Chapter 42 - The One Who Was a Watcher IV

6

For the record, I coined most of the proper nouns I use in this account myself.

Not because I suffered from some delusion that I was the Creator and that I alone had the right to name all things. It was simply because I was the first to witness most of these strange phenomena.

Think about it. Who besides me had ever watched an awakened transform into an anomaly in real time?

So I had no choice but to come up with both the name “fall” for the phenomenon and the term “Fallen” myself.

Terminology wasn't the only thing I had to create. Whenever a powerful boss-level anomaly appeared, I also had to write a strategy guide for defeating it.

I hope others never make the same mistakes I did.

Thus, here and now, I will set down a strategy guide in preparation for the Executor—the anomaly created when the Saintess, one of the strongest awakened, falls.

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[The Saintess's Fall]

[Executor Route: Unlock Conditions]

1. At least 15 years have elapsed with the Saintess still alive.

2. The number of civilian victims the Saintess has witnessed exceeds one million, at a “minimum.” In particular, she has observed helpless elderly people and children dying or being tortured more than 100,000 times.

3. The Saintess has mastered the use of aura.

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The so-called “Executor Route.”

If even one of those conditions is not met, the Executor Route will not occur.

This is knowledge I acquired through countless regressions. In fact, conditions 1 and 2 are practically identical, so you may treat them as the same condition.

Whether SG Net exists is irrelevant here. Even if SG Net, where she can distribute videos, disappears, the Saintess does not stop her “executions.” Only the location changes.

If she can no longer distribute videos online, she hangs the evildoers' corpses in city squares rather than underground parking garages. She even finds cassette players to play recordings of their confessions. If that proves impractical too, she writes them on paper and attaches them to the bodies like public notices.

Have you ever seen corpses hung up simultaneously in twelve cities nationwide, on the same day and at the same time?

Let me say it again: the Saintess is an awakened with multiple abilities that border on cheating. Never underestimate her.

The best option is to avoid entering the Executor Route in the first place. But if you do enter it, you must subdue the Saintess as quickly as possible.

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[The Executor's Abilities]

1. Time Stop

2. Telepathy

3. Clairvoyance

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Let's start with Time Stop.

Our time and the Saintess's time are not the same.

Even if, from my perspective, I have only put something off for a day, she might have been given two days, a week, a month, or perhaps a year. With every second that passes, the Saintess receives a near-eternity of opportunity.

Like right now, for instance.

“Damn...!”

Dodging every one of those thousands of bullets and dozens of hatchets was impossible. I ran with all my might, but the barrage struck me like a drizzle gradually soaking my clothes—no, like a torrential monsoon downpour drenching me through.

I protected myself by wrapping my entire body in aura, but aura was by no means infinite. My mental reserves were being whittled away in real time.

[“I think your combat prowess is remarkable, Mr. Undertaker.”]

As the battle continued, footprints multiplied in the snow by the hundreds.

In front of me. Behind me. All around me.

Footprints I had neither made nor seen being made tightened their grip around me.

[“But how long can you hold out?”]

The Saintess's aura was infinite.

Despite unleashing countless attacks just moments earlier, she showed no sign of tiring. Once again, she fed aura into each of dozens of hatchets and hurled them at me.

That use of aura defied all common sense.

“Don't tell me you're stopping time to replenish your aura?”

[“Yes.”]

The Saintess's indifferent voice lodged directly in my head. Her tone was unmistakably the same as always, yet for some reason it sounded infuriating.

[“Ten days of rest restored it. While you were frozen, Mr. Undertaker, I had a good long rest.”]

I swore inwardly. Wasn't this effectively the same as fighting with infinite-HP and infinite-MP cheats enabled?

'Is this how Tenlegs felt fighting me?'

Tenlegs wouldn't remember, but from its perspective, I was a creature who kept coming back to life and demanding a rematch, no matter how many times it killed me. It must have wanted to beg me to stop cheating so damn much.

That was exactly how I felt now. Against my will, my empathy for monsters was flourishing.

But just like my regression, the Executor's [Time Stop] was not a perfect ability. It definitely had a weakness.

'She could have subdued me easily if she'd kept hitting me while time was stopped. But she didn't.'

The fact that she hadn't meant she couldn't.

Above all, rather than a weapon like a sword or spear that could strike an opponent directly, the Saintess used hatchets as throwing weapons. She stubbornly stuck to ranged combat instead of close quarters.

The implication was clear.

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[The Executor's Abilities]

1. Time Stop: An ability that allows the user to unleash near-infinite attacks while always evading the enemy's attacks. However, Time Stop is presumed to end upon “direct contact with the opponent.”

2. Telepathy

3. Clairvoyance

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That was probably the loophole in Time Stop.

And although the Saintess had just spoken as though she had “rested comfortably for ten days,” it was likely a bluff.

In this era, firearms and ammunition were by no means stocked in abundance. Gathering those scarce resources, bringing them here, and firing them at me alone must have consumed a considerable amount of time.

Only an instant had passed for me, but during it, the Saintess would have traveled all over the country preparing her attacks.

Of course, that wouldn't matter if she kept time stopped for an entire year—or even ten. But even the Saintess would find that difficult.

