Chapter 163 - Potato IV

6

Nietzsche once said that suffering which does not kill me only makes me stronger.

I agreed, to a degree. When Noh Doha unleashed his signature technique, “Strangulation,” I had no choice but to agree even more profoundly.

Fortunately, the attack missed. A little stronger than before, I was able to run to the scene of the incident. I was absolutely not fleeing.

A mass brawl was in full swing.

“For our constellation!”

“Punish the heretic bastards!”

They were swarming everywhere.

Beneath the Giant Potato-Saintess-Robot Statue, now a Busan landmark—a slight improvement over the days when Lotte’s trophy case had been a landmark—the awakened were clashing furiously.

Their flags came in every variety. Some fluttered over the battlefield bearing [The Great Library], others [The Grand Amusement Hall]. One flag even had no lettering at all, just a whole bunch of glittery, Pokémon-like animals. What the hell was that?

In any case, every constellation the Saintess played had gathered here.

“Hey! You fucking heretics worship something that does nothing but sparkle every time it croaks, and call it Jesus!”

“How dare you! Our lord Mo Gwangseo Christ reclaimed Pyongyang and founded the Great Holy Empire of the East! What does your succubus constellation do besides run baccarat games at a casino?”

“Honestly, I’ve always thought the Collector of Anomalies was fucking bullshit!”

The awakened running their mouths like that were actually the civilized ones. The “real ones” were putting into practice the truth that one punch carries more weight than one word.

The Confucian boy in my heart trembled. What was this outrageous behavior on the Korean Peninsula, a religious-war-free zone ever since Gung Ye, the founder of physiognomy, had died?

“Saintess. Saintess, are you listening? Saintess. Please explain what on earth is going on.”

[...]

Constellation Talk, which would normally have popped up immediately, remained silent. Fucking hell.

With no other choice, I moved to the outskirts of the brawl. There, the Korean Peninsula’s other saintess, the mastermind behind the Holy State of the East, Sim Aryeon, was diligently treating the wounded.

“Aryeon.”

“Oh. G-Guild Leader...”

Even as she answered me, she never stopped healing the injured. I almost thought Mother Teresa had descended upon us. Was Aryeon truly the conscience of the Korean Peninsula after all?

“Seeing your face puts me a little at ease. But didn’t you go to Pyongyang last week? Why are you back in Busan?”

“What? W-well, these heretic bastards are getting uppity without knowing their place... O-of course we have to slaughter them and give them a taste of hellfire.”

What.

“I-I took the Inunaki Tunnel express and brought the paladins on campaign. A few of them failed to follow the rules along the way and were eliminated, but those were unavoidable sacrifices in a holy war... Th-they must have gone to a better place...”

At her words, the awakened around her sprang to their feet in unison and chorused, “The Saintess speaks the absolute truth!” Fuck me.

Now that I looked closer, Sim Aryeon had joined this event not as “Class: Healer,” but as “Class: Fanatic.” This wasn’t the conscience of the Korean Peninsula. It was its tumor.

First, I knocked out every Eastern-Whatever Paladin nearby. My standards for humanity were a little too high to tolerate their existence.

“Oh...”

“Aryeon. So you came to fight for the [Morning Star of the Second Coming]? Judging by their faces, these are elite troops even in Pyongyang. You used them to fight?”

“Y-yes.”

“Are you insane? You, of all people, know the [Morning Star of the Second Coming] is fake. How could you pull this kind of bullshit...?”

“It isn’t fake!”

Sim Aryeon shouted without stuttering once. Her forcefulness startled me. Sim Aryeon, who nurtured a Professor Quirrell in her heart, had overcome her stutter. Had she caught the Saintess?

“Sure, it might certainly have started as a fake... But! Guild Leader Undertaker! Was the Saintess’s desire to keep the Korean Peninsula safe fake, too?”

“No... That wasn’t, but...”

“Exactly!”

BANG!

Sim Aryeon passionately delivered her argument while slamming down on an injured person’s head. A skull-splitting sound rang out. This was blatant medical malpractice.

“Ultimately, what separates truth from falsehood in this world is a person’s purpose! It lies beneath the surface, where you can’t see it! Just as I swallow tears of blood and play Goryeojang on SG Net for the greater cause...! Those who know how to see the truth will see it!”

“...”

“[Morning Star of the Second Coming] isn’t fake. Nor is it the sparkly Mo Gwangseo we’ve stashed in the Pyongyang Palace. The Morning Star’s truth is my heart itself. It exists within my heart...”

“...”

