Chapter 206 - The Antipode III

5

For now, we decided to leave the gravestone and return to reality.

However real the crystal graveyard felt, it was ultimately an illusory realm I had spun into existence. We needed to make preparations in reality.

Naturally, Kim Jucheol was horrified.

"M-Master Jang! You can't leave us here like this. You must come back. Otherwise, we really will...!"

"I'll be back within a week at the latest. Please wait here and keep your wife and child safe."

"A week..."

Kim Jucheol trembled with frantic anxiety. After barely managing to calm him down, we escaped the graveyard and were greeted by fresh air.

The soccer stadium lay in ruins.

But unlike inside the graveyard, where all of Busan's Seo-gu district had been burning, the town in reality was quiet.

"... I never realized. Regression can push the human mind that far."

The Saintess murmured beside me, still holding my hand.

"Mr. Kim and the citizens have succumbed to madness, but if you look at it objectively, it's been a thousand days. They've only repeated time for less than three years. Yet they've ended up like that..."

She stole a glance at me.

I knew what she wanted to say. I had spent thousands of years as a regressor, yet I probably looked relatively sane.

I shrugged.

"I repeat a lifetime. They repeat a single day."

"... Is that really the only reason?"

"Anyway, let's get moving. Even if Mr. Kim has been forgotten in reality, I don't want to leave him like that."

"Ah. I agree."

We traveled all over Busan.

Our objective was simple: to check whether similar phenomena were occurring in the crystal gravestones that sealed people other than Kim Jucheol.

The result?

"Hmm."

I groaned.

"They're all infected."

It wasn't just Kim Jucheol.

We had checked exactly fifty gravestones, and all fifty people had contracted the 'twenty-four-hour regression virus.'

We would have to assume that all the [Time-Sealed]—roughly five hundred thousand on the Korean Peninsula alone—were infected by the same anomaly.

On top of that, our day spent traveling around Busan had revealed another fact.

"... Undertaker. It seems to be affecting people in reality, too."

"Hmm."

Indeed.

As we had seen in the gravestone, countless ordinary citizens appeared in Kim Jucheol's dream.

Most of them had died or gone missing during the apocalypse in reality.

But around one in ten had survived and still lived in Busan's Seo-gu district.

For some reason, these survivors—the ordinary citizens who had appeared in Kim Jucheol's dream—were spending longer and longer asleep in reality.

"Oh, don't get me started. Maybe it's the hot weather lately, but I keep having strange thoughts."

We met one of the survivors and obtained a detailed account. He was a soccer player who had once played on the same team as Kim Jucheol.

(Of course, he had no awareness whatsoever that a man named Kim Jucheol had existed, or that he was repeating twenty-four hours inside Kim Jucheol's dream.)

"What sort of strange thoughts...?"

"Hmm. It's hard to explain. You know, should I call it déjà vu? That feeling that you've experienced something before? I've been getting that a lot lately."

"..."

Abnormal symptoms.

If it had been just this one person, I could have dismissed it as the heat getting to him. But every survivor we found in Seo-gu complained of the same symptoms.

Their severity varied, but one thing was certain: they were all experiencing an inexplicable sense of déjà vu.

Every one of them was a citizen who had contracted the regression virus and run wild with madness in Kim Jucheol's dream.

"... Wait."

By this point in our investigation, the Saintess's expression had grown darker than I had ever seen it.

"Undertaker. Didn't you say that the number of people whose time you've sealed nationwide exceeds five hundred thousand?"

"That's right."

"... Then if all five hundred thousand have contracted the regression virus, and everyone around them who appears in their dreams has been infected as well, and those symptoms are manifesting in reality..."

I nodded.

"Yes. It won't be long before the entire Korean Peninsula is reporting the same symptoms."

6

The Regression Alliance was urgently convened.

For the alliance members, I briefly outlined the effects of the 'unidentified anomaly' on the blackboard.

――――――――――

[Anomaly's identity = Nut??]

1. Inside the crystal gravestones, the sealed individuals are experiencing 'twenty-four-hour regression.'

2. Their memories should reset every twenty-four hours, but for some reason, those memories are being retained.

3. These symptoms are gradually spreading to the people around them.

4. Effects are manifesting not only inside the crystal gravestones, but in reality as well. Affected people in reality experience déjà vu: a sense that 'something is repeating.'

――――――――――

Once he had heard the full explanation, Noh Doha's first reaction was to frown.

"Fuck. What kind of anomaly is this now? Now we're getting epidemics that spread through dreams? And a disease that turns everyone in the world into half-assed regressors, at that...?"

"We don't know for certain yet."

I spoke calmly.

"I suspect several anomalies may be overlapping, but first, let me ask you all something. Have you been experiencing strong déjà vu from time to time lately?"

The alliance members looked at one another.

Seo Gyu spoke first.

"Now that you mention it... When I was eating breakfast this morning, I thought, huh, I'm sure I've seen this exact scene somewhere before. Boss."

"M-me too."

Sim Aryeon spoke hesitantly.

"The other day, Guild Leader, you commissioned that, um, Operator of All Things at Play...? Anyway, you asked me to paint a blue butterfly. While I was painting it, I thought, huh? I'm sure I've painted this exact same thing before..."

"I've been having similar experiences."

Yu Jiwon agreed as well.

"I dismissed it as my imagination, but if it's an anomaly's influence, that makes perfect sense. Your Excellency. To be frank, even the scene in this conference room feels somehow familiar."

Just as I thought.

I had used [Time Seal] on a staggering five hundred thousand people.

There was a strong possibility that Seo Gyu, Sim Aryeon, and Yu Jiwon had briefly appeared in the dreams of someone among those five hundred thousand.

