Chapter 223 - The Explosion Victim II

3

'Someone in the Japanese archipelago blew herself up while screaming Undertaker's name!'

What on earth was going on?

For starters, it made no sense. There was a physical distance between me and the mysterious woman—whom I would call Y from now on—that was practically impossible to bridge.

The tutorial dungeon I had been dragged into was in Busan. Meanwhile, the stage that had ensnared the High Shrine Maiden and Y was in Kyoto. Even in a straight line, they were a full 600 kilometers apart.

How could a complete stranger I didn't even remember, a Japanese woman at that, have died in an explosion while shouting Undertaker?

"Perhaps she was an acquaintance of yours...?"

Surprisingly, even Noh Doha, whom I regularly forced to take swimming lessons, showed an interest in this intriguing mystery.

"An acquaintance? I'm not sure. I managed to obtain some degraded data through the tutorial fairies, but judging by her appearance, she was someone I had absolutely no memory of."

"She could still be an acquaintance even if you don't remember her. Aren't you a memory eunuch who's had all his memories from roughly age one to twenty castrated...?"

"Oh."

"A surprising number of Koreans have relatives or acquaintances living in Japan. It wouldn't be strange if you had one or two yourself...."

That possibility had never occurred to me.

As Noh Doha said, my childhood was like Schrödinger's box. Until I opened it, anyone could potentially turn out to be an acquaintance of mine.

But I soon shook my head.

"... No, on second thought, that's unlikely."

The word 'Why?' appeared in Noh Doha's eyes as he stood neck-deep in the pool.

"Everyone close enough to me to be family or a friend was subjected to [Time Seal]. That would leave only acquaintances with very tenuous connections to me. It would be strange for someone who barely knew me to scream my name with her dying breath."

"Aha. Hmm. That's a fair point...."

Thus, I discarded the hypothesis that she had actually been someone connected to my past.

Apparently losing interest at that, Noh Doha swam gracefully down his lane like a dolphin. His backstroke was truly unhurried.

Comrade Supreme Leader of the Korean Peninsula surely had no idea that I already planned to switch his swimming lessons to personal training as soon as he built up a little more stamina.

"...? Awakened Undertaker. Were you just staring at me while thinking something fucking irritating?"

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Ah. Fuck, I think you were. Hey. Hey. What bullshit are you planning this time...?"

"Now, now. I told you, that's a baseless accusation."

I played completely innocent.

Anyway.

Unlike the [Making a Human Being out of Noh Doha ~Five-Year Plan~] project, which could only be achieved by deploying every conceivable stratagem and sinister scheme, the answer to Y's mystery arrived surprisingly quickly—and surprisingly easily.

"Huh? Someone whose head exploded in Japan right after the void arrived?"

The person holding the key to the answer was none other than Oh Dokseo.

When she heard that Noh Doha and I were having swimming lessons, this cheeky little brat had eagerly tagged along, exclaiming, ["Oh my God! Swimming? Private lessons? There was a juicy secret event like that between Mister and the commander of the National Road Management Corps?"] Then she had gotten all disappointed on her own, saying, ["Seriously, you're actually just teaching him wholesome swimming...?"]. Now, overhearing our conversation, she pricked up her ears.

"That's her. The prologue. The false protagonist."

"...?"

"...?"

Prologue? False protagonist?

Question marks floated over Noh Doha's head and mine as Oh Dokseo, the eternal middle schooler (note: permanently in her second year), once again spoke in a language only she understood.

Her face scrunched up in exasperation.

"ORV! I'm talking about ORV! [Omniscient Regressor's Viewpoint], the book I read before the void arrived. The exact same story appears in its prologue."

This was another exceedingly strange connection.

Someone who had landed in the same tutorial dungeon as the High Shrine Maiden had also happened to appear in Oh Dokseo's ORV?

"Then does that novel also explain why her head suddenly exploded?"

"Of course."

Oh Dokseo said it casually.

"She's an actual prophet."

4

Until now, I had barely asked Oh Dokseo anything about the contents of [Omniscient Regressor's Viewpoint].

The reason was simple. Unlike the account of my life that Oh Dokseo herself wrote and edited, [ORV] was originally a novel written by the Operator of All Things at Play.

In other words, it was closer to a haunted object steeped in a God of Alienation's curse and contamination.

'If I read ORV and learn about myself from runs one through four, I'd essentially be handing a God of Alienation [the power to define the being called Undertaker] for free.'

Wasn't that precisely the sort of scheme a cunning God of Alienation like the Operator of All Things at Play would devise?

Of course, it might have kindly written nothing but the truth. But my level of suspicion toward anomalies was on par with the German army in World War II, terrified that, "The French army is incredibly powerful! We're all doomed!" Naturally, I had to assume the worst.

For an idea of what happens when you don't, please refer to [The Monkey's Paw] episode.

Still, from what Oh Dokseo told me... the section about the mysterious woman Y seemed relatively safe from the anomaly's curse.

