Chapter 129 - The Doomsayer I

1

Do you happen to have nightmares often?

I do.

One night, for instance, I dreamed that the Goryeojang villain had made Seo Gyu utterly subservient to her, becoming the tyrant of SG Net.

-Goryeojang: F-from now on, boomer topics like Romance of the Three Kingdoms will be banned on SG Net around the clock...

-ZERO_SUGAR: What are you talking about, Aryeon?

-Goryeojang: Aah, this resentment, this hatred. Your aggro tastes the best after all, Guild Leader. So delicious. You're a gourmet's paradise...!

-Goryeojang: From now on, I shall stand above the heavens...

And wouldn't you know it, every member of SG Net applauded, marveling at their new administrator's bold decision.

Even the Saintess, who always logged in anonymously, and Noh Doha, who scarcely ever participated in the community, registered under their real names just this once to sing the Goryeojang villain's praises.

What a horrifying nightmare.

Even if the whole world forgave this atrocity, I, the Undertaker, could not. The day after that dream, I secretly put an extra shot of espresso into Sim Aryeon's café mocha (Aryeon was puzzled by the change in flavor).

There were other nightmares, less horrifying than that one, but with a little more realism mixed in.

"Teacher? Teach... er?"

In that nightmare, I—the "Undertaker"—was already dead.

I couldn't remember exactly how I'd died. Even with [Perfect Recall], I had trouble recalling scenes from dreams. It might have been different if I'd bought a hundred-billion-won lucid dream from the tutorial fairies.

How had I died?

Had someone betrayed me and stabbed me in the back? Had I been murdered by someone I trusted enough to let my guard slip, despite almost always wearing a protective sheath of energy? Or had some anomaly against which aura was largely ineffective killed me?

Unlike other people, I had over a thousand possible causes of death, so I couldn't pinpoint it.

"Teacher, Teacher. Teacher... Wake up, Teacher. Please? Open your eyes..."

All I knew was that, in the dream, Cheon Yohwa was looking at my dead body.

Actually, "looking" wasn't the right word. Her red eyes were so wet, like a car windshield in the rain, that she could barely see anything.

She felt around. Kneeling before my corpse, she traced my outline a handspan at a time, relying on touch instead of sight.

It was just as well that she couldn't see.

Perhaps because it was a dream, I was observing the world in the third person, as though I'd had an out-of-body experience. And that world's genre was gore. Not a single part of my corpse was intact.

"..."

Cheon Yohwa soon realized that too. Her hands stopped.

"Die."

Then she repeated it.

"Die, die. Die. Die. Just die."

CRASH

Something shattered.

Then the dreamscape changed abruptly.

Something writhed around Cheon Yohwa, like static on an old television. Flickering alternately white and black, the static spread rapidly.

'Ah.'

Radiating from Cheon Yohwa like a tidal wave, the static swallowed a city, the Korean Peninsula, and the entire world in an instant.

The world screamed each time the static expanded.

BZZZT

Between one scream and the next, blood burst forth again and again.

Birch trees and red spider lilies.

The colors of the static and the blood looked exactly like what had once bloomed at Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School.

A divine domain.

The territory of a God of Alienation. When Cheon Yohwa, the master and priestess who had sealed it away, wished for the world's destruction, Gapless painted the world black, white, and red for her without a moment's hesitation.

'Yohwa. No, Yohwa. Don't do this.'

The fall of Cheon Yohwa, who had imprisoned all the anomalies of Hundred Tales, unleashed terrifying power.

This was precisely the [Bad Ending] scenario I'd envisioned in the first place.

A God of Alienation was dangerous. Having sealed one away, Cheon Yohwa always carried the risk of descending upon the world as an even more devastating catastrophe.

But she was by no means a weak girl. She was strong. After the 117th run, I had scarcely ever witnessed her mental state collapse while I was alive.

Yes. While I was "alive."

What if I died?

What if I died before Cheon Yohwa—and in a manner too degrading for her to accept, at that?

What would become of the pupil to whom I had personally handed a diploma?

KA HA HA HA HA KA KA KA KA

Freed from its glass prison, Gapless roared with mad laughter.

