Chapter 80 - The Questioner II

2

There is a saying: trouble within and without.

Usually, this refers to the ultimate agony of getting food poisoning and then stepping on a LEGO, leaving you suffering both inside and outside your skin. But the true meaning of this ancient proverb lies elsewhere.

Namely, the wisdom that internal troubles are easily resolved by pointing to an external enemy.

This truth, handed down since ancient times, was proven once again when I rounded up 101 fairy bastards, filmed the scene, and uploaded it to SG Net.

-Anonymous: Undertaker, is he a god? Undertaker, is he a god? Undertaker, is he a god?

-Goryeojang: Watching those fairy fuckers get wrecked is so satisfying lmao

-Anonymous: Mommy, I want to be an Undertaker when I grow up! Mommy, I want to be an Undertaker when I grow up!

-BookishGirl: Seriously, why do we only get to watch this fucking hilarious prank on video? Can't you sell tickets to the live show??

└Anonymous: Think I recognize the building. Recruiting a raid party to go cheer him on in person.

-[National Roads]Historian: Truly, just deserts. Proof that justice is still alive and breathing in this world. Those running wild and blaming the apocalypse should watch these videos and reflect on their behavior.

-dolLHoUse: Concern.

-[Yuldoguk]SwordEmpress: Truly magnificent cinematography!

"Hmm."

I nodded in satisfaction.

The post's upvote count alone dwarfed anything else in my entire eighty-ninth run!

We awakened might have wildly different dispositions and personalities, but didn't we all feel exactly the same way about those fucking fairies?

But it was too soon to relax. No matter how thoroughly you fucked up an external enemy, your internal problems didn't disappear. It was merely sleight of hand.

My internal trouble, a cancerous lump incarnate, stood beside me giving off a lovely fragrance.

"Woooow... You've captured every tutorial fairy in the country and gathered them in one place. How did you ever come up with this, Guild Leader? You're amazing."

Pop quiz.

Who had just marveled at me with a bright, beaming smile?

Hint 1. This person called me "Guild Leader," a form of address surprisingly few people used.

Hint 2. This person had the uncommon distinction of possessing pink hair.

Hint 3. This was run eighty-nine.

"You really are quite an unusual person, Guild Leader. It reminds me what a good decision I made when you invited me to join at Busan Station, and I chose to follow you..."

The answer: Go Yori!

Any normal human, upon hearing the answer, ought to have screamed, "Aaaaah! Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" and run away.

But I was far from a normal human, and at this point I had no idea whatsoever that run eighty-nine would end in a total party kill.

Naturally, I hadn't guessed that Go Yori was a brainwashing-hypnosis-beam Kadabra (the Pokémon) wearing a human disguise, either.

"Oh, please. You're the one who's made running the guild so much easier by joining. Sometimes I think the guild members like you more than they like me."

"Ahaha. Oh, Guild Leader. That's only because I don't have to take responsibility for managing the guild or give anyone orders."

Thus, even as my run-eighty-nine self listened to this pink shiny Kadabra laugh, the only impression I formed was that she had a very pleasant voice. You imbecile. Run.

"And honestly, I think luck played a part this time."

"Luck, you say?"

"Yes. Granted, I know every last pattern of every fairy still alive on the Korean Peninsula, but even so, they let themselves get captured with far too little resistance."

"..."

Go Yori smiled brightly.

"Do all you can, then leave the rest to heaven. In the end, heavenly fortune completes human endeavors. Look at it the other way around, and the fairies were simply unlucky. I think you should be happy, Guild Leader."

"Hmm. You're right."

No! Undertaker. No!

Run right now. I'm telling you, run right now!

... But however hard I tried to reenact Interstellar all by myself, there was no way my voice could reach my run-eighty-nine self.

If I had to name one saving grace, it was that Go Yori's brainwashing-hypnosis beam wasn't particularly racist.

Her power worked on fairies as well as Homo sapiens. Thanks to that, the 101 fairies didn't cause much trouble even in prison.

"Hweeeh... Wh-where are we?"

"An unfamiliar ceiling."

Their place of incarceration: Cheongsong Prison.

Ever since the apocalypse broke out, its walls had broken apart too, resulting in a steady population drain. Now, for the first time in ages, Cheongsong Prison was bustling with new arrivals.

"Kidnapping? Have we been kidnapped?"

"We were created to serve clichés, and now we've become their playthings?"

