Chapter 243
Chapter 243
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 243
Chapter Title: The Monster Wave Arrives
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The smoke pillars blanketing the sky persisted for half a day before winking out one by one.
The ones rising from the farthest distances faded first. It meant the human cities or outposts equipped with beacon towers had been completely destroyed.
One, two, three...
Quietly, like candles being snuffed.
By the time only five plumes of smoke remained in the sky.
“Great Witchhh!”
A Three Thousand Worlds Guild member scouting on a broomstick from high altitude swooped in.
Our leadership received the scout's report on the terrace of the National Highway Management Corps headquarters.
“Yes. What is it?”
“A Monster Wave has been sighted! Sejong City and Daejeon City appear to have already fallen!”
“I see. Good work. Have scout teams 1 through 5 return.”
“Yes!”
The guild member flew back beyond Busan. With the Saintess's [Telepathy] gone, such reports had to be delivered in person.
We had radios, too. But most were disposables that could get infected by anomalies with even brief use, so it was wiser to save them for truly critical battles.
Soon, the smoke in the sky dwindled to four columns. Jeonju had likely fallen as well.
“Everyone, take one last break. Once we enter combat, we'll be swamped nonstop for a while.”
“......”
There weren't many responses.
Most were extremely tense.
It was only natural.
For me, the regressor, this was merely the 687th apocalypse I'd faced. For my comrades, it was their first—and last.
Seoul reduced to rubble in seconds, families and friends dying, human lives toyed with like playthings... Amid all that, they'd scraped together a desperate will to survive and rebuilt the city.
Even so, they'd all wondered deep down: 'How much longer can we hold out?' 'Is all this just pointless struggling?'
The answer to those questions was now descending from the sky. The smoke pillars signaling humanity's strongholds—the clock hands ticking from four to three, three to two, two to one.
Finally, from one to zero.
Dooooong-.
A bell toll rang out from high above.
Dooooooong- doooong-.
It wasn't music played by Dang Seo-rin with magic, nor sound from some ability user.
The bell toll itself was an anomaly.
Whenever humanity's remaining outposts vanished entirely, with only one holdout resolving to fight, and the Monster Wave's hordes closing in—the 'bell toll' invariably appeared, resounding sharply across the entire sky.
Dooooooong- doooong-.
Each time the invisible bell rang, crimson paint splattered across the sky.
Like paint cans overturned.
The empty heavens had transformed into a canvas. Before the toll rang out twelve times—clang- clang—the firmament was dyed entirely red.
Dooooooong-.
The bell tolled exactly thirteen times before fading.
But what the toll left behind wasn't just a sky painted red.
Another witch scouting from high altitude dove down in haste.
“Great Witch! Th-the Earth has gone flat!”
In the mere span of thirteen tolls, the planet's topography—no, the solar system's laws themselves—had warped.
It proved humanity no longer held any authority to assert reason or laws toward the world.
I drew a sharp breath and unleashed a lion's roar.
“Do not look up at the sky!”
It reverberated!
“Do not let the sun, moon, or stars enter your sight! They are no longer celestial bodies! They are parts of anomalies, mere voids! Do not look!”
It was knowledge survivors had already internalized, but I emphasized it anyway.
Up to now, humans had drilled endlessly. Through virtual spaces crafted by Tutorial Fairies and writers in collaboration—the dream simulation called [Kingdom Project].
Even with the Saintess dead, this was the secret to humanity unleashing its final strength.
No more chaos like the early Ten Tribes subjugation or Meteor Shower battles. Everyone was practically a pseudo-regressor, having died countless times in dream simulations.
My legion.
The crystallization of regression.
“It's here!”
The orchestra of my legion—the sensory organs and bloodstream division, the Three Thousand Worlds witches—fired off fireworks with a whoooosh-.
“The Monster Wave!”
The hordes of anomalies blanketed the horizon.
3
-Uooohheruuuhooowooo!
I'd never described the 'Monster Wave' in much detail before.
Because it was simply every anomaly swarming in a chaotic mass—that was the Monster Wave.
Even so, the most prominent among that pitch-black tidal wave of human-wave tactics deserved mention.
-Woooouuuuhhhhooo!
Revenants.
In this world, corpses denied proper funerals mutated into anomalies.
Corpses of children abandoned in hasty evacuations, elders killed to conserve rations and tossed aside carelessly.
No matter the case, the unceremoniously departed always 'returned.' And they lashed out at the world that abandoned them with vengeful claws.
The first revenant to reach Busan's final defensive line belonged to that breed.
A body colossal as a mountain.
Towering to the height of a 70-story building, the giant anomaly bristled with limbs and lips sprouting like fur across its form.
Lips and teeth muttered ceaselessly. Too jumbled for human ears to decipher.
Breaking it down piece by piece yielded this:
-Oh my, Sang-gyu. Look at the baby!
-MomDadMomDadMomDad.
-The kid's grown up so pretty.
-Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah.
-Don't even get me started, ugh. She's at that age where she won't listen at all. I thought it'd get better after four, but...
The newborn's head, mom's fingers, dad's calf muscles, relatives' hair—dragging all their entrails, the 70-story flesh mass formed from one body sickness advanced.
They weren't even spewing curses at 'us' humans. No overt murderous intent.
If anything, it was like a greeting.
Behold, was this not human?
As if to say this was your world all along, the anomaly mimicked 'human society' with childlike innocence.
And the revenants weren't singular.
Countless revenants drew nearer from beyond the horizon.
Thousands, by rough count.
