Chapter 28 - The Buddhist II

In run seventeen, Old Man Scho and I were running an academy. He was the principal, and I was the vice principal. It was one of our schemes for attracting promising awakened from various countries and training them more easily.

For a while, we put genuine effort into running it, which allowed us to accumulate a wealth of data on awakened. The time will come to discuss that academy separately.

“Gather all the graduating students and faculty!”

“I already have, you brat! You're the last one!”

Old Man Scho was full of shit. We had to go around the dormitories in our pajamas, waking up every combat squad.

Once we were ready, we headed out to the rendezvous point we had agreed on with the other guilds in advance for emergencies.

“Three Thousand Guild Leader!”

“Ah, Undertaker. The Sword Star's here too?”

Other guilds joined us one after another along the way.

Three Thousand Worlds, one of Korea's top two guilds, had also responded swiftly, bringing only its elite members. Sixty awakened, every last one wearing a pointed hat and gripping a staff, made a comical sight. Their fighting strength, however, was no joke.

“What in the world is going on?”

“We're still trying to determine the exact cause. The constellations have been telling me all sorts of things, but I need to see it with my own eyes first. For now, we know that humongous tree was first spotted at two this morning.”

“Did it spring up out of nowhere?”

“Yes. They say it grew that big in less than an hour. Apparently, it only started glowing red like that after it finished growing. I guess that's why the report was a little late.”

“... That's ominous.”

“Agreed.”

Just then, a member of Three Thousand approached Dang Seorin and whispered in her ear.

All the guild leaders gathered at the rendezvous point, ourselves included, looked at her. Tenlegs had already been slain, but she was still expected to act as Alliance Leader. She sighed.

“Well, everyone ought to see it. Bring it over.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

The guild members dragged something over. Bound tightly in ropes, it was a human—or, more precisely, a human whose clothing unmistakably marked them as a follower of the New Buddha faith.

To be even more precise, it was a human who was gnawing on their own forearm and muttering incessantly.

“H҉u҉n҉g҉r҉y҉, h҉u҉n҉g҉r҉y҉, h҉u҉n҉g҉r҉y҉, h҉u҉n҉g҉r҉y҉.”

Even bound in ropes, it would not stop biting. Forcing its unbending neck downward, twisting its elbow backward, it did whatever it took to eat its own flesh.

It had been hard to tell in the darkness, but now I could see that it had already devoured both legs and its left arm.

The guild leaders' faces hardened.

“... What the hell is that bastard doing? Is it a zombie?”

“Pretty nice for a zombie, though. It's stuffing its face with its own flesh, not someone else's.”

“Maybe it's an especially humble zombie.”

“What's it muttering?”

Watching human flesh being torn off in real time was grotesque, but the guild leaders who had survived this long had considerable nerve themselves. Every one of them looked sickened, yet they watched the zombie with keen, vigilant eyes.

“From what we've observed so far...”

The guild leaders fell silent when Dang Seorin began to speak.

“Every follower of the New Buddha faith is exhibiting the same symptoms.”

“Every one of them!”

Shock rippled through the gathering.

“Really? All of them?”

“Yes. Ah, I misspoke. They don't have to be followers of the New Buddha faith. Everyone infected with New Buddha is the same. Ordinary people, awakened—it makes no difference.”

“I knew this would happen,” Old Man Scho grumbled.

“Nothing good has ever come from getting mixed up with those cultist bastards. What? Get infected and you gain an extra life for free? As if anything could be that convenient. Bah! I was suspicious from the start.”

“...”

The guild leaders glared at the old German, whose preachy old-man tendencies knew neither time nor place. I cleared my throat and discreetly took the floor.

“Three Thousand Guild Leader. Are these all the zombie's symptoms? Eating itself, like the monster called Gluttony? It's certainly interesting, but I don't see what connection there is between the World Tree and the zombies.”

“Hm? What's Gluttony? Anyway, watch a little longer. You'll see something strange.”

Even as we spoke, the zombie continued its feast.

“H҉u҉n҉g҉r҉y҉, h҉u҉n҉g҉r҉y҉, h҉u҉n҉g҉r҉y҉, h҉u҉n҉g҉r҉y҉.”

Before long, its right arm—the last of its four limbs—fell off as well. Then the zombie stood upright like a matryoshka doll.

“...”

The zombie raised its head and looked up at the night sky, toward the World Tree. Its mouth slowly opened, and a red flower grew out of it in an instant.

The guild leaders caught their breath.

“My God.”

“Fuck, what the...”

Then someone muttered,

“It's just like cordyceps...”

A fungus that parasitizes a host's body, then eventually sprouts a mushroom.

Only in this case, it was a flower rather than a mushroom—a red flower so beautiful it was mesmerizing.

