Chapter 39 - The One Who Was a Watcher I

1

After reading in the last episode that Kim Sieun went backpacking in Japan, some readers may have wondered about something. Hadn't I been rather reluctant to mention anything overseas until now?

Naturally, there are good reasons for that, too.

First, obvious though it may be, my main base of operations is the Korean Peninsula. I have occasionally gone on expeditions to nearby regions, but as a rule, I don't like venturing abroad.

Why? The Saintess isn't there.

I'm not joking. When the Saintess, who always serves as my support, suddenly isn't around, the downgrade is staggering. A third-person, top-down strategy game suddenly turns into a first-person Soulslike action game, you know?

I didn't take her along to China when I went to defeat the butterfly effect for no reason.

The Saintess plays a bigger part in my life as a regressor than you might think.

I have no intention of singing her praises with “Light of my life, fire of my flesh, my sin, my soul. Saint-ess,” like a certain Russian-born writer with a Lolita complex. She wouldn't like it, either.

But if I had to assemble a hero's party, I'd recruit the Saintess first, no questions asked, and work out my strategy afterward. If you don't know this, memorize it. Support—the Saintess—is a locked-in pick.

“Mr. Undertaker.”

“Yes?”

“Why must I never, under any circumstances, observe Ms. Go Yori of the Contentment guild with Clairvoyance?”

“Hmm...”

Given how essential she was, naturally, the folders in my head contained a strategy guide titled [Saintess User Manual].

It wasn't as though I was giving her special treatment. I wrote a separate guide for everyone I considered a party member.

Most awakened regarded my “strategy guides” as something a little unsettling.

Understandably so. To me, it was all knowledge earned through blood and sweat, but from their perspective, some random guy had suddenly appeared and shouted, “Your ability actually gets stronger the more aggro you draw from people!”

Honestly, I'd have had trouble believing it myself.

“Go Yori has a passive mental contamination ability. Top-tier. No matter how strong someone's willpower is, anyone who comes into contact with her will be brainwashed.”

“Ah... I see.”

The Saintess never once doubted my strategy guides.

Though she couldn't share my memories, she shared my records. She accepted what were merely my assertions as truth without hesitation, and built her strategies upon those truths.

CLACK CLACK

The Saintess spoke with me as she organized the information on her keyboard.

“Has a previous version of me ever come to harm while observing Ms. Go Yori with Clairvoyance?”

“Yes. In the eighty-ninth run.”

“How did it unfold?”

“It all happened so quickly that it's difficult to know the details, but Go Yori was a member of our party at the time. Seo Gyu was probably brainwashed first. And Seo Gyu knows what your abilities are and where you live, doesn't he? Go Yori must have used that information to approach you. By the time I rushed over, you were dead, hanging from a towel rack.”

“Suicide?”

“Probably. More precisely, she must have induced you to kill yourself.”

“...”

The Saintess rested a hand against her chin.

“Mr. Seo Gyu. Yes, I see. Keeping him firmly on our side at all times will be important. Separately, I don't think it would be a bad idea to investigate Ms. Go Yori's true nature to the very end, even if it means being prepared to sacrifice this run...”

She studied my expression, then nodded.

“... But there's no need to take that risk. In that case, please tell me what else I should be careful of.”

“Nothing beyond what I've already told you.”

That was both the truth and a lie.

“I'll deal with all the remaining threats myself.”

The typing stopped. The Saintess was looking at me with her head tilted.

“Mr. Undertaker.”

“Yes.”

“What happens to me if those threats are left alone?”

I was silent for a moment.

There were a few subjects I deliberately kept silent about. Time Seal was one, and matters overseas were another. Telling those stories required a little preparation.

I had also never mentioned that, although it was exceedingly rare, awakened who “fell” could turn into monsters.

So now, I'll tell you.

The story of what happens when the Saintess falls—the so-called “Executor Route.”

2

Ever since we met at a riverside convenience store and learned of each other's existence, I trusted the Saintess in every run, and she trusted me.

