Chapter 89 - The Trailblazer III

6

Ultimately, I am what you might call a story retailer: I turn my experiences into tales and deliver them to you.

As such, unless my brain goes so thoroughly off the rails that I mistake myself for an omnipotent, omniscient god, my stories must inevitably stick to first-person narration.

But even I occasionally envy the story wholesalers. That is, third-person narrators, or those who rotate through first-person viewpoints.

Imagine it. How much fun would it be to slander and malign Noh Doha from an omniscient perspective?

Sadly, I possess neither the [Evolve into a Divine Being in the Final Arc] skill nor the [Possession] ability, so I cannot describe events in the third person or immerse myself in someone else's first-person viewpoint.

Still... there are certain subjects I could do anything to without feeling the slightest guilt.

Anomalies, for instance. Surely I could indulge in all the “historical revisionism” I wanted with them?

So I gave it a try.

"The security guard is coming! The security guard is coming!"

The anomalies cried out from the shadows, trembling in fear. (Of course, no such conversation could actually have taken place.)

"To think we must fear a mere human! Have you no shame as anomalies?"

"Stop! Don't go! Everyone who lost patience and charged in never came back!"

"Long live anomalies! For the glory of Gapless!"

"The art room's Agrippa ghost has been defeated! Lost! No signs of life detected!"

"Idiot. What gave him the confidence to go out there when he was made of marble and didn't even have physical immunity?"

"Impossible. The music room's Beethoven portrait ghost isn't responding either. It died with [Symphony One-Trick Pony] written on Beethoven's portrait! Blood is trickling from Beethoven's mouth!"

"The biology room's anatomical specimen ghost has also been found with all its organs in pieces! [Arrhythmia] on its heart, [Diabetes] on its kidneys, and on its tongue... [Noh Doha]? Unidentified words are inscribed on it like curses!"

"No! Impossible! We are School Ghost Stories, the strongest tutorial dungeon to descend upon the Korean Peninsula! And our aces are being annihilated without even putting up a fight?"

"Enemy sighted, approaching! It's coming this way! Aah! The flashlight! That light! Our eyes!"

"Stop him! Hold the line at all costs!"

"The security guard is coming! The security guard is coming!"

"Aaaaaaah! Ia! Ia!"

That concludes our delightful session of historical revisionism.

But no amount of rewriting history could erase the truth.

The truth here being that I had personally cleaned out practically every ghost on the first through third floors of the school building.

Day two of the search.

After exorcising the “student left alone in a classroom after school” ghost in a third-floor classroom, I set up a clearly visible notice on the stair landing.

[Patrol Complete]

With that, all the lower floors of the school building became safe zones. They had returned from the void of “School Ghost Stories” to the reality of “Baekhwa Girls’ High School.”

"So the floor that really matters... is the fourth."

I muttered to myself. When traversing a void alone, constantly carrying on a conversation with yourself like this was quite useful.

"It's a way to check my self-awareness."

If I muttered something I hadn't intended, or if such a mutter felt like “my own words,” it was a sign that a brainwashing anomaly had appeared nearby.

Of course, talking to yourself had its drawbacks.

"Going to the fourth floor is extremely dangerous. But that's probably where the most survivors are trapped."

"Right. I thought you'd show up about now."

CRUNCH!

I immediately infused my sword cane, Doha, with aura and stabbed my shadow.

"Aaaaaaaaagh!"

As just demonstrated, excessive self-talk could increase the risk of attracting doppelganger-type anomalies if you weren't careful.

But with countermeasures prepared in advance, you could instead keep muttering deliberately and “fish” for doppelgangers.

The shadow pinned by my cane writhed and thrashed.

"How? How? How?"

"Thanks to the conveniences of civilization, little anomaly."

I slipped the earphone out of my left ear. A small microphone was attached to the collar of my security guard uniform.

I had been listening to my own mutterings through the earphone in real time. Both microphone and earphone were connected to my smartphone, and I had deliberately set it to reproduce my voice at low audio quality.

What if a voice came through the earphone recorded at an entirely different distance or sound quality? That would provide evidence that a mind-brainwashing anomaly had appeared nearby.

And the method for defeating a doppelganger was simple.

"Tell me the Saintess's name."

"...? ...?"

