Chapter 140
Chapter 140
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 140
Chapter Title: The Lucky One II
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Shin Noah
3
[Undertaker. Big trouble.]
One day, the Saintess sent a constellation chat message in the middle of the night.
I bolted upright. 3 a.m. If the Saintess was waking me up at this hour, it had to be some seriously urgent event.
“What’s going on?”
[You mentioned it before. That in the 7th year, the ‘Meteor Shower’ would appear in the night sky and devastate the Gyeongsangnam-do region.]
“Yes, that’s right.”
[Right now. A monster presumed to be the Meteor Shower has been spotted over the East Sea. The observation point is Ulleungdo.]
What?
[A photo has been uploaded to SG Net.]
[It’s the early morning hours, so only 14 views, but please check it out.]
I freaked out, changed out of my pajamas, and rushed off.
The Sword Marquis, who had been crouching like a cat by my doorstep, chased after me as well.
“What’s going on in the middle of the night, Sword Duke?”
I won’t explain how the Sword Marquis ended up calling me ‘Sword Duke’ instead of Undertaker.
There are many things in the world you just don’t want to explain, and most of those incidents were connected to lunatics.
“A monster has appeared in the East Sea right now.”
“What! To think the vile thing would launch a night raid! What a nasty bastard!”
Crunch, pat-pat-
The two of us stepped onto the Haeundae beach sands and, as if it were the most natural thing, leaped toward the sea off Busan.
Lily Pad Water Striding.
Aura for me, internal energy for the Sword Marquis—a supreme lightness skill of treading across the water’s surface.
“But a monster in the middle of the sea. I wonder if it’s an ill omen or a good one. Still, it’s better than it appearing on land, though it seems Your Excellency thinks otherwise.”
Of course it was an ill omen.
My [Regressor Schedule] was so airtight that you’d believe it was written by a mentally ill person obsessed with precise timing.
I’d built in buffers for about a week’s margin anywhere, anytime. But for the most critical points—the ‘timing of monster appearances’—the schedule was meticulously planned down to the minute and second.
‘The Meteor Shower shouldn’t appear for several more years, so why now! Did something go wrong when I killed the Butterfly Effect in Beijing?’
This would throw a massive wrench into my project to build unity among the Awakeners under the pretext of subjugating the Meteor Shower.
My heart raced anxiously.
Sure enough, when we arrived near Ulleungdo and looked up at the sky, a multicolored galaxy of shooting stars stretched across the pitch-black night.
I muttered in disbelief.
“It really is the Meteor Shower...?”
Truth be told, subjugating the Meteor Shower itself posed no problem.
Would a regressor from the 590th round fail to take down an early-game boss on the Korean Peninsula?
It was just that, as I said before, the plans would get seriously tangled.
How to boost the unity of the Korean Peninsula Awakener Alliance, how to solidify Dang Seo-rin’s position as alliance leader, and so on...
As I pondered amid the midnight sky and sea, waves of worry crashing over me.
“Huh?”
Flash- crack!
Something else twinkled on the other side of the Meteor Shower’s expanse in the night sky.
The twinkle was a bit fast.
A ‘disc-shaped’ object—saucer-like flying craft—shot across the sky at tremendous speed...
And collided head-on with the Meteor Shower.
-Flash, flash, a small star?
The Meteor Shower shuddered. If it were human, it’d be like tilting its head in confusion.
For reference, a sea-like space had been artificially spread around the Meteor Shower.
Naturally, the ‘disc-shaped flying object’ that struck the night sky’s surface had its trajectory sharply deflected.
Thud, thud, thud-
The saucer bounced off the Meteor Shower’s surface like skipping stones.
“......”
My jaw dropped.
‘No way, that’s a UFO?’
That’s right.
A mysterious disc-shaped flying object.
A race with the universe’s strongest combat power, but fatally weak to water due to their fire Pokémon attribute. The ill-fated monster that would melt like sugar the moment it hit the East Sea water: UFO.
“Uh, uhh— uhhh?”
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
The UFO’s stone-skipping didn’t stop.