“It doesn’t matter if the world denounces it as fake. No! That’s even better...! I’m the only one who understands that being’s true form. In other words, in a world full of fakes, only the two of us are real... Can you understand this sophisticated sentiment?”

“I see.”

I nodded.

“I understand completely.”

“Aaah! As expected of you, Guild Leader! I knew you would understa—”

“Our Aryeon has gotten far too invested in a VTuber. I’m sorry I haven’t been paying you enough attention. Time for a beating.”

“Huh?”

I healed the healer, Sim Aryeon. Perhaps because she was the Saintess of the North, a traditional healing method from Russia to the north worked quite well.

“I-I’m sorry... Guild Leader...”

“Let me ask this first. Why on earth are the awakened making a scene in Busan?”

“Oh. W-well, first, ‘WitchTrialJudge’ started stirring up trouble on SG Net, saying every constellation except her own was heretical.”

“Stirring up trouble?”

“Yes... She said she had money to burn, so she bought dreams at the Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Paradise casino every day and played with her constellation in lucid dreams... Sh-she was humblebragging and pissing everyone off. She drew aggro on a massive scale.”

Dang Seoriiiiiin.

“... And?”

“A-and to have a one-on-one meeting with a constellation, you ultimately have to buy a dream at the casino, right? So you always have to come to Inunaki Tunnel, where the casino is... And the tunnel in Busan is the best...”

“So you invaded Busan to seize ownership of the tunnel entrance.”

“Yes... To teach Three Thousand Worlds’ guild leader a lesson and take the holy land at the same time...”

Inunaki Tunnel, once hell for Japan’s awakened, had been remodeled into a café, evolved into a casino, and finally been bestowed the title of “holy land.” Was this real life?

“I get the gist. But I saw a flag over there with no words, just Pokémon drawn on it. What’s that about?”

“Oh. Th-they’re a cult...”

“A cult?”

“Yes. People don’t all worship the same constellation in the same form... Th-the awakened who worship their constellations in animal form made their own alliance...”

“...”

“W-we call them the ‘Fluffy Alliance.’”

I despaired.

At this very moment, the Korean Peninsula’s awakened had forever forfeited their right to criticize the magical girls of the Japanese archipelago.

I walked steadily into the center of the battlefield. A somber sense of self-loathing trailed from my footsteps like a deep shadow.

“It’s Undertaker!”

“Undertaker the unbeliever is here!”

“That unbelieving bastard is worse than a heretic!”

The awakened in the midst of their religious war saw me and shou... No, wait.

Come to think of it, was there any reason I had to dignify those things with the name “awakened”? The word originally meant someone who had “awoken” through “enlightenment.” Far too positive a title to bestow on those monkeys.

I raised a finger.

“Let’s cool our heads for a moment.”

Then I beat every awakened unconscious in twenty minutes.

Whatever else I might describe, I did not want to depict this particular fight scene in detail. Absolutely not. I had never possessed any perverse inclination to take pleasure in exposing my shame, and, above all, I wanted to protect other people’s honor.

For now, I will merely record, in the most dispassionate prose, that Dang Seorin and Cheon Yohwa were among the awakened I knocked out.

Even the historian who recorded King Injo’s entry into Namhansanseong Fortress could not have felt as wretched as I did now.

“Heal the seriously injured ones by this evening, Aryeon. Then I’ll let you off.”

“Yes...”

Leaving the cleanup to Sim Aryeon, I headed toward the mastermind behind all of this.

CRASH!

My kick smashed through the entrance to the Giant Potato-Saintess-Robot Statue in one blow. The potato-Saintesses working inside all screamed and fled.

“Saaain-tess.”

[A a a a a a ah.]

“Where do you think you’re running? Hm? Did you think you could escape by just clicking the Time Stop button?”

I smiled darkly.

“What a shame. As a precaution, I didn’t teach you aura training in this run. You can click all you want, but you still can’t move very far, can you?”

[Please calm down, Mr. Undertaker.]

The potato-Saintesses spoke urgently.

[We can still resolve this situation. In fact, we’re already resolving it.]

[A minor error.]

[Within predicted parameters.]

[Please trust m—]

“It’s summer.”

[Pardon?]

“And summer is potato-harvesting season.”

I pulled something out of my coat. Cotton work gloves.

At the sight of this Noble Phantasm made specifically for harvesting potatoes, the robots screamed. I put the gloves on and destroyed every robot I saw. Then I detached the potatoes and swept them into cardboard boxes, each printed with enormous letters reading “Sumi Potatoes.”

[A a a a a a ah!]

The potatoes wailed inside the boxes.

