Chapter 33 - The Maker III

3

“You really did a number on me...”

The formal proceedings wrapped up well enough, and we moved on to the group dinner. This was arguably today’s main event. It wasn’t often that the major guild leaders from all over the country gathered in one place.

As soon as the drinking began, I excused myself to the restroom and slipped out onto the cruise ship’s deck. Noh Doha had tracked me down with uncanny precision and followed me out.

I played innocent.

“Did a number on you? Me?”

“You blew the road project up to this scale...”

“Oh, come on. That was the Alliance Leader, not me. I don’t know why you’re blaming an innocent bystander.”

“Dang Seorin, Guild Leader of Three Thousand Worlds...” Noh Doha murmured.

“She’s an excellent person, but immensely proud... She knows how to separate personal feelings from public affairs, but precisely because of that, even when she handles something professionally, her personal feelings remain unresolved, tucked away in her heart... I deliberately wounded the Three Thousand Worlds Guild Leader’s pride, even using the word ‘cripple,’ and yet she introduces me to guild leaders from all over the country... That would be impossible unless she thought so highly of me that she had to treat me as a purely public figure...”

Noh Doha’s eyes narrowed.

“That means the Three Thousand Worlds Guild Leader asked someone about me, and that someone talked me up enormously...”

“I see. Who could that be?”

“Most likely the person who happened to be in the guest lounge when I spoke with the Three Thousand Worlds Guild Leader...”

Noh Doha held a glass in each hand and offered me one. Chilled lemon tea. I accepted gratefully and took a drink.

Beyond Busan Port, where the cruise ship lay moored, the city stretched into the night. Gone was the old nightscape, where electric lights stole starlight from the sky and spread a Milky Way across the earth. A little light. A little shadow. And a great deal of moonlight.

The sea’s raw, green scent wafted over the deck.

For a while, Noh Doha and I watched the cityscape, submerged in the sound of water.

“You really did a number on me...”

“You already said that.”

“Trying to make someone work for free. Has your conscience stepped out for a while...?”

“It won’t be for free. Materials, funding, manpower—whatever you request, I’ll do everything I can to provide it.”

“Hmmm.”

Noh Doha gave a dark chuckle.

“Whatever I need? Very well. Then put the world back the way it was...”

“...”

“Undertaker, what comes to mind when you hear the word ‘infinity’? Space? Time? Me, I believe the one infinite thing in this world is human misery...”

Noh Doha’s tone was a shade darker than the nightscape of this era.

“Saving one person’s life? I can do that. I have done it. But does removing one person’s misery settle everything? Does happiness arrive when misery disappears? That depends entirely on the person. Nobody else can take responsibility for that. How would you know when it would end...?”

So said the person who cared until the very end for people with disabilities, whom nobody spared a thought for even in a world like this.

“That’s why the very idea of helping another person is flawed. Help must have limits. You must think of it not as helping with their whole life, but simply helping with the one arm they’ve lost. Then you can take responsibility. It’s something I can do, and something I do very, very well... But.”

Noh Doha craned her neck toward me.

Like a long-necked snake.

The aroma of freshly brewed lemon tea mingled and swayed with the fishy smell of the sea.

“You want me to take responsibility for the road network of the entire country, not just Busan...?”

Her eyes, as though a full moon had been split in half and pasted onto her face, took in every inch of mine.

“Well, I can do it. I’ll probably do it well, too. But what comes next? Roads are infrastructure, Undertaker. Do you happen to know what we call the people in charge of infrastructure...?”

“The government.”

“You seem to have a dim view of privatization. Correct...”

Noh Doha laughed at length.

Clouds cast shadows over the half-moons.

“I have no intention of taking responsibility for every part of people’s lives...”

“...”

“I can barely handle crippled people. I have absolutely no intention of handling a crippled country. I know. Right now I have to introduce myself to guild leaders and kiss their asses, but as the roads go in one by one, it’ll be the guild leaders who have to get on their knees before me. Ooh. The new power in a broken world. King of the Korean Peninsula. Sounds sweet, doesn’t it? But... I don’t want it. I don’t. Why? Did you think I’d be delighted if you handed me all that power? Go suck your own dick...”

“Ms. Noh Doha.”

“Ah, does autofellatio hurt your pride? Then ask the Three Thousand Worlds Guild Leader to suck it for you. Heh. If you want to save the world, you noble souls can save it yourselves. Why drag an innocent bystander into—”

“I’m a regressor.”

A wave lightly struck the cruise ship’s hull.

Perhaps it was the vibration that made Noh Doha’s head tilt.

The half-moon slice of lemon in her glass slipped a little, too.

“Hmm...?”

“You secretly dug a wine cellar beneath your workshop, didn’t you? I know you’ve stashed twenty bottles of 1990 Château d’Yquem down there.”

“Uh...”

“I also know you secretly opened one of them the day you decided to build a road for the elderly people living in Bansong. Why Bansong, specifically? Because the people there were in the worst circumstances. And getting acquainted with the guild leader who controlled that turf would let you intervene if the need arose.”

“Huh...?”

