Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Heroes
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Shin Noah
1
There are many mysteries in this world that even I don’t know about, but some of them I’ve deliberately left as unsolved cases.
Today, I thought I’d lightly cover one of those episodes. It might feel a bit out of left field, but first, let me toss out this question.
Do you like fantasy genres by any chance?
I do. And while opinions may vary, I’ve always thought that if a fantasy story features a Saintess, it should also have a “Hero” job to make it perfect.
The two archetypes are like chocolate and mint. They only truly become a dish when observed together, in the same frame, at the same time.
…But what if the balance of those two ingredients goes wrong?
What if the chocolate-to-mint ratio crumbles from 1:1 to 1:3? And the collapse accelerates to 1:81, 1:729?
It’s no longer mint chocolate. It’s just plain mint.
For the record, I like mint chocolate well enough, but I can’t stand straight mint. In that sense, the world I live in is like a failed dish.
Which brings me to my point—.
This world has way too many Heroes.
2
“Excuse me? Excuse me? Can you hear me?”
“Ugh…….”
If you’re walking down the street and spot people collapsed here and there, and instead of thinking jackpot and rifling through their wallets—or worse, slitting their throats—you still have enough kindness left to pat their shoulders and urge them to snap out of it, and finally, if this is the heart of some city on the Korean Peninsula, where over 13 years have passed since the Gate Incident first erupted.
Then you’ll run into a reaction like this with about a 6% gacha probability.
“Where… am I?”
“Oh, you’re awake? Whew. Mister, you can’t just lie collapsed on the street in this cold weather.”
“This is…… No way. Earth?”
Because I’ve witnessed it myself.
The miracle of the subway terminal—or rather, the plaza—where a dazed pedestrian who’d been lying there suddenly sprang up and looked around.
“Huh?”
“Um, sir. Do you know what year it is by any chance?”
I answered his question.
“No way. It’s definitely been 20 years, but in reality, less than a year has passed……?”
His slack-jawed face trembled, his pupils shaking uncontrollably.
The man held a smartphone in his hand.
If you’re sane, you’d sense something off and bolt. Even if you’ve never met a lunatic in your life, crazies are like cow dung—you spot them and instantly know, “That’s cow dung right there.”
Unfortunately, my senses, dulled by too many regressions and too much time, were a bit broken.
Instead of inputting “Run now” into my brain folds, it mistakenly typed “Feel curious.”
“No, what’s going on?”
“…Until just now, I was in a place called the Sintra Continent. It was a world where magic and aura truly existed.”
Those were services newly added to Earth’s post-Gate servers, but I didn’t nitpick.
“You experienced dimensional travel?”
“Yes, exactly. I was summoned there, received the title of Hero, and set off on an expedition with my precious… truly precious comrades to defeat the Demon King.”
His chin beard carried a sincerity and wistful bitterness too deep to dismiss as bullshit.
But what caught my eye was something else.
“Demon King? You defeated the Demon King?”
“Ah, yes. In the end… with the sacrifice of me and my comrades, we somehow subjugated it.”
“Huh.”
If the guy really fell into another dimension, rolled around a battlefield for a full 20 years, and synced up with his party members to take down a mighty enemy force… that screamed “veteran.”
And I, the Undertaker, desperately needed such veteran Awakeners.
“Then, seeing me on the brink of death, the priest and mage in the team said the Hero couldn’t die there…… Sniff. Before my last breath, they promised to send me back to my original world…….”
Hot tears welled up in the man’s eyes.
“I wanted to die with my comrades even if it killed me. Now you’re telling me to live alone in a world without you…….”
Love for his comrades? Check.
My heart thumped with faint anticipation. Could I have stumbled upon a top-tier warrior candidate by sheer luck?
“I see. That’s a shame. If it’s not too rude, could you demonstrate your aura or magic here?”
“Huh? Ah, y-yeah. Of course. I’m a swordsman……. Ugh?!”
The man suddenly clutched his forehead. The smartphone he’d gripped in his left hand dropped to the ground.
“Ughhh……?”
“Wait. What’s wrong? What happened?”