Having lost Old Man Scho, I desperately needed an ally. She, too, needed a warrior to make up for her lack of fighting power. Our alliance was inevitable.

[“Well done defeating Tenlegs, Mr. Undertaker. That eliminates most of the threats south of the Han River.”]

At first, there were no problems.

[“Udumbara... Defeat confirmed. If what you told me is true, the flowers blooming from the bodies of that mother and child would have covered the entire world. I find that terribly sad. Thank you for your hard work.”]

Among everyone I knew, the Saintess possessed exceptional mental fortitude and survival skills.

She always survived until the day the world ended. Her heart was strong: she could live without interacting with others, and without relying on fighting power.

[“Meteor Strike, defeat confirmed. ... Now countless awakened and civilians will no longer be wiped out overnight without ever knowing why. I believe this would have been impossible without you, Mr. Undertaker. Thank you so much for your hard work.”]

We safely made it past the seventh-year crisis, when Meteor Strike was guaranteed to appear.

The changes began to show in year twelve.

[“Mr. Undertaker.”]

“Hmm? What is it?”

[“There has been a massacre of civilians in Nampo, in North Korea.”]

The Saintess's Clairvoyance reached most of the Korean Peninsula. It was no exaggeration to say that, within the peninsula, we had unlimited vision.

“What? A civilian massacre? Where exactly? I'll go there.”

[“... No. I've only just learned of it myself. The massacre is already almost over. It is estimated to have taken place from the morning of July eleventh until now, July thirteenth.”]

But the Saintess's Clairvoyance only worked on the awakened. She couldn't observe everyone living on this land.

In other words, when civilians killed other civilians, she was utterly powerless.

Murder. Massacre. Whatever the crime, if it occurred between civilians, she was always a step too late, observing only a scene where everything had already ended.

[“Mr. Undertaker.”]

[“I think my abilities are gradually growing stronger.”]

Things grew a little worse.

“Oh, really? Depending on the awakened, abilities either keep growing or remain stagnant from the beginning. It seems yours were the former. How far does your Clairvoyance reach now?”

[“It's still barely within range, but when I'm in Seoul, I think I can reach the tip of the Shandong Peninsula.”]

“Wow. That's amazing. Congratulations.”

[“... Yes. Thank you.”]

“Anyway, aren't you interested in learning martial arts from me yet? You need exercise, too. Training is essential, if only for your health, not necessarily to build your fighting strength.”

[“I'll think about it. ... Thank you.”]

The Saintess's abilities had always developed slowly.

When Tenlegs swept across the Korean Peninsula, when Udumbara brought the world to its end, when Meteor Strike brought the world crashing down, the Saintess died.

She died before her abilities had a chance to grow.

But as the runs progressed, her lifespan grew longer and longer.

Five years, seven years, twelve years, fifteen years. The longer her time continued, the broader the world she could observe grew, a little at a time.

Above all, at this point I was giving her nearly all the elixirs that were no longer of any use to me. She was my most dependable ally, after all.

[“...”]

As a result, the tragedies she had to bear also grew a little more numerous.

It was fine when the scope was limited to Korea.

Even if we couldn't care for everyone, we had created a social system called the National Road Management Corps.

Moreover, thanks to the constellations' presence, awakened rarely committed serious transgressions, and even when they did, [Clairvoyance] let us discover them quickly.

Korea's major guilds, including Dang Seorin's Three Thousand Worlds, were also cooperative.

But it was a different story across the sea.

We didn't have the capacity to concern ourselves with those places. We lacked resources. Even before considering the shortage of supplies and personnel, I, the regressor, simply didn't have anywhere near enough time.

For example, a round trip to Tianjin in China would take me at least a week. That meant a week in which I would be absent from the Korean Peninsula, inevitably missing incidents that could only be resolved through my intervention.

[“...”]

The Saintess was wise. She deeply agreed with the proposition that all good begins with allocating resources efficiently.

Indeed, she was considerate of me.

After mentioning the massacre in Nampo, North Korea, that one time, she never once brought up tragedies outside the National Road Management Corps's territory. She worried that doing so might only burden me.

