Chapter 13 - The Unidentified One I

1

Regressors are human too. Human.

I was a very long way from being an omniscient, omnipotent god.

Just look at the Sim Aryeon affair. How could I possibly have known that things would unfold like a Japanese web novel titled ‘【Manga Serialization Begins】I Thought I Was a Worthless Awakened, but in This Run I’m Actually the Greatest Healer Ever~I Saved Patients from the Brink of Death and Now They Call Me an Angel, but Hey, Hey, How Does Everyone Who Treated Me Like an Idiot Feel Now? ~【On Sale 11/11】’?

Let me say it again: being a regressor doesn’t mean you know every secret.

Every once in a great while, even I encounter incidents you could call unsolved mysteries—or ghost stories.

Events that make me wonder, as I look back over Old Man Scho’s café au lait, ‘Anyway, what the hell was that?’

Today, I thought I’d introduce one of those mysteries.

2

Do you believe there’s such a thing as balance in the world?

For example, if there are scumbags among humanity, there are angels too.

Likewise, when villains crop up in an online community, their polar opposites also appear: popular stars everyone wants to befriend.

-[Contentment]CookingQueen: Do you want peace of mind? Join the Contentment guild! Our main base is in Daejeon!

CookingQueen was always popular on SG Net.

I could only remember hearing good things about her.

“CookingQueen? I haven’t observed her for very long, but she wasn’t a bad person. She takes good care of her guild members and even volunteers every Sunday. Personally, I don’t think there’s anyone among the awakened with a character as trustworthy as hers.”

Witness No. 1: the Saintess.

“Oh, CookingQueen. I know her. She’s a fantastic member. Seriously, running SG Net, I’ve seen everything anyone should—and shouldn’t—have to see, but I’ve never once seen her cause trouble. Does that mean she’s boring? Not at all. She posts plenty of funny stuff, and she doesn’t act superior. Whew. If all our members were like CookingQueen, I wouldn’t have to suffer like this...”

Witness No. 2: Seo Gyu.

-[Contentment]CookingQueen: Goryeojang, I believe in the goodness planted like a seed within your heart. Why do you keep repeating actions that hurt yourself? If something is troubling you, please come to me for counseling.

-Goryeojang: Please... Stop... I was wrong. I’m a fucking asshole and a bad person, so please don’t talk to me like that...

Witness No. 3: Sim Aryeon.

Awakened with wildly different personalities all testified with one voice: CookingQueen had a heart rarely found in this day and age.

Even the Saintess, famously demanding in her judgments of others, was unstinting in her praise. Testimony from someone who could observe the awakened firsthand through [Clairvoyance] carried exceptional credibility.

Naturally, I, Undertaker, the one and only infinite regressor (the other one besides me had filed for extended leave), also had a favorable impression of CookingQueen.

-BookishGirl: This ZERO_SUGAR guy... What a nose.

└[Contentment]CookingQueen: Disparaging others is really an act of lowering yourself. Every human being is a mirror reflecting me, and I am a mirror reflecting every human being. Please respect and be considerate of one another.

When those despicable creatures lurking in the shadows slandered me, CookingQueen, at least, defended me.

I knew better than anyone how difficult it was to insist on doing good alone while everyone else did evil.

And so, run eighty-nine.

At the time, encouraged by the jackpot I’d hit with Seo Gyu, my “unscratched lottery ticket,” I was trying to recruit a different awakened as a companion in each run. CookingQueen, who had proven her resolve and integrity throughout the previous runs, was one of my targets.

I most certainly wasn’t approaching her because she had personally taken my side.

“Hello.”

“Hello there.”

And recruiting CookingQueen wasn’t difficult. Like Seo Gyu, she was very close by.

In the waiting hall of Busan Station, the very place where my regressions began.

The person behind CookingQueen was among the 399 people summoned there.

“I thought we’d be safer moving as a group, so I’m putting together a party. If you don’t mind, would you join me, at least until we get out of Busan Station?”

“Oh. Yes, I’d like that.”

She was a woman with pink hair.

Her hair color was flamboyant, but her demeanor was calm in contrast. It was the tranquility of someone who had been through countless experiences in life, yet ultimately hadn’t lost herself.

There was a mismatch between that color and her expression. But rather than seeming strange, the incongruity became a charm uniquely her own.

“Thank you. You can call me Undertaker, or Taker for short. May I ask your name?”

“Go Yori.”

The woman who, in previous runs, would have been active on SG Net as CookingQueen smiled brightly, calmly, and politely.

“Please, just call me Yori, Mr. Taker.”

3

To get straight to the point, Go Yori had absolutely no combat abilities.

Actually, it wasn’t just combat abilities: we found no useful powers whatsoever. All she awakened was [Presence Concealment], at best.

If she’d had a talent for sniping or assassination, [Presence Concealment] might have been a good ability. But she truly had no talent for fighting at all.

“Uh. Agh! Urgh! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Go Yori looked ready to cry as slimes, some of the weakest monsters around, kept bouncing into her.

Sim Aryeon—who had also become a member of my party around run fifty-one—went over and roughly tore the slimes away.

