Chapter 95
Chapter 95
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 95
Chapter Title: Responder IX
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Shin Noah
17
After patrolling the school once with Cheon Yo-hwa, we arrived at a conclusion.
“This place… it’s a peaceful world.”
A world where humanity had not perished.
Voids known as “Gates” were popping up here and there, but they weren’t as dire as in reality.
True to their name, the voids here all resembled gateways. If left alone, “monsters” would come pouring out in droves.
On the flip side, success in sealing a Gate could minimize the damage.
—Last time, a Gate appeared centered around Seoul’s Sadang Station, right? With crowds surging in for the morning commute, heavy casualties were expected…
—The Fourth Exploration Party has finally succeeded in clearing the Sadang Station Gate. Exploration Party Leader Dang Seo-rin, who rescued most of the missing…
—Meanwhile, regarding this incident that set a new record for Gate casualties at 212 deaths, calls are growing to hold the government accountable…
Newspapers, news broadcasts, YouTube, SNS—stories about Gates blanketed them all day every day.
Civilization had not collapsed.
The list of disasters humanity had endured since ancient times—typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, pandemics—had simply gained a new, brief entry: “Gates.”
Humans still proclaimed themselves lords of all creation.
Some feared the Gates and monsters as harbingers of the end times, but our impressions differed, having returned from truly experiencing the “end.”
“…I’m jealous. I wish our world had been at this level.”
“The fact that it doesn’t show a completely peaceful world reveals Avici’s cunning.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Our minds are already scarred with trauma from the anomalies. In an overly peaceful world, we’d only fixate on how abnormal we are. We’d be gripped by the obsession that the world could end at any moment… But here, monsters appear at a level we can handle. In this world, you and I can live as ‘normal’ people.”
“Oh… Wow, even that level of detail?”
“Yes. It’s an outer god-level anomaly, after all. No pushover.”
And that was just the beginning.
In a completely peaceful world, one without anomalies at all, Cheon Yo-hwa’s and my awakening abilities would be nothing but alien tumors.
But in a world where monsters truly existed?
All the abilities, knowledge, and instincts we’d built up would translate directly into results. Guilds everywhere would shower us with recruitment offers.
“A world where we’re not denied for who we are—in fact, endlessly affirmed—and we can climb straight to the top of the pyramid. And yet, we can believe our success stems not from some gift from the anomaly called Avici, but from our own talent, effort, and free will. This place is a model garden designed solely for us two.”
“……”
Cheon Yo-hwa’s shoulders shrank.
“…Scary. Anomalies, I mean.”
“Terrifying. But conversely, it means we’ve cornered Avici that badly.”
Four steps. The infinite instant from the other shore to this one. Our footsteps traversing that distance were far from useless.
Avici was undoubtedly crumbling.
Dang Seo-rin’s journey. No Do-ha’s seclusion. The Saintess’s contemplation. Each eternity-laden route had been trampled underfoot.
The illusions meticulously chosen by Avici were rejected by our will to return to reality, no matter how sweet.
“Yo-hwaaa!”
“Let’s play basketball togetheeer!”
Students on the distant sports field waved toward us.
Cheon Yo-hwa froze. After about three seconds, she cupped her hands into a megaphone.
“Sorryyy! I’m sitting this one out todaaay—”
Eeeee, ee, ee—
Cicada wings sprouting from the wisteria bark buzzed fiercely. Wind rustled the leaves. On the school sports field—that faux sand desert—children’s laughter and cicada cries echoed.
“Friends of yours?”
“…Yeah. Classmates. Roommates.”
A sigh drifted downward. Too faint to reach the desert.
“They both died in the school ghost story on the first week.”
Cheon Yo-hwa tapped the sports field with her shoe tip. Tok, tok. A human’s weight knocked on the Earth.
“Hmmmmm. Mister. Sudden thought. No, actually, I’ve wondered before, but asking now…”
“Go ahead.”
“Why can’t we just stay here? Not that I want to. Pure curiosity. Honestly… going back changes nothing, right?”
“……”
“Every bathroom trip means checking for ghosts. To avoid human flesh, you have to pick out every piece of meat. You wake up and someone’s always gone. From what you’ve said, mister, it’s not just our school that’s ruined—the whole world is toast… How can you say so firmly we have to go back to reality?”
“Hm.”
“For example… What if we invited not just us, but everyone else into Avici? Then this would become reality, right? Or maybe you think a world that’s not truly real has no value…”
“No. Not for that reason.”
“Then?”
“My moniker is Undertaker.”
Cheon Yo-hwa turned to look at me.
“Just as you have the ability to brainwash targets, I have a few abilities too. One is Time Seal… which I personally call a funeral.”
“Funeral.”
“I can make someone relive the day they felt happiest forever.”
“……”
“Strictly speaking, it’s not even repetition. They never realize the day is regenerating endlessly. This is why I earned the name Undertaker.”
Cicada chirps from the trees, basketball thuds on the court, a truck beyond the school wall blaring its horn—paaaang—
“Yo-hwa. Is there no unhappiness in this world?”
“…No.”
“Right. There is. Lots. Yesterday, 212 died sealing a Gate. No matter how optimized Avici made this for us, it’s still far from happiness for all humanity.”
The crosswalk light by the school gate blinked stutteringly.
“The reason we don’t entrust our lives to Avici is simple. Comparative advantage. This world lacks… persuasive power as a final hell.”
“……”
If the world is hell, people live seeking a hell they can accept. Until then, they can postpone life.
After a long silence, Cheon Yo-hwa nodded.
