Chapter 106 - The Pedestrian IV

The “clearing operation” continued.

It was like a chaotic chess battle unfolding across the board.

Black was the anomaly. White was humanity.

But unlike an ordinary match with a fixed number of pieces, Inunaki Tunnel had countless pieces at its disposal.

It had swallowed tunnels all across Japan. That meant it had monopolized every fear and ghost story associated with those places. It had more than enough pieces to place on the board—as many as there were ghost stories.

We humans, on the other hand, had a mere seventy-two pawns. Still, I was in no hurry.

My chess pieces were replenished with every run anyway. Even if I failed this time, all I had to do was hit the “Continue” button next time and keep playing.

With more knowledge, and a more comprehensive walkthrough.

["An exploration team member has died."]

["All clear."]

["Advance."]

Run 141, run 142, run 143, run 144, run 145.

I worked on clearing Inunaki Tunnel over five runs in total. Not that I devoted all my time to it.

I took my time. While subjugating other anomalies, I simply expended my seventy-two death-row inmates.

With each successive run, the battle of wits shifted further in my favor. Inmates no longer died at the tunnel entrance. Fewer fell under the graffiti’s spell.

The record of my battle of wits with the anomaly—the moves of our chess game—remained intact as a walkthrough.

And so.

["Visual confirmation of the exit."]

["Mr. Undertaker. Inmate No. 66 died approximately twenty meters from the exit. Immediately before dying, the inmate looked back."]

I gripped the radio.

“Just looked back, with no other unusual behavior whatsoever?”

["Yes."]

“Then it seems the myth of Orpheus has gotten mixed in. He looked back when the cave’s exit was in sight, and his lover was dragged away to her death... Myths frequently undergo strange distortions and become part of an anomaly.”

["Oh."]

“We’ll have to add a line to the walkthrough stating that you must never look back once the exit comes into view. Saintess, that inmate was our last explorer, correct?”

["Yes. We have no more inmates available. Will you put it off until the next run?"]

I shook my head.

“No. If there are only twenty meters left, I’ll finish it this time. It’s only right that those in charge of the operation make the final trip themselves. To verify our walkthrough...”

I glanced back.

“And for the Council’s honor.”

Three awakened—Yu Jiwon, Manyoneko, and Armless Sword—were watching me.

“Jiwon. Stay here and keep watching the map. It’s fine if all you do is look at it.”

“Yes, Your Excellency. I shall keep my eyes on the operational map without so much as blinking.”

“There’s no need to go that far. Anyway...”

I met the two magical girls’ eyes. Their gazes held a multitude of emotions.

Anxiety. Had they left almost the entire subjugation to the awakened from the Korean Peninsula?

Excitement. Perhaps the chance had finally come to deliver the finishing blow to the anomaly that had tormented the Japanese archipelago for so long.

Sorrow and guilt.

Those feelings hardly need explaining. They weren’t directed at us, nor at any living human.

“Let’s go. Manyoneko, Armless Sword.”

“...”

“To avenge your comrades.”

Their eyes turned cold.

Soon, the final exploration team set out.

8

“We let our guard down in all sorts of ways during the first subjugation, meow.”

STEP. STEP.

Human footsteps flowed down the tunnel’s pitch-black walls like rainwater. Muddy water splashed onto the magical girls’ shoes.

“You see, it behaved itself even when we left it alone. It didn’t spit out anomalies or anything, meow. Compared to the other anomalies that smashed towns and cities to pieces, wouldn’t it look weaker, meow?”

["Five shrines around Nagoya and Kyoto joined forces to form the first subjugation team. Of course, at the time, we never imagined it would be the ‘first.’"]

“My childhood friend was on that team, meow.”

["A dear friend of mine as well."]

STEP.

Outside, the cries of evening cicadas drifting from the distant hills had been almost deafening, but inside the tunnel lay a sinister silence.

Whenever footsteps echoed along the walls, bizarre graffiti writhed like luminous insects. Yet no one looked at those patterns.

“Stars—guide—the dawn, meow.”

As the darkness deepened, Manyoneko lightly shook her umbrella. Its outer surface began to glow a faint blue.

It was magic. Phrase Magic, which had been regarded as this world’s only method of casting magic until Dang Seorin, that peerless witch, developed Spell-Song Chanting single-handedly.

It assembled words to manifest the caster’s mental image, and a mage’s caliber could be gauged by how many phrases they could weave together at once.

“After that, we organized a second, third, and even a fourth subjugation team, but the results were much the same, meow. Oh. Look at this, meow.”

Manyoneko pointed to the floor with the tip of her umbrella.