"So, Mister, you don't show up as the protagonist right away in ORV."

"Really? That's surprising."

"Yeah. In the prologue, someone completely different acts like they're the protagonist and tricks the readers."

A false protagonist.

It wasn't a common cliché, but it was a writing device that occasionally appeared to catch readers off guard. One representative example was the timeless masterpiece among Romance of the Three Kingdoms novels, <Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Tale of Jia Xu>.

"Yeah, I don't know anything about Three Kingdoms Again or whatever.... Anyway, right at the start of the prologue, people get summoned into a tutorial dungeon. Including the false protagonist."

"Hmm."

"But while everyone else is running around in a panic, the false protagonist immediately awakens a 'Prophecy' ability. Strictly speaking, it's foresight, but whatever."

Foresight. Seeing what lay ahead.

Apparently, the events to come literally unfolded before Y like a stream of VR footage.

Like Oh Dokseo, Y was well versed in subculture. Prophet characters weren't rare in either Korean or Japanese novels, so she immediately realized what tremendous good fortune she had seized and was overcome with joy.

["I can see it! How to clear this dungeon and escape!"]

["That person over there is a hero who'll be called the High Shrine Maiden and lead the magical girls of the Japanese archipelago. I have to make friends with her!"]

["Ah! Yes! The spirits of Eight Million will descend, and the archipelago will fall into the abyss!"]

["It's terribly sad, but...!"]

["With this ability, with the power to see the future so vividly, I can save countless people! Yes! I will!"]

She could do anything.

"Up to that point, it felt like the prologue of an ordinary overpowered-protagonist story."

But the twist came immediately afterward.

["Huh?"]

How could she save the survivors of the tutorial dungeon, the people of the archipelago, and eventually the world?

Y, who had continued foreseeing images of the future in search of that answer, suddenly faltered.

It didn't end.

["What?"]

The footage didn't end.

More importantly, its perspective was strange. What had initially seemed to revolve around Y gradually focused on someone else.

A man with eyes as black as wells.

He died. He died endlessly.

Sometimes he died as soon as he was summoned into the tutorial dungeon. Other times, he wandered the world alone for hundreds of years.

["Huh? Huh? Huh?"]

Everyone the man treasured met death—or an end worse than death.

Some were witch-hunted by crowds enthralled by anomalies, their limbs gruesomely torn apart. Some killed themselves endlessly. Others lost their human forms, became anomalies, and killed the man with their own hands.

Such things happened very, very often.

["Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?"]

And the prophet Y vividly 'foresaw' every one of those deaths.

Yet foresight didn't mean merely seeing. She heard. Smelled. Tasted. Felt. Sensed. Felt it all in advance. Experienced it all in advance. Every last bit.

Thousands upon tens of thousands of years of the man's deaths and suffering condensed into a single instant and flooded Y's brain.

["Aaaaaaaaaaagh!"]

Y screamed. No, she wasn't even aware that she was screaming.

Her 'awakening' to the prophetic ability was happening in real time. The proof was her hair, gradually turning white from its tips toward her scalp.

["N-no."]

She didn't want to awaken.

["Stop, please, stop! Aaaaaaaaagh!"]

The whiter her hair became, the stronger her foresight grew. The pain and agony she felt from the man became as vivid as if she had experienced them herself.

She mustn't awaken any further. She couldn't. A person, born in a human body, couldn't feel something like this. Couldn't feel this much.

["Ah."]

At that moment, Y 'prophesied.'

For as long as she lived as an awakened, for her entire life until she died, she would have to watch that man's life repeat endlessly.

["Ah, haha. Aha."]

An ability was a curse.

Life was nothing but suffering.

And so, the moment her hair turned completely white and her awakening was complete, Y foresaw how to use aura—something she had never used or learned before—and put it into practice.

On her own head.

CRUNCH!

Y died instantly.

"That day, at the exact same moment, all six people around the world who awakened prophetic abilities killed themselves... That's how [ORV] described it. Pop, pop, pop-pop-pop. Six heads explode."

Each had the potential to save the world.

And at a railway station in some remote corner of the world, a man casually opened his eyes.

Undertaker.

A regressor who, whenever he opened his eyes, sent six Prometheuses to their sacrificial graves.

"That's how the prologue ends."

"..."

"Man! Fucking awesome, right? Huh? All these scenes of the suffering you'll go through sweep past like a panorama in the prologue."

Oh Dokseo chattered excitedly.

"I could tell just from the prologue. This one's a gem! I figured the false protagonist wouldn't appeal to the other readers, but I loved it anyway!"

I see.

In other words, the people already removed from the world at the starting point of my Regression included not only the hundreds of thousands subjected to [Time Seal], but also six prophets, including Y.

All on the assumption that the Operator of All Things at Play had written ORV truthfully, of course.

"Impressive...."

Noh Doha, who had listened along with his head sticking out of the pool, sneered.

