Chapter 159 - The Strategist XI

Have you ever heard the term sixth sense?

A sixth sense. Literally, a sixth faculty of perception.

Something beyond the sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch that every human possesses.

Most people would ask whether such a sense even exists, but I truly possessed something worthy of that name.

An intuition for fate, perhaps.

I suspected it was because I had lived far too long as a regressor and experienced far too many events.

My ability to discern the causes and consequences of events had developed to an excessive degree.

Not always, but sometimes a single word or gesture was enough for me to sense what would happen afterward.

Anyone who has fallen in love—especially at first sight—will understand what I mean.

A human life is like a traditional ornamental tassel made of many strands of thread. It is the sensation of one of those strands connecting to the person before your eyes.

"I'll write your novel, Mister."

This was one of those moments.

Oh Dokseo's eyes were half closed. My breathing, too, grew a little thinner, as though matching the narrowing of her eyes.

"A novel?"

"Yeah."

"You mean to seal the God of Alienation by using a novel as the format instead of a stream?"

"Yeah."

My voice was no different from usual.

But with every word Dokseo and I exchanged, my consciousness, situated somewhere far behind my head, curled ever closer to the space before my eyes.

I opened my mouth.

"Why?"

"Look. In the 'stream' you chose, I play a game character who just moves according to your instructions. Everyone else, except the Saintess, is nothing more than an NPC. So..."

Dokseo pointed down. There, the [Operator of All Things at Play], reduced to a white girl, clung to the top of her foot.

"There's some truth to the warning that God of Alienation spat out. If we define you as too much of a 'higher being' compared to other humans, then someday, probably—no. You'll definitely become a God of Alienation-class anomaly yourself."

"..."

"... The same goes for me."

Dokseo smiled bitterly.

"I've felt this all through our conversations, but if I'd fought you like the God of Alienation planned... If a 'book transmigrator' and a 'regressor' had fought, and I'd finally claimed the protagonist's place... I think I probably would have become an anomaly too."

I remained silent.

Because that was, in fact, one of the world-ending scenarios I had anticipated.

The [Protagonist] anomaly.

Oh Dokseo defeats me and ascends to the protagonist's position. Then she becomes one with the God of Alienation and receives every cliché reserved exclusively for protagonists: 'protagonist plot armor.'

"Neither of us can be allowed to gain too much of an advantage over the other. We're too powerful. I'm not talking about our aura levels or anything. We were given the positions of book transmigrator and regressor right at the starting line."

"..."

"Just by existing, we have the possibility of defining the world itself... Potential that's no different from an anomaly's."

Indeed.

-Whoever fights anomalies must beware of becoming an anomaly themselves. If you gaze long into the void, the void will also gaze into you.

That sentence, with only a few words altered from Nietzsche's aphorism, suited us perfectly.

Therefore.

"... I'll become the author who writes your story. There's that, uh, genre called literary reportage, right? Where you reconstruct things that really happened into a novel."

"Hmm."

"If your life story is recorded by my hand, at least you won't fall into being an anomaly on a higher plane than me. Because I'll be your 'author.'"

And.

"I'll only be a narrator following your life story, too... Yeah. Good. I think it'll make for a reasonably balanced relationship."

"You're saying we should shackle each other."

"Oh, yeah. Exactly! That's it!"

Dokseo laughed.

Human laughter was as radiant as droplets from a fountain in some town square, catching a brief sip of sunlight before falling back down.

I said,

"Not a bad idea. But wouldn't that give you a little too much power as the author?"

"Hmm? Would it? Ultimately, readers judge a novel, and the author is bound by that judgment, so I don't think it's such a grand position. Isn't it closer to being a shrine maiden who offers herself as a sacrifice to people? But if you're still worried... Oh."

Dokseo lightly tapped the laptop with her palm.

"How about this? I'll write the novel about you. But for the parts that mention me, you write them instead."

"..."

"Even I couldn't stand being told to type about myself... Blegh. Absolutely not! It'd be way too embarrassing."

She shuddered, apparently horrified by the mere thought.

"So... I'll narrate you, and you'll narrate me. We'll honestly tell each other things like what we were feeling when we did something, so we can use that as reference."