But her silence did not stop the killing.

[“...”]

Thanks to our defeat of the Milky Way, countless people both at home and abroad were saved. But what they did with the lives they retained was up to each of them, and it was commonplace for them to use those lives to take others.

She could have looked away.

Had she cut herself off, there would have been no problem.

But the Saintess never stopped “observing.”

Perhaps things would have been different if the world shrank by however much she ignored. But nothing of the sort happened.

As long as the world existed there, and as long as someone died without even being able to scream, the Saintess wanted at least one person—herself—to remember that death.

Poison.

Drop by drop, poison accumulated in her heart.

[“...”]

The Saintess's heart was strong.

Sixteen years was the amount of time that heart could hold.

3

CRASH

A sound like breaking glass rang through an old playground.

It had once stood in the middle of an apartment complex. Now the apartment buildings had crumbled, left only to long for the property values of distant days, but even the half-collapsed ruins were enough to carry the echoes well.

It wasn't actually the sound of breaking glass.

It was steel clashing with steel—or, more precisely, aura colliding with aura.

“Wow.”

I marveled after deflecting the Saintess's thrown hatchet with my sword.

“You're incredible. You have a natural talent not only for aura, but for martial arts as well.”

“... Thank you. I still have a long way to go.”

“No, no. Compared to me, you're practically born for martial arts. I've mastered aura training, but I have no martial talent. If I had as much talent as you, I'd have saved the world already, with room to spare.”

That wasn't entirely empty flattery.

In fact, my talent for martial arts was close to zero. To use a martial-arts novel analogy, I was the type who simply kept building up internal energy and brute-forced enemies with hardened energy. Even that was a level I'd barely managed to reach because, from the tenth run onward, my skills were preserved through regression.

“And it's fascinating that your aura is transparent. Seriously, how can aura be transparent?”

“...”

Above all, the Saintess's aura had no discernible presence.

Literally colorless and odorless. Perfectly clear aura.

Judging by the glass-shattering crashes and clangs it made on impact, her mental image was probably a “mirror.” It was a form of aura that suited her very well.

“Anyway, that's all for today. Good work.”

“Thank you for your hard work, Mr. Undertaker.”

“If you've achieved this much in just a year, you'll be able to run around the battlefield in my place in another three or five. If you're this good once you try, why did you refuse to train all this time?”

“Physical activity wasn't a hobby of mine.”

“Have your hobbies changed now?”

“... Yes.”

I felt privately pleased.

'Even the eternally shut-in Saintess can change if she wants to.'

Granted, it had taken a full sixteen years or so for that change to happen. But what did that matter? This was the first time in my entire life of regression that she had learned martial arts like this.

I spoke as I handed her a towel.

“Saintess, do you have any other plans today?”

“...”

“Saintess? Saintess.”

“... Ah.”

She blinked.

This had been happening often lately.

She had always given the impression of observing everything from a step removed from the world, but lately that air had grown a little more pronounced, perhaps. Even in the middle of conversations like this one, she would often suddenly stare blankly into space.

“Are you all right?”

Even that vacant expression suited her strangely well, so there was no issue aesthetically, but I worried that something might be wrong with her health.

If she became bedridden, Noh Doha would immediately try to torture me by twisting my legs. The Saintess's Clairvoyance was that vital to running the National Road Management Corps.

“Yes, I'm fine... I'm sorry. What did you just say?”

“Do you have any plans to go out somewhere today?”

“No.”

The Saintess answered immediately.

“I don't.”

“That's a relief. Public safety has been getting worse lately, hasn't it? I'm sure you know how to look after yourself, but please be careful. You do overdo things sometimes.”

“... You know me well, Mr. Undertaker.”

“Of course. How many years have I known you?”

She took the towel from me and wiped her face.

At the time, I thought she'd only lowered her head to wipe away the sweat.

Looking back now, perhaps she was using the towel as a natural way to avoid my gaze.

“Thank you, as always, Mr. Undertaker.”