Japanese words had been carved into concrete relatively untouched by the muddy water. Most were damaged, but some remained legible.

-Die.

-No. I don’t want to be here anymore. Where did everyone go? Why did you leave me alone, die. LCNA. 1199.

-I leave this for future explorers or members of the Council. First, never walk down the center. Do not listen to sounds coming from the center, and if you sense someone there.

-Please save me.

When Manyoneko raised her umbrella, the words on the floor sank back into eternal darkness.

“They’re all traces left by previous subjugation teams, meow.”

["This was Gamma Point, if I recall?"]

“Yes, meow. We agreed to leave markers like these in every area relatively safe from Inunaki Tunnel’s encroachment, meow.”

They, too, had tried to create a walkthrough. Just like me.

“But ‘relatively safe’ doesn’t mean ‘completely safe,’ meow. The fourth subjugation team followed these instructions and was annihilated, meow.”

“... The documents were contaminated.”

“Exactly, meow. That fucking bastard did nothing to the third team, then started playing tricks when the fourth arrived, meow.”

It wasn’t rare for anomalies in the void to mimic human language. They readily imitated voices, behavior, and appearances as well.

Just like now.

-“Manyoneko!”

-“Armless Sword? That’s you, isn’t it?”

-“I knew you’d come to save us!”

-“My dear pupil, well done. I always believed in you.”

Armless Sword smiled coldly. No scoffing sound escaped her mute lips, making the chill of that smile all the more unmistakable.

["What utter bullshit."]

“People you know?”

["Yes, a comrade and my teacher. The leader of the fourth subjugation team Manyoneko just mentioned. I hear the lower half of the body was found at Gamma Point, but fortunately the voice seems perfectly intact."]

STEP.

The magical girls walked on without looking back.

Suddenly, my companions’ footsteps sounded like muted screams.

The anomaly played every sort of trap card, but we fell for none of them. The “Inunaki Tunnel Walkthrough,” with its seventy-seven numbered rules, led us to the exit.

The moment light from the exit began to appear in the distance.

-“Manyonekoooo.”

An arm suddenly thrust out from behind us, as though to embrace us.

A pretty little bracelet circled its wrist. Frills adorned its sleeve.

-“What’s wrong? Hurry and take my hand.”

-“Didn’t you come to save us? What about the Council? Has headquarters abandoned us?”

-“Let’s go home together, Manyoneko. No, Rika.”

Small cracks appeared in the magical girls’ faces, which had remained composed throughout.

-“We promised to meet again when the first snow fell this year. On Mount Yahiko.”

“...”

-“I still remember my promise to you, Rika.”

Manyoneko stopped walking.

She and I both knew that looking back here would end everything.

But rather than remind her of that fact, I stayed silent. Armless Sword likewise used no voice-transmission magic.

“... This really is fucking shit, meow.”

Her murmur drifted through the tunnel.

“We made that promise seven years ago, didn’t we, meow? But damn it, you left with the subjugation team without even deciding what counted as the first snow, meow. Was it the snow in Hokkaido, meow? Or did it have to snow in the village where we were staying, meow? There’s never been a shittier promise than that, meow.”

-“...”

“So when it snowed in Hokkaido, when it snowed in the village, and when it snowed in your hometown, I climbed Mount Yahiko every time—three times in total, meow. It was fucking miserable, meow. And you weren’t there any of those times, meow. I was so cold, I thought I’d freeze to death, meow.”

-“...”

“You. I wondered where and how the hell you died that we couldn’t find even a scrap of your corpse—and you were luring harmless people into this fucking tunnel, meow? What happened to your promise to serve the gods and protect people, meow? You fucking bastard, meow. Seriously...”

I still haven’t forgotten what I saw then.

The “hand” that had emerged from behind us and done nothing but wave through empty air gently took Manyoneko’s hand.

Their fingers intertwined.

-“I’m sorry. Let’s go home together.”

“...”

-“Rika.”

Human sounds flowed down the tunnel’s pitch-black walls like rainwater. The rain fell for a long time.

STEP.

We walked.

The light drew steadily closer. The odors of moss and corpses that had tormented our noses gradually gave way to the scent of grass. And when the muted screams had become the cries of evening cicadas.

["You’ve arrived, Mr. Undertaker."]

We emerged from the tunnel.

Without exchanging any particular words, we turned around together. The tunnel’s exit. The sign that had read “Inunaki” now bore a different name.

Sorojidani Tunnel.

The tunnel’s original name, before the anomaly had possessed it and eaten away at it.

Beneath that name lay hundreds, thousands of corpses, strewn all the way into the tunnel.

“...”

["..."]