"I see. Each of us is both protagonist and author. Like mountaineers tying their lifelines together so we don't fall into becoming anomalies of the void."

"Yeah. Isn't that good?"

"..."

I watched Dokseo for a long time.

Did this child truly understand the weight of what she had said?

Had the excitement of being able to define a God of Alienation however she wished made her speak too rashly about the course of her own life?

Was there really no danger that she might instead contaminate me under the pretext of interpreting me?

Could she keep her promise?

Could she... could she... could she... Doubts echoed several times through the valleys of my heart.

But I found that breeze of doubt refreshing instead, and nodded. What did it matter if the promise went unfulfilled?

This child was walking toward somewhere, and she was even smiling as she walked. That was enough.

"All right, Dokseo. I'll entrust my interpretation to you."

"Yeah. I'll entrust mine to you, too. ... Whoa. This is kind of embarrassing..."

Dokseo cleared her throat a couple of times, then crouched down.

She looked down at the [Operator of All Things at Play].

"Hey, God. You heard us, right?"

-...

"I'll keep Mister Undertaker in check like you want. But if you're my god, respond to my answer, too."

Dokseo thrust the laptop screen before the God of Alienation's eyes.

[ W h a t i s t h i s w o r l d ? ]

[ This world is a novel written by 'Oh Dokseo' that tells the story of 'Undertaker.' ]

Dokseo tapped the screen twice with her long fingers.

"There. This is the world as I define it."

-...

"Well, I haven't written anything yet, but I can start tomorrow. On this laptop. Anyway, since it takes the form of a novel, it's a creative work, right? This compromise shouldn't give you that much to complain about."

-..., ...

"So unless you want to be relegated to some forgotten old geezer in the back room, shut up and write <ORV> for the me of every run to read. Dear God."

BZZZZT!

At that moment, the white girl's form warped and was sucked into the laptop screen.

Dokseo flinched in surprise, but did not drop the laptop from her hands.

First the white girl, then the filthy black liquid the God of Alienation had spilled, and finally the vast white space itself. Everything mixed together in a vortex and swirled into Dokseo's laptop.

A little later.

Like dark clouds clearing from the sky, the God of Alienation's domain vanished cleanly from the world.

Just as Cheon Yohwa had imprisoned Gapless inside an hourglass, Oh Dokseo had sealed the [Operator of All Things at Play] inside a laptop.

"Huh?"

"Where are we...?"

One by one, the magical girls began opening their eyes in the devastated hotel garden.

Looking around at them, Dokseo muttered a disgusted groan.

"If the day ever comes when I write today's story as a novel, I'm absolutely not describing what those magical girls look like..."

"What a coincidence. I agree. I already feel I've secured an excellent author."

"Half of them aren't even girls in the first place. Have the awakened in Japan gone a little nuts?"

"In this run alone, the magical-girl population on the Korean Peninsula is probably a little larger than that of the Japanese archipelago."

"The worst..."

Dokseo shook her head and slipped the laptop into her backpack.

Then she held out a hand to me.

"Anyway... I'm counting on you from here on, Mister."

"And I'm counting on you. Oh, since we're making this a novel, I have a good idea."

"Yeah? What is it?"

"I'll tell you later."

The idea was to insert a six-hundred-chapter Romance of the Three Kingdoms parody into the middle of the novel. It was later rejected by Oh Dokseo, who knew nothing about the Three Kingdoms.

We shook hands.

"Oh, and I've read lots of novels, but this is my first time writing one. You'll have to help me a lot, okay?"

Holding my hand, Oh Dokseo—the very first reader and very last author of my story—was smiling brightly.

Anomaly: Operator of All Things at Play.

Aliases: Logout Game, Cliché, Muse, Hello-I'm-God, Omniscient Regressor’s Viewpoint, Fourth Wall, Author Syndrome

Threat Level: Lv.5 God of Alienation-class (Alienation)

Subjugation complete.

There is an epilogue.

By now, it must be perfectly clear to you all.

Yes. This very story, which I recount and Oh Dokseo edits into a novel, is an 'anomalous artifact that seals a God of Alienation.'

