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

WeTried Translations Translator: ZERO_SUGAR Editor: LiteraryGirl

. Chapter 364

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The Missing XVI

Let me digress for a bit.

Once, on SG Net, someone posted a complaint that went something like this:

- Anonymous: Damn. I finally ascended into the Awakener rank of my dreams, and life is still absolute trash...

- Anonymous: Some folks Awaken to be heroes of the battlefield for clicking “heal” once while others only get to have their fingers treated like cheap cigarette lighters...

This is the so-called Awakened Spoon Theory, based on the caste system that once ravaged the Korean Peninsula. The system had simply changed its skin and updated itself, and now, even Awakeners are divided into gold-, silver-, bronze-, and dirt-spoon tiers—or so the theory claimed.

The Spoon-Theory OP fired that shot, and a fair number of comments nodded along.

- Anonymous: Being an Awakener doesn’t automatically make you OP. If anything, Awakeners look down on weak Awakeners way more than normies do. Being a dirt-spoon makes me so miserable I could die...

└dolLHoUse: lighter bro hey o/

└Anonymous: Fact: Even a “human lighter” like that still sits in the top 0.01 % of humanity if you count normies.

└[Oriental Star]TheKindOne: Uh, sorry, but that “heal clicker” isn’t our northern Saintess, right??

└LiteraryGirl: Spoons exist for those who cannot live unless they cling to spoons.

└Anonymous: Ma’am, how about finishing your serial instead of philosophizing?

└OldManGoryeo: Healers stand at the back with their arms folded yet get pampered. If that bugs you, smash that like button lolol

Hmm.

I watched the back-and-forth like an angler watching his float, then typed a casual reply.

- ZERO_SUGAR: Mr. Seo-Gyu.

- ZERO_SUGAR: Please don’t play anonymous here.

Seconds later, the thread disappeared.

Anyway, even though the post was nuked, that didn’t change reality—the Awakeners just had some tact when admitting to it. The gap between ordinary humans and Awakeners is nothing compared to the gulf between low-grade and high-grade Awakeners. True, the members of the Regressor’s Alliance that I recruited mostly boasted gold-spoon shine or better, but...

[Wow.]

Above any gold-spoon there is always a diamond-spoon, and ours was the Saintess. And I’m not talking about the knock-off with the “Made in North Korea” label, but the original masterpiece. Before her brand-name splendor, every other Awakener’s spoon looked one grade cheaper.

[What in the world is even happening up there?] Ha-yul muttered.

It wasn’t just her either. Every strike-team member stared upward, struck utterly dumb. Up there raged an air battle... No, a war in space. Planets that had once been split in two writhed like living amoebas, trying to fuse back together. The millions of “holes” that had turned the universe into a trypophobic nightmare were still intact. The trembling fissures were summoning Meteors again.

And every single attempt was massacred before it could sprout.

“We can’t keep this up forever.”

Such was the Saintess’s grand feat. Whenever Hecate’s night-sky spell—or the night sky itself—thrashed, the Saintess stomped it flat with Time Stop. One second, one more, and then another. With each passing instant, shards of planets and countless meteors were pulverized.

A witch who governs space versus a saintess who overpowers time. In that very moment, the cosmos was no more than a Go board where black and white stones collided.

“Even as we speak, the burden on Ji-won keeps increasing,” the Saintess noted. “Leviathan’s Aura isn’t infinite.”

“How long can she hold?” I questioned.

“Twenty-three thou... Sorry. One more hour.”

I gritted my teeth. Sorrow sang through me for making the Saintess relive her purgatory within a frozen world, but ultimately, it just meant that I had absolutely no time to hesitate. The only way to fix it was to shave whatever seconds I could off her season in that wasteland.

The Saintess looked at me. “Mr. Undertaker, are you truly sure that Hecate and Dang Seo-rin can be separated?”

I paused, then said, “Yes. I’ll be the one to do it.”

“I believed you would.” Her crystalline eyes seemed to stand alone in the universe. “The method?”

A storm of thoughts flashed through me. Some were plans drawn up before the fight. Others were insights struck during the battle. Yet even then, one knot remained untied in this operation: Cheon Yo-hwa. The elder of the twin sisters, and the architect of Project Collapse. And yet absurdly, when her turn finally came, she dropped herself from the candidate list.