-Huh? Huh??
The Meteor Shower, repeatedly bombarded out of nowhere in the dead of night, just... died.
No, it really died.
Meteor Shower subjugated.
The early boss was gone without a single Korean Awakener lifting a finger.
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud.
Meanwhile, the UFO bounced a whopping 89 times on the Meteor Shower’s waves.
As a result, the UFO, which should have crashed in the middle of the East Sea, veered wildly off course in a completely unexpected direction.
Northward.
Not toward the sea, but toward land—North Korea.
“No, nooo!”
I screamed. It was a scream laced with pure desperation.
“Hmm? What do you mean ‘no,’ Sword Duke?”
“If that thing lands on land, it’s over! That saucer’s got 120 monsters inside, each one stronger than you, Sword Marquis! The world will face disaster!”
“What.”
The Sword Marquis’s expression changed.
“Then we must chase it at once! I must request a lesson in your arts!”
“Yeah. Fuck.”
Setting aside the Sword Marquis’s lunacy, we absolutely had to pursue it.
I poured out my aura at max output and dashed after it. To keep the UFO in my sights.
The Sword Marquis yelled from behind, “Whoa! Sword Duke—wait, Sword Duke!” but I didn’t care.
I had no time to indulge the old coot’s senility right now.
“Pant, huff. Haaa...!”
I ran so hard it had been ages since I’d felt this out of breath. I’d gone so far that I even lost contact with the Saintess midway.
Long story short, the UFO crash-landed farther north than North Korea.
Precisely between Shenyang and Sinuiju. Aliens were crawling out pitter-patter in the region known as Manchuria.
-Kyaaak?
-Kyak. Kyaaaa.
Just like detestable cockroaches bursting from their nest.
But these cockroaches were strong. Very strong.
I hid in the bushes from afar and observed the aliens.
Despite being from an SF genre, the aliens naturally deployed movement techniques as if breathing, scouting all directions.
Well, if their genre was space opera instead of SF, it wouldn’t differ much from orthodox wuxia.
-Kya?
One alien tilted its head and dipped its ankle into a stream.
Splash, splash.
Impressive determination, but foot baths were healthy only for humans and Japanese macaques.
The alien melted from toes to head, one after another.
-Kyaaaaah!
-Kak! Kyaaak! Kyak!
The aliens flew into a panic.
They were probably chattering something like, ‘Oh my god! How can such a horrific substance exist in this world?’ ‘Witnessing your kin melt like candle wax from mere contact? Sanity check failed.’
After that, the aliens’ movements grew even more frantic.
-Kyaaaaah!
-Kyat! Kyaaak!
The aliens pulled out laser guns from their bosoms. They collected surrounding rocks, earth, minerals—everything.
Ziiiiing-
Through technology incomprehensible to humans, Earth’s minerals were perfectly NTR’d for the aliens.
-Kak-kak!
-Kyaaaa.
The aliens began constructing something, drawing in all sorts of materials with lasers.
The hit minerals floated in the air, morphing in real-time into walls, pillars, mysterious interior fixtures.
In less than 30 minutes, a bizarre structure rose in the heart of Manchuria.
Uh, if I had to liken its form to something Earthly... a termite mound?
But pitch-black. A tar-like lava liquid oozed endlessly from the surface. Utterly profane at a glance.
-Kyaaaa.
-Kya, kya.
Amazed by their NTR skills, the aliens hugged shoulders and floated around dancing.
They partied for a while before slipping into their termite mound... er, black ant mound fortress.
“......”
What the hell?
Was that hideous fortress a beachhead for invading Earth? Or an antenna tower signaling their refugee ships still adrift in space?
“Pant! Huff, haaa! Hoo! Sw-Sword Duke. Finally... huff, caught up. Truly the master of lightness skills, to think this seat would lag so far behind...”
“Shh. Be quiet. They’ll hear us.”
“Huff... Hoo? That grotesque... huff. Tower, what in the world is it?”
“No idea. Only that monsters built it.”
