Chapter 109 - The Former Companion I

1

If you asked me to pick the most foundational of all the powers I had awakened, that honor would go to [Time Seal]. Not only was it the basis of my alias, Undertaker, but it was also the very first skill I awakened.

But the ability I used most profitably, as routinely as breathing, was unquestionably [Perfect Recall]. Without that little skill, how could I possibly regale you with thousands of years of stories?

Yet [Perfect Recall] did not, in fact, mean I remembered absolutely everything, one hundred percent. There was precisely one gap in my long life as a regressor—a 0.01 percent portion that remained blank, like data forcibly deleted.

And so, today I thought I would discuss my ability's "imperfect recall."

This is a story from run 173.

2

One day, the Saintess said:

["Mr. Undertaker."]

"Yes?"

["Perhaps I've been operating with preconceived notions about constellations all this time. Don't you think I ought to revamp my constellation image to make it a little more approachable and friendly?"]

"Ah, yes. Do whatever you like."

["A wonderful idea suddenly came to me last night."]

Those of you with exceptional memories might find that exchange familiar.

["Hello, hello! Hello to all you awakened on the Korean Peninsula! Pleased to meet you, meow!"]

["I'm the constellation who'll aaalways be watching you from now on, the Saintess of National Salvation, meow!"]

["Meeooow! Let's all get along, meow!"]

"..."

That's right. Run 173 was the run in which I deliberately left the butterfly effect alone instead of subjugating it.

Rather than departing for America or Brazil, the flutter of wings in Beijing moved next door to Korea, dealing a tremendous blow to the psyche of the peninsula's longtime resident, the Saintess.

"Saintess."

["Meow?"]

"This isn't it. Please stop..."

["Yes."]

The Saintess's little departure from the norm was suppressed, leaving countless question marks on SG Net.

At any rate, the butterfly effect randomly generated variables like these, things you would never see in previous runs.

In creating "a future a regressor could not predict," the butterfly effect might unexpectedly have been my greatest nemesis. Conversely, it was also an anomaly I was rather grateful for, in that it provided "new events I couldn't grow bored with."

After all, it wasn't every day you got to hear the Saintess meowing, was it?

I created a folder on the desktop inside my brain labeled "Run 173 Saintess—Cat Constellation Transformation," saved the audio files, and returned to my routine.

A regressor had a rigorously fixed schedule of his own. At this point, I was only seven months into the run, so I had plenty to keep me busy.

After subjugating Udumbara, the World Tree, in Onyang, Asan, I headed to the rehabilitation hospital where I would first meet Noh Doha, intending to propose the establishment of the National Road Management Corps.

Noh Doha was dead.

"..."

The place was a national hospital that doubled as a rehabilitation facility.

Hospitals, pharmacies, and supermarkets were the most vulnerable to attack at the end of the world. A rehabilitation hospital, a public institution with weak security, looked like easy prey to looters.

Though one could hardly claim that national hospitals offered vastly superior service to private ones, government subsidies allowed them to provide patients with reasonably cost-effective treatment.

Its reviews were good, too. Noh Doha's skill as an assistive-device technician at its prosthetics and orthotics center must have contributed to those high star ratings.

Her corpse lay sprawled at the entrance to a patient room, far from the prosthetics and orthotics center where she worked.

Had it only been a looter attack, the damage would not have been extensive. The apocalypse had yet to worsen. Even looters still had qualms about murder.

But the looters' attack coincided with an onslaught of anomalies. When the hospital began to collapse, Noh Doha left her workplace and ran to the inpatient ward. And died.

The attack appeared to have taken place barely a day earlier. The blood on the white coat she favored had not yet lost all its red.

"Why..."

I murmured the word, then swallowed the rest.

This was a first. There had never been a run in which Noh Doha died so early.

And so I could immediately identify exactly what had caused this outcome.

The butterfly effect.

An anomaly that deviated from established causality to generate random variables if left unsubjugated. This particular variable had happened to trigger an attack by looters and anomalies.

As a result, Noh Doha died.

Leaving the butterfly effect alone could produce a route like this, too.

"... It seems my gift is useless now, Workshop Master."

I sat down against the wall beside her corpse. Then I set the gift box I had brought from China down beside me.

Pu-erh tea. First-flush tea from Bingdao Laozhai. A luxury item that fetched roughly twenty million won.

It wasn't a fake. It was the genuine article, obtained through a regressor's knowledge and connections. At the beginning of every run, I gave it to Noh Doha, who preferred tea slightly more than coffee.

Noh Doha was extremely reluctant to open up to others. But after receiving this gift, she would frown and allow some room for conversation: ["... Well, let's hear what you have to say."]

Like this.

["Huh? A regressor? Excuse me. I'm sorry, but are you telling me to believe that ridiculous nonsense...?"]

