Chapter 44 - Returnees I

1

There are a lot of nutjobs among the awakened.

I can't speak for anywhere else, but the proportion is definitely high among awakened from the Korean Peninsula. Take Dang Seorin, who is dead serious about her witch cosplay, or Cheon Yohwa, who calls her guild a girls' high school.

But they're relatively manageable, at least in the sense that you can communicate with them in human language.

Today, let's talk about one illustrious individual counted among the most outstanding nutjobs of all: SwordEmpress of Yuldoguk.

2

As we've seen, the Wheel Killer incident somehow worked out in the end. But the mere fact that the Saintess had fallen dealt me an enormous shock.

It had been quite some time since I'd taken a psychological blow of that magnitude. If I had to find a comparable incident, perhaps it would be when Go Yori, whom I'd firmly believed to be a "good person," slammed a grand slam into the back of my head?

What that meant was:

'Vacation season, then.'

A shout rang out across the waiting hall of Busan Station.

"You fucking bastard! What the fuck are you talking about?!"

"Hoi."

A sound like puffed rice exploding rang out as well.

POP!

Seo Gyu, the man who made his exit faster than anyone else in the world, was eliminated.

"Aaaaaah!"

Thanks to a fairy who knew nothing of the human heart, people screamed and fled in every direction. A familiar sight.

With that, SG Net would never come into existence. In other words, I'd personally relinquished one of my means of controlling the awakened, openly or behind the scenes.

Why hide it?

I, the regressor Undertaker, had absolutely no intention of saving the world in this 108th run. Seo Gyu kicking the bucket was as good as a sign announcing that I was closed for business.

'More importantly, that guy... He's far too weak when it comes to women.'

Seo Gyu had once fallen hook, line, and sinker for Go Yori and sold her information on the Saintess.

That, I could understand. Go Yori's brainwashing beam was ridiculously powerful. Hadn't even I fallen under her hypnosis and nearly ended up making an out-of-the-blue, adults-only gore doujinshi?

But the last run was different. Now that I sat down and thought about it, that bastard Seo Gyu had absolutely been recruited by the Saintess.

He'd probably been in charge of subtly manipulating public opinion on SG Net or stoking fear of the Wheel Killer.

There was nothing wrong with helping the Saintess in itself.

The problem was that he'd hidden it from me!

'You shameless little bastard. You ungrateful bastard. After everything I've done for you.'

I'd raised him like a precious treasure, and in the end, his relationship with a female colleague mattered more than some savior and mentor who'd saved his life.

Incidentally, I held grudges for a while. How long? Uh... About two hundred years?

When a regressor bore a grudge, frost, hail, and yellow dust came sweeping in not just in summer, but all year round, 365 days a year.

Was it unfair for his next-run self to be punished for mistakes committed by his previous-run self? Life was inherently unfair. That junior of mine needed a good beating for a while.

Seriously, where else would he find a Boss like me?

Seo Gyu loved Italian-style pizza so much that I'd deliberately saved a pizza artisan in Busan and even helped him open a shop. Such was the boundless affection his Boss lavished on him.

'Pizza privileges revoked!'

For daring to disappoint his Boss, that bastard Seo Gyu would have to endure a pizza-free existence for the next two hundred years. In other words, ten to fifteen runs.

Anyway, Seo Gyu had paid for his sins by getting "hoi'd" by the fairy.

What really mattered was how to make the most of this vacation.

As I squatted in a corner of the waiting hall, planning my getaway, Fairy No. 264 scurried over.

"What are you doing, human?"

"As you can see, I'm planning a vacation."

"A vacation?"

"Yes. The world's gone to hell anyway, so at least I should enjoy some peaceful, meaningful time. If I'm going on vacation, shouldn't I pick a new itinerary, something I've never experienced before?"

"Eek. You're a lunatic... My seniors taught me not to go anywhere near lunatics..."

The fairy scampered away.

As usual, I farmed a silver bell from the waiting hall's souvenir shop, then pondered alone.

Suddenly, a conversation I'd had with the Saintess in the previous run struck me like lightning.

["All the awakened like me!"]

