WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 415

──────

The Regressor I

When do you all experience déjà vu?

Is it when the sunlight pours down on the street, causing the asphalt's outline to crumble into a hazy mirage?

Is it when a red peony falls, its petals scattering in every direction?

Is it when you climb the stairs of some old public office or school, only to find the hallway completely empty?

I will confess first. I, the Undertaker, experience déjà vu 24 hours a day, for all 1,440 minutes and 86,400 seconds.

『Oppa, please wake up. It's morning.』

『...Hey. I'm genuinely curious. Why do you insist on that same greeting every single morning? I'm already awake, you know.』

『I'm sorry, brother, but I have my own aesthetic principles. They say learning begins by imitating the masterpieces.』

『?』

Therefore, even when a scene that should have been a 'nonexistent memory' suddenly flowed by like a dream, and even when an intense sense of déjà vu washed over me, I was not particularly flustered.

I was used to the feeling.

Of course, perhaps it was not simply a matter of familiarity.

Squeeze.

The warmth of Go Yuri, who was holding my hand tightly beside me, soothed my heart.

“This place is...”

“As you can see. It's the time when we were siblings.”

“Is this inside your dream? Did you invite me into your dream?”

“No, Guild Leader. For beings like us, there is no such thing as a 'dream'. There is only a void I artificially created in imitation of a dream, a place called the 'world of unconsciousness'.”

“You too…?”

“Yes. We are already anomalies. We only imitate humans, love humans, and act for the sake of humans.”

“...”

The scenery before my eyes transformed rapidly.

The landscapes scattered into pieces, each flowing at its own arbitrary speed. Each one held a lifetime of Go Yuri, contained within frames made not of space, but of time.

That's right. The two of us were walking alone through an exhibition hall titled 'Her'.

“The 'red flesh' that you occasionally witnessed, Guild Leader, is the conclusion where my identity as an anomaly completely devoured my identity as a human.”

“The conclusion.”

“Yes. It's because I lost my family every time I was reincarnated. Because I wanted to become someone precious to them again. It is a mass of flesh, consumed by desire, that merely struggles to become 'one' with whatever it comes across.”

Go Yuri murmured.

“My ugly and filthy end. An anomaly known by the name of Reincarnator. A forgotten god of false happiness.”

“...”

“Everyone swallowed by the red flesh remembers me and becomes my family. Within the flesh, they each dream their own separate dreams of being with me for all eternity.”

Then, something came to mind.

“That's just like my ability, [Time Seal].”

“That's correct.”

Hehe, Go Yuri let out a small laugh.

“You, Guild Leader, can only grant people a single day of happiness. But I can make them dream of their happiest lifetime, an entire life spent with the one being who filled the emptiness in their heart more than anyone else and made their life happier.”

“A superior version, is it?”

“Perhaps.”

The scenery within the frames changed again.

In those scenes, the 'Go Yuris' were continuously dying. After becoming someone's precious person, they would deliberately orchestrate the most harsh and miserable deaths for themselves.

“Guild Leader. You may have noticed by now, but my 'human self' barely exists anymore.”

“...”

“Even now, Guild Leader, you are taking the countless, echoing screams from thousands upon thousands of paths, and from within that noise, you are barely managing to connect words and sentences to create 'my voice'.”

It was true.

“Every human is like that to me.”

“Yes. I'm happy. That you continue to treat me as a human even after knowing what I am now.”

Go Yuri smiled brightly.

“It was because I knew you were that kind of person that I decided to entrust myself to you.”

“Entrust yourself?”

“Hup.”

There was no answer.

Instead, there was a hand pushing me.

Into the frame of a dream within a dream. Into that well of the abyss, where Go Yuri's lifetimes were swirling in pieces.

“…?!”

It was a blow I took while completely off guard.

I desperately reached out my hand. Though I had already been pushed and had fallen into the massive frame, I somehow succeeded in grabbing its edge.

Just like a castaway hanging precariously from the edge of a cliff.

“You…?!”

“Ahaha. You were fooled, Guild Leader. This is the price for neglecting the precious people around you and letting your heart be captivated by an anomaly like me.”

Unlike me, who had tumbled completely inside the frame, Go Yuri was looking down at me from above.

Smiling cheerfully. In a squatting posture.

“You could have chosen to subjugate me after hearing my story, Guild Leader. You could have treated me as a monster, then simply urged me to commit suicide by getting infected with Udumbara.”

