Chapter 134 - The Doomsayer VI

"Huaa! Uwaaaaaagh!"

The Sword Demon charged.

But compared to when he had sliced my head off in one go, he moved like a slug's grandfather.

His footwork had changed for the worse. To avoid the land mines—statues—I had planted throughout the city, the Sword Demon was forced to take inefficient routes.

Of course, it was hard to believe that Old Man Scho, now reduced to a Fallen, still possessed the staunch political convictions he had held in life.

In fact, the statues I had made the most of were heads of Adele. Old Man Scho's dear wife, in other words.

Even behind the statues of Marx and Luxemburg, statues of his wife were peeking out from hiding.

Those wife statues probably accounted for about ninety percent of the Sword Demon's reluctance to embark on an iconoclastic campaign.

You might wonder, 'Then weren't the statues of those commies unnecessary?' But the question itself went against the Korean Peninsula's anticommunist ideology.

Why would I pass up a perfectly legal opportunity to humiliate and degrade that senile old bastard? Especially when this was the first hilariously entertaining event to come my way in thousands of years?

A regressor should always enjoy himself while he can.

I made some of the wife statues as half-length figures rather than heads. I needed to give them right arms to recreate the 'fuck you' pose.

Hundreds of middle fingers stood proudly raised toward Old Man Scho.

With some outdoor decorations added to these utterly desolate city ruins, there was finally something worth looking at. Now this was environmental beautification. This was urban aesthetics.

"...! ...!"

The Sword Demon howled again at my meticulously prepared barrage of gifts. Clearly, he was moved by his old comrade's thoughtfulness.

I couldn't quite understand the language anomalies spoke, but translated into German, wouldn't it have been something like 'Danke'?

Behind me, Go Yori murmured.

"How fascinating..."

Leaving our spectator, who was just here for the fun, behind, the two of us exchanged furious sword blows—or, more precisely, blows with a sword cane and a steel pipe.

Even if my opponent was Old Man Scho with his potential maxed out, having his routes dictated made this a fight I could handle.

"Grrrrrr!"

As if frustrated, the Sword Demon stepped on the air and soared upward.

He meant to eliminate even the possibility of stepping on a statue!

But that was a shortsighted trick. Apparently, the old bastard had been on vacation for so long that he had lost his sense of just what sort of person I, the Undertaker, was.

"Look—at—me!"

RIIIIP!

Without a moment's hesitation, I tore off my shirt. Behind me, Go Yori laughed at my sudden strip show. "Oh my, oh my."

But going shirtless wasn't mere fan service. Nor was it a performance meant to taunt the enemy, like some paladin tank.

It was purely an artistic desire to show Old Man Scho the portrait drawn on my underwear.

My undershirt was as white as drawing paper.

And on it was a portrait of Mrs. Adele.

"...!"

Old Man Scho jolted to a halt in midair, as though he had collided with a car.

The fingers gripping his steel pipe trembled. His stupidly hanging mouth played nothing but anomaly noises: "Uhh... Uhh?"

From the old bastard's perspective, he had been ambushed by the masterpiece of the century. Naturally, he could only worship it.

And it wasn't just my clothes. I had tattooed Mrs. Adele onto my forearms, the backs of my hands, and even my feet...!

[Wife Shield], a strictly superior, upgraded version of [Friend Shield], had descended upon this place.

"Go ahead and attack, old man. I said, attack me. Where will you strike? My neck? Do you see the ADELE written here on my neck?"

"U-uhhhh... Uhhh, huaagh...?"

"Cut it off if you can! You rotten old bastard!"

The Sword Demon floundered, unable to advance or retreat. Even Old Man Scho, who had tossed friendship to the dogs and run off without a care for me, was helpless before 'love.'

Remember this. This is the proper way to deal with anomalies.

Servants don't go to such lengths to hide their true names for nothing. The moment you learn their identity, their weakness is exposed. Once you have that weakness in your grip, an anomaly's stiff neck becomes no tougher than a chicken's.

From here on out, it was my turn all the way.

