WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 421

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The Possessor III

Waiting was the sound of footsteps not yet heard.

"The trail ends here."

"Yo-hwa's cult headquarters, I see."

"Judging from the footprints... hmm. Three people. Ms. Yu Ji-won, Ms. Jeong Ye-ji, and Ms. Oh Dok-seo."

"The crutches would be Ha-yul."

"If it were me, I'd have made Ms. Ye-ji the command center and kept her in the rear. Mm, did they judge the combat power was insufficient for that?"

"...At this point in time, the Saintess's [Time Stop] is weak as can be. But they'd need to mobilize even that level of power to annihilate a cult along with an Outer God."

"Ahaha. What absurd recklessness. Ah, is this why veterans enjoyed watching newbies? How interesting."

Waiting was a message being typed.

"It's Ms. Dok-seo's corpse, Mr. Undertaker."

"......"

"Don't make that sad face. This is the first time across hundreds of cycles that she's reached 'a death that at least left a corpse behind.' To fight an Outer God and leave an intact corpse, isn't that quite an achievement?"

"An intact corpse? Only half of it is left."

"Yes. Whether a corpse is intact is determined only by whether the deceased's will was left behind or not, and ta-da."

"What's that?"

"How unexpected. It's a suicide note hidden in Ms. Dok-seo's corpse♪"

"......"

"[To Mister.]"

[Sorry.]

[If you're reading this letter, it means I'm already dead.]

[Ah, I've always wanted to write a suicide note like this—]"

"That's all there is. The rest of the letter was cut off and disappeared somewhere!"

"......"

Waiting was…

[Ah, I've always wanted to write a suicide note like this. Writing it myself is way more fucking fun than I thought. You should try it too, Mister.]

Just like the sound of a bell that didn't ring.

[Actually, if I die anyway, you'll just defer the ending to the next cycle, so I'm not really thinking much about it.]

[I wondered for a moment whether I should feel sorry about my death.]

[But I've decided not to be sorry.]

[You don't really try to think about the world that remains after you die either, right? You don't pointlessly stress over areas you can't control.]

[I thought that was your attitude.]

[So, if it's good, I'll also—]

A night that was not night.

Though not visible before my eyes yet rising before them, the sound of a fountain pen scratching beneath some lamp.

[So.]

It continued.

[If it's good, I'll try to learn it too.]

The void that exists in this world. The emptiness.

The path cut off before me. The route.

[To me, you're a human being, never a god. Sorry, but I don't have the slightest desire to worship you.]

[A life mortgaged to worship someone is too devastating, isn't it?]

[You have your own life.]

[If the answer you've reached at the end of that life is this moment, if it's to seal Go Yuri and isolate even yourself in lines of text.]

[I'll acknowledge it.]

[But there's no reason anywhere that it should be the end of my life too.]

Breath into a breathless letter.

[I told Ji-won unni and Ye-ji unni too. About your scenario.]

[No comment on how they reacted. That's something you can find out by digging through the unnies' corpses and farming their wills.]

[But just between us, those unnies' personalities are really fucking awful. Why the hell did you form a hero party with people like this??]

[This is why your life went to shit. You idiot.]

Laughter onto a blank page without laughter.

[I persuaded Cheon Yo-hwa.]

The letter gradually grew longer.

[I persuaded Sim Ah-ryeon.]

The locations where Dok-seo's corpse was found, the places where her companions' corpses appeared, began to change little by little each time.

[Go Yuri thought the only solution was to make Hecate into a 'human' called Dang Seo-rin.]

[I respect that judgment.]

[But it's not my judgment.]

[I haven't lived that far yet.]

There were cases where corpses continued to be found at specific points for hundreds of cycles.

[I can't live the same life as Go Yuri. I'm not a reincarnator. I'm not a regressor either.]

[As a regressor, you might have understood the reincarnator Go Yuri's method, fully accepted it, and then agreed.]

[Even while abandoning your own love.]

[But I can't.]