“My mind……. My, my memories. No! The 20 years on Sintra Continent, the journey with my comrades, my love… they’re fading. Vanishing……. No, aaaah!”
For the record, when someone spins me a yarn, I’m a plain narrator who never mixes in exaggeration. So the chin-bearded guy tearing at his hair with both hands, reenacting Munch’s scream in 3D right in front of me? Pure, touching true-story documentary.
Only now did the thought creep in: maybe this guy’s just a plain old psycho.
“Sir?”
“…….”
“Hey?”
I waved a hand in front of his face, but he stood blankly for a while.
It felt wrong to just leave him, so I picked up the dropped smartphone.
“Hm?”
It was still powered on. And it happened to be logged into the Awakener-exclusive website community.
I’ll cover this community later. What mattered now was the post displayed on the man’s screen.
──────────
Anonymous: [SYSTEM] Click this post, and you will be transported to 《Another World》.
Hero.
If you’re reading this, it means you’ve safely returned home.
To protect our world—our world—you sacrificed yourself, knowing full well it would become a painful memory someday.
Seeing you grieve the loss of your comrades in the final battle against the Demon King, we decided to erase your memories and send you back to your original world.
You might curse us as selfish.
But we…
Didn’t want to see you suffer.
Farewell.
-P.S.: We’re sorry, Hero. Due to the imperfection of our magic, you’ll still feel like you’ve lost some memories.
──────────
“…….”
I made the exact face of a college kid who went to microwave his frozen pizza at midnight, only to realize he’d left the fridge door open since earlier that day.
Then a mutter came from beside me.
“…Huh?”
The man……
“Why are there tears?”
Was crying……
Even though he didn’t want to, as if he couldn’t control it, lips twisting grotesquely as he tried to laugh it off… he sobbed.
“Why are the tears coming……? I hate it. It feels like I’ve lost something precious――some memory…….”
“…….”
I quietly placed the smartphone back in his hand and left. Silently. Without a sound. Without looking back.
The footwork of a seasoned regressor.
Thus, I safely distanced myself from the nutjob, but sadly, the nutjob—or rather, nutjobs—didn’t want to distance themselves from me.
“Huh? Where’s this……?”
“I’m not Kim Jun-young from Anyang! I’m Namgoong Moon-cheong, the pride of the Namgoong family!”
“Please send me back to that world… Huh, why are there tears?”
Fuck.
I first witnessed this phenomenon in the 118th cycle.
In cycles after, I’d bump into so-called “Returners” with that same 6% probability, and they always reacted identically.
Their trips to other worlds varied. Some regressed, some possessed, some reincarnated. The whole “reg-pos-reinc” clusterfuck party.
Me, the Undertaker? I’ve seen it all over countless long years, but this scenery had its own special flavor.
“Good grief.”
Only after dozens more cycles—once the data piled up—did I realize this wasn’t some hidden-camera prank by a couple psychos, but a serious social phenomenon.
So-called “Hero Syndrome.”
A mental interference-type monster.
3
“A monster?”
And so, in the 161st cycle.
I immediately got to countermeasures this time. After hearing my explanation of “Hero Syndrome,” the Saintess, who always served as my consultant, asked.
“Can a monster lack a physical body, Mr. Undertaker?”
“Yes. Quite possible.”
I nodded.
“Non-physical ones, or those unbound by physics, are even more dangerous. That’s why ‘monster’ is less fitting than ‘anomaly.’”
“I see. Hero Syndrome…… An anomaly existing as a mental illness.”
A faint hint of distress clung to the Saintess’s emotionless voice like perfume.
For the record, she had strong hikikomori tendencies and always holed up at home. The living room of the Saintess House bubbled with aquarium sounds as part of the decor for a while.
“…Then how do we subjugate this anomaly? No physical body means we can’t kill it.”
“Well, in cases like this, we skip the righteous path for the crooked one—cheats, in other words.”
It might not even need subjugating.
The Saintess tilted her head.
“Cheats?”
I turned on my smartphone.
“See this post?”
“Hm? Yes. ‘Click this post and……’ etc.”
“All Hero Syndrome victims found so far collapsed after clicking that post. The anomaly likely spreads its plague via this internet post.”