“Y-Yori... You really are fucking useless...”

“Yes. It seems I have no talent.”

“I-It’s okay. I can protect you!”

“Thank you, Aryeon...”

The glimpse of camaraderie between companions was truly beautiful. Aside from the fact that Sim Aryeon, who was saying all this, also ranked at the very bottom in combat strength.

Even so, we didn’t expel Go Yori from the party.

It wasn’t because I feared the story would turn into a banishment tale tagged #Regret #Obsession #Misery. There were perfectly rational reasons.

“Oh. Guild Leader.”

Five in the morning. A quiet, blue hour before daily life began. As I drank café au lait in the kitchen of our guild lodgings, Go Yori came down from upstairs with quick little steps.

I’d lived as a regressor for a long time, but I still found it difficult to get used to being called “Guild Leader.” That title was somewhat special to me.

Still, I showed none of that and responded naturally.

“You’re up early.”

“Yes. I wake up on my own around this time.”

Go Yori chuckled sheepishly and scratched her cheek.

Plus ten points.

Early to bed and early to rise was, after all, the foundation of a wholesome, healthy human life. That conviction remained unchanged in my hundredth run and my thousandth.

Go Yori came into the kitchen and looked around.

“You always brew your own coffee in the morning, Guild Leader. And our guild’s name has ‘café’ in it too. Is it a hobby of yours?”

“Yes. It wasn’t originally, but an old friend knew a great deal about it. Somehow I ended up getting into it too.”

“That’s wonderful!”

Go Yori brought her hands together to form a tilted triangle, then tipped her head slightly and beamed.

“I think following a set routine early in the morning is itself proof of diligence. How should I put it? A declaration that you won’t just let time flow past untouched? And yet you’re drinking warm coffee, Guild Leader. It relaxes both body and mind. It’s a very good routine!”

A smile spread across my lips.

I had a different reason for coming to love the early morning, but Go Yori wasn’t wrong.

“You and I understand each other. Off to water the flower beds now?”

“Yes. The mountain hydrangeas have bloomed beautifully! I was worried about whether the soil would suit them, but the blue came out so bright. It made me really happy!”

Plus thirty points.

Lazy people spread the can’t-be-bothered virus around them, while diligent people radiate vitamins of haaard work.

Tending the flower beds without anyone asking was admirable enough on its own. And she spoke so coherently, with such precise, lovely phrasing, that watching her filled me with contentment.

Though, for some reason, whenever I said this in front of my party members, the response was underwhelming.

“Um, Boss.”

“What is it, Seo Gyu?”

“You’re not much older than me, Boss, but listening to you talk, you sound just like a department manager at some company...”

Now, now.

When I frowned, Seo Gyu smoothly averted his gaze.

The Saintess nodded as she accepted the coffee I’d brewed—a masterpiece made to taste as much like instant coffee packets as possible.

“I think Mr. Undertaker is right. Every virtue arises from habit, and habit begins with diligence. Without diligence, any virtue is liable to deteriorate into dilettantish self-display.”

“Exactly, right? I knew it. Seo Gyu, you should learn a thing or two from Go Yori and the Saintess.”

Seo Gyu wore an inscrutable expression.

“... Weird. Our guild’s average age is almost the lowest in the business, so why does it feel like this...?”

He grumbled like that, but fondness for Go Yori wasn’t limited to me. Every member of the party felt it.

“Go Yori! Let’s grab a beer after training! Our usual place got a shipment this week!”

“Um, Yori. About running SG Net...”

“Y-Yori. Would you like to have lunch together today...?”

Party members famous for being as difficult as wild horses became as docile as donkeys whenever they stood before Go Yori.

In fact, that was precisely why I decided to keep bringing her along.

I can say this now: awakened generally had nasty personalities. It wasn’t an inevitable rule that held one hundred percent of the time, but there were certainly cases where the more bizarrely twisted someone’s nature was, the stronger their abilities became.

Our guild consisted of promising S-rank and A-rank prospects. Their emotional instability was correspondingly spectacular. Even Seo Gyu, perfectly meek in front of me, was the lunatic who had fearlessly hurled “Hey, you fucking bastard!” at the tutorial fairy.

As for the Saintess... I trusted her enough to put my life in her hands, but it was hard to call her personality ordinary. She occasionally talked to Seo Gyu about running SG Net, at least. She sent more messages to people than anyone else, yet paradoxically hated communicating with them.

Getting along with everyone in a guild full of troublemakers like that was by no means an easy feat.

‘The party members are far more mentally stable than in previous runs.’

Plus two hundred points.

Affection surpassed Lv. 7.

It didn’t matter if Go Yori was a worthless awakened who could learn nothing but [Presence Concealment], barely more than an ordinary person with a nose hair sticking out.

As I keep saying, few things matter more to a person than mental resilience. What good are the strongest combat abilities? If your mind collapses like Old Man Scho’s, all you do is change classes from Scho to no-show.

“Yes, everyone. Let’s have lunch together, then.”

Go Yori served as a bridge connecting all the guild members.

She even mediated between awakened who would have been at one another’s throats in previous runs, drastically reducing my burden.

