Chapter 83 - The Accomplice I

1

I had encountered my worst enemy, Gapless, a God of Alienation-class anomaly, but I did not act immediately.

Instead, I waited for the right time.

For an infinite regressor, “waiting” exists on an entirely different plane. Take the anger and anxiety you feel when you have definitely ordered food, yet it is running a whole three minutes past the estimated delivery time, and multiply that by roughly thirteen. That is what waiting means to an infinite regressor. Truly, one could call it superhuman patience.

During this period, I focused on increasing my fighting strength as much as possible.

Did I train in martial arts? Of course not. As Old Man Scho had said, my combat instincts were on par with a beaver’s. You must not underestimate the combat talent of a born support.

But even I—no, precisely because I was who I was—still had a way to maximize my fighting strength.

“Workshop Master Noh Doha.”

“...”

Noh Doha’s expression was perfectly normal.

By which I mean, looking sour was this person’s default setting. Any additional sourness at this point merely added normal to normal.

“I haven’t even said anything yet. Why are you glaring at my face as though it’s an asshole?”

“Because when you call me ‘Workshop Master Noh Doha’ instead of ‘Corps Commander Noh Doha,’ there is a very high probability that you are about to spout some personal shit.... And your personal pain, anger, venting, goodwill, your poses of ‘I’m human too,’ your little signals of connection that say ‘Only I can recognize your humanity’—in other words, all that fucking bullshit—evokes nothing in me beyond annoyance. Nothing more, nothing less....”

“Workshop Master Noh Doha. Haven’t you been doing nothing but work lately? I happen to have a little free time myself. Why don’t we take a vacation together? A backpacking trip, just the two of us. Like college friends.”

“Fucking hell....”

“Just as I thought. I knew you’d love it.”

And so I went traveling with Noh Doha.

Had this been after run 380, when I established Idea Ranch, we could have traveled together companionably on dinosaurs (and later, we really did). Unfortunately, at this point, I was only on run 100.

If I had been alone, I would have sped along using something akin to lightness techniques. And if my companion had been anyone other than Noh Doha, I would have given them a piggyback ride so we could enjoy the speed together.

The latter solution was rejected once again when Noh Doha shyly remarked, “Oh, if you wanted to watch me commit suicide in person, you should have said so sooner....” What a bashful little thing.

Thus, our transportation options were necessarily very limited. That I nevertheless found the best possible solution under such difficult circumstances surely proved my caliber as a regressor.

BRRRRRRR...

Riding our chosen vehicle alongside me, Noh Doha wore a perfectly normal expression.

“Awakened Undertaker....”

“Yes?”

“Is this really the best option...?”

“Yes.”

BRRRRRRR...

“However scarce fuel may be these days, surely there is some more respectable means of transportation—a dump truck, perhaps—whether through the National Road Management Corps or your miracle regressor powers or whatever...? At least a bicycle....”

“Oh, you’re such a joker. This is a personal trip. We can’t go squandering the Corps’ property. We’ll be traveling over rough roads, too. A bicycle would break down in no time.”

BRRRRRRR...

“Even so, fuck.... No, seriously. Where the hell did you get this fucking yogurt cart? Huh?”

That’s right.

The two of us were currently riding the world’s first and only ride-on refrigerated electric cart designed exclusively for Fresh Managers: the third-generation model, CoCo (Cold&Cold) 3.0.

It was also known as the “yogurt lady cart.” Yes, that ancient relic with the lovely apricot-colored exterior, which traveled from neighborhood to neighborhood through the art of teleportation.

I held the handlebars while Noh Doha sat atop the cart. I had even specially modified it with a top-of-the-line cushion, so there was no danger of a sore backside.

“Now, now. Please refrain from such foul language. Despite appearances, this is an anomaly called the ‘Yogurt Cart.’”

“What? An anomaly...?”

“Indeed. A miraculous vehicle that climbs even the roughest roads without trouble and steadfastly reaches even the most remote neighborhoods. Workshop Master Noh Doha, have you ever seen a yogurt cart broken or stranded on the roadside?”

“No, I haven’t, but....”

“Exactly. Most Koreans have only ever observed yogurt carts in a state of ‘working fine, somehow.’ Even on terrain that seems physically impossible to traverse, this anomaly effortlessly produces the result ‘successfully got there, somehow.’”

“What the fuck are you talking about...?”

“Watch.”

BRRRRRRR...

An asphalt road stretched before us. The cart bravely advanced onto pavement so badly damaged that it was hard to tell whether it was concrete or Couque d’As cookies.