"For now, I suspect this anomaly comprises several overlapping concepts. 'Valhalla' seems to be part of the mix."

"Valhalla? That Norse thing where warriors croak and then kill each other all over again in the afterlife...?"

"Exactly."

Valhalla. One of the afterlives.

The souls of warriors invited to Valhalla killed one another each morning, then all returned to life in the evening.

"Valhalla is about the only concept of an afterlife where a 'day' repeats forever on the same schedule."

"Hmm..."

"There's probably a strong chance this anomaly can manipulate the concept of the 'afterlife.' Hell, the abyss. Some place where souls gather after vanishing from reality."

TAP, TAP.

I explained as I wrote on the blackboard.

"The people whose funerals I conduct through [Time Seal] vanish completely from this real world. In a sense, the inside of a crystal gravestone is no different from an afterlife. At least, that's how this anomaly defines it."

"... So the anomaly has contaminated your gravestones, Undertaker?"

"That's right."

I confirmed the Saintess's words.

"More precisely, its ultimate aim is presumably to contaminate me, the Undertaker."

"... You."

"When you think about it, what people experience inside the crystal gravestones is essentially a miniature version of my own experience. I'm a regressor, and these people also experience regression, even if it only spans twenty-four hours. I'm not particularly fond of this analogy, but..."

TAP.

I added more writing to the blackboard.

――――――――――

[Undertaker = God of Alienation]

-Regression, Perfect Recall

[Kim Jucheol and the other sealed individuals = apostles]

-Regression (24 hours), memory retention

――――――――――

I turned back around.

"If things go wrong, this configuration could actually take shape."

"...!"

The Saintess's eyes widened.

"If you occupy the same position as a God of Alienation, it would attack and overcome the apostles beneath you first...?"

"Yes. I'm not saying I'm actually a God of Alienation, only that the anomaly treats me as one."

It was the strategy of shooting the horse first if you wanted to capture the general.

"To accomplish that, it needs to make me, the God of Alienation, and those people, the apostles, as similar as possible. Now, what was the biggest difference between Mr. Kim and me, for example?"

"... Memory."

"Exactly. Not only am I aware that I'm regressing, but I remember everything perfectly through [Perfect Recall]. Until now, however, Mr. Kim had no idea that twenty-four hours were repeating."

So it forced them to become similar.

It defined Kim Jucheol as 'an embodiment of the Undertaker.'

Not only Kim Jucheol—it forced 'traits resembling the Undertaker's' onto all five hundred thousand Time-Sealed.

And if it could bring every one of those five hundred thousand under its influence, or make them experience hell—

"It could land a blow on me as well."

"..."

"I believe that's the calculation the opposing anomaly arrived at. Though this is still only deduction."

Silence settled over the conference room.

Utterly unbothered by it, Noh Doha propped his chin on his hand at a slant.

"In short, you're saying this anomaly has you in its sights...?"

"Yes. I don't know whether it had a purpose or intent, but the result is unquestionably that it targeted me."

"Is this normal? I mean, do anomalies actually devise elaborate operations aimed at one person...?"

"No."

It was the Saintess, not me, who answered Noh Doha's question.

"From the anomalies' perspective, Undertaker isn't a person."

"..."

"Anomalies don't distinguish between humans and nonhumans in the first place. Everything is simply a phenomenon to them. The five hundred thousand afterlives Undertaker has constructed merely looked like tempting prey to that anomaly."

I agreed with the Saintess's view.

"In any case, an anomaly that can toy with 'afterlives' or 'hells' is clearly extremely dangerous. We need to move as quickly as—"

"Undertaker."

The Saintess interrupted me. It was so rare that I was a little surprised.

Come to think of it, her presence in person at National Road Management Corps headquarters was itself unusual. She normally attended meetings remotely through [Telepathy].

"What is it?"

"I'm sorry. But I thought I should tell you immediately. Look at the post uploaded to SG Net thirty seconds ago."

I took out my smartphone.

It was midday, and new posts were coming in thick and fast, but the title alone instinctively told me which one the Saintess meant.

-Anonymous: This world is regressing.

I immediately clicked the post.

-Anonymous: This world is regressing.

-Sorry for bringing up something serious. But I couldn't bear the pain anymore, so I picked up my smartphone.

-I've actually been experiencing constant déjà vu for a while now.

-Whether I woke up in the morning or lay down at night, I had such a vivid sense that I'd seen the exact same scene somewhere before. It was strange.

-But today, I finally realized. This isn't déjà vu. I've really experienced this exact same thing several times, and similar things tens of thousands of times.

-Tenlegs has been defeated countless times. I've gone onto the battlefield to take down Meteor Strike dozens, hundreds of times. If anything, it's strange that I couldn't remember until now.

-You'll all think I'm talking crazy, but I'm serious. Maybe these very thoughts mean I've been bewitched by an anomaly, but even now, the déjà vu is so vivid.

-My head hurts like it's going to split open. I'm in agony. When I close my eyes, I see myself dying hundreds of times, over and over.

-My head was smashed apart, my guts were severed, my limbs were pierced, and my entire body is being hacked to pieces.

-I want to die. No, I'm already dying. Why is something this horrible happening to me?

-I'm not insane. The world is.

"..."

I wasn't the only one who had read the post. After hearing the Saintess, everyone was checking SG Net.

Seo Gyu was flustered.

"B-Boss. Should I... block this? The comments are piling up in real time..."

"Don't forcibly censor it. Run the Hero Syndrome macro and push it onto the later pages. Clumsy intervention will probably only make things worse."

"Ah. Y-yes, sir."

Despite what I had said, everyone gathered here, myself included, could feel it.

This was no more than a temporary measure.

The 'enemy's' attack had probably only now begun in earnest.