“Back when you were a civil servant, you actually won the lottery’s first prize, but never told anyone, did you? You used that money to collect wine and privately buy equipment for making assistive devices.”

“...”

Noh Doha touched her lips with her index and middle fingers.

“Hmm. Aha? Hmmmm. Hmm... A very interesting claim. If it’s true...”

She stared at me. Her gaze swept over my legs, hands, chest, and body in turn.

“So that’s why you were always in that state. Ahaa, certainly. Yes. It would explain a great deal about your actions, Undertaker...”

Silence.

“But even if it is true, it means nothing if you’re incompetent, Undertaker. Ah, I’m not saying you actually are incompetent. I mean you have to be competent enough to put the world back the way it was... I know you took Tenlegs’ head off, but that alone isn’t quite enough. Do you understand what I mean...?”

“I do.”

“Prove it.”

I looked up at the night sky.

“Saintess. Are you watching?”

[Yes.]

“Please send Noh Doha a message.”

The Saintess did not question my judgment. She knew what I was.

“...!”

Beside me, Noh Doha’s shoulders twitched. Bewilderment, wonder, and a certain delight briefly flitted across her face.

“The constellations were actually bullshit...?”

“Yes. I run SG Net, too.”

“Huh? Oh, because it’s a website made by a constellation? Aha. I see, aha...”

Silence.

“Not bad...”

Noh Doha’s eyes settled.

“A monopoly on information doesn’t mean controlling all the information itself. It only becomes meaningful when you secure the channels through which information flows. Hmmm. This might all be a con accomplished through Mind Reading or some sort of manipulation, but conversely, if you have that much power to manipulate things, you’re just as capable as you would be with regression...”

She suddenly turned back to me.

“If it’s regression, how many times have you regressed? Is this your second run...?”

“My fifty-fourth. I first met you in my eleventh.”

“Well, you’ve been through a fucking lot, haven’t you...?”

Noh Doha seemed slightly horrified.

“I suppose... The world is pretty thoroughly fucked. But surely there were plenty of suitable candidates besides me? Aren’t there perverted bastards everywhere who’d come running, drooling from both ends, if you offered them power...?”

“I’ve tried pretty much all of them.”

The Second Provisional Government. The military coup faction. And, though I hadn’t mentioned them, the politicians who had shown some promise.

Noh Doha drew her eyebrows together.

“And I’m the best of the bunch? That can’t be right. Wouldn’t it be best to leave it to the person impersonating a constellation...?”

“Ah. She’s a hardcore shut-in, so that’s not an option.”

[...]

I felt the Saintess’s silent pressure, but shrugged.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from slogging through fifty-four runs, it’s that there’s no end to it if I try to do everything myself. Rather like your theory of infinite misery earlier. I have to leave alone the areas I can afford to leave alone. Then people emerge who grow on their own and claw their way up.”

“And that’s me...?”

“Even without my interference, you rebuilt Busan’s road network with very high probability. You went to see the Alliance Leader last run, too. I just wasn’t there then.”

“...”

In fact, that wasn’t all.

Although it was still in the future at this point, there was my ninetieth run—the one where I coaxed the tutorial fairy into helping me run a convenience store.

Noh Doha attended the last supper held in the store’s front yard. She was the one who won the awakened’s praise by handing out her prized wines.

And before forming the final raid party with the other awakened and charging at Meteor Strike, she, too, left a final note at my convenience store.

[The trip here is far too inconvenient. Nearly died carrying the wine bottles. - NDH]

I don’t think those last words were a complaint directed at me.

They were regret over herself.

If she had pushed herself harder and linked the cities with roads before the world fell apart completely, perhaps she could have delayed the world’s destruction, even a little—

I believe that was the regret they contained.

In the end, whether in the past or the future, Noh Doha would always live and die with that feeling tucked into a corner of her heart.

In that case, weren’t her words and behavior a kind of camouflage?

Everyone knew Noh Doha was important. There were certainly powerful people scheming over how to put her talents to better use. But once they heard her deranged invective, they could only retreat, thinking, ‘This person is somewhat defective as a Homo sapiens.’

Even so, I existed in this world.

When I first met Noh Doha, I, too, thought she was someone I couldn’t put to much use.

What set me apart from other people was that I was endlessly given opportunities to correct my own prejudices.

In the previous run, I entered Noh Doha’s workshop and observed her character from beginning to end. How she treated patients, how she negotiated with other guild leaders, how she checked on her patients first even when destruction was finally imminent...

For more than nine full years.

The result: a pass.

As I had told Dang Seorin, Noh Doha truly was a good person.

“You needn’t worry about failing. No, please fail in as many different ways as possible. Every failure you experience this time will be passed on intact as data to the Noh Doha of the next run.”

“Ha...”

“Build roads wherever you want. Start projects however the hell you please, wherever your instincts tell you. Eventually, the optimal route will emerge. Try all sorts of people when you put your organization together, too. In the end, we’ll find out exactly who’s suited to it.”

“Regression really is a cheat. You can even use lines like that to lure people in...”

Noh Doha scratched the side of her head.