The entire Earth was reduced to a mass of black-and-white static. The God of Alienation, unexpectedly assassinated by a regressor, had finally returned and declared its ultimate victory.

Though it was only a dream, laughter too ominous to dismiss as a mere imaginary victory on the God's part embroidered the universe.

The funeral song the world sang as it ended was a sneer.

"Huh?"

That was when Cheon Yohwa—the name meaning Heaven's Desolation Transformed, which had instead swallowed Cheon Yohwa of the Thousand Songs and Tales—stopped laughing.

It gazed steadily at me.

I could feel it with my entire body: the black-and-white static, the Earth, the universe, the god that had alienated the world, was staring straight at me.

"You're not dead? Not yet?"

That was where my dream ended.

2

Similar nightmares repeated themselves time and again.

Cheon Yohwa wasn't the only one who appeared in them.

The protagonist changed with every dream. Dang Seorin, the Saintess, Lee Hayul, Sim Aryeon...

Of course, a dream was only a dream. It was easy to brush it off as a nasty, meaningless nightmare. And that was exactly how I'd been ignoring them.

"Hweh? A nightmare?"

But after learning in the 205th run that the tutorial fairies were actually dream demons, I changed my mind.

I decided I needed to take my nightmares a little more seriously.

"Right. Dreams are your specialty, after all. Could something like an 'anomaly that parasitizes dreams' exist?"

"Hweeh. Of course it could!"

Fairy No. 264 wiggled its bottom.

"We fairies aren't the only ones! Dreams are full of all sorts of anomalies!"

"Full?"

"Hweh. Humans have had the habit of treating dreams as another dimension for a very, very long time! To describe the situation using the terminology dictionary you personally developed, Comrade General Secretary, a dream qualifies as 'another world entirely different from this one, which I can enter—or find myself entering!'"

"... A void, then."

"Hee hee hee. Correct! There may be humans who have never entered a void, but there can be no human who has never dreamed...! Humans are a pitiful species, doomed from birth to experience the void known as dreams! And we fairies are the ones who live in that 'first void'...! A species with truly impeccable roots! Any reactionaries who covet the realm of dreams, our rightful Lebensraum, deserve a spanking!"

"Hmm."

Dreams could be a kind of void. No, they were a void.

Talking to the fairies, experts in that field, had convinced me of that. But my questions remained unanswered.

And I wasn't the sort to stew over questions on my own.

I immediately sought out the counselor I trusted most and opened up about my "nightmares."

"Why, of all people, am I that counselor...?"

"Because you have never once been the protagonist of a nightmare."

"Haa..."

Commander Noh Doha wiped her lens. It didn't accomplish much. The cleaning cloth itself was filthy, having gone who knew how long without a wash.

I snapped my fingers, summoning aura, and delicately cleaned the grime off her monocle.

"I keep telling you to clean it with water, not that cloth."

"I don't have time for such leisurely pursuits. I'm fucking busy. Hah. I might have some time to spare if a certain someone hadn't burst through my door claiming to need psychological counseling..."

"You mean Jiwon did that? I'll give her a stern talking-to later."

"Does this bastard seriously have no conscience...?"

"Anyway, please help me think this through. If this 'nightmare' is an anomaly, why does it keep trying to show me these dreams?"

"Hmm..."

Noh Doha chewed on the end of her pen.

"... First, setting aside the possibility that this is all meaningless dreaming conjured up by your unpleasant subconscious."

"Seriously, what kind of person do you take me for?"

"We can only conclude that its aim is to shake your mental stability. Well, anomalies have neither intelligence nor reason. But if we imagine them as intelligent beings like humans, frankly, Undertaker, you must be an inexplicable thorn in their side..."

"A thorn in their side?"

"Yees."

Noh Doha grinned.

"You know exactly which anomalies will appear and when, and you defeat them using all manner of bizarre methods... If that isn't inexplicable, what is? There are broadly only two ways to defeat you. Overwhelming numbers, or psychological attacks..."

"..."

"Overwhelming numbers. That would be the monster wave... But according to you, thanks to that, what's it called, The Bird That Drinks Poison or whatever, you can hold out for roughly eight years anyway, can't you...?"

"Yes."

