Chapter 215
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The Naless One I
Novels are different from illustrations.
At first glance, this might sound like an obvious statent, but to , the distinction is surprisingly significant.
For example, Lee Ha-yul. She lived with in the Inunaki Tunnel, which I had converted into my hideout. Except during vacation rounds, she was almost always there. Compared to the other mbers, her attendance rate was truly overwhelming.
「Ah, I’m sorry, Hyung. I have thalassophobia, so living deep inside the Inunaki Tunnel is a bit... If sothing bursts in there, I'd drown right away, right?」
Seo Gyu usually stayed close to the headquarters of the National Road Managent Corps.
「I... I am the Queen of the Eastern Holy State.」
Sim Ah-ryeon worked mostly as the Saintess of the North, so she didn’t co to the hideout as often.
Oh Dok-seo was a rookie who joined after the 555th cycle, and lacked seniority.
But Lee Ha-yul, she consistently claid the best spot in the hideout, no matter the ti. Yet, despite this, she didn’t appear much in my stories. Why?
There was a sad reason for that.
I present to you...
"...Ah, this coffee is quite delicious."
"Isn’t it? I blended three of the Saintess's favorite instant coffees and added exactly one spoonful of cinnamon. This is her favorite brew."
"...Hey, Mr. Undertaker, if you’ve reached that level, shouldn’t we stop calling it 'instant' coffee? Well, it does taste good."
Let's say this conversation took place between the Saintess and at the hideout’s café, 1,200 ters underground.
But this is a novel. If we strip away the filters of a novel and depict things more visually, the truth would look like this:
"...Ah, this coffee is quite delicious."
"Isn’t it?"
(Beside , Ha-yul silently lifted two coffee packs like twin swords. Image: Lee Ha-yul holding up two coffee packs like a warrior.)
"I blended three of the Saintess's favorite instant coffees and added exactly one spoonful of cinnamon. This is her favorite brew."
(Image: Lee Ha-yul playfully slapping my back with the coffee packs, as if she were part of the jazz band from Whiplash.)
"...Hey, Mr. Undertaker, if you’ve reached that level, shouldn’t we stop calling it 'instant' coffee?"
(Image: Lee Ha-yul failing to control her Aura, causing the coffee pack to explode, spilling its contents all over my barista uniform.)
"Well, it still tastes good."
(Image: holding Lee Ha-yul’s head as she struggles like a mischievous kid.)
See how different the scene is?
That’s right.
As you all probably know, Ha-yul was born with a speech impedint. Normally, she traveled with her maid doll to voice her words. However, when it was just the two of us—especially when she was ssing with —she would ditch the maid and perform her ‘silent protests’. Though I hadn’t described it, Ha-yul was usually next to in the hideout, pulling pranks about 80% of the ti.
Why did she leave the maid behind when it was just the two of us?
‘Ouch! Ouch, oppa, my skull! It’s in danger!’
This girl could use her Aura to write on my back in real ti. And since I had exceptional skills in reading Aura, I could easily interpret what she wanted to say.
"You’ll be fine."
‘Ah! No violence! No violence!’
"...You and Ha-yul seem really close. Almost like siblings with a big age gap."
Anyway.
Ha-yul was always forcing my readers to play a ga of Spot the Difference.
Her thods of communication with were diverse: writing on my back, vibrating her Aura to make her sound like a voiceroid, tapping Morse code into my palm...
And then, after receiving a thorough scalp massage from , she would scurry behind the Saintess and pull out her sketchbook.
It read:
[Ex] [pla] [na] [tion]
?
[The Undertaker is a Monster] [Confird as a Regressor Monster] [When You Gaze into the Void, the Void Gazes Back] [This Regressor Has No mories Before the Fourth cycle] [Is There Any Proof That This Monster Didn’t Suddenly Appear After the Fourth cycle?] [Can Humanity Entrust Its Fate to a Monster Regressor?] [Is Korea Truly Safe This Way?]
.......
[Monster] [Explanation] [Monster] [Explanation]
[The Undertaker Is a Colossal Monster]
[Explanation Please]
By the way, the sketchbook pages flipped at a speed of 0.3 seconds per sheet. If I didn’t have eyes finely tuned with Aura, I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.
"...Undertaker, is sothing wrong?"
The Saintess noticed sothing was off and turned around, but with impeccable timing, Ha-yul quickly displayed a portrait she had drawn. It was an illustration of , seriously brewing coffee. Thanks to the lessons she received from Sim Ah-ryeon, Ha-yul had gotten decent at drawing.
"Ah, it’s a really cool drawing."
"......"
"By the way, Mr. Undertaker, could you tell which three products you used in my coffee and in what ratio?"
The mont the Saintess turned her head back, Ha-yul flipped to the next page of her sketchbook.
(Image: The Regressor monster in a coffee-stained barista outfit, unleashing black Aura as he defeats awakened beings like Noh Do-hwa, Dang Seo-rin, and Sim Ah-ryeon, while destroying Busan.)
This little brat...
Of course, Ha-yul knew the Saintess turned off her Clairvoyance and Telepathy when she was relaxing with her coffee.
"Mm."
