WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: LiteraryGirl

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell

Chapter 361

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The Missing XIII

Go Yuri is dead.

“Hey, mister? Why are you spacing out all of a sudden?”

Go Yuri is dead.

Perhaps this was the ending I had spent a thousand turns of regression praying for. In run after run, I wandered, hunting for some way to handle the “pink entity.” And yet... Seeing Go Yuri’s severed head dangling vacantly from Seo-rin’s hand sent my heart thumping at an ominous tempo.

“Your Excellency? Your complexion...”

Maybe that was inevitable. All this punny regressor had managed so far was to keep Ji-won glued to Go Yuri, and even that only shooed her away. If you asked whether we ever truly stopped her, a question mark was all we could offer.

And now, Go Yuri was dead.

Killed by Dang Seo-rin, as casually as breathing.

Splat. Crack.

Fresh blood dotted the mirror-bright lunar surface.

Seo-rin opened her hand, and in an unhurried arc, slow enough to mistake for a drifting balloon, Go Yuri’s head fell. Her face was just as serene.

「Hmm... Looks like you’ve got a lot of company over there too.」

Lilac eyes, bored to the point of drowsiness, swept across the Void. She wasn’t staring at me but staring past me—at my comrades, glancing back with worried faces.

「It’s hard to talk in peace with them hanging around, right?」

Her lips whispered.

「Shall I clear them out?」

“Everyone! Scatter!” I instantly shouted, flinging Aura and the transmission of sound alike.

A rookie might have blinked in confusion, but my party—the last elites of this world, who had even accepted Corruption—were different. Of course, even among raiders, there were differences in reflexes.

Yu Ji-won was the fastest. “I’ll handle it.”

Then with no forewarning, Seo-rin flicked her hand, and the vast emptiness of the Void itself was cleaved in violet. It was a ridiculous fissure, a slash big enough to bisect the whole team. We could have been annihilated in one blow.

Ji-won charged straight at it without a heartbeat’s hesitation, a spectrum of auroras slamming into the attack.

Screeeech...

Sound shouldn’t carry in the middle of space, yet a warped static howled like a monster’s scream—an ugly shriek stabbing our eardrums.

Impact.

The authority of Hecate collided with Leviathan, and the slash never reached us.

But not without a price.

“Hmm.”

Half of Ji-won’s body was gone.

The silver-haired girl glanced down and murmured, “So that’s why she chose the moon, an environment where she can cast any spell at any time.”

Even with half her body missing, Ji-won stayed calm.

“But how strange. The Great Witch’s specialty is the Cursed Song Incantation. Melodies layered in advance should be the core of her magic. How can she fire off a grand spell this large on the spot without chanting...?”

“Heal.”

Petals sprouted and scattered over Ji-won’s wounds, as Ah-ryeon was already beside me, praying without expression. Where the petals passed, Ji-won’s body—and even her clothing—were restored.

“Dok-seo!” I shouted. “Hold the rear with Ah-ryeon! If a spell that we absolutely can’t stop comes, that’s when you pop Absolute Defense!”

“R-right, mister!”

“Ha-yul, take center! Watch ahead and behind, and adjust on your own!”

[Okay.]

“Ji-won! Yo-hwa! You’re with me!”

No reply was needed.

The moment her treatment concluded, Ji-won rode her Aura and shot toward the moon.

Fighting in the air—well, in space—put us at a disadvantage. On a battlefield without ground beneath our feet, Seo-rin held the upper hand. She always flew on her broom and so commanded the field. All of our experience, by contrast, was earned on solid earth.

「Hmm-hmm.」

Humming as if amused, she swept her arm through space again. This time I didn’t need to shout; the whole raid was already tracking her every twitch.

“I’ll block this one, Teacher!”

The same casual blow that had torn off Ji-won’s limbs sliced silently between us again—

Between us.

She had aimed for Ji-won and Yo-hwa’s throats, but the moment Yo-hwa snapped her fingers, the slashes corkscrewed away. By rewriting the target’s perceived data, Infinite Void had made their strikes veer off as though ensnared by illusion.

Yo-hwa laughed. “Ahaha! What an idiot! Has eyes but doesn’t know what you use them for!”

Kuuuu-oom!

With her razor-edged laughter, we slammed into the moon.

The boom and tremor were seismic. Any NASA tech would have fainted. Yet that mirror-smooth surface showed not a single crater or scratch.

Astronomers and physicists alike would be out of work.

“Ji-won.”