["I have plenty of proof. We've had this conversation countless times already. Which is why there's also a collection you personally devised: [Surely, If He Knows Even This, I'll Have to Admit It! 100 Questions to Make Me Say 'I Believe You—You Really Are a Regressor.']"]

["What kind of fucking idiocy..."]

["I'm not a prophet, nor do I work for the National Intelligence Service. Before anything else, let me pass on a message your previous-run selves asked me to deliver to the current you."]

["What is it...?"]

["Enjoying your fucking free ride?"]

["Huh...?"]

["The materials I just gave you contain not only the questions, but pretty much all the records of failures from previous runs. In other words, you now have a far greater advantage than your previous selves did. That's what those previous versions of you are pointing out. They're asking whether you're enjoying your fucking free ride."]

["..."]

["For reference, that sentence is followed by the profanity 'you motherfucker.'"]

["Bullshit."]

After we talked all night like that, Noh Doha would accept the duty of becoming the head of the National Road Management Corps.

But today, that conversation was no longer possible.

["Awakened Undertaker..."]

["Yes?"]

["Your specialty is holding funerals, isn't it? If I die, don't perform a funeral for my corpse. Ah. This request isn't limited to this run. It applies to all time from now on..."]

["That wouldn't be difficult, but why don't you want me to hold your funeral?"]

["Heh. Because I don't want you preparing my body... If you find my corpse, just leave it there and go. Don't look at it. Don't inspect it. Don't even see me off. Understood...?"]

["Hmm."]

["We'll meet again anyway, won't we? When we do, just tell me why I croaked..."]

I sat beside the corpse without looking at Noh Doha's dead face, simply gazing up into the hospital corridor alongside her.

For a while.

"... Then I'll see you next time, Workshop Master."

There was no answer.

But I would take this scene and this memory, intact, into the next run. Then Noh Doha would surely respond to the story with that distinctive little laugh of hers: "Heh."

Imagining that scene let me smile a little.

I left the gift behind and walked out of the hospital.

Afterward, with the Saintess's help, I tracked down and killed the looters who had attacked the national hospital. Not that it particularly matters, but they operated in independent cells, like the Seventy-Two Green Forest Strongholds of martial arts fiction, and Lee Baek was involved with one of those groups.

Proof that people don't change easily, I suppose.

After weeding out every last member of that large-scale looter organization just beginning to take root in Korea, I crossed over to Beijing and finished off the butterfly effect as well.

["It seems she was someone important to you, Mr. Undertaker."]

"Yes. Though I'm sure she was thoroughly sick of me."

["..."]

After that, the Saintess and I never mentioned Noh Doha again. We continued our 173rd run as though nothing had happened.

Just to be clear, I never even considered the idea of killing myself to start a new run.

Living diligently despite Noh Doha's absence—that was my own funeral for her death, my way of paying her respect.

Rather, I ought to take this variable as an opportunity and gather data even more aggressively, including things I normally couldn't collect.

Then, when I passed it on to Noh Doha in the next run, wouldn't I be able to get a response like, ["Hmm, well, I suppose my pointless death was worth something after all..."]?

That was why.

Why I pursued a slightly more radical route in run 173.

3

"The National Road Management Corps?"

Dang Seorin tilted her head.

"I'm not sure I follow, but you're planning to create an organization like that, and you want me to lead it?"

"Yes."

Noh Doha was my first choice to shoulder the National Road Management Corps. And having a first choice meant there was a second.

Naturally enough, my second choice had always been Dang Seorin.

"Hmm... I have quite a few questions, but let's address this one first."

"Ask away."

"Why me, specifically?"

That was a simple question. There were many reasons why Dang Seorin suited the position of commander of the National Road Management Corps.

"I knew you'd ask that, so I prepared some materials."

"Huh? Materials?"

"Yes. Please look at this PowerPoint presentation."

"... Oh, that's odd. Suddenly I'm getting this awful feeling that I asked something I shouldn't have."

(1) Leadership.

Across countless runs, Dang Seorin had already built Three Thousand Worlds into the strongest guild on the Korean Peninsula.

Not only that, she had governed the metropolis of Busan superbly—a city that had effectively become the capital since Seoul's destruction.

Even when other guild leaders relied on AI judges, Dang Seorin used her Equivalent Exchange magic to administer justice in Busan her own way. Both the members of Three Thousand Worlds and the citizens of Busan accepted this method of governance.

In terms of leadership, there was likely no one who could match her.

(2) Noblesse Oblige.

While some guild leaders were busy occupying cities and building little kingdoms of their own, Dang Seorin threw herself into battle without a moment's hesitation. She headed to the front lines to fight the anomalies.

Tenlegs. Udumbara. Meteor Strike. Whenever powerful anomalies swept across the Korean Peninsula, she sang her magical songs on the battlefield, shaving away her life—literally, her remaining lifespan.

