouldn’t they be people with a fair amount of experience in voids?”

“Correct. Of the seventy-two inmates, sixty-nine had previously explored a void at least once.”

“And yet they’ve been wiped out in three hours.”

It happened just then.

A chess piece passing the northern tip of Tsushima suddenly slid across the sea.

“Huh?”

“...?”

That strange movement drew not only my eyes, but Yu Jiwon’s and Noh Doha’s to the chart.

The “Kim Jeongrip” piece moved to the vicinity of Fukuoka in an instant. To be precise, it landed right in the middle of the map labels for Hisayama and Miyawaka.

Whatever the distance from Tsushima to that spot, one thing was clear: no human could possibly move that fast.

TAP

As we all stared openmouthed, the “Kim Jeongrip” piece toppled limply over.

“...”

“...”

Silence fell around us.

There were only two reasons a chess piece could fall over on the Minimap Yu Jiwon controlled.

The person it represented had either moved beyond the map’s boundaries or died.

Noh Doha muttered,

“What the fuck is this now...?”

RATTLE

This time, it was the turn of the last remaining piece, “Lee Eunju.” That piece also abruptly moved from Tsushima to the vicinity of Fukuoka.

As though something were pulling it.

RATTLE! SLIDE!

The piece darted frantically between northwestern and northeastern Kyushu. This way, that way, then south. It bounced around like a ping-pong ball, then—

TAP

It fell over.

Silence lingered for a while.

“... Forgive my presumption.”

Yu Jiwon spoke.

“There is nothing wrong with my ability, Your Excellency.”

It really was presumptuous of her.

“... Jiwon. You said you once cycled the length of Japan, right?”

“Pardon? Yes, that’s correct.”

“If you have a map of Japan in your trunk, get it out. A big one, preferably.”

“Understood, Your Excellency.”

Yu Jiwon opened the trunk she carried everywhere.

The wide-open trunk was a testament either to her pathological compulsiveness or to her extremely efficient organizational skills.

A complete map of the Korean Peninsula, city maps, nautical charts, and maps from all over the world were neatly filed in tiers.

It took her less than ten seconds to pull out a map of Japan.

“Spread it out. Connect it to the Korea Strait chart.”

“Yes.”

Though their scales differed, the two maps overlapped.

Then something strange happened.

SCRAPE

The “Lee Eunju” chess piece dragged across the map. No, it was not the only one.

The chess pieces strewn across the table—dozens of corpses—began sliding somewhere as if drawn by a magnet.

SCRAPE, SCRAPE, SCRAPE, SCRAPE, SCRAPE

“...”

“...”

Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Hiroshima, Okayama, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Shizuoka, Tokyo, Sendai...

Each corpse moved to a different destination. The seventy-two bodies were relocated to every corner of Japan.

Of those pieces, “Kim Jeongrip” behaved particularly strangely.

CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER!

The “Kim Jeongrip” piece lying near Fukuoka trembled. It was an inexplicable phenomenon. Then, at one particular instant—

SNAP

The chess piece broke in two.

The pawn’s “head” remained abandoned near Fukuoka, while its “body” rolled away alone. It did not stop until it reached the vicinity of Osaka.

This silence lasted longer than the last.

This time, Noh Doha spoke.

“Hmm. Should I get some more death-row inmates...?”

I shook my head.

“I’m raising the threat level of the anomaly ‘Inunaki Tunnel’ to Continent. Let’s contact Japan’s Magical Girl Council. They should be the experts on this. We’ll probably form a joint investigation team. Make the preparations, Commander Noh Doha.”

3

“The Inunaki Tunnel, meow? That place is fucking awful, meow.”

Sure enough, the Japanese awakened was already thoroughly sick of that anomaly.

A former shrine maiden who had received divine power from a cat god by swearing to end every sentence with “meow” or “mew” until the day she died. Currently a magical girl.

The golden-haired awakened called Manyoneko answered our questions conscientiously.

“Your country and ours both have mountains everywhere, don’t they, meow? Unless you’re some pervert designed to derive peculiar pleasure from climbing mountains, digging a tunnel is more convenient, meow.”

But who could have foreseen it?

That a tunnel’s location made it liable, once the lights went out, to become a space of “damp, frightening darkness untouched by sunlight all 365 days of the year”—and that those very conditions made it a hot spot for anomalies.

Unfortunately, the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport had no ability to foresee the future. In truth, their ability to perceive reality probably was not all that impressive either. As a result, tunnels riddled the length and breadth of Japan like worm burrows.

Then the void arrived.

“Kiyotaki Tunnel. Ikoma Tunnel. Inunaki Tunnel. They were all famous haunted spots in the old days, meow.”

Places widely renowned as Japan’s three great haunted tunnels.

“But after the void arrived, these tunnels started ‘fighting’ each other, mew.”

“Fighting? The tunnels?”

“That’s right, meow. I’m only telling you this because it’s you, Undertaker...”

The Japanese magical girls called me Undertaker in English. It meant the same thing as my Korean code name.

“There was a perfectly normal tunnel in our neighborhood, mew. Then one day we woke up, and wouldn’t you know it, the nameplate had suddenly changed to ‘Kiyotaki,’ meow?”

“...”

“Even though Kiyotaki Tunnel was miles away from our neighborhood, mew. Then another year passed, and the nameplate changed to ‘Inunaki,’ meow!”

A territorial struggle between anomalies.

A battle to determine which of the three great haunted spots truly deserved to be the “tunnel anomaly.”

“It wasn’t just our neighborhood, meow. Every single tunnel across Japan, including underpasses, turned into ‘Inunaki Tunnel’ without exception, meow.”

“... They were infected. ‘Inunaki Tunnel’ devoured the entire concept of a ‘tunnel.’”

“Exactly, mew. It fucking sucks, meow.”

“So now nobody in Japan uses tunnels anymore, meow,” the magical girl added.

As if occupying Japan were not enough, Inunaki Tunnel had even begun attempting to invade foreign countries.

By devouring as “its own” even the “Japan–Korea Undersea Tunnel,” an imaginary tunnel that had never existed in reality.

Manyoneko sighed.

“Originally, the real, original Inunaki Tunnel was only about 150 meters long at most, meow. But now it’s eaten every tunnel in Japan, and according to you, Undertaker, even an imaginary undersea tunnel, so its total length is...”

The longest anomaly in history.

That was the Continent-level anomaly I would face in run 141.