"You can't answer. You're not me."

BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE...

The shadow boiled, then its bubbles burst with a pop! Once all the bubbles had burst, my shadow returned to normal.

After hearing the Saintess's real name in run thirty-six, I had never exchanged names with her again. A doppelganger living only in this run would have had no way of knowing her real name.

Thus, “I” and “you” were different. A denial of identity. With its void spot exploited, the anomaly could no longer sustain its existence and collapsed.

"What a pushover. If you want to brainwash me, bring someone on Go Yori's level."

But I wasn't finished yet.

I put the earphone and microphone back on. This time, I took a radio out from inside my uniform.

"All right. This is Security Guard Undertaker. Having passed through floors one, two, and three, I'm now heading to the fourth floor. All clear. Continuing night patrol."

"Roger..."

"There. Got you."

A radio anomaly, identified and confirmed: there was no way an answer should have come back.

I immediately used my phone's recorder to play “All clear. Continuing night patrol” on an endless loop.

With the speed increased a little—to ten times normal.

Naturally, the radio, which was compelled to respond to my words, also began speaking at a frantic pace.

"Roger, roger, roger, roger."

"Oh. You're holding up pretty well."

I cranked the speed straight up to twenty times normal.

"Roger, roger, roger-ro, ro, ger-r-r-r, ro, ro, ro, ro, ro, ro, ro, ro, ro, ro."

BOOOOM!

Before sixty seconds had passed, the radio exploded all on its own.

A “radio that could no longer give a proper response” had no value as an existence.

"This is Security Guard Undertaker. Heading up to the fourth floor. Stairway all clear. Continuing night patrol."

"..."

No answer came from anywhere. Just in case, I looked at the school speaker mounted on the wall, but it too was silent.

Exorcism complete.

At this point, it was safe to say I had wiped out most of the brainwashing anomalies.

"Hmm."

On the now-silent landing, I glanced up toward the next floor.

The fourth floor.

The death floor.

In voids with stairs or elevators, it was among the most dangerous areas, alongside the thirteenth floor and fourth basement level.

Don't scoff and dismiss it as mere wordplay based on “four” and “death” sounding the same. You might end up with your brain flowing out through your nostrils like an Egyptian mummy.

“Playing tricks on the world with words.” Wasn't that very linguistic act the essence of humanity?

Homophonic wordplay forms the foundation of comedy and poetry. For the human race, which seeks to rule the world through language, it is also groundwork for spells.

My astute readers will have noticed by now.

Yes. This is precisely why I insist on calling myself by the alias Undertaker, and why I never mention the Saintess's real name.

Simply revealing a real name risks its misuse in spells.

It might be different for people like Noh Doha or Dang Seorin, who operate in the public eye. But those like the Saintess and me, who only become free by concealing our identities, must hide even our names behind aliases, just as we keep our bodies in the shadows.

"Let's see."

I opened my suitcase and took out “money.”

Broadly speaking, there were two kinds.

One was a pouch filled with gold and silver coins. The other was a pile of banknotes from all sorts of countries, bundled in stacks of two hundred.

Using the stairs leading to the fourth floor as an altar, I laid out the gold coins, silver coins, and banknotes side by side. I also held one silver coin between my teeth.

Then I quietly closed my eyes and pressed my palms together.

"..."

A chilly breeze brushed my cheek. When I opened my eyes, every last bit of money on the stairs had disappeared.

"Ptooey!"

The silver coin in my mouth, on the other hand, was perfectly intact. I spat it out and shoved it back into my suitcase.

"Well, well. His Lordship the Reaper certainly gobbled down a hefty travel allowance."

To enter the death floor—the domain of death, or the “underworld”—without incident, I had to make a gesture of goodwill in my own way.

That gesture was money for the journey.

The type and amount of that payment varied enormously depending on what sort of anomaly ruled the domain of death.

The money I had just placed on the altar included not only banknotes but gold and silver coins issued by countries all over the world. There were Greek silver coins and Venetian gold coins, too.

Yet the “underworld” within School Ghost Stories had swiped the entire travel payment without asking or caring about its country of origin.

In other words, this anomaly positively oozed greed.

But that wasn't bad news.

Quite the opposite: it was excellent news, the kind I could welcome with both arms open.