[I can't live that far. Even if I want to, I can't.]

[I'm going to test my own life.]

[Your life without Dang Seo-rin is incomplete. If you consider that incompleteness itself to be beautiful, I'll tell you that my aesthetic is different.]

Gunshots without gunshots continued.

[I'll save Dang Seo-rin. I'll save the Princess of the Night.]

Hecate was an anomaly that even a reincarnator and regressor couldn't dare guarantee victory against in a direct confrontation.

The domain she inhabited was the entire night sky, and all the planets and starlight that moved across the night sky were no different from the witch's limbs.

Hundreds and thousands of corpses lay scattered.

And then.

[I saved Dang Seo-rin.]

Direction was born in the sound of footsteps.

[As a result, Seo-rin ended up becoming an ordinary person without any abilities. I don't know if you'll like a Seo-rin who isn't Hecate.]

[That would be your life.]

[I saved the person I wanted to save, and I don't think your consent is necessary.]

Thud. Thud.

The footprints always disappeared at some midpoint. However, the direction the footprints continued was all too clear.

Toward Busan Station.

Toward the Tutorial Dungeon.

To the terminal of reincarnation where the reincarnator finally arrived, to the starting point of regression where the regressor first began.

"Hee. How curious. How did she subdue Hecate? I'm very interested."

"...She's a child who started with both the reincarnator's strategy guide and the regressor's strategy guide. Her conditions were much better than ours."

"Even so, it's amazing. It's a great achievement."

"Yeah. Well done."

Time flowed.

An era flowed.

Eavesdropping on the waves of those footsteps, I suddenly looked up at the sky.

'Did I perhaps become arrogant?'

The sky was like my only refuge as the Undertaker.

At least when looking up at the sky, I could turn my gaze away, even a little, from the countless corpses preserved in my [Complete Memory].

Like meteor showers, the corpses of raid members falling, only the starlight made of human lingering thoughts, desperate hopes, and will adorned my sky.

"I think I lived a righteous life."

"Yes. I think so too."

"But the world I think of myself, the self I think of myself... perhaps I unknowingly forced it on the children."

"Because you believed."

"That eventually if they were wounded like me, they would reach the same conclusion as me."

"Yes. Mr. Undertaker. Isn't that belief itself beautiful?"

Waiting was continuation.

"The world and self that I think of. The world and self that others think of. Two routes overlapping to form one path. I think that's the only beautiful thing in this world stained with Void."

"......"

"We two are beautiful."

Waiting was showing yourself.

"Only we two in this universe are beautiful."

Waiting was accepting even your misunderstanding as understanding.

"You and I understand each other perfectly. We pursue exactly the same purpose. We overlapped our footsteps. Is there any more supremely pure beauty, any miracle, that exists in the world?"

"......"

I thought there wasn't.

"Perhaps we were wrong."

"Why do you say that?"

"We just happened to become a reincarnator and just happened to become a regressor. Between just us two who happened to exist like that... the most beautiful thing in the world couldn't possibly be established."

"......"

"If it's the most noble beauty, surely even if you're not a reincarnator or regressor, anyone should be able to grasp it."

The letter continued.

The footsteps continued.

"I ultimately understood my story in my own way, and I still believe without doubt that it's right, but..."

"But?"

"Dok-seo has the right to judge my story. She's watched my story more closely than anyone."

If you compare life to a work of art.

Oneself would be both the author and reader of one's life.

However, in a true sense, the 'first reader' could only be one's own child.

"My unavoidable decision might have seemed like an absolutely unacceptable sacrifice to Dok-seo."

"......"

"The conclusion I reached, that she had already fallen into an anomaly with no way to help it and could only seal herself away, might be a wrong answer that Oh Dok-seo must correct."

"That child lacks experience points."

"It doesn't matter. We're all the same."

"......"

"I intend to offer myself so that Dok-seo can judge my life."

I looked back at Go Yuri.

Under the night sky, I cast my gaze at the finisher who had 'understood' all humanity by living through billions of lives in their entirety.

