Chapter 173 - Diver V

“Mmph, brrmmph...?”

Lee Hayul thrashed desperately on my back.

She was being a little dramatic.

Unlike me, Hayul had goggles and an oxygen tank. Even her prosthetic legs had been replaced with “Noah Workshop Special Swimming Flippers.” Had they appeared in a gacha game, they would have earned at least an SR rating.

Indeed.

Aside from the fact that the water we had just dived into was not ordinary H₂O, but pure poison that made a reactor pool after a nuclear meltdown look positively lovely, Hayul had absolutely no reason to struggle.

“Hayul.”

The regressor’s gentle voice traveled through his aura, resonating softly even underwater.

“Did you happen to watch <Evangelion>, the show I recommended last time? You know how the pilots dissolve into orange water? Unless you keep your head straight, your entire body will melt away, leaving nothing but that diving suit.”

“...! ...!”

“Draw up your aura and wrap it around your entire body. Keep reminding yourself what kind of person you were. If it gets too difficult, remember your anger toward your father.”

Of course, if she really was in danger, I would protect her myself.

But I couldn’t keep sheltering her in the nest forever. As an instructor, I put my guild members and companions through a fairly harsh regimen.

“You can think of your mother, too.”

“Mmph...?”

“The doll that’s always been with you, ever since Japan. You’ve passed her off as a housekeeper, but I know she’s really your mother.”

“...”

“If you disappear here, that doll will never move again.”

BLUB BLUB BLUB.

Bubbles rose quietly behind my back. The water in those bubbles was particularly cold.

Just as in the other runs, today’s Lee Hayul had adapted quickly to the training.

Her fingertips had turned a translucent white, but the existential contamination had not spread beyond her forearms.

There were no signs whatsoever of her turning into a “frog,” either.

“Yes. Well done.”

“...”

“Always think of the person whose existence you carry with you. Compared to that, the void’s poison has infinitely little to do with your life.”

She nodded.

I felt the tiny motion against the back of my neck.

It might not compare to the sea, but everyone lived with a dark well dug an abyss deep within their heart. I trusted the depth of that well more than the vastness of the ocean.

Something glided past.

Just as Lee Hayul was regaining some composure, an anomaly swam by barely a dozen meters ahead of us.

It had taken the shape of a shark.

WOOOOOOO.

Lee Hayul startled.

Understandably so. Sharks didn’t normally cry “woooo,” nor were their entire bodies made of transparent glass.

They certainly weren’t nearly twenty meters long, either.

In this void ecosystem, where it seemed impossible for any life to survive, a school of fifteen megalodons—sharks larger than buses, long extinct on present-day Earth—cruised leisurely past our eyes.

WOOOOO...

WOOOOOO.

“...”

With both hands gripping my neck—she’d picked up strange habits after a few drinking sessions with the commander of the National Road Management Corps—Lee Hayul stared blankly at these Cenozoic versions of Jaws.

Press. Press. A longer press.

Her ten fingers kneaded the flesh of my neck as though playing piano keys.

This wasn’t some peculiar taste she’d also acquired from the commander of the National Road Management Corps. Those presses were Morse code.

‘Amazing.’

That was what it meant in ordinary language.

With another firm press, she said:

‘Beautiful.’

BLUBBB.

The transparent megalodons disappeared into the distant depths, seemingly uninterested in us.

The ripples from their tails reached our noses and broke in tiny, dainty bursts.

“Hayul. Attach your puppet strings to this figurehead. I’ll take care of the swimming for you.”

“...”

“Use plenty of strings. If they snap, we’ll have to come back and attach them all over again.”

She squeezed hard. Perhaps I was imagining it, but the neck-strangling massage seemed to gain a little pressure.

After that, the work proceeded smoothly.

We attached puppet strings to Ark One, drew them out over a long distance, and connected them to Ark Four. Much like laying an undersea cable.

“Hh—phaaah...!”

Whenever we reached the next ark, we rested for anywhere from three hours to half a day.

