Chapter 224 - The Concealer I

1

As you all know by now, there are a few subjects I deliberately avoid mentioning in these tales.

The moment the world ends, for instance.

For someone who keeps singing the same old refrain about everything being doomed, surprisingly few scenes of “One_Second_Before_the_End_of_the_World.avi” actually make it onto my camera.

Since I am rationality incarnate, there are two perfectly sound reasons for this.

The first is profoundly altruistic.

Namely, to protect my companions’ honor and reputations.

[Daddy] [Daddy] [Daddy] [Daddy]

[Die] [Die] [Die] [Die]

In some runs, for example, Hayul murdered me.

Of course, the thing only resembled Lee Hayul on the outside. In reality, it should be considered an anomaly utterly contaminated by void poison.

It wasn’t as though Hayul alone had been possessed by an especially powerful Oedipus complex and decided to pull an “I’m succeeding you, Father.”

["Guild Leader, please die."]

["Undertaker. Sorry, but would you die with me?"]

["Please go to hell, Teacher."]

["..."]

Sim Aryeon, Dang Seorin, Cheon Yohwa, the Saintess, and so on.

Other people were perfectly capable of putting holes in my heart, too.

Regardless of the run, anyone who met the condition of being “the only other survivor with me at the very end” had an extremely high chance of turning dark and landing the finishing blow on me.

(Noh Doha landed the finishing blow whenever the mood struck, without even meeting that condition.)

For the record, I bear them no ill will.

Obviously, my companions could never have done those things of their own free will. What had they done wrong? It was all the fault of those nasty anomalies that bewitched people and manipulated them however they pleased.

But how would other people... readers like you, in short, see it?

‘Y-you—how dare you blow up the protagonist’s head! You abominable wretch!’

‘I’m sensing cancerous levels of frustration here. Let’s kill them before they become companions.’

‘Get them out of here! Get them out right now!’

Now that I was thoroughly versed in subculture, I could readily foresee witch hunts and slander like these erupting among certain readers and fueling heated flame wars.

The joke would probably go around that “Go Yori, who only killed the protagonist once, is clearly his only true companion.”

What a horrifying sight. As a regressor possessed of both common sense and refinement, I could not possibly allow it.

Thus, with the greater good in mind, I cut most of the “runs in which my companions killed me.” Fans of misery fiction may find that decision lamentable, but I ask for your understanding.

Then what is the second reason?

“Boss.”

“Yeah, Seo Gyu?”

“I—this very SG Guy—am the mastermind behind everything.”

The second reason was, uh...

Sometimes it was just fucking hilarious.

No matter how dire the scene, even if the world was on the very brink of ending, when our SG Guy, Seo Gyu, suddenly delivered a line like that with a serious face, I couldn’t help asking myself the philosophical question: “Was the end of the world really such a weighty subject after all?”

The so-called Mastermind Syndrome.

When a human other than me survived to the very end, they were designated the “mastermind” who had destroyed Earth, and started acting strange.

In run 243, that person happened to be Seo Gyu.

It was also the first time in the Undertaker’s life that Seo Gyu had been selected as the last person standing, apart from me.

To think SG Guy, whose head always exploded first, had now survived all the way to the end of the world. My heart truly swelled with pride.

“Seo Gyu.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“Without me, the tutorial fairy would’ve blown your head off and it would’ve been game over. Huh? There’s a limit to how far you can stretch things. How the hell could you possibly be the mastermind?”

Seo Gyu wagged a finger from side to side, tutting.

“You don’t understand a thing. As usual.”

“...”

For a moment, I almost turned him into Seo/Gyu right then and there.

To shatter a regressor’s still-lake composure with a single move. That provocation packed truly formidable power.

“As is the case with every work of fiction, the true mastermind always appears in the novel’s prologue. Boss, your prologue was none other than the Busan Station waiting hall, was it not? Who made the earliest, most powerful impression on you there? Who was your ‘first character’?”

“Uh... Well, you?”

“Exactly. Naturally, then, I am the most suitable person to be the mastermind. I concealed the truth flawlessly all along.”

“No...”

You were supposed to die there, you lunatic.

I openly manipulated my facial muscles in an attempt to communicate this to Seo Gyu, but it had no effect whatsoever. Mastermind Syndrome had already swallowed him whole.

“All this time, I was treated as a mere SG Net errand boy. That, too, was my disguise. A character who appeared first, yet kept his significance thoroughly hidden... What could be more fitting for a mastermind?”

“Doesn’t that just mean you literally have no significance?”

“Heh.”

Seo Gyu flashed a killer smile.

“—What if I led you to that very misconception?”

I decided to turn that lethality back on Seo Gyu himself. Drawing on my aura, I beat him with my fists.

“Heh heh, how barbaric, Boss. Gah. Resorting to violence now changes nothing. Heh, urk, heh...”

It didn’t do much good.

Mastermind Syndrome bestowed boundless confidence, a mental disorder that locked the victim’s laugh to “heh heh,” narrowed eyes that reduced the visible area of their pupils by 99%, and, above all, the delusion that everything had gone according to their plans.

It could not, however, bestow fighting strength.

I hoisted Seo Gyu up.

“Ah. Heh heh, even if you eliminate me here, someday I shall return...”

Then I flung him off the cliff.

This was no ordinary cliff. In run 243, “Flat Earth Theory” had arrived and made the land genuinely flat. I had thrown Seo Gyu over the cliff at the very edge of that world.

Scattering an unpleasant “Heh heh heh heh heh,” he fell into the void.

