Chapter 205 - The Antipode II

3

There had been occasions when I brought someone inside a gravestone created through [Time Seal]. Hadn't I entered the soccer player Kim Jucheol's gravestone with his son, Kim Sieun?

But this was the first time I had shown the landscape within a gravestone to someone as close to me as the Saintess.

“So this is...”

Still holding my hand, the Saintess looked around.

“The heaven I've heard so much about, where one's happiest twenty-four hours repeat forever.”

I cleared my throat.

“Calling it heaven is a bit much.”

“I imagine it would seem that way to a regressor like you, Undertaker. But for ordinary people who have to worry about surviving every single day, this is one excellent option.”

“I don't know. We have the casino now, don't we? Asking the fairies to whip up a bowlful of dreams is a much better deal than being subjected to [Time Seal].”

“Even that casino is an option you created, Undertaker.”

“...”

“It's quiet here, though.”

As you know, Kim Jucheol's dream took place in a soccer stadium.

It was the match in which he had played brilliantly in front of his family. He was repeating forever the moment when he had attained glory, money, and love in full.

Yet the stadium, which should have been filled with the roar of the crowd, was—as the Saintess put it—quiet.

“Hmm.”

A little too quiet.

“It looks like they're all asleep.”

“So it does. How strange.”

A world where everyone had fallen asleep.

Every person sitting in the stands was fast asleep. Only an eerie silence hung in the air.

It wasn't just the spectators. The players, who should have been busy kicking the ball around, lay sprawled on the grass too.

Among them was the master of this place, Kim Jucheol—the player who had appeared in my nightmare to deliver a warning.

Restored to his prime, he lay collapsed with the soccer ball clutched to his chest.

“Kim Jucheol. Mr. Kim.”

“...”

“Can't you hear me? Sieun's father. Sieun's father.”

I tapped his cheeks, but he showed no sign of opening his eyes. Sending aura through his body to massage it made no difference.

He was effectively in a state of suspended animation.

All ten thousand or so people gathered in the stadium had completely lost consciousness. Considering that they were all illusory, this was truly a case of false death.

I made a quick decision.

“I think we need to bring in the tutorial fairy to examine these people's unconscious minds. And, Saintess...”

“Yes?”

“Don't let go of my hand, and do not eat or drink anything here under any circumstances. You may be tempted to get something from a vending machine, but if you consume so much as a bite, the myth of Persephone will leave you under a nasty curse.”

“Oh...”

We entered the gravestone again with the tutorial fairy, intending to use its ability to enter Kim Jucheol's dream.

Then an entirely different landscape unfolded before our eyes.

“Aaaah!”

“Help! Please, help me!”

The stadium stands had burned and were already half in ruins.

People were running wild, screaming.

“Again! Another day is starting!”

“Someone stop that murdering bastard!”

“Hee-hee-hee! What does it matter? We'll come back to life in a day anyway! Kill me! Go on, try killing me, you bastards!”

It wasn't just screaming. Blood was splattered everywhere.

People fought in groups with their fists, tore seats loose however they could to use as shields, and swung wooden clubs and baseball bats they had brought from somewhere.

“Nobody get involved! Hold your positions!”

Kim Jucheol was struggling desperately to protect his wife and young son. At least the soccer players had formed ranks by team and looked relatively safe.

Holding the Saintess's hand, I approached the soccer teams. Kim Jucheol spotted me and bellowed.

“You there! Stay back! I'll kill you!”

“Mr. Kim. It's me. Undertaker.”

“I'll fucking kill— Huh? Huh?”

He blinked repeatedly.

“M-Mr. Undertaker? Is that really you?”

“Of course. Undertaker. We made it out of the Busan Station Tutorial Dungeon alive together, remember?”

“Ah! Ah!”

Kim Jucheol dropped the baseball bat in his hand, ran over, and threw his arms around me.

My shoulder was soon wet. A middle-aged man's tears were flowing from a young man's eyes.

“Wh-why did you only come now? Huh? You're not an illusion, are you? Oh, God. Why did you take so long, you fool...?”

Without any idea what was going on, all I could do was pat his back.

It wasn't just me. The Saintess beside me, the tutorial fairy, Kim Jucheol's wife, and his teammates all had question marks written across their faces.

“Please calm down, Mr. Kim. Explain it to me calmly. You say you've been waiting for me, but your memories reset after a day anyway. How long could you possibly have been waiting...?”

“A thousand days!”

I froze.

“What?”

“I've waited over a thousand days! Me! I've repeated this hellish day more than a thousand times! And it's not just me—it's everyone!”

“...”

“Th-this is hell! Mr. Undertaker! Please save me—save us!”

My mouth fell open.

What on earth had happened?

4

Hundreds, even thousands of rioters roamed the area around the stadium, making it dangerous.