The red flower used the zombie's body as a flowerpot. In the blink of an eye, it grew as tall as the first story of an apartment building, at a speed that seemed to break the flow of time itself. Speechless, we looked up at its crown.

POP!

The petals burst like popping corn.

The red flower bloomed and faded as though ten seconds were an entire season. But unlike other trees, it did not shed its blossoms downward.

The guild leaders' mouths fell open.

“Uh, uh. That...?”

“They're going up?”

Not falling blossoms, but ascending blossoms.

It seemed the red flowers belonged to the sky, not the earth. They fluttered as though yearning for what lay above rather than below. Like a slightly lighter breeze, slightly lighter fireflies, slightly lighter cherry blossoms.

It was not happening only here.

Countless red lights twinkled in the dark night sky. They were far more delicate than starlight, but also far closer. From abandoned buildings, from vacant lots, from everywhere, red petals unfurled like the Milky Way and returned to heaven.

“Beautiful...”

That, too, was someone's murmur.

Having gathered up every trace of red from the earth, the World Tree grew still more luxuriant. Its radiance was so dazzling that starlight and moonlight could only hold their breath.

“Hmm.”

Old Man Scho gave a low murmur.

When I turned, he was staring not at the night sky, but at the zombie.

Emaciated flesh. No, it looked less like flesh than the husk of a tree that had died long ago. Stripped of all its red, the human corpse was now nothing but a remnant. Old Man Scho tapped it with his scabbard, and the zombie-flowerpot crumbled away.

“Doctor.”

“... Yes, old man.”

“Looks like we're fucked. Right?”

I nodded. I hated to agree, but it was the correct diagnosis.

Another boss-level monster had appeared after Tenlegs' defeat.

No—in fact, it had appeared before Tenlegs, hiding its power for years as it parasitized its hosts, only now finally revealing itself.

The World Tree—the anomaly designated “Udumbara”—had arrived.

Udumbara.

A sacred entity regarded in Buddhism as a legendary flower. A mythical flower that did not exist in reality.

But now it did.

There really was no answer to a legend that had descended upon the earth. It was even more dangerous than Tenlegs.

Above all, unlike Tenlegs, Udumbara was exceptionally cunning. It did not merely parasitize its hosts; it made the hosts welcome the parasite. Thus it quietly expanded its reach, then unleashed all its power at once.

By the time Udumbara revealed itself, it was already game over. If enough hosts had been infected with the virus for the red World Tree to reach full bloom, the world's destruction was assured.

“Good grief, what are we going to do about this...?”

“Exactly.”

Old Man Scho and I put our heads together and agonized over it.

For the record, this was now run eighteen. Where had run seventeen suddenly gone, you ask? Uh... Weeds started poking out of Old Man Scho's beard, and grass sprouted from my eyebrows.

We took the entire guild alliance out for one last shot and tried taking an axe to the tree, but it wasn't even close. What else could we do? Old Man Scho and I mixed poison into our soju glasses and knocked them back with a toast.

In the end, even after Old Man Scho went on vacation, I could not devise a fundamental solution to Udumbara.

About all I could do was curb awakened supremacy while taking care to keep the cult from spreading as much as possible.

Even that was like pissing on frozen feet to warm them. I might somehow keep things under control at home, but how could I manage events overseas? Whatever measures I took merely delayed Udumbara's blooming a little.

But time passed, and run thirty-six came.

“Constellations... don't exist.”

“The Saintess of National Salvation, the Conqueror of the Alps—they're all just characters I created myself.”

Once I met the Saintess, everything changed in an instant.

A clue emerged to defeating the World Tree, which had seemed utterly hopeless.

In the runs after I forged a blood alliance with the Saintess, I began working in earnest to exterminate Udumbara. The key to the operation was a request I made of her.

“Saintess, for the time being, please use [Clairvoyance] to focus on observing the awakened on Jeju Island.”

“Jeju Island?”

The Saintess tilted her head.

“Is there a reason I need to do that?”

“Yes. If left alone, a cult called the New Buddha faith begins emerging in earnest in the third year...”

I explained the spread of the zombie virus and the New Buddha faith, awakened supremacy and the backlash of hatred toward awakened it provoked, and, above all, the crowning touch: the red World Tree reaching full bloom.

The Saintess listened quietly from beginning to end. Then she spoke softly.

“I see. I understand. You intend to find the virus's patient zero, Mr. Undertaker.”

“That's right.”

Patient zero, whose identity had remained a complete mystery in all my previous runs. The first domino that set off the viral outbreak.

I could never have found them on my own, but with the Saintess's [Clairvoyance] alongside my regression ability, it was entirely possible.