"Now then, let's see you cough up what you owe for all that money you gobbled down."

It was a very simple transaction.

The more excessive the payment it accepted, the more “preferential treatment” it was obliged to grant me.

Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, hadn't standardized his fare at one silver coin for everyone, regardless of age or sex, because he was some sucker.

Charon was wise enough to preempt fairness controversies and protests demanding his resignation as ferryman.

But hadn't this “underworld anomaly” just gobbled down a travel payment with a face value exceeding at least a hundred million won, even discounting the historical value of the gold and silver coins? And from a living person who wasn't even dead yet, at that.

At this level, in any religion or mythology, it could be dismissed from office on the spot without grounds to complain. Bribery. Embezzlement. Favoritism scandals.

As a conscientious citizen of a democratic society, I couldn't help grinning broadly. I strode confidently toward the most dangerous area in School Ghost Stories.

One step.

Another step.

The moment I finished climbing the stairs and set foot on the fourth floor, red masses of flesh writhed on every side and lunged toward me, immediately living up to the area's reputation as the worst—

"..."

—or rather, failed to lunge. The red tentacles all stopped right in front of my nose.

As though an invisible barrier surrounded my body.

RATTLE...

A dark corridor. From its far end, black as the maw of hell, a single gold coin rolled toward me with a rattle and tapped against my foot.

I smiled.

"Not accepting it."

"..."

"No refunds."

"..."

RATTLE, RATTLE, RATTLE...

Gold and silver coins rolled toward me from the far end of the corridor, one after another. As time passed, countless coins piled up at my feet, but I paid them not the slightest attention.

"I said I wouldn't accept money. You would've insisted that humans pay for their lives with their arms or legs if they couldn't cough up the cash, wouldn't you?"

"..."

"Interest rates are brutal these days. Who knows how high this loan-shark debt will climb? See you in a little while."

I took another step. As I walked on, ignoring the request for a refund, the illusions of flesh that had stained my surroundings red vanished all at once.

Only an ordinary school corridor remained visible.

The “underworld” had not been completely exorcised yet. As proof, the view outside the corridor windows remained blood-red, with bloody handprints here and there.

But for a while, at least the area around me would be protected from the underworld's curse.

Was that why?

TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP!

The wooden corridor resounded. Light, brisk footsteps, yet with a solid weight that never lost its center of gravity. A rhythm bearing breath and muscle, unique to a living organism.

The footsteps of a human, not an anomaly.

"Hyaaaaaah!"

That living rhythm was evident in the voice, too. A human in a white school uniform sprinted down the wooden corridor in an instant, leaped, and thrust their right foot at me.

Excellent jumping power. A splendid kick.

I ducked my head and caught the attacker's shoe. It wobbled. The black-and-red Air Jordan basketball shoe came to a halt.

The kick carried the full weight of Cheon Yohwa's powerful running charge, but I deftly absorbed it with the aura in my palm.

"Huh?!"

She was flustered. An orange ponytail swished through the air.

For an instant, our eyes met.

"—A h-human? Huh? An adult?!"

Instead of immediately slamming her into the corridor floor, I lowered her gently so she wouldn't wrench her back.

"Wah! Eek! Gah!"

Unable to find her balance, she staggered and eventually fell over in the corridor. But since I had killed all her momentum, she didn't seem to have suffered any particular injury.

"Ow, ow, ow... W-wait. An adult? Are you really an adult? Uh, I mean... sir, y-you are human, right?"

"Mm."

I nodded.

"Yes, I'm human."

"Aah...! F-finally! You've come to rescue us!"

Her face lit up with joy.

She gave quite a different impression from when I had met her later, but the name tag attached to her front pocket proved that the person before me was the one I had been searching for.

An awakened who would one day become the Korean Peninsula's strongest necromancer.

A member of the runner-up team in the girls' high school basketball division at South Korea's final National Sports Festival. Primary position: point guard.

The 113th Student Council President of Baekhwa Girls’ High School. The one and only witness leading to the God of Alienation, Gapless.

Cheon Yohwa.

Cheon for heaven, yo for loneliness, hwa for becoming. A girl whose name held a measure of quiet solitude.

At last, I had encountered my target in the worst tutorial dungeon.