Old Baekje Hospital. Café.
Emt Schopenhauer was delighted.
Partly because he had just enjoyed an exceptionally delicious cup of coffee, but more than that—
his most beloved wife in the world was approaching him in real ti.
“Now, my dear undertaker. I can’t help but ask because I’m simply too curious. Just how many tis have you rolled through regression?”
His voice was colored with a naturally cheerful rhythm.
To be blunt, to Schopenhauer, this entire situation itself felt like a dream.
He had just achieved the most important goal on his life’s bucket list—how could he not be happy?
“Well. If we’re talking about the regressions I personally led, roughly around the two-thousandth round. But if you add them all up together, it easily exceeds three thousand.”
“Oh.”
Schopenhauer’s voice still floated leisurely in the lody of a happiness march.
“When I died, I felt certain I had gone through at least three thousand regressions. I suppose the density of ti must have been a little different for you and , though.”
“That’s right.”
“How long did you live per round?”
“Hmm.”
“No need to tell an exact number. If I were to guess, perhaps about five years each round—?”
“Well, the difference isn’t that large. About twenty years, I suppose.”
Pause.
“Twenty years?”
“Yes.”
“……”
Schopenhauer’s gaze slowly turned.
Across the table.
There sat the man sipping a now-cold café au lait.
In the first-person viewpoint, he was the Undertaker.
In the third-person omniscient narrative, he was called Go Yo-il.
“Hmmm……”
Schopenhauer set his coffee cup down.
Sothing trickled down the back of his neck.
A secretion known as cold sweat—
in the body of homo sapiens, it was typically released upon sensing impending doom.
“What an amusing joke. If that number were true, then wouldn’t that an three thousand rounds multiplied by twenty years each? Ho ho ho. Roughly sixty thousand years old, then.”
“Ah, not quite that much. I’ve taken vacations. And in about the last thousand rounds, the world ended early anyway. So, fifty thousand.”
“Hmmm.”
The cold sweat would not stop.
“By the way, old man.”
“W-what is it?”
“When people interact, there must always be proper etiquette. That’s sothing even your beloved Confucius once said.”
“That’s true.”
“The root of etiquette lies in showing respect to those who ca before you. In East Asia, that respect is often expressed simply through honorific speech.”
“……And?”
“How old are you, exactly, old man?”
“……”
Tap.
Go Yo-il set down his porcelain cup with a gentle smile.
“Emt Schopenhauer.”
“What?”
“Don’t raise your voice.”
“……”
“Even if I’ve grown old, I’ve still lived at least fifty thousand more years than you have.”
“……….”
“Now then. Who’s the greenhorn?”
Schopenhauer’s vision blurred.
This was a nightmare.
Hình dạng
“Now now, swing it properly.”
“Argh!”
“I have no great expectations of you. All I ask is that you swing your sword correctly. Weren’t you once a self-proclaid swordsman? Am I asking too much?”
“Agh! No, sir!”
“Your sword path is twisted. Again. You’ve failed once more—repeat it five thousand tis.”
“Damn son of a—”
“Son of what? My ears have grown dull because a certain comrade of mine abandoned the world and left to age alone. Speak loudly enough that these old ears can understand.”
“No, sir! Aaaaagh!”
People passing through the plaza murmured among themselves.
“Mom, what are those people doing?”
“Shh. Quiet!”
It was still June—
a ti when civilization wasn’t quite destroyed, but in the process of collapsing.
Even in Busan, pedestrians still walked the streets.
Yet, sweating profusely with his shirt off before such ordinary people, Schopenhauer felt like dying.
Still, balance in the world must always be maintained.
“Tsk, tsk. What kind of swordsman can’t even handle a sword properly?”
Soone’s misery was always another person’s delight.
The Undertaker, swordsmanship instructor, was relishing his being alive in real ti.
“Like this—see? Like this, swing it like this. Ah, honestly, is this difficult?”
“Hell yes, it’s hard! You bastard! How am I supposed to catch up with so lunatic who’s been swinging a sword for tens of thousands of years?!”
Schopenhauer shouted.
He still vividly rembered being beaten for five minutes earlier, but he couldn’t hold back anymore.
The Undertaker replied dryly.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have spent tens of thousands of years regression-hopping.”