“...”

“You're a greedy one, Guild Leader. But I don't dislike that kind of greed.”

It makes me feel a sense of kinship.

Go Yuri added.

She reached out her hand and began to peel my fingers off the edge of the frame.

One by one. One by one.

“You can still back out now, you know? If you fall into my dream like this, truly, truly terrible things will unfold.”

“...‘No matter what happens,’ is what my past self swore. For what it's worth, I pride myself on being a man who keeps his promises.”

A smile lingered on Go Yuri's lips.

She lowered her head.

“You are even more foolish than I am.”

My ring finger, the last one clinging to the frame, was gently bitten between Go Yuri’s front and bottom teeth—and she pulled it away.

“Have a good trip.”

With those last words, I fell into the abyss.

My surroundings grew dark. Rapidly. The only light was from far above, seeping out from beyond the frame where Go Yuri's shadow flickered.

A small whisper echoed in the darkness.

“My precious.”

And then, hell began.

Go Yuri's life unfolded.

“Ah.”

The first life.

Confirming that the life of the reincarnator she had told me about in reality as a 'story' was being reproduced exactly as it was, I sensed that I was seriously screwed.

Even that castaway on Mars, who famously declared something along the lines of 'I'm screwed, and then I'm even more screwed,' would surely offer me some unwitting sympathy if he saw the situation I was in now.[1]

“You want me to live it, from the very beginning? The life she walked as a reincarnator…?”

My head felt dizzy.

The situation was so absurd that a laugh escaped my lips.

Humans often let out a laugh as a defense mechanism when faced with a disaster they can't possibly resist. Laughter was a form of human magic, as ancient as language itself.

“...A life worth hundreds of millions, billions of years. This is a problem on a whole other level than when I lived Cheon Yo-hwa's life. This is…”

“Hey, Ms. Su-yeon! What are you doing over there! The monsters will be swarming in tomorrow. Get a move on and carry those sandbags!”

“...”

A foreman at the Final Defensive Line ordered me, and I had no choice but to obey.

In an instant, that foreman achieved the feat of imprinting his authority upon a reincarnator and regressor.

'To think that the phrase, ‘let's become one’ meant something like this.'

The years flowed by.

Sometimes quickly. Sometimes slowly.

The end came easily and swiftly. In 'this world,' which could truly be called the first round, or rather, the round before the first round, the Final Defensive Line was breached with laughable ease.

'A world where not a single Awakener exists, aside from the reincarnator.'

What kind of hard mode was this?

The 'monsters' that pierced through the Final Defensive Line were not merely the infinite horde of the Monster Wave.

Ah———ah—ah-ah-ah———

Above the battlefield.

A single 'witch' was singing there. At a glance, she looked human, but the reality was completely different

——Ah-ah—ah—ah——ah——

What looked vaguely like a witch's hat was made of living, squirming hair.

All over her body, 'eyes' and 'fingers' bloomed and snapped off repeatedly, as she spewed forth songs stained with curses and resentment that a person's ears could not dare to contain.

I couldn't help but mutter unconsciously.

“Dang Seo-rin...”

“It's Hecate! The witch! Hecate has appeared!”

But the soldiers who participated in the battle, the civilians classified as support personnel, and the boy soldiers were different.

They did not know the name 'Dang Seo-rin'.

'Hecate?'

Just as I did not know the name of that anomaly.

“Retreat! Retreat! Don't listen to the song! You must not listen to the song!”

“Ah, ahhh...”

One of the soldiers exposed to 'Dang Seo-rin's' song suddenly opened his mouth with a blank expression. From that opening, the same rhythm as 'Dang Seo-rin's' scream began to play out a cappella.

Bang!

A discipline officer pulled out a pistol without hesitation and shot the soldier. The soldier fell immediately.

–Ah, ah, ah.

However, only the soldier's body had fallen.

The soldier's head remained, suspended by itself in 'mid-air', singing the a cappella chorus.

“Hyaaaaargh!”

A comrade next to him, horrified, swung his sword, struck the head, and sliced it off, and only then did the song stop.

“Don't listen! Do not listen! Keep muttering anything in your mouths! You bastards! Mix in some noise! Don't focus on the song!”

“Ah ah ah ah ah.”

“Ah ah-ah ah-ah ah.”

Bang! Bang!

