WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 442

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That Woman N I

Click.

"I want to see my wife in person."

“......”

"Do you not understand me? At least you should. So use your ability and make me...."

"I can't. You know this, old man. Once someone gets Time Sealed, that's the end. It's over. No matter how many times you regress, the seal never breaks."

"Yes. But at least in a dream, I could speak to my wife."

"You'll only repeat that same day forever."

"How is that any different from the situation we're in now?"

"......"

[1. Grant Emit Schopenhauer's wish.]

[2. Refuse. There is still far too much I do not know to claim the world's misery is inevitable.]

Click.

[1. Grant Emit Schopenhauer's wish.] ◀

Click.

"Ah..."

“......”

"Thank you, Undertaker. Thank you. Truly. You cannot imagine how great a grace you've shown me. Truly...."

“......”

"Adele."

Click.

"Saintess-nim, please stop using Time Stop."

"I'm being consumed by Void poison more and more."

......

"I think maybe half my existence has already turned into an anomaly. When you discovered my secret, I thought it was over for me. But looking back, I'm glad you found out now. If a little more time had passed...."

......

"When awakeners go beyond simply getting used to their abilities, when their abilities start devouring who they are, they'll become close to anomalies, like me. Do you understand? An awakener's ability is not a pure blessing. It's a double-edged sword."

"......"

[1. The being before me is an anomaly. I cannot allow exceptions for myself. Sealing her before she falls into anomaly is the best path.]

[2. The being before me is human. Not because I can prove why she is human, but because I want to prove that she is human, I will live the life ahead.]

Click.

[1. The being before me is an anomaly. I cannot allow exceptions for myself and Schopenhauer. Sealing her before she falls into anomaly is the best path.] ◀

Click.

"Ah."

......

"...Yes. I'm sorry. I'm not strong enough to keep walking with you. My heart broke first. I'm sorry."

......

"Please, Mr. Undertaker. In this world that cannot be saved, at least you. You alone...."

......

"Why is it that people... are supposed to be people...."

Click.

"This place is a utopia."

......

"Simply ruling a city doesn't advance anomaly transformation. But now, this city can't even be separated from you anymore, Dang Seo-rin."

"Then now... are you going to subjugate me too?"

......

"Even so, Undertaker, I can't abandon my city. It's an oasis I barely carved out in this messed-up world. No matter what anyone says, I am, and my citizens are, human. No, from now on I'll make us the only human species. So if you plan to subjugate me and this place... you'd better be ready to die."

"......"

[1. The being before me is an anomaly. I cannot allow exceptions for myself. A little happiness. Ignorance of happiness. A heaven where time is dead. That alone is the best that can be given to an anomaly.]

[2. I will not subjugate Dang Seo-rin. The question of who and why is human is for me to decide, and that decision is proven only by responsibility for life and by love.]

Click.

[1. The being before me is an anomaly. I cannot allow exceptions for myself, Schopenhauer, and the Saintess. A little happiness. Ignorance of happiness. A heaven where time is dead. That alone is the best that can be given to an anomaly.] ◀

Click.

"Ahaha, ahahaha. Aha...."

......

"You're strong after all. You. Mm... no. I guess hurting you was too hard for me after all."

......

"What?"

......

"...You're right. If this is a utopia because it's a city that exists nowhere anyway, then running away to a place that truly exists nowhere would be the same thing."

......

"Ah, what a shame. I wanted to go on a trip with you, just the two of us, someday! But.... I knew that dream could never come true."

......

"If this is my final station. If this is the last city on the road I took with you. Yeah, then.... maybe that's not so bad."

......

"Thank you. Undertaker."

......

"Because you were here, I was happy."

Click.

Click.

Click.

Undertaker opened his eyes.

Busan Station waiting hall. Tutorial dungeon.

It was a scene painfully familiar to him.

"...I've come back again."

Undertaker pressed hard between his brows.

A sickening fatigue clung to his eyelids like ticks.

This was the very starting point where the journey had just begun, so there should have been no reason to feel tired.

It was somewhat strange, but not shocking.

'It's mental fatigue, not physical.'

For thousands of years. For tens of thousands of years, he had run without rest.

There had even been a time when he considered introducing the idea of a "vacation cycle."

A whole cycle spent throwing away his purpose and duty, doing only what he personally wanted. A dream like that.

'No.'

But the vacation cycle had remained nothing more than a paper plan.

'I cannot be allowed that kind of luxury.'

Rest? Forget? Forget what?

By what right?

Even now, if you went to a cafe somewhere in Busan, there stood a chillingly transparent crystal gravestone. A place where the traces of an old man named Emit Schopenhauer had been preserved.

And was that the only place?

'Even this place... has gone quiet now.'

When he looked around, it was desolate.

Endlessly silent.

The man who always pointed at the fairy and shouted, "You son of a bitch!" whenever a new cycle began, and the woman who used to stammer and hide behind other people.

The number of survivors from the once hundreds-strong "Busan Station Tutorial" had now become... exactly one.

Undertaker. No one else remained.