Clad head to toe in my anti-No-Show AT Field like iron armor, I charged.

"I've wanted to punch you in the fucking face for a thousand years!"

"Uwaaaaaagh!"

One blow. Another blow. And another.

Every time I swung my sword cane, Doha, the Sword Demon could do nothing but scramble to evade it.

Even amid all that, Old Man Scho's dull eyes scanned my skin. Was he searching for a gap where he could stab me without hitting Mrs. Adele's portraits and tattoos?

But I hadn't made the mistake of the goddess who tried to make a baby invincible, only to leave his ankle untouched.

A Korean who had received an early education in misery fiction by reading <Uturi, the Baby General> from childhood was all the more determined to avoid that kind of bullshit.

"Huaaaaagh...!"

In the end, Old Man Scho couldn't find a single weakness on my body. Unable to sustain his Walking on air, the Sword Demon fell.

Only one option remained to him: getting the shit beaten out of him by me.

And that beating made no distinction between body and mind. I wasn't a mind-body dualist like Descartes, treating matter and the psyche separately.

"Emit, darling, what's going on?"

"...?!"

"I'm at a conference! Good heavens. Have you been drinking? Why are you acting like a child? Hmm? Wait, Emit. I hear something strange in the sky!"

The lines pouring out of my mouth were a verbatim copy-and-paste of a thirty-second phone call Old Man Scho had once had with his wife.

Sufficiently advanced plagiarism was indistinguishable from the original.

I perfectly imitated not only the call's contents, but her voice as well. By converting the vibrations of sound waves into aura, I had succeeded in reproducing 'Mrs. Adele's voice.'

This strategy was born of inspiration from my battle in the 107th run against the Executor, the Saintess's Fallen version. Using a tactic invented by one Fallen against another was truly an achievement of human intellect.

"My brother's name is Maximilian! Oh God! Emit, what are you suddenly talking about?! This is driving me crazy. Wait, hold on. Let's talk about this in person later!"

"Uhh, uhh, uhuuuh...?"

Old Man Scho was utterly defenseless against my 'voice phishing' tactic.

The German's mental fortitude was being whittled down in real time by a Korean's K-scam attack.

"Oh my, oh my..."

As Go Yori watched us fight—how should I put it? Her entire face glowed with rapture.

It was like the expression you wore when you bought bread from a subway-station bakery because its aroma was criminally enticing, then found that it really did taste wonderful. She seemed to feel sated just by watching.

The battle continued for one day, two days, three days, and then four.

I wasn't merely using this bloody battle to unload thousands of years of pent-up stress on Old Man Scho. That accounted for only eighty-five percent of my purpose.

The remaining fifteen percent, as I had told Go Yori, was to study the 'answer key' with my own eyes.

'Whatever else it is, the anomaly before me is a realized version of the talent Old Man Scho might have brought to fruition.'

I let out a long breath, redirecting my opponent's aura as I steadied my breathing. Then I looked straight at the Sword Demon.

Shortcuts rather than proper methods. The unorthodox rather than the orthodox. Berserker rather than Saber.

His attainment might have been built through sinister demonic energy rather than pure energy, but even so, the Sword Demon was unquestionably one possible realization of the martial artist named Emit Schopenhauer.

My gaze sharpened.

'I need to remember as much as possible.'

The way he gripped his sword's hilt.

The direction of his swings. The proportion of feints mixed into his attacks, and how he used them. The angles at which he put weight behind his sword, and the speed with which he deftly deflected blows. The ways he incorporated aura into his swordsmanship.

The sword techniques Old Man Scho would eventually have mastered on his own, had he not quit the game in the twenty-third run.

'I'll watch them, remember them, and pass them on.'

For Old Man Scho, who would return someday.

That was why I prolonged, as much as possible, a battle I could have ended a little sooner.

I introduced countless scenarios. How did he react to an attack from the left?

How did he defend when I feigned a sword slash, then suddenly fired intangible aura?

What if I responded like this? What about this situation? Oh ho, even this?

I hurled countless question marks at my enemy.

"Uwaaaaaaagh!"