"Haven't you ever thought this sometimes?"

"What thought would that be?"

"Even if we reach an ending, would that really be the end of this world? Perhaps the Void will appear again anytime, a hundred years later, a thousand years later, and 'destruction' will repeat as if it's nothing. Won't it push the world into Void once again?"

"......"

"By that time, Go Yuri, you won't be in the world, nor will I. Without the miracle that is you. Without the miracle that is me, people will have to fight against destruction again."

"It's a terrible scenario."

"But even there, the strategy guide left by a reincarnator and regressor will remain as traces, and the children of Oh Dok-seo's children will exist."

"......"

"I believe I'm right. Still. But Oh Dok-seo can think I'm not right. Thinking about it now... to give Dok-seo that spare room in life."

The void.

"Passing her blank pages where she can write the story about me herself might have been the best choice in my life."

"......"

"O God."

For the first time, I spoke the name of God. Not mentioning Jesus and Buddha and Mo Gwang-seo as a joke, but in a true sense, while looking at the reincarnator who had become my god.

"Please let fortune accompany that child's future."

"......"

"May that child someday accept that I simply did my best in my life."

"......"

"Not a life that's always in pain and twisted by the fact that someone isn't in this world."

I prayed.

"May it be a life that smiles happily with every step walking their own path."

"Ah."

"May that child also someday be able to hand over their own correct answer to another child as a wrong answer."

"......"

"I earnestly pray."

Go Yuri was silent.

That expression twisted for the first time.

In a direction it had never twisted while living billions of lives. Into a face never remembered in my memory.

"I..."

[I figured out how to bloom Udumbara.]

"I'm too late to become human."

[The conditions were incredibly strict. But it's not so impossible that I can't implement it at all. Ah-ryeon unni got a bit weird, but well. That person is always weird.]

[So.]

"I came this far. I threw away all my abilities just to remain human to you. But, is my sacrifice wrong?"

[I'll subdue the Monster Wave.]

"It's not that it's wrong."

"...Will Ms. Oh Dok-seo. That self-proclaimed possessor who's only just started toddling, be able to find a better solution than me?"

"I told you. Your life isn't an answer key. Countless wrong answers are recorded in the search for the correct answer. Looking at the same correct and wrong answers, Oh Dok-seo can reach a different conclusion."

"Mr. Undertaker. You reached the same conclusion as me."

"As I already said, Go Yuri. Not all humans can be like me."

"So I—"

"So I will choose Oh Dok-seo."

[Mister. But why is there so fucking little strategy information specifically for the Monster Wave??]

[The Ten Legs are a type of Hollow, and the Monster Wave is a gathering of Hollows. I understood the fact itself that if you hold memorial services and funerals for each one, it can be cleared.]

[But fuck, isn't this method too difficult?? It's a strategy that only works for someone like you who can 'bring to mind' dead people as if they were living humans right before your eyes.]

[In my opinion, this is too specialized a method.]

"If they enshrine someone like me as a god, the only things left in these children's lives will be regret and sorrow, days of blaming themselves."

"......"

"The same goes for you."

[Thinking about it, the Hollows caught in the Monster Wave are all missing persons, right? Hollows who lost even the bereaved who should hold their funerals.]

[But can't the 'state' also hold funerals jointly for those kinds of deaths? Originally?]

"I don't want Dok-seo to live a life of always regretting because of me. Feeling sorry about me, gathering only with people who feel sorry to me and praising each other as true humans."

"......"

"I'm asking what you hope your children will become. Go Yuri. My god."

[I plan to make Ji-won unni the Undertaker.]

"...Of course."

[Ji-won unni is a priestess of Leviathan, and Leviathan is originally the concept of a 'state' corrupted into an anomaly, right?]

"Of course, I want them to be happy."

[Then Ji-won unni is an agent of the state. In the world of anomalies, she'll be treated even more as such.]

[Naturally, a funeral where Ji-won unni serves as the Undertaker will have the character of 'a funeral jointly held by the state,' I think.]