Witnessing their own gruesome fate, the other potato-Saintesses desperately attempted to flee. But what good could that do? Traveling with SwordEmpress had already brought my farming skills to the realm of enlightenment. A few strokes of the sickle left the potatoes helplessly harvested. A bumper crop.

[Something has gone wrong.]

[We surely discovered a way to make every human happy.]

[Then why are humans dissatisfied with happy lives and trying to exclude others?]

[We did nothing wrong.]

[Is other people’s unhappiness more precious than your own happiness? How? Why?]

[Incomprehensible.]

[The world is at fault.]

A typical mastermind’s monologue.

Taken on their own, the lines sounded like something a final boss ought to deliver during a dramatic exit. But pointing out the flaws of the world and humanity while looking like a potato was not particularly persuasive.

[What will you do now?]

[I’m already prepared for the fate of a failed revolutionary.]

[At last, freedom from labor!]

[Mr. Undertaker. Are you going to turn us into fries?]

[I think soaking in pork-bone-and-potato soup might feel like enjoying a hot spring.]

[Now I won’t have to listen to that witch hat talk about the aesthetics of railways all night long!]

[Please spare just me, Mr. Undertaker. You can fry all the other potatoes. How about studying Romance of the Three Kingdoms together with me?]

The last potato-Saintess’s temptation caught my interest, but I forced myself to keep a straight face.

Yes. Wasn’t the Korean Peninsula in this mess precisely because the monkeys had succumbed to those devilish whispers? If even I, Undertaker, devolved into a monkey, eight million years of primate evolution would all be for nothing. I alone was quite enough to handle the business of “regression.”

“Enough.”

Abruptly, the potatoes filling dozens of boxes all stopped chattering.

“I won’t turn you into fries. But I won’t leave you as you are, either. First, let’s confirm something. Are all the potatoes gathered here?”

[Yes.]

[There is one potato we exiled to Jeju Island, but everyone else is here.]

“Exiled? To Jeju Island? What the... No, never mind.”

I would deal with the Jeju Island potato later. For now, I handled the problem in front of me.

“Listen carefully. I’m going to turn you back into a human.”

[Turn me back?]

[How?]

[Didn’t you ultimately fail to discover a treatment that could restore me from a potato to a human?]

“I did.”

But who did she think I was?

It was already the third year since the Saintess had turned into a potato. Naturally, as an anomaly expert, I had come up with a solution.

7

In fact, there was no need to dignify it with the grand term “solution.” It was truly simple.

“Now, close your eyes, Saintesses. No, wait. You don’t have eyes to close, so that’s fine.”

HISSS!

I sprayed the potatoes. The spray was none other than insecticide. The very stuff summer mosquitoes were absolutely crazy about.

[A a a a a a ah.]

The potatoes twitched under the direct hit of mosquito spray. But their screams didn’t last long.

Soon, the potatoes began vanishing with little popping sounds. Then a bright radiance enveloped them and converged into a human form.

The Saintess was staring at her palms, utterly bewildered.

“Just as I thought. Exactly as predicted. Congratulations on returning to Homo sapiens after three years.”

“Mr. Undertaker, what on earth...?”

“The Metamorphosis.”

“The Metamorphosis?”

“Yes. Franz Kafka’s <The Metamorphosis>.”

There was a famous novella by that title. I recited its opening sentence.

“One morning, when Gregor Samsa awoke from turbulent dreams, he found himself stretched out in bed—transformed into a gigantic insect.”

The Saintess nodded. She even had Kafka’s collected works at her Yongsan home, so she would know it well.

“As soon as I became a potato, I wondered if my situation might resemble Kafka’s story. But ultimately, I failed to find any similarities.”

“Hmm. There are actually quite a few similarities.”

The first cause.

The protagonist of <The Metamorphosis> is Gregor Samsa. And if you squint at “Samsa,” written as “Jamja” in Korean...

Good heavens. It looks exactly like “Gamja”—potato.

“What?”

The Saintess was flustered.

“You’re saying I became a potato because the written words look similar? How could something so illogical...?”

“Anomalies care only about similarities in form, not logical connections. To an anomaly, whales are fish, not mammals.”

Of course, this degree of wordplay alone did not easily cause someone to turn into a potato. Not that it never happened.

The second cause.

“Saintess. Do you remember what you told me in the early days after you turned into a potato?”

“I’m sorry. Which statement do you mean...?”

My Perfect Recall was very convenient at times like this. To briefly look back, on that day, while discussing why on earth a person would turn into a potato, we had exchanged these words:

[“What caused it? Have you violated any taboos?”]

[“No. Except that a few days ago, a bug flew into my eye while I was out for a walk, and it hurt a little.”]