‘Yo-hwa may be playful, but she’s not shameless enough to bail on an op. If anything, she’s the sort who gets addicted to risk and goes all-in. And yet... she stepped out. The only thing she left behind was that bizarre request for me to drink her blood, then she walked away from the gambling table.’

The realization was quick to hit home.

‘Impossible.’

The conclusion came even faster.

‘If she sees a shortcake, that girl saves the strawberry for last—always.’

So why fold her hand now?

‘Because only by folding can she eat the final strawberry at peak sweetness.’

And when would that final moment come?

‘Right now.’

Even with Dok-seo and the Saintess deployed, we were basically stalling. The chorus from all four cosmic walls was drawing ever closer. This lethal tension was precisely the stage that that dopamine-junkie tactician had lusted for.

‘There’s only one question remaining.’

Could I trust Cheon Yo-hwa?

Doubt painted the edge of my mind for the briefest instant, but no more.

“Find the elder Yo-hwa.”

I made my decision. I would trust myself, and I chose to trust that mischievous, orange-haired gambler.

“Even a corpse is fine. Bring her here—”

“Okay.”

The next instant the elder Yo-hwa’s body was lying there between the Saintess and me, still headless.

“Here she is.” When I stared down at the body without a word, the Saintess continued, “Oddly enough, I sense none of the Mastermind’s power. Aside from Void Poison, she’s practically ordinary—just bewitched by Hecate.”

I nodded and turned to Sim Ah-ryeon. The fight was a race against time now.

“Ah-ryeon.”

“Yeeep?”

“Check on how Yo-hwa is doing.”

“Ah... Just a sec. Mmm.” Ah-ryeon floated a four-leaf clover over her nail and studied it. “N-not dead, at least.”

“And?”

“Hard to say she’s alive either. Part human, part Anomaly, see? Kind of a suspended-animation state... Literally just entranced.”

“Like she’s dreaming?”

“Eh? Oh, yeah. And the missing head isn’t a big deal. I could regrow it anytime...”

“Then regenerate it, but don’t heal her fully awake.”

“’Kay.”

Ah-ryeon knelt before the half-corpse as I looked across to the almost-corpse’s sole relative. The younger twin was gazing down at her sister’s remains with an unreadable face.

“Yo-hwa.”

She was slow to respond. “Yes, Teacher?”

“The Tutorial fairy. Can you summon one here?”

“Y-yeah. I can!” she exclaimed, blinking in surprise. “But the fairies draw from my resource pool, so combat power won’t really go up—might even drop, since they’re all criminals...”

“That’s fine. Call one.”

“Hm-hm, okay! I’ll bring the one closest to you, Teacher.”

Pyonk! With a comically cheap sound effect, a baku popped out of thin air: the Tutorial Fairy No. 264, red armband and all.

“Hoeeeek! At last, freedom! Freedom! What is a lord, a master? We march from the colony of scorn and oppression to the bright dawn of liberation—”

A meteor whooshed past.

The fairy spun around to find the titanic space duel of Witch and Saintess still in full swing.

“A-ahem. Truly, I was perfectly content under His Imperial Majesty’s benevolent rule. Upon reflection, living my life as a high-school security guard sounds lovely, so I’ll just head back—”

“Shut it.”

“Eeep! S-save the children from bullying!”

One curt phrase from the student council president reduced the fairy to tears.

I grabbed No. 264’s hand.

“Hoek? Comrade Secretary-General?”

“The situation is urgent. Nazi dogs press on Moscow’s doorstep. You’ve got questions—I’ve got no time. Obey orders without a word.”

The fairy’s eyes went round. “Hoeeek! The Great Patriotic War! For the eternal liberation of the working class, I’ll gladly lay this duckweed life beneath the red flag!”

“See this corpse?”

“Yes, sir! Turns out she’s the final-final boss—the elder sister of the student council president!”

“We’re entering her dream. You lead.”

“At your command!”

“Seriously...” Yo-hwa muttered. “Did they all inhale something? Why are they RPing like that?”

“They’re beings swayed by dreams—humanity’s harshest scarlet sever, you could say. Yo-hwa, assist us in entering your sister’s dream.”

“Ahh. Of course, Teacher.”

The fairy took my left hand, and Yo-hwa gripped my right. The three-link circuit enclosed the half-corpse.

I cast one last glance around, then looked at the Saintess.

“We’ll be back.”

She simply stared at me, quiet for a moment, before she mused, “You’ve thought of a method.”

“Yes. Whether it’s even possible is a gamble, though.”