CLUNK!

A wheel dropped into a gap between uneven slabs of concrete. Noh Doha’s face darkened.

“Uh, we’re fall—”

Yet, bizarrely, the cart clung snugly to the concrete surface and climbed right back onto a stable path.

“...ing?”

Its footwork was literally on another level.

No matter how collapsed the concrete, how disordered the tiles, or how unevenly the tree roots protruded, the yogurt cart merely gave a slight jolt and went straight ahead ‘without any problems.’

Rocking from side to side, it rolled merrily along a national road so badly damaged that not only cars, but most people would have been unable to traverse it.

Truly, the pinnacle of South Korean engineering. An SSS-grade lost-technology artifact.

“Huh? What kind of idiotic bullshit...?”

“This is the Yogurt Cart anomaly, Workshop Master. You may sing my praises now.”

“Wait. Don’t tell me it moves without charging it with electricity or anything...?”

“Yep. Furthermore, drinks or food stored in the refrigerator you’re currently sitting on rarely spoil. Even meat lasted over a year when I put it in yogurt-shaped containers.”

“My God. Fucking hell, if you had something this good, you should have told the National Road Management Corps immediately. What are you doing playing at backpacking? We need to collect carts from all over the country and assign them to the Corps right away. We could revolutionize logistics in this already shitty age. No, we could even use them instead of wheelchairs for old people who have trouble getting around....”

“Oh. There’s only one.”

“...”

“I thought there might be a way to mass-produce them, so I collected some relatively intact-looking carts and experimented. But this one, this cart right here, is the only one that exists as an anomaly. So I just use it as my personal ride.”

“Fuck....”

Anyway, our two-person party, composed of a shadowy mastermind and a very public demon overlord, traveled without incident.

Noh Doha only complained verbally; she enjoyed everything there was to enjoy. Of course she did. I had lavishly stocked the refrigerated cart with meat, vegetables, and all sorts of carbohydrates, which I took out and cooked at every mealtime. How could she not enjoy herself?

“Do you know something, Awakened Undertaker...?”

“What is it?”

“You are utterly useless in my life, but your cooking alone is a national treasure. Without even that, I truly wouldn’t treat you as a human being....”

“...?”

As someone born with the word ‘workaholic’ stamped into her DNA, Noh Doha must have been suffering burnout, knowingly or otherwise, from running the National Road Management Corps.

As our delightful camping trip continued for one day, two days, three days, and longer, her face grew peaceful. The fatigue and grime clinging to her heart had been washed away.

That was how gifted I was at comforting and caring for weary hearts.

“Hey, you fucking goddamn regressor bastard. How much longer are we going to wander the fuck around out here? If the Three Thousand guild leader finds out about this, huh? Do you really want to see me die?”

“...?”

At last, on the sixth day of our trip, our merry backpacking party reached its destination.

The Taebaek Mountains. Jeongseon.

With what had once been Korea’s most famous mining region before us (it had since become famous for something rather different), Noh Doha wore an exceedingly normal expression.

“What kind of backwater dump is that...?”

“A village, as you can see.”

A village had formed at the mines of Jeongseon. Its terrain, however, was rather unusual.

A vast cavern hollowed out the middle of a mountainside as sheer as a cliff, and the village buildings had sprouted there like mushrooms.

A mining village, you might call it. Its feng shui had taken only the first part of ‘mountains at your back, water before you.’

“The houses are built of stone...?”

“They’ve used a nonflammable material. Not a bad choice for construction.”

“The villagers seem abnormally short...?”

“In this day and age, a bigger body only means consuming more nutrients for no reason. It must be the result of convergent evolution.”

“Every resident has a bushy beard...?”

“A means of maintaining a constant body temperature. These villagers are remarkably well adapted to their environment.”

“Aren’t those little people, however you look at them...?”

Hmm.

I nodded.

“They’re sometimes called that. But isn’t ‘little people’ a bit racially discriminatory? Please use the term ‘dwarves.’”

“You said we were going backpacking, then brought me into a Class 1 void where another race has manifested, you crazy bastard....”

Dwarves. A race that regularly appears in the fantasy genre.

In any work, they are born with ‘excellent blacksmith’ as part of their national spirit. Thus, the masterwork weapons dwarves forge are sometimes treated as relics of lost technology, much like the yogurt cart we were currently riding.

By now, you can probably guess why I had crawled all the way to this remote void in the Taebaek Mountains in the name of increasing my fighting strength.