"Then what choice is left? They can only chip away at your mind. I've been meaning to point this out for some time... Awakened Undertaker. You have a strong tendency to regard anomalies as rather too overwhelmingly powerful an enemy."

"Because they are overwhelmingly powerful enemies?"

"Well, once they're Ocean-class or God of Alienation-class, they could certainly treat us humans as insects. You said even the merely city-class Tenlegs was hopeless before you became stronger... But... From the anomalies' perspective, aren't you quite a terrifying being yourself...?"

"Hmm."

"So if I were an anomaly, I'd try to break your mind. Showing you the people you cherish falling apart, one after another... That seems like a decent tactic. What do you think...?"

Indeed.

Noh Doha's analysis had merit.

Of course, as she herself had emphasized, anomalies didn't possess humanlike intelligence.

Rather than saying an anomaly had the "aim" of breaking "me," it made more sense to say that a "phenomenon that happened to threaten me" had arisen.

Either way, however, the fact remained that an "anomaly seeking to cause my mental collapse" existed.

"Talking to you has helped me sort things out, Commander. But still, isn't it only a dream? It doesn't seem to be doing any particular harm to our reality for now, so let's leave it alone."

"Hah. As you wish. I'll leave matters concerning anomalies to you, Awakened Undertaker. In any case, I'm rather pleased that I've never appeared in those sinister nightmares..."

But several runs later, it became clear that our judgment had been far too complacent.

"Teacher!"

PAT PAT PAT

Cheon Yohwa, formerly the basketball club's star player, rushed toward me. We were at Depth 1,200 meters in Café Hideout. Though this deep chamber was small enough that running was unnecessary, she hurried over.

As though I might disappear somewhere.

Only when she was right in front of me did she sigh in relief.

"Ah... Ohh, you're all right, Teacher. Thank goodness..."

"What's wrong? Why do you look so upset?"

"... I'm sorry. I had a really unpleasant dream last night."

"An unpleasant dream?"

My long life as a regressor had developed a highly refined sensory organ at the back of my neck. The moment I heard the words "bad dream," it raised goosebumps with all its might.

"Yes. In the dream, something bad happened to you. It was so cruel. You did everything you could to help people, but nobody appreciated it, and I can't remember clearly, but they betrayed you too..."

Sure enough.

My premonition hadn't been wrong.

"So I was really, really angry. Suddenly, the people around me didn't even feel human, and if they weren't human, there was no particular reason to care about them... So."

"You broke Gapless's seal."

"Ah... That's right. Um, Gapless covered the whole world, and humanity went extinct, but I didn't feel anything at all. I hated that so much..."

Yes.

There was something I hadn't considered, and that Commander Noh Doha hadn't thought about either.

If the "nightmare" really was an anomaly, there was no way I was the only one experiencing it. Every human was being bewitched by the same anomaly whenever they had nightmares.

It was only because I was an awakened with [Perfect Recall] that I could remember this nightmare even vaguely. Most people simply forgot their nightmares after having them.

I wasn't especially worried about my own mental stability. Believe it or not, I'd devised all sorts of measures to maintain my mental health.

But if other people were at risk too?

That changed things considerably.

As you know, Dang Seorin, the Saintess, Cheon Yohwa, Sim Aryeon, and the others all had the potential to undergo a "fall" and bring about the end of the world if things went wrong.

An anomaly that gnawed away at their minds while they could barely even remember it warranted a significantly higher threat rating.

I went straight to the casino.

"Fairy No. 264."

"Hweh. What is it, Comrade General Secretary?"

"Gather as many currently available dream demons as possible. Make preparations for lucid dreaming, too. The time has come to raise the red flag once more."

"Hwek... We could gather about ninety. But what enemy of the revolution has appeared to warrant calling everyone up?"

I said,

"We're going to destroy the anomaly parasitizing humanity's dreams."

"Hweeh? That's our Comrade General Secretary...!"

Fairy No. 264 seized my hand in both of its own and shook it.

"Dreams are rightfully our territory...! If it's a matter of fucking up reactionaries who dare occupy our ancestral lands without permission, our Fairy Revolution Club will give you its full cooperation!"

Flower-scented tears streamed from the fairy's eyes.

It was the moment when, for the first time in history, a combined human (me)–anomaly (fairy) army was formed.