We moved to the foot of Mount Gubong, which Kim Jucheol described as “relatively safe.”

When we climbed the slope and looked back, Busan's Seo-gu district was burning, soccer stadium and all.

“... At some point, I started feeling like I was living the same day over and over.”

This was Kim Jucheol's explanation.

“Then my memories of you, Mr. Undertaker, suddenly came rushing back. Ah, this was a dream. The real me was already dead, and here I was doing all this shit.”

“...”

“But I didn't really worry about it much. After all, I'd accepted it myself, hadn't I? Huh? Given enough time, I'd forget that the day was repeating again. I'd go back to living without knowing anything, so it didn't matter. That's what I thought, but...”

Yet his memories persisted.

Even after twenty-four hours passed, the “Continue” button was forcibly activated.

“Fuck. No matter how happy the memory was, repeating the exact same day was enough to drive me out of my mind. You were right, Mr. Undertaker. Forgetting was a blessing.”

Kim Jucheol sighed.

“At first, I tried telling everyone around me. That the world was repeating. That after twenty-four hours, we'd have to live the same day again...”

“...”

“At first, they looked at me like, ‘What bullshit is this asshole spouting?’ It was frustrating, but I understood. Of course they'd react that way. But after twenty or thirty repeats, was it? After repeating the day for about a month—”

The change began at the bar he visited with his teammates after the match.

“Out of nowhere, one of the bar staff said this to me.”

[“Excuse me, sir, but weren't you here yesterday too?”]

“That was the beginning. It started happening to them one by one. The bar staff. My teammates sitting at my table. The customers at the other tables.”

[“Huh. Is the same stuff on TV every day?”]

[“Didn't we meet up for drinks yesterday too?”]

[“The food here tastes exactly the same every day.”]

“Before long, my wife suddenly realized it too.”

An epidemic.

A so-called “regression virus” had begun spreading rapidly.

It probably infected those who had been in close contact with Kim Jucheol during that day first.

And so the day kept repeating.

For some reason, even when time reset, the “regression virus” did not. The infected gradually passed it on to those around them.

“Huh? Was today Saturday?”

“Wh-what? Wasn't this match yesterday?”

Bar customers passed it to their families, players to the opposing team's players, players to their supporters, and supporters to other citizens in turn.

The “regression virus” spread rapidly.

The problem was that this was only half a regression: a regression in which nothing more than twenty-four hours repeated forever.

“Sir, this might be a strange question, but yesterday... No, the day before yesterday too...”

“Right? Something's strange, isn't it?”

“Hold on. I know someone at a broadcasting station. I'll call them and...”

People tried to spread word of the emergency far and wide, hoping to find some way to solve it.

Instead, that spread the infection little by little.

By the time the hundredth day had passed, the virus that began in a small bar near the stadium had swallowed all of Seo-gu.

“A-another day has started again...”

“What on earth is wrong?”

“What the hell is the government doing?”

The citizens, led by civil servants and police officers, tried to resolve the situation. They publicized Busan's plight through the media and the internet while asking the government for help.

They even managed to contact the government.

Only for everything to reset after twenty-four hours.

“Why isn't the government taking action? Professor, didn't you tell us yesterday that you got a promise directly from that bastard Mayor Jeong Sang-guk?”

“Well... I'm sorry. It seems that people other than us have no idea whatsoever that the day keeps repeating.”

“What?”

“Only we know it's repeating. Other people don't. That means all the promises we secured twenty-four hours ago are forgotten.”

Isolation. Confinement.

In fact, the epidemic called the “regression virus” never spread beyond Busan—more specifically, the Seo-gu area.

Only the citizens here could realize that twenty-four hours were repeating.

Just as an entire city might be quarantined in space during a zombie virus outbreak, these citizens had been quarantined in time.

“Th-that's impossible!”

“There must be some way, surely?”

Even then, the citizens refused to face the truth.

They believed that if they informed the government of this absurd situation, a solution would somehow emerge.

Leaving behind the elderly professor who admitted, “I got a promise from a politician, but it did no good,” the citizens devised their own measures.

“We need to make such a huge scene that nobody in the world can possibly miss it!”

“That's right! Within twenty-four hours, we need to make not only the government but the entire nation understand how serious this is!”

“H-how?”

“Let's start a mass brawl! We'll cause bloodshed and show the world this isn't some ordinary disturbance.”

“Oh...”

“The government will act urgently if people get hurt. Every news outlet will come running to film us too.”

“Everyone, let's steel ourselves and do this!”

Drastic measures in the most literal sense.

The meticulously planned riot certainly sent enormous shock waves through society. There were even deaths.

Alarmed by the bloodshed among ordinary citizens, the Busan city government urgently dispatched police forces.

“Aaaah! We did it! It worked!”