"That can only be another cliché."

"Hweeh... If I'd been born just five hundred years earlier, I would have conquered the literary world. I was born in the wrong era..."

"The Middle Ages didn't have cola, potato chips, or cup noodles. What's the point of conquering anything?"

"I could make every literature student born five hundred years later wish they'd been born five hundred years earlier."

"Eek! A terrifying genius...!"

The chatter rolled on.

Even one fairy was noisy when left alone. With a whopping 101 gathered together, the place was every bit as loud as Noryangjin Market.

It was about time to get the real show started.

Go Yori smiled and handed me a microphone as though she'd had it ready in advance (that gives me chills). I stepped onto the platform.

"Ah, ah. Microphone test. Microphone test. Hello, fairies. A pleasure to meet you."

"Hweh? Who are you...?"

"I am your guide. I imagine being suddenly kidnapped and brought here has given you quite a shock. But do not worry. From now on, I shall be your instructor and kindly guide you from beginning to end."

The fairies strewn across the auditorium blinked and whispered among themselves.

"Haven't we heard this routine somewhere before?"

"For some reason, those lines sound awfully familiar."

"Whatever this rope is made of, it's too tough to untie..."

"The Busan Station awakened!"

A fairy shrieked from the middle of the auditorium.

"I've seen him in the reference footage! That one, that human, cleared the nightmare-grade Busan Station dungeon No. 264 was in charge of in less than twenty minutes! There's no mistake!"

"Eeeeek?"

"Twenty minutes? He's one of those protagonist-type awakened our seniors warned us so much about!"

The chatter swelled into an uproar.

The fairies grew noisy all at once.

But a speaker who believed himself righteous would not be shaken by mere commotion offstage. Like the Reverend Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial, I steadfastly continued my speech.

"Calm down and listen to me, fairies. When do you believe evil arises in this world?"

"Hweh?"

"I believe evil arises precisely when we fail to consider another's position and feelings, or deliberately choose not to. Refusing to see. Refusing to know. In that sense, we may judge Socrates' ancient proposition that ignorance is the root of evil to be eminently correct."

"... What the hell is that human babbling about?"

"I have absolutely no idea..."

"Ah, ah. As your instructor, I have arranged this gathering to save you from the abyss of evil. The reason you play with humans like toys is simply that you have never experienced being toys yourselves."

Question marks appeared above all the fairies' tiny heads at once.

My voice rang nobly through the considerably quieter auditorium, like a righteous battle cry.

"Get the general idea? Now kill each other."

"...?"

It didn't take long for those bent question marks to be hammered straight into exclamation points.

Fairies-only tutorial dungeon: start.

"Eeeeeek! Somebody save this fairy!"

"Aaagh! A rock! A rock is rolling toward us! Aaaaaagh! Eeeeeek!"

Traps overflowing with every conceivable malice, limited supplies, stages designed to plunge their occupants into paranoia, and so on and so forth.

They say all creation is born of imitation.

When constructing the Cheongsong Prison dungeon, I too drew my inspiration entirely from the great pioneers of this field. Those esteemed predecessors were now joyfully frolicking through the structure their junior had designed.

"H-how can you do this while wearing a human face? Do you truly have no human heart?"

"Nope. I've installed a fairy heart instead. Hweh, hweeeeh."

"..."

"What? What the fuck are you staring at, No. 76? When the humans in Yeongwol begged and pleaded for their lives, did you grant their requests?"

"Eek! W-we were only following orders!"

"Is that so? Your instructor is in a similar position. I am wholly my own master, and I am presently giving myself orders. As we share similar circumstances, I ask you fairies for your generous understanding."

"Insane human... You're an insane human..."

The fairies trembled.

Oh. Incidentally, this entire process was recorded without a single gap by the smartphone in Go Yori's hand.

"Oh, Guild Leader. Sorry, you're out of frame. Could you move a little farther in?"

"Like this?"

"Yees."

As our time at Cheongsong Prison stretched from one day to two, then three, and onward, Go Yori's smile evolved from a beam into a great big beeeam.

As befitted a master of mind manipulation, she also knew a thing or two about video editing.

Director and screenwriter: Undertaker. Cinematography and editing: Go Yori. Starring and supporting cast: the fairies.

With our powers combined, the moving true-story documentary weekend serial [Tutorial Upside-Down World] achieved a 100% viewership rating every time we uploaded an episode to SG Net.