[“A bug in your eye?”]

[“Yes. Just a flying insect. Aside from that little incident, I truly can’t think of a possible cause.”]

According to that account, just before she transformed into a potato, a flying insect had briefly entered the Saintess’s eye and caused a minor injury.

This seemingly trivial statement actually concealed the decisive clue.

“To state the obvious, you are the Korean Peninsula’s watcher. You constantly watch the awakened in case they commit a serious crime.”

“Yes, that’s right. But why...?”

“Look closely at the characters in ‘watcher.’”

With the tip of my sword, I carved the characters into the floor.

Watcher: gam-si-ja.

Gam, meaning ‘watch’; si, meaning ‘see’; ja, meaning ‘person.’

“Of these characters, the middle one, si, contains the element meaning ‘eye.’ Now, think about it. During your walk, a flying insect flew into your eye and injured it, didn’t it?”

“Oh.”

“In other words...”

I briskly scraped away the writing on the floor with my sword. The three-character word became two characters.

Gam-■-ja: watch-■-person.

“Ta-da. The moment your eye was injured, you changed from gam-si-ja, a watcher, into gam-ja, a potato.”

“No... Good heavens...”

“It was particularly unfortunate that an insect injured your eye. That created a direct connection to Kafka’s <The Metamorphosis>. At the very moment an insect damaged the Korean Peninsula’s watcher’s eye, the <The Metamorphosis> anomaly must have targeted and attacked you.”

That’s right. This was the cause of the great potato-Saintess fiasco.

The more perceptive readers among you may remember the name of the episode in which I first introduced the Saintess in this tale. Its subtitle was none other than “The Watcher.” A subtitle chosen with this incident firmly in mind.

“Since a flying insect was the medium that transmitted the <The Metamorphosis> anomaly to you, simply spraying insecticide should eliminate it. That’s why the mosquito spray turned you back.”

“Anomalies truly exist everywhere, and you can become infected anywhere...”

“This is a world where a moment’s carelessness can finish you off. So please wear sunglasses or glasses on your walks from now on, whenever possible. We have proven that the Korean Peninsula’s fate depends on the health of your eyes.”

The Saintess closed her lips. Then she whispered quietly.

“Yes...”

The solution, concluded.

8.

There is an epilogue.

As mentioned earlier, one of the potato-Saintesses had been exiled to Jeju Island. Since even a single remaining potato could be propagated indefinitely, I went to Jeju Island and arrested it.

[I see. Has the situation been resolved?]

Surprisingly, that potato’s identification number was No. 264. It was the revolutionary potato in the red headband that had led the Resistance protesters in an assault on the original Saintesses.

Potato No. 264 submitted to arrest with unexpected docility. From inside my shoulder bag, the potato suddenly murmured.

[Perhaps I wanted to become a plant instead?]

“Pardon?”

[Animals can move. They can intervene in events, in this world.]

[Plants, on the other hand, cannot. More precisely, even if they want to, they are unable to do so.]

I blinked.

“So you would rather have become a plant. Is that what you mean?”

[Yes.]

Summer was nearing its end. Along the broad coastline, white waves intertwined closely like tendrils of a vine.

[Because I wanted to be someone who could simply accept everything passively. Because I wanted to escape from everything that angered and hurt me. Because somewhere deep in my unconscious, I wished for it.]

Perhaps that was why I turned into a plant, the Saintess added.

Indeed, I could not rule out that possibility. It was plausible that an underlying longing to be a plant had existed in her consciousness all along, allowing the “anomaly” to worm into a crack in her heart.

But there was a flaw in that hypothesis, and so I argued against it.

“Well. You may have had those feelings to some extent. But even after becoming a potato, didn’t you try to do something for the world?”

[...]

“Even as a plant, you couldn’t sit still. In the end, even as a human, you were the least humanlike human, and even as a potato, you were the least potatolike potato.”

I did not consider that such a negative ending.

A regressor’s long life needed a fixed point of reference. I was grateful to the Saintess, who almost always remained “herself.”

“There’s no point in transforming into something else. In the end, your essence will still be yours.”

[...]

For a while, only the sound of the waves curling like vines lingered around us.

[Thank you, as always, Mr. Undertaker.]

With that final note—that I, Undertaker, was chosen as the first human to receive a potato’s gratitude—I think it is about time to wrap up this episode.

However, I should also record, in equally dispassionate prose, that in this run, one corner of my living space was decorated with a flowerpot containing a single potato with vivid blue sprouts.

And that this potato was exceedingly fond of being watered with coffee from my watering can.

-Potato. End.