Chapter 50 - Survivors III

The academy city was dead and alive at the same time.

The whole of it flourished like one enormous zombie.

Whenever academy cities appeared in fiction, I used to criticize the concept as utterly unrealistic. Now I saw that I had been wrong. I could only reflect bitterly on how narrow-minded my past self had been.

Yes. Incredible as it might seem, academy cities existed. This academy city had a stronger economy than any other city, along with transcendent scientific technology capable of creating nothing out of something. At the very pinnacle, ruling over it all, stood none other than the student council president. And yes, every single one of these statements was true.

"This is actually happening...?"

Even Dang Seorin was bewildered by the academy city's untimely debut.

"Deputy Guild Leader. Does the Korean Peninsula have bad energy or something? Did Grandfather Dangun get scammed by a real estate agent when he picked this place? Fighting Tenlegs is enough of a headache. Where did that bunch of lunatics come from?"

"From a gate. Did you know? Apparently, the swimming pool at Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School has no water. There are only zombies in swimsuits flailing around on the bottom of the lanes."

"... ... Let's pretend we didn't see it."

Anyone with even a scrap of brain in their skull took the same approach to the academy city.

Ignore the fuck out of it.

The basic strategy remained unchanged even in the runs when I struck out on my own, no longer working under Dang Seorin.

Don't look at it. Don't take an interest in it. Don't speak to it.

This so-called Three No's policy was the proper way to deal with Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. It truly was the best way to keep that Pandora's box full of durian sealed.

Even when other guilds were seduced by the sales pitch of an "unprecedented necromancer" and tried dipping in for a taste, I desperately stopped them. No, no. Yucky. Yucky! Eat that and you'll get a tummy ache.

"Huh? Who are you to stop our guild?"

"With a necromancer, we could beat Dang Seorin!"

Of course, the guilds didn't obey me meekly from the start. Some guild leaders stubbornly refused to fucking listen and wound up contributing to the academy city's founding after all.

But I didn't get angry. Seen against a regressor's long life, they were like immature newborn babies. Keep tending them with love and attention, and someday they would come to appreciate their parent's noble intentions on their own.

"Well, if you say so, Mr. Undertaker..."

"True. Now that I think about it, necromancers are creepy. Ordering corpses around? What's that about?"

Ah, yes.

You want me to tell you how to make proud awakened submit? It's incredibly simple. Become a regressor and kill Tenlegs. Then even those steel-plated tsunderes will turn sweet on you.

Thus, from run ten onward, when I began successfully killing Tenlegs, the guild leaders obediently complied with my restrictions.

Tape invariably proliferated across the gates of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School like a spiderweb.

[NO ENTRY] [SAFETY FIRST] [DANGER] [BEWARE OF HUMAN FLESH] [RESTRICTED AREA]

It was an exceedingly simple solution, yet astonishingly, those strips of yellow tape proved almost as powerful as an absolute barrier.

As long as nobody stirred things up from outside, Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School was safe. Cheon Yohwa and her student council never ventured out, to the point that I wondered what on earth they ate to survive in there.

On the very, very rare occasions when Cheon Yohwa herself went out to gather supplies, the Saintess immediately whispered in my ear, "The student council president has appeared." Even then, major incidents were rare.

Even after thirty runs.

Even after forty runs.

Even after fifty runs.

Yellow tape still cordoned off the "gate" of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. I can guarantee that, except for the runs when I went on vacation, its seal was never broken.

In other words, whenever I quit my job as a regressor and took a vacation, there was an extremely high chance of an "academy city" appearing.

The same held true in run 108, when I returned from acting out Return to Mount Hua with the Sword Marquis.

The Korean Peninsula was blazing away, determined to prove once again why this land had once been called Hell Joseon and inspired terror in one and all.

GR҉U҈҉GU҉WI҈҈҉RG҉O҈҉!

"Eternal life without killing! Life of the spirit, splendor of flowers! Peace beneath the heavens for a hundred million li!"

"Boss, two servings of tteokbokki over here!"

Tenlegs, the solitary gourmet. New Buddha, the religious cult. And now, on top of those, Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School, the largest academy city in history!

Those oh-so-familiar hometown friends welcomed me enthusiastically.