“……”
“Do you know why I trained with the sword, old man? It was all for the day when you’d join the Regression Alliance—so that I could personally master and pass on a training thod to make you the greatest swordsman. Out of faith and devotion to you, I picked up the sword. And yet you call this hard? Ah, people really are useless to trust. If you can’t do it, I’ll just have to break the sword, sigh.”
“Y-you son of a—”
Schopenhauer was in despair.
No matter how he resisted, he couldn’t win this verbal duel.
Justification, skill, logic—
he was being crushed on every front.
There was simply no counter to ‘Then don’t regression-hop for millennia.’
“Hey, mister!”
A red-haired girl in a backward cap ca running—Oh Dok Seo.
She held two paper cups sloshing with liquid.
“Here! I brought caffeine boosters!”
“Ah, thanks. You’re the only one I can rely on, Dok Seo.”
“Right? Hehe!”
Slap! Oh Dok Seo jumped up and high-fived the Undertaker.
To the casual observer, she looked like nothing but a cheerful, innocent girl.
But Schopenhauer never let his guard down.
Because in the past few days, he had learned painfully well that behind that innocent smile lurked a level of madness no less than the Undertaker’s.
“To be honest, you don’t have that deep of a connection yet with most of the Regression Alliance mbers, right? Normally, you’d be the one saving people like Cheon Hwa or Dang Seo Rin, but I got to them first. You’re probably proud of , but deep down, you must feel kind of… NTR’d, right?”
“Exactly.”
“But don’t worry, mister! I have zero intention of stealing your heroine candidates! On the contrary, I’ll give you full support—front and back—so you can NTR instead!”
“You really have… unique tastes.”
“Ehehehe.”
“Ahahaha.”
They’re insane.
Already on the verge of losing his sanity, Schopenhauer felt sothing slipping further from his mind—
his humanity, or perhaps his soul leaving his body.
Just listening to the conversation between those two—the regressors and the possessor—made his sanity crumble in real ti.
He had tried to understand, but the only truth he uncovered was this:
the more deeply you tried to understand them, the more you went insane—
they were living grimoires in human skin.
“But seriously, how long are we gonna keep this old guy in boot camp? He’s just so washed-up has-been who failed early in the regression rounds. If we want him usable again, we’ll have to train him for hundreds more rounds, right?”
“Then we’ll do it. Whatever.”
They’re truly insane.
Schopenhauer’s hands trembled as he swung his sword.
Just a week of this had been agony enough—
and now he was supposed to repeat this for hundreds of rounds, twenty years each?
Was this hell?
They’re not human. They’re monsters wearing human skin. Only I, who still cling to my humanity despite being a regressor, can bring judgnt upon them.
“Hmm? Trainee Schopenhauer, your sword tip has no vigor. Should I take that as a sign you don’t wish to eat dinner with Madam Adele tonight?”
“N-no, sirrrr!!”
“Depending on your attitude, I can be either the King of Hades or Master Confucius. When you et Madam Adele, what kind of trainee do you wish to be?”
“Wh-what kind?”
“A lazy, unsincere Unternsch trainee? Or a disciplined Übernsch of regression?”
“Ugh…”
Oh Dok Seo, sipping bubble tea nearby, furrowed her brow. The straw trembled.
“Hearing my friend’s family called Unternch suddenly drains all my energy. What should I do? I feel weak, so weak… If this goes on, I might just abandon the world, write a record about a man who regression-hopped for 3,000 rounds, and publish it in Germany as my greatest sin as an author…”
You bastards.
Tears welled in Schopenhauer’s eyes.
Hình dạng
Truthfully, those tears were little more than theatrics.
At least, from the perspective of the two who had personally cleared their routes through blood—the Undertaker and Oh Dok Seo—it was frustrating to watch.
Even so, the reason the two still tolerated the old man’s whining and continued investing ti into this “Swordmaster-Maker” grind was simple.
“That old man’s power isn’t technically swordsmanship. It’s the ability to ‘cut anything.’”
“Yep. Exactly.”
A strategy eting.
With the old man Schopenhauer fainted at their feet after a full day of training, the Undertaker and Oh Dok Seo were already discussing the next round.
“For now, he can only cut physical things in the real world. But if he keeps training under —”
“Then soday, his power’s potential will let him slice through even abstract concepts.”
