Chapter 204 - The Antipode I

1

This story begins in a nightmare.

"Undertaker! Hey, Master Undertaker!"

Someone grabbed my shoulders in my dream and shook me violently. When I looked closely to see who it was, it turned out to be none other than the soccer player Kim Jucheol.

A former fullback. Nicknamed the Iron Wall during his playing days. A once-successful professional who had lost his family to a gambling addiction. A father who would eventually reunite with his son, only to lose even the chance to apologize forever because I had already subjected him to [Time Seal].

That man, now erased from reality, had appeared in my dream, sweating profusely.

"Please, help me! Huh? Save me, will you!"

"Hold on. Calm down. What's the matter?"

"Get me out of this hellscape! I'm begging you! Please, get me out of this endlessly repeating twenty-four-hour hell!"

At that moment, I thought, 'Ah. Just an ordinary nightmare.'

The number of people I had erased with [Time Seal] amounted to a staggering five hundred thousand. Even I, the Undertaker—a man with a beautiful mind who prided himself on mental resilience second to none—still carried guilt over this particular matter.

That burden on my conscience was one of the two advantages I prided myself on having over Adolf Hitler.

(The other, of course, was my drawing ability.)

"Mr. Kim Jucheol. This is a dream. What you're repeating could also be called a dream."

"A nightmare!"

"Yes. It's our lives in condensed form, but aren't you dreaming of your happiest day? In a sense, it's better than your real life. You yourself agreed, Mr. Kim—"

"No! No, it isn't! Not at all! I never agreed to this!" Kim Jucheol screamed.

"Because you said that once twenty-four hours passed, I'd forget everything that happened that day and live it all over again!"

"Yes. That's correct."

"But it's different! I keep repeating those twenty-four hours! With my memory intact! Yesterday, the day before, the day before that! I've been living the same day for forty days already!"

"... What?"

This was a new sort of nightmare.

"Save me, Master. Please, save me. No matter how often I tell people the day is repeating, they don't believe me! Even if they do, they reset after twenty-four hours! It's hell! This is hell!"

Kim Jucheol kept spraying spit. Even his bad breath and the angle and consistency of his saliva registered as vividly as reality.

"So... Mr. Kim Jucheol. Normally, you should only have one day's worth of memories, but for some reason, your memories are now carrying over. Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes! Exactly! That's what I've been telling you! ... Ah, i-it's coming. It's coming again!"

It was coming?

Kim Jucheol suddenly whipped his head around, looking in every direction, then began trembling. He had certainly been the type who liked to swagger, but now he was clearly terrified.

"Calm down. Please explain this calmly. There may be some anomaly interfering with your situation—"

"The great one is comingggg!"

Kim Jucheol's scream hung over the entire neighborhood, over the tops of buildings, against the ceiling of the sky.

Then the sky shook.

The sun's outline melted. Its red blood suddenly formed a sunset, and night arrived in the wake of the lava.

All in barely five seconds.

It was an anomaly. One I knew well, at that.

'Nut, the goddess of night?'

One of the world's end-of-the-world scenarios. The horizon steadily contracted, the entire world was blanketed in night, and eventually every being vanished into nothingness.

Nut had also destroyed the world in run 53, when I had worked as an assistant under factory owner Noh Doha.

An anomaly that could melt even the sun and moon undoubtedly possessed terrifying power. It had to be at least ocean-class.

Despite that, I hadn't given Nut much attention in my stories so far.

Why? The reason was simple.

'Isn't that thing just a kill-stealing pest?'

An anomaly that only ever delivered the last hit!

Not once had it taken the initiative to bring about the world's destruction. It only appeared when a monster wave had swallowed the entire surface, or Meteor Strike was raining down everywhere and humanity was on the verge of extinction, or the World Tree Udumbara had fully bloomed and reached the point of covering the heavens—

In short, Nut only appeared once the world's destruction was already certain.

It was different from a die-hard camper like the Operator of All Things at Play. At least the Operator had tried to destroy the world by distributing a game itself.

Nut was genuinely, truly committed to nothing but the last hit.

Conversely, it was an anomaly you didn't have to worry about at all when the world was sailing along smoothly, with no particular sign of impending destruction.

'So why did it suddenly appear in my dream?'

SHHHHHH

Regardless of my questions, the goddess of night dyed the world into a night sky in an instant. Every building in the dream was sliced apart by the night sky's sharp darkness and fell into a bottomless abyss. I couldn't see anything.

"Aah! Ah, aaaah!"

Kim Jucheol had moved beyond my shoulders and now wrapped his arms around my torso, howling.

"I don't want to be eaten! S-save me! I don't want to fall into hell! Save meee—"

His screams didn't last long, either.

CRASH

With the sound of shattering glass, the night sky's darkness snapped its jaws around Kim Jucheol's neck. He couldn't even scream. No blood spurted from the severed part, either. The space Nut consumed simply became darkness containing nothing at all.

I was left alone in an empty world.

A familiar sensation. A familiar landscape.

"..."

Hating it, my dreaming self closed his eyes. At the same time, my waking self lifted his eyelids.

The nightmare ended with the weight of Kim Jucheol's headless body falling against my chest.

"..."

"Ah. Undertaker, are you awake?"

The Saintess's voice reached me.

