Chapter 8
Chapter 8
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: Determinist I
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Shin Noah
1
When you think about it, what do you suppose is the greatest nemesis of the classic webnovel protagonist trio—regressors, possessors, and reincarnators?
A powerful monster? The protagonist always beats it in the end.
Stress? Trauma? Obsessions?
Not wrong, exactly. But it’s hard to call those uniquely regressor-specific foes. Stress has been a universal weakness of Homo sapiens from the 35-year-old unemployed bum to the 60-year-old U.S. president since time immemorial.
Baldness? How could you say something so cruel?
The answer, surprisingly unsurprising, is… the Butterfly Effect.
-Can a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing really trigger a tornado on the opposite side of the Earth?
The Butterfly Effect.
The theory that even tiny changes in initial conditions can snowball into massive divergences over time, to the point of utter uncontrollability.
I can say this with full confidence: This Butterfly Effect, so familiar to us all, is truly the regressor’s ultimate villain—the archenemy you can’t dodge on a log bridge, the blood-sworn foe without parallel.
Oh, what calamity!
Countless regressors have fallen victim to it (in works of fiction).
-I’m a reader who’s devoured every webnovel out there, an unrivaled authority on the worldview I’ve entered. According to my analysis, I must first save the maid who dies pointlessly early on to avert the tragedy’s first button…. Huh? Why is the Demon King invading just because I saved the maid?
-I kindly helped the starving kid under the palace wall, and ten years later, the crown prince proposes to me? I just wanted a peaceful daily life—what do I do now?
-No, why is the (original protagonist who’s supposed to clear all these quests, recruit the companion who should join their party, and monopolize the items and lucky breaks meant for them) so weak? Jeez, guess I’ll have to step up.
Of course, the latter case is more a matter of conscience and intellect than the Butterfly Effect.
No matter the genre—fantasy, modern fantasy, romance fantasy, alternate history—the trio of regressors, possessors, and reincarnators dread nothing more than the Butterfly Effect.
So today, let me, the Undertaker, a highly seasoned regressor, tell you the tale of how I killed the Butterfly Effect.
2
The first time I sensed something off—when I truly felt the Butterfly Effect’s power—was around the 30th loop.
“Hm?”
At first, it was just a faint sense of wrongness.
‘Wasn’t this café… supposed to be open?’
After finishing the Tutorial and about six months in, I headed to the old Baekje Hospital building. It was definitely the one with Old Man Show’s corpse decorating the rooftop.
I drop by now and then when I think of the place.
But for some reason, a guy was running the café where there should’ve been an out-of-business sign.
A situation I’d never encountered across all my loops left me unable to hide my bewilderment.
“Um….”
“Yes, welcome.”
The man smiled. He was the type who invested 80% of his fashion and styling into his chin beard.
“Pardon me, but is it okay to be open like this? The world’s gone completely mad right now.”
“Ah… yeah. I was planning to evacuate to Japan, but a massive typhoon and tornado hit the South Sea a couple days ago, sinking all the evacuation ships.”
The man sighed.
It was news to me, fresh off the boat from Seoul to Busan.
“A typhoon hit?”
“Yep. Probably thousands dead. Busan Port’s in total chaos. I was tempted to shell out for a scalped ticket I bought at an insane price… but the captain threatened to sail in a week and told me to shove off if I didn’t like it. What can you do? Might as well keep the place open for a week since I’ve got nothing else. Money doesn’t mean much anymore anyway. Haha.”
The manager laughed. I couldn’t.
‘There was never a typhoon at this point.’
I had [Perfect Memory]. The ability to store every past memory intact, literally.
In fact, I’d gotten this skill in the 5th loop, and it’s what lets me spin tales like this for you all now. I can recall every incident from the 30th loop and every thought I had then, down to the details.
Thus, I could state with 100% certainty.
‘…This is anomalous.’
To reiterate, I arrived at the café in the 30th loop ‘six months after the Tutorial ended.’
That’s the ultra-early game.
