Chapter 64 - The Sleepwalker II

I barely—truly, barely—held on to my sanity as it resolved to flee the confines of my skull.

'It... wasn't an assassination...?'

Then had the security-level-six hideout I built using every scrap of my knowledge as a regressor been utterly useless?

What about the continuous-poison-monitoring-system I'd barely managed to assemble by rounding up every awakened with medical abilities, including Uehara Shino and Sim Aryeon?

What about the Ultimate Weapon–Railway Gun Fortress–Galaxy Express 999, which I'd created at the cost of putting Dang Seorin under tremendous stress?

Yes. Utterly useless. All of it had been a complete waste of fucking time.

Judging dispassionately from run 1,183, my run-twenty-four self was simply an exemplary dumbass.

The train fortress in particular earned a place in my embarrassing past that I don't even want to discuss, so I'll never mention it again in any of my future stories.

'Then what the hell killed me? What happened to cause my death?'

Confusion. Anguish. Pain.

My brain was still rigid, buried beneath preconceptions. It needed to soften up a little more before I could arrive at the idea: *'Maybe monsters don't need a fixed physical form? Couldn't a [phenomenon] like starlight in the night sky qualify as a monster? In that case, isn't the word monster itself somewhat inaccurate? Wouldn't it make more sense to use the term anomaly from now on?'*

Of course. What you don't know will hurt you.

But even my run-twenty-four self wasn't so much of a dumbass that I couldn't conclude that, whatever the circumstances, something extremely strange had definitely happened that night.

And so, year seven came around again.

"Wow. Undertaker, look over—"

"Yes. Shooting stars. The usual meteor shower for this time of year. I'm getting a very good look."

"... What's with you? Aren't you being a little prickly today? What's been bothering you all day?"

Because our deaths were guaranteed on the day the shooting stars fell.

But Dang Seorin was the one person I couldn't share that regressor's knowledge with. Naturally, having received no reasonable explanation, she left in a huff.

I resolved to apologize someday, yet still unable to handle my own tension and irritability, I looked up at the night sky.

'I'm not going to sleep tonight. No matter what.'

CLICK.

As I gulped down my secret weapon, the can of Let's Be coffee I'd saved for this day, my eyes kept watch over every inch of my surroundings.

I'd even chosen my position carefully: the summit of Mount Bongnae in Yeongdo, Busan.

Anyone coming up here would have to step on the threads Puppeteer had spread like a spiderweb, immediately alerting me to an intruder. Unless the intruder literally dropped out of the sky, of course.

The meteor shower was still falling beautifully through the night sky.

...

"Huh?"

Wait a minute.

It had been nine in the evening when I took that walk with Dang Seorin. Counting from then, it had already been...

Hadn't this meteor shower been falling for six hours?

'Do meteor showers normally last this long?'

And it wasn't merely drizzling out a streak or two. This was a full-blown summer monsoon. Starlight as vivid as thick streams of rain endlessly crossed the night sky.

And those streams of rain...

Were growing thicker.

"..."

A shiver raced up my spine.

Before I knew it, I'd shed my camouflage and sprung to my feet.

"Fuck. No way. It can't be, can it?"

Of course it could.

In a joyous turn of events, humanity now had to fight and defeat the starlight of the cosmos. This was the regressor's newly assigned quest.

Right. What the hell did I expect from this shitty, broken game?

3

There are probably few people capable of accurately describing the precise moment the world ends.

More accurately, to my knowledge, however vast this world might be, only two people could pull off that feat.

The Saintess of [Clairvoyance]. And me, Undertaker, of [Infinite Regression].

No matter how suddenly something happened, the Saintess could call "Time!" and carefully record the situation, while I could simply turn the wheel of regression.

Unfortunately, though, at this point I hadn't even exchanged names with her.

Thus, witnessing the world's destruction by Meteor Strike was a task I had to perform alone.

"The stars are... getting closer?"

Boss battle: versus Meteor Strike. Phase One.

First, countless streams of starlight begin pouring down from the night sky.

