Chapter 140 - The Fortunate One II

3

["Mr. Undertaker. Something terrible has happened."]

One night, the Saintess sent me a message through Constellation Talk.

I sprang to my feet. Three in the morning. If she was waking me at this ungodly hour, something seriously urgent must have happened.

"What is it?"

["You told me before that when we enter the seventh year, ‘Meteor Strike’ will appear in the night sky and devastate South Gyeongsang Province."]

"Yes, I did."

["An anomaly suspected to be Meteor Strike has just been observed above the East Sea. It was spotted from Ulleungdo."]

What?

["A photo has been posted on SG Net, too."]

["It only has fourteen views because it’s so early in the morning, but please take a look."]

Horrified, I changed out of my pajamas and rushed off.

The Sword Marquis, who had been sleeping curled up like a cat on my doorstep, followed me.

"What is happening at this hour, Sword Duke?"

I will not explain how the Sword Marquis came to call me the ‘Duke of Swords’ instead of Undertaker.

There were plenty of things in this world I would rather not explain, and most of them involved lunatics.

"Apparently, an anomaly has just appeared over the East Sea."

"Ho! An evil creature dares launch a night raid! What a vile wretch!"

TAP, SPLASH-SPLASH!

After setting foot on Haeundae’s sandy beach, the two of us ran across the sea off Busan as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Treading Duckweed, Crossing Water.

A level of the lightness arts that allowed us to gather our energy—aura for me, internal energy for the Sword Marquis—and step across the water’s surface.

"Still, an anomaly in the middle of the sea. Who can say whether it bodes ill or well? I would consider it preferable to one appearing on land, but you seem to disagree, Sword Duke."

Of course it bode ill.

My [Regressor Schedule] was so airtight you could believe it had been written by a mentally ill person with a severe obsession with punctuality.

I had built it to accommodate discrepancies of about a week whenever they arose. But for the most important points—the times when anomalies appeared—I had meticulously scheduled everything down to the minute and second.

'Meteor Strike shouldn’t appear for another several years! Why now? Did something go wrong when I killed the butterfly effect in Beijing?'

This would throw a massive wrench into my project to strengthen the bonds among the awakened under the pretext of defeating Meteor Strike.

Anxiety gripped my heart.

Sure enough, when we reached the waters near Ulleungdo and looked up, a multicolored Milky Way stretched across the pitch-black night sky.

I muttered blankly,

"It really is Meteor Strike...?"

Actually, defeating Meteor Strike itself posed no problem.

Surely a regressor in his 590th run could beat one of the Korean Peninsula’s early-game bosses.

But as I said, there was no avoiding a serious disruption to my plans.

How would I strengthen the Korean Peninsula Awakened Federation’s unity? How would I cement Dang Seorin’s position as Alliance Leader? And so on...

As my worries surged like waves, surrounded by the midnight sky and midnight sea...

"Huh?"

Something flashed on the far side of the night sky where Meteor Strike spread out.

That glimmer was moving rather fast.

A disc-shaped—in other words, saucer-shaped—flying object raced across the sky...

And collided head-on with Meteor Strike.

-T҉w҈i҉n҉k҈l҉e҉,҉ t҉w҈i҉n҉k҉l҈e҉,҉ l҉i҈t҉t҉l҈e҉ s҉t҈a҉r҉?

Meteor Strike shuddered. Perhaps the human equivalent would have been tilting its head in puzzlement.

For the record, a sea-like expanse had been artificially spread around Meteor Strike.

Naturally, when the ‘disc-shaped flying object’ struck that surface of water in the night sky, its trajectory abruptly changed.

BOING, BOING, BOING—

The disc bounced across Meteor Strike’s surface. Like a skipping stone.

"..."

My jaw dropped.

'Wait, that’s a UFO!'

Yes.

A mysterious disc-shaped flying object.

A race with the greatest combat power in the universe, but whose Pokémon type unfortunately happened to be Fire, making them weak to Water. It was UFO, the ill-fated anomaly destined to dissolve like sugar the moment it plunged into the East Sea.

"Uh, uhh—uhhhhh?"

BOING, BOING, BOING, BOING.

The UFO kept skipping.

-A҉҉h҉?҉ A҉҉h҉?҉

Bombarded repeatedly in the dead of night, Meteor Strike simply died.

No, it actually died.

Meteor Strike elimination complete.