Most of the corpses wore the elaborate outfits of magical girls. But the dresses were rotting under the ravages of time and the pitch-black muddy water of corpse poison.

Manyoneko knelt before one corpse missing an arm.

Only later did I learn that Manyoneko had also belonged to the first subjugation team, but had survived because she had been assigned to wait outside the tunnel.

Anomaly: Inunaki Tunnel.

Aliases: River of Three Crossings, Hell Gallery, Orpheus’s Road to the Underworld

Threat Level: Lv.3 Continent

Subjugation complete.

9

Afterward, part one.

Across the Japanese archipelago, every tunnel returned to normal one after another. For some reason, however, the undersea tunnel crossing the Korea Strait remained intact.

Of course, “intact” only meant that it could be used if you walked through it in strict accordance with the walkthrough. Every danger originally possessed by the anomaly Inunaki Tunnel remained in the undersea tunnel.

Noh Doha furrowed her brows.

“How strange. The undersea tunnel was an imaginary structure to begin with. Shouldn’t it disappeaar...?”

“Well, I don’t know either. I may be an anomaly expert, but I don’t know everything.”

“Hmm...”

Noh Doha frowned at the undersea tunnel poking its head out of the waters off Busan.

“Weell, I suppose it’s not a bad thing if we think of it as one more means of contact with the other side, should we need it...”

I’ll tell the story of this undersea tunnel in the very next episode.

10

Afterward, part two.

After run 145, I decided to visit the Japanese archipelago as early as possible in each run.

The purpose was simple. To subjugate Inunaki Tunnel before the Council suffered countless casualties.

Of course, farming my precious spirit camera was another reason.

And so, run 146. After obtaining the camera, I arrived at Inunaki Tunnel—and sensed a familiar presence approaching from afar.

“Huh, meow? Someone beat us here, meow?”

It was Manyoneko.

Her face was a little younger and a little less experienced than in the previous run.

And so, instead of an umbrella, her hand was joined to something else.

“What should we do, You, meow? The high shrine maiden ordered us to seal off the tunnel entrance, meow.”

“Why don’t we warn that person to leave for now?”

“Yes, meow, but you can tell at a glance that their aura is incredible, meow... Oh. I think they’ve noticed us too, meow.”

“It’s dangerous. Stay back, Rika.”

I approached with both hands raised to show I meant no harm.

A magical girl with jet-black hair, contrasting with Manyoneko’s golden locks, stared straight at me.

“Who are you? I’ve never seen you before. You’re not from the village, are you? This area is off-limits to civilians as of today. We’ve received a missing-person report.”

“I’m an awakened from Korea.”

“Korea...? Why would someone from Korea come here?”

Hmm.

Her eyes held suspicion and wariness. But appearances aside, I, the Undertaker, was a regressor who had mastered the art of making friends.

About four minutes of conversation and four bags of snacks passed between us.

“It’s deliciooous, meow!”

“Chocolate, for the first time in weeks... Not fake chocolate, but the distinction of the genuine article, evident in the rich flavor of cacao...”

“Ahh, I’m melting, meoow...”

“So, are we friends now?”

“Yay! We’re friends, meow!”

The magical girls diligently strung sacred boundary ropes around the tunnel entrance. Then, after repeatedly stressing that I must never go inside, they departed at their leisure.

The sun was setting. I watched the two of them walk away hand in hand for quite a while.

“... Maybe I’ll take a picture.”

CLICK.

It was purely a whim that prompted me to raise the spirit camera and photograph Inunaki Tunnel then.

Perhaps you could say I wanted a keepsake of that moment.

WHIRRR.

The photograph developed. Perhaps because Inunaki Tunnel had yet to swallow all sorts of tunnels across Japan, the picture was far more subdued than before.

There were no magical girls’ corpses, nor any gruesome displays of limbs or heads.

Only the stone wall blocking the entrance.

On it were vivid red letters.

-Welcome home. This is already your seventh time, isn’t it?

I froze for a moment, the camera still raised.

Evening cicadas were crying in the cedar forest.

... It wasn’t simply the anomaly’s pretense of knowing that I was repeatedly regressing that chilled me.

Such a pretense could be achieved with nothing more than the ability to conjure an illusion of “what the other person fears.” An anomaly with sophisticated illusion abilities like Inunaki Tunnel could easily do that.

The problem lay elsewhere.

I had first encountered Inunaki Tunnel in run 141. Run 142, run 143, run 144, run 145... Finally, in run 146, I had come here to face the tunnel again.

“Six times” in total.

Yet Inunaki Tunnel welcomed me, saying this was already our “seventh” encounter.

Where, then, had that other encounter disappeared to?

- The Pedestrian. End.