If you're very far from Meteor Strike's landing site, your chances of survival are extremely high. Meteor Strike isn't made of real shooting stars. It's an anomaly. Compared with actual shooting stars, it falls infinitely slowly.

And if you're standing near the landing site? All I can do is offer my condolences. There's a ninety-nine percent chance you're already dead.

My run-twenty-five self fell into the latter category.

Because the very first place Meteor Strike chose upon appearing in this world—"Oh! I'll fall here!"—was none other than South Gyeongsang Province on the Korean Peninsula.

"Well, fuck."

Tenlegs, Udumbara, and now Meteor Strike. Respect for Grandfather Dangun welled up spontaneously in my heart. Seriously, what the hell was this choice of location for the Korean Peninsula?

If there was any consolation, well... at least you got to enjoy quite a mystical experience just before you died.

-T҉winkle҉, t҈winkle҉, little҉ sta҈r҉.

A melody delicately caressing the heavens.

-H҉ow beau҈tifully҉ you shi҈ne҉.

Phase Two of the boss battle had begun.

I hurried down Mount Bongnae.

Despite it being the middle of the night, people were outside watching the sky, or poking their heads out of windows to look.

It must have been because of the utterly unreal sight and the equally unreal melody.

"What's this? A song?"

"Where's it coming from?"

"Speakers...? No, that can't be."

Murmurs spread through the crowd.

After civilization broke down, humanity's biological rhythms reverted to prehistoric times. Nearly everyone was forced into the life of a good little child, drifting off to sleep as early as nine in the evening.

Considering that, the scene before my eyes was unmistakably abnormal.

-I҉n the eas҈tern҉ sky҉, in҈ the wes҉tern҈ sky҉.

I couldn't have called it good singing even as an empty compliment.

For one thing, it was off-key. Here and there, noises like television static intruded—noises that, on closer listening, also sounded like human sobbing—making even the lyrics difficult to understand.

And yet everyone could immediately recognize it as a song, however thoroughly buried in noise it might be.

To exaggerate a little, the heavenly song pouring out of Meteor Strike carried a rhythm etched into modern humanity's DNA.

"Doesn't it sound familiar?"

"It's a lullaby!"

"What? A lullaby?"

"Yes! There's so much static it's hard to hear, but it's a lullaby. You know, what's it called? Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star!"

"Oh."

Mozart's lullaby. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

A masterpiece so wildly successful that almost everyone could recognize it instinctively, even if the lyrics differed between countries and peoples.

-T҈winkle҉, twinkle҉, li҈ttle҉ star҉.

Watching the starlight draw ever closer in the night sky and listening to the soothing lullaby flow down from the heavens, people might well forget they were under attack by one of the world's most dangerous anomalies.

But at the very moment everyone gazes blankly up at the night sky, the melody breaks, and the world's flesh is torn away.

-W҉H҈EEEE҉EEEE҈EEEE҉!

"Agh! Fuck!"

"A-an air-raid siren?"

"But the government's collapsed, and all the speakers are broken. What..."

At the sudden siren, people clutch their ears and grimace. Fortunately, it stops soon enough, but that is absolutely no reason to relax.

That sound was the very signal that the anomaly had entered a new stage.

Entering Phase Three.

-T҈winkle҉, t҈winkle҉, little҈ star҉.

-H҉ow beau҈tifully҉ you shi҈ne҉.

SHAAAAASH.

The meteors that had been falling infinitely slowly all crossed one another above Busan at once.

They warped this way and that in beautiful, pure-white curves, spreading like wings, each individual stream of starlight carrying its own pitch.

It was around then that I reached Three Thousand Worlds' guild headquarters. Dang Seorin was outside the train station with several guild members.

I shouted urgently.

"Dang Seorin!"

"Huh? Undertaker? Why are you here at this hour..."

A fleeting look of displeasure lingered on her face. She must have remembered that we'd parted after arguing earlier.

But there was no time to worry about that.

"It's a monster!"

"What?"

"That! The starlight! It's a monster!"

"...!"