But despite Ha-yul's bratty antics, her point was valid.
The so-called Regressor Monster Theory.
As I’ve ntioned before, I have no mories of my family. My mories from before the 4th cycle are all a blur now. And that wasn't the only reason.
‘Even in the cycles where I’d beco sowhat famous, not a single person who knew ever ca to find .’
Not a distant relative. Nor a childhood friend from my hotown. No one at all.
Once in a while, I’d get a call from the Reunion anomaly, inviting to a class reunion, but I couldn’t really consider that person a friend.
Oh, by the way, defeating the Reunion anomaly is incredibly challenging yet simple. Just drive up in a limousine like a Maybach S-Class Pullman or a supercar like a Ferrari. That’ll instantly exorcize the anomaly, and it won’t bother you again.
Returning to the main point...
‘In the end, my family and acquaintances were probably all swept away by the Arrival of the Void and either died or went missing.’
It went all that far-fetched of a possibility. Didn’t 19 out of every 20 people die in Korea? Most people with bad gacha luck lost all their connections, just like I did.
"Well... Should I seriously go search for them?"
"Huh?"
"Ah. Ha-yul keeps teasing , asking if I’m really the Regressor Monster. So, I thought maybe I should investigate whether I really did appear out of nowhere during the fourth cycle."
(Image: Lee Ha-yul giving a disgusted look for snitching on her pranks.)
"Oh... Um..." The Saintess set down her coffee cup. "Wouldn’t that be difficult?"
"Why do you think that?"
"Because of your nature, Mr. Undertaker. I don’t know much about the ‘you’ before the 4th cycle, but from what I’ve heard..." She hesitated briefly before continuing, "I imagine you probably Ti Sealed the people closest to you, one by one."
"......"
"You said you cleared the Tutorial Dungeon in the 3rd cycle. So, right after you left Busan Station, I believe you sought out your family and acquaintances. And convinced them to―"
"Seal them in Crystal Tombstones. But now, I don’t rember where those tombstones are or who I Ti Sealed."
"That’s just my guess, though."
She... had a point.
To find any clues about my family, I’d have to inspect every single Crystal Tombstone in Korea.
How many tombstones had I buried? At least 500,000. Who knows how many I couldn’t keep track of?
"It’s definitely going to be tough."
"Yes, unfortunately."
[Ex] [pla] [na] [tion]
At that mont, our discussion ended with Ha-yul's ridiculous placard still lingering. I had no intention of doing a Regressor version of In Search of Lost Ti, so the idea was naturally shelved.[1]
Until the 267th cycle, that is.
As I’ve ntioned before, I mobilized every fairy in my arsenal to find any trace of the Saintess in the 267th cycle. I sent out the baku to scour the dreams of every survivor in Korea. Yet in the end, there was no sign of the 267th Saintess.
"Hoeeek."
However, I stumbled upon an entirely unexpected puzzle piece instead.
"I-isn’t this the Secretary General?"
"Hm?"
"Look over there, in that person's dream, up on the hill. The figure walking past the supermarket!"
Fairy No. 264 invited into soone's dream. It belonged to a 50-sothing woman I didn’t recognize.
"...I can see it, but so what? Isn’t that just a mother and child walking side by side?"
"The kid looks oddly similar to the Secretary General!"
"What?"
The dream revealed a vague silhouette that, according to the fairy, resembled .
"Co on, it's way too blurry. You can barely make out their face. How could you say whether he looks like ?"
"Hoek, but the baku's instincts are telling ! The dark aura! That shadow, black as ink! Those dead fish-like eyes! The stomp of soone who resents the world, pounding the ground! That’s definitely you, Secretary General... Gyaaaah! My skull! It's being crushed!"
"First of all, it's ‘sense,’ not ‘instinct.’"
"V-violence is bad! No purging, please!"
I gave the fairy a scalp massage, frowning as I observed the dream. In the distance, a mother and child walked, barely noticeable at the edge of the dream’s awareness.
‘That kid is supposed to be ?’
The child looked like they were around elentary school age.
I felt no connection to them at all.
I brushed off the fairy’s hunch, but similar reports kept trickling in over ti.
"Secretary General! Look at this middle school graduation ceremony!"
"Where?"
"There! About 20 ters away from the drear, look at the crowd of students! There’s a figure that just barely flashes by over soone’s shoulder! It has to be the Secretary General from the past!"
I strained my vision, sharpening my Aura to its extre limit—the kind of limit only the most refined Awakener like could reach—just to catch a flicker of the silhouette.
I muttered in disbelief, "...This really is like a ga of Where's Waldo. Only five thousand tis harder."
Still, if the fairies were right, one thing was clear. The past I thought I'd lost forever, the mories before the 4th cycle, especially the original Undertaker from the 1st cycle...
There were fragnts of it, hidden within these dreams.
Perhaps I wasn’t a monster born suddenly in the 4th cycle.
And now, I had been handed a clue to piece together that lost puzzle.
Footnotes:
[1] In Search of Lost Ti is a novel by French author Marcel Proust. In it, the narrator walks through mories of his younger years, often through monts of “involuntary mory” where sothing in his everyday life sparks a mory from childhood.
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