“Hmmmm. Sorry for telling you to suck your own dick. And, well, I owe the Three Thousand Worlds Guild Leader an apology, too...”

“I don’t mind.”

“Can you put this world back the way it was...?”

She had said that earlier, too.

I looked straight at Noh Doha.

“Not on my own.”

“...”

“Please help me.”

Noh Doha let out a long sigh.

As if resonating with it, the waves of the night sea beat coldly against the hull of the cruise ship, which now lay moored in port and would never sail again.

“This is a disease.”

The waves untouched by light murmured, and the motionless cruise ship muttered.

“A vicious plague at that. Fucking carriers of an infectious disease. Great causes, good intentions... I’ve fixed countless cripples, but the biggest cripple of all was me. No matter where I look, there’s no prescription for fixing myself, and there won’t be until the day I fucking die...”

I didn’t bother answering.

That, too, was surely no more than a reflection on herself.

With her shoulders slumped, Noh Doha held out her glass.

“Well, what the hell. Let’s do it. Public works...”

CLINK.

Our two glasses met in a small toast.

The scent of lemon drifted beneath my nose.

“I look forward to working with you.”

“Is this going to repeat forever from now on...?”

“If you’re competent, yes.”

“I’m fucked...”

4

There is an epilogue.

The next day, an organization was formally launched.

The National Road Management Corps.

As befitted its simple name, the organization had just one purpose: to restore and maintain the rapidly deteriorating road network. To connect, with lines, the cities that had splintered into separate regions, each fending for itself.

“We don’t need a government at present. Nor could one sustain itself...”

A week later, Noh Doha gave us a briefing. By “us,” I do not mean the guild leaders from all over the country.

Me. The Saintess.

It was a closed-door meeting of the group with whom I almost always shared the fact that I was a regressor. Later, Oh Dokseo and a few others would join, but for now it was merely a blood alliance of three.

“We’ll leave the cities to their influential local guild leaders, just as before. They’re a kind of feudal lord. To use an analogy, the National Road Management Corps must define its position as merely a royal court that has made contracts with the feudal lords—no, as a body of officials under that court...”

The Saintess raised her hand. It was revealing of her personality.

“Yes, what is it...?”

“Wouldn’t that leave us with too little power?”

“Yes. The less we throw our weight around, the better. Power becomes broader the more areas you occupy, but it becomes stronger the more you occupy an area where nobody can replace you. And we don’t need broad power. It would only reduce efficiency and breed corruption... In an era of self-sufficiency, when no city can afford to worry about another, our National Road Management Corps will take sole responsibility for connecting and maintaining the road network...”

Noh Doha spoke with conviction.

The National Road Management Corps consisted of laborers, builders, and combat teams. Once a single-lane road was secured, the combat teams dispersed to “patrol” the roads regularly each month.

“These regular patrols are more important than anything else...”

People and merchants traveling to other cities naturally tagged along on the days the National Road Management Corps “patrolled.” Noh Doha collected a set usage fee from each of them.

“A usage fee—or rather, effectively a tax... Still, they’d protest immediately if we called it a tax, so we’ll insist to the bitter end that it’s a usage fee...”

The cities connected by those roads also had to pay road usage fees. Of course, people could use the roads without permission, but then they had to protect their own lives from monsters and other threats attacking the roads.

“We must advertise it as though they have plenty of other choices, and those choices must genuinely be available. The belief that this is their own choice, not coercion, is extremely important. Only then will the reason for the National Road Management Corps’ existence be reinforced in people’s minds every time...”

The guilds could also form their own parties and use the roads if necessary. But reaching a distant city meant passing through stops along the way, and every time they passed through a city, they had to pay a tax to its guild.

“That would really piss them off, wouldn’t it...?”

Rather than do that, it was far more sensible to pay the National Road Management Corps a small tax and travel along with them.

As ordinary people and awakened alike entrusted their travel to the Corps, Noh Doha’s influence naturally grew.

The Corps members handpicked by Noh Doha eventually came to perform roles akin to “diplomats.” Even hostile guilds that could do nothing but fight when brought together could hold a reasonably productive conversation with the Corps acting as a buffer.

Noh Doha extracted the greatest possible efficiency by exploiting the relationships, pride, and competitive instincts of the guild leaders entrenched in each city.

Of course, there was some trial and error. No, a lot.

“These fucking bastards...”

Plenty of Corps members sent out to conduct diplomacy turned out to be lining their own pockets. Some people she trusted with responsibilities were actually spies sent by other guilds. Frequently, a road chosen as the quickest route turned out to pass through a monster den.

Even so, little by little, the National Road Management Corps found its footing.

I’m telling you, my judgment of people really is spot-on.

Though for some reason, Noh Doha looked at me with hatred in her eyes.

“When you go to the next run and hand over the records of my failures, make sure you pass this along to me.”

“What should I tell you?”

“Enjoying your fucking free ride, you motherfucker...?”

I passed it along.

Noh Doha’s reaction in the fifty-fifth run was exceedingly plain.

“Bullshit.”

- The Maker. End.