Living alone for years in a world where no one moved and no one spoke to you would be hard.

Unless she let time resume periodically, at least once every ten days or so, her mental reserves would surely wear down fast.

That was why fighting the Saintess resembled playing a shooting game. Or perhaps I should call it a bullet-hell game.

Even a blink was enough for countless curtains of fire to fill my vision. A game where I had to somehow dodge the barrage of bullets and shower of hatchets, then finally approach the Saintess and “touch” her.

You might think those victory conditions were excessively difficult. Unfortunately, the Saintess wasn't out of gimmicks yet.

[BOOOOM!]

I flinched.

The sudden blast in my left ear made me falter. Had the Saintess finally grown dissatisfied with guns and resorted to bombs?

But something was strange. I quickly turned to check, yet nowhere I looked could I find an explosion.

Naturally, hesitating in the middle of combat was quite deadly. In the moment I flinched, countless bullets poured into my body.

My entire body shook. My head spun. I could feel that last barrage gouging a deep chunk out of my remaining aura.

'What? What was that explosion just now?'

I kept moving quickly, thinking furiously. Before I could deduce the source of the explosion, another noise rang out as though intent on ripping my brain apart.

[SCREEEEEECH!]

My face twisted into a grimace. It was the sound of an iron fang scraping a long, straight line across a sheet of metal. My senses were already infinitely more developed than an ordinary person's, making it all the more unpleasant.

An explosion was one thing, but with bullets pouring in from every direction, there was no way a mere metal-scraping sound could be this loud.

'Telepathy!'

I ground my teeth. This was noise the Saintess was driving straight into my head.

“Wasn't Telepathy originally limited to transmitting voices?”

[“As I told you, my abilities grow over time. I can replay any sound I remember whenever I like. Shall I play you a song?”]

Goddammit.

If the Saintess personally served as a radio DJ, I would gladly listen and send her regular fan letters. The problem was that the DJ was currently subjecting me to relentless noise pollution.

Explosions and scraping sounds weren't the only things tormenting me.

[“Undertaker! I'm here to help!”]

That was Dang Seorin's voice.

Even though I knew intellectually that Dang Seorin wasn't here, my body couldn't help reacting. Taking advantage of my hesitation, another hail of bullets thundered onto my aura barrier. It was enough to drive me insane.

[“Boss!”]

That was Seo Gyu. I gritted my teeth and ignored it.

But the next moment, when I heard a voice whispering right beside my ear, I thought I really would lose my mind.

[“Guild Leader?”]

It was none other than Go Yori's voice. Goosebumps erupted all over my body.

'This is driving me fucking crazy.'

Nothing could be more vicious. The Saintess knew me every bit as well as I knew her.

Shutting off my heightened senses was utterly useless. How was I supposed to evade Telepathy that hammered directly into my brain?

In the end, I couldn't even trust my own hearing. I continued fighting with my senses in utter disarray.

[“Running won't help, no matter how far you go, Mr. Undertaker. Have you forgotten that other people still revere me as a constellation?”]

My eyes widened. Surely not?

[“The moment the battle began, I designated you a ‘subjugation target’ to awakened all across the country. Naturally, I announced your location too. Looking through Clairvoyance, I can see hundreds of awakened converging on us.”]

“All the awakened like me!”

[“No, only 50% of awakened like you. Most of the powerful ones happen to belong to that 50%, but among the rest, plenty have been waiting for a chance to come after you. The Sword Empress of Yuldoguk, for instance. Now that I've publicly declared in a constellation's name that ‘the Undertaker has fallen,’ they have a justification, however temporary.”]

“Dang Seorin...”

[“Naturally, I didn't send messages to the guild leader of Three Thousand Worlds or anyone around her. The commander of the National Road Management Corps either. But I worried they might both be disappointed that I hadn't invited them, so I prepared a surprise present without telling you.”]

This was fucking insane.

“Please tell me it isn't Go Yori!”

[“You really do know me well, Mr. Undertaker.”]

My mind reeled. Handling the Saintess after she'd become a Fallen was already killing me, and now Go Yori was joining the fight too? Was she really planning to turn this regressor into a tossed regressor salad?

[“Three hours left.”]

Now the bullet-hell game had a time limit too. Though perhaps it was simply a bluff to make me impatient.

In short, the Saintess's abilities were as follows.

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[The Executor's Abilities]

1. Time Stop: An ability that allows the user to unleash near-infinite attacks while always evading the enemy's attacks. However, Time Stop is presumed to end upon “direct contact with the opponent.”

2. Telepathy: Originally transmitted only the Saintess's own voice, but once upgraded, becomes outright “sound playback.” Can reproduce not only other people's voices but also noises such as explosions.

3. Clairvoyance

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How the hell was I supposed to beat this?

Honestly, I couldn't argue if someone declared it unbeatable.

“...”

But there is always a way.

Tenlegs, Udumbara, the Milky Way—I always thought there was no answer when I first encountered them. But as Udumbara's case demonstrated, problems sometimes found solutions in entirely unexpected ways.

I gave up.

More precisely, I gave up on defeating the Saintess.

Instead, I dispelled the aura surrounding my entire body “all at once.”

“...!”

In the distance, I saw the Saintess's eyes fly wide open.