“Look at the TV! The government is making an announcement! They acted before the day repeated!”

“We're saved!”

“Now something will finally happen!”

Even with blood streaming from their heads, even as the police led them away, the citizens wept with emotion.

They thought they would finally escape hell.

But twenty-four hours later...

“Ah.”

“We're back again. But everyone in the country knows now, so things will work out somehow.”

Nothing worked out.

Instead, it was the final blow.

“... Nobody knows?”

“What?”

“None of those government bastards know. About this. About the day repeating...”

Yes.

After causing all that chaos, the citizens had no choice but to confront the cruel truth.

One: the regression virus spread only in and around Seo-gu.

Two: it did not spread beyond that area at all.

The reason was simple.

Beyond the area the soccer player Kim Jucheol had originally traversed that day, the world had never actually been constructed.

[Time Seal] was not all-powerful. It did not build any more data than was necessary to create Kim Jucheol's happy day.

It had merely allocated enough space for him to enjoy that day to the fullest.

In the world beyond, things seemed to be happening, and people appeared to be going about their lives just the same, but fundamentally, it was all nothing more than a virtual “picture.”

“What? Why are we the only ones living the same day...?”

“Fuck, what's going on?”

The citizens could not deduce that underlying cause.

All they had was the result: the same day repeating a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, more than four hundred times.

Eventually...

“Ah, aaaah! Aaaah!”

At some point, law and order in the area began collapsing rapidly.

The leaders who had actively proposed solutions such as “Let's inform the government” and “Let's start a riot” lost their support.

No—it was those very leaders who fell into despair first.

No matter what they tried, they could not escape the repeating twenty-four hours. Whether they killed someone or died themselves, everything returned to its original state.

“Wait! Please calm down! If we at least form a society among ourselves...”

“Shut up! My family is in Incheon!”

There were attempts to cobble together a community somehow, but they failed every time.

The law governing this space-time—“Even if you kill someone, it resets anyway”—was far too cruel.

Everyone was subjected to extreme stress. Fights broke out easily, and whenever they did, anyone could kill their opponent without a second thought.

Life was the most fundamental element of society.

Long before the gold standard was invented, manpower, labor, and human time had always served as society's yardstick.

Morality. Work. Relationships.

Once the lives that formed them became worth next to nothing, Homo sapiens society collapsed in an instant.

And...

“This... Mr. Undertaker. It might be my fault...”

Having witnessed everything, Kim Jucheol was afraid.

“You know, don't you? I made that wish to you, and then, what was it called? Time something...?”

“You mean [Time Seal].”

“Ah! Right, right. That's it. I had that Time Seal done to me... What if all these other people got caught up in it too...?”

His voice dropped very low, as if afraid anyone nearby might hear.

Heavy guilt, self-loathing, and fear filled his eyes. He lowered his head and mumbled.

“I-if that's the case, th-these things usually end when, um, the cause dies, don't they...? B-but I've already tried dying a few times, and, um, even then...”

“No.”

I shook my head.

“This isn't your fault, Mr. Kim.”

“I-it isn't...?”

“No. Mr. Kim, this space isn't reality in the first place. It's the final trace you left in the world, nothing more than a dream.”

“... Oh.”

“The bar staff, your teammates, your wife. They aren't real human beings. They're beings within an illusion.”

“...”

“There is no fundamental difference between the people here and those beyond Busan. The only difference is one of degree: an illusion rendered with more detailed data, or one roughly rendered with less detail. The people beyond Busan haven't noticed the repeating twenty-four hours simply because they don't even have the capacity to realize it.”

Kim Jucheol's mouth opened and closed, his lips moving as he struggled to speak.

“Th-that's right. That was it. You're right. That's how it was... B-but, Mr. Undertaker. From where I stand, you know? No matter how I look at them, they're people...”

Then he looked up at me.

And clutched my foot.

“P-please save us.”

“...”

“Please don't abandon us. Mr. Undertaker. N-no. God! God. Aren't you something like the c-creator who made this world? Huh? Didn't you promise me at the beginning? That you'd let me rest forever in a happy day. But this... God, this isn't what you promised. This is hell...”

“Please calm down.”

With my free hand, I took his trembling hand.

“And don't worry. This is my responsibility, and I will make sure to resolve it for you.”

“Ah...”

“If anyone is to blame here, it's not you, Mr. Kim. It's me. And the anomaly. And...”

I turned my gaze and met the Saintess's eyes.

She seemed to understand the meaning in my look and gave a small nod.

“Thanks to your explanation, Mr. Kim, I have some idea of what this anomaly is.”

Valhalla.

An afterlife where the dead rise again, repeating the same day forever in an endless cycle of slaughter.

For now, that was the anomaly that had descended upon this “graveyard.”