Chapter 130 - The Doomsayer II

3

There is one thing I strongly recommend to all of you who will someday read my life story: establish a decent relationship with the tutorial fairies if you can.

I was an inexperienced regressor, so we built up a cycle of hatred, cutting off each other's heads and smashing each other's skulls. But there is no need for you to wade into that hell of bloodshed too.

"Hee-hee-hee. The operation to crush the reactionary guerrillas hiding deep within the unconscious folds of Comrade General Secretary's brain starts now...!"

"Good. I'm counting on you."

The tutorial fairies were genuinely decent anomalies. If you revised history just a little to gloss over their bizarre speech and the way they ground humans up in their tutorials, you could at least have a conversation with them as a Homo sapiens, couldn't you?

As long as you didn't open with a greeting like, 'What the fuck are you talking about, you fucking asshole?!' you could make a good impression on a fairy easily enough. In fact, that was a greeting best avoided with humans as well.

The fairies scurried over and surrounded me. I counted sixty-four of them.

"First, to enter the unconscious, you must relax your mind and body above all else and fall sound asleep!"

"Mm."

I lay down on the bed. The fairies arranged themselves for a circle dance, then firmly clasped my left and right hands from either side.

Fairy–fairy–(me)–fairy–fairy.

That was what it looked like as a diagram. Thirty-two tutorial fairies formed a chain on my left, and another thirty-two on my right.

"Now we shall invite Comrade General Secretary to our fairy homeland. If you have a song request, please tell us!"

"A song request?"

"Hweh. Entering the territory of dream demons requires a suitably adorable lullaby...! Without a request, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star will be selected as the default background music!"

Since <Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star> had left me traumatized thanks to Meteor Strike, I requested <Island Baby>.

The tutorial fairies joined hands and swayed their shoulders from side to side.

"When Mommy goes into the island's shade—♪"

"To gather heeeads—♪"

"The baby stays alone—and takes a shiiit♪"

Wait. Were those really the lyrics to <Island Baby>?

"Zzz..."

Before I even had time to question it, the fairies' song lifted me bodily and plunged me into sleep.

A blink.

When I opened my eyes, the scenery had changed. A moment ago, I had definitely been lying in the bed at my hideout. Now my cheek rested against a café table in the former Baekje Hospital building.

Old Man Scho's corpse lay beneath the table.

The fairies still held my hands tightly. But their Eight Gates Golden Lock Formation of thirty-two on each side had been cut precisely in half, to sixteen on each side.

"Oh...? Hey, this would be an instant cure for insomniacs. Commander Noh Doha is always complaining about not getting enough sleep. If you sang this for—"

"To the song the sea sings—♪"

"The song of doooom♪"

"Zzz..."

I fell asleep again within the dream. As my consciousness faded into the distance, I wondered whether something like this happened in the movie <Inception>.

A blink.

After that, I continued through dreams within dreams. Each time, my consciousness dove into a darker unconscious, into a deeper sleep.

From the hideout to the café, to Dang Seorin's VVIP train carriage, to the convenience store at Jamsu Bridge, to Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School...

"Huh? Deputy Guild Leader, you—"

Sometimes, a character in a dream recognized me and widened their eyes.

The 'guild leader' from a run long ago—Dang Seorin, that is—was startled to see me too.

But the lullaby did not stop.

"Head cut off, gently—♪"

"Driiifting off to sleeep♪"

Deep. Deeper still.

Dreams within dreams.

All the way down to the bottomless pit of the unconscious, which a normal human could never perceive, and could never remember even if they dreamed of it.

"—Sir?"

"Boss."

"I-it's the Guild Leader..."

"Big brother."

It was an endless fall.

The relationships, memories, and essence belonging to the human called the Undertaker fell farther and farther, scattering into pieces.

Like an animal slaughtered in a butcher's shop. Like a wooden doll whittled away in a sculptor's palm.

"Though humanity sleeps soundly—♪"

"Soooundly it sleeep s—♪"

"The baby's cries."

"The soul trembles."