They felt so dear to me now that I could almost cry. If Meteor Strike fell here too, we'd have the Korean Peninsula's complete Four Heavenly Kings.

Rather than witness that shitshow firsthand, I was better off quietly regressing. So that's exactly what I did.

"Hmm."

Having finished a vacation season and returned to Busan Station, I entered a moment of post-indulgence clarity.

Vacations really did work wonders. All those notorious occupational ailments unique to infinite regressors—the [Why Only Me?] syndrome, the [I'm Tired, I've Had Enough] syndrome, the [Nobody Remembers Me] syndrome, and so on—had been completely cured.

Instead, the opposite set of chronic regressor ailments flared up again: the [Still, I Have to Fix It] syndrome, the [I'm Completely Fine] syndrome, and the [Even If Everyone Forgets, I'll Remember Everyone Forever] syndrome. But, well.

Isn't a human life merely a record of battling the illnesses called unhappiness and happiness, anyway?

A regressor was nothing more than a long-term inpatient who suffered the same illnesses as everyone else, only more deeply, and managed them with a little more skill.

I checked back into the hospital that had cared for me for so long. That is, this world. Then I quietly observed the state of the Korean Peninsula from an angle I had never considered before.

'Compared with the Sword Marquis... might Cheon Yohwa actually be a highly rational conversation partner?'

A true revolution in thought!

An epiphany made possible only after patiently attending to an unparalleled lunatic like the Sword Marquis for six whole years.

Indeed. Compared with a dog smeared in shit, a dog smeared in mustard was practically an adorable shih tzu.

'A high school student council president? Compared with a nobleman from some island nation, she's completely normal.'

The fifth-run regressor who trembled at the sight of student zombies no longer existed. All that remained was the awakened of run 109, fresh from experiencing the Marquis of Yuldoguk, who doubled as the Mount Hua Sect's leader.

People grow, don't they?

Mildly impressed by my own growth, I, Undertaker, began my preparations.

I grabbed SG Guy, Seo Gyu, by the scruff of his neck and cured his anger management issues, formed an alliance with the perpetually shut-in Saintess, took down Tenlegs and Udumbara, then dragged the Sword Marquis out of Ulleungdo, where he was training his internal energy. With that, all the groundwork was laid.

And several months later.

I went to Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School alone.

"What brings you here?"

An NPC stood at the school gates.

It was a security guard with a familiar face.

Just as Dante's gates of Hell bore the inscription "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," this NPC presided over the entrance to a terrifying dungeon.

"I'm sorry, but if you have no business here, please leave. This is a private school. Outsiders cannot simply enter."

"Ah. Thank you for your hard work. I'm not an outsider."

But having cleared the entity known as the Sword Marquis, I saw the guard as nothing more than an utterly insignificant monster.

The Sword Marquis who did not kill me only made me stronger.

"Here's who I am."

"Hmm? What's this...?"

I politely offered him a printout.

Conveniently, it bore the Office of Education's logo.

[Notice of the 99th Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School Alumni Reunion]

"... Uh."

The guard's eyes wavered.

I gave him a bright smile.

"Hello. I'm a graduate of this school, here on business concerning the Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School alumni reunion. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"..."

The zombie guard faltered, like an NPC acting according to its programming who had frozen at a completely unexpected move by a player.

Naturally, the document was forged. I had never even enrolled in an education department, and I had never heard of an actual student teacher carrying a document with a title like that.

But what did it matter?

What were they going to do, call the Office of Education or a university to check whether it was real? Those people had emigrated to Mars ages ago, when half of Seoul was blown away.

"Um... excuse me... This is a girls' high school?"

"Ah. My sex changed. It's called sex-swap syndrome. I awakened an ability like that."

"Uhh...?"

The zombie guard could no longer decide whether responding with "No such insane ability exists in this world!" would constitute sexism. It was a rather cruel situation for an NPC that acted only according to programmed patterns.

"Hmm. No, uh... Could you come inside and wait a moment? I'll fetch the person in charge."

"Oh, I called ahead to say I'd be coming about the reunion today, but I suppose the message never reached you. I'll go wait, then."

"Th-thank you..."

I entered Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School with astonishing ease.

Did you see that?

That is the seasoned expertise of a regressor on his 109th run.

["Is this really the best approach...?"]

The Saintess's lament reached my ear, but I ignored it.

6

"... You're a graduate of our school?"

Blink.

Cheon Yohwa, who greeted me in the student council room, kept blinking as she watched my every move.

Even the formidable necromancer could not conceal her bewilderment before a self-proclaimed graduate claiming to suffer from sex-swap syndrome.

"That's right. Judging by your hair color, you must be Cheon Yohwa? I've heard a lot about you from the others."

"Uh..."

I treated Cheon Yohwa with complete nonchalance.

"Word went all around our alumni network that an incredibly smart, quick-witted junior had been elected student council president."

"Um, well... Thank youuu...?"

"For the record, I worked on the student council too. Now I'm the alumni association president."

"Ah..."

Cheon Yohwa grew increasingly meek.

This was precisely the weakness of lunatic-type awakened who built their own world and setting inside their skulls.

They fiercely resisted outsiders who disregarded their setting, yet became utterly vulnerable to visitors who faithfully played along.

"We're holding an alumni gathering, and my friends said they'd like to look around the school for the first time in ages."

"Oh, I see..."

And this was exactly what I had intended.

A lunatic's natural enemy was always another lunatic with a higher level of crazy. Once again, the truth that a lunatic's enemy is a lunatic was proven without fail.

Why? You said you were a student. The student council president of a school proud of its history and traditions, no less.

Necromancer or whatever, were you really going to defy the alumni association president, a senior so far above you that I might as well be in the heavens?

"Right. We'll avoid class hours, so would it be all right for us alumni to use the school building for a little while after school?"

"... J-just a moment. Please wait a minute!"

Cheon Yohwa got up and went to a corner of the student council room. Oh, incidentally, there were about fifteen other students gathered in the room besides her.

They weren't zombies. Every one of them was a properly living human being. Presumably, these were the true members of the "Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School guild."

"Wh-what do we do? He says he's an alumnus..."

Hundred Flowers' guild members exchanged whispers.

"That's impossible. Can someone's sex really change?"

"When you think about it, President Yohwa's ability is even more amazing, so theoretically it's entirely possible..."

"No, he could be lying."

"But if he were lying, how did he know the student council president's name before she'd even introduced herself?"

"Let's test him."

"What kind of test?"

"If he graduated here, he should know all about our school. Let's ask questions that would be almost impossible to answer unless he went to Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School."

They whispered among themselves.

They might have thought they were keeping their voices down, but I could hear everything.

"Um..."

"What is it?"

"Do you happen to know what our dormitory is called?"

I had expected a test like this.

And I had spent the past several months preparing thoroughly for this very situation.

The result of those preparations whispered to me.

["... Hundred Flowers Hall. But the students just call it the dorm."]

Ah, yes. This is an awakened called the Saintess—

With her ability, Clairvoyance, she can observe any awakened she wishes.

You may not know it, but she's already spent more than half a year by your side, sharing your joys and sorrows. Because I specifically asked her to.

"Hundred Flowers Hall. But people usually just call it the dorm."

"Uh. Where is our school cafeteria...?"

"Leave this room, go down to the first floor, then walk a little way along the left corridor."

"What's the name of the teacher in charge of student discipline...?"

"Oh, Gorilla? That teacher's really been here a long time. Back in my day, our dorm supervisor always had permed hair. Does she still?"

"..."

Cheon Yohwa's eyes wavered.

As though resorting to her last option, she brought out a yearbook. Since I had said I belonged to the 96th graduating class, she opened the corresponding volume.

Naturally, when she looked at the yearbook, the Saintess looked at it too.

"Um, could you perhaps tell me the names of some of the other alumni...?"

"Han Yesol. Lee Miri. Park Hayun. Kim Jiyu. Kim Yerin."

"..."

"Those were the girls I was close to. But..."

I smoothly rose to my feet.

"I don't understand why you keep asking such strange questions."

"Pardon?"

"You're not doubting me, are you, junior? Wow, Hundred Flowers really has gone downhill. In our day, we sent at least two students to Seoul National University. Are you preparing properly for the college entrance exam? As student council president, you should at least be aiming for Seoul National University, right?"

"..."

"Yohwa."

"Yes..."

"I'm counting on you from now on."

"Yes, sir..."

That day, the regressor acquired an obedient necromancer junior.

- Survivors. End.