I turned my head. The house in Yongsan. I was lying on the sofa in the Saintess's home, which she had decorated with aquariums.

I moved the pillow off my chest and stood up. Our study session yesterday had run so late that I'd stayed over for a little while.

"Give me a moment. I'll make you some morning coffee. You're always making it for me, so I'd like to treat you this time."

"... Thank you."

The shadows of fish swimming in the tanks rippled faintly across my forearms.

Sipping the coffee the Saintess had made me—instant, the product known for its gold packaging—I spoke.

"Saintess."

"Yes?"

"There's something I'd like to consult you about."

A tilt of the head.

The Saintess tilted her aqua-colored head.

2

"I see. An anomaly that only used to appear when the world was ending suddenly appeared in your dream..."

"Yes. I'd like to know what this might signify."

"I'm not sure..."

Having heard my full explanation, the Saintess rested a hand on her chin.

This was run 267. Then as now, the Saintess was the best person to consult about anomalies. The "constellation" before me, who monitored the awakened of the Korean Peninsula virtually twenty-four hours a day, had encountered more anomalies than anyone other than me.

As such, she didn't respond with anything like, "Couldn't it just be a meaningless dream?" She knew very well that dreams were the void closest to humanity.

"I don't know exactly what an anomaly appearing in a dream signifies. I've never experienced it myself. But hearing your story reminded me of something that's been bothering me for a while."

"What is it? Please, speak freely."

"... It would be terribly embarrassing if I'm just overestimating my own importance."

The Saintess drew a small breath.

"But could it be because of me?"

I blinked.

"Pardon?"

"... As you know, the constellation system we've built is also a highly advanced anomaly surveillance system. If an awakened person comes into contact with a dangerous anomaly, I immediately receive visual information, which I pass straight on to you."

"That's right."

I nodded.

Wasn't it thanks to our constellation's protection that I could receive "emergency alerts" and immediately deploy to disaster areas?

Unlike most regressors, who insisted on individualism and elitism alone, I, the Undertaker, was also a believer in systems. And I prided myself on having built a rather excellent one.

"Wouldn't that very point have seemed terribly inconvenient to the anomalies?"

"From the anomalies' perspective...?"

"Yes. Reality puts anomalies at far too great a disadvantage. But dreams are different. Even when I observe sleeping awakened people's vision through [Clairvoyance], all I see is the pitch-black darkness behind their eyelids."

"...!"

My eyes widened. It felt like a light blow to the back of my head. That was an angle I hadn't considered.

"Are you saying the anomalies fled into dreams to escape your [Clairvoyance]?"

"Perhaps. More precisely, they would be avoiding our alliance. The moment I detect them, you find out as well, so from their perspective, we would feel like a single entity."

"Oh..."

"Of course, they wouldn't have humanlike intelligence and act with a goal such as 'Let's flee into dreams.' But perhaps, as a result, some anomalies have come to thrive more in dreams than in reality. Like living organisms."

I rested a hand on my chin.

That... made sense!

In other words, suppose an anomaly called "A" existed. A could operate both in reality and in dreams, sharing that characteristic with tutorial fairies or Go Yori.

Now, let's look at things from A's perspective.

▷ Reality: Kill a human, and before long, a terrifyingly powerful guy (me) suddenly comes running to punish you. Strategies for defeating you are being shared in an invisible virtual world (SG Net).

▷ Dreams: You can roam around without getting killed. If you accidentally venture too deep into the unconscious, a scary lady (Go Yori) does appear, but everywhere else is relatively safe.

The Undertaker, who was guaranteed to appear? Or Go Yori, who could be avoided with sufficient care?

Given that choice, a rational A would naturally have no option but to choose dreams.

That was the Saintess's hypothesis.

"More accurately, anomalies that settled for reality rather than dreams would naturally be approaching extinction."

"... I see. You're saying a kind of natural selection is taking place."

"Yes."

The Saintess added,

"From the anomalies' perspective, you aren't merely a single human being. You're a force of 'nature.' A being who exerts evolutionary pressure that could drive them to extinction."

"..."

"Perhaps you are to anomalies what anomalies have been to us humans."

Should I be pleased about this or not?

There was the satisfaction of knowing I hadn't wasted my lives as a regressor. And there was revulsion toward anomalies that, despite everything I'd done, were now crawling into dreams to thrive there too.

Feeling those conflicting emotions, I set down my coffee cup.

"Thank you. That was an excellent hypothesis. I'll bear your words in mind as I investigate this anomaly."

"Are you going to examine that man's crystal gravestone? Kim Jucheol, was it?"

"Yes. It's in Busan, so I'll go through Inunaki Tunnel."

"I'll come with you."

Before I could answer, I blinked, and her outfit had already changed. A mere tenth of a second ago, she had been wearing a comfortable T-shirt. Now she was equipped with a long coat for going out. She had a backpack for void exploration, with her main weapons—hatchets—hanging from it.

The Saintess's signature move. She had stopped time and changed clothes in an instant.

She spoke with an expressionless face.

"I've been very interested in your [Time Seal] ability for a long time. I'd like to take this opportunity to see the landscape inside a gravestone myself."

Her decisive tone, which didn't even entertain the possibility of refusal, made me laugh without thinking.

"Of course. I'd be happy to show you."

The graveyard my past self had created.

Together, we headed for my private hell, which I had never shown to any of my guild members.