“Jeju Island this run. South Gyeongsang Province next. Then North Gyeongsang, South Jeolla, North Jeolla... At the start of each run, we'll focus our search on one region of the country, sweeping the Korean Peninsula from bottom to top. Then—”

“Eventually, we'll be able to witness the moment patient zero appears.”

The Saintess nodded.

“All right. Until now, I've mainly used [Clairvoyance] on influential awakened like you. But if I push myself a little... I can't observe every awakened in Korea in real time, but one region should be possible. Somehow.”

“Shall I assign Yu Jiwon to help you?”

“No. It's all right.”

The Saintess clasped her hands and closed her eyes as though praying.

“This is something I can do on my own.”

At the time, I had no way of knowing precisely how she observed so many awakened. That was one of the “secrets” she had not revealed.

I could only privately speculate that she might be cooperating with awakened working for the South Korean government—or rather, its remnants—or people like Noh Doha.

While entrusting that quest to the Saintess, I also dealt with the cult leaders who had played the most crucial roles in establishing the New Buddha faith. Similar faiths would arise even without them, but it still bought us at least another year or two.

And so, in run thirty-six:

“It's not Jeju Island.”

Run thirty-seven.

“Patient zero isn't in South Gyeongsang Province.”

Run thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty.

Finally, when run forty-one came:

“... I've found them.”

The Saintess opened her eyes.

“South Chungcheong Province. Asan. Onyang.”

More precisely, an old inn in Onyang.

The old downtown had once been reasonably prosperous, but declined when the city center shifted elsewhere. Beside paving stones so seldom trodden that weeds flourished more than people, the inn stood precariously rotting away.

There was no sign of life inside. Its dull beige paint peeled in patches like dead skin.

In room 202 on the second floor of the depleted inn, with little left worth taking, a mother and son lay dead.

“...”

Their bodies were intact, as though they had closed their eyes only moments ago.

Finding this place had been nothing short of a miracle. An employee of the local community service center was awakened, and he had been making thorough rounds of houses and lodgings in case any residents had failed to evacuate. (Perhaps the Saintess had impersonated a constellation and put him to work.)

At the moment the employee discovered the bodies, the Saintess was witnessing the very same sight.

He moved on to his next stop without giving it much thought. It was a time when simply caring for the living was overwhelming enough. But the Saintess's gaze lingered, and today I had come.

There was a reason my epithet happened to be “Undertaker.”

“Hmm.”

The mother leaned against the wall, holding her child tightly. The child was a newborn. And on the mother's shoulder, tiny red flowers had bloomed, almost like young fern shoots in spring.

The child wore a string of prayer beads a little too large for his wrist. It was not hard to imagine whose they had been, or who had put them on him. For a moment, I considered what his mother might have felt as she placed her own prayer beads on her child.

Had she hoped that, when they crossed to the far shore, at least her child would not fall into hell?

For a while, I stood motionless before the scene, like a Buddhist facing a statue of the Buddha.

[“Mr. Undertaker.”]

The Saintess spoke to me through Telepathy. Unlike when addressing other awakened, she did not pretend to be a constellation with me. She used her own voice directly.

I nodded.

“I know. Don't worry.”

I channeled aura into my sword and swung it. A few red blossoms scattered through the single room, a little too small to call a world.

Udumbara was a mythical flower.

There is no real epilogue to this story.

Only that, from that day onward, one more item was added to my schedule at the beginning of every run.

Look after Seo Gyu and Sim Aryeon at Busan Station. Go to the Baekje Hospital building and drink Old Man Scho's café au lait. Contact the Saintess and form an alliance. Then travel up to Chungcheong to see the red flowers.

I only learned it later, but no matter how many times I regressed, saving the mother and son was impossible. They were already dead when the gate crisis erupted in Seoul.

The cause of death was starvation.

The world's misery was always in season.

“Wow...”

Sometimes a slight delay in my schedule meant I did not reach the inn until several days had passed. On those occasions, Udumbara, once the size of a young fern shoot, had already grown into something like a small cherry tree.

“I-it's so beautiful...”

With each new run, I brought a companion along to view the flowers. In run ninety-six, for instance, my companion was Sim Aryeon.

“Is this really the anomaly you told me about, Guild Leader? The one we're supposed to list on SG Net with a continental-level threat rating...?”

“Yes.”

“I-it's such an amazing sight. It makes me want to paint it.”

Those were not empty words: Sim Aryeon had actually brought an easel all the way here and set it up. As she took out her paints, she said, “Oh.”

“So what kind of flower is that, Guild Leader...?”

A flower that had destroyed the world countless times.

Instead of telling her that, I trimmed a flowering branch and said,

“It's a flower that blooms once in every season of my death.”

“Hurk.”

Sim Aryeon marveled at my refined turn of phrase.