The discipline officer's pistol spat out sharp reports all across the battlefield.

I, who was there as a combat support personnel, could only stand there, aghast.

The final form of 'Dang Seo-rin', called by the name Hecate, was shocking enough, but an even more detailed point struck me with horror.

'They're using guns!'

Chekhov's Gun. It was one of the anomalies that had inflicted the most damage upon humanity.

If a gun so much as appeared once, that gun would someday be used, creating a 'decisive scene'.

For most humans, the most decisive scene was a moment when their own life was on the line. In other words, if one were to use a firearm, the user's life would inevitably be put in grave danger.

'No... But, it's true. In a world this broken, they're not in a position to be picky about using firearms or anything else.'

In the first place, the soldiers seemed to know nothing about Chekhov's Gun.

'The experience points.'

They were desperately lacking.

'Strategies against the anomalies. Knowledge. No, even the Awakeners who could use that knowledge to change the tide of war... are gone.'

There was nothing.

– Ahahahahahahahaha.

At that moment, the soldiers who had just lost their heads and fallen began to rise up from all over the front line.

– Ahahahaha.

– Ahahahahahaha.

– A ha ha ha ha.

Just like zombies.

– A thing, formless yet complete.

– Born before heaven and earth.

– The way that follows nature.[2]

The resurrected zombies danced and pranced, forming their own circle dance. If their neck was broken, they chanted the Tao Te Ching with a broken neck, and if they had no head, they struck their own corpses with a sword, keeping rhythm with the surrounding zombies. You might know them as the Jiangshi.

– The way that follows nature.

– Man follows earth, earth follows heaven.

– A ha ha ha ha ha.

In an instant, dozens of circle dances formed on the battlefield. Strangely, the endlessly surging horde of monsters never touched those circle dances.

Mixed in with the other soldiers, I retreated, glancing back.

“...Yo-hwa.”

In the middle of the ever-growing circle dance.

Someone dressed like a shrine maiden was there, letting out an endless stream of laughter—A ha ha ha ha—and conducting the procession of corpses.

Next to me, a soldier muttered bluntly.

“Fucking necromancer...”

“...”

“Platoon Leader. We have no more room to retreat from here. The other units are probably in a similar situation.”

“For now, just evacuate the civilians.”

“To where, sir?”

“Back. Unconditionally back.”

“Understood.”

A soldier grabbed my shoulder and pulled me.

“Go. Quickly.”

“...”

I tried to hold my ground, but I was pushed away too easily by the soldier's grip.

It couldn't be helped. The current 'me' was too weak.

The moment I stepped back like that, Splash.

“…?”

I heard the sound of water.

I looked down, and a puddle had formed even though it had not rained.

No. That was not a puddle.

“Ah.”

From the entire ground, the 'water level' was steadily rising.

Leviathan.

Yu Ji-won.

“...”

But the soldiers, who were busy fighting a bloody battle to hold the front, and the civilians, who were moving to the rear even as they foresaw their own deaths, paid no mind to the puddle soaking their feet.

They did not know.

The fact that this water, too, was an anomaly.

“...No way.”

“What? Ms. Su-yeon?”

The foreman moving with me asked with a tired face, but I couldn't bring myself to answer him.

It wasn't as if the foreman was expecting a proper conversation either. For that to happen, even the civilians were rarely in good shape.

Humanity was exhausted.

In the face of an annihilation that offered not a sliver of hope.

Ah—ah-ah—ah———

In the sky of the battlefield, a song that tore people's sanity to shreds rang out endlessly.

A ha ha ha ha ha.

On the ground, corpses formed circles as if holes had been punched here and there, endlessly dancing a circle dance that insulted life.

Splash. Splash, splash.

And even on the ankles of the humans who retreated to escape them, an anomaly that mimicked 'water', an anomaly that mocked the most fundamental 'life' of this planet, seeped in.

No Awakeners existed.

Only the Fallen Ones, no.

Only the Outer Gods who borrowed the bodies of the Fallen existed.

“...”

That was the first cycle.

Not the epilogue, but the prologue.

Humanity's starting point.

Footnotes:

[1] Direct reference to the protagonist of Andy Weir's novel The Martian and his famous opening lines.

[2] The phrases chanted by the zombie-like soldiers are lines from the Tao Te Ching, a classic Chinese text. They are philosophical verses describing the nature of the Tao/Dao (the Way). In order, they are:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried