Chapter 51 - The Judge I

1

Let us continue the necromancer’s story from the last episode.

2

Naturally, I had not suddenly recruited the Korean Peninsula’s second-biggest lunatic, the student council president of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School, because I wanted to be besties with lunatics. (First place, of course, belonged to Yuldoguk’s esteemed SwordEmpress.)

There were broad and profound reasons behind it all.

And I must stress that I, the Undertaker, am nothing like some scheming mastermind.

I am not the sort of bastard who draws up plans all by himself, then watches them fall apart with voyeuristic delight and a sinister snicker.

Those secretly blackhearted characters are all the end result of adults who suffered failures in communication during childhood and traded their hope in people for contempt for humanity—in short, adults trapped in thoroughly infantile trauma who never managed to escape it.

“I see. But why are you glaring at me, of all people, while saying that...?”

“That is not what matters right now, Ms. Noh Doha.”

“I see. Shall I gouge out your eyeballs, pickle them in salt, then dip them in soy sauce and eat them for you...?”

“Overly salty food is bad for your health.”

“You fucking regressor bastard...”

As befitted someone who had endured a rough childhood, Noh Doha was quick to anger and swear.

Of course, being an adult of sound character, I knew how to respond calmly to another person’s anger.

“Cheon Yohwa, whom I recruited on my own this time, will be classified as a crucial resource for our plan.”

“Why? Because you’re a pervert with a sailor-uniform fetish...?”

“I don’t like school uniforms. Try reaching my age, Ms. Noh Doha. They all look like little kids.”

“Aren’t you already a decrepit old fart who’s lived nearly a thousand fucking years by your own subjective reckoning? How am I supposed to reach that age...?”

“That is not my concern. In any case, Cheon Yohwa’s necromancy matters because it gives us a stable supply of ‘manpower.’”

“Hmm...”

Noh Doha sipped her coffee. Coffee I had brewed for her.

Over my thousand years of life—strictly speaking, I was still only 771 at this point—my skills as a barista had steadily improved. I still could not perfectly reproduce Old Man Scho’s café au lait, but apart from that, it would be no exaggeration to say I had reached the pinnacle.

Even Noh Doha, who considered cynicism toward everything her personal trademark, warmed up when she drank my coffee, muttering, “Fuck, why is this so good...?”

How gratifying. This was what made being a regressor worthwhile.

“Is manpower that important? Honestly, these days manpower is the only thing we have too much of...”

“I mean manpower for the National Road Management Corps.”

“Ah—”

Noh Doha nodded, holding her coffee cup in both hands.

“Hmm, fair point. Running this organization has been making me realize it too. ‘National Road Management Corps member’ is just another way of saying ‘suicide squad.’ Send them into a void somewhere, and there’s a twenty-percent chance they’ll come back as aliens with flowers on their heads, so...”

“If we leave the dangerous work to zombie corpses from now on, the survival rate will increase dramatically.”

“Sounds promising...? Let’s try it.”

“There is a condition we must meet first.”

“What condition...?”

I looked around. Though she had not had a single line so far, the Saintess was also there, silently sipping instant coffee.

I beamed at my trusty ‘Regression Alliance.’

“From now on, you are graduates of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School.”

“...”

“Now, this is the ninety-sixth class’s yearbook. I’ve already doctored it. See this Class Two photo? Just bullshit them and say these are pictures of you and the Saintess when you were young. I was the student council vice president. Our backstory is that you were the president, Ms. Noh Doha, and the Saintess was the secretary.”

“...”

“And these are materials I prepared specifically for Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. The dormitory’s name, a list of teachers the students frequently interacted with, slang unique to the school—it’s all here, so memorize it.”

“...”

Noh Doha looked at the Saintess.

The Saintess nodded.

“I’ve already memorized it.”

“... Fuck, is this actually happening...?”

It was.

“Hello, seniors! It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

A few days later.

We got to see Cheon Yohwa bowing her head practically to the ground right in front of us. Not just Cheon Yohwa, either. The student council of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School—the actual survivors, not the zombies—had lined up in a neat row.

“Ah, yes... I’m Noh Doha...”

“Please, no need to be formal with us! Hehehe. I heard you were student council president? Undertaker told us you needed help from your juniors on the student council. Feel free to work us like dogs!”

“How badly did you break this kid...?”

Noh Doha gave me an accusing glare.