A blink.

Every time I entered a 'dream' one level lower, the number of fairies dwindled too. Sixty-four, thirty-two, sixteen, eight, four, two...

At last, one.

"Hweeeh."

Fairy No. 264. The first tutorial fairy I had ever met in my life was clasping both my hands.

The fairy, uniquely rendered as a two-dimensional chibi character in reality, wore an expression best represented by >_<);;.

"Eeeek... Goodness! That was so, so much work!"

The fairy shook its head vigorously from side to side, sending equally cartoonish beads of sweat flying.

"Comrade General Secretary's unconscious is far, far too solid!"

"... Is it?"

"Eek. In all my long, long life as a dream demon, I have never seen a human with an unconscious structured like this! Comrade General Secretary, there is absolutely no distinction between your 'present' and your 'past.' Everything is immediately present before your eyes, and there are thousands of years of it! A structure no mere mortal could possibly withstand...! Truly worthy of the General Secretary of Steel who leads us!"

"Mm."

As a human, I found it difficult to understand the observation that my unconscious was 'solid.'

All I could do was guess that my [Perfect Recall] had given the fairies trouble.

How should I describe this?

Unlike other people's memories, mine did not fade. Except for my memories from before the fourth run, that is.

From my perspective, thousands of years had already passed since I became this way, so I was actually accustomed to memories that seemed genuinely visible before my eyes.

It was also why Old Man Scho sincerely envied me.

That old geezer's bitterest regret in life was that his wife's face and voice were gradually fading away.

There will be another opportunity later to discuss this peculiar condition of mine.

"Anyway, good work. Is this the bottom of my unconscious now?"

"Hee-hee-hee. Indeed! Reaching this place is truly impossible for anyone but highly trained dream demons like us...! This project has exceeded its targets thanks to the heroic resolve of our revolutionary heroes!"

I looked around.

The waiting hall at Busan Station.

In a sense, it struck me as very fitting. I might have a separate birthplace as an individual, but where else could the regressor Undertaker call home?

My point of origin. Somewhere in the empty air of the waiting hall lingered a sense of substance no different from reality.

"It doesn't feel like a dream at all."

"Of course not. This place is not merely Comrade General Secretary's individual unconscious. It is practically 'humanity's collective unconscious' itself. A phenomenon as essential to human survival as air or water... Reality before reality, an a priori structure, a surreality."

"The collective unconscious? That's Carl Jung's concept. You know about that sort of thing too?"

"Hee-hee-hee. Thanks to Gapless, we accessed all of humanity's knowledge and received a crash course!"

"Ah."

"In any case, you must be very careful here, Comrade General Secretary. What surrounds you now is not mere physical reality, but humanity's unconscious itself...!"

Even as it spoke, the fairy did not release my hand. Just as when the Fairy Monarch had briefly shown me Gapless's domain before, that probably meant this place was genuinely dangerous.

"The laws of space and time mean nothing here!"

"You mean it's practically a void?"

"Not practically—it is the void itself!"

Some people talked faster when discussing something they knew well. Fairy No. 264 apparently belonged to that breed.

"In a sense, dreams are the very first great void to fall over every human...! We could only establish a base camp in this waiting hall because it is the 'most familiar place' to Comrade General Secretary."

"A base camp, huh."

"Yes. So once we leave this place, you must not let go of my hand under any circumstances! Comrade General Secretary, to activate the emergency escape protocol if anything goes—"

It happened then.

CLICK

The soft sound of a shoe heel echoed through the waiting hall. Far too high up for the sound of a heel striking the floor. Like a village church bell.

Beyond the area where the fairy and I stood, the hall was shrouded in darkness. And so the figure responsible for the footsteps slowly emerged from the bottom up.

CLICK

Black loafers. White stockings. A purple skirt covering the calves below the knees, its white stripes lightening the oppressive weight peculiar to that deep plum color.

"Oh?"

Pink hair.

"How curious."

"..."

"Fancy meeting you here, Guild Leader."

Go Yori.