Her expression transformed the moment she heard me. This was no longer Dang Seorin, my friend for restaurant tours. This was Dang Seorin, Alliance Leader of the Korean Peninsula Guild Alliance and guild leader of Three Thousand Worlds, her face fierce.

"That's impossible! It's just a phenomenon."

"What phenomenon? Sure, all the scientists have found employment inside monsters' stomachs, but they never announced the existence of shooting stars that sing lullabies from space while falling slowly for over six hours!"

"Wait. Then how on earth...?"

I understood the rest of the question she'd swallowed.

["Then how on earth are we supposed to stop it? Something like that?"]

In needing only a word or two of conversation to shatter her preconceptions about monsters, Dang Seorin was faster than anyone.

But in every other respect, we were far too late.

-I҉n the eastern҉ sky҉, in the western҉ sky҉.

THUD.

Dang Seorin and I turned our heads simultaneously.

THUD.

The Three Thousand Worlds guild members, who had formed a circle around us like a protective guard without my noticing, were falling face-first to the ground one by one, like scarecrows.

Even Dang Seorin couldn't help being horrified.

"What—"

"Fuck."

It wasn't just the guild members.

THUD. THUD.

Citizens who'd come out to admire the rare spectacle in the night sky, people listening to the low-quality lullaby through gaps in their windows—they too were collapsing as if they'd fainted.

"Are they... dead? All of them? Just like that?"

"No."

I approached the nearest guild member and checked their condition.

"... They've fallen asleep."

"What?"

"Literally. They're sleeping. Hard as it is to believe. The whole city is falling asleep right now."

I slapped the guild member's cheek, but they didn't even twitch. Not even when I sent aura into them.

I groaned.

"Apparently... not just the starlight, but the sound of the lullaby coming from it is itself a monster."

"..."

"I'm not sure, but it must have a [Forced Sleep] effect. It was already over the moment we heard the song. What a fucking mess. Let's run."

I immediately abandoned the city.

"Run?"

"Yes, Dang Seorin. First, we need to get out of this city, fast."

I grabbed her wrist. She felt unusually light.

"If we stay here, we'll fall asleep ourselves before long. Then there'll be no one left to report this phenomenon, this monster."

"..."

"We have to keep struggling until the end. It isn't all over yet. Come on, Dang Seorin. Hurry."

That was when it happened.

The night sky turned pure white.

Dazzlingly, blindingly white.

Her wrist still in my grasp, Dang Seorin looked blankly upward.

"Ah..."

White night.

Phase Four of the boss battle.

And the final phase.

"... It's too late, Undertaker."

"..."

"I thought something was strange lately. You're normally fine, but you've been anxious all the time, snapping at people. Undertaker, you... knew this would happen."

"No, I didn't know either. I only suspected something would happen tonight. I never imagined those countless streams of starlight were a monster."

"Mm, I'm sorry. I should have paid more serious attention."

"... I'm the one who should apologize," I murmured.

"I promise I'll never do it again."

"Heh. Okay."

Dang Seorin chuckled as though she'd heard an amusing joke. I held her tightly.

A lullaby twittered from the sky, its darkness bleached white, accompanied by crackling static.

The song was even more distorted and stuttering than before. Now it sounded downright like noise from a broken radio.

-T҈winkle҉, twin҈kle҉, little҈ star҉.

-H҉ow beau҈tifully҉ you shi҈ne҉.

The light reached right before my eyes.

My vision grew brighter and brighter. That should have made me more alert, but instead my eyelids rapidly grew heavy.

Was it the same for Dang Seorin? Blinking again and again, she wrapped both arms around my back. Perhaps she hadn't been trying to embrace me at all, but had simply collapsed against me.

"Undertaker."

"... Yes."

"Actually, I..."

A blinding flash—

Everything before my eyes turned white.

The night sky, the city, the sea off Busan, the bridge that had collapsed midway across, the beach. Dang Seorin's face. Shadows. The sound of breathing.

Even the world itself.

That was my twenty-fifth apocalypse.