"So you're saying you instantly wiped out six incredibly powerful awakened without lifting a finger? Heroes who might each have saved a country? Just what I'd expect from Awakened Undertaker. A prospective great anomaly really is different from the moment it sprouts...."

"That's slander."

I shrugged.

"Those six were probably candidates the Operator of All Things at Play was investigating to decide whom to make its shrine maiden."

"Hmm...?"

"It was trying to target me from the outset. Naturally, it would carefully examine who was most suitable. To oppose a regressor, it would have to grant at least a prophetic ability, so it likely tested the six people with the greatest aptitude."

But, like the anomaly it was, the Operator of All Things at Play hadn't considered human limits at all.

The awakened who obtained excessively vivid prophetic abilities chose death rather than becoming involved with me.

"So it simplified the prophetic ability considerably and showed it to Dokseo here. The result of filtering out realism over and over until it wouldn't destroy a human brain... was presumably ORV, written in novel form."

"Oh! Mister, that sounds plausible!"

"Hmm...."

Of course, this hypothesis had holes too, but what mattered right now was escaping Noh Doha's slander, so that was irrelevant.

Anyway, the anomaly was at fault.

Even from the perspective of the six tragically sacrificed prophets, wouldn't being killed by a God of Alienation be a more honorable death than being killed by a regressor who still hadn't saved the world after over a thousand attempts?

5

There is an afterstory.

As I said earlier, I didn't trust Gods of Alienation. So, in the next run, I visited the Kyoto tutorial dungeon that had supposedly ensnared the High Shrine Maiden as quickly as I could.

Even if [ORV] contained some truth, there were bound to be parts it had deliberately distorted in its own favor.

For example—

'However much the prophecy made Y suffer, there were at least thirty seconds before she actually blew up her head.'

About thirty seconds.

It might sound extremely short, but it was also surprisingly long. It would have felt even longer to an awakened who had successfully foreseen my entire fate as a regressor in less than thirty seconds.

'Then might she have left some kind of trace?'

A so-called dying message.

The prophets, particularly Y, had at least possessed enough resolve to decide to try saving the world if not for me.

Even if the process had proved so agonizing that she had chosen to bow out herself, might she have left some comment for the person who, unlike her, kept trying without giving up? In other words, me?

Keep going. Or, I'm sorry.

Had she been a little more ill-tempered, it might have been, Die. At the very least, she could have left a curse as her final words.

'Here it is.'

I slipped past the High Shrine Maiden, who still radiated low-level-player vibes since she hadn't yet contracted with the nine-tailed fox, and went to the site where Y had reportedly exploded.

The scene was better preserved than I had expected.

"Oh."

Even the corpse was intact. Except for everything above the collarbones being [pixelated] [pixelated].

Well, if people had witnessed someone's head explode right in front of them, the trauma would keep them from approaching. Back when Seo Gyu died in the Busan Station waiting room, everyone had been too terrified and busy fleeing.

"Let's see...."

Sure enough, before long I discovered handwriting I suspected Y had left behind. It was a final message written in blood, using the blood she had drawn by clawing at her scalp with her nails.

It read as follows.

S U

I tilted my head.

'SU? A code?'

Its meaning was unclear.

Perhaps the prophet had wanted to write a few more letters. But had the pain simply been too much to bear? While writing 'some word,' Y had lost the ability to endure and blown herself up.

'SU... SU... Hmm. Assuming she chose the shortest possible sentence or word, I need to consider what words start with SU....'

I put myself in her shoes.

She hadn't had much time left anyway. Y, too, had known that she would soon lose to the pain and end her own life.

Therefore, the final message she left for me had to convey the most important information in the fewest possible words.

Namely:

'A prophecy about my ending.'

Would I, the regressor, ultimately save the world, or fail to save it?

That was the crux of it. A prophet who had glimpsed the future could give me the answer to a question I myself still wasn't certain about.

Viewed that way, 'SU' could be interpreted in roughly three ways.

① SUCCESS: You will succeed in the end. Keep striving.

② SUICIDE: You will fail anyway. Kill yourself now instead.

③ SUKI: I love you! I'm a fan!

④ SUCK YOU: Seo Gyu is the culprit.

First, I eliminated the fourth and final candidate for being far too random.

The third candidate was out too. There was no need to write it in the Latin alphabet. I spoke Japanese perfectly well.

That left me to choose between one and two... but there was no decisive evidence for either.

"Hmm."

Thus, choosing one or two was a matter of preference.

I bit hard into my fingertip.

I used the slowly seeping blood as ink and my own finger as a brush.

Then I added my handwriting to Y's word—to that dying utterance that was both a 'prophecy' and a 'final message.'

S U C C E S S

I buried Y's headless body and held a funeral for her. Then I left with a considerably lighter step.

After all, wasn't how one received a prophecy a matter of one's own heart?

-The Explosion Victim. End.