Watching from a distance, I whispered to the Saintess.

“Go Yori is as comforting and dependable as a bowl of rice soup. Managing the organization has become ridiculously easy. You know Hayul? The quiet kid? Even she follows Go Yori around. At this rate, I think we could push things a little and expand the guild to twenty or thirty members without a problem.”

“...”

“Hmm?”

When I turned at the lack of a reply, the Saintess looked a little dazed for some reason. Her always-clear eyes had grown slightly clouded.

“Saintess?”

“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry. What did you just say?”

“Nothing particularly important. Has the heat gotten to you? Shall I bring you some cold water?”

“... No, I’m fine.”

The Saintess murmured,

“I was just marveling at how she really is close to everyone. As you know, I’m about as far from that sort of person as you can get.”

“Doesn’t every personality have its strengths and weaknesses? Go Yori may have stresses she can’t tell anyone else about.”

“Yes. You’re right.”

In many ways, run eighty-nine felt promising.

SG Net’s operations were sailing smoothly. Sim Aryeon, the villain Goryeojang, had once again changed classes into the Bird That Drinks Aggro, successfully becoming an A-rank healer.

The Saintess’s backup was perfect at all times, and thanks to Go Yori’s friendliness, with her charm stat at MAX, the guild was more tightly knit than in any other run. We’d arrested every last fairy and even won nationwide support from the awakened.

A run in which our power had solidified, both openly and behind the scenes.

‘Maybe... this time, we might actually stop the end of the world?’

Looking back now, it was nothing but utter nonsense, but what can I say? At the time, I sincerely believed it.

After such a satisfying day, I went to bed.

The next day, I opened my eyes and tried to sit up.

It was my ironclad rule to get up immediately upon waking, rather than laze around in bed.

“...?”

But that day, for the first time in ages, I faltered in bed.

Not because I’d suddenly attained enlightenment in the ways of laziness.

I simply stared blankly upward.

At the ceiling, which had been clean and completely bare when I went to sleep.

[Do not trust the pink hair.]

An unfamiliar sentence was carved into the familiar ceiling.

4

Infinite regression had given me countless lessons.

One of those gifts was named “doubt.”

Old Man Scho, a regressor just like me, was no different. Hadn’t he said it long ago?

[“Don’t put too much trust in these constellation things, or whatever they are.”]

Everyone took the constellations’ existence for granted. But Old Man Scho pointed out that they “favored Koreans” and never let go of his suspicions.

In the end, he was right. The constellations were a masked performance the Saintess put on for the entire nation.

‘German.’

As I ate breakfast with my guild members, I thought about the sentence I’d seen in my room earlier.

‘It was carved with a blade tip, not written with a pen. In that case.’

I took the dagger from inside my clothes and looked down at it.

A weapon for self-defense that I kept on my person even while sleeping.

Inspecting the blade, I found fine dust and tiny particles clinging to it. I would have to ask Uehara Shino to determine their exact composition, but even a cursory look suggested they were the same material as the ceiling.

In other words.

‘Someone took the dagger from inside my clothes and carved a sentence into the ceiling in German, which only I could read. Not only did they avoid my noticing throughout the whole process, they also bypassed every security measure around my bedroom.’

Was that possible?

‘Impossible.’

What’s more, I had asked a fortification specialist known as the “Puppeteer” to lay fine “spiderwebs” throughout the ceilings of our guild hideout.

Except perhaps for Dang Seorin’s guild train, no other headquarters had such a high level of security. At the very least, none of our guild members had the talent to penetrate it and pull off that stunt.

Old Man Scho might have managed it... but that was impossible too. I’d already checked the old geezer’s corpse as soon as run eighty-nine began.

That left only one suspect.

‘Me.’

Myself.

I stared at my face reflected in my glass of water.

If I were the culprit, I could easily have committed the act despite all those obstacles.

The problem was... no matter how I searched my mind, I had no memory of carving that damned sentence into the ceiling.

‘Brainwashing? Sleepwalking? A split personality? Amnesia? Hypnosis?’

Countless possibilities came to mind.

Whatever the case, it had to be one of two things.

‘Either it’s meant to drive a wedge between Go Yori and me, or it really is a warning about her.’

I turned my head slightly to the side and happened to meet Go Yori’s eyes as she munched on a sandwich held in both hands.

“...?”

Go Yori smiled brightly and went on eating her sandwich.

... My heart settled calmly.

I, too, ate normally, as though nothing had happened.

‘To think this kind of unfair bullshit would happen in run eighty-nine, which I thought was my best run ever.’

In an emergency like this, the Saintess was ultimately the only companion I could consult. Not only did she know I was a regressor, she could assess the situation more objectively than anyone.

“By the way, haven’t the constellations stopped talking lately?”

“Huh? You too? I haven’t had any messages since yesterday.”

“Doesn’t it make you a little anxious when they suddenly go quiet after talking to you every day?”

I paused.

At the guild members’ chatter from the dining table, I reflexively looked their way.

“You’re not getting constellation messages?”

“Oh, yes, Guild Leader.”

“I think people are talking about it on SG Net right now too.”

I had a bad feeling.