My actions in the ultra-early game were always similar. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say there were almost no differences from the 29th or 28th loops.
My actions hadn’t changed at all. Yet in this loop, a ‘typhoon’ had ravaged the South Sea.
‘What the hell? What caused this?’
Every event has a cause.
To someone like me, who strictly rejects quantum nonsense like the Copenhagen interpretation and adheres solely to causal determinism, this was utter chaos.
“Excuse me, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Really sorry, but if you’re not ordering….”
“Ah, sorry. Got lost in thought. Could I get a café au lait?”
“Whew, of course. That’ll be 59,500 won.”
“…….”
The apocalypse-inflated café au lait tasted like crap.
But what drove me even crazier happened next loop, the 31st.
[Closed due to personal circumstances.]
At the same point, the café had its out-of-business sign up again, just like old times.
“Huh.”
What the hell?
I wasn’t panicking yet. Excluding the café’s status, tons of minor variables popped up differently across loops.
“Huh? Saintess, did you move?”
“Yes?”
“You always lived in that Yongsan house in past loops.”
“Ah… It was getting hard to stock fish food. Someone in a nearby guild has aquariums as a hobby too, so I moved closer.”
“…….”
In the 47th loop, the Saintess’s address changed, minor stuff.
“Everyone! I declare right here that from now on, the new capital of Korea is Busan Metropolitan City!”
“Woooaaah!”
“Normal country! Normal country!”
In the 71st, Busan’s mayor seized control of the peninsula. I was floored.
That mayor was supposed to flee to Fukuoka, Japan, and set up the Second Provisional Government (taking meticulous care of his extended family like a model patriarch).
Beyond that, mid-boss monsters that should’ve crossed into North Korea suddenly embraced democracy and defected back, meteor showers meant for South Gyeongsang hit South Jeolla instead—every kind of freak show imaginable.
‘No way.’
I felt deeply uneasy.
‘How am I supposed to predict the future like this?’
Most loops progressed ‘normally’ with no issues, cause leading to effect. But occasionally, total mayhem erupted out of nowhere.
Sure, it’s like the occasional pineapple pizza as a treat—no big deal.
But as a devotee of classical determinism, I couldn’t rest until I uncovered the cause of these anomalies.
[Undertaker.]
And so, the 82nd loop.
A clue finally dropped.
[A typhoon has been spotted off Incheon’s coast. A massive tornado.]
“Huh? A tornado in the Yellow Sea? Water’s too shallow there for that.”
[But it’s happening. I’m sharing an Awakener’s view from Incheon Port right now. No one knows where it’s heading—stay cautious.]
“Sheesh, Incheon’s crawling with refugees already….”
[Don’t worry. I’ve already messaged other Awakeners in the constellations’ name. Evacuations are underway.]
I quickly checked SG Net. Sure enough, the boards were exploding.
-Anonymous: Breaking: Tornado off the West Sea ㄷㄷㄷ
-[Three Thousand]Witch Judge: Too far to help even if I wanted to.
-Goryeo Jang: Alright~ old folks to the coffins~ old folks to the coffins~
-dolLHoUse: Danger.
-Anonymous: No joke, photos look bad. That size on the horizon means at least 3km diameter. No idea the power, but stay the hell away. Bad luck and you’re lightning-fried.
Amid the frenzy, someone uploaded pics and vids of the colossal tornado.
Never happened before.
“……!”
Then, lightning struck my mind.
“That’s it! The typhoon!”
[Yes?]
“The typhoon! I mean, the tornado!”
Thinking back, hadn’t the café owner in the 30th loop said it?
‘A couple days ago, a massive typhoon and tornado hit the South Sea, sinking all the evacuation ships.’
Exactly.
I said with conviction.
“Every loop with a rampaging tornado warps events subtly. The typhoon’s the culprit…. No, whatever causes the typhoon.”
[Sorry, Undertaker, I don’t quite….]