'In a little while, the Tutorial Fairy will show up and freak out.'

A faint smile touched the corner of Undertaker's lips.

In this place gone so cold that not even breathing could be heard, the fairy's overreaction was the only entertainment left.

Even that "entertainment" was just filthy sludge wrung by force from a dried-up towel, but to a traveler on the verge of thirst, even that was still something.

-Ah, hello there! Everyo-bleeegh?! W-why are there so few?!

-O-one person?! One person?! Wha, why has only one person been summoned to my assigned sector?!

-S-something is definitely wrong! I must file a thorough complaint with the authorities!

Watching the fairy panic in a sweat gave him a strange sort of joy.

He used to hate it so much. Why was that?

"...Hm?"

But no matter how long he waited, the Tutorial Fairy did not pop out into thin air with a boing.

Undertaker was startled by this unusual turn. Considering how distant and unfamiliar surprise had become to him, that itself was rare.

"Ah."

Soon he realized the cause.

'Right. In the previous cycle, I bound Cheon Yo-hwa with Time Seal. Could it be that Infinite Void got sealed entirely, and the Tutorial Fairies were all dragged into it and vanished too?'

It was a plausible guess.

But a vague unease twisted the rhythm of Undertaker's heartbeat.

'Strange. From what I felt, the Tutorial Fairies weren't one Outer God, but something spread across multiple Outer Gods.'

'I only sealed Cheon Yo-hwa, yet every fairy disappeared. Could a decayed Infinite Void really have been that powerful...?'

That was when it happened.

He followed his instinctive pulse and unraveled the thought, then suddenly let go of the whole flow of reasoning.

"...Who knows."

He did not care anymore.

The true nature of the Outer God called Infinite Void. The aftermath of sealing Cheon Yo-hwa.

The cause was not that important.

'Whatever happened, those anomalies called Tutorial Fairies disappeared. Isn't that enough?'

Only the result mattered.

Suppose someone fell into a raging current right in front of you. Then the right thing was to run and rescue them first, not to waste time guessing how they ended up in the river.

'And the world right now is being swallowed by a tidal wave.'

Undertaker was not some leisurely drifter with spare time to dig into the reasons for floods and falls.

So he moved.

Leaving Busan Station was easy.

There was no fairy commotion anymore, no announcement that the Void had arrived in this world. No tutorial either.

Part of him felt lonely.

Still, he mocked himself, thinking this scenery where nothing ever "began" might actually be the station that suited him best.

From Busan to Seoul. He could have drawn on aura and arrived quickly, but he deliberately took several days before reaching his destination.

Convenience Store.

After lightly twisting apart the carefully laid booby trap at the entrance like a child's toy, he stepped inside the store.

An axe flew straight for Undertaker's neck.

"...!"

But the one who seemed more startled was the ambusher. Beneath silver hair blowing loose, clear eyes widened.

The axe blade did not bite into Undertaker's neck at all. A dark aura protected him as if it were alive.

"You, how are you using prāṇa—"

"Not prāṇa. Aura."

Boom!

Undertaker did not even reach out his hand, yet the hatchet exploded and spat fragments everywhere.

The ambusher immediately fell back.

Not on Undertaker's level, but not ordinary either.

"......"

He could have pursued. He knew pressing harder here would make it easier to cut off her breath.

But for some reason, he did not feel like doing it.

"......"

Had the other side sensed that instinctively? Keeping her distance, she stared at Undertaker without expression.

'So this development changed too.'

Originally, simply entering the Convenience Store would not make that person attack him right away.

She used to open with conversation to lower his guard, even revealing her appearance to make him relax.

But at some point, that kind of small talk disappeared.

She could think too, after all.

If she survived long enough to barricade herself in this store without finding even one other survivor?

Then if, in that twisted world, something became the very first being to enter the store?

Of course trying to subdue it first instead of chatting was a hundred times more sensible.

"Yu Ji-won."

"......"

As soon as Undertaker said that name, her vigilance sharpened even more.

"I am a regressor."

"I see."

"I know that when you were seventeen, you murdered your grandmother, cut her up, and dumped her in the minari swamp on the mountain."

"......"

Yu Ji-won's delicate brows twitched slightly. But her guard did not ease. It deepened.

"If you are a regressor, that means you turn back time. What cycle is this now, and when did I tell you that fact?"

"I heard your past in the 5th cycle. And now... counting has no meaning anymore. At the very least, you can assume thousands of cycles have passed."

"I see."

Yu Ji-won nodded.

She fell into thought for about ten seconds, then spoke again.

"I can trust, to some extent, that you are a regressor. So what did you come to me for?"

"To make you one proposal."

"A proposal?"

"Yes."

Undertaker said calmly.

"I have an ability called [Time Seal]. A person caught by this ability repeats, forever, the happiest day of their life. Without ever realizing they are repeating it."

"......"

"You've explored this city enough, so you know. The world has fallen. There is no salvation, no hope. Even so, remembering the time you were happiest and living forever inside it. This is the only path left to humanity."

"Certainly."