I could only lament it. What an ignorant, uninformed reaction. The awakened of run 109 only acted like this because they had yet to experience what a band of lunatics Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School was.

“Do not let your guard down. The moment you stop respecting their shtick, all hell breaks loose. Consider yourselves warned.”

“But they seem like really nice kids...?”

“They are. But their niceness has an expiration date. Every one of them is a cannibal who goes insane unless they eat human flesh at least once every four days.”

“...”

Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School joined the National Road Management Corps.

That very night, six members of the Corps ‘enrolled’ at Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School.

The admission requirements were not particularly demanding. All you needed was a hole punched through your skull.

“What the fuck?”

Only then did Noh Doha realize the gravity of the situation.

“Undertaker, what kind of crazy bastards have you brought in here...?!”

“I warned you beforehand.”

“I didn’t know it would be this bad...!”

“Incidentally, how did they die?”

Noh Doha handed me an incident report. Truly a former civil servant, I suppose. Even in a world falling to ruin, she made sure to document every incident.

――――――――――

Victim A: What’s this? A new recruit?

Cheon Yohwa: Hello! I’m Cheon Yohwa, Student Council President of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School!

Victim B: Huh? A girls’ school? Student council? What’s that supposed to be, some role-playing shtick?

Cheon Yohwa: Pardon? No, I really am the student council president of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School!

Victim A: Good grief. Our newbie’s gone and picked up some weird ideas. One look at your face says you’re past high school graduation age, so what the...

Victim B: Yeah, listen. You’ve got to be someone like Dang Seorin to pull that role-playing crap without people giving you grief. Nobody’s going to indulge a nobody awakened like you. Student council, my ass.

Cheon Yohwa: (A peculiar smile)

――――――――――

Hmm.

That was all I needed to read.

According to the attached materials, parts of Victim A’s and Victim B’s bodies had been found in cans.

I diagnosed the victims’ cause of death.

“This was suicide.”

“Are you serious...”

Noh Doha shuddered.

But like me, she was an expert at dealing with SwordEmpress. She had maxed out the skill ‘Lunatic Socializing,’ specialized for dealing with lunatics.

The moment she realized Cheon Yohwa was the same breed of lunatic as SwordEmpress, she immediately adjusted her approach.

“My dear junior, Cheon Yohwa...”

“Yes, Senior Noh Doha!”

“How are your preparations for the college entrance exam coming along?”

“Huh?”

“Goodness. Back in my day, our seniors told us that a student council president naturally had to get into at least Seoul National University. You’re aiming high too, aren’t you, Yohwa...?”

“...”

Noh Doha promptly laid down the law, then worked Cheon Yohwa like a dog. Incidentally, both she and I made ourselves Seoul National University admission certificates and proudly showed them to Cheon Yohwa.

They were forged documents again. So what? What could you do about it?

My backstory even had me majoring in German language and literature. As everyone knows, my German was flawless.

With [Perfect Recall] added to the mix, I could even pull off the feat of reciting Goethe’s Faust and Schiller’s poems on the spot, without missing a beat.

I raised my eyebrows as though perplexed.

“Hmm. Isn’t this much a basic requirement for the student council president of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School?”

“...”

Cheon Yohwa shed tears and surrendered to her seniors’ imposing authority.

Had she been a ‘fake,’ she would have waved the white flag and abandoned her shtick at this point. But Cheon Yohwa was the real deal. Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School existed in her mind, and naturally, its traditions remained alive and well.

“I’ll do my best to follow your guidance...”

The academy city’s monster, who had once terrorized every awakened on the Korean Peninsula in a past run, was nowhere to be found. Only one pitiful student remained.

This must be what it meant to get caught in your own trap.

“Oh. The zombie army really is useful...?”

And Noh Doha confirmed that Cheon Yohwa was worth using, ‘even if it meant keeping up this ridiculous role-play.’

That left no reason to hesitate. Pragmatism incarnate, Noh Doha immediately renamed the National Road Management Corps’ deployments ‘off-campus practical training’ and forced them on Cheon Yohwa.

The National Road Management Corps’ unit structure successfully evolved.

- Reconnaissance unit: Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School security staff (zombies). At least one awakened leads the zombies. Their role is to enter the void first, identify dangers, and report back to the main unit. Since zombies cannot make nuanced judgments, their assignments are kept as simple as possible.

- Main unit: A strike force consisting of at least two awakened. Travels between cities, inspects roads, escorts migrants and merchant caravans traveling with it, and commands the zombie reconnaissance unit.