Go Yori was smiling sweetly.

My heart lurched.

My aura surged faster than my pulse. I drew it up throughout my body, about to cut off Go Yori's head in a single stroke.

"—Hweh?"

BOOM!

The weight clasping my left hand suddenly diminished. I turned to find the fairy's entire head torn off its body.

Pieces of fairy flesh pattered onto the floor a moment later, like a song whose rhythm was out of sync.

Fairy No. 264's arm hung limp in my hand. Once, twice, three times it seesawed, until at last it settled.

Instant death.

A dream demon, which wielded far more omnipotent power in dreams than in reality, had been slaughtered in an instant within that very dream.

"..."

"Oh, I'm sorry. But I was so happy to see you after such a long time, Guild Leader, that I just... I'm truly sor—"

No questions. No answers.

I drew up my aura at full power and kicked off the floor.

I passed Go Yori, and the sensation of her neck exploding under my single slash traveled through my cane sword into my hand. A bang, more an explosion than a slicing sound, followed one step behind.

I had grown considerably since the battle with Tenlegs. I neither said anything like 'Did I get her?' nor checked whether I had. I simply kept sprinting.

In short, I ran like hell.

"—Aha."

And before I had run even three hundred meters, I came face-to-face with Go Yori again.

THUD!

Our head-on collision sent Go Yori tumbling backward.

She rubbed her nose with a rueful smile.

"Ouch, ah... I'm sorry, Guild Leader. I wasn't watching where I was going. Ahaha. You know how clumsy I am."

"..."

I immediately fired my aura upward.

An inverted lightning bolt pierced Busan Station's ceiling. The sky came into view. I gathered aura in the soles of my feet and launched myself upward.

Walking on air.

At this point in time, it was a feat only someone like me, who had honed aura to its utmost limit, could perform.

"What lovely weather."

Go Yori sat on a cloud.

"..."

"As long as you watch out for the void, doesn't the air up here feel a little clearer than on the ground? Oh. Guild Leader, would you like some pu-erh tea?"

Using the cloud as a bench, she swung her feet in turn. A thermos and teacups had even been set out beside her.

I stopped walking on air and dropped straight down.

CRAAASH!

The instant I struck the ground, I dug with all my strength. Into the earth, down underground.

I was a drill, and our drill was the drill that would pierce the underground.

"Oh, silly me. You preferred Ceylon tea to pu-erh, Guild Leader."

Six hundred meters underground, I unearthed Go Yori, buried there with Ceylon tea in both hands and a bright smile on her face.

"..."

"Oh. We were playing hide-and-seek, weren't we? Then... was I it? Guild Leader, found—you! Ahaha. Is that how you do it? I haven't played hide-and-seek since I was little, so this is a bit embarrassing."

GodBuddhaAllahShivaMoGwangseoJesusChrist! Please!

I had no choice. I activated my final emergency escape protocol, No. 552-71: 'Pansori Song of the Red Cliffs.'

"Unexpectedly, a furious wind roars, rrrrumble! As the wind howls, Zhou Yu hastily comes thump-thump-thumping down from the command platform and looks toward the banners..."

"Oh-ho♪ The Azure Dragon and Vermilion Bird banners answer the White Tiger and Black Tortoise, fluttering northwest! In a flash, a mighty southeast wind rises, and the flagpoles craaack♪ Jerk♪ The banner boards go rolling, rrrrumble♪"

"..."

"Ah, they rise like thunder, and at the sight of this, Zhou Yu's heart quakes with teeerror♪"

DONG

Wherever she had found a janggu drum, Go Yori deftly struck its bass side. Her singing was as masterful as mine, and I had once received professional instruction in the Song of the Red Cliffs from a pansori singer during a vacation run.

"Oh? Guild Leader, aren't you going to keep singing? I practiced this so much so I could sing it with you..."

"..."

The ends of Go Yori's eyebrows drooped.

Only then was I forced to face the stark, cold truth.

Yes.

I was fucked.

Pretty fucking badly, too.