Even for awakened with superhuman recovery, the great void inside the Great Monsoon was no small challenge.

After clinging to me and enduring the underwater environment for hours on end, Lee Hayul panted for breath.

‘Completely. Exhausted.’

“Are you all right?”

‘Yes. But, need more rest.’

Even while resting, she gripped my left hand tightly and refused to let go.

Naturally. For safety reasons, we hadn’t been able to bring the “housekeeper doll” on this operation.

Whether through sign language or Morse code, I was the only person she could converse with in real time.

The extremely dangerous environment of the great void.

The severely restricted communication.

For Lee Hayul, these things stirred an old trauma.

Those gray days when her father, former Busan mayor Jeong Sang-guk, had treated her as a child who didn’t exist, leaving her to live in what amounted to confinement.

I was the one who had brought her back from Japan after she had finally tried to end her life.

‘Big brother.’

“...”

‘Living, is so hard.’

Lee Hayul burrowed into my arms like a baby kangaroo.

I opened my hand and stroked her head.

Her soaking hair shifted with soft, wet rustles, drying gently beneath my aura wherever my hand passed.

A human palm could cover many things.

For instance, how whenever Hayul called me “big brother,” she subtly blurred the opening vowel into something between that word and “Dad.”

And how neither of us went out of our way to mention that fact—how we never mentioned it at all.

“...”

“...”

An embrace.

A sign of connection far older than gestures such as a handshake.

For a while, we remained like that, sharing human warmth.

9

The awakened in charge of Ark Four were astonished by our visit.

“Good heavens. Y-you mean you swam through that water? Just now?”

“Yes. We’ve connected the figureheads with plenty of puppet strings. I’m continually feeding aura into them to keep them from snapping, but the currents may make the ship vibrate strangely. Please don’t panic if that happens.”

“Y-yes...”

“I knew long ago that you weren’t an ordinary café owner, but...”

The awakened answered uneasily. They looked thoroughly appalled by our insane behavior.

Once I had heard all the reports I needed from Ark Four, I immediately plunged back into the water toward our next destination.

‘As I thought. It’s much better to begin subjugating the Great Monsoon early, even if it means pushing ourselves a little.’

I thought as I swam through the transparent depths.

Hayul seemed to have grown accustomed to it already; she was even kicking along in time with my movements.

‘The other arks suffered serious damage in the last run. Day ten is probably the limit of what people can take mentally.’

One by one, swiftly but without rushing, we linked the arks with puppet strings.

Anyone well-read would have immediately recognized the true nature of my plan: the “chain-link stratagem” featured at the Battle of Red Cliffs in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

That stratagem had brought Cao Cao to ruin, but unfortunately, there was neither a Zhuge Liang nor a southeast wind here. Nothing awaited the Great Monsoon anomaly but overwhelming destruction.

ROOOOAR...!

Of course, the Great Monsoon did contain something vaguely resembling a southeast wind.

The currents.

“Mmph, mmph, brrmmph...!”

Whenever violent currents arose within the water typhoon, Hayul and I were swept this way and that like bits of wood.

Sometimes we were driven thousands of meters off course.

Finding our bearings in this environment bordered on an impossible feat of acrobatics.

Relying on the superhuman senses I had built up over my long life as a regressor, and on Perfect Recall, I scattered aura in every direction like radar and felt my way along a course through the water.

Toward the center. Ever closer to the center.

WOOOOOO.

WOOOO, OOO...

The nearer we drew to the typhoon’s eye, the more underwater anomalies we encountered.

Not just megalodons. Livyatan melvillei, Dunkleosteus, Cameroceras.

Creatures that had once reigned supreme in Earth’s ancient seas were swimming in borrowed anomaly bodies.

As though the true life of Earth existed here, not in our human world.

SKREEEEE!

Some of those creatures took an interest in humanity, their juniors by a considerable stretch in the history of evolution.

Vicious ancient whales lunged at us with their jaws gaping wide.