["No. Only fifty percent of the awakened like you, Mr. Undertaker. That fifty percent simply includes most of the powerful ones. Among the rest, plenty have been waiting for a chance to go after you. SwordEmpress of Yuldoguk, for example."]

The Saintess's words had unintentionally wounded my pride.

I, Undertaker, might be an insignificant regressor, but I took pride in treating and helping people with as little prejudice as possible. Hadn't I deliberately insisted on speaking politely to everyone I met for the first time, for fear that my long life of regression might make me arrogant?

If I put my mind to it, I was confident I could get not fifty percent, but ninety—no, ninety-five percent of the awakened to like me.

"All right."

I rose from my squat.

In this run, I'd win the heart of SwordEmpress of Yuldoguk.

3

The fact that SwordEmpress was a crazy old man was obvious from his epithet, "SwordEmpress," alone.

Anyone who's read martial arts novels will know that Sword Empress is a title. Specifically, an honorific reserved for female masters, not male ones.

Yet our world's SwordEmpress was, no matter how you looked at him, an old man with a magnificent beard—a man past sixty.

Isn't the back of your neck tingling already?

"I am the greatest under heaven!"

And this man referred to himself with the grandiose self-address of a supreme master.

As a self-proclaimed SwordEmpress, he wore a sword at his side. Except that sword was a practice blade he'd stolen from a kendo school when it went under. In short, a fake sword made of aluminum.

I trust that fully explains why I hadn't made friends with SwordEmpress even by my 108th run. He was a completely crazy old man.

"Furthermore, I am the greatest of all time."

Now then.

Perhaps you've already decided, 'Ah, this is that trope where you think he's crazy, but once you dig into his circumstances, he turns out to be surprisingly normal. I know this one.'

If so, I regret to bring you sad tidings: you have absolutely no talent as a fortune-teller, at the very least.

A true lunatic is in a different league from someone merely cosplaying one. The deeper you dig into his circumstances, the higher the insanity reading climbs, as though you're approaching a radioactive contamination site.

"Lastly, I am SwordEmpress of Yuldoguk!"

"Uh. What is Yuldoguk?"

"Good heavens, you don't even know Yuldoguk? Alas, what a tragedy. There was a nation founded by His Highness the Grand Duke, who rose in righteous fury against the tyranny of those English scoundrels."

When I looked it up later, Yuldoguk's actual name turned out to be a micronation called the "Principality of Sealand."

Even as someone who spoke eight languages, I had no idea what fateful overlap this old codger SwordEmpress had discovered between the English name "Sealand" and the Korean name "Yuldoguk." I suspect even the laborers at the Tower of Babel construction site would have said they had no idea.

Incidentally, Sealand... No, Yuldoguk had chosen absolute monarchy rather than a democratic republic. It even had a proper class system. One couldn't help feeling it was a little behind global fashions and trends.

Taking things a step further, the Yuldoguk government had learned its philosophy of statecraft from none other than Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Back in the days of the Three Kingdoms, there was a Han emperor named Liu Hong. Commonly known as Emperor Ling of the Later Han, this monarch was a progressive leader at the cutting edge of contemporary trends.

A full seventeen hundred years before The Wealth of Nations was published far away in Britain, Liu Hong independently grasped the principles of capitalism.

["The state belongs to me. Therefore, government offices are also my private property."]

["If you want to borrow someone else's private property, shouldn't you show some appreciation?"]

The emperor firmly rejected the antiquated evil practice of handing out government offices according to blood ties. Instead of the superstition of bloodline, he bestowed offices according to the one true faith in this world: money.

This reform-minded monarch not only sold higher offices for higher prices, but also created a system allowing his cash-strapped subjects to pay for their offices in installments. Contrary to popular belief, the seeds of capitalism had blossomed in the East before the West.

Though Liu Hong's reforms ended in failure, they inspired countless revolutionaries in later ages.

Even Britain, the homeland of capitalism, could not escape their influence.

In the late twentieth century, a certain Englishman decided to found a country in the middle of nowhere. He learned the wisdom of governance from that ancient sage.

["Wouldn't selling noble titles help the national finances?"]

Truly, this was a reversal of "Eastern principles, Western tools": Western principles, Eastern tools in action.