I dug a proper camouflage trench and went into hiding.
Even if it meant abandoning this regression, I was determined to uncover their behavioral principles.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the stakeout didn’t last long.
We soon learned the purpose of that bizarre building.
Rumble-rumble-rumble-
It rained.
From the aliens’ perspective: a ‘death substance’ aerial bombardment from the sky.
Endless H₂O, Earth’s specialty, poured onto the black ant mound fortress.
The filthy sludge oozing from the surface channeled the rainwater away nonstop.
Peek-
Long after the rain stopped, the aliens poked their heads out.
-Kya?
-Kyaa, kyaa.
-Kyaaaaah.
Surprisingly, the aliens were fine.
First off, their armor had changed slightly.
Raincoats? Anyway, they’d donned something like black rain gear.
Seems they’d run sewing machines nonstop inside the black ant mound.
-Kyaaaaak!
But anyone who’s worn a raincoat knows the waterproofing isn’t great.
The aliens’ newly modded armor wasn’t perfect either. Roaming Earth’s steamy surface too long, it slowly melted away.
What are you, Ultraman with a three-minute limit?
Anyway, spotting hope for survival on this hellish doomsday planet seemed precious to the aliens.
-Kyaaaaah! Kyaa!
The aliens gradually expanded the black ant mound.
Not upward, but spreading out horizontally like aggressive real estate development.
Ever heard of ‘The Line,’ that ambitious Saudi project they scaled way back?
Think Great Wall of China.
In short, the black ant mound increasingly resembled a ‘wall.’ Naturally, as they kept extending sideways.
“Huh?”
And that wall... stretched west toward the Yellow Sea, east toward the East Sea, proliferating endlessly.
‘No. No. No, wait a sec.’
Finally, the aliens’ ‘black great wall’ sliced across Manchuria horizontally.
In other words.
‘Even if a monster wave happens... it’ll be blocked by the black wall!’
And indeed it was.
Years later, the ocean-grade monster ‘Monster Wave’ devoured the world and finally swarmed toward the eastern fringe, the Korean Peninsula, for an all-you-can-eat buffet.
But just before landing on the peninsula, the Monster Wave hit an unexpected obstacle.
-Grrr?
-Growl?
Some shitty-looking wall blocking the advance route.
At first, the Monster Wave didn’t panic. It charged boldly. What’s a wall to giants? Maria’s Wall, right?
-Kyaaaaak!
-Kyaaaaah! Kyaaaaah!
The problem: every alien bursting from that Maria’s Wall boasted Levi soldier-level martial arts.
Faced with 116 total (some died in the meantime) Levi soldiers, the Monster Wave got utterly annihilated.
They crushed a 200,000-strong army without losing a single one.
Of course, the Monster Wave auto-produced troops, so it tried the same swarm next month, and the month after. And got crushed every time.
Naturally, south of the black great wall—the Korean Peninsula—was safe.
No need for Mogwangseo’s Eastern Divine Nation ass show. No need for Sim A-ryeon’s Zero Requiem strategy.
Completely unscathed, they escaped the threat of the ‘Monster Wave,’ deemed impossible to subjugate.
“Is this... for real?”
My jaw hung open.
To be honest, my mouth had stayed agape for years, refusing to close.
So the strategy for the ‘Monster Wave’ was actually to use the Meteor Shower to make the UFO skip stones, crash it in Manchuria, induce the aliens to build their alien Great Wall, and block the nomadic Monster Wave invasion?
You expect me to believe that, you monsters?
“You got lucky...”
No Do-ha, sipping coffee after hearing my tale, remarked.
Maybe it was my imagination, but her dark circles seemed lighter than in other rounds. Her ventures were succeeding left and right, after all.
“But didn’t you say this was fallout from wishing on that ‘Monkey’s Paw’ or whatever? Heh. Doesn’t matter to me, but won’t you get fucked over in a few years...?”
“......”
“I’m really looking forward to whatever bullshit blues engulfs you. I’ll snag VIP tickets in advance and wait...”
I’m gonna lose my mind.