An early-game boss had exited the stage without the awakened of the Korean Peninsula lifting a single finger.

BOING, BOING, BOING, BOING, BOING.

Even through all that, the UFO bounced off Meteor Strike’s waves a staggering eighty-nine times.

As a result, the UFO, which should have fallen into the middle of the East Sea, veered off in a completely different direction.

North.

Not toward the sea, either, but toward the land of North Korea.

"N-no!"

I screamed. That scream came straight from the heart.

"Hmm? What do you mean, no, Sword Duke?"

"If that thing lands on solid ground, we’re finished! There are a hundred and twenty anomalies inside that fucking saucer, and every single one is stronger than you, Sword Marquis! They’ll unleash disaster on the world!"

"What?"

The Sword Marquis’s expression changed.

"Then we must pursue them immediately! I must ask them to teach me a thing or two!"

"Yeah. Fuck."

The Sword Marquis’s insanity aside, he was right that we had to give chase.

I cranked my aura to maximum output and ran, determined not to lose sight of the UFO.

Behind me, the Sword Marquis shouted, "Hah! Sword Duke—wait, Sword Duke!" But that was none of my concern.

I had no time to humor that old man in a kid’s body and his senility.

"Hah, huff. Haaaah...!"

For the first time in a very long while, I ran hard enough to get out of breath. I traveled so far that I even lost contact with the Saintess along the way.

To cut to the chase, the UFO crash-landed even farther north than North Korea.

Specifically, between Shenyang and Sinuiju. Aliens were scurrying out into the region known as Manchuria.

SKREEEE?

SKREE. SKREEEEE.

They looked exactly like disgusting cockroaches pouring out of their nest.

Except these cockroaches were a bit strong. Very strong.

I hid in the bushes some distance away and observed the aliens.

Despite being a race out of science fiction, the aliens employed martial footwork as naturally as breathing while exploring in every direction.

Then again, if their genre was space opera rather than science fiction, it wasn’t all that different from traditional martial arts fiction.

SKREE?

One alien tilted its head and dipped its feet into a stream, ankle-deep.

SPLISH, SPLASH.

An admirable spirit of adventure, but enjoying the health benefits of a footbath was a privilege reserved for humans and Japanese macaques.

The alien melted away, bit by bit, from the tips of its toes to the top of its head.

SKREEEEEEE!

SKREEK! SKREEEEE! SKREE!

The aliens kicked up a fuss.

They were probably saying things like, ‘My God! How can such a horrifying substance exist?’ and ‘Having witnessed a member of your species melt like candle wax upon mere contact, you must now make a SAN check.’

After that, the aliens grew busier.

SKREEEEE!

SKREET! SKREEEE!

The aliens pulled laser guns out from inside their clothing. With those, they collected every nearby rock, patch of soil, and mineral.

ZZZZZZZ—

Through technology utterly incomprehensible to humans, Earth’s minerals got NTR’d—stolen away to suit the aliens’ every need.

SKREEK-SKREEK!

SKREEEEE.

The aliens drew in all sorts of material with their lasers and began building something.

The minerals struck by the laser beams floated in midair, being shaped in real time. Into walls, pillars, and mysterious pieces of interior decor.

In less than thirty minutes, an utterly bizarre structure rose in the middle of Manchuria.

Uh, to compare its appearance to something on Earth as closely as possible... A termite mound?

Except it was pitch-black. A dark, lava-like liquid flowed ceaselessly down its surface. Even at a glance, its form was blasphemous.

SKREEEEE.

SKREE, SKREE.

Apparently impressed by their own NTR skills, the aliens put their arms around one another’s shoulders and danced buoyantly.

After enjoying their dance party for a while, they slipped into their very own termite mound... Hmm. Black-ant-mound fortress.

"..."

What was this?

Was that sinister fortress a bridgehead for invading Earth? Or an antenna tower to signal refugee ships of their kind still drifting through space?

"Haaah! Hah, huuuuff! Huff! S-Sword Duke. At last... Hah, I have caught up. A true master of the lightness arts. To think I would lag so far behind..."

"Shh. Be quiet. They’ll notice us."

"Huuuuff... Huff? What on earth is that bizarre-looking, huff, tower?"

"I don’t know either. Only that the anomalies built it."

I dug a proper camouflaged trench and settled in to observe them.