"I lived diligently for that."

[Isn't it interesting? That Yu Ji-won, a person who cannot be anyone's bereaved and cannot mourn any single person's death, is paradoxically the only human who can hold funerals for all people.]

[It'll be difficult, but I'm going to try.]

"It was a life lived only for that."

"Then you too should open your understanding of yourself to others."

"......"

"That's the only way for us to become happy humans."

I've thought for a long time.

[Hmm. I wonder how delicious your coffee is for the novel to keep going on and on about coffee.]

What is the world? What is life?

[I want to look forward to it, but what if I expect too much and then it's actually not that great when I drink it? I feel like I'll be disappointed, so I'm deliberately trying to lower my expectations.]

[But it's a special cup from a barista who's lived thousands of cycles, so shouldn't I look forward to it a lot? If something exists somewhere in this world with a taste that transcends my consideration, my kind heart, wouldn't that be you, Mister...?]

[Expectations are absent. Expectations exist. Ambivalence is absent and exists. Existence is absent. Absence exists.]

[That rhyme was sick.]

At some point, I thought that I, who had lived more lives and received deeper wounds than anyone, was qualified to define the world and life.

However, I realized after entrusting the ghostwriting of my autobiography to the child called Oh Dok-seo that I too was one world and one life to someone.

The world and life continued like that.

'Chase after me, Dok-seo.'

No.

'Move forward, Dok-seo.'

Your path.

Though you were born slower than me, your steps are faster than anyone's.

Walk stepping on the failures I experienced, the strategy guide I created, my life story.

My life was originally for others, but now it's also for you.

Therefore I wait.

"......"

I simply waited.

"......"

The waiting room of the Busan Station Tutorial Dungeon.

The people who had been summoned to the tutorial along with me were not visible. Fairy No. 264 didn't appear either.

'It's not the Void.'

I realized it as soon as I regressed.

This place was no longer the Void defined under the name of Tutorial Dungeon. It was just an ordinary concrete building from which people had disappeared.

'Someone isolated all the people who should have been summoned to the Tutorial Dungeon somewhere else, and put even the Tutorial Fairy to sleep by some method.'

The Busan Station waiting room was vast and quiet.

Lighting played a major role in that quietness. All the windows, entrances, and gaps through which light could pierce through were covered with thick curtains.

It was dark.

In such a colorless cemetery.

Creeeak.

Slowly, a door opened.

As the curtain was drawn back, faint light began to seep out. The light became a carpet.

"Who did you think would save you, Mister?"

Thud.

With the sound of footsteps.

"The Saintess?"

A voice flowed down whitely.

"Dang Seo-rin? Cheon-hwa? Yo-hwa? Sim Ah-ryeon? Lee Ha-yul? Noh Do-hwa? Yu Ji-won?"

Thud.

"Go Yuri?"

Thud.

"No."

I turned toward the footsteps and voice.

There, Oh Dok-seo's breathing existed.

Dok-seo's hair was long, unlike the her I had known until now.

The color was different too. She had let down long black hair.

"Surprisingly, you never expected it at all."

Chew chew, pop.

Dok-seo burst a cheap bubble gum. She had always failed when trying to make a bubble, but somehow this time a proper bubble had formed.

After smoothly wiping away the gum that had exploded properly for the first time.

"Me."

Dok-seo took out scissors from inside her clothes. The haircutting scissors sparkled silver as they drank in the light seeping from that door crack.

Snip.

Hair scattered in pieces.

As it fluttered, the hair gradually became dyed red from the tip of the scissors.

Soon Dok-seo had long hair. She had returned to being the red-haired girl I knew.

Grinning.

Dok-seo took out a cap and covered her head. Then she spun it around to face backward.

"—I am your salvation, Mister."

She was my epilogue.

The writer who would record the correct answer called me as a wrong answer.

Thus, the being who would connect all wrong answers into one correct answer.

The child I had always waited for.

The person I loved.

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