“I’ll explain later. Saintess, can you track the tornado’s path off Incheon and pinpoint its origin as best you can?”
[…Tough, but I’ll try. Check affected areas.]
One moment, she whispered.
Probably pulling up a map. Soon after, she scanned Yellow Sea-adjacent cities and reported.
[Hmm… Area’s too broad to be sure. Keep in mind this is just a guess, Undertaker.]
“Fine. Where?”
[China. Beijing.]
Beijing, China. Tornado.
“Ah.”
In that instant, I somehow knew what this tornado really was.
3
-A butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing: can it really trigger a tornado on the other side of the Earth?
A succinct encapsulation of the Butterfly Effect.
Originally, it was ‘Brazil,’ not ‘Beijing.’ Fun fact: even that origin is a later invention, a slogan.
When a meteorologist first presented the Butterfly Effect at a conference, it was a ‘seagull,’ not a butterfly—no Brazil, no typhoon.
This alone shows how these anomalies utterly disregard human history’s precision.
Anomalies possess a sloppy, humanities-style sensibility that scoffs at factual rigor.
A cultured person like me, with my strict scientific-causal-deterministic worldview, might counter:
-Why Beijing instead of Brazil?
-The theory posits tiny initial changes yielding wildly different results only after eons—why blast gale-force winds from the get-go?
Dunno.
For real. No clue.
Anomalies couldn’t care less about human curiosity or rebuttals.
To their sensibility, such questions aren’t ‘sexy’ at all.
Here’s my insight from long years as a regressor… These things are basically no different from ‘AI art.’
From an anomaly’s view, all human history, common sense, and scholarship are mere ‘prompt inputs.’
Just as AI deems two legs or three equally valid for Homo sapiens, these egalitarian anomalies draw no racial distinctions between Chinese and Brazilians.
The old academic concept of the ‘Butterfly Effect’ got enthusiastically reinterpreted in the end times.
‘A being that unleashes storms heedless of causal flows!’
If I had to name it, Tornado Launcher.
Thus, the ‘Butterfly Effect’ gained an identity like North Korea’s missiles: It definitely launches them whenever bored, but the trajectory shifts whimsically.
In the 30th loop, it curved to the South Sea, sinking Japan-bound evac ships. In the 82nd, it hit Incheon’s coast, drenching refugees.
Not all: Loops 83 to 85 veered to Mongolia, India, Siberia.
A major league scout would’ve swooned and shoved a contract forward for those curveballs.
In short, direct strikes on the Korean mainland were surprisingly rare. No wonder I, with origins screaming 100% Korea, took so long to notice.
“…Truly dangerous.”
Crunch. The Saintess munched a potato chip.
Shockingly, she pulled it not from a bag but a Lock & Lock plastic lunch container. Even snacks portioned and fridge-stored—proof she wasn’t right in the head.
Oh, and she used chopsticks, not fingers. Did she lack a human soul?
The hikikomori neat-freak Saintess said.
“So it’s called the Butterfly Effect, but really just an unpredictable variable, pure RNG. Doesn’t that nullify a regressor’s biggest edge?”
“Exactly. Worse, pinpointing its location is near impossible.”
“Huh?”
“Think, Saintess. The tornado’s path varies per loop means its launch point might too. Beijing’s confirmed, sure—but Beijing’s huge, right?”
“Ah…….”
She finally got it and nodded.
“Tough nut.”
“Yeah. If it were Cthulhu-sized, fine—but it hasn’t hit my intel net, so probably tiny. Gotta find a position-shifting anomaly somewhere in Beijing each loop. Like finding a scale on a beach.”
“Right. Spot on.”
“Yep. Solo? Near impossible. Unless there’s a genius who can share all Awakeners’ visions.”
“…….”
“…….”
“……?”
“…….”
“…I’ll tag along. To Beijing.”
“Oh dear, no need for that. Whew, with your help, Saintess, it’s like gaining a heavenly host.”
“…….”
Hikikomori Saintess’s heart-pounding overseas trip: Confirmed!