It is also a weight that holds me, Undertaker, and Oh Dokseo down.

The very act of your reading and judging it in real time is what keeps various anomalous phenomena suppressed.

Since I, Undertaker, regard every human who subjugates anomalies as a comrade—even the High Shrine Maiden of the Magical Girl Council is a comrade—you are naturally my comrades as well.

In my heart, I can only feel grateful for Oh Dokseo, who connected us this way.

"Mister, we have a problem..."

And so, Oh Dokseo awakened to the genius literary talent that had danced down from heaven, proclaiming, 'God made me write this novel,' and 'But now the author Oh Dokseo has become God herself!'... Nothing resembling that sort of happy ending happened.

It was closer to the exact opposite.

"I can't write..."

"You can't write? Why?"

"I just feel like everything I write sucks."

Alas.

As a reader, Oh Dokseo had looked down dismissively on every creative work in the world, but the moment she started tapping away at her laptop keyboard, she transformed into the weakest creature of all.

Sipping the coffee I had made her, Dokseo muttered gloomily.

"Before bed, I keep telling myself I'll write tomorrow, I'll write tomorrow. But when I wake up, turn on the laptop, and see that pure white screen, my fingertips go white too..."

"Why not write the way you just described that? You're quite good with words."

"Ugh! I told you, I caaaan't!"

It wasn't entirely Dokseo's fault.

As we later discovered, once Dokseo defined herself as an 'author,' the [Operator of All Things at Play] began treating her as one too.

In short, all the chronic ailments of authors had latched onto her.

[My Writing Sucks Syndrome], [Remake Syndrome], [Endless Revision Syndrome], [Plot Drift Syndrome], [I Can't Write Because I Don't Have Enough Experience Syndrome], [Changing the Desktop Wallpaper Over and Over for Some Reason Syndrome], [Going on Hiatus Because Something Came Up at Home That Day Syndrome], [Uploading Late Because of an Editor's Mistake Syndrome], [Plain Old Depression Syndrome], [Clicking SG Net and Doing Anything but Writing My Novel Syndrome]...

Truly a monarch of disease!

The ideal form of an 'author,' who carries every plague in the world through sheer existence, was forced upon Dokseo as well.

"This isn't it!"

BANG!

Whenever she got the chance, Dokseo hurled the laptop onto the floor. But it was still a God of Alienation's artifact, and not a single scratch appeared on it.

"But, Dokseo. It's been sixty days since you so confidently declared you'd write a novel, and you haven't managed even one prologue..."

"What do you know about a creator's anguish, Mister!"

I knew it very well. By this point, I had stockpiled a hundred chapters of my Romance of the Three Kingdoms parody, easily writing about two a day.

Fortunately, the 'Laptop of All Things at Play' persisted across runs.

In other words, even if she completed only six chapters in this run, for instance, all six would carry over intact into the next.

Of course, from Dokseo's perspective, with the God of Alienation's curse activating every time she typed, this enraged her: was it giving her the disease only to offer the cure?

"Being an author is painful..."

"No point discussing suffering in front of an infinite regressor."

"I can't live like this all by myself. Aaah! That's it! Mister! I'll ask the God of Alienation to spread these diseases to every other author too!"

"What?"

"When we die, we all have to die together... That's what makes the world fair and just, right?"

I voiced my objections, but Dokseo steadfastly pushed ahead with spreading the epidemic.

That day, a bloodbath swept through SG Net's Fiction Serialization Board.

Readers coughed up blood when the novels they had been happily enjoying suddenly announced one hiatus after another.

If any of you are authors who turn on your computer and immediately think, 'Fuck, why do I hate writing so much?' please blame that bastard Oh Dokseo. That's a God of Alienation's curse.

"Mister! Finally, I finished the first chapter!"

Still, thanks to Dokseo's tireless efforts, she showed me her first prologue a full two years after the God of Alienation's subjugation.

"Look at this! Oh, don't mind me! I'll just stand behind you and watch you read!"

"Hmm."

Let's have a look.

I drank café au lait with one hand while moving the mouse cursor with the other.

CLICK.

On the pure white Notepad file, the opening lines read:

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Infinite regression.

There is a genre by that name.

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