“…Landspeed infection? The coronavirus-era joke’s become reality.”
The Saintess pondered, then perked up.
“Wait, does that mean I’m infected now?”
“No. This post is a dummy I anonymously uploaded to the community—a fake mimicking the real one. You’re safe.”
“Oh.”
I smiled faintly at her relief.
“But this dummy post hides the cheat to repel mental anomalies.”
“……?”
From that day.
The Awakener community board flooded with persistent spam posts.
-Anonymous: [SYSTEM] Click this post, and you will be transported to 《Another World》. (Views: 56)
-Anonymous: [SYSTEM] Click this post, and you will be transported to 《Another World》. (Views: 17)
-Anonymous: [SYSTEM] Click this post, and you will be transported to 《Another World》. (Views: 34)
-Anonymous: [SYSTEM] Click this post, and you will be transported to 《Another World》. (Views: 11)
Endless, relentless spam under the exact same title, like it was deliberate. The power of macros.
Online members panicked, naturally.
-Anonymous: What is this?
-[Three Thousand] Historian: What’s going on?
-Anonymous: Fuck, what concept is this?
At first, curiosity drove clicks to check the fuss, pushing views over 50 sometimes.
But unchanging content and a barrage of spam quickly turned it into something to avoid.
-Literary Girl: Seriously, who keeps spamming this boring shit? No fun. No feels.
-[Baekhwa] High School 6th Year: Hooeeengㅠ_ㅠ
-dolLHoUse: Juvenile.
-Anonymous: What’re the Constellations doing? Why not delete that crap.
└[Three Thousand] Witch Trial Judge: Constellations probably don’t see it as deletable. They do that often.
└Anonymous: Sigh…….
-ZERO_SUGAR: Why not just set keyword blocks yourselves...? I blocked it, and now I don’t see it—feels great^^
-Anonymous: Blocked.
Views: 10, 6, 3.
Finally, the spam posts hit 0 views.
Occasionally, a 1 would pop up. But with macros running nonstop for over 13 years, every active member set 《Another World》 as a blocked keyword.
-Anonymous: [SYSTEM] Click this post, and you will be transported to 《Another World》. (Views: 0)
-Anonymous: [SYSTEM] Click this post, and you will be transported to 《Another World》. (Views: 0)
A beautiful row of zeros.
Watching the community beside me, the Saintess said with mild admiration.
“Impressive. No need to eradicate the anomaly itself—just eliminate exposure, and it’s as good as subjugated.”
“Yes. Physical anomalies can approach us freely, but bodiless ones lose power when no one perceives them.”
“True. Effective method. Fitting for a regressor…… Simple yet masterful.”
“Thank you.”
Only Awakeners can post on that community. But we had to account for the anomaly pulling some weird trick to interfere.
Now, whatever it does, it won’t affect members.
Sure, some might unblock for fun and click by chance…… But for every 1 real post, macros pump out 100 dummies.
What’re the odds a member unblocks by chance, clicks one of hundreds of spam posts by chance, and it’s the 1/100 real “Hero Syndrome” infector?
Even if a victim pops up, it’s like dying in a plane crash. A freak accident. Even as a regressor, I can’t control every probability.
Besides, infection doesn’t cause major harm anyway.
Thus, I, the Undertaker, had neatly sealed away yet another anomaly.
“But…… Mr. Undertaker.”
“Hm?”
“What if it’s not insanity, but real? What if those who saw the post really went to another dimension, faced mortal peril, and returned thanks to their comrades?”
“The odds are low.”
Near-zero, really.
“Why?”
“Simple experience. They all claim they spent about 20 years adventuring, slayed the Demon King, saved the world. I know from experience—20 years isn’t nearly enough to save a world.”
“Oh…….”
“And even if by some miracle another dimension exists, it’s none of my business. Don’t we have our hands full tending our own world?”
The Saintess nodded calmly, convinced.
“True. You’re right.”
I sipped my café au lait and peered at the board again.
-Anonymous: [SYSTEM] Click this post, and you will be transported to 《Another World》. (Views: 0)
Even without macros, the latest post showed 0 views.
Probably forever.
- Heroes. End.
Infinite Regressor Storytime