“That’s nothing new for us.” A faint smile touched her lips. “Go ahead, Mr. Undertaker. I’ll guard the Mr. Undertaker who enters the dream.”

“...I’m off.”

We ended our brief farewell with a nod. The dream-demon master and minion nodded back.

This time we needed no lullaby to enter the unconscious realm.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. See how beautifully you shine. Shards of endless, crumbling meteors clawed at the universe’s curtain with delicate fingers, singing the nursery rhyme for us.

Yo-hwa parted her lips. “One.”

The fairy chirped. “Twoooo.”

“Three.”

In that moment, a veil darker than the night sky and deeper than the universe fell across my awareness. It was a single curtain at first, then an instant later, it layered twofold, fourfold, eightfold—

I sank.

Plunged. Fell.

Collapsed.

Just as the sea is made of uncountable waves, I fell into a dream composed of uncountable times.

A crossroads of black and white stretching on forever.

·

·

·

·

·

·

Step. The footsteps reached me first before my eyes even opened, while the world was still wrapped in darkness.

“It was a gamble—I won’t deny it.”

The tread carried a faint hum and a clear thrill.

“If you’re right, sunbae, then I, Cheon Yo-hwa, can’t determine on my own whether I’m Anomalous or human. Hahaha! Schrödinger’s cat? More like Schrödinger’s Anomaly.”

Step. “So, gamble one: Will sunbae, a dead-serious hater of Anomalies, trust someone who may be nothing but an Anomaly?”

Step. “Gamble two: Will Hecate, who is devolving into an estranged god, actually absorb me? Considering Dang Seo-rin always saw me as a thorn, the odds existed—but that’s no guarantee.”

Step. “If that one pays off, my mind and body become a ‘passage’ leading straight into the estranged god Hecate. Naturally, I myself degrade into part of her.”

Step. “Gamble three, the final of them: How deeply does sunbae understand me?”

...

“Will he brand me irresponsible for proposing the plan, then backing out? Or will he guess that I’m a conscious offender with my own agenda?”

...

“Will he acknowledge that not only am I human, not only am I his comrade and student, but that I—Cheon Yo-hwa, the human—am highly competent?”

Step. “A fifty-fifty shot. If Sim Ah-ryeon drops early, or Saintess unnie can’t pull the trigger, or the younger twin fails—then the pathway into my dream gets blocked.”

Step. “I laid every stone I could, but in the end, the only move left was ‘to put my trust in someone.’”

...

“That was the method you taught me, sunbae. Thanks for trusting me.”

Something covered my face.

Five ridges. Fingers. A palm.

Cheon Yo-hwa gently cupped her hand over my eyes.

“Mmm. To be fair, it’s not just you. The other comrades performed splendidly, each in their role.”

...

“So now, it’s my turn.”

I opened my eyes. Even then, my vision was still partly blocked by those black lines—her fingers.

The world I saw came in broken crosswalk stripes.

“One.”

Beneath the little finger, a night sky.

Meteors shattered by the thousands. While I slept, the Saintess kept dueling the Goddess of Night.

“Two.”

Beneath the ring finger, a frozen world.

Oh Dok-seo with Absolute Defence. Sim Ah-ryeon kneeling quietly beside me. Lee Ha-yul casting Puppet Strings. Yu Ji-won lying unconscious. Cheon Yo-hwa intercepting. Everyone motionless—except for the Saintess striding across the field of debris.

“Three.”

Beneath the middle finger, Noh Do-hwa’s corpse.

The tombstone drifted among earthly fragments splintered by the war of the Great Witch and the Saintess. If even one person who makes me “me” was lost, this would be the fate we were all destined to meet.

“Four.”

Beneath the index finger, static.

No form, no color—just the hiss of signals beyond human recognition. The Void always lives between our eyelids.

And under the thumb... lips.

“It might feel a bit stifling.”

At the closest crossroads in this universe, those lips whispered softly.

“But could you leave my hand where it is, sunbae?”

A tiny giggle.

“Kind of embarrassing, but to me, this place is sacred ground—the last four seasons.”

...

“After losing all black, only this curtain remains, draped solely for you. My long curtain call.”

Yo-hwa smiled.

“Well then. Shall we go, sunbae? Let’s lift the curtain and see whether only oblivion still waits there.”

Awakener: Cheon Yo-hwa (天寥化)

Corrupted Alias: Shadow Schemer

Strategist of the Regressor’s Alliance.

Has joined the party.

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