And my comrade answered with countless exclamation marks.

Hammering countless curved question marks into exclamation marks of one's own—that was the path a martial artist walked.

Even if a human fell into an anomaly, that did not mean his blade bent too.

'I can't tell what subtle principles lie within these moves.'

I'll admit it honestly. As Old Man Scho had said, my martial talent was hopeless.

I had entertained a little hope, just in case, but even the dazzling feast of swordsmanship and footwork unfolding before my eyes failed to move my five senses in any dramatic way.

Those moments of enlightenment, breakthroughs to a new level, and other fortuitous encounters so common in martial-arts fiction apparently wanted nothing to do with me.

As a martial artist, I was below average.

'Still, if I accurately reproduce even the outward movements and demonstrate them, the old bastard will figure out the hidden meaning himself.'

As a supporter, however, my talent was supreme.

There had been few moments when I was as grateful for [Perfect Recall] as I was now.

I stayed true to the role originally given to me as a regressor in this world. I helped my comrades. Supported them. Connected them to one another.

I used the cliffs of time and death—the absolute severance imposed upon mortal humans—as stepping-stones, joining them into a single unbroken line.

"Old man. You aren't fighting me right now, nor are you fighting to defeat me."

Ink-black aura crossed with night-sky aura.

"Uwaaaaaagh! Huaa, huaaaaaagh!"

"You're fighting your future self, who will be a slightly better person than you are now. It's quite a coincidence, really. Aren't all battles ultimately duels against oneself?"

"...!"

"I'll make a prophecy. Someday, you will lose your life beneath your own blade."

The fight that had continued through the nights for four days was slowly drawing to a close.

I thought of it as a long letter the present Old Man Scho was sending to his future self.

Hadn't people once exchanged letters containing records of their moves to play Go over long distances?

Then surely there was nothing strange about two martial artists exchanging a martial-arts manual across a somewhat distant span of time.

"... U-uh..."

The Sword Demon was utterly exhausted.

Even a killing machine operating on the single principle of 'love for his wife' had its limits.

Because of the inherent limitations of a design based on a human body, the Sword Demon's muscles suffered from endless minor wounds, and his heart groaned under unrelenting fatigue.

His aura wasn't infinite, either.

On a battlefield rigged thoroughly in my favor, Old Man Scho's engine was the first to cool.

POP, P-POP—POP—

The Sword Demon's aura, once grand enough to dye broad daylight the color of the night sky, had become a pitiful shadow of itself.

Like a broken TV intermittently displaying static, the color of the night sky flickered around Old Man Scho's shoulders, flashing on and dying out again.

If that anomaly was Old Man Scho's fall, then this sight was the anomaly's downfall.

Yes. It was rather paradoxical for me, a regressor, to say so, but many events did have an end.

The time was approaching to finish burying a little time capsule inside my head.

"Uhh, uhhh... Uhuuuh..."

As I stepped backward, the Sword Demon reflexively swung his steel pipe.

He staggered.

The pitiful blow stirred nothing but empty air.

The Sword Demon tried to follow me. But his stride collapsed, and he fell. His ankles bore dozens of cuts, like the base of a tree an inept woodcutter had failed to fell.

He tried to crawl toward me, using his hands if he had to.

But his clumsy control of aura had shattered all his fingernails.

Blood gushed from beneath his ten broken nails every time he scrabbled forward.

The Sword Demon's blood was pitch-black and smelled of coal briquettes.

A long trail of ash stretched out behind him.

"..."

I raised Doha.

I resolved to strike the final blow against Old Man Scho—against his remains, against his Bad Ending.

For a very long time, I had believed that if Old Man Scho died, I alone would be qualified to conduct his funeral.

But I had no choice but to pause before bringing down my sword.

Crawling with his arms if not his feet, his hands if not his arms, his fingers if not his hands, his fingernails if not his fingers, Old Man Scho was not heading toward me, the person he had battled to the death for four days.

"... A..."

His destination was a little farther behind me.

"...del...e... A..."

He was heading toward Go Yori.