They nodded together.
“Totally broken ability, right?”
“Yeah.”
That was precisely why the Undertaker had never given up on Emt Schopenhauer, his old comrade.
“Even without relying on Leviathan’s aura, he can already fight monsters almost like a user who’s reached the extre of aura.”
“Wow. If I had that ability, I’d literally bow three tis a day to thank Go Yuri for it. What’s that old guy even complaining about?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Ughhhhhh……”
Even as he twitched in his fainted state, there was no one here to sympathize with his pain.
Because pain is the mark of an awakened being.
“Haa.”
As the old man’s groans faded, Oh Dok Seo stretched out her legs and looked up at the night sky.
“It’s kinda surreal—talking face-to-face with you like this, sir.”
“……Is that so?”
“Yeah. I an, from my point of view, you were always a character in a novel. A prophet in the Book of Prophecy. It’s only natural that I feel emotional about it.”
Oh Dok Seo spoke casually.
“For monts like this, hundreds, thousands of versions of died.”
“……”
“Hmm? Ah, no need to feel sorry. I wanted to do it. If anything, I feel bad because all my dying probably forced you into those twenty-year rounds over and over again.”
Oh Dok Seo giggled.
“Y’know what? I even conspired with Yeji unnie to secretly spy on you back in your ‘0th round.’”
“Oh my.”
“My schedule was already packed, but I couldn’t help it—I was too curious. What kind of person was he? The regressor my past selves, my future self, were trying to save through blood-written strategies… What kind of face would he have?”
The night sky inhaled her breath, and the air grew a little more humid; the starlight shimred a bit more faintly.
An ancient truth of life—
that sotis the twinkling of the stars and the beating of one’s heart fell into rhythm—
felt wondrous to Oh Dok Seo.
“So, what was your impression after spying?”
“Oh, he wasn’t that person.”
Oh Dok Seo turned to look at the Undertaker. Her red eyes shimred faintly, intoxicated by the stars.
“The one I wanted to save wasn’t that man.”
“……”
“I didn’t want to save the Go Yuri who’d lost all his mories and powers, finally returning to an ordinary human. I wanted to save the person who bore all that ti and walked through it.”
She gently brushed the back of his hand.
The Undertaker, originally, didn’t think much of it.
Among the Regression Alliance, the trio of I Ha-yul, Oh Dok Seo, and Sim Ah-ryeon—the little ones’ axis—had much freer physical contact with him than other mbers.
After all, the romantic possibility was below zero.
“When I saw you for the first ti in Busan Station’s waiting room, I was sure. Wow. The person standing there was completely different from the one I’d spied on days before.”
“……”
But then—
Wait a second.
Thump.
The Undertaker sensed sothing ominous.
Hold on. The old Oh Dok Seo was just so trash writer stuck in endless serialization. But this one standing before —she’s on par with Go Yuri or , a possessor who perford miracles herself… isn’t she?
Without realizing it, he had been treating the Oh Dok Seo before him as the sa as the old one—the glutton of the little trio.
But of course, the old trash-writer and the current Oh Dok Seo had entirely different-level resus.
Within barely a month, she recruited key figures like Cheon Hwa, rescued Madam Adele, upgraded the Udumbara through the Sword Queen, manipulated Normal Country, and distributed Awakening Erasers across the entire world.
How could this possibly be the sa person as back then?
In fact, before eting him at Busan Station, this Oh Dok Seo had long hair—
she had cut it short just as a performance to appear like the Oh Dok Seo he rembered.
aning?
She was a monster who had gone farming for experience points in parts unknown to him.
“I don’t want you to end up losing everything—your mories, your powers—in so empty ending. That’s not the man I want.”
Her red eyes shimred with emotions too complex to na.
“So don’t you dare pull a ‘redemption-hop’ or ‘sacrifice-hop’ like that old man.”
She squeezed the back of his hand tighter.
“I want this version of you.”
At that mont—
Wait… am I…
For the first ti ever, a strange alarm blared violently in the Undertaker’s mind—
one that had never once been triggered by this person before.
Am I… being flirted with? By Dok Seo??
Na: Undertaker.
Real na: Go Yo-il.
The greatest crisis of his life.
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