Ji-won knelt the instant she landed and pressed her palms together. “Yes. I know, Mr. Matiz.”

Her whole body flashed with aurora. The light ran down her legs—down, ever down. Within moments, a full-spectrum light swallowed the moon. Terraforming— No, Auraforming was the word. Ji-won’s Aura rolled across a moon already twisted into Dang Seo-rin’s divine realm, making a battlefield perfectly suited for us.

Gwooooo...

Behind the praying Ji-won, a sea dragon of water reared up.

Dok-seo yelped, “Eek!” and slipped. With gravity now Earth-normal, she splashed on her backside.

“Dang Seo-rin.” I stepped forward. Splash—water fanned beneath my shoe. “I’m here to return your question.”

Splash. Slosh.

The raiders followed at my back—Ji-won on my left, Yo-hwa on my right, Ha-yul behind, Dok-seo and Ah-ryeon at the rear—forming a triangular wedge aimed straight at Seo-rin.

「Ah. At last...」

「You’ll stay with me, right—forever?」

She smiled wide, yet it seemed I alone understood her. My comrades only tilted their heads.

Yo-hwa frowned. “What’d she say just now?”

[It sounded like someone dragging a crowbar across a car hood. Weird.]

“M-me too, sir. Like a TV full of static.”

Only I’d caught her words.

Odd. Ji-won could lip-read, yet even she was puzzled.

Something was fundamentally off. In this universe, somehow only she and I...

I swallowed my questions and spoke what had to be said. “Yes... I’ll stay with you.”

Her smile brightened.

「Wise decision! If you’re by my side, everything will be fine.」

She leaned against her broom.

「Saving the world is foolish. Think back to the world before it died. Was it worth saving?」

Behind her, the planets spun—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all circling a flattened Earth, not a shrunken Sun.

「You can’t remember the worlds before cycle four, Undertaker, so you cling to a fantasy of “the world” you must save.」

Uranus and Neptune no longer existed here. Only the ancient sky of magic remained, the planets’ shadows sliding over the mirror-moon.

「No one takes responsibility. They think they suffer, yet dump their pain on others without a thought.

Rather than that filthy surface, the utopia we’ll build will be far more beautiful. Without fail.」

Light and shadow striped the ground beneath her like a shifting crosswalk.

At the crossroads of the cosmos, she stood.

「And if you stay with me now, you’ll never have to suffer hundreds more times.」

I remained silent.

「You fear a time paradox? But why treat time’s order as sacred? I can re-assemble space this beautifully, so with you, I can rebuild time as well. That is an Outer God. A miracle granted to humanity! A god truly watching over us has given us a chance to redesign the flawed human race!」

She rejoiced like a child.

「Let’s rebuild humans. Let’s redesign the world. Again and again, until every being is happy—even if it takes eternity! That is why you exist. You and I share a single destiny—we exist for this!」

Her words painted a vivid vision. One witch and one swordsman, forever piecing together the perfect human. We would tweak intellect, compassion, memory. Lament each failure yet never despair. Because together, even hardship became play.

But every playtime ends.

「Once the world we want is complete, we’ll slip away quietly. There’ll be no need for a god to meddle with a perfected world. This is better—definitely.」

Indeed. The world she dreamed of echoed the Saintess’s wish and Ji-won’s hope.

And yet...

“I have a question, Dang Seo-rin.”

「Hmm? Ask anything.」

“The children you tried to kill, the people around me. What do they look like to you now?”

She blinked. Memories flashed.

“I love humanity!”

“I hate people. They tick me off.”

“The day we first defeated the Meteor Shower, wrapped in endless sunset...”

“Humans are amazing!”

A thread of that tune still flowed in my heart.

The witch who looked just like you swept her eyes over my comrades and said lightly,

「Yeah. They’re noisy, aren’t they? Honestly, they’ve been grating on me—so noisy, noisy, noisy. Can’t we talk after I wipe them away? Don’t worry. I’ll remake them later, and they’ll be much prettier.」

...I see.

I listened to my heartbeat, then opened my eyes.

“They each have their reasons, but they chose to come here and fight. They’re a suicide squad.”

「...?」

“Dang Seo-rin would never call such people ugly. What you see and hear right now aren’t through her eyes or ears.”

「...」

“My witch... No.”

I drew my cane-sword. When the walking stick’s sheath fell away, Do-hwa gleamed.

Faced with that bright tip, Dang Seo-rin’s smile froze.

“I have come to reclaim my princess, Outer God Hecate.”

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