That’s right.

I was here to get some gear.

2

I first discovered this place, commonly called the ‘Jeongseon Dwarf Mine,’ in run 54.

At the time, I had just founded the National Road Management Corps, so I was traveling all across the country to complete the Daedongyeojido (upgraded version).

On the surface, the Jeongseon Dwarf Mine really looked like a village that had leaped straight out of a work of fiction.

The clang of metal being hammered rang out everywhere, and dwarves bustled about without rest.

As though the mining industry of the Taebaek Mountains had never declined, the dwarf village was filled with endless noise pollution from pickaxes and hammers.

But this world’s voids were never so accommodating. This place, destined for a magnificent rebirth as a mining village, also had a few defects that made it difficult to call an ordinary village.

“Hello.”

-...

“Can you understand me? Hello? Greetings? Can you perceive me?”

-...

“Your race is inferior to elves. Your beard is extremely ugly.”

CLANG!

The ‘dwarves’ brought their hammers down on their anvils without any reaction. They acted as though I did not exist.

In fact, a close look at their faces revealed how far they deviated from typical dwarves.

First, they had bushy beards. That was fine. But where their eyes should have been, there were ‘eyeholes,’ and where their mouths should have been, there were ‘mouth holes.’

This was not wordplay.

I mean that they had neither eyelids nor lips.

-..., ...

CLANG, CLAAANG!

Their arms alone bulged abnormally like those of a statue of Hercules, giving their bodies strangely distorted proportions. Those masses of flesh endlessly swung their hammers while strange breathing noises leaked from their ‘mouth holes.’

-Oh... Ooon... Oh... Oh....

It did not sound like air being stored in lungs and then exhaled. Rather, it sounded as though their entire bodies were hollow leather drums, like janggu, with air flowing out from within.

Not the breathing of life, but the whistling of a chasm.

“Hmm.”

... Even for me, the Undertaker, the greatest linguistic genius in Earth’s history, Dwarvish seemed a little difficult. Well, naturally. It presumably wasn’t a language of Earth.

A taste of regret lingered in my mouth.

‘If I could commission a weapon from a dwarf, it would surely produce a magnificent sword extremely effective against anomalies.’

After exploring the entire mining village, I found seven dwarf blacksmiths in total. Not one could be communicated with.

In the end, all I accomplished in run 54 was identifying the void’s location. I returned with nothing else to show for it.

3

“Wait....”

Noh Doha interrupted my story about the past.

“Then why did we drag ourselves into this godforsaken backwater? You can’t talk to them, and they don’t make equipment for you...?”

“Oh, that’s fine. I wasn’t planning to ask the dwarves to make me a weapon.”

“...? Then why?”

“Come now, think about it, Workshop Master. Even if normal communication is impossible, if these really are anomalies imitating fictional dwarves, wouldn’t their hammering and leather tanning contain some extraordinary secrets? Just as a protagonist gifted in martial arts gains tremendous insight merely from watching a Swordmaster’s swordplay, an excellent blacksmith could surely learn countless subtleties simply by watching these dwarves hammer away.”

“Huh...?”

“And the ore those anomalies are hammering isn’t a mineral found on Earth. Well, it’s probably something with a name like adamantium. Naturally, those dwarves alone would possess the techniques for smelting it and forging it into weapons, not modern Earthlings. To smelt that mineral, an excellent blacksmith needs to learn the techniques from the dwarves.”

“...?”

“Gasp. What a coincidence. Right before my eyes stands the most talented blacksmith in the history of the Korean Peninsula. In other words, the Finest Artisan of the Three Han. Ta-da.”

“...”

“Ta-daaa!”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“Oh. So. You want me to learn, just by watching these anomaly fuckers I can’t even talk to, how to work some ore that doesn’t exist on Earth—adamantium or virgin-antium or whatever the fuck it is—and then churn out an SSS-grade weapon for your bastard self to fucking use...?”

“Exactly.”

“Excuse me. Please just fucking die.”

“Oh, you said that last run, too.”

“...?”

“Last run, I simply forced you onto my back and ran here in less than a day. Then you strangled me to death, Workshop Master. You asked whether I really thought so little of you, and told me to go ahead and die for real. I never imagined you would actually kill me, but anyway. That’s why this time I brought the Yogurt Cart anomaly instead of giving you a piggyback ride, so you could travel with a little more peace of mind. Didn’t I do well?”

“You goddamn fucking insane psycho bastard—”

I was strangled.

This time, I didn’t fucking die.