This Englishman went a step beyond his predecessor, opening his doors not only to his own citizens, but to people all over the world. He understood well the truth that money should have neither borders nor nationality.

The power of that open-door policy reached even South Korea, thousands of miles from Britain. And the person it reached was none other than the protagonist of this tale, SwordEmpress.

He purchased a barony of Yuldoguk for the princely sum of 250,000 won, including various extras on top of the 70,000-won list price. A glorious achievement: a Korean had reclaimed a noble title, something that had officially disappeared with the fall of the Korean Empire.

The old man thrust his nose high into the air.

"Henceforth, address me as Sword Baron."

"Sword" because he liked martial arts novels. "Baron" because he was a baron.

His naming sense was insane, but the tragedy did not end there.

While humanity kept dividing itself by race and nationality, monsters treated their brethren across the world equally. When Seoul was wiped out in Korea, the whole of East Anglia evaporated in Britain.

Naturally, the nearby micronation couldn't possibly have survived unscathed. Yuldoguk, boasting an effective population of four, disappeared, becoming a page in history.

Incidentally, it was also the first nation in the world to fall after the gate crisis, making the swiftest national exit.

"Impossible! My homeland has fallen!"

The old man, abruptly deprived of his country, swallowed bitter tears.

Had he collapsed here, he would have been third-rate at best. But he rose in righteousness. One drop of a man's tears was enough for his fallen country.

"From this moment forth, I shall carry on the will of Yuldoguk!"

The nation with the swiftest exit suddenly experienced the swiftest restoration movement as well.

"Yet I cannot bring myself to forget His Highness the Grand Duke's generosity. How could I presumptuously claim the grand ducal title? I shall claim only a rank inferior to grand duke, a rank below duke. Henceforth, address me as Sword Marquis!"

That's right.

Astonishingly, the characters behind his title meant Sword Marquis. In other words, a marquis of the sword.

Even in Yuldoguk, it was rare to see someone promoted straight from baron to marquis, skipping viscount and count. Because the original Yuldoguk hadn't had a marquisate.

Naturally, the official name of the new Yuldoguk became the "Marquisate of Yuldo," a country ruled by a marquis. Of course, Sword Marquis himself was the only person claiming citizenship in this backward nation.

After hearing the background of Sword Marquis's birth up to this point, any sensible human would conclude, 'If I get too close to that old man, my home address might change to a psychiatric hospital.'

But astonishingly, Sword Marquis survived. Even in this age of turmoil, with the world destroyed and anomalies running rampant, he steadfastly preserved himself. Far from having him confined to a psychiatric hospital, the awakened were scrambling to secure his presence.

Could it be because Sword Marquis was a master swordsman, just as his epithet implied?

The answer was NO. Sword Marquis couldn't even use aura. How well could a fashion-accessory swordsman carrying a fake sword fight in the first place? I guarantee that an elementary school student who'd just earned a yellow belt at a Haidong Gumdo school would show more of a master's caliber than Sword Marquis.

Sword Marquis's survival strategy lay in a truly unexpected field.

"Excuse me, sir."

"..."

"..."

"... Lord Sword Marquis."

"Oh, a junior of the martial world, are you not? What brings you here?"

"I merely wished to ask how this spring's crops are coming along..."

"Bah! Farming is devotion and care. You should trust that I am tending them properly! How dare you attempt to monitor me!"

"No, I'm not monitoring..."

"Bah! Why does a young junior have so much to say? Keep bothering me, and I may cut off food supplies to your guild entirely!"

Behind the shouting Sword Marquis stretched a golden wheat field.

Sword Marquis's ability was [Plant Growing].

An utterly broken SSS-class ability, it let him grow crops as much as he pleased regardless of climate, soil, or water quality, and accelerate their growth by a whopping three to six times.

Thanks to this, Sword Marquis evolved from "crazy old man" into "old man absolutely nobody could touch or mouth off to."

"Do you understand? If I so desire, all you juniors shall go hungry! Would you care for a taste of the lean season?"

"..."

Sword Marquis.

Most unfortunately for Korea's awakened... this crazy old man was the sole source of sustenance on the Korean Peninsula after civilization's collapse.