Whenever they did, I gladly drew my sword cane and gave them a firsthand demonstration of the miracle of Moses.

Those unholy creatures, not even recorded in the Bible, beheld the power of God and died. Proof that seniority meant nothing in the harsh natural world.

‘Big brother. The best.’

Fending off intermittent attacks from sharks and whales millions of years old, we finally connected all twelve arks.

We finished on day nine.

It happened to be around sunset.

As the crimson sunset descended, it laid its red upon the Great Monsoon’s storm as well.

Unlike the sea, which drank in sunlight through its surface at most, the typhoon soaring into the sky was exposed to the sunset with its entire body.

The depths of the whole world were dyed in evening colors.

Deep in the heart of that water, the webs Lee Hayul and I had strung up scattered the red light of sunset, glittering like the Milky Way.

“...”

All the way back to Ark One, Lee Hayul rode on my back, unable to take her eyes off the sunset inside the typhoon.

Were humans designed to find beauty even in this hell of the void—which had slaughtered countless people and stood ready to slaughter more at any moment?

Life was cruel.

“Welcome back...”

When we finally put our long underwater sojourn behind us and returned to Ark One, Noah greeted us.

Her eye condition must have worsened in the meantime; both her left and right eyes were bloodshot.

I was inwardly a little taken aback. Had Sim Aryeon still not healed her?

“You’ve managed to come crawling back alive like some indestructible beggar instead of dropping dead. Did you really find all eleven arks and connect every last one with puppet strings...?”

“Ah, yes. I’ll have to find a somewhat smarter method starting next run. Fortunately, the void poison on the other arks wasn’t as severe as it is here.”

“Hmmm...”

Noah gave us a sidelong look.

More precisely, her gaze was aimed at Lee Hayul rather than me. Hayul had currently changed species from turtle to sloth and was plastered tightly against me.

“You seem to have grown even closer in the meantime...”

“We’ve been stuck together swimming for nearly a week. Anyone would either become mortal enemies or the best of friends.”

I patted Hayul’s head. Looking pleased, she openly used my shoulder as a pillow like a cat.

“Now we just have to steer the arks and ensnare the Great Monsoon. Oh, did anything happen while we were away?”

“Well...”

I expected something along the lines of, “If you not dying counts as something happening, then yes.”

But reality was different. Noah’s bloodshot eyes actually slipped away from mine.

A sudden sense of foreboding crept softly up the back of my neck. Naturally, my voice lowered as well.

“Commander. What happened?”

“Hmm. Awakened Undertaker. I’m sure you know we thoroughly checked the identities of everyone who boarded our ark...”

“Of course. They’re volunteering to sacrifice themselves on behalf of East Asia. Especially aboard Ark One here, where the danger is far greater, we only selected people who had been vetted.”

“But, hmm. I personally checked the list twice as well... It seems we had a stowaway...”

A stowaway?

I tilted my head.

Plenty of people had run away rather than board an ark, no matter what benefits we offered them, but no one had broken the rules to get aboard. Who would go out of their way to do that?

No, more importantly...

“Are you saying our awakened failed to detect a mere stowaway beforehand?”

“... Strictly speaking, saying this person boarded illegally isn’t entirely accurate, either. The witnesses say that, at some point, they looked around and found that person already aboard... As though they’d sprung up out of the floor, or something...”

My foreboding grew much stronger.

“Where is this passenger now?”

“We’ve confined them in Isolation Section Thirteen. It’s the only empty space. Well, I’m not sure ‘confined’ is the word. They volunteered to go inside... Would you like to meet them?”

I went.

Isolation Section Thirteen was the place that had been wiped out on the first day of flooding. The water still hadn’t drained, and the victims’ shirts, trousers, and other clothing floated about like tropical fish in an aquarium.

In the middle of that water,

Go Yori sat demurely on her knees.

“...”

“Oh my.”

Go Yori smiled brightly.

“Hello, Guild Leader Undertaker. It’s been a while.”

My body began to tremble like a little polar bear facing a sun bear.