Factoring in the shadows closing from that dizzying distance, it was revenants forged from billions of corpses.
No use hiding it.
The Ten Tribes, mistaken for final bosses in my early regressions, were also revenants.
In other words, the Monster Wave included tens of thousands of Ten Tribes-class anomalies. And this was just a fraction.
“Ugh......”
“......”
No matter the training, the awakening ones froze before the tangible reality of world-ending doom bearing down.
And as always in such moments.
“―――Ah―――.”
The witch's song echoed forth.
Dang Seo-rin ascended to a spot on the terrace visible to all and began her Song Enchantment.
The anomalies' meaningless noises drowned in one witch's melody, reduced to mere white noise.
That wasn't all.
“G-Guild Leader.”
“......”
“I'll... offer a prayer too.”
Sim A-ryeon.
The girl donned clothes she rarely wore. More precisely, clothes she rarely wore in front of me.
Saintess robes. Black-and-white dress.
Her attire as the Saintess of the Eastern Holy Kingdom. No deep religious meaning—just evoked 'ah, sacred somehow' on sight.
Sim A-ryeon's robes enveloped her completely in generous folds, without a hint of exposed skin.
Fashion shapes aura, they say. In saintess robes, her usual dopey vibe vanished as she giggled ehehe-.
“Guild Leader too... f-fight on!”
Sim A-ryeon assumed a prayer stance.
Then, from cracks in the concrete terrace floor, green blades of grass sprouted.
A riot of vibrant flowers.
Vines swiftly coiled around the National Highway Management Corps Babel Tower, then spread through Busan's alleyways. Like blood pulsing through veins.
The wave of blooms and grass enveloped the final defensive line.
“This is......”
“M-my legs are moving!”
From shantytown beds, wounds of the bedridden suddenly burst into full flower.
Grass leaves stitched gashes like fine thread. Petals erased scars before silently falling.
As if spring had arrived, petals fluttered across all of Busan.
Red for those with severed limbs, yellow for ruptured organs, blue for brain damage, pure white for those weeping at family voices from revenants.
Hundred Flowers in Full Bloom.
The Eastern Holy Kingdom Saintess, Sim A-ryeon's divine power.
An wide-area heal endlessly mending wounds of 'allies' within her domain.
A garden blooming from malice as fertilizer.
Wherever Sim A-ryeon unleashed her true power on the battlefield, petals always blanketed the sky.
“Ooooooh!”
“The Saintess protects us!”
“The Saintess pierces the winds to light our path! With merciful glory's radiance and love's blessings, the world shall be saved!”
It was natural to grow addicted to such an ecstatic sight, improbable for one human.
“In the name of Christ the All-Glorious!”
The 600 Saintess Guards roared ferociously first, charging the revenants.
Dwarfed by the 70-story behemoth, the holy knights charging resembled Don Quixote assaulting windmills—making the knight of La Mancha look sane.
But they were more competent than La Mancha's.
Kuuuoooong...!
The orderly Saintess Guard literally pulverized the nearest revenant.
They carved into its flanks, toppling the oversized anomaly off-balance. Its fall shook all of Busan.
“Slaughter themmmm!”
“W-we too! We're joining!”
“Uoooooh!”
Guild members who'd fled from across the peninsula joined in.
Blood sprayed endlessly.
The merely massive downed anomaly was shredded in seconds before aura-proficient awakeners' blades.
-Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah.
-Don't bully my baby!
-MomDadMomDadMomDad.
-It hurts! It hurts! Save me!
-Why are you doing this? Why kill us? Are you even human?
Dying, the revenants mimicked human gazes, voices, touches, clinging to awakeners.
Each utterance a curse in itself. Even battle-hardened warriors flinched.
“Ah――Ah―Ah―――.”
But Dang Seo-rin's song, now in the Third Melody, showered 'Mental Fortification' across the battlefield.
A Song Enchantment magic I'd co-developed with Dang Seo-rin—a remnant of struggles against Go Yo-ri.
Its key effect was simple: endlessly feedbacking specific memories and emotions.
'We'll repel the anomalies.' 'We'll show humanity's final stand.'—such resolve surged in the fighters.
“Fucking anomaly bastards......!”
“Don't you dare mimic humans!”
Hesitation vanished from their blades. They massacred as trained.
The anomalies didn't go down easy.
Revenants of tens of thousands clawed, bit, detonated innards like bombs.
Casualties were inevitable. The ground turned red with revenant blood and the living's.
“......”
But Sim A-ryeon was there.
Silently, she prayed.
Repenting wounds she'd inflicted, atoning all sins, soothing others' pain equal to her own.
Even if anomalies ripped flesh, grass vines soon coiled arms. Petals bloomed and wilted in seconds.
Thus, when the colossal revenant lay utterly butchered—.
Beneath the crimson sky, around the battleground, a million petals drifted in radiant splendor.
Injured: 0. Dead: 0.
The opening skirmish was humanity's overwhelming victory.
“Uoooooooh!”
“Fuck it, bring all the anomalies and bullshit! Come at us!”
“Three Thousand Worlds forever! Great Witch forever!”
Cheers erupted here and there.
But with my aura-enhanced sight, I saw the Monster Wave's endless waves cresting the horizon.
The revenant we'd felled? Roughly 1/10,000,000,000th of the total force.
One in ten billion.
“......”
Gazing at Dang Seo-rin burning lifespan to keep singing, Sim A-ryeon inching toward fallen one in real time, I gripped No Do-ha's sword hilt tight.
It was just the beginning.