I intended to uncover what made those things tick, even if it meant giving up on this run.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t need to remain hidden for long.

The purpose for which the aliens had erected that bizarre building soon became clear.

PATTER-PATTER-PATTER—

It rained.

From the aliens’ perspective, the ‘substance of death’ was raining down in an aerial bombardment.

Earth’s specialty, H₂O, poured onto the black-ant-mound fortress in abundance, too.

The filthy liquid gushing down its surface continuously carried the rainwater away.

Long after the rain stopped, the aliens poked their heads out of the black-ant mound.

SKREE?

SKREE, SKREE.

SKREEEEEE.

Amazingly, the aliens were fine.

For starters, the armor they wore had changed shape slightly.

Should I call those raincoats? Anyway, they had put on something resembling black raincoats.

Apparently, they had been running their sewing machines nonstop inside the black-ant mound.

SKREEEEEE!

But as anyone who has worn a raincoat knows, they’re surprisingly poor at keeping water out.

The aliens’ newly modified armor wasn’t perfect, either. If they wandered Earth’s moisture-laden surface for too long, they gradually began to melt.

What were they, Ultraman with his three-minute time limit?

Still, the mere fact that they had found hope of surviving on this hellish planet of doom seemed precious to the aliens.

SKREEEEE! SKREE!

The aliens gradually expanded the black-ant mound.

Rather than adding floors upward, however, they aggressively increased its footprint.

Have you heard of ‘The Line,’ the project Saudi Arabia pursued so ambitiously before drastically scaling it back?

You can also picture the Great Wall of China.

In short, the aliens’ black-ant mound increasingly resembled a ‘barrier.’ That was only natural, since they kept extending the building to either side.

"Huh?"

And that great wall... kept growing toward the Yellow Sea in the west and the East Sea in the east.

'No. No. No, hold on.'

Eventually, the aliens’ ‘Black Great Wall’ stretched straight across Manchuria.

In other words...

'Even if a monster wave happens... the black wall will block it!'

And that was exactly what happened.

Several years later, the Ocean-class anomaly ‘monster wave’ swallowed the world, then finally surged toward the Korean Peninsula on the eastern fringes, hoping to make it the next course in its eating show.

But just before reaching the peninsula, the monster wave encountered a completely unexpected obstacle.

GURGLE?

GRRRGL?

Some shitty-looking barrier stood squarely in the way of its advance.

At first, the monster wave wasn’t flustered. It marched forward confidently instead. No matter what wall those nobodies built, wouldn’t it be nothing more than Wall Maria before the Titans?

SKREEEEEE!

SKREEEEEEE! SKREEEEE!

The problem was that every alien bursting out of that Wall Maria possessed martial prowess on par with Captain Levi.

Against a total of 116 Captain Levis—a few had died in the meantime—the monster wave was annihilated without putting up a fight.

Not a single alien died while slaughtering that army of a staggering two hundred thousand.

Of course, the monster wave automatically produced troops, so it launched the same overwhelming assault the next month, and the month after that. And every time, it got its ass kicked just as thoroughly.

Naturally, the Korean Peninsula south of the Black Great Wall was safe.

No need for Mo Gwangseo’s Holy State of the East to put on its desperate ass-clown show. No need to launch Sim Aryeon’s Operation Zero Requiem.

Without suffering any damage whatsoever, we were completely freed from the threat of the ‘monster wave,’ which I had judged virtually impossible to defeat.

"This... actually works?"

My jaw dropped.

To tell the truth, my jaw had been hanging open for the past several years.

So the actual strategy for beating the ‘monster wave’ was to somehow use Meteor Strike to skip a UFO like a stone, land it in Manchuria, and induce the aliens to build their own Great Wall of China to stop the monster wave’s nomadic invasion?

You expect me to believe this shit, anomaly?

"Lucky you..."

Noh Doha offered that assessment over a sip of coffee after hearing my story.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but the dark circles under his eyes seemed lighter than in other runs. After all, every undertaking of his was going smoothly.

"But didn’t you say this was the fallout from your wish to that ‘Monkey’s Paw’ or whatever? Heh. Doesn’t matter to me, but aren’t you going to be fucked in a few years...?"

"..."

"I’m very much looking forward to whatever batshit fuckery comes crashing down on you. I’ll get my VIP ticket in advance and be waiting..."

This was seriously driving me insane.