He probably wasn’t lonely when he died.

I died not long afterward, too.

In runs afflicted by Flat Earth Theory, the cliff edges kept closing in until even the entire Korean Peninsula fell over the edge. I couldn’t escape the falling ending either.

As you can see, Mastermind Syndrome had originally been nothing more than a seasoning-like anomaly that annoyed me at the very end of certain runs.

Originally, that is.

Things began to change in the very next run, number 244.

2

The moment I opened my eyes in the Busan Station waiting hall, I had a powerful gut feeling that something was wrong.

‘What is it?’

This almost never happened.

The only exception I could think of was when I found a laptop resting on my thighs after run 135, which had ended in destruction at the hands of the Operator of All Things at Play.

But this felt different from that, too. Something new hadn’t been “added” to my Regression.

Quite the opposite.

“You fucking bastard! What the hell is that bullshit?”

As usual, Seo Gyu was roaring mightily at Fairy No. 264... but “it” was missing from his head.

There was no head.

Saying his head had no head might sound odd, but, in short, he had no hair.

In other words, every last strand of hair had run away from the follicles on Seo Gyu’s scalp.

“Pfft!”

“Ah, shit. What the hell?”

“That’s fucking disgusting...”

When I involuntarily sprayed the Ceylon Tea I’d bought from the vending machine into the air, the people nearby recoiled in disgust and moved away.

But I couldn’t even think to wipe my mouth. Along with the Ceylon Tea and drool, my very soul was dribbling out.

What in tarnation was that?

“You fucking bastard! If you drag people here out of nowhere, the first thing out of your mouth should be an apology! Who the hell do you think you’re running your mouth at...”

“Excuse me. Just a moment. Ah, excuse me. Sorry. Yes. Could you let me through? Thank you. Mr. Seo Gyu? Mr. Seo Gyu?”

“Huh?”

I pushed through the crowd and approached him.

He had been building up his rage meter with a barrage of roars at the fairy, but he faltered when someone suddenly called his name.

Puzzlement flickered in his eyes as he looked at me. Naturally: in this run, we were complete strangers.

“... Who are you to butt in?”

“Don’t you recognize me? I used to take personal training sessions with you.”

“Uh.”

“In Nam-gu. The training center on the fourth floor. Don’t you remember me?”

Seo Gyu grew flustered.

He really had worked as a personal trainer at a fitness center. The address I’d just mentioned was also his former workplace.

Naturally, the anger melted from his eyes. In its place came the fear of becoming “that guy who couldn’t even recognize a client just a few years after they paid good money for his training.”

“Uh, oh... Ah, yes, sir. Fancy seeing you again here. It’s been so long that I didn’t recognize you right away.”

“Oh, you were so dedicated back then, you really got me hooked on personal training. I used to be a total beanpole, but you made a proper human being out of me.”

Seo Gyu’s eyes instantly scanned my upper and lower body. It was an ability that came with being a personal trainer.

Naturally, my muscles, carried over between runs by [Continue], boasted the ultimate in compact, combat-ready conditioning.

His expression darkened further. Had he really forgotten such an outstanding client?

“Ah, thank you...”

“Rather than fighting that strange fairy here, why don’t you come over this way and talk for a moment?”

“Waaah. Strange? Humans are so frightening, picking fights without cause and then slandering me without cause, too...”

Incidentally, this was the quickest, most reliable method of both “keeping SG Guy Seo Gyu’s head from exploding” and “not killing Fairy No. 264.”

Seo Gyu might have been a thug, but he had a surprisingly strong sense of responsibility when it came to his own role.

Anyway, I took him aside and asked in truly roundabout language, as devoid of rudeness or impropriety as possible.

Q. Since when were you bald?

A. Pardon? I’ve always been like this.

What.

I ended the conversation before his gaze could start turning into “Are you really one of my training clients?”

Only then did I have the leisure to look around at the other waiting-hall members besides Seo Gyu—or, in the younger generation’s terminology, the people bound by the same void ties.

Before long, it became clear that Seo Gyu wasn’t the only person who had had something deleted.

“I have no intention of joining your group, Mr. Lee Baek!”

“Huuuh?”

“Eek. You can glare and threaten me all you like, but no means no!”

Sim Aryeon’s “stutter” had disappeared.

Normally, Lee Baek would have dragged her away by force if I hadn’t intervened, yet for some reason, in run 244, she was expressing her convictions clearly.

Was this an anomaly?

“Oh my, oh my. Hee hee.”

Go Yori’s “shadow” had disappeared.

The others hadn’t noticed yet, but it was plain to my eyes. Her clothes cast shadows, yet her head, arms, legs, and everything else outside those clothes cast none at all.

Pretty sure this was an anomaly.

‘No, what the hell is going on? It’s far too early for the butterfly effect to have influenced anything.’

I was utterly bewildered. Had the worldline suddenly changed in run 244 or something?

But the Busan Station waiting hall was, quite literally, only the tutorial.

The true shock came after I left Busan Station.

“Hi. I’m Dang Seorin.”

“...”

“I’m going to gather people and do whatever I can to struggle through this wreck of a world. You said your name was Undertaker, right? Would you like to work with me?”

As she held out her hand and invited me to become her co-founder, Dang Seorin had—no witch’s hat.

No broom, either.

I asked in a trembling voice.

“Um, excuse me. Sorry to ask when we’ve only just met... Uh, didn’t you like Harry Potter and railways?”

“Huh? What are you talking about? I like Pokémon and cars better.”

“...”

It’s an anomalyyyyyy!