“…Yeah. I get it. You’re a final stop people can return from anytime, mister.”
“Ended up that way somehow.”
“Then the only question I have to ask myself is if I want to give up and rest… Yeah. I’m fine. I’m not tired yet.”
Our gazes met.
Sunset embraced the desert. Orange mixed with sand and red. Cheon Yo-hwa’s hair held half the desert’s scent and half orange.
“Tell me what I need to do, mister.”
18
On the moon’s surface, I executed the strategy the Saintess had proposed.
—Seizing control of Baekhwa, Avici’s Night Parade of One Hundred Demons consisting of 100 ghosts.
If we could pull this off, Avici’s power, manifested through those 100 ghosts, would undoubtedly weaken dramatically.
“For this plan, Yo-hwa, you need to brainwash every single one of Baekhwa’s ghosts.”
“Brainwash anomalies.”
“Yes. Doesn’t matter how long it takes. Just make the ghosts follow you, not Avici.”
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
I captured a hopping ghost and tossed it to her. I looped rope around its neck so it wouldn’t smash its head on the floor and hung it from the ceiling.
Cheon Yo-hwa holed up in the student council room like she was in secluded training, spending time alone with the ghost.
Brainwashing an anomaly instead of a human.
Something that had never happened across all regressions, yet I was certain. Cheon Yo-hwa could do it.
A day, two, three, a week passed, and still she hadn’t brainwashed the ghost.
The student council room reeked of rot from the ghost’s stench. Cup ramen cups, cans, trash from Cheon Yo-hwa’s shut-in eating piled up in one corner.
“I’m okay.”
Cheon Yo-hwa’s eyes gleamed like a madwoman’s.
“I think I can do it. It’s summer break anyway… I want to focus alone for a while, so no need to clean.”
While the Korean Peninsula’s sole necromancer persisted in her seclusion, I took a quick tour nationwide.
In Busan, pro-traitor Mayor Jeong went about his duties unfazed.
Puppeteer Lee Ha-yul, the mayor’s hidden daughter, had graduated school early and joined a major guild.
Dang Seo-rin led an exploration party with her three younger siblings. I caught a distant glimpse of her family’s faces, known to me only through stories.
At Hongik University, Sim A-ryeon occupied a ramen shop’s shoyu ramen (extra bean sprouts) alone, friendless for meals.
At the rehab hospital’s orthotics center, No Do-ha walked out right on quitting time.
In Yongsan, the Saintess only emerged once a day for an evening stroll, otherwise staying home.
A world where humans, not anomalies, still claimed to be lords of creation.
…Even an old man who’d come to Korea for his wife’s academic lecture from Germany was alive and well.
“Sorry. Do you know where this auditorium is?”
Old Man Show.
The old man in casual business attire asked me in English right in the middle of Seoul National University.
Seeing Old Man Show with a perfectly intact head on his shoulders, not a dullahan, was a rare sight.
I was torn between the urge to sock that bearded chin and the urge to hug his shoulders tight.
“…You can ask in German, sir.”
“Oh? Well, I’ll be. Didn’t expect a young Korean so fluent! Does my English sound that German?”
“I majored in German lit, so I have some German friends. I’m heading to that auditorium anyway—follow me.”
“Oh, thank you. My wife’s lecturing here today. You know her? Adele Schopenhauer…”
“Wow. I’m actually going to her lecture too.”
“Oho! Fate, then!”
That day, at Seoul National University’s cultural hall, I met Old Man Show’s wife face-to-face. I’d seen photos, but this was the real deal.
His beaming embrace of his wife after the lecture was, naturally, a first.
So that’s the kind of person she was.
Solid proof that when Avici crafted illusions, it didn’t just hijack my personal memories—it drew on my accumulated data about the world.
“Oh, Adele. I got lost here, and a kind young man showed me the way… Huh? What? That’s weird. He was just here with me…”
I left one route behind and returned to school without a word.
No one questioned my comings and goings. Cheon Yo-hwa had “set” me as a longtime security guard at Baekhwa Girls’ High School.
The moment I stepped into the old school building’s wooden hallway, the world flipped upside down without warning.
“……!”
Midair. Position: the old school building’s ceiling.
I immediately spread aura in all directions. Any other Awakener would gasp at the waste, but for an infinite regressor formerly a pure supporter with no combat skills, filling in with aura was perfectly rational.
Gray waves crashed in the void.
Echolocation. After centuries of honing, my senses specialized in perceiving object outlines via aura. Like a dolphin mapping terrain with ultrasound.
An anomaly hit my senses. Mid-fall, my eyes met Cheon Yo-hwa’s as she stood by a building window.
Cheon Yo-hwa was smiling.
“—.”
Her lips moved.
‘Stand.’
The sky flipped again. The midair float vanished, and suddenly my feet were planted on the old school building’s hallway.
Cheon Yo-hwa smiled before me. She held an hourglass in both hands, something inside the glass.
Wriggle—
It was a ghost. A minuscule ghost dangled inside the hourglass, rope around its neck.
An hourglass. I inwardly admired it. Was there a more fitting spell to seal and imprison ghosts?
Enclosing the world in one’s grasp. Taking a mere barren sand pile, infusing it with time’s vortex, all under total personal control.
Sunset from the hallway window struck the hourglass glass.
Like showing off a new pet—or toying with it—the school ghost story’s student council president playfully shook the hourglass.
“What do you think, mister?”
“Cool clock. Can I touch it?”
“Ahaha—sure!”
Humanity’s first anomaly tamer.
By summer break’s end, Cheon Yo-hwa had subjugated a total of 43 ghosts.