Dedication to the public.

The ability to turn that dedication into results.

The charisma to package and publicize those achievements, gathering supporters and establishing authority.

Dang Seorin possessed these exceedingly rare virtues.

... As I've mentioned several times before, this end-of-the-world era was rife with the bizarre ideology of "awakened supremacy."

Like Noh Doha, I always referred to awakened people simply as "awakened." But plenty of people called those same beings "transcendents" or "ascendants."

Dang Seorin did not stake so much as a fingernail's worth of her identity on such word games. She simply shouldered responsibilities as boundless as her power.

It was hard to find anyone as qualified as her to command the National Road Management Corps, a role that required "not only uniting the awakened, but considering every human being on the Korean Peninsula."

(3) Personal Charm.

Beyond the charisma required to lead a group, even in one-on-one interactions, Dang Seorin...

"No, wait, wait! Stop! Stooop!"

"Hmm?"

While I was enthusiastically expounding on "101 Reasons You Should Command the National Road Management Corps," Dang Seorin waved both hands.

"Undertaker, enough! That's plenty! Stop now! Please!"

"What's wrong? I haven't even finished yet."

"I said stop! You—this, you... Are you trying to embarrass me to death? Huh? Trying to make me die of shame? Seriously, good heavens. You're insane!"

As you might infer from the fact that she ordinarily went around with a pointed hat and a witch's broom, the part of Dang Seorin's brain responsible for embarrassment and shame had atrophied.

Even so, if you carpet-bombed her with praise in areas unrelated to "magic," "witches," or "songs," her brain would panic, much like weakened thigh muscles trembling after an excessive round of squats.

And at times like these, unreasonable demands had an exceptionally high success rate.

"Understood. Then may I take that to mean you'll accept command of the National Road Management Corps?"

"Yes! I'll do it. I'll do it, so shut up before somebody hears you!"

See? That's how a former Dang Seorin manager operates.

And so Dang Seorin's Three Thousand Worlds guild merged with the National Road Management Corps. No, it would be more accurate to say Three Thousand Worlds now evolved into the National Road Management Corps.

The entire process went smoothly.

Few worried that too much authority was being concentrated in Three Thousand Worlds, a mere guild. Dang Seorin's reputation had the power to turn concern into anticipation.

If you asked why I hadn't put Dang Seorin in charge of the National Road Management Corps in previous runs when it was this simple—apart from assorted minor excuses, there was only one truly fundamental reason.

["If at all possible, don't tell the next run's me that you're a regressor."]

I could not confess to Dang Seorin that I was a regressor.

Because of her own last words.

In run ten, the run in which we first succeeded in subjugating Tenlegs and I revealed that I was a regressor, Dang Seorin tied one knot of an eternal binding around me.

["I'm greedy, and I worship the god of impulse buying. I could never think, 'I'll abandon this run for the sake of the next one.'"]

["If I learn that I have hundreds of years of lifespan left, I'll definitely spend them for the sake of the current run."]

["Guide me into accumulating lifespan until the very end. Until the truly, truly final crisis arrives."]

I kept that promise.

From run ten through run 173, I never once revealed my secret to Dang Seorin.

And that meant, unlike Noh Doha or the Saintess, Dang Seorin could never join our Regression Alliance.

I could freely share the information I gained through regression with Noh Doha, but to share it with Dang Seorin always required a little packaging and acting... In other words, lies.

Lies. Something I would ordinarily never inflict on Dang Seorin.

But in run 173, perhaps because Noh Doha's early departure had been so shocking, I decided to experiment with the hypothetical route: [What if Dang Seorin led the National Road Management Corps?]

Sure enough.

On this route I was exploring for the first time, Dang Seorin displayed her talents to the fullest.

"Undertaker. You know that Equivalent Exchange magic you helped me develop the other day? I thought it over yesterday, and I think its potential applications are endless."

"Yes. Whenever I send Corps members on patrol in other regions, I'm going to make sure there's always someone who fought in the Tenlegs subjugation. That way, if they get into a dispute with another guild, can't they smooth things over by saying we were all comrades in arms?"

"Hmm—the AI judge Guild Leader Cheon Yohwa provided is certainly convenient. But people sometimes refuse to accept its verdicts, don't they? So I'd like to make it possible for final rulings to be handed down here at the Corps headquarters in Busan..."

My judgment had been sound.

Though she had the data Noh Doha had accumulated and my advice, Dang Seorin took command of the National Road Management Corps with astonishing speed, as though it were only natural.

And before long, she began coming up with ideas that neither Noh Doha nor I had ever considered.

"Say, Undertaker."

"Hmm?"

"Could we record a song I cast through Spell-Song Chanting and keep it playing softly throughout the entire city? For instance... by developing magic that makes people feel a little happier."

That was the beginning.