"You really are a fascinating person, Guild Leader."

... Looking back on it now.

Even if I had followed the wisdom of trouble within and without, it would have been difficult to elicit such a uniform response from SG Net, overflowing with lunatics as it was.

Perhaps the videos Go Yori "edited" already carried Perception Manipulation within them. Enough to make them look satisfying whether Sim Aryeon or SwordEmpress watched them.

There was no doubt that this was when Go Yori began taking a serious interest in me—and became obsessed.

3

Of course, my purpose in establishing a fairies-only prison wasn't merely to avenge all the grievances that had piled up between our species. (That accounted for a mere 50% of my reasons.)

I watched the fairies lose at tug-of-war and plummet sixty meters underground in real time.

'I've captured every fairy left on the Korean Peninsula and reduced them to mere clowns. Do you still intend to keep your face hidden?'

The Fairy Monarch.

Yes. The special-class anomaly presumed to manage and rule the "tutorial dungeons" and "fairies" that had appeared simultaneously not only on the Korean Peninsula, but throughout the world.

A great evil that, under the Library Society classification system established later, might merit the very first Level 5 designation: Alienation, God of Alienation-class.

'I've put this much effort into capturing the fairies. I have to gather as much information about that bastard as possible in this run.'

The fairies screamed "Eeeeeek!" and writhed.

Amazingly, even after coming this far, I still knew nothing about the Fairy Monarch's identity.

Throughout no fewer than eighty-nine runs, I hadn't obtained a single piece of meaningful information.

That very fact put me on my guard.

'This one is no pushover.'

Unlike the attention whores in other works of fiction who, despite being villains, were desperate to drop subtle hints about their identities, the fairies' boss was a true mastermind in the shadows.

The only information in my possession was a four-syllable Korean title: "Fairy Monarch."

"Hey. Mass murderer."

"Hweeeh..."

I tapped the forehead of the fairy sprawled on the floor with my finger.

"Why don't you start talking about your boss already? Think I'll stop after raising hell on the Korean Peninsula? China, Japan, India... Well, India's a bit much. Anyway, I can wipe out every last fairy in most places."

"Eek! I-I can't tell you..."

"Why? Because you only have one mouth? If I give you two or three, can we have a rational conversation?"

"Eeeeeek!"

A footstep sounded. I glanced back to find Go Yori standing with her hands behind her back.

"Are you conducting an interrogation, Guild Leader?"

"Yes. Well, it isn't a pretty sight, so don't film it."

"Not a pretty sight? It's a very pretty sight. All the more reason to treasure it and not let anyone else sneak a look."

Go Yori tilted her head.

"Hmm. Are you having trouble because the fairies won't answer? If there's anything I can help with, I'd like to."

"Hmm? Of course I'd appreciate any help, but these bastards are incredibly tight-lipped. I'll just thank you for the thought."

"..."

Go Yori smiled gently.

"There's no need to thank me. What were you asking just now?"

"Oh, I was just asking what the Fairy Monarch's real name was..."

"—The Fairy Monarch is the Fairy Monarch."

A murmur.

I looked at the fairy. Our eyes met. Its lips were twitching, though it had consistently feigned ignorance through a fortnight of interrogation.

"But you humans misunderstand the true meaning of Monarch."

"... Misunderstand? What do we misunderstand?"

"The monarch you imagine is a sovereign ruler. A superior whom those below serve with loyalty. But our Fairy Monarch is different. Our Monarch is the master of the collective. The master that forms the single 'colony' known as fairies."

The fairy smiled radiantly.

"We are one. One is us. That is why we say 'our Fairy Monarch' in the truest sense. To defy it is merely to betray ourselves. We are—"

BOOOOM!

The fairy's lips rippled, and an explosion erupted from within. Its body swelled like a balloon.

A flash. I instantly summoned my aura and erected a barrier between the fairy and us. Bright red liquid splattered against the glasslike shield.

When the blast subsided, nothing remained where the fairy had been sitting except scraps of flesh.

"What the hell just...?"

"Oh, apparently something like a bomb was implanted to keep it from revealing secrets."

Go Yori murmured beside me.

"Hmm. I've never encountered this before... Still, I don't think it should cause you too much trouble, Guild Leader."

"What do you mean?"

"There are still a hundred fairies left."

Go Yori brought her hands together.

"You can ask another hundred times."