Yu Ji-won's eyes narrowed.

"At least in Seoul, it's true that nothing but monsters remain."

"Not just Seoul. The Korean Peninsula, and the whole world, is the same."

"...Hmm. Even so, it's difficult for me to accept your proposal."

"Yes. I know why."

Undertaker said,

"You have someone precious to you. One person who promised to come back no matter what, so you cannot abandon the hope of meeting that person again."

"......"

"As I said, I am a regressor. Do you think this is the first time we've had this conversation? I already heard this from you hundreds of cycles ago."

"I see."

Yu Ji-won's gaze met his directly.

"I'll ask again. Why did you come to me, regressor?"

"To tell you that you no longer need to cling to useless hope."

"What do you mean?"

"You. Me. And one woman still alive somewhere."

Undertaker raised one finger.

"Three."

"......"

"Aside from those three, there are no living humans left on the surface now."

"......"

"So whoever you're waiting for, whoever you wish to meet again, the possibility of that wish coming true is zero."

"......"

"Because everyone disappeared."

"By disappeared..."

Yu Ji-won's voice was quiet.

"Do you mean all humanity in this world has been put under [Time Seal] by you?"

"Yes. Since Time Seal requires agreement from the target, it took a very long time."

"Even if you are a regressor, because of time limits it would be difficult to contact everyone. The moment you regress, some people would already be dying somewhere in this world. What did you do with those people? Did you just leave them?"

"No."

Undertaker shook his head.

"Until the previous cycle, I had a Necromancer companion by my side."

"A Necromancer...?"

"A death mage who can revive the dead. Not a complete revival, so they're basically half-corpse... but it's possible to ask for 'consent.'"

"......"

"With the Necromancer, I roamed the world for truly countless years. Corpses. Even dead souls with no bodies left. We raised them every time and asked for consent for Time Seal."

Undertaker pointed outside the Convenience Store.

In his eyes, the entire horizon stretching below the mountain ridge was covered in crystal gravestones.

Everyone was there, and no one was there.

"This is the result. The world you saw."

"......"

"I'm sorry, but the person you were searching for was nowhere. A few people knew a child model named 'Yu Ji-won,' but not one person understood when they heard keywords like mountain, minari swamp, and so on."

"......"

"So I am the one who severed your stubborn hope. Yu Ji-won. Isn't it time to give up now?"

Again, silence.

For some reason, that silence felt ominous to Undertaker. It was the same ominous feeling he sensed earlier in his heart.

"What are you hesitating for? It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I traveled the whole world to persuade you. If even after this you still won't accept it, I'll have no choice but to use force on you—"

"No."

Yu Ji-won answered.

"I learned a lot through this conversation with you. The reason I hesitate is not to make excuses to reject your Time Seal."

"...Then?"

"There is simply something I want to ask you."

"Ask anything. If you agree to Time Seal, I'll freely share any secret I discovered."

"Cars."

Cars?

The word was so abrupt that Undertaker had no choice but to tilt his head.

"Cars?"

"I want to ask what kind of car left the deepest impression on you. A truck is fine, a sedan is fine. Any brand is fine. Just tell me one."

"...That truly is a strange question."

Undertaker frowned.

"There is no car that left an impression on me. Things I can't even use anyway."

"......"

"Since I raised my aura realm, I've never relied on a car. So the proper answer to your question is 'none.'"

"I see."

Yu Ji-won closed her eyes.

Then she opened them again, and as their eyes met, Undertaker was suddenly overtaken by a bizarre sensation.

Her pupils were looking at him. Clearly.

But for some reason, her gaze felt like it was looking not at Undertaker standing here now, but at some "other side" somewhere else.

A truly strange look.

"I understand."

"...Are you agreeing?"

"Yes. If that place is the only place left where I can meet that person, then that's where I must go."

The Time Seal process went smoothly.

It was a task he had already repeated tens of billions of times, so in a way fitting his alias, Undertaker sealed the being before him with practiced skill.

Right before that.

"Yu Ji-won. I answered your question, so can you answer one of mine too?"

"Yes."

"Who was the person you searched for until the end? Even through countless cycles, you never told me his name. Now that this whole thing is finally at the end, can't you tell me?"

"Ah. I see."

Yu Ji-won nodded.

"It's Suzuki-ssi."

"Suzuki? Japanese?"

"......"

Yu Ji-won did not answer. As if one question had already been used up.

Undertaker shrugged and finished the rest of the process.

Not long after, beyond the Convenience Store counter, a gravestone clear as glass stood there.

'Still, I am a little curious about Yu Ji-won's ending. Should I peek for a moment at what day became her happiest dream?'

He moved slightly.

Undertaker reached a finger toward the gravestone, then stopped dead halfway.

The corner of his lips twisted.

'No. An uninvited guest like me cannot dare invade another person's dream. I guaranteed their final happiness.'

Undertaker left the Convenience Store.

Then he turned his steps.

Present humanity.

Survivors. Two people.

Excluding Undertaker himself, he headed toward the one and only human still left on the surface.

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