- Support unit: A unit capable of immediately repairing damaged roads, even if only temporarily. In short, manual labor.

With Cheon Yohwa’s addition of the ‘reconnaissance unit,’ the National Road Management Corps made a tremendous leap forward. Its members’ disappearance rate, which had reached a staggering twenty percent, dropped below five percent.

The proportion of zombies turning into actual corpses rose accordingly, but nobody cared. Human rights were already gone; the world was a little too harsh to spare any thought for zombie rights.

“So this is the true usefulness of corpses...?”

Corpses were wonderful things.

Zombies could work without eating, felt no pain, required no consideration for human rights, and acted only according to their preprogrammed instructions. Once you got a taste, they were like a drug you could never quit. All the more so if you pursued pragmatism as avidly as Noh Doha.

Noh Doha discovered a new taste.

3

“Undertaker. What is a zombie...?”

One day, I was asked that question.

“Pardon?”

“Think about it. Every zombie Cheon Yohwa creates performs its own role. Security guard, student, teacher... They only act according to their preprogrammed instructions, so they can’t respond to unexpected situations, but within the confines of that role, they seem quite human...”

“What are you getting at?”

“Aren’t these just NPCs rather than zombies...?”

A dark gleam appeared in Noh Doha’s eyes.

“You probably called them zombies based on their appearance, Undertaker, but I don’t think that’s a very accurate designation. Cheon Yohwa is a necromancer, but she isn’t mass-producing ‘zombies’... You could call her a kind of designer who creates ‘NPCs.’ In a sense, you could even say she equips them with ‘AI’...”

“Oh?”

NPCs, not zombies.

It was a naming method befitting Noh Doha, who judged others purely by their usefulness rather than their appearance.

“An interesting interpretation. But does that actually change anything?”

“Well, we’ll have to find that out as we go...”

Noh Doha grinned.

“The way I see it, a great many things could change...”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. On that note, please call Guild Leader Dang Seorin over...”

Even the commander of the National Road Management Corps was in no position to order Dang Seorin around. But she willingly listened to me, the only member of her ‘Restaurant Tour Club.’

The next day, Dang Seorin arrived at the Corps’ headquarters, making no effort to hide her annoyance.

“What is it? I’m busy these days.”

“Ah, my apologies. I asked Undertaker to invite you here. You see, this is something only the Great Witch of Three Thousand Worlds can do... Ah. And this is a copy of the Necronomicon I happened to find at a secondhand bookshop the other day. The moment I saw it, I thought its binding would be perfect for the Great Witch’s library...”

“As a guild leader living on the Korean Peninsula, it is only right that I cooperate with the National Road Management Corps.”

“Would you perform some spell chants for us...?”

THUD.

Dang Seorin set enormous books on the table. Even to me, a regressor, their titles were utterly unfamiliar.

[Supreme Court Case Reports], [Three Concepts: Latest Case Reports], [Civil Execution Act], [Tax Case Reports by Key Issue], [Criminal Procedure Act: Statutes and Case Reports]...

Every last one was monstrously thick. They had surely been designed to destroy people’s heads both physically and mentally. Their overwhelming presence made even Dang Seorin hesitate for a moment.

“What are you going to use these for?”

“Heh. No need to worry. All you need to cast, Great Witch, are [Repeat], [Read Aloud], and [Playback]...”

“I-is that so? All right.”

Dang Seorin entered the storeroom and performed Spell-Song Chanting.

Before long, the countless casebooks in the storeroom were turning page by page, automatically ‘reading aloud.’ Naturally, it was quite a magical sight.

After seeing Dang Seorin off, Noh Doha immediately brought Cheon Yohwa to the storeroom.

“Yohwa, my dear junior...”

“Yes, Senior!”

“Bring about three security guards and leave them here. And would you ask them to [Remember every sound that comes from this storeroom]...?”

“Huh? Um, entering that much information takes an enormous amount of stamina.”

“This is an order from your senior...”

“Waaah...”

At this point, my mouth fell open in astonishment. I could not begin to understand what kind of mind could arrive at such an idea, and precisely because of that, I could only marvel.

“Noh Doha, don’t tell me you’re...?”

“Yes.”

Noh Doha gave a smug little chuckle.

“Now that the National Road Management Corps is established, shouldn’t